The Gadfly by Ethel Voynich (top fiction books of all time .txt) 📕

A little pause.

“And your anger against this⁠—comrade, your jealousy of him, was called forth by his success in that work being greater than yours?”

“I⁠—yes, partly. I envied him his experience⁠—his usefulness. And then⁠—I thought⁠—I feared⁠—that he would take from me the heart of the girl I⁠—love.”

“And this girl that you love, is she a daughter of the Holy Church?”

“No; she is a Protestant.”

“A heretic?”

Arthur clasped his hands in great distress. “Yes, a heretic,” he repeated. “We were brought up together; our mothers were friends⁠—and I⁠—envied him, because I saw that he loves her, too, and because⁠—because⁠—”

“My son,” said Father Cardi, speaking after a moment’s silence, slowly and gravely, “you have still not told me all; there is more than this upon your soul.”

“Father, I⁠—” He faltered and broke off again.

The priest waited silently.

“I envied him because the society⁠—the Young Italy⁠—that I belong to⁠—”

“Yes?”

“Entrusted him with a work that I had hoped⁠—would be given to me, that I had thought myself⁠—specially adapted for.”

“What work?”

“The taking in of books⁠—political books⁠—from the steamers that bring them⁠—and finding a hiding place for them⁠—in the town⁠—”

“And this work was given by the party to your rival?”

“To Bolla⁠—and I envied him.”

“And he gave you no cause for this feeling? You do not accuse him of having neglected the mission entrusted to him?”

“No, father; he has worked bravely and devotedly; he is a true patriot and has deserved nothing but love and respect from me.”

Father Cardi pondered.

“My son, if there is within you a new light, a dream of some great work to be accomplished for your fellow-men, a hope that shall lighten the burdens of the weary and oppressed, take heed how you deal with the most precious blessing of God. All good things are of His giving; and of His giving is the new birth. If you have found the way of sacrifice, the way that leads to peace; if you have joined with loving comrades to bring deliverance to them that weep and mourn in secret; then see to it that your soul be free from envy and passion and your heart as an altar where the sacred fire burns eternally. Remember that this is a high and holy thing, and that the heart which would receive it must be purified from every selfish thought. This vocation is as the vocation of a priest; it is not for the love of a woman, nor for the moment of a fleeting passion; it is for god and the people; it is now and forever.”

“Ah!” Arthur started and clasped his hands; he had almost burst out sobbing at the motto. “Father, you give us the sanction of the Church! Christ is on our side⁠—”

“My son,” the priest answered solemnly, “Christ drove the moneychangers out of the Temple, for His House shall be called a House of Prayer, and they had made it a den of thieves.”

After a long silence, Arthur whispered tremulously:

“And Italy shall be His Temple when they are driven out⁠—”

He stopped; and the soft answer came back:

“ ‘The earth and the fullness thereof are mine, saith the Lord.’ ”

That afternoon Arthur felt the need of a long walk. He entrusted his luggage to a fellow-student and went to Leghorn on foot.

The day was damp and cloudy, but not cold; and the low, level country seemed to him fairer than he had ever known it to look before. He had a sense of delight in the soft elasticity of the wet grass under his feet and in the shy, wondering eyes of the wild spring flowers by the roadside. In a thorn-acacia bush at the edge of a little strip of wood a bird was building a nest, and flew up as he passed with a startled cry and a quick fluttering of brown wings.

He tried to keep his mind fixed upon the devout meditations proper to the eve of Good Friday. But thoughts of Montanelli and Gemma got so much in the way of this devotional exercise that at last he gave up the attempt and allowed his fancy to drift away to the wonders and glories of the coming insurrection, and to the part in it that he had allotted to his two idols. The Padre was to be the leader, the apostle, the prophet before whose sacred wrath the powers of darkness were to flee, and at whose feet the young defenders of Liberty were to learn afresh the old doctrines, the old truths in their new and unimagined significance.

And Gemma? Oh, Gemma would fight at the barricades. She was made of the clay from which heroines are moulded; she would be the perfect comrade, the maiden undefiled and unafraid, of whom so many poets have dreamed. She would stand beside him, shoulder to shoulder, rejoicing under the winged death-storm; and they would die together, perhaps in the moment of victory⁠—without doubt there would be a victory. Of his love he would tell her nothing; he would say no word that might disturb her peace or spoil her tranquil sense of comradeship. She was to him a holy thing, a spotless victim to be laid upon the altar as a burnt-offering for the deliverance of the people; and who was he that he should enter into the white sanctuary of a soul that knew no other love than God and Italy?

God and Italy⁠—Then came a sudden drop from the clouds as he entered the great, dreary house in the “Street of Palaces,” and Julia’s butler, immaculate, calm, and politely disapproving as ever, confronted him upon the stairs.

“Good evening, Gibbons; are my brothers in?”

“Mr. Thomas is in, sir; and Mrs. Burton. They are in the drawing room.”

Arthur went in with a dull sense of oppression. What a dismal house it was! The flood of life seemed to roll past and leave it always just above high-water mark. Nothing in it ever changed⁠—neither the people, nor the family portraits, nor the heavy furniture and ugly plate, nor the vulgar ostentation