AUTHOR'S PREFACE.

             MY most cordial thanks are due to the many
             persons who helped me to collect, in Italy, the
             materials for this story. I am especially indebted
             to the officials of the Marucelliana Library of
             Florence, and of the State Archives and Civic
             Museum of Bologna, for their courtesy and
             kindness.
        

CONTENTS

THE GADFLY

PART I.

CHAPTER I.

CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER III.

CHAPTER IV.

CHAPTER V.

CHAPTER VI.

CHAPTER VII.

PART II.

CHAPTER I.

CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER III.

CHAPTER IV.

CHAPTER V.

CHAPTER VI.

CHAPTER VII.

CHAPTER VIII.

CHAPTER IX.

CHAPTER X.

CHAPTER XI.

PART III.

CHAPTER I.

CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER III.

CHAPTER IV.

CHAPTER V.

CHAPTER VI.

CHAPTER VII.

CHAPTER VIII.

EPILOGUE.

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. He was a slender little creature, more like an Italian in a sixteenth-century portrait than a middle-class English lad of the thirties. From the long eyebrows and sensitive mouth to the small hands and feet, everything about him was too much chiseled, overdelicate. Sitting still, he might have been taken for a very pretty girl masquerading in male attire; but when he moved, his lithe agility suggested a tame panther without the claws.

“Is that really it? What should I do without you, Arthur? I should always be losing my things. No, I am not going to write any more now. Come out into the garden, and I will help you with your work. What is the bit you couldn't understand?”

They went out into the still, shadowy cloister garden. The seminary occupied the buildings of an old Dominican monastery, and two hundred years ago the square courtyard had been stiff and trim, and the rosemary and lavender had grown in close-cut bushes between the straight box edgings. Now the white-robed monks who had tended them were laid away and forgotten; but the scented herbs flowered still in the gracious mid-summer evening, though no man gathered their blossoms for simples any more. Tufts of wild parsley and columbine filled the cracks between the flagged footways, and the well in the middle of the courtyard was given up to ferns and matted stone-crop. The roses had run wild, and their straggling suckers trailed across the paths; in the box borders flared great red poppies; tall foxgloves drooped above the tangled grasses; and the old vine, untrained and barren of fruit, swayed from the branches of the neglected medlar-tree, shaking a leafy head with slow and sad persistence.

In one corner stood a huge summer-flowering magnolia, a tower of dark foliage, splashed here and there with milk-white blossoms. A rough wooden bench had been placed against the trunk; and on this Montanelli sat down. Arthur was studying philosophy at the university; and, coming to a difficulty with a book, had applied to “the Padre” for an explanation of the point. Montanelli was a universal encyclopaedia to him, though he had never been a pupil of the seminary.

“I had better go now,” he said when the passage had been cleared up; “unless you want me for anything.”

“I don't want to work any more, but I should like you to stay a bit if you have time.”

“Oh, yes!” He leaned back against the tree-trunk and looked up through the dusky branches at the first faint stars glimmering in a quiet sky. The dreamy, mystical eyes, deep blue under black lashes, were an inheritance from his Cornish mother, and Montanelli turned his head away, that he might not see them.

“You are looking tired, carino,” he said.

“I can't help it.” There was a weary sound in Arthur's voice, and the Padre noticed it at once.

“You should not have gone up to college so soon; you were tired out with sick-nursing and being up at night. I ought to have insisted on your taking a thorough rest before you left Leghorn.”

“Oh, Padre, what's the use of that? I couldn't stop in that miserable house after mother died. Julia would have driven me mad!”

Julia was his eldest step-brother's wife, and a thorn in his side.

“I should not have wished you to stay with your relatives,” Montanelli answered gently. “I am sure it would have been the worst possible thing for you. But I wish you could have accepted the invitation of your English doctor friend; if you had spent a month in his house you would have been more fit to study.”

“No, Padre, I shouldn't indeed! The Warrens are very good and kind, but they don't understand; and then they are sorry for me,—I can see it in all their faces,—and they would try to console me, and talk about mother. Gemma wouldn't, of course; she always knew what not to say, even when we were babies; but the others would. And it isn't only that——”

“What is it then, my son?”

Arthur pulled off some blossoms from a drooping foxglove stem and crushed them nervously in his hand.

“I can't bear the town,” he began after a moment's pause. “There are the shops where she used to buy me toys when I was a little thing, and the walk along the shore where I used to take her until she got too ill. Wherever I go it's the same thing; every market-girl comes up to me with bunches of flowers—as if I wanted them now! And there's the church-yard—I had to get away; it made me sick to see the place——”

He broke off and sat tearing the foxglove bells to pieces. The silence was so long and deep that he looked up, wondering why the Padre did not speak. It was growing dark under the branches of the magnolia, and everything seemed dim and indistinct; but there was light enough to show the ghastly paleness of Montanelli's face. He was bending his head down, his right hand tightly clenched upon the edge of the bench. Arthur looked away with a sense of awe-struck wonder. It was as though he had stepped unwittingly on to holy ground.

“My God!” he thought; “how small and selfish I am beside him! If my trouble were his own he couldn't feel it more.”

Presently Montanelli raised his head and looked round. “I won't press you to go back there; at all events, just now,” he said in his most caressing tone; “but you must promise me to take a thorough rest when your vacation begins this summer. I think you had better get a holiday right away from the neighborhood of Leghorn. I can't have you breaking down in health.”

“Where shall you go when the seminary closes, Padre?”

“I shall have to take the pupils into the hills, as usual, and see them settled there. But by the middle of August the subdirector will be back from his holiday. I shall try to get up into the Alps for a little change. Will you come with me? I could take you for some long mountain rambles, and you would like to study the Alpine mosses and lichens. But perhaps it would be rather dull for you alone with me?”

“Padre!” Arthur clasped his hands in what Julia called his “demonstrative foreign way.” “I would give anything on earth to go away with you. Only—I am not sure——” He stopped.

“You don't think Mr. Burton would allow it?”

“He wouldn't like it, of course, but he could hardly interfere. I am eighteen now and can do what I choose. After all, he's only my step-brother; I don't see that I owe him obedience. He was always unkind to mother.”

“But if he seriously objects, I think you had better not defy his wishes; you may find your position at home made much harder if——”

“Not a bit harder!” Arthur broke in passionately. “They always did hate me and always will—it doesn't matter what I do. Besides, how can James seriously object to my going away with you—with my father confessor?”

“He is a Protestant, remember. However, you had better write to him, and we will wait to hear what he thinks. But you must not be impatient, my son; it matters just as much what you do, whether people hate you or love you.”

The rebuke was so gently given that Arthur hardly coloured under it. “Yes, I know,” he answered, sighing; “but it is so difficult——”

“I was sorry you could not come to me on Tuesday evening,” Montanelli said, abruptly introducing a new subject. “The Bishop of Arezzo was here, and I should have liked you to meet him.”

“I had promised one of the students to go to a meeting at his lodgings, and they would have been expecting me.”

“What sort of meeting?”

Arthur seemed embarrassed by the question. “It—it was n-not a r-regular meeting,” he said with a nervous little stammer. “A student had come from Genoa, and he made a speech to us—a-a sort of—lecture.”

“What did he lecture about?”

Arthur hesitated. “You won't ask me his name, Padre, will you? Because I promised——”

“I will ask you no questions at all, and if you have promised secrecy of course you must not tell me; but I think you can almost trust me by this time.”

“Padre, of course I can. He spoke about—us and our duty to the people—and to—our own selves; and about—what we might do to help——”

“To help whom?”

“The contadini—and——”

“And?”

“Italy.”

There was a long silence.

“Tell me, Arthur,” said Montanelli, turning to him and speaking very gravely, “how long have you been thinking about this?”

“Since—last winter.”

“Before your mother's death? And did she know of it?”

“N-no. I—I didn't care about it then.”

“And now you—care about it?”

Arthur pulled another handful of bells off the foxglove.

“It was this way, Padre,” he began, with his eyes on the ground. “When I was preparing for the entrance examination last autumn, I got to know a good many of the students; you remember? Well, some of them began to talk to me about—all these things, and lent me books. But I didn't care much about it; I always wanted to get home quick to mother. You see, she was quite alone among them all in that dungeon of a house; and Julia's tongue was enough to kill her. Then, in the winter, when she got so ill, I forgot all about the students and their books; and then, you know, I left off coming to Pisa altogether. I should have talked to mother if I had thought of it; but it went right out of my head. Then I found out that she was going to die——You know, I was almost constantly with her towards the end; often I would sit up the night, and Gemma Warren would come in the day to let me get to sleep. Well, it was in those long nights; I got thinking about the books and about what the students had said—and wondering—whether they were right and—what—Our Lord would have said about it all.”

“Did you ask Him?” Montanelli's voice was not quite steady.

“Often, Padre. Sometimes I have prayed to Him to tell me what I must do, or to let me die with mother. But I couldn't find any answer.”

“And you never said a word to me. Arthur, I hoped you could have trusted me.”

“Padre, you know I trust you! But there are some things you can't talk about to anyone. I—it seemed to me that no one could help me—not even you or mother; I must have my own answer straight from God. You see, it is for all my life and all my soul.”

Montanelli turned away and stared into the dusky gloom of the magnolia branches. The twilight was so dim that his figure had a shadowy look, like a dark ghost among the darker boughs.

“And then?” he asked slowly.

“And then—she died. You know, I had been up the last three nights with her——”

He broke off and paused a moment, but Montanelli did not move.

“All those two days before they buried her,” Arthur went on in a lower voice, “I couldn't think about anything. Then, after the funeral, I was ill; you remember, I couldn't come to confession.”

“Yes; I remember.”

“Well, in the night I got up and went into mother's room. It was all empty; there was only the great crucifix in the alcove. And I thought perhaps God would help me. I knelt down and waited—all night. And in the morning when I came to my senses—Padre, it isn't any use; I can't explain. I can't tell you what I saw—I hardly know myself. But I know that God has answered me, and that I dare not disobey Him.”

For a moment they sat quite silent in the darkness. Then Montanelli turned and laid his hand on Arthur's shoulder.

“My son,” he said, “God forbid that I should say He has not spoken to your soul. But remember your condition when this thing happened, and do not take the fancies of grief or illness for His solemn call. And if, indeed, it has been His will to answer you out of the shadow of death, be sure that you put no false construction on His word. What is this thing you have it in your heart to do?”

