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

had led her astray should leave the country at once; and, as you know, he went to China as a missionary. For my part, I was very much against your having anything to do with him when he came back; but my father, just at the last, consented to let him teach you, on condition that he never attempted to see your mother. I must, in justice, acknowledge that I believe they both observed that condition faithfully to the end. It is a very deplorable business; but⁠—”

Arthur looked up. All the life and expression had gone out of his face; it was like a waxen mask.

“D-don’t you think,” he said softly, with a curious stammering hesitation on the words, “th-that⁠—all this⁠—is⁠—v-very⁠—funny?”

“Funny?” James pushed his chair away from the table, and sat staring at him, too much petrified for anger. “Funny! Arthur, are you mad?”

Arthur suddenly threw back his head, and burst into a frantic fit of laughing.

“Arthur!” exclaimed the shipowner, rising with dignity, “I am amazed at your levity!”

There was no answer but peal after peal of laughter, so loud and boisterous that even James began to doubt whether there was not something more the matter here than levity.

“Just like a hysterical woman,” he muttered, turning, with a contemptuous shrug of his shoulders, to tramp impatiently up and down the room. “Really, Arthur, you’re worse than Julia; there, stop laughing! I can’t wait about here all night.”

He might as well have asked the crucifix to come down from its pedestal. Arthur was past caring for remonstrances or exhortations; he only laughed, and laughed, and laughed without end.

“This is absurd!” said James, stopping at last in his irritated pacing to and fro. “You are evidently too much excited to be reasonable tonight. I can’t talk business with you if you’re going on that way. Come to me tomorrow morning after breakfast. And now you had better go to bed. Good night.”

He went out, slamming the door. “Now for the hysterics downstairs,” he muttered as he tramped noisily away. “I suppose it’ll be tears there!”

The frenzied laughter died on Arthur’s lips. He snatched up the hammer from the table and flung himself upon the crucifix.

With the crash that followed he came suddenly to his senses, standing before the empty pedestal, the hammer still in his hand, and the fragments of the broken image scattered on the floor about his feet.

He threw down the hammer. “So easy!” he said, and turned away. “And what an idiot I am!”

He sat down by the table, panting heavily for breath, and rested his forehead on both hands. Presently he rose, and, going to the washstand, poured a jugful of cold water over his head and face. He came back quite composed, and sat down to think.

And it was for such things as these⁠—for these false and slavish people, these dumb and soulless gods⁠—that he had suffered all these tortures of shame and passion and despair; had made a rope to hang himself, forsooth, because one priest was a liar. As if they were not all liars! Well, all that was done with; he was wiser now. He need only shake off these vermin and begin life afresh.

There were plenty of goods vessels in the docks; it would be an easy matter to stow himself away in one of them, and get across to Canada, Australia, Cape Colony⁠—anywhere. It was no matter for the country, if only it was far enough; and, as for the life out there, he could see, and if it did not suit him he could try some other place.

He took out his purse. Only thirty-three paoli; but his watch was a good one. That would help him along a bit; and in any case it was of no consequence⁠—he should pull through somehow. But they would search for him, all these people; they would be sure to make inquiries at the docks. No; he must put them on a false scent⁠—make them believe him dead; then he should be quite free⁠—quite free. He laughed softly to himself at the thought of the Burtons searching for his corpse. What a farce the whole thing was!

Taking a sheet of paper, he wrote the first words that occurred to him:

“I believed in you as I believed in God. God is a thing made of clay, that I can smash with a hammer; and you have fooled me with a lie.”

He folded up the paper, directed it to Montanelli, and, taking another sheet, wrote across it: “Look for my body in Darsena.” Then he put on his hat and went out of the room. Passing his mother’s portrait, he looked up with a laugh and a shrug of his shoulders. She, too, had lied to him.

He crept softly along the corridor, and, slipping back the door-bolts, went out on to the great, dark, echoing marble staircase. It seemed to yawn beneath him like a black pit as he descended.

He crossed the courtyard, treading cautiously for fear of waking Gian Battista, who slept on the ground floor. In the wood-cellar at the back was a little grated window, opening on the canal and not more than four feet from the ground. He remembered that the rusty grating had broken away on one side; by pushing a little he could make an aperture wide enough to climb out by.

The grating was strong, and he grazed his hands badly and tore the sleeve of his coat; but that was no matter. He looked up and down the street; there was no one in sight, and the canal lay black and silent, an ugly trench between two straight and slimy walls. The untried universe might prove a dismal hole, but it could hardly be more flat and sordid than the corner which he was leaving behind him. There was nothing to regret; nothing to look back upon. It had been a pestilent little stagnant world, full of squalid lies and clumsy cheats and foul-smelling ditches that were not