The Gadfly by E. L. Voynich (ebook reader android TXT) 📕

paid for

you; come, then, and gorge yourselves, cannibals,

bloodsuckers—carrion beasts that feed on the

dead! See where the blood streams down from

the altar, foaming and hot from my darling’s

heart—the blood that was shed for you! Wallow

and lap it and smear yourselves red with it!

Snatch and fight for the flesh and devour it—and

trouble me no more! This is the body that was

given for you—look at it, torn and bleeding,

throbbing still with the tortured life, quivering

from the bitter death-agony; take it, Christians,

and eat!”

 

He had caught up the sun with the Host and

lifted it above his head; and now flung it crashing

down upon the floor. At the ring of the metal on

stone the clergy rushed forward together, and

twenty hands seized the madman.

 

Then, and only then, the silence of the people

broke in a wild, hysterical scream; and, overturning

chairs and benches, beating at the doorways,

trampling one upon another, tearing down curtains

and garlands in their haste, the surging,

sobbing human flood poured out upon the street.

 

EPILOGUE.

 

“GEMMA, there’s a man downstairs who wants

to see you.” Martini spoke in the subdued tone

which they had both unconsciously adopted during

these last ten days. That, and a certain slow

evenness of speech and movement, were the sole

expression which either of them gave to their grief.

 

Gemma, with bare arms and an apron over her

dress, was standing at a table, putting up little

packages of cartridges for distribution. She had

stood over the work since early morning; and

now, in the glaring afternoon, her face looked haggard

with fatigue.

 

“A man, Cesare? What does he want?”

 

“I don’t know, dear. He wouldn’t tell me.

He said he must speak to you alone.”

 

“Very well.” She took off her apron and

pulled down the sleeves of her dress. “I must go

to him, I suppose; but very likely it’s only a spy.”

 

“In any case, I shall be in the next room, within

call. As soon as you get rid of him you had better

go and lie down a bit. You have been standing

too long to-day.”

 

“Oh, no! I would rather go on working.”

 

She went slowly down the stairs, Martini following

in silence. She had grown to look ten years

older in these few days, and the gray streak across

her hair had widened into a broad band. She

mostly kept her eyes lowered now; but when, by

chance, she raised them, he shivered at the horror

in their shadows.

 

In the little parlour she found a clumsy-looking

man standing with his heels together in the middle

of the floor. His whole figure and the half-frightened

way he looked up when she came in,

suggested to her that he must be one of the Swiss

guards. He wore a countryman’s blouse, which

evidently did not belong to him, and kept glancing

round as though afraid of detection.

 

“Can you speak German?” he asked in the

heavy Zurich patois.

 

“A little. I hear you want to see me.”

 

“You are Signora Bolla? I’ve brought you a

letter.”

 

“A—letter?” She was beginning to tremble,

and rested one hand on the table to steady herself.

 

“I’m one of the guard over there.” He

pointed out of the window to the fortress on the

hill. “It’s from—the man that was shot last

week. He wrote it the night before. I promised

him I’d give it into your own hand myself.”

 

She bent her head down. So he had written

after all.

 

“That’s why I’ve been so long bringing it,” the

soldier went on. “He said I was not to give it to

anyone but you, and I couldn’t get off before—

they watched me so. I had to borrow these

things to come in.”

 

He was fumbling in the breast of his blouse.

The weather was hot, and the sheet of folded

paper that he pulled out was not only dirty and

crumpled, but damp. He stood for a moment

shuffling his feet uneasily; then put up one hand

and scratched the back of his head.

 

“You won’t say anything,” he began again

timidly, with a distrustful glance at her. “It’s as

much as my life’s worth to have come here.”

 

“Of course I shall not say anything. No,

wait a minute–-”

 

As he turned to go, she stopped him, feeling for

her purse; but he drew back, offended.

 

“I don’t want your money,” he said roughly.

“I did it for him—because he asked me to. I’d

have done more than that for him. He’d been

good to me—God help me!”

 

The little catch in his voice made her look up.

He was slowly rubbing a grimy sleeve across his

eyes.

 

“We had to shoot,” he went on under his

breath; “my mates and I. A man must obey

orders. We bungled it, and had to fire again—

and he laughed at us—he called us the awkward

squad—and he’d been good to me–-”

 

There was silence in the room. A moment

later he straightened himself up, made a clumsy

military salute, and went away.

