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

betrayed him. Ugh!” Enrico took up the shirt again in disgust.

“Betrayed him? A comrade? Oh, how dreadful!” Arthur’s eyes dilated with horror. Enrico turned quickly round.

“Why, wasn’t it you?”

“I? Are you off your head, man? I?”

“Well, they told him so yesterday at interrogation, anyhow. I’m very glad if it wasn’t you, for I always thought you were rather a decent young fellow. This way!” Enrico stepped out into the corridor and Arthur followed him, a light breaking in upon the confusion of his mind.

“They told Bolla I’d betrayed him? Of course they did! Why, man, they told me he had betrayed me. Surely Bolla isn’t fool enough to believe that sort of stuff?”

“Then it really isn’t true?” Enrico stopped at the foot of the stairs and looked searchingly at Arthur, who merely shrugged his shoulders.

“Of course it’s a lie.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear it, my lad, and I’ll tell him you said so. But you see what they told him was that you had denounced him out of⁠—well, out of jealousy, because of your both being sweet on the same girl.”

“It’s a lie!” Arthur repeated the words in a quick, breathless whisper. A sudden, paralyzing fear had come over him. “The same girl⁠—jealousy!” How could they know⁠—how could they know?

“Wait a minute, my lad.” Enrico stopped in the corridor leading to the interrogation room, and spoke softly. “I believe you; but just tell me one thing. I know you’re a Catholic; did you ever say anything in the confessional⁠—”

“It’s a lie!” This time Arthur’s voice had risen to a stifled cry.

Enrico shrugged his shoulders and moved on again. “You know best, of course; but you wouldn’t be the only young fool that’s been taken in that way. There’s a tremendous ado just now about a priest in Pisa that some of your friends have found out. They’ve printed a leaflet saying he’s a spy.”

He opened the door of the interrogation room, and, seeing that Arthur stood motionless, staring blankly before him, pushed him gently across the threshold.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Burton,” said the colonel, smiling and showing his teeth amiably. “I have great pleasure in congratulating you. An order for your release has arrived from Florence. Will you kindly sign this paper?”

Arthur went up to him. “I want to know,” he said in a dull voice, “who it was that betrayed me.”

The colonel raised his eyebrows with a smile.

“Can’t you guess? Think a minute.”

Arthur shook his head. The colonel put out both hands with a gesture of polite surprise.

“Can’t guess? Really? Why, you yourself, Mr. Burton. Who else could know your private love affairs?”

Arthur turned away in silence. On the wall hung a large wooden crucifix; and his eyes wandered slowly to its face; but with no appeal in them, only a dim wonder at this supine and patient God that had no thunderbolt for a priest who betrayed the confessional.

“Will you kindly sign this receipt for your papers?” said the colonel blandly; “and then I need not keep you any longer. I am sure you must be in a hurry to get home; and my time is very much taken up just now with the affairs of that foolish young man, Bolla, who tried your Christian forbearance so hard. I am afraid he will get a rather heavy sentence. Good afternoon!”

Arthur signed the receipt, took his papers, and went out in dead silence. He followed Enrico to the massive gate; and, without a word of farewell, descended to the water’s edge, where a ferryman was waiting to take him across the moat. As he mounted the stone steps leading to the street, a girl in a cotton dress and straw hat ran up to him with outstretched hands.

“Arthur! Oh, I’m so glad⁠—I’m so glad!”

He drew his hands away, shivering.

“Jim!” he said at last, in a voice that did not seem to belong to him. “Jim!”

“I’ve been waiting here for half an hour. They said you would come out at four. Arthur, why do you look at me like that? Something has happened! Arthur, what has come to you? Stop!”

He had turned away, and was walking slowly down the street, as if he had forgotten her presence. Thoroughly frightened at his manner, she ran after him and caught him by the arm.

“Arthur!”

He stopped and looked up with bewildered eyes. She slipped her arm through his, and they walked on again for a moment in silence.

“Listen, dear,” she began softly; “you mustn’t get so upset over this wretched business. I know it’s dreadfully hard on you, but everybody understands.”

“What business?” he asked in the same dull voice.

“I mean, about Bolla’s letter.”

Arthur’s face contracted painfully at the name.

“I thought you wouldn’t have heard of it,” Gemma went on; “but I suppose they’ve told you. Bolla must be perfectly mad to have imagined such a thing.”

“Such a thing⁠—?”

“You don’t know about it, then? He has written a horrible letter, saying that you have told about the steamers, and got him arrested. It’s perfectly absurd, of course; everyone that knows you sees that; it’s only the people who don’t know you that have been upset by it. Really, that’s what I came here for⁠—to tell you that no one in our group believes a word of it.”

“Gemma! But it’s⁠—it’s true!”

She shrank slowly away from him, and stood quite still, her eyes wide and dark with horror, her face as white as the kerchief at her neck. A great icy wave of silence seemed to have swept round them both, shutting them out, in a world apart, from the life and movement of the street.

“Yes,” he whispered at last; “the steamers⁠—I spoke of that; and I said his name⁠—oh, my God! my God! What shall I do?”

He came to himself suddenly, realizing her presence and the mortal terror in her face. Yes, of course, she must think⁠—

“Gemma, you don’t understand!” he burst out, moving nearer; but she recoiled with a sharp cry:

“Don’t touch me!”

Arthur seized her right hand with sudden violence.

“Listen, for God’s sake! It was not my