Arthur stood up and answered slowly, as though repeating a catechism:

“To give up my life to Italy, to help in freeing her from all this slavery and wretchedness, and in driving out the Austrians, that she may be a free republic, with no king but Christ.”

“Arthur, think a moment what you are saying! You are not even an Italian.”

“That makes no difference; I am myself. I have seen this thing, and I belong to it.”

There was silence again.

“You spoke just now of what Christ would have said——” Montanelli began slowly; but Arthur interrupted him:

“Christ said: 'He that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.'”

Montanelli leaned his arm against a branch, and shaded his eyes with one hand.

“Sit down a moment, my son,” he said at last.

Arthur sat down, and the Padre took both his hands in a strong and steady clasp.

“I cannot argue with you to-night,” he said; “this has come upon me so suddenly—I had not thought—I must have time to think it over. Later on we will talk more definitely. But, for just now, I want you to remember one thing. If you get into trouble over this, if you—die, you will break my heart.”

“Padre——”

“No; let me finish what I have to say. I told you once that I have no one in the world but you. I think you do not fully understand what that means. It is difficult when one is so young; at your age I should not have understood. Arthur, you are as my—as my—own son to me. Do you see? You are the light of my eyes and the desire of my heart. I would die to keep you from making a false step and ruining your life. But there is nothing I can do. I don't ask you to make any promises to me; I only ask you to remember this, and to be careful. Think well before you take an irrevocable step, for my sake, if not for the sake of your mother in heaven.”

“I will think—and—Padre, pray for me, and for Italy.”

He knelt down in silence, and in silence Montanelli laid his hand on the bent head. A moment later Arthur rose, kissed the hand, and went softly away across the dewy grass. Montanelli sat alone under the magnolia tree, looking straight before him into the blackness.

“It is the vengeance of God that has fallen upon me,” he thought, “as it fell upon David. I, that have defiled His sanctuary, and taken the Body of the Lord into polluted hands,—He has been very patient with me, and now it is come. 'For thou didst it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel, and before the sun; THE CHILD THAT IS BORN UNTO THEE SHALL SURELY DIE.'”

MR. JAMES BURTON did not at all like the idea of his young step-brother “careering about Switzerland” with Montanelli. But positively to forbid a harmless botanizing tour with an elderly professor of theology would seem to Arthur, who knew nothing of the reason for the prohibition, absurdly tyrannical. He would immediately attribute it to religious or racial prejudice; and the Burtons prided themselves on their enlightened tolerance. The whole family had been staunch Protestants and Conservatives ever since Burton & Sons, ship-owners, of London and Leghorn, had first set up in business, more than a century back. But they held that English gentlemen must deal fairly, even with Papists; and when the head of the house, finding it dull to remain a widower, had married the pretty Catholic governess of his younger children, the two elder sons, James and Thomas, much as they resented the presence of a step-mother hardly older than themselves, had submitted with sulky resignation to the will of Providence. Since the father's death the eldest brother's marriage had further complicated an already difficult position; but both brothers had honestly tried to protect Gladys, as long as she lived, from Julia's merciless tongue, and to do their duty, as they understood it, by Arthur. They did not even pretend to like the lad, and their generosity towards him showed itself chiefly in providing him with lavish supplies of pocket money and allowing him to go his own way.

In answer to his letter, accordingly, Arthur received a cheque to cover his expenses and a cold permission to do as he pleased about his holidays. He expended half his spare cash on botanical books and pressing-cases, and started off with the Padre for his first Alpine ramble.

Montanelli was in lighter spirits than Arthur had seen him in for a long while. After the first shock of the conversation in the garden he had gradually recovered his mental balance, and now looked upon the case more calmly. Arthur was very young and inexperienced; his decision could hardly be, as yet, irrevocable. Surely there was still time to win him back by gentle persuasion and reasoning from the dangerous path upon which he had barely entered.

They had intended to stay a few days at Geneva; but at the first sight of the glaring white streets and dusty, tourist-crammed promenades, a little frown appeared on Arthur's face. Montanelli watched him with quiet amusement.

“You don't like it, carino?”

“I hardly know. It's so different from what I expected. Yes, the lake is beautiful, and I like the shape of those hills.” They were standing on Rousseau's Island, and he pointed to the long, severe outlines of the Savoy side. “But the town looks so stiff and tidy, somehow—so Protestant; it has a self-satisfied air. No, I don't like it; it reminds me of Julia.”

Montanelli laughed. “Poor boy, what a misfortune! Well, we are here for our own amusement, so there is no reason why we should stop. Suppose we take a sail on the lake to-day, and go up into the mountains to-morrow morning?”

“But, Padre, you wanted to stay here?”

“My dear boy, I have seen all these places a dozen times. My holiday is to see your pleasure. Where would you like to go?”

“If it is really the same to you, I should like to follow the river back to its source.”

“The Rhone?”

“No, the Arve; it runs so fast.”

“Then we will go to Chamonix.”

They spent the afternoon drifting about in a little sailing boat. The beautiful lake produced far less impression upon Arthur than the gray and muddy Arve. He had grown up beside the Mediterranean, and was accustomed to blue ripples; but he had a positive passion for swiftly moving water, and the hurried rushing of the glacier stream delighted him beyond measure. “It is so much in earnest,” he said.

Early on the following morning they started for Chamonix. Arthur was in very high spirits while driving through the fertile valley country; but when they entered upon the winding road near Cluses, and the great, jagged hills closed in around them, he became serious and silent. From St. Martin they walked slowly up the valley, stopping to sleep at wayside chalets or tiny mountain villages, and wandering on again as their fancy directed. Arthur was peculiarly sensitive to the influence of scenery, and the first waterfall that they passed threw him into an ecstacy which was delightful to see; but as they drew nearer to the snow-peaks he passed out of this rapturous mood into one of dreamy exaltation that Montanelli had not seen before. There seemed to be a kind of mystical relationship between him and the mountains. He would lie for hours motionless in the dark, secret, echoing pine-forests, looking out between the straight, tall trunks into the sunlit outer world of flashing peaks and barren cliffs. Montanelli watched him with a kind of sad envy.

“I wish you could show me what you see, carino,” he said one day as he looked up from his book, and saw Arthur stretched beside him on the moss in the same attitude as an hour before, gazing out with wide, dilated eyes into the glittering expanse of blue and white. They had turned aside from the high-road to sleep at a quiet village near the falls of the Diosaz, and, the sun being already low in a cloudless sky, had mounted a point of pine-clad rock to wait for the Alpine glow over the dome and needles of the Mont Blanc chain. Arthur raised his head with eyes full of wonder and mystery.

“What I see, Padre? I see a great, white being in a blue void that has no beginning and no end. I see it waiting, age after age, for the coming of the Spirit of God. I see it through a glass darkly.”

Montanelli sighed.

“I used to see those things once.”

“Do you never see them now?”

“Never. I shall not see them any more. They are there, I know; but I have not the eyes to see them. I see quite other things.”

“What do you see?”

“I, carino? I see a blue sky and a snow-mountain—that is all when I look up into the heights. But down there it is different.”

He pointed to the valley below them. Arthur knelt down and bent over the sheer edge of the precipice. The great pine trees, dusky in the gathering shades of evening, stood like sentinels along the narrow banks confining the river. Presently the sun, red as a glowing coal, dipped behind a jagged mountain peak, and all the life and light deserted the face of nature. Straightway there came upon the valley something dark and threatening—sullen, terrible, full of spectral weapons. The perpendicular cliffs of the barren western mountains seemed like the teeth of a monster lurking to snatch a victim and drag him down into the maw of the deep valley, black with its moaning forests. The pine trees were rows of knife-blades whispering: “Fall upon us!” and in the gathering darkness the torrent roared and howled, beating against its rocky prison walls with the frenzy of an everlasting despair.

“Padre!” Arthur rose, shuddering, and drew back from the precipice. “It is like hell.”

“No, my son,” Montanelli answered softly, “it is only like a human soul.”

“The souls of them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death?”

“The souls of them that pass you day by day in the street.”

Arthur shivered, looking down into the shadows. A dim white mist was hovering among the pine trees, clinging faintly about the desperate agony of the torrent, like a miserable ghost that had no consolation to give.

“Look!” Arthur said suddenly. “The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light.”

Eastwards the snow-peaks burned in the afterglow. When the red light had faded from the summits Montanelli turned and roused Arthur with a touch on the shoulder.

“Come in, carino; all the light is gone. We shall lose our way in the dark if we stay any longer.”

“It is like a corpse,” Arthur said as he turned away from the spectral face of the great snow-peak glimmering through the twilight.

They descended cautiously among the black trees to the chalet where they were to sleep.

As Montanelli entered the room where Arthur was waiting for him at the supper table, he saw that the lad seemed to have shaken off the ghostly fancies of the dark, and to have changed into quite another creature.

“Oh, Padre, do come and look at this absurd dog! It can dance on its hind legs.”

He was as much absorbed in the dog and its accomplishments as he had been in the after-glow. The woman of the chalet, red-faced and white-aproned, with sturdy arms akimbo, stood by smiling, while he put the animal through its tricks. “One can see there's not much on his mind if he can carry on that way,” she said in patois to her daughter. “And what a handsome lad!”

Arthur coloured like a schoolgirl, and the woman, seeing that he had understood, went away laughing at his confusion. At supper he talked of nothing but plans for excursions, mountain ascents, and botanizing expeditions. Evidently his dreamy fancies had not interfered with either his spirits or his appetite.

When Montanelli awoke the next morning Arthur had disappeared. He had started before daybreak for the higher pastures “to help Gaspard drive up the goats.”

Breakfast had not long been on the table, however, when he came tearing into the room, hatless, with a tiny peasant girl of three years old perched on his shoulder, and a great bunch of wild flowers in his hand.

Montanelli looked up, smiling. This was a curious contrast to the grave and silent Arthur of Pisa or Leghorn.

“Where have you been, you madcap? Scampering all over the mountains without any breakfast?”

“Oh, Padre, it was so jolly! The mountains look perfectly glorious at sunrise; and the dew is so thick! Just look!”

He lifted for inspection a wet and muddy boot.

“We took some bread and cheese with us, and got some goat's milk up there on the pasture; oh, it was nasty! But I'm hungry again, now; and I want something for this little person, too. Annette, won't you have some honey?”

He had sat down with the child on his knee, and was helping her to put the flowers in order.

“No, no!” Montanelli interposed. “I can't have you catching cold. Run and change your wet things. Come to me, Annette. Where did you pick her up?”

