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

looked at her, frowning. “Do you always guess people’s private affairs?” he said after a moment.

“Very often. I am rather observant, and have a habit of putting things together. I tell you that so that you may be careful when you don’t want me to know a thing.”

“I don’t mind your knowing anything so long as it goes no further. I suppose this has not⁠—”

She lifted her head with a gesture of half-offended surprise. “Surely that is an unnecessary question!” she said.

“Of course I know you would not speak of anything to outsiders; but I thought that perhaps, to the members of your party⁠—”

“The party’s business is with facts, not with my personal conjectures and fancies. Of course I have never mentioned the subject to anyone.”

“Thank you. Do you happen to have guessed which sect I belong to?”

“I hope⁠—you must not take offence at my frankness; it was you who started this talk, you know⁠—I do hope it is not the ‘Knifers.’ ”

“Why do you hope that?”

“Because you are fit for better things.”

“We are all fit for better things than we ever do. There is your own answer back again. However, it is not the ‘Knifers’ that I belong to, but the ‘Red Girdles.’ They are a steadier lot, and take their work more seriously.”

“Do you mean the work of knifing?”

“That, among other things. Knives are very useful in their way; but only when you have a good, organized propaganda behind them. That is what I dislike in the other sect. They think a knife can settle all the world’s difficulties; and that’s a mistake. It can settle a good many, but not all.”

“Do you honestly believe that it settles any?”

He looked at her in surprise.

“Of course,” she went on, “it eliminates, for the moment, the practical difficulty caused by the presence of a clever spy or objectionable official; but whether it does not create worse difficulties in place of the one removed is another question. It seems to me like the parable of the swept and garnished house and the seven devils. Every assassination only makes the police more vicious and the people more accustomed to violence and brutality, and the last state of the community may be worse than the first.”

“What do you think will happen when the revolution comes? Do you suppose the people won’t have to get accustomed to violence then? War is war.”

“Yes, but open revolution is another matter. It is one moment in the people’s life, and it is the price we have to pay for all our progress. No doubt fearful things will happen; they must in every revolution. But they will be isolated facts⁠—exceptional features of an exceptional moment. The horrible thing about this promiscuous knifing is that it becomes a habit. The people get to look upon it as an everyday occurrence, and their sense of the sacredness of human life gets blunted. I have not been much in the Romagna, but what little I have seen of the people has given me the impression that they have got, or are getting, into a mechanical habit of violence.”

“Surely even that is better than a mechanical habit of obedience and submission.”

“I don’t think so. All mechanical habits are bad and slavish, and this one is ferocious as well. Of course, if you look upon the work of the revolutionist as the mere wresting of certain definite concessions from the government, then the secret sect and the knife must seem to you the best weapons, for there is nothing else which all governments so dread. But if you think, as I do, that to force the government’s hand is not an end in itself, but only a means to an end, and that what we really need to reform is the relation between man and man, then you must go differently to work. Accustoming ignorant people to the sight of blood is not the way to raise the value they put on human life.”

“And the value they put on religion?”

“I don’t understand.”

He smiled.

“I think we differ as to where the root of the mischief lies. You place it in a lack of appreciation of the value of human life.”

“Rather of the sacredness of human personality.”

“Put it as you like. To me the great cause of our muddles and mistakes seems to lie in the mental disease called religion.”

“Do you mean any religion in particular?”

“Oh, no! That is a mere question of external symptoms. The disease itself is what is called a religious attitude of mind. It is the morbid desire to set up a fetish and adore it, to fall down and worship something. It makes little difference whether the something be Jesus or Buddha or a tum-tum tree. You don’t agree with me, of course. You may be atheist or agnostic or anything you like, but I could feel the religious temperament in you at five yards. However, it is of no use for us to discuss that. But you are quite mistaken in thinking that I, for one, look upon the knifing as merely a means of removing objectionable officials⁠—it is, above all, a means, and I think the best means, of undermining the prestige of the Church and of accustoming people to look upon clerical agents as upon any other vermin.”

“And when you have accomplished that; when you have roused the wild beast that sleeps in the people and set it on the Church; then⁠—”

“Then I shall have done the work that makes it worth my while to live.”

“Is that the work you spoke of the other day?”

“Yes, just that.”

She shivered and turned away.

“You are disappointed in me?” he said, looking up with a smile.

“No; not exactly that. I am⁠—I think⁠—a little afraid of you.”

She turned round after a moment and said in her ordinary business voice:

“This is an unprofitable discussion. Our standpoints are too different. For my part, I believe in propaganda, propaganda, and propaganda; and when you can get it, open insurrection.”

“Then let us come back to the question