The Gadfly

Arthur sat in the library of the theological seminary at Pisa, looking through a pile of manuscript sermons. It was a hot evening in June, and the windows stood wide open, with the shutters half closed for coolness. The Father Director, Canon Montanelli, paused a moment in his writing to glance lovingly at the black head bent over the papers.

“Can’t you find it, carino? Never mind; I must rewrite the passage. Possibly it has got torn up, and I have kept you all this time for nothing.”

Montanelli’s voice was rather low, but full and resonant, with a silvery purity of tone that gave to his speech a peculiar charm. It was the voice of a born orator, rich in possible modulations. When he spoke to Arthur its note was always that of a caress.

“No, Padre, I must find it; I’m sure you put it here. You will never make it the same by rewriting.”

Montanelli went on with his work. A sleepy cockchafer hummed drowsily outside the window, and the long, melancholy call of a fruitseller echoed down the street: “Fragola! fragola!”

“ ‘On the Healing of the Leper’; here it is.” Arthur came across the room with the velvet tread that always exasperated the good folk at home.

It had long been dark when Arthur rang at the front door of the great house in the Via Borra. He remembered that he had been wandering about the streets; but where, or why, or for how long, he had no idea. Julia’s page opened the door, yawning, and grinned significantly at the haggard, stony face. It seemed to him a prodigious joke to have the young master come home from jail like a “drunk and disorderly” beggar. Arthur went upstairs. On the first floor he met Gibbons coming down with an air of lofty and solemn disapproval. He tried to pass with a muttered “Good evening”; but Gibbons was no easy person to get past against his will.

“The gentlemen are out, sir,” he said, looking critically at Arthur’s rather neglected dress and hair. “They have gone with the mistress to an evening party, and will not be back till nearly twelve.”

Arthur looked at his watch; it was nine o’clock. Oh, yes! he would have time⁠—plenty of time⁠—

“My mistress desired me to ask whether you would like any supper, sir; and to say that she hopes you will sit up for her, as she particularly wishes to speak to you this evening.”

“I don’t want anything, thank you; you can tell her I have not gone to bed.”

He went up to his room. Nothing in it had been changed since his arrest; Montanelli’s portrait was on the table where he had placed it, and the crucifix stood in the alcove as before.

The other voice, a man’s, was remarkably soft and musical; but its sweetness of tone was marred by a peculiar, purring drawl, perhaps mere affectation, more probably the result of a habitual effort to conquer some impediment of speech, but in any case very unpleasant.

“English, did you say?” it asked. “But surely the name is quite Italian. What was it⁠—Bolla?”

“Yes; she is the widow of poor Giovanni Bolla, who died in England about four years ago⁠—don’t you remember? Ah, I forgot⁠—you lead such a wandering life; we can’t expect you to know of all our unhappy country’s martyrs⁠—they are so many!”

Signora Grassini sighed. She always talked in this style to strangers; the role of a patriotic mourner for the sorrows of Italy formed an effective combination with her boarding-school manner and pretty infantine pout.

“Died in England!” repeated the other voice. “Was he a refugee, then? I seem to recognize the name, somehow; was he not connected with Young Italy in its early days?”

“Yes; he was one of the unfortunate young men who were arrested in ’33⁠—you remember that sad affair? He was released in a few months; then, two or three years later, when there was a warrant out against him again, he escaped to England. The next we heard was that he was married there. It was a most romantic affair altogether, but poor Bolla always was romantic.”

“And then he died in England, you say?”

“Yes, of consumption; he could not stand that terrible English climate. And she lost her only child just before his death; it caught scarlet fever. Very sad, is it not?

They turned back towards the bridge over which the Cardinal’s carriage would have to pass. Gemma looked out steadily across the water as she spoke.

“In those days Montanelli was a canon; he was Director of the Theological Seminary at Pisa, and used to give Arthur lessons in philosophy and read with him after he went up to the Sapienza. They were perfectly devoted to each other; more like two lovers than teacher and pupil. Arthur almost worshipped the ground that Montanelli walked on, and I remember his once telling me that if he lost his ‘Padre’⁠—he always used to call Montanelli so⁠—he should go and drown himself. Well, then you know what happened about the spy. The next day, my father and the Burtons⁠—Arthur’s stepbrothers, most detestable people⁠—spent the whole day dragging the Darsena basin for the body; and I sat in my room alone and thought of what I had done⁠—”

She paused a moment, and went on again:

“Late in the evening my father came into my room and said: ‘Gemma, child, come downstairs; there’s a man I want you to see.’ And when we went down there was one of the students belonging to the group sitting in the consulting room, all white and shaking; and he told us about Giovanni’s second letter coming from the prison to say that they had heard from the jailer about Cardi, and that Arthur had been tricked in the confessional.

He flung out both hands with a sudden, passionate gesture.

“Has it never occurred to you that that miserable clown may have a soul⁠—a living, struggling, human soul, tied down into that crooked hulk of a body and forced to slave for it? You that are so tenderhearted to everything⁠—you that pity the body in its fool’s dress and bells⁠—have you never thought of the wretched soul that has not even motley to cover its horrible nakedness? Think of it shivering with cold, stilled with shame and misery, before all those people⁠—feeling their jeers that cut like a whip⁠—their laughter, that burns like red-hot iron on the bare flesh! Think of it looking round⁠—so helpless before them all⁠—for the mountains that will not fall on it⁠—for the rocks that have not the heart to cover it⁠—envying the rats that can creep into some hole in the earth and hide; and remember that a soul is dumb⁠—it has no voice to cry out⁠—it must endure, and endure, and endure. Oh! I’m talking nonsense! Why on earth don’t you laugh? You have no sense of humour!”

Slowly and in dead silence she turned and walked on along the river side. During the whole evening it had not once occurred to her to connect his trouble, whatever it might be, with the variety show; and now that some dim picture of his inner life had been revealed to her by this sudden outburst, she could not find, in her overwhelming pity for him, one word to say. He walked on beside her, with his head turned away, and looked into the water.

“I want you, please, to understand,” he began suddenly, turning to her with a defiant air, “that everything I have just been saying to you is pure imagination. I’m rather given to romancing, but I don’t like people to take it seriously.”