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

Let us be quiet for a little bit. When one of us dies, the other will remember this. We will forget this loud, insistent world that howls about our ears; we will go away together, hand in hand; we will go away into the secret halls of death, and lie among the poppy-flowers. Hush! We will be quite still.”

He laid his head down against her knee and covered his face. In the silence she bent over him, her hand on the black head. So the time slipped on and on; and they neither moved nor spoke.

“Dear, it is almost twelve,” she said at last. He raised his head.

“We have only a few minutes more; Martini will be back presently. Perhaps we shall never see each other again. Have you nothing to say to me?”

He slowly rose and walked away to the other side of the room. There was a moment’s silence.

“I have one thing to say,” he began in a hardly audible voice; “one thing⁠—to tell you⁠—”

He stopped and sat down by the window, hiding his face in both hands.

“You have been a long time deciding to be merciful,” she said softly.

“I have not seen much mercy in my life; and I thought⁠—at first⁠—you wouldn’t care⁠—”

“You don’t think that now.”

She waited a moment for him to speak and then crossed the room and stood beside him.

“Tell me the truth at last,” she whispered. “Think, if you are killed and I not⁠—I should have to go through all my life and never know⁠—never be quite sure⁠—”

He took her hands and clasped them tightly.

“If I am killed⁠—You see, when I went to South America⁠—Ah, Martini!”

He broke away with a violent start and threw open the door of the room. Martini was rubbing his boots on the mat.

“Punctual to the m-m-minute, as usual! You’re an an-n-nimated chronometer, Martini. Is that the r-r-riding-cloak?”

“Yes; and two or three other things. I have kept them as dry as I could, but it’s pouring with rain. You will have a most uncomfortable ride, I’m afraid.”

“Oh, that’s no matter. Is the street clear?”

“Yes; all the spies seem to have gone to bed. I don’t much wonder either, on such a villainous night. Is that coffee, Gemma? He ought to have something hot before he goes out into the wet, or he will catch cold.”

“It is black coffee, and very strong. I will boil some milk.”

She went into the kitchen, passionately clenching her teeth and hands to keep from breaking down. When she returned with the milk the Gadfly had put on the riding-cloak and was fastening the leather gaiters which Martini had brought. He drank a cup of coffee, standing, and took up the broad-brimmed riding hat.

“I think it’s time to start, Martini; we must make a round before we go to the barrier, in case of anything. Goodbye, for the present, signora; I shall meet you at Forli on Friday, then, unless anything special turns up. Wait a minute; th-this is the address.”

He tore a leaf out of his pocketbook and wrote a few words in pencil.

“I have it already,” she said in a dull, quiet voice.

“H-have you? Well, there it is, anyway. Come, Martini. Sh-sh-sh! Don’t let the door creak!”

They crept softly downstairs. When the street door clicked behind them she went back into the room and mechanically unfolded the paper he had put into her hand. Underneath the address was written:

“I will tell you everything there.”

II

It was market-day in Brisighella, and the country folk had come in from the villages and hamlets of the district with their pigs and poultry, their dairy produce and droves of half-wild mountain cattle. The marketplace was thronged with a perpetually shifting crowd, laughing, joking, bargaining for dried figs, cheap cakes, and sunflower seeds. The brown, barefooted children sprawled, face downward, on the pavement in the hot sun, while their mothers sat under the trees with their baskets of butter and eggs.

Monsignor Montanelli, coming out to wish the people “Good morning,” was at once surrounded by a clamourous throng of children, holding up for his acceptance great bunches of irises and scarlet poppies and sweet white narcissus from the mountain slopes. His passion for wild flowers was affectionately tolerated by the people, as one of the little follies which sit gracefully on very wise men. If anyone less universally beloved had filled his house with weeds and grasses they would have laughed at him; but the “blessed Cardinal” could afford a few harmless eccentricities.

“Well, Mariuccia,” he said, stopping to pat one of the children on the head; “you have grown since I saw you last. And how is the grandmother’s rheumatism?”

“She’s been better lately, Your Eminence; but mother’s bad now.”

“I’m sorry to hear that; tell the mother to come down here some day and see whether Dr. Giordani can do anything for her. I will find somewhere to put her up; perhaps the change will do her good. You are looking better, Luigi; how are your eyes?”

He passed on, chatting with the mountaineers. He always remembered the names and ages of the children, their troubles and those of their parents; and would stop to inquire, with sympathetic interest, for the health of the cow that fell sick at Christmas, or of the rag-doll that was crushed under a cartwheel last market-day.

When he returned to the palace the marketing began. A lame man in a blue shirt, with a shock of black hair hanging into his eyes and a deep scar across the left cheek, lounged up to one of the booths and, in very bad Italian, asked for a drink of lemonade.

“You’re not from these parts,” said the woman who poured it out, glancing up at him.

“No. I come from Corsica.”

“Looking for work?”

“Yes; it will be hay-cutting time soon, and a gentleman that has a farm near Ravenna came across to Bastia the other day and told me there’s plenty of work to be got there.”

“I hope you’ll find it so, I’m sure, but times are bad