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

it, and flew at Arthur like nothing else in the world but a fashionable lady in a rage.

“So it’s you that have disgraced the family!” she screamed; “setting all the rabble in the town gaping and staring as if the thing were a show? So you have turned jailbird, now, with all your piety! It’s what we might have expected from that Popish woman’s child⁠—”

“You must not speak to a prisoner in a foreign language, madam,” the officer interrupted; but his remonstrance was hardly audible under the torrent of Julia’s vociferous English.

“Just what we might have expected! Fasting and prayer and saintly meditation; and this is what was underneath it all! I thought that would be the end of it.”

Dr. Warren had once compared Julia to a salad into which the cook had upset the vinegar cruet. The sound of her thin, hard voice set Arthur’s teeth on edge, and the simile suddenly popped up in his memory.

“There’s no use in this kind of talk,” he said. “You need not be afraid of any unpleasantness; everyone will understand that you are all quite innocent. I suppose, gentlemen, you want to search my things. I have nothing to hide.”

While the gendarmes ransacked the room, reading his letters, examining his college papers, and turning out drawers and boxes, he sat waiting on the edge of the bed, a little flushed with excitement, but in no way distressed. The search did not disquiet him. He had always burned letters which could possibly compromise anyone, and beyond a few manuscript verses, half revolutionary, half mystical, and two or three numbers of Young Italy, the gendarmes found nothing to repay them for their trouble. Julia, after a long resistance, yielded to the entreaties of her brother-in-law and went back to bed, sweeping past Arthur with magnificent disdain, James meekly following.

When they had left the room, Thomas, who all this while had been tramping up and down, trying to look indifferent, approached the officer and asked permission to speak to the prisoner. Receiving a nod in answer, he went up to Arthur and muttered in a rather husky voice:

“I say; this is an infernally awkward business. I’m very sorry about it.”

Arthur looked up with a face as serene as a summer morning. “You have always been good to me,” he said. “There’s nothing to be sorry about. I shall be safe enough.”

“Look here, Arthur!” Thomas gave his moustache a hard pull and plunged head first into the awkward question. “Is⁠—all this anything to do with⁠—money? Because, if it is, I⁠—”

“With money! Why, no! What could it have to do⁠—”

“Then it’s some political tomfoolery? I thought so. Well, don’t you get down in the mouth⁠—and never mind all the stuff Julia talks. It’s only her spiteful tongue; and if you want help⁠—cash, or anything⁠—let me know, will you?”

Arthur held out his hand in silence, and Thomas left the room with a carefully made-up expression of unconcern that rendered his face more stolid than ever.

The gendarmes, meanwhile, had finished their search, and the officer in charge requested Arthur to put on his outdoor clothes. He obeyed at once and turned to leave the room; then stopped with sudden hesitation. It seemed hard to take leave of his mother’s oratory in the presence of these officials.

“Have you any objection to leaving the room for a moment?” he asked. “You see that I cannot escape and that there is nothing to conceal.”

“I am sorry, but it is forbidden to leave a prisoner alone.”

“Very well, it doesn’t matter.”

He went into the alcove, and, kneeling down, kissed the feet and pedestal of the crucifix, whispering softly: “Lord, keep me faithful unto death.”

When he rose, the officer was standing by the table, examining Montanelli’s portrait. “Is this a relative of yours?” he asked.

“No; it is my confessor, the new Bishop of Brisighella.”

On the staircase the Italian servants were waiting, anxious and sorrowful. They all loved Arthur for his own sake and his mother’s, and crowded round him, kissing his hands and dress with passionate grief. Gian Battista stood by, the tears dripping down his gray moustache. None of the Burtons came out to take leave of him. Their coldness accentuated the tenderness and sympathy of the servants, and Arthur was near to breaking down as he pressed the hands held out to him.

“Goodbye, Gian Battista. Kiss the little ones for me. Goodbye, Teresa. Pray for me, all of you; and God keep you! Goodbye, goodbye!”

He ran hastily downstairs to the front door. A moment later only a little group of silent men and sobbing women stood on the doorstep watching the carriage as it drove away.

VI

Arthur was taken to the huge medieval fortress at the harbour’s mouth. He found prison life fairly endurable. His cell was unpleasantly damp and dark; but he had been brought up in a palace in the Via Borra, and neither close air, rats, nor foul smells were novelties to him. The food, also, was both bad and insufficient; but James soon obtained permission to send him all the necessaries of life from home. He was kept in solitary confinement, and, though the vigilance of the warders was less strict than he had expected, he failed to obtain any explanation of the cause of his arrest. Nevertheless, the tranquil frame of mind in which he had entered the fortress did not change. Not being allowed books, he spent his time in prayer and devout meditation, and waited without impatience or anxiety for the further course of events.

One day a soldier unlocked the door of his cell and called to him: “This way, please!” After two or three questions, to which he got no answer but, “Talking is forbidden,” Arthur resigned himself to the inevitable and followed the soldier through a labyrinth of courtyards, corridors, and stairs, all more or less musty-smelling, into a large, light room in which three persons in military uniform sat at a long table covered with green baize and littered with papers,