"I f-forgot," he stammered apologetically. "I was g-going to t-tell you about——"

"About the—accident or whatever it was that caused your lameness. But if it worries you——"

"The accident? Oh, the smashing! Yes; only it wasn't an accident, it was a poker."

She stared at him in blank amazement. He pushed back his hair with a hand that shook perceptibly, and looked up at her, smiling.

"Won't you sit down? Bring your chair close, please. I'm so sorry I can't get it for you. R-really, now I come to think of it, the case would have been a p-perfect t-treasure-trove for Riccardo if he had had me to treat; he has the true surgeon's love for broken bones, and I believe everything in me that was breakable was broken on that occasion—except my neck."

"And your courage," she put in softly. "But perhaps you count that among your unbreakable possessions."

He shook his head. "No," he said; "my courage has been mended up after a fashion, with the rest of me; but it was fairly broken then, like a smashed tea-cup; that's the horrible part of it. Ah—— Yes; well, I was telling you about the poker.

"It was—let me see—nearly thirteen years ago, in Lima. I told you Peru was a delightful country to live in; but it's not quite so nice for people that happen to be at low water, as I was. I had been down in the Argentine, and then in Chili, tramping the country and starving, mostly; and had come up from Valparaiso as odd-man on a cattle-boat. I couldn't get any work in Lima itself, so I went down to the docks,—they're at Callao, you know,—to try there. Well of course in all those shipping-ports there are low quarters where the sea-faring people congregate; and after some time I got taken on as servant in one of the gambling hells there. I had to do the cooking and billiard-marking, and fetch drink for the sailors and their women, and all that sort of thing. Not very pleasant work; still I was glad to get it; there was at least food and the sight of human faces and sound of human tongues—of a kind. You may think that was no advantage; but I had just been down with yellow fever, alone in the outhouse of a wretched half-caste shanty, and the thing had given me the horrors. Well, one night I was told to put out a tipsy Lascar who was making himself obnoxious; he had come ashore and lost all his money and was in a bad temper. Of course I had to obey if I didn't want to lose my place and starve; but the man was twice as strong as I—I was not twenty-one and as weak as a cat after the fever. Besides, he had the poker."

He paused a moment, glancing furtively at her; then went on:

"Apparently he intended to put an end to me altogether; but somehow he managed to scamp his work—Lascars always do if they have a chance; and left just enough of me not smashed to go on living with."

"Yes, but the other people, could they not interfere? Were they all afraid of one Lascar?"

He looked up and burst out laughing.

"THE OTHER PEOPLE? The gamblers and the people of the house? Why, you don't understand! They were negroes and Chinese and Heaven knows what; and I was their servant—THEIR PROPERTY. They stood round and enjoyed the fun, of course. That sort of thing counts for a good joke out there. So it is if you don't happen to be the subject practised on."

She shuddered.

"Then what was the end of it?"

"That I can't tell you much about; a man doesn't remember the next few days after a thing of that kind, as a rule. But there was a ship's surgeon near, and it seems that when they found I was not dead, somebody called him in. He patched me up after a fashion—Riccardo seems to think it was rather badly done, but that may be professional jealousy. Anyhow, when I came to my senses, an old native woman had taken me in for Christian charity—that sounds queer, doesn't it? She used to sit huddled up in the corner of the hut, smoking a black pipe and spitting on the floor and crooning to herself. However, she meant well, and she told me I might die in peace and nobody should disturb me. But the spirit of contradiction was strong in me and I elected to live. It was rather a difficult job scrambling back to life, and sometimes I am inclined to think it was a great deal of cry for very little wool. Anyway that old woman's patience was wonderful; she kept me—how long was it?—nearly four months lying in her hut, raving like a mad thing at intervals, and as vicious as a bear with a sore ear between-whiles. The pain was pretty bad, you see, and my temper had been spoiled in childhood with overmuch coddling."

"And then?"