“At the top of the village. She belongs to the man we saw yesterday—the man that cobbles the commune's boots. Hasn't she lovely eyes? She's got a tortoise in her pocket, and she calls it 'Caroline.'”

When Arthur had changed his wet socks and came down to breakfast he found the child seated on the Padre's knee, chattering volubly to him about her tortoise, which she was holding upside down in a chubby hand, that “monsieur” might admire the wriggling legs.

“Look, monsieur!” she was saying gravely in her half-intelligible patois: “Look at Caroline's boots!”

Montanelli sat playing with the child, stroking her hair, admiring her darling tortoise, and telling her wonderful stories. The woman of the chalet, coming in to clear the table, stared in amazement at the sight of Annette turning out the pockets of the grave gentleman in clerical dress.

“God teaches the little ones to know a good man,” she said. “Annette is always afraid of strangers; and see, she is not shy with his reverence at all. The wonderful thing! Kneel down, Annette, and ask the good monsieur's blessing before he goes; it will bring thee luck.”

“I didn't know you could play with children that way, Padre,” Arthur said an hour later, as they walked through the sunlit pasture-land. “That child never took her eyes off you all the time. Do you know, I think——”

“Yes?”

“I was only going to say—it seems to me almost a pity that the Church should forbid priests to marry. I cannot quite understand why. You see, the training of children is such a serious thing, and it means so much to them to be surrounded from the very beginning with good influences, that I should have thought the holier a man's vocation and the purer his life, the more fit he is to be a father. I am sure, Padre, if you had not been under a vow,—if you had married,—your children would have been the very——”

“Hush!”

The word was uttered in a hasty whisper that seemed to deepen the ensuing silence.

“Padre,” Arthur began again, distressed by the other's sombre look, “do you think there is anything wrong in what I said? Of course I may be mistaken; but I must think as it comes natural to me to think.”

“Perhaps,” Montanelli answered gently, “you do not quite realize the meaning of what you just said. You will see differently in a few years. Meanwhile we had better talk about something else.”

It was the first break in the perfect ease and harmony that reigned between them on this ideal holiday.

From Chamonix they went on by the Tete-Noire to Martigny, where they stopped to rest, as the weather was stiflingly hot. After dinner they sat on the terrace of the hotel, which was sheltered from the sun and commanded a good view of the mountains. Arthur brought out his specimen box and plunged into an earnest botanical discussion in Italian.

Two English artists were sitting on the terrace; one sketching, the other lazily chatting. It did not seem to have occurred to him that the strangers might understand English.

“Leave off daubing at the landscape, Willie,” he said; “and draw that glorious Italian boy going into ecstasies over those bits of ferns. Just look at the line of his eyebrows! You only need to put a crucifix for the magnifying-glass and a Roman toga for the jacket and knickerbockers, and there's your Early Christian complete, expression and all.”

“Early Christian be hanged! I sat beside that youth at dinner; he was just as ecstatic over the roast fowl as over those grubby little weeds. He's pretty enough; that olive colouring is beautiful; but he's not half so picturesque as his father.”

“His—who?”

“His father, sitting there straight in front of you. Do you mean to say you've passed him over? It's a perfectly magnificent face.”

“Why, you dunder-headed, go-to-meeting Methodist! Don't you know a Catholic priest when you see one?”

“A priest? By Jove, so he is! Yes, I forgot; vow of chastity, and all that sort of thing. Well then, we'll be charitable and suppose the boy's his nephew.”

“What idiotic people!” Arthur whispered, looking up with dancing eyes. “Still, it is kind of them to think me like you; I wish I were really your nephew——Padre, what is the matter? How white you are!”

Montanelli was standing up, pressing one hand to his forehead. “I am a little giddy,” he said in a curiously faint, dull tone. “Perhaps I was too much in the sun this morning. I will go and lie down, carino; it's nothing but the heat.”

After a fortnight beside the Lake of Lucerne Arthur and Montanelli returned to Italy by the St. Gothard Pass. They had been fortunate as to weather and had made several very pleasant excursions; but the first charm was gone out of their enjoyment. Montanelli was continually haunted by an uneasy thought of the “more definite talk” for which this holiday was to have been the opportunity. In the Arve valley he had purposely put off all reference to the subject of which they had spoken under the magnolia tree; it would be cruel, he thought, to spoil the first delights of Alpine scenery for a nature so artistic as Arthur's by associating them with a conversation which must necessarily be painful. Ever since the day at Martigny he had said to himself each morning; “I will speak to-day,” and each evening: “I will speak to-morrow;” and now the holiday was over, and he still repeated again and again: “To-morrow, to-morrow.” A chill, indefinable sense of something not quite the same as it had been, of an invisible veil falling between himself and Arthur, kept him silent, until, on the last evening of their holiday, he realized suddenly that he must speak now if he would speak at all. They were stopping for the night at Lugano, and were to start for Pisa next morning. He would at least find out how far his darling had been drawn into the fatal quicksand of Italian politics.

“The rain has stopped, carino,” he said after sunset; “and this is the only chance we shall have to see the lake. Come out; I want to have a talk with you.”

They walked along the water's edge to a quiet spot and sat down on a low stone wall. Close beside them grew a rose-bush, covered with scarlet hips; one or two belated clusters of creamy blossom still hung from an upper branch, swaying mournfully and heavy with raindrops. On the green surface of the lake a little boat, with white wings faintly fluttering, rocked in the dewy breeze. It looked as light and frail as a tuft of silvery dandelion seed flung upon the water. High up on Monte Salvatore the window of some shepherd's hut opened a golden eye. The roses hung their heads and dreamed under the still September clouds, and the water plashed and murmured softly among the pebbles of the shore.

“This will be my only chance of a quiet talk with you for a long time,” Montanelli began. “You will go back to your college work and friends; and I, too, shall be very busy this winter. I want to understand quite clearly what our position as regards each other is to be; and so, if you——” He stopped for a moment and then continued more slowly: “If you feel that you can still trust me as you used to do, I want you to tell me more definitely than that night in the seminary garden, how far you have gone.”

Arthur looked out across the water, listened quietly, and said nothing.

“I want to know, if you will tell me,” Montanelli went on; “whether you have bound yourself by a vow, or—in any way.”

“There is nothing to tell, dear Padre; I have not bound myself, but I am bound.”

“I don't understand———”

“What is the use of vows? They are not what binds people. If you feel in a certain way about a thing, that binds you to it; if you don't feel that way, nothing else can bind you.”

“Do you mean, then, that this thing—this—feeling is quite irrevocable? Arthur, have you thought what you are saying?”

Arthur turned round and looked straight into Montanelli's eyes.

“Padre, you asked me if I could trust you. Can you not trust me, too? Indeed, if there were anything to tell, I would tell it to you; but there is no use in talking about these things. I have not forgotten what you said to me that night; I shall never forget it. But I must go my way and follow the light that I see.”

Montanelli picked a rose from the bush, pulled off the petals one by one, and tossed them into the water.

“You are right, carino. Yes, we will say no more about these things; it seems there is indeed no help in many words——Well, well, let us go in.”

THE autumn and winter passed uneventfully. Arthur was reading hard and had little spare time. He contrived to get a glimpse of Montanelli once or oftener in every week, if only for a few minutes. From time to time he would come in to ask for help with some difficult book; but on these occasions the subject of study was strictly adhered to. Montanelli, feeling, rather than observing, the slight, impalpable barrier that had come between them, shrank from everything which might seem like an attempt to retain the old close relationship. Arthur's visits now caused him more distress than pleasure, so trying was the constant effort to appear at ease and to behave as if nothing were altered. Arthur, for his part, noticed, hardly understanding it, the subtle change in the Padre's manner; and, vaguely feeling that it had some connection with the vexed question of the “new ideas,” avoided all mention of the subject with which his thoughts were constantly filled. Yet he had never loved Montanelli so deeply as now. The dim, persistent sense of dissatisfaction, of spiritual emptiness, which he had tried so hard to stifle under a load of theology and ritual, had vanished into nothing at the touch of Young Italy. All the unhealthy fancies born of loneliness and sick-room watching had passed away, and the doubts against which he used to pray had gone without the need of exorcism. With the awakening of a new enthusiasm, a clearer, fresher religious ideal (for it was more in this light than in that of a political development that the students' movement had appeared to him), had come a sense of rest and completeness, of peace on earth and good will towards men; and in this mood of solemn and tender exaltation all the world seemed to him full of light. He found a new element of something lovable in the persons whom he had most disliked; and Montanelli, who for five years had been his ideal hero, was now in his eyes surrounded with an additional halo, as a potential prophet of the new faith. He listened with passionate eagerness to the Padre's sermons, trying to find in them some trace of inner kinship with the republican ideal; and pored over the Gospels, rejoicing in the democratic tendencies of Christianity at its origin.

One day in January he called at the seminary to return a book which he had borrowed. Hearing that the Father Director was out, he went up to Montanelli's private study, placed the volume on its shelf, and was about to leave the room when the title of a book lying on the table caught his eyes. It was Dante's “De Monarchia.” He began to read it and soon became so absorbed that when the door opened and shut he did not hear. He was aroused from his preoccupation by Montanelli's voice behind him.

“I did not expect you to-day,” said the Padre, glancing at the title of the book. “I was just going to send and ask if you could come to me this evening.”

“Is it anything important? I have an engagement for this evening; but I will miss it if———”

“No; to-morrow will do. I want to see you because I am going away on Tuesday. I have been sent for to Rome.”

“To Rome? For long?”

“The letter says, 'till after Easter.' It is from the Vatican. I would have let you know at once, but have been very busy settling up things about the seminary and making arrangements for the new Director.”

“But, Padre, surely you are not giving up the seminary?”

“It will have to be so; but I shall probably come back to Pisa, for some time at least.”

“But why are you giving it up?”

“Well, it is not yet officially announced; but I am offered a bishopric.”

“Padre! Where?”

“That is the point about which I have to go to Rome. It is not yet decided whether I am to take a see in the Apennines, or to remain here as Suffragan.”

“And is the new Director chosen yet?”

“Father Cardi has been nominated and arrives here to-morrow.”

“Is not that rather sudden?”

“Yes; but——The decisions of the Vatican are sometimes not communicated till the last moment.”

“Do you know the new Director?”

“Not personally; but he is very highly spoken of. Monsignor Belloni, who writes, says that he is a man of great erudition.”

