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

anything, my friend? It is late, and the cathedral is closed at night.”

“I beg pardon, Your Eminence, if I have done wrong. I saw the door open, and came in to pray, and when I saw a priest, as I thought, in meditation, I waited to ask a blessing on this.”

He held up the little tin cross that he had bought from Domenichino. Montanelli took it from his hand, and, re-entering the chancel, laid it for a moment on the altar.

“Take it, my son,” he said, “and be at rest, for the Lord is tender and pitiful. Go to Rome, and ask the blessing of His minister, the Holy Father. Peace be with you!”

The Gadfly bent his head to receive the benediction, and turned slowly away.

“Stop!” said Montanelli.

He was standing with one hand on the chancel rail.

“When you receive the Holy Eucharist in Rome,” he said, “pray for one in deep affliction⁠—for one on whose soul the hand of the Lord is heavy.”

There were almost tears in his voice, and the Gadfly’s resolution wavered. Another instant and he would have betrayed himself. Then the thought of the variety-show came up again, and he remembered, like Jonah, that he did well to be angry.

“Who am I, that He should hear my prayers? A leper and an outcast! If I could bring to His throne, as Your Eminence can, the offering of a holy life⁠—of a soul without spot or secret shame⁠—”

Montanelli turned abruptly away.

“I have only one offering to give,” he said; “a broken heart.”

A few days later the Gadfly returned to Florence in the diligence from Pistoja. He went straight to Gemma’s lodgings, but she was out. Leaving a message that he would return in the morning he went home, sincerely hoping that he should not again find his study invaded by Zita. Her jealous reproaches would act on his nerves, if he were to hear much of them tonight, like the rasping of a dentist’s file.

“Good evening, Bianca,” he said when the maidservant opened the door. “Has Mme. Reni been here today?”

She stared at him blankly.

“Mme. Reni? Has she come back, then, sir?”

“What do you mean?” he asked with a frown, stopping short on the mat.

“She went away quite suddenly, just after you did, and left all her things behind her. She never so much as said she was going.”

“Just after I did? What, a f-fortnight ago?”

“Yes, sir, the same day; and her things are lying about higgledy-piggledy. All the neighbours are talking about it.”

He turned away from the doorstep without speaking, and went hastily down the lane to the house where Zita had been lodging. In her rooms nothing had been touched; all the presents that he had given her were in their usual places; there was no letter or scrap of writing anywhere.

“If you please, sir,” said Bianca, putting her head in at the door, “there’s an old woman⁠—”

He turned round fiercely.

“What do you want here⁠—following me about?”

“An old woman wishes to see you.”

“What does she want? Tell her I c-can’t see her; I’m busy.”

“She has been coming nearly every evening since you went away, sir, always asking when you would come back.”

“Ask her w-what her business is. No; never mind; I suppose I must go myself.”

The old woman was waiting at his hall door. She was very poorly dressed, with a face as brown and wrinkled as a medlar, and a bright-coloured scarf twisted round her head. As he came in she rose and looked at him with keen black eyes.

“You are the lame gentleman,” she said, inspecting him critically from head to foot. “I have brought you a message from Zita Reni.”

He opened the study door, and held it for her to pass in; then followed her and shut the door, that Bianca might not hear.

“Sit down, please. N-now, tell me who you are.”

“It’s no business of yours who I am. I have come to tell you that Zita Reni has gone away with my son.”

“With⁠—your⁠—son?”

“Yes, sir; if you don’t know how to keep your mistress when you’ve got her, you can’t complain if other men take her. My son has blood in his veins, not milk and water; he comes of the Romany folk.”

“Ah, you are a gipsy! Zita has gone back to her own people, then?”

She looked at him in amazed contempt. Apparently, these Christians had not even manhood enough to be angry when they were insulted.

“What sort of stuff are you made of, that she should stay with you? Our women may lend themselves to you a bit for a girl’s fancy, or if you pay them well; but the Romany blood comes back to the Romany folk.”

The Gadfly’s face remained as cold and steady as before.

“Has she gone away with a gipsy camp, or merely to live with your son?”

The woman burst out laughing.

“Do you think of following her and trying to win her back? It’s too late, sir; you should have thought of that before!”

“No; I only want to know the truth, if you will tell it to me.”

She shrugged her shoulders; it was hardly worth while to abuse a person who took it so meekly.

“The truth, then, is that she met my son in the road the day you left her, and spoke to him in the Romany tongue; and when he saw she was one of our folk, in spite of her fine clothes, he fell in love with her bonny face, as our men fall in love, and took her to our camp. She told us all her trouble, and sat crying and sobbing, poor lassie, till our hearts were sore for her. We comforted her as best we could; and at last she took off her fine clothes and put on the things our lasses wear, and gave herself to my son, to be his woman and to have him for her man. He won’t say to her: ‘I don’t love you,’ and: ‘I’ve other things to do.’ When a woman is young, she wants a man; and