"Oh, then—I got up somehow and crawled away. No, don't think it was any delicacy about taking a poor woman's charity—I was past caring for that; it was only that I couldn't bear the place any longer. You talked just now about my courage; if you had seen me then! The worst of the pain used to come on every evening, about dusk; and in the afternoon I used to lie alone, and watch the sun get lower and lower—— Oh, you can't understand! It makes me sick to look at a sunset now!"

A long pause.

"Well, then I went up country, to see if I could get work anywhere—it would have driven me mad to stay in Lima. I got as far as Cuzco, and there——— Really I don't know why I'm inflicting all this ancient history on you; it hasn't even the merit of being funny."

She raised her head and looked at him with deep and serious eyes. "PLEASE don't talk that way," she said.

He bit his lip and tore off another piece of the rug-fringe.

"Shall I go on?" he asked after a moment.

"If—if you will. I am afraid it is horrible to you to remember."

"Do you think I forget when I hold my tongue? It's worse then. But don't imagine it's the thing itself that haunts me so. It is the fact of having lost the power over myself."

"I—don't think I quite understand."

"I mean, it is the fact of having come to the end of my courage, to the point where I found myself a coward."

"Surely there is a limit to what anyone can bear."

"Yes; and the man who has once reached that limit never knows when he may reach it again."

"Would you mind telling me," she asked, hesitating, "how you came to be stranded out there alone at twenty?"

"Very simply: I had a good opening in life, at home in the old country, and ran away from it."

"Why?"

He laughed again in his quick, harsh way.

"Why? Because I was a priggish young cub, I suppose. I had been brought up in an over-luxurious home, and coddled and faddled after till I thought the world was made of pink cotton-wool and sugared almonds. Then one fine day I found out that someone I had trusted had deceived me. Why, how you start! What is it?"

"Nothing. Go on, please."

"I found out that I had been tricked into believing a lie; a common bit of experience, of course; but, as I tell you, I was young and priggish, and thought that liars go to hell. So I ran away from home and plunged into South America to sink or swim as I could, without a cent in my pocket or a word of Spanish in my tongue, or anything but white hands and expensive habits to get my bread with. And the natural result was that I got a dip into the real hell to cure me of imagining sham ones. A pretty thorough dip, too—it was just five years before the Duprez expedition came along and pulled me out."

"Five years! Oh, that is terrible! And had you no friends?"

"Friends! I"—he turned on her with sudden fierceness—"I have NEVER had a friend!"

The next instant he seemed a little ashamed of his vehemence, and went on quickly:

"You mustn't take all this too seriously; I dare say I made the worst of things, and really it wasn't so bad the first year and a half; I was young and strong and I managed to scramble along fairly well till the Lascar put his mark on me. But after that I couldn't get work. It's wonderful what an effectual tool a poker is if you handle it properly; and nobody cares to employ a cripple."

"What sort of work did you do?"

"What I could get. For some time I lived by odd-jobbing for the blacks on the sugar plantations, fetching and carrying and so on. It's one of the curious things in life, by the way, that slaves always contrive to have a slave of their own, and there's nothing a negro likes so much as a white fag to bully. But it was no use; the overseers always turned me off. I was too lame to be quick; and I couldn't manage the heavy loads. And then I was always getting these attacks of inflammation, or whatever the confounded thing is.

"After some time I went down to the silver-mines and tried to get work there; but it was all no good. The managers laughed at the very notion of taking me on, and as for the men, they made a dead set at me."

"Why was that?"

"Oh, human nature, I suppose; they saw I had only one hand that I could hit back with. They're a mangy, half-caste lot; negroes and Zambos mostly. And then those horrible coolies! So at last I got enough of that, and set off to tramp the country at random; just wandering about, on the chance of something turning up."

"To tramp? With that lame foot!"

He looked up with a sudden, piteous catching of the breath.

"I—I was hungry," he said.