“The seminary will miss you terribly.”

“I don't know about the seminary, but I am sure you will miss me, carino; perhaps almost as much as I shall miss you.”

“I shall indeed; but I am very glad, for all that.”

“Are you? I don't know that I am.” He sat down at the table with a weary look on his face; not the look of a man who is expecting high promotion.

“Are you busy this afternoon, Arthur?” he said after a moment. “If not, I wish you would stay with me for a while, as you can't come to-night. I am a little out of sorts, I think; and I want to see as much of you as possible before leaving.”

“Yes, I can stay a bit. I am due at six.”

“One of your meetings?”

Arthur nodded; and Montanelli changed the subject hastily.

“I want to speak to you about yourself,” he said. “You will need another confessor in my absence.”

“When you come back I may go on confessing to you, may I not?”

“My dear boy, how can you ask? Of course I am speaking only of the three or four months that I shall be away. Will you go to one of the Fathers of Santa Caterina?”

“Very well.”

They talked of other matters for a little while; then Arthur rose.

“I must go, Padre; the students will be waiting for me.”

The haggard look came back to Montanelli's face.

“Already? You had almost charmed away my black mood. Well, good-bye.”

“Good-bye. I will be sure to come to-morrow.”

“Try to come early, so that I may have time to see you alone. Father Cardi will be here. Arthur, my dear boy, be careful while I am gone; don't be led into doing anything rash, at least before I come back. You cannot think how anxious I feel about leaving you.”

“There is no need, Padre; everything is quite quiet. It will be a long time yet.”

“Good-bye,” Montanelli said abruptly, and sat down to his writing.

The first person upon whom Arthur's eyes fell, as he entered the room where the students' little gatherings were held, was his old playmate, Dr. Warren's daughter. She was sitting in a corner by the window, listening with an absorbed and earnest face to what one of the “initiators,” a tall young Lombard in a threadbare coat, was saying to her. During the last few months she had changed and developed greatly, and now looked a grown-up young woman, though the dense black plaits still hung down her back in school-girl fashion. She was dressed all in black, and had thrown a black scarf over her head, as the room was cold and draughty. At her breast was a spray of cypress, the emblem of Young Italy. The initiator was passionately describing to her the misery of the Calabrian peasantry; and she sat listening silently, her chin resting on one hand and her eyes on the ground. To Arthur she seemed a melancholy vision of Liberty mourning for the lost Republic. (Julia would have seen in her only an overgrown hoyden, with a sallow complexion, an irregular nose, and an old stuff frock that was too short for her.)

“You here, Jim!” he said, coming up to her when the initiator had been called to the other end of the room. “Jim” was a childish corruption of her curious baptismal name: Jennifer. Her Italian schoolmates called her “Gemma.”

She raised her head with a start.

“Arthur! Oh, I didn't know you—belonged here!”

“And I had no idea about you. Jim, since when have you——?”

“You don't understand!” she interposed quickly. “I am not a member. It is only that I have done one or two little things. You see, I met Bini—you know Carlo Bini?”

“Yes, of course.” Bini was the organizer of the Leghorn branch; and all Young Italy knew him.

“Well, he began talking to me about these things; and I asked him to let me go to a students' meeting. The other day he wrote to me to Florence———Didn't you know I had been to Florence for the Christmas holidays?”

“I don't often hear from home now.”

“Ah, yes! Anyhow, I went to stay with the Wrights.” (The Wrights were old schoolfellows of hers who had moved to Florence.) “Then Bini wrote and told me to pass through Pisa to-day on my way home, so that I could come here. Ah! they're going to begin.”

The lecture was upon the ideal Republic and the duty of the young to fit themselves for it. The lecturer's comprehension of his subject was somewhat vague; but Arthur listened with devout admiration. His mind at this period was curiously uncritical; when he accepted a moral ideal he swallowed it whole without stopping to think whether it was quite digestible. When the lecture and the long discussion which followed it were finished and the students began to disperse, he went up to Gemma, who was still sitting in the corner of the room.

“Let me walk with you, Jim. Where are you staying?”

“With Marietta.”

“Your father's old housekeeper?”

“Yes; she lives a good way from here.”

They walked for some time in silence. Then Arthur said suddenly:

“You are seventeen, now, aren't you?”

“I was seventeen in October.”

“I always knew you would not grow up like other girls and begin wanting to go to balls and all that sort of thing. Jim, dear, I have so often wondered whether you would ever come to be one of us.”

“So have I.”

“You said you had done things for Bini; I didn't know you even knew him.”

“It wasn't for Bini; it was for the other one.”

“Which other one?”

“The one that was talking to me to-night—Bolla.”

“Do you know him well?” Arthur put in with a little touch of jealousy. Bolla was a sore subject with him; there had been a rivalry between them about some work which the committee of Young Italy had finally intrusted to Bolla, declaring Arthur too young and inexperienced.

“I know him pretty well; and I like him very much. He has been staying in Leghorn.”

“I know; he went there in November———”

“Because of the steamers. Arthur, don't you think your house would be safer than ours for that work? Nobody would suspect a rich shipping family like yours; and you know everyone at the docks——”

“Hush! not so loud, dear! So it was in your house the books from Marseilles were hidden?”

“Only for one day. Oh! perhaps I oughtn't to have told you.”

“Why not? You know I belong to the society. Gemma, dear, there is nothing in all the world that would make me so happy as for you to join us—you and the Padre.”

“Your Padre! Surely he——”

“No; he thinks differently. But I have sometimes fancied—that is—hoped—I don't know——”

“But, Arthur! he's a priest.”

“What of that? There are priests in the society—two of them write in the paper. And why not? It is the mission of the priesthood to lead the world to higher ideals and aims, and what else does the society try to do? It is, after all, more a religious and moral question than a political one. If people are fit to be free and responsible citizens, no one can keep them enslaved.”

Gemma knit her brows. “It seems to me, Arthur,” she said, “that there's a muddle somewhere in your logic. A priest teaches religious doctrine. I don't see what that has to do with getting rid of the Austrians.”

“A priest is a teacher of Christianity, and the greatest of all revolutionists was Christ.”

“Do you know, I was talking about priests to father the other day, and he said——”

“Gemma, your father is a Protestant.”

After a little pause she looked round at him frankly.

“Look here, we had better leave this subject alone. You are always intolerant when you talk about Protestants.”

“I didn't mean to be intolerant. But I think Protestants are generally intolerant when they talk about priests.”

“I dare say. Anyhow, we have so often quarreled over this subject that it is not worth while to begin again. What did you think of the lecture?”

“I liked it very much—especially the last part. I was glad he spoke so strongly about the need of living the Republic, not dreaming of it. It is as Christ said: 'The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.'”

“It was just that part that I didn't like. He talked so much of the wonderful things we ought to think and feel and be, but he never told us practically what we ought to do.”

“When the time of crisis comes there will be plenty for us to do; but we must be patient; these great changes are not made in a day.”

“The longer a thing is to take doing, the more reason to begin at once. You talk about being fit for freedom—did you ever know anyone so fit for it as your mother? Wasn't she the most perfectly angelic woman you ever saw? And what use was all her goodness? She was a slave till the day she died—bullied and worried and insulted by your brother James and his wife. It would have been much better for her if she had not been so sweet and patient; they would never have treated her so. That's just the way with Italy; it's not patience that's wanted—it's for somebody to get up and defend themselves———”

“Jim, dear, if anger and passion could have saved Italy she would have been free long ago; it is not hatred that she needs, it is love.”

As he said the word a sudden flush went up to his forehead and died out again. Gemma did not see it; she was looking straight before her with knitted brows and set mouth.

“You think I am wrong, Arthur,” she said after a pause; “but I am right, and you will grow to see it some day. This is the house. Will you come in?”

“No; it's late. Good-night, dear!”

He was standing on the doorstep, clasping her hand in both of his.

“For God and the people——”

Slowly and gravely she completed the unfinished motto:

“Now and forever.”

Then she pulled away her hand and ran into the house. When the door had closed behind her he stooped and picked up the spray of cypress which had fallen from her breast.

ARTHUR went back to his lodgings feeling as though he had wings. He was absolutely, cloudlessly happy. At the meeting there had been hints of preparations for armed insurrection; and now Gemma was a comrade, and he loved her. They could work together, possibly even die together, for the Republic that was to be. The blossoming time of their hope was come, and the Padre would see it and believe.

The next morning, however, he awoke in a soberer mood and remembered that Gemma was going to Leghorn and the Padre to Rome. January, February, March—three long months to Easter! And if Gemma should fall under “Protestant” influences at home (in Arthur's vocabulary “Protestant” stood for “Philistine”)———No, Gemma would never learn to flirt and simper and captivate tourists and bald-headed shipowners, like the other English girls in Leghorn; she was made of different stuff. But she might be very miserable; she was so young, so friendless, so utterly alone among all those wooden people. If only mother had lived——

In the evening he went to the seminary, where he found Montanelli entertaining the new Director and looking both tired and bored. Instead of lighting up, as usual, at the sight of Arthur, the Padre's face grew darker.

“This is the student I spoke to you about,” he said, introducing Arthur stiffly. “I shall be much obliged if you will allow him to continue using the library.”

Father Cardi, a benevolent-looking elderly priest, at once began talking to Arthur about the Sapienza, with an ease and familiarity which showed him to be well acquainted with college life. The conversation soon drifted into a discussion of university regulations, a burning question of that day. To Arthur's great delight, the new Director spoke strongly against the custom adopted by the university authorities of constantly worrying the students by senseless and vexatious restrictions.

“I have had a good deal of experience in guiding young people,” he said; “and I make it a rule never to prohibit anything without a good reason. There are very few young men who will give much trouble if proper consideration and respect for their personality are shown to them. But, of course, the most docile horse will kick if you are always jerking at the rein.”

Arthur opened his eyes wide; he had not expected to hear the students' cause pleaded by the new Director. Montanelli took no part in the discussion; its subject, apparently, did not interest him. The expression of his face was so unutterably hopeless and weary that Father Cardi broke off suddenly.

“I am afraid I have overtired you, Canon. You must forgive my talkativeness; I am hot upon this subject and forget that others may grow weary of it.”

“On the contrary, I was much interested.” Montanelli was not given to stereotyped politeness, and his tone jarred uncomfortably upon Arthur.

When Father Cardi went to his own room Montanelli turned to Arthur with the intent and brooding look that his face had worn all the evening.