 

She stood still for a little while with the paper

in her hand; then sat down by the open window

to read. The letter was closely written in pencil,

and in some parts hardly legible. But the first

two words stood out quite clear upon the page;

and they were in English:

 

“Dear Jim.”

 

The writing grew suddenly blurred and misty.

And she had lost him again—had lost him again!

At the sight of the familiar childish nickname all

the hopelessness of her bereavement came over

her afresh, and she put out her hands in blind

desperation, as though the weight of the earth-clods

that lay above him were pressing on her heart.

 

Presently she took up the paper again and went

on reading:

 

“I am to be shot at sunrise to-morrow. So

if I am to keep at all my promise to tell you everything,

I must keep it now. But, after all, there is

not much need of explanations between you and

me. We always understood each other without

many words, even when we were little things.

 

“And so, you see, my dear, you had no need to

break your heart over that old story of the blow.

It was a hard hit, of course; but I have had plenty

of others as hard, and yet I have managed to get

over them,—even to pay back a few of them,—and

here I am still, like the mackerel in our nursery-book

(I forget its name), ‘Alive and kicking,

oh!’ This is my last kick, though; and then, to-morrow

morning, and—‘Finita la Commedia!’

You and I will translate that: ‘The variety show

is over’; and will give thanks to the gods that

they have had, at least, so much mercy on us. It

is not much, but it is something; and for this and

all other blessings may we be truly thankful!

 

“About that same to-morrow morning, I want

both you and Martini to understand clearly that

I am quite happy and satisfied, and could ask

no better thing of Fate. Tell that to Martini

as a message from me; he is a good fellow and a

good comrade, and he will understand. You see,

dear, I know that the stick-in-the-mud people are

doing us a good turn and themselves a bad one

by going back to secret trials and executions so

soon, and I know that if you who are left stand

together steadily and hit hard, you will see great

things. As for me, I shall go out into the courtyard

with as light a heart as any child starting

home for the holidays. I have done my share of

the work, and this death-sentence is the proof that

I have done it thoroughly. They kill me because

they are afraid of me; and what more can any man’s

heart desire?

 

“It desires just one thing more, though. A man

who is going to die has a right to a personal fancy,

and mine is that you should see why I have always

been such a sulky brute to you, and so slow to forget

old scores. Of course, though, you understand

why, and I tell you only for the pleasure of

writing the words. I loved you, Gemma, when you

were an ugly little girl in a gingham frock, with a

scratchy tucker and your hair in a pig-tail down

your back; and I love you still. Do you remember

that day when I kissed your hand, and when

you so piteously begged me ‘never to do that

again’? It was a scoundrelly trick to play, I know;

but you must forgive that; and now I kiss the

paper where I have written your name. So I have

kissed you twice, and both times without your

consent.

 

“That is all. Good-bye, my dear.”

 

There was no signature, but a verse which they

had learned together as children was written

under the letter:

 

“Then am I

A happy fly,

If I live

Or if I die.”

 

… . .

 

Half an hour later Martini entered the room,

and, startled out of the silence of half a life-time,

threw down the placard he was carrying and flung

his arms about her.

 

“Gemma! What is it, for God’s sake? Don’t

sob like that—you that never cry! Gemma!

Gemma, my darling!”

 

“Nothing, Cesare; I will tell you afterwards—I

—can’t talk about it just now.”

 

She hurriedly slipped the tear-stained letter into

her pocket; and, rising, leaned out of the window

to hide her face. Martini held his tongue and bit

his moustache. After all these years he had betrayed

himself like a schoolboy—and she had not

even noticed it!

 

“The Cathedral bell is tolling,” she said after

a little while, looking round with recovered self-command.

“Someone must be dead.”

 

“That is what I came to show you,” Martini

answered in his everyday voice. He picked up the

placard from the floor and handed it to her.

Hastily printed in large type was a black-bordered

announcement that: “Our dearly beloved Bishop,

His Eminence the Cardinal, Monsignor Lorenzo

Montanelli,” had died suddenly at Ravenna, “from

the rupture of an aneurism of the heart.”

 

She glanced up quickly from the paper, and

Martini answered the unspoken suggestion in her

eyes with a shrug of his shoulders.

 

“What would you have, Madonna? Aneurism

is as good a word as any other.”

 

End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Gadfly, by E. L. Voynich