She turned her head a little away and rested her chin on one hand. After a moment's silence he began again, his voice sinking lower and lower as he spoke:

"Well, I tramped, and tramped, till I was nearly mad with tramping, and nothing came of it. I got down into Ecuador, and there it was worse than ever. Sometimes I'd get a bit of tinkering to do,—I'm a pretty fair tinker,—or an errand to run, or a pigstye to clean out; sometimes I did—oh, I hardly know what. And then at last, one day———"

The slender, brown hand clenched itself suddenly on the table, and Gemma, raising her head, glanced at him anxiously. His side-face was turned towards her, and she could see a vein on the temple beating like a hammer, with quick, irregular strokes. She bent forward and laid a gentle hand on his arm.

"Never mind the rest; it's almost too horrible to talk about."

He stared doubtfully at the hand, shook his head, and went on steadily:

"Then one day I met a travelling variety show. You remember that one the other night; well, that sort of thing, only coarser and more indecent. The Zambos are not like these gentle Florentines; they don't care for anything that is not foul or brutal. There was bull-fighting, too, of course. They had camped out by the roadside for the night; and I went up to their tent to beg. Well, the weather was hot and I was half starved, and so—I fainted at the door of the tent. I had a trick of fainting suddenly at that time, like a boarding-school girl with tight stays. So they took me in and gave me brandy, and food, and so on; and then—the next morning—they offered me——"

Another pause.

"They wanted a hunchback, or monstrosity of some kind; for the boys to pelt with orange-peel and banana-skins—something to set the blacks laughing——— You saw the clown that night—well, I was that—for two years. I suppose you have a humanitarian feeling about negroes and Chinese. Wait till you've been at their mercy!

"Well, I learned to do the tricks. I was not quite deformed enough; but they set that right with an artificial hump and made the most of this foot and arm—— And the Zambos are not critical; they're easily satisfied if only they can get hold of some live thing to torture—the fool's dress makes a good deal of difference, too.

"The only difficulty was that I was so often ill and unable to play. Sometimes, if the manager was out of temper, he would insist on my coming into the ring when I had these attacks on; and I believe the people liked those evenings best. Once, I remember, I fainted right off with the pain in the middle of the performance—— When I came to my senses again, the audience had got round me—hooting and yelling and pelting me with———"

"Don't! I can't hear any more! Stop, for God's sake!"

She was standing up with both hands over her ears. He broke off, and, looking up, saw the glitter of tears in her eyes.

"Damn it all, what an idiot I am!" he said under his breath.

She crossed the room and stood for a little while looking out of the window. When she turned round, the Gadfly was again leaning on the table and covering his eyes with one hand. He had evidently forgotten her presence, and she sat down beside him without speaking. After a long silence she said slowly:

"I want to ask you a question."

"Yes?" without moving.

"Why did you not cut your throat?"

He looked up in grave surprise. "I did not expect YOU to ask that," he said. "And what about my work? Who would have done it for me?"

"Your work—— Ah, I see! You talked just now about being a coward; well, if you have come through that and kept to your purpose, you are the very bravest man that I have ever met."

He covered his eyes again, and held her hand in a close passionate clasp. A silence that seemed to have no end fell around them.

Suddenly a clear and fresh soprano voice rang out from the garden below, singing a verse of a doggerel French song:

"Eh, Pierrot! Danse, Pierrot! Danse un peu, mon pauvre Jeannot! Vive la danse et l'allegresse! Jouissons de notre bell' jeunesse! Si moi je pleure ou moi je soupire, Si moi je fais la triste figure— Monsieur, ce n'est que pour rire! Ha! Ha, ha, ha! Monsieur, ce n'est que pour rire!"

At the first words the Gadfly tore his hand from Gemma's and shrank away with a stifled groan. She clasped both hands round his arm and pressed it firmly, as she might have pressed that of a person undergoing a surgical operation. When the song broke off and a chorus of laughter and applause came from the garden, he looked up with the eyes of a tortured animal.