“Arthur, my dear boy,” he began slowly; “I have something to tell you.”

“He must have had bad news,” flashed through Arthur's mind, as he looked anxiously at the haggard face. There was a long pause.

“How do you like the new Director?” Montanelli asked suddenly.

The question was so unexpected that, for a moment, Arthur was at a loss how to reply to it.

“I—I like him very much, I think—at least—no, I am not quite sure that I do. But it is difficult to say, after seeing a person once.”

Montanelli sat beating his hand gently on the arm of his chair; a habit with him when anxious or perplexed.

“About this journey to Rome,” he began again; “if you think there is any—well—if you wish it, Arthur, I will write and say I cannot go.”

“Padre! But the Vatican———”

“The Vatican will find someone else. I can send apologies.”

“But why? I can't understand.”

Montanelli drew one hand across his forehead.

“I am anxious about you. Things keep coming into my head—and after all, there is no need for me to go———”

“But the bishopric——”

“Oh, Arthur! what shall it profit me if I gain a bishopric and lose——”

He broke off. Arthur had never seen him like this before, and was greatly troubled.

“I can't understand,” he said. “Padre, if you could explain to me more—more definitely, what it is you think———”

“I think nothing; I am haunted with a horrible fear. Tell me, is there any special danger?”

“He has heard something,” Arthur thought, remembering the whispers of a projected revolt. But the secret was not his to tell; and he merely answered: “What special danger should there be?”

“Don't question me—answer me!” Montanelli's voice was almost harsh in its eagerness. “Are you in danger? I don't want to know your secrets; only tell me that!”

“We are all in God's hands, Padre; anything may always happen. But I know of no reason why I should not be here alive and safe when you come back.”

“When I come back——Listen, carino; I will leave it in your hands. You need give me no reason; only say to me, 'Stay,' and I will give up this journey. There will be no injury to anyone, and I shall feel you are safer if I have you beside me.”

This kind of morbid fancifulness was so foreign to Montanelli's character that Arthur looked at him with grave anxiety.

“Padre, I am sure you are not well. Of course you must go to Rome, and try to have a thorough rest and get rid of your sleeplessness and headaches.”

“Very well,” Montanelli interrupted, as if tired of the subject; “I will start by the early coach to-morrow morning.”

Arthur looked at him, wondering.

“You had something to tell me?” he said.

“No, no; nothing more—nothing of any consequence.” There was a startled, almost terrified look in his face.

A few days after Montanelli's departure Arthur went to fetch a book from the seminary library, and met Father Cardi on the stairs.

“Ah, Mr. Burton!” exclaimed the Director; “the very person I wanted. Please come in and help me out of a difficulty.”

He opened the study door, and Arthur followed him into the room with a foolish, secret sense of resentment. It seemed hard to see this dear study, the Padre's own private sanctum, invaded by a stranger.

“I am a terrible book-worm,” said the Director; “and my first act when I got here was to examine the library. It seems very interesting, but I do not understand the system by which it is catalogued.”

“The catalogue is imperfect; many of the best books have been added to the collection lately.”

“Can you spare half an hour to explain the arrangement to me?”

They went into the library, and Arthur carefully explained the catalogue. When he rose to take his hat, the Director interfered, laughing.

“No, no! I can't have you rushing off in that way. It is Saturday, and quite time for you to leave off work till Monday morning. Stop and have supper with me, now I have kept you so late. I am quite alone, and shall be glad of company.”

His manner was so bright and pleasant that Arthur felt at ease with him at once. After some desultory conversation, the Director inquired how long he had known Montanelli.

“For about seven years. He came back from China when I was twelve years old.”

“Ah, yes! It was there that he gained his reputation as a missionary preacher. Have you been his pupil ever since?”

“He began teaching me a year later, about the time when I first confessed to him. Since I have been at the Sapienza he has still gone on helping me with anything I wanted to study that was not in the regular course. He has been very kind to me—you can hardly imagine how kind.”

“I can well believe it; he is a man whom no one can fail to admire—a most noble and beautiful nature. I have met priests who were out in China with him; and they had no words high enough to praise his energy and courage under all hardships, and his unfailing devotion. You are fortunate to have had in your youth the help and guidance of such a man. I understood from him that you have lost both parents.”

“Yes; my father died when I was a child, and my mother a year ago.”

“Have you brothers and sisters?”

“No; I have step-brothers; but they were business men when I was in the nursery.”

“You must have had a lonely childhood; perhaps you value Canon Montanelli's kindness the more for that. By the way, have you chosen a confessor for the time of his absence?”

“I thought of going to one of the fathers of Santa Caterina, if they have not too many penitents.”

“Will you confess to me?”

Arthur opened his eyes in wonder.

“Reverend Father, of course I—should be glad; only——”

“Only the Director of a theological seminary does not usually receive lay penitents? That is quite true. But I know Canon Montanelli takes a great interest in you, and I fancy he is a little anxious on your behalf—just as I should be if I were leaving a favourite pupil—and would like to know you were under the spiritual guidance of his colleague. And, to be quite frank with you, my son, I like you, and should be glad to give you any help I can.”

“If you put it that way, of course I shall be very grateful for your guidance.”

“Then you will come to me next month? That's right. And run in to see me, my lad, when you have time any evening.”

Shortly before Easter Montanelli's appointment to the little see of Brisighella, in the Etruscan Apennines, was officially announced. He wrote to Arthur from Rome in a cheerful and tranquil spirit; evidently his depression was passing over. “You must come to see me every vacation,” he wrote; “and I shall often be coming to Pisa; so I hope to see a good deal of you, if not so much as I should wish.”

Dr. Warren had invited Arthur to spend the Easter holidays with him and his children, instead of in the dreary, rat-ridden old place where Julia now reigned supreme. Enclosed in the letter was a short note, scrawled in Gemma's childish, irregular handwriting, begging him to come if possible, “as I want to talk to you about something.” Still more encouraging was the whispered communication passing around from student to student in the university; everyone was to be prepared for great things after Easter.

All this had put Arthur into a state of rapturous anticipation, in which the wildest improbabilities hinted at among the students seemed to him natural and likely to be realized within the next two months.

He arranged to go home on Thursday in Passion week, and to spend the first days of the vacation there, that the pleasure of visiting the Warrens and the delight of seeing Gemma might not unfit him for the solemn religious meditation demanded by the Church from all her children at this season. He wrote to Gemma, promising to come on Easter Monday; and went up to his bedroom on Wednesday night with a soul at peace.

He knelt down before the crucifix. Father Cardi had promised to receive him in the morning; and for this, his last confession before the Easter communion, he must prepare himself by long and earnest prayer. Kneeling with clasped hands and bent head, he looked back over the month, and reckoned up the miniature sins of impatience, carelessness, hastiness of temper, which had left their faint, small spots upon the whiteness of his soul. Beyond these he could find nothing; in this month he had been too happy to sin much. He crossed himself, and, rising, began to undress.

As he unfastened his shirt a scrap of paper slipped from it and fluttered to the floor. It was Gemma's letter, which he had worn all day upon his neck. He picked it up, unfolded it, and kissed the dear scribble; then began folding the paper up again, with a dim consciousness of having done something very ridiculous, when he noticed on the back of the sheet a postscript which he had not read before. “Be sure and come as soon as possible,” it ran, “for I want you to meet Bolla. He has been staying here, and we have read together every day.”

The hot colour went up to Arthur's forehead as he read.

Always Bolla! What was he doing in Leghorn again? And why should Gemma want to read with him? Had he bewitched her with his smuggling? It had been quite easy to see at the meeting in January that he was in love with her; that was why he had been so earnest over his propaganda. And now he was close to her—reading with her every day.

Arthur suddenly threw the letter aside and knelt down again before the crucifix. And this was the soul that was preparing for absolution, for the Easter sacrament—the soul at peace with God and itself and all the world! A soul capable of sordid jealousies and suspicions; of selfish animosities and ungenerous hatred—and against a comrade! He covered his face with both hands in bitter humiliation. Only five minutes ago he had been dreaming of martyrdom; and now he had been guilty of a mean and petty thought like this!

When he entered the seminary chapel on Thursday morning he found Father Cardi alone. After repeating the Confiteor, he plunged at once into the subject of his last night's backsliding.

“My father, I accuse myself of the sins of jealousy and anger, and of unworthy thoughts against one who has done me no wrong.”

Farther Cardi knew quite well with what kind of penitent he had to deal. He only said softly:

“You have not told me all, my son.”

“Father, the man against whom I have thought an unchristian thought is one whom I am especially bound to love and honour.”

“One to whom you are bound by ties of blood?”

“By a still closer tie.”

“By what tie, my son?”

“By that of comradeship.”

“Comradeship in what?”

“In a great and holy work.”

A little pause.

“And your anger against this—comrade, your jealousy of him, was called forth by his success in that work being greater than yours?”

“I—yes, partly. I envied him his experience—his usefulness. And then—I thought—I feared—that he would take from me the heart of the girl I—love.”

“And this girl that you love, is she a daughter of the Holy Church?”

“No; she is a Protestant.”

“A heretic?”

Arthur clasped his hands in great distress. “Yes, a heretic,” he repeated. “We were brought up together; our mothers were friends—and I—envied him, because I saw that he loves her, too, and because—because——”

“My son,” said Father Cardi, speaking after a moment's silence, slowly and gravely, “you have still not told me all; there is more than this upon your soul.”

“Father, I——” He faltered and broke off again.

The priest waited silently.

“I envied him because the society—the Young Italy—that I belong to———”

“Yes?”

“Intrusted him with a work that I had hoped—would be given to me, that I had thought myself—specially adapted for.”

“What work?”

“The taking in of books—political books—from the steamers that bring them—and finding a hiding place for them—in the town———”

“And this work was given by the party to your rival?”

“To Bolla—and I envied him.”

“And he gave you no cause for this feeling? You do not accuse him of having neglected the mission intrusted to him?”

“No, father; he has worked bravely and devotedly; he is a true patriot and has deserved nothing but love and respect from me.”

Father Cardi pondered.

“My son, if there is within you a new light, a dream of some great work to be accomplished for your fellow-men, a hope that shall lighten the burdens of the weary and oppressed, take heed how you deal with the most precious blessing of God. All good things are of His giving; and of His giving is the new birth. If you have found the way of sacrifice, the way that leads to peace; if you have joined with loving comrades to bring deliverance to them that weep and mourn in secret; then see to it that your soul be free from envy and passion and your heart as an altar where the sacred fire burns eternally. Remember that this is a high and holy thing, and that the heart which would receive it must be purified from every selfish thought. This vocation is as the vocation of a priest; it is not for the love of a woman, nor for the moment of a fleeting passion; it is FOR GOD AND THE PEOPLE; it is NOW AND FOREVER.”