"Yes, it is Zita," he said slowly; "with her officer friends. She tried to come in here the other night, before Riccardo came. I should have gone mad if she had touched me!"

"But she does not know," Gemma protested softly. "She cannot guess that she is hurting you."

"She is like a Creole," he answered, shuddering. "Do you remember her face that night when we brought in the beggar-child? That is how the half-castes look when they laugh."

Another burst of laughter came from the garden. Gemma rose and opened the window. Zita, with a gold-embroidered scarf wound coquettishly round her head, was standing in the garden path, holding up a bunch of violets, for the possession of which three young cavalry officers appeared to be competing.

"Mme. Reni!" said Gemma.

Zita's face darkened like a thunder-cloud. "Madame?" she said, turning and raising her eyes with a defiant look.

"Would your friends mind speaking a little more softly? Signor Rivarez is very unwell."

The gipsy flung down her violets. "Allez-vous en!" she said, turning sharply on the astonished officers. "Vous m'embetez, messieurs!"

She went slowly out into the road. Gemma closed the window.

"They have gone away," she said, turning to him.

"Thank you. I—I am sorry to have troubled you."

"It was no trouble." He at once detected the hesitation in her voice.

"'But?'" he said. "That sentence was not finished, signora; there was an unspoken 'but' in the back of your mind."

"If you look into the backs of people's minds, you mustn't be offended at what you read there. It is not my affair, of course, but I cannot understand——"

"My aversion to Mme. Reni? It is only when——"

"No, your caring to live with her when you feel that aversion. It seems to me an insult to her as a woman and as——"

"A woman!" He burst out laughing harshly. "Is THAT what you call a woman? 'Madame, ce n'est que pour rire!'"

"That is not fair!" she said. "You have no right to speak of her in that way to anyone—especially to another woman!"

He turned away, and lay with wide-open eyes, looking out of the window at the sinking sun. She lowered the blind and closed the shutters, that he might not see it set; then sat down at the table by the other window and took up her knitting again.

"Would you like the lamp?" she asked after a moment.

He shook his head.

When it grew too dark to see, Gemma rolled up her knitting and laid it in the basket. For some time she sat with folded hands, silently watching the Gadfly's motionless figure. The dim evening light, falling on his face, seemed to soften away its hard, mocking, self-assertive look, and to deepen the tragic lines about the mouth. By some fanciful association of ideas her memory went vividly back to the stone cross which her father had set up in memory of Arthur, and to its inscription:

"All thy waves and billows have gone over me."

An hour passed in unbroken silence. At last she rose and went softly out of the room. Coming back with a lamp, she paused for a moment, thinking that the Gadfly was asleep. As the light fell on his face he turned round.

"I have made you a cup of coffee," she said, setting clown the lamp.

"Put it down a minute. Will you come here, please."

He took both her hands in his.

"I have been thinking," he said. "You are quite right; it is an ugly tangle I have got my life into. But remember, a man does not meet every day a woman whom he can—love; and I—I have been in deep waters. I am afraid——"

"Afraid——"

"Of the dark. Sometimes I DARE not be alone at night. I must have something living—something solid beside me. It is the outer darkness, where shall be—— No, no! It's not that; that's a sixpenny toy hell;—it's the INNER darkness. There's no weeping or gnashing of teeth there; only silence—silence——"

His eyes dilated. She was quite still, hardly breathing till he spoke again.

"This is all mystification to you, isn't it? You can't understand—luckily for you. What I mean is that I have a pretty fair chance of going mad if I try to live quite alone—— Don't think too hardly of me, if you can help it; I am not altogether the vicious brute you perhaps imagine me to be."

"I cannot try to judge for you," she answered. "I have not suffered as you have. But—I have been in rather deep water too, in another way; and I think—I am sure—that if you let the fear of anything drive you to do a really cruel or unjust or ungenerous thing, you will regret it afterwards. For the rest—if you have failed in this one thing, I know that I, in your place, should have failed altogether,—should have cursed God and died."