“Ah!” Arthur started and clasped his hands; he had almost burst out sobbing at the motto. “Father, you give us the sanction of the Church! Christ is on our side——”

“My son,” the priest answered solemnly, “Christ drove the moneychangers out of the Temple, for His House shall be called a House of Prayer, and they had made it a den of thieves.”

After a long silence, Arthur whispered tremulously:

“And Italy shall be His Temple when they are driven out——”

He stopped; and the soft answer came back:

“'The earth and the fulness thereof are mine, saith the Lord.'”

THAT afternoon Arthur felt the need of a long walk. He intrusted his luggage to a fellow-student and went to Leghorn on foot.

The day was damp and cloudy, but not cold; and the low, level country seemed to him fairer than he had ever known it to look before. He had a sense of delight in the soft elasticity of the wet grass under his feet and in the shy, wondering eyes of the wild spring flowers by the roadside. In a thorn-acacia bush at the edge of a little strip of wood a bird was building a nest, and flew up as he passed with a startled cry and a quick fluttering of brown wings.

He tried to keep his mind fixed upon the devout meditations proper to the eve of Good Friday. But thoughts of Montanelli and Gemma got so much in the way of this devotional exercise that at last he gave up the attempt and allowed his fancy to drift away to the wonders and glories of the coming insurrection, and to the part in it that he had allotted to his two idols. The Padre was to be the leader, the apostle, the prophet before whose sacred wrath the powers of darkness were to flee, and at whose feet the young defenders of Liberty were to learn afresh the old doctrines, the old truths in their new and unimagined significance.

And Gemma? Oh, Gemma would fight at the barricades. She was made of the clay from which heroines are moulded; she would be the perfect comrade, the maiden undefiled and unafraid, of whom so many poets have dreamed. She would stand beside him, shoulder to shoulder, rejoicing under the winged death-storm; and they would die together, perhaps in the moment of victory—without doubt there would be a victory. Of his love he would tell her nothing; he would say no word that might disturb her peace or spoil her tranquil sense of comradeship. She was to him a holy thing, a spotless victim to be laid upon the altar as a burnt-offering for the deliverance of the people; and who was he that he should enter into the white sanctuary of a soul that knew no other love than God and Italy?

God and Italy——Then came a sudden drop from the clouds as he entered the great, dreary house in the “Street of Palaces,” and Julia's butler, immaculate, calm, and politely disapproving as ever, confronted him upon the stairs.

“Good-evening, Gibbons; are my brothers in?”

“Mr. Thomas is in, sir; and Mrs. Burton. They are in the drawing room.”

Arthur went in with a dull sense of oppression. What a dismal house it was! The flood of life seemed to roll past and leave it always just above high-water mark. Nothing in it ever changed—neither the people, nor the family portraits, nor the heavy furniture and ugly plate, nor the vulgar ostentation of riches, nor the lifeless aspect of everything. Even the flowers on the brass stands looked like painted metal flowers that had never known the stirring of young sap within them in the warm spring days. Julia, dressed for dinner, and waiting for visitors in the drawing room which was to her the centre of existence, might have sat for a fashion-plate just as she was, with her wooden smile and flaxen ringlets, and the lap-dog on her knee.

“How do you do, Arthur?” she said stiffly, giving him the tips of her fingers for a moment, and then transferring them to the more congenial contact of the lap-dog's silken coat. “I hope you are quite well and have made satisfactory progress at college.”

Arthur murmured the first commonplace that he could think of at the moment, and relapsed into uncomfortable silence. The arrival of James, in his most pompous mood and accompanied by a stiff, elderly shipping-agent, did not improve matters; and when Gibbons announced that dinner was served, Arthur rose with a little sigh of relief.

“I won't come to dinner, Julia. If you'll excuse me I will go to my room.”

“You're overdoing that fasting, my boy,” said Thomas; “I am sure you'll make yourself ill.”

“Oh, no! Good-night.”

In the corridor Arthur met the under housemaid and asked her to knock at his door at six in the morning.

“The signorino is going to church?”

“Yes. Good-night, Teresa.”

He went into his room. It had belonged to his mother, and the alcove opposite the window had been fitted up during her long illness as an oratory. A great crucifix on a black pedestal occupied the middle of the altar; and before it hung a little Roman lamp. This was the room where she had died. Her portrait was on the wall beside the bed; and on the table stood a china bowl which had been hers, filled with a great bunch of her favourite violets. It was just a year since her death; and the Italian servants had not forgotten her.

He took out of his portmanteau a framed picture, carefully wrapped up. It was a crayon portrait of Montanelli, which had come from Rome only a few days before. He was unwrapping this precious treasure when Julia's page brought in a supper-tray on which the old Italian cook, who had served Gladys before the harsh, new mistress came, had placed such little delicacies as she considered her dear signorino might permit himself to eat without infringing the rules of the Church. Arthur refused everything but a piece of bread; and the page, a nephew of Gibbons, lately arrived from England, grinned significantly as he carried out the tray. He had already joined the Protestant camp in the servants' hall.

Arthur went into the alcove and knelt down before the crucifix, trying to compose his mind to the proper attitude for prayer and meditation. But this he found difficult to accomplish. He had, as Thomas said, rather overdone the Lenten privations, and they had gone to his head like strong wine. Little quivers of excitement went down his back, and the crucifix swam in a misty cloud before his eyes. It was only after a long litany, mechanically repeated, that he succeeded in recalling his wandering imagination to the mystery of the Atonement. At last sheer physical weariness conquered the feverish agitation of his nerves, and he lay down to sleep in a calm and peaceful mood, free from all unquiet or disturbing thoughts.

He was fast asleep when a sharp, impatient knock came at his door. “Ah, Teresa!” he thought, turning over lazily. The knock was repeated, and he awoke with a violent start.

“Signorino! signorino!” cried a man's voice in Italian; “get up for the love of God!”

Arthur jumped out of bed.

“What is the matter? Who is it?”

“It's I, Gian Battista. Get up, quick, for Our Lady's sake!”

Arthur hurriedly dressed and opened the door. As he stared in perplexity at the coachman's pale, terrified face, the sound of tramping feet and clanking metal came along the corridor, and he suddenly realized the truth.

“For me?” he asked coolly.

“For you! Oh, signorino, make haste! What have you to hide? See, I can put——”

“I have nothing to hide. Do my brothers know?”

The first uniform appeared at the turn of the passage.

“The signor has been called; all the house is awake. Alas! what a misfortune—what a terrible misfortune! And on Good Friday! Holy Saints, have pity!”

Gian Battista burst into tears. Arthur moved a few steps forward and waited for the gendarmes, who came clattering along, followed by a shivering crowd of servants in various impromptu costumes. As the soldiers surrounded Arthur, the master and mistress of the house brought up the rear of this strange procession; he in dressing gown and slippers, she in a long peignoir, with her hair in curlpapers.

“There is, sure, another flood toward, and these couples are coming to the ark! Here comes a pair of very strange beasts!”

The quotation flashed across Arthur's mind as he looked at the grotesque figures. He checked a laugh with a sense of its jarring incongruity—this was a time for worthier thoughts. “Ave Maria, Regina Coeli!” he whispered, and turned his eyes away, that the bobbing of Julia's curlpapers might not again tempt him to levity.

“Kindly explain to me,” said Mr. Burton, approaching the officer of gendarmerie, “what is the meaning of this violent intrusion into a private house? I warn you that, unless you are prepared to furnish me with a satisfactory explanation, I shall feel bound to complain to the English Ambassador.”

“I presume,” replied the officer stiffly, “that you will recognize this as a sufficient explanation; the English Ambassador certainly will.” He pulled out a warrant for the arrest of Arthur Burton, student of philosophy, and, handing it to James, added coldly: “If you wish for any further explanation, you had better apply in person to the chief of police.”

Julia snatched the paper from her husband, glanced over it, and flew at Arthur like nothing else in the world but a fashionable lady in a rage.

“So it's you that have disgraced the family!” she screamed; “setting all the rabble in the town gaping and staring as if the thing were a show? So you have turned jail-bird, now, with all your piety! It's what we might have expected from that Popish woman's child——”

“You must not speak to a prisoner in a foreign language, madam,” the officer interrupted; but his remonstrance was hardly audible under the torrent of Julia's vociferous English.

“Just what we might have expected! Fasting and prayer and saintly meditation; and this is what was underneath it all! I thought that would be the end of it.”

Dr. Warren had once compared Julia to a salad into which the cook had upset the vinegar cruet. The sound of her thin, hard voice set Arthur's teeth on edge, and the simile suddenly popped up in his memory.

“There's no use in this kind of talk,” he said. “You need not be afraid of any unpleasantness; everyone will understand that you are all quite innocent. I suppose, gentlemen, you want to search my things. I have nothing to hide.”

While the gendarmes ransacked the room, reading his letters, examining his college papers, and turning out drawers and boxes, he sat waiting on the edge of the bed, a little flushed with excitement, but in no way distressed. The search did not disquiet him. He had always burned letters which could possibly compromise anyone, and beyond a few manuscript verses, half revolutionary, half mystical, and two or three numbers of Young Italy, the gendarmes found nothing to repay them for their trouble. Julia, after a long resistance, yielded to the entreaties of her brother-in-law and went back to bed, sweeping past Arthur with magnificent disdain, James meekly following.

When they had left the room, Thomas, who all this while had been tramping up and down, trying to look indifferent, approached the officer and asked permission to speak to the prisoner. Receiving a nod in answer, he went up to Arthur and muttered in a rather husky voice:

“I say; this is an infernally awkward business. I'm very sorry about it.”

Arthur looked up with a face as serene as a summer morning. “You have always been good to me,” he said. “There's nothing to be sorry about. I shall be safe enough.”

“Look here, Arthur!” Thomas gave his moustache a hard pull and plunged head first into the awkward question. “Is—all this anything to do with—money? Because, if it is, I——”

“With money! Why, no! What could it have to do——”

“Then it's some political tomfoolery? I thought so. Well, don't you get down in the mouth—and never mind all the stuff Julia talks. It's only her spiteful tongue; and if you want help,—cash, or anything,—let me know, will you?”

Arthur held out his hand in silence, and Thomas left the room with a carefully made-up expression of unconcern that rendered his face more stolid than ever.

The gendarmes, meanwhile, had finished their search, and the officer in charge requested Arthur to put on his outdoor clothes. He obeyed at once and turned to leave the room; then stopped with sudden hesitation. It seemed hard to take leave of his mother's oratory in the presence of these officials.

“Have you any objection to leaving the room for a moment?” he asked. “You see that I cannot escape and that there is nothing to conceal.”

“I am sorry, but it is forbidden to leave a prisoner alone.”

“Very well, it doesn't matter.”

He went into the alcove, and, kneeling down, kissed the feet and pedestal of the crucifix, whispering softly: “Lord, keep me faithful unto death.”

When he rose, the officer was standing by the table, examining Montanelli's portrait. “Is this a relative of yours?” he asked.

“No; it is my confessor, the new Bishop of Brisighella.”

On the staircase the Italian servants were waiting, anxious and sorrowful. They all loved Arthur for his own sake and his mother's, and crowded round him, kissing his hands and dress with passionate grief. Gian Battista stood by, the tears dripping down his gray moustache. None of the Burtons came out to take leave of him. Their coldness accentuated the tenderness and sympathy of the servants, and Arthur was near to breaking down as he pressed the hands held out to him.

“Good-bye, Gian Battista. Kiss the little ones for me. Good-bye, Teresa. Pray for me, all of you; and God keep you! Good-bye, good-bye!”

He ran hastily downstairs to the front door. A moment later only a little group of silent men and sobbing women stood on the doorstep watching the carriage as it drove away.

ARTHUR was taken to the huge mediaeval fortress at the harbour's mouth. He found prison life fairly endurable. His cell was unpleasantly damp and dark; but he had been brought up in a palace in the Via Borra, and neither close air, rats, nor foul smells were novelties to him. The food, also, was both bad and insufficient; but James soon obtained permission to send him all the necessaries of life from home. He was kept in solitary confinement, and, though the vigilance of the warders was less strict than he had expected, he failed to obtain any explanation of the cause of his arrest. Nevertheless, the tranquil frame of mind in which he had entered the fortress did not change. Not being allowed books, he spent his time in prayer and devout meditation, and waited without impatience or anxiety for the further course of events.

One day a soldier unlocked the door of his cell and called to him: “This way, please!” After two or three questions, to which he got no answer but, “Talking is forbidden,” Arthur resigned himself to the inevitable and followed the soldier through a labyrinth of courtyards, corridors, and stairs, all more or less musty-smelling, into a large, light room in which three persons in military uniform sat at a long table covered with green baize and littered with papers, chatting in a languid, desultory way. They put on a stiff, business air as he came in, and the oldest of them, a foppish-looking man with gray whiskers and a colonel's uniform, pointed to a chair on the other side of the table and began the preliminary interrogation.

Arthur had expected to be threatened, abused, and sworn at, and had prepared himself to answer with dignity and patience; but he was pleasantly disappointed. The colonel was stiff, cold and formal, but perfectly courteous. The usual questions as to his name, age, nationality, and social position were put and answered, and the replies written down in monotonous succession. He was beginning to feel bored and impatient, when the colonel asked:

“And now, Mr. Burton, what do you know about Young Italy?”

“I know that it is a society which publishes a newspaper in Marseilles and circulates it in Italy, with the object of inducing people to revolt and drive the Austrian army out of the country.”

“You have read this paper, I think?”

“Yes; I am interested in the subject.”

“When you read it you realized that you were committing an illegal action?”

“Certainly.”

“Where did you get the copies which were found in your room?”

“That I cannot tell you.”

“Mr. Burton, you must not say 'I cannot tell' here; you are bound to answer my questions.”

“I will not, then, if you object to 'cannot.'”

“You will regret it if you permit yourself to use such expressions,” remarked the colonel. As Arthur made no reply, he went on:

“I may as well tell you that evidence has come into our hands proving your connection with this society to be much more intimate than is implied by the mere reading of forbidden literature. It will be to your advantage to confess frankly. In any case the truth will be sure to come out, and you will find it useless to screen yourself behind evasion and denials.”

“I have no desire to screen myself. What is it you want to know?”

“Firstly, how did you, a foreigner, come to be implicated in matters of this kind?”

“I thought about the subject and read everything I could get hold of, and formed my own conclusions.”

“Who persuaded you to join this society?”

“No one; I wished to join it.”

“You are shilly-shallying with me,” said the colonel, sharply; his patience was evidently beginning to give out. “No one can join a society by himself. To whom did you communicate your wish to join it?”

Silence.

“Will you have the kindness to answer me?”

“Not when you ask questions of that kind.”

Arthur spoke sullenly; a curious, nervous irritability was taking possession of him. He knew by this time that many arrests had been made in both Leghorn and Pisa; and, though still ignorant of the extent of the calamity, he had already heard enough to put him into a fever of anxiety for the safety of Gemma and his other friends. The studied politeness of the officers, the dull game of fencing and parrying, of insidious questions and evasive answers, worried and annoyed him, and the clumsy tramping backward and forward of the sentinel outside the door jarred detestably upon his ear.

“Oh, by the bye, when did you last meet Giovanni Bolla?” asked the colonel, after a little more bandying of words. “Just before you left Pisa, was it?”

“I know no one of that name.”

“What! Giovanni Bolla? Surely you know him—a tall young fellow, closely shaven. Why, he is one of your fellow-students.”

“There are many students in the university whom I don't know.”

“Oh, but you must know Bolla, surely! Look, this is his handwriting. You see, he knows you well enough.”

The colonel carelessly handed him a paper headed: “Protocol,” and signed: “Giovanni Bolla.” Glancing down it Arthur came upon his own name. He looked up in surprise. “Am I to read it?”

“Yes, you may as well; it concerns you.”

He began to read, while the officers sat silently watching his face. The document appeared to consist of depositions in answer to a long string of questions. Evidently Bolla, too, must have been arrested. The first depositions were of the usual stereotyped character; then followed a short account of Bolla's connection with the society, of the dissemination of prohibited literature in Leghorn, and of the students' meetings. Next came “Among those who joined us was a young Englishman, Arthur Burton, who belongs to one of the rich shipowning families.”

The blood rushed into Arthur's face. Bolla had betrayed him! Bolla, who had taken upon himself the solemn duties of an initiator—Bolla, who had converted Gemma—who was in love with her! He laid down the paper and stared at the floor.

“I hope that little document has refreshed your memory?” hinted the colonel politely.

Arthur shook his head. “I know no one of that name,” he repeated in a dull, hard voice. “There must be some mistake.”

“Mistake? Oh, nonsense! Come, Mr. Burton, chivalry and quixotism are very fine things in their way; but there's no use in overdoing them. It's an error all you young people fall into at first. Come, think! What good is it for you to compromise yourself and spoil your prospects in life over a simple formality about a man that has betrayed you? You see yourself, he wasn't so particular as to what he said about you.”

A faint shade of something like mockery had crept into the colonel's voice. Arthur looked up with a start; a sudden light flashed upon his mind.

“It's a lie!” he cried out. “It's a forgery! I can see it in your face, you cowardly——You've got some prisoner there you want to compromise, or a trap you want to drag me into. You are a forger, and a liar, and a scoundrel——”

“Silence!” shouted the colonel, starting up in a rage; his two colleagues were already on their feet. “Captain Tommasi,” he went on, turning to one of them, “ring for the guard, if you please, and have this young gentleman put in the punishment cell for a few days. He wants a lesson, I see, to bring him to reason.”

The punishment cell was a dark, damp, filthy hole under ground. Instead of bringing Arthur “to reason,” it thoroughly exasperated him. His luxurious home had rendered him daintily fastidious about personal cleanliness, and the first effect of the slimy, vermin-covered walls, the floor heaped with accumulations of filth and garbage, the fearful stench of fungi and sewage and rotting wood, was strong enough to have satisfied the offended officer. When he was pushed in and the door locked behind him he took three cautious steps forward with outstretched hands, shuddering with disgust as his fingers came into contact with the slippery wall, and groped in the dense blackness for some spot less filthy than the rest in which to sit down.

The long day passed in unbroken blackness and silence, and the night brought no change. In the utter void and absence of all external impressions, he gradually lost the consciousness of time; and when, on the following morning, a key was turned in the door lock, and the frightened rats scurried past him squeaking, he started up in a sudden panic, his heart throbbing furiously and a roaring noise in his ears, as though he had been shut away from light and sound for months instead of hours.

The door opened, letting in a feeble lantern gleam—a flood of blinding light, it seemed to him—and the head warder entered, carrying a piece of bread and a mug of water. Arthur made a step forward; he was quite convinced that the man had come to let him out. Before he had time to speak, the warder put the bread and mug into his hands, turned round and went away without a word, locking the door again.

Arthur stamped his foot upon the ground. For the first time in his life he was savagely angry. But as the hours went by, the consciousness of time and place gradually slipped further and further away. The blackness seemed an illimitable thing, with no beginning and no end, and life had, as it were, stopped for him. On the evening of the third day, when the door was opened and the head warder appeared on the threshold with a soldier, he looked up, dazed and bewildered, shading his eyes from the unaccustomed light, and vaguely wondering how many hours or weeks he had been in this grave.

“This way, please,” said the cool business voice of the warder. Arthur rose and moved forward mechanically, with a strange unsteadiness, swaying and stumbling like a drunkard. He resented the warder's attempt to help him up the steep, narrow steps leading to the courtyard; but as he reached the highest step a sudden giddiness came over him, so that he staggered and would have fallen backwards had the warder not caught him by the shoulder.

“There, he'll be all right now,” said a cheerful voice; “they most of them go off this way coming out into the air.”

Arthur struggled desperately for breath as another handful of water was dashed into his face. The blackness seemed to fall away from him in pieces with a rushing noise; then he woke suddenly into full consciousness, and, pushing aside the warder's arm, walked along the corridor and up the stairs almost steadily. They stopped for a moment in front of a door; then it opened, and before he realized where they were taking him he was in the brightly lighted interrogation room, staring in confused wonder at the table and the papers and the officers sitting in their accustomed places.

“Ah, it's Mr. Burton!” said the colonel. “I hope we shall be able to talk more comfortably now. Well, and how do you like the dark cell? Not quite so luxurious as your brother's drawing room, is it? eh?”