He still kept her hands in his.

"Tell me," he said very softly; "have you ever in your life done a really cruel thing?"

She did not answer, but her head sank down, and two great tears fell on his hand.

"Tell me!" he whispered passionately, clasping her hands tighter. "Tell me! I have told you all my misery."

"Yes,—once,—long ago. And I did it to the person I loved best in the world."

The hands that clasped hers were trembling violently; but they did not loosen their hold.

"He was a comrade," she went on; "and I believed a slander against him,—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.



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.



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 infernal 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.



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 somebody else, and gave himself up to the police in a fit of remorse."

"Was he quite old?"

"Yes; but a white beard and wig will set that right, and the description suits you to perfection in every other respect. He was an old soldier, with a lame foot and a sabre-cut across the face like yours; and then his being a Spaniard, too—you see, if you meet any Spanish pilgrims, you can talk to them all right."

"Where am I to meet Domenichino?"

"You join the pilgrims at the cross-road that we will show you on the map, saying you had lost your way in the hills. Then, when you reach the town, you go with the rest of them into the marketplace, in front of the Cardinal's palace."

"Oh, he manages to live in a p-palace, then, in s-spite of being a saint?"

"He lives in one wing of it, and has turned the rest into a hospital. Well, you all wait there for him to come out and give his benediction, and Domenichino will come up with his basket and say: 'Are you one of the pilgrims, father?' and you answer: 'I am a miserable sinner.' Then he puts down his basket and wipes his face with his sleeve, and you offer him six soldi for a rosary."

"Then, of course, he arranges where we can talk?"

"Yes; he will have plenty of time to give you the address of the meeting-place while the people are gaping at Montanelli. That was our plan; but if you don't like it, we can let Domenichino know and arrange something else."

"No; it will do; only see that the beard and wig look natural."

*****

"Are you one of the pilgrims, father?"

The Gadfly, sitting on the steps of the episcopal palace, looked up from under his ragged white locks, and gave the password in a husky, trembling voice, with a strong foreign accent. Domenichino slipped the leather strap from his shoulder, and set down his basket of pious gewgaws on the step. The crowd of peasants and pilgrims sitting on the steps and lounging about the market-place was taking no notice of them, but for precaution's sake they kept up a desultory conversation, Domenichino speaking in the local dialect and the Gadfly in broken Italian, intermixed with Spanish words.

"His Eminence! His Eminence is coming out!" shouted the people by the door. "Stand aside! His Eminence is coming!"

They both stood up.

"Here, father," said Domenichino, putting into the Gadfly's hand a little image wrapped in paper; "take this, too, and pray for me when you get to Rome."

The Gadfly thrust it into his breast, and turned to look at the figure in the violet Lenten robe and scarlet cap that was standing on the upper step and blessing the people with outstretched arms.

Montanelli came slowly down the steps, the people crowding about him to kiss his hands. Many knelt down and put the hem of his cassock to their lips as he passed.

"Peace be with you, my children!"

At the sound of the clear, silvery voice, the Gadfly bent his head, so that the white hair fell across his face; and Domenichino, seeing the quivering of the pilgrim's staff in his hand, said to himself with admiration: "What an actor!"

A woman standing near to them stooped down and lifted her child from the step. "Come, Cecco," she said. "His Eminence will bless you as the dear Lord blessed the children."

The Gadfly moved a step forward and stopped. Oh, it was hard! All these outsiders—these pilgrims and mountaineers—could go up and speak to him, and he would lay his hand on their children's hair. Perhaps he would say "Carino" to that peasant boy, as he used to say——

The Gadfly sank down again on the step, turning away that he might not see. If only he could shrink into some corner and stop his ears to shut out the sound! Indeed, it was more than any man should have to bear—to be so close, so close that he could have put out his arm and touched the dear hand.

"Will you not come under shelter, my friend?" the soft voice said. "I am afraid you are chilled."

The Gadfly's heart stood still. For a moment he was conscious of nothing but the sickening pressure of the blood that seemed as if it would tear his breast asunder; then it rushed back, tingling and burning through all his body, and he looked up. The grave, deep eyes above him grew suddenly tender with divine compassion at the sight of his face.

"Stand bark a little, friends," Montanelli said, turning to the crowd; "I want to speak to him."

The people fell slowly back, whispering to each other, and the Gadfly, sitting motionless, with teeth clenched and eyes on the ground, felt the gentle touch of Montanelli's hand upon his shoulder.

"You have had some great trouble. Can I do anything to help you?"

The Gadfly shook his head in silence.

"Are you a pilgrim?"

"I am a miserable sinner."

The accidental similarity of Montanelli's question to the password came like a chance straw, that the Gadfly, in his desperation, caught at, answering automatically. He had begun to tremble under the soft pressure of the hand that seemed to burn upon his shoulder.

The Cardinal bent down closer to him.

"Perhaps you would care to speak to me alone? If I can be any help to you——"

For the first time the Gadfly looked straight and steadily into Montanelli's eyes; he was already recovering his self-command.

"It would be no use," he said; "the thing is hopeless."

A police official stepped forward out of the crowd.

"Forgive my intruding, Your Eminence. I think the old man is not quite sound in his mind. He is perfectly harmless, and his papers are in order, so we don't interfere with him. He has been in penal servitude for a great crime, and is now doing penance."

"A great crime," the Gadfly repeated, shaking his head slowly.

"Thank you, captain; stand aside a little, please. My friend, nothing is hopeless if a man has sincerely repented. Will you not come to me this evening?"

"Would Your Eminence receive a man who is guilty of the death of his own son?"

The question had almost the tone of a challenge, and Montanelli shrank and shivered under it as under a cold wind.

"God forbid that I should condemn you, whatever you have done!" he said solemnly. "In His sight we are all guilty alike, and our righteousness is as filthy rags. If you will come to me I will receive you as I pray that He may one day receive me."

The Gadfly stretched out his hands with a sudden gesture of passion.

"Listen!" he said; "and listen all of you, Christians! If a man has killed his only son—his son who loved and trusted him, who was flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone; if he has led his son into a death-trap with lies and deceit—is there hope for that man in earth or heaven? I have confessed my sin before God and man, and I have suffered the punishment that men have laid on me, and they have let me go; but when will God say, 'It is enough'? What benediction will take away His curse from my soul? What absolution will undo this thing that I have done?"

In the dead silence that followed the people looked at Montanelli, and saw the heaving of the cross upon his breast.

He raised his eyes at last, and gave the benediction with a hand that was not quite steady.

"God is merciful," he said. "Lay your burden before His throne; for it is written: 'A broken and contrite heart shalt thou not despise.'"

He turned away and walked through the market-place, stopping everywhere to speak to the people, and to take their children in his arms.

In the evening the Gadfly, following the directions written on the wrapping of the image, made his way to the appointed meeting-place. It was the house of a local doctor, who was an active member of the "sect." Most of the conspirators were already assembled, and their delight at the Gadfly's arrival gave him a new proof, if he had needed one, of his popularity as a leader.

"We're glad enough to see you again," said the doctor; "but we shall be gladder still to see you go. It's a fearfully risky business, and I, for one, was against the plan. Are you quite sure none of those police rats noticed you in the market-place this morning?"

"Oh, they n-noticed me enough, but they d-didn't recognize me. Domenichino m-managed the thing capitally. But where is he? I don't see him."

"He has not come yet. So you got on all smoothly? Did the Cardinal give you his blessing?"

"His blessing? Oh, that's nothing," said Domenichino, coming in at the door. "Rivarez, you're as full of surprises as a Christmas cake. How many more talents are you going to astonish us with?"

"What is it now?" asked the Gadfly languidly. He was leaning back on a sofa, smoking a cigar. He still wore his pilgrim's dress, but the white beard and wig lay beside him.

"I had no idea you were such an actor. I never saw a thing done so magnificently in my life. You nearly moved His Eminence to tears."

"How was that? Let us hear, Rivarez."

The Gadfly shrugged his shoulders. He was in a taciturn and laconic mood, and the others, seeing that nothing was to be got out of him, appealed to Domenichino to explain. When the scene in the market-place had been related, one young workman, who had not joined in the laughter of the rest, remarked abruptly:

"It was very clever, of course; but I don't see what good all this play-acting business has done to anybody."

"Just this much," the Gadfly put in; "that I can go where I like and do what I like anywhere in this district, and not a single man, woman, or child will ever think of suspecting me. The story will be all over the place by to-morrow, and when I meet a spy he will only think: 'It's mad Diego, that confessed his sins in the market-place.' That is an advantage gained, surely."

"Yes, I see. Still, I wish the thing could have been done without fooling the Cardinal. He's too good to have that sort of trick played on him."

"I thought myself he seemed fairly decent," the Gadfly lazily assented.

"Nonsense, Sandro! We don't want Cardinals here!" said Domenichino. "And if Monsignor Montanelli had taken that post in Rome when he had the chance of getting it, Rivarez couldn't have fooled him."

"He wouldn't take it because he didn't want to leave his work here."

"More likely because he didn't want to get poisoned off by Lambruschini's agents. They've got something against him, you may depend upon it. When a Cardinal, especially such a popular one, 'prefers to stay' in a God-forsaken little hole like this, we all know what that means—don't we, Rivarez?"

The Gadfly was making smoke-rings. "Perhaps it is a c-c-case of a 'b-b-broken and contrite heart,'" he remarked, leaning his head back to watch them float away. "And now, men, let us get to business."

They began to discuss in detail the various plans which had been formed for the smuggling and concealment of weapons. The Gadfly listened with keen attention, interrupting every now and then to correct sharply some inaccurate statement or imprudent proposal. When everyone had finished speaking, he made a few practical suggestions, most of which were adopted without discussion. The meeting then broke up. It had been resolved that, at least until he was safely back in Tuscany, very late meetings, which might attract the notice of the police, should be avoided. By a little after ten o'clock all had dispersed except the doctor, the Gadfly, and Domenichino, who remained as a sub-committee for the discussion of special points. After a long and hot dispute, Domenichino looked up at the clock.

"Half-past eleven; we mustn't stop any longer or the night-watchman may see us."

"When does he pass?" asked the Gadfly.

"About twelve o'clock; and I want to be home before he comes. Good-night, Giordani. Rivarez, shall we walk together?"

"No; I think we are safer apart. Then I shall see you again?"

"Yes; at Castel Bolognese. I don't know yet what disguise I shall be in, but you have the password. You leave here to-morrow, I think?"

The Gadfly was carefully putting on his beard and wig before the looking-glass.

"To-morrow morning, with the pilgrims. On the next day I fall ill and stop behind in a shepherd's hut, and then take a short cut across the hills. I shall be down there before you will. Good-night!"

Twelve o'clock was striking from the Cathedral bell-tower as the Gadfly looked in at the door of the great empty barn which had been thrown open as a lodging for the pilgrims. The floor was covered with clumsy figures, most of which were snoring lustily, and the air was insufferably close and foul. He drew back with a little shudder of repugnance; it would be useless to attempt to sleep in there; he would take a walk, and then find some shed or haystack which would, at least, be clean and quiet.

It was a glorious night, with a great full moon gleaming in a purple sky. He began to wander through the streets in an aimless way, brooding miserably over the scene of the morning, and wishing that he had never consented to Domenichino's plan of holding the meeting in Brisighella. If at the beginning he had declared the project too dangerous, some other place would have been chosen; and both he and Montanelli would have been spared this ghastly, ridiculous farce.

How changed the Padre was! And yet his voice was not changed at all; it was just the same as in the old days, when he used to say: "Carino."

The lantern of the night-watchman appeared at the other end of the street, and the Gadfly turned down a narrow, crooked alley. After walking a few yards he found himself in the Cathedral Square, close to the left wing of the episcopal palace. The square was flooded with moonlight, and there was no one in sight; but he noticed that a side door of the Cathedral was ajar. The sacristan must have forgotten to shut it. Surely nothing could be going on there so late at night. He might as well go in and sleep on one of the benches instead of in the stifling barn; he could slip out in the morning before the sacristan came; and even if anyone did find him, the natural supposition would be that mad Diego had been saying his prayers in some corner, and had got shut in.

He listened a moment at the door, and then entered with the noiseless step that he had retained notwithstanding his lameness. The moonlight streamed through the windows, and lay in broad bands on the marble floor. In the chancel, especially, everything was as clearly visible as by daylight. At the foot of the altar steps Cardinal Montanelli knelt alone, bare-headed, with clasped hands.

The Gadfly drew back into the shadow. Should he slip away before Montanelli saw him? That, no doubt, would be the wisest thing to do—perhaps the most merciful. And yet, what harm could it do for him to go just a little nearer—to look at the Padre's face once more, now that the crowd was gone, and there was no need to keep up the hideous comedy of the morning? Perhaps it would be his last chance—and the Padre need not see him; he would steal up softly and look—just this once. Then he would go back to his work.

Keeping in the shadow of the pillars, he crept softly up to the chancel rails, and paused at the side entrance, close to the altar. The shadow of the episcopal throne was broad enough to cover him, and he crouched down in the darkness, holding his breath.

"My poor boy! Oh, God; my poor boy!"

The broken whisper was full of such endless despair that the Gadfly shuddered in spite of himself. Then came deep, heavy, tearless sobs; and he saw Montanelli wring his hands together like a man in bodily pain.

He had not thought it would be so bad as this. How often had he said to himself with bitter assurance: "I need not trouble about it; that wound was healed long ago." Now, after all these years, it was laid bare before him, and he saw it bleeding still. And how easy it would be to heal it now at last! He need only lift his hand—only step forward and say: "Padre, it is I." There was Gemma, too, with that white streak across her hair. Oh, if he could but forgive! If he could but cut out from his memory the past that was burned into it so deep—the Lascar, and the sugar-plantation, and the variety show! Surely there was no other misery like this—to be willing to forgive, to long to forgive; and to know that it was hopeless—that he could not, dared not forgive.

Montanelli rose at last, made the sign of the cross, and turned away from the altar. The Gadfly shrank further back into the shadow, trembling with fear lest he should be seen, lest the very beating of his heart should betray him; then he drew a long breath of relief. Montanelli had passed him, so close that the violet robe had brushed against his cheek,—had passed and had not seen him.

Had not seen him—— Oh, what had he done? This had been his last chance—this one precious moment—and he had let it slip away. He started up and stepped into the light.

"Padre!"

The sound of his own voice, ringing up and dying away along the arches of the roof, filled him with fantastic terror. He shrank back again into the shadow. Montanelli stood beside the pillar, motionless, listening with wide-open eyes, full of the horror of death. How long the silence lasted the Gadfly could not tell; it might have been an instant, or an eternity. He came to his senses with a sudden shock. Montanelli was beginning to sway as though he would fall, and his lips moved, at first silently.

"Arthur!" the low whisper came at last; "yes, the water is deep——"

The Gadfly came forward.

"Forgive me, Your Eminence! I thought it was one of the priests."

"Ah, it is the pilgrim?" Montanelli had at once recovered his self-control, though the Gadfly could see, from the restless glitter of the sapphire on his hand, that he was still trembling. "Are you in need of anything, my friend? It is late, and the Cathedral is closed at night."