Arthur raised his eyes to the colonel's smiling face. He was seized by a frantic desire to spring at the throat of this gray-whiskered fop and tear it with his teeth. Probably something of this kind was visible in his face, for the colonel added immediately, in a quite different tone:

“Sit down, Mr. Burton, and drink some water; you are excited.”

Arthur pushed aside the glass of water held out to him; and, leaning his arms on the table, rested his forehead on one hand and tried to collect his thoughts. The colonel sat watching him keenly, noting with experienced eyes the unsteady hands and lips, the hair dripping with water, the dim gaze that told of physical prostration and disordered nerves.

“Now, Mr. Burton,” he said after a few minutes; “we will start at the point where we left off; and as there has been a certain amount of unpleasantness between us, I may as well begin by saying that I, for my part, have no desire to be anything but indulgent with you. If you will behave properly and reasonably, I assure you that we shall not treat you with any unnecessary harshness.”

“What do you want me to do?”

Arthur spoke in a hard, sullen voice, quite different from his natural tone.

“I only want you to tell us frankly, in a straightforward and honourable manner, what you know of this society and its adherents. First of all, how long have you known Bolla?”

“I never met him in my life. I know nothing whatever about him.”

“Really? Well, we will return to that subject presently. I think you know a young man named Carlo Bini?”

“I never heard of such a person.”

“That is very extraordinary. What about Francesco Neri?”

“I never heard the name.”

“But here is a letter in your handwriting, addressed to him. Look!”

Arthur glanced carelessly at the letter and laid it aside.

“Do you recognize that letter?”

“No.”

“You deny that it is in your writing?”

“I deny nothing. I have no recollection of it.”

“Perhaps you remember this one?”

A second letter was handed to him, and he saw that it was one which he had written in the autumn to a fellow-student.

“No.”

“Nor the person to whom it is addressed?”

“Nor the person.”

“Your memory is singularly short.”

“It is a defect from which I have always suffered.”

“Indeed! And I heard the other day from a university professor that you are considered by no means deficient; rather clever in fact.”

“You probably judge of cleverness by the police-spy standard; university professors use words in a different sense.”

The note of rising irritation was plainly audible in Arthur's voice. He was physically exhausted with hunger, foul air, and want of sleep; every bone in his body seemed to ache separately; and the colonel's voice grated on his exasperated nerves, setting his teeth on edge like the squeak of a slate pencil.

“Mr. Burton,” said the colonel, leaning back in his chair and speaking gravely, “you are again forgetting yourself; and I warn you once more that this kind of talk will do you no good. Surely you have had enough of the dark cell not to want any more just for the present. I tell you plainly that I shall use strong measures with you if you persist in repulsing gentle ones. Mind, I have proof—positive proof—that some of these young men have been engaged in smuggling prohibited literature into this port; and that you have been in communication with them. Now, are you going to tell me, without compulsion, what you know about this affair?”

Arthur bent his head lower. A blind, senseless, wild-beast fury was beginning to stir within him like a live thing. The possibility of losing command over himself was more appalling to him than any threats. For the first time he began to realize what latent potentialities may lie hidden beneath the culture of any gentleman and the piety of any Christian; and the terror of himself was strong upon him.

“I am waiting for your answer,” said the colonel.

“I have no answer to give.”

“You positively refuse to answer?”

“I will tell you nothing at all.”

“Then I must simply order you back into the punishment cell, and keep you there till you change your mind. If there is much more trouble with you, I shall put you in irons.”

Arthur looked up, trembling from head to foot. “You will do as you please,” he said slowly; “and whether the English Ambassador will stand your playing tricks of that kind with a British subject who has not been convicted of any crime is for him to decide.”

At last Arthur was conducted back to his own cell, where he flung himself down upon the bed and slept till the next morning. He was not put in irons, and saw no more of the dreaded dark cell; but the feud between him and the colonel grew more inveterate with every interrogation. It was quite useless for Arthur to pray in his cell for grace to conquer his evil passions, or to meditate half the night long upon the patience and meekness of Christ. No sooner was he brought again into the long, bare room with its baize-covered table, and confronted with the colonel's waxed moustache, than the unchristian spirit would take possession of him once more, suggesting bitter repartees and contemptuous answers. Before he had been a month in the prison the mutual irritation had reached such a height that he and the colonel could not see each other's faces without losing their temper.

The continual strain of this petty warfare was beginning to tell heavily upon his nerves. Knowing how closely he was watched, and remembering certain dreadful rumours which he had heard of prisoners secretly drugged with belladonna that notes might be taken of their ravings, he gradually became afraid to sleep or eat; and if a mouse ran past him in the night, would start up drenched with cold sweat and quivering with terror, fancying that someone was hiding in the room to listen if he talked in his sleep. The gendarmes were evidently trying to entrap him into making some admission which might compromise Bolla; and so great was his fear of slipping, by any inadvertency, into a pitfall, that he was really in danger of doing so through sheer nervousness. Bolla's name rang in his ears night and day, interfering even with his devotions, and forcing its way in among the beads of the rosary instead of the name of Mary. But the worst thing of all was that his religion, like the outer world, seemed to be slipping away from him as the days went by. To this last foothold he clung with feverish tenacity, spending several hours of each day in prayer and meditation; but his thoughts wandered more and more often to Bolla, and the prayers were growing terribly mechanical.

His greatest comfort was the head warder of the prison. This was a little old man, fat and bald, who at first had tried his hardest to wear a severe expression. Gradually the good nature which peeped out of every dimple in his chubby face conquered his official scruples, and he began carrying messages for the prisoners from cell to cell.

One afternoon in the middle of May this warder came into the cell with a face so scowling and gloomy that Arthur looked at him in astonishment.

“Why, Enrico!” he exclaimed; “what on earth is wrong with you to-day?”

“Nothing,” said Enrico snappishly; and, going up to the pallet, he began pulling off the rug, which was Arthur's property.

“What do you want with my things? Am I to be moved into another cell?”

“No; you're to be let out.”

“Let out? What—to-day? For altogether? Enrico!”

In his excitement Arthur had caught hold of the old man's arm. It was angrily wrenched away.

“Enrico! What has come to you? Why don't you answer? Are we all going to be let out?”

A contemptuous grunt was the only reply.

“Look here!” Arthur again took hold of the warder's arm, laughing. “It is no use for you to be cross to me, because I'm not going to get offended. I want to know about the others.”

“Which others?” growled Enrico, suddenly laying down the shirt he was folding. “Not Bolla, I suppose?”

“Bolla and all the rest, of course. Enrico, what is the matter with you?”

“Well, he's not likely to be let out in a hurry, poor lad, when a comrade has betrayed him. Ugh!” Enrico took up the shirt again in disgust.

“Betrayed him? A comrade? Oh, how dreadful!” Arthur's eyes dilated with horror. Enrico turned quickly round.

“Why, wasn't it you?”

“I? Are you off your head, man? I?”

“Well, they told him so yesterday at interrogation, anyhow. I'm very glad if it wasn't you, for I always thought you were rather a decent young fellow. This way!” Enrico stepped out into the corridor and Arthur followed him, a light breaking in upon the confusion of his mind.

“They told Bolla I'd betrayed him? Of course they did! Why, man, they told me he had betrayed me. Surely Bolla isn't fool enough to believe that sort of stuff?”

“Then it really isn't true?” Enrico stopped at the foot of the stairs and looked searchingly at Arthur, who merely shrugged his shoulders.

“Of course it's a lie.”

“Well, I'm glad to hear it, my lad, and I'll tell him you said so. But you see what they told him was that you had denounced him out of—well, out of jealousy, because of your both being sweet on the same girl.”

“It's a lie!” Arthur repeated the words in a quick, breathless whisper. A sudden, paralyzing fear had come over him. “The same girl—jealousy!” How could they know—how could they know?

“Wait a minute, my lad.” Enrico stopped in the corridor leading to the interrogation room, and spoke softly. “I believe you; but just tell me one thing. I know you're a Catholic; did you ever say anything in the confessional———”

“It's a lie!” This time Arthur's voice had risen to a stifled cry.

Enrico shrugged his shoulders and moved on again. “You know best, of course; but you wouldn't be the only young fool that's been taken in that way. There's a tremendous ado just now about a priest in Pisa that some of your friends have found out. They've printed a leaflet saying he's a spy.”

He opened the door of the interrogation room, and, seeing that Arthur stood motionless, staring blankly before him, pushed him gently across the threshold.

“Good-afternoon, Mr. Burton,” said the colonel, smiling and showing his teeth amiably. “I have great pleasure in congratulating you. An order for your release has arrived from Florence. Will you kindly sign this paper?”

Arthur went up to him. “I want to know,” he said in a dull voice, “who it was that betrayed me.”

The colonel raised his eyebrows with a smile.

“Can't you guess? Think a minute.”

Arthur shook his head. The colonel put out both hands with a gesture of polite surprise.

“Can't guess? Really? Why, you yourself, Mr. Burton. Who else could know your private love affairs?”

Arthur turned away in silence. On the wall hung a large wooden crucifix; and his eyes wandered slowly to its face; but with no appeal in them, only a dim wonder at this supine and patient God that had no thunderbolt for a priest who betrayed the confessional.

“Will you kindly sign this receipt for your papers?” said the colonel blandly; “and then I need not keep you any longer. I am sure you must be in a hurry to get home; and my time is very much taken up just now with the affairs of that foolish young man, Bolla, who tried your Christian forbearance so hard. I am afraid he will get a rather heavy sentence. Good-afternoon!”

Arthur signed the receipt, took his papers, and went out in dead silence. He followed Enrico to the massive gate; and, without a word of farewell, descended to the water's edge, where a ferryman was waiting to take him across the moat. As he mounted the stone steps leading to the street, a girl in a cotton dress and straw hat ran up to him with outstretched hands.

“Arthur! Oh, I'm so glad—I'm so glad!”

He drew his hands away, shivering.

“Jim!” he said at last, in a voice that did not seem to belong to him. “Jim!”

“I've been waiting here for half an hour. They said you would come out at four. Arthur, why do you look at me like that? Something has happened! Arthur, what has come to you? Stop!”

He had turned away, and was walking slowly down the street, as if he had forgotten her presence. Thoroughly frightened at his manner, she ran after him and caught him by the arm.

“Arthur!”

He stopped and looked up with bewildered eyes. She slipped her arm through his, and they walked on again for a moment in silence.

“Listen, dear,” she began softly; “you mustn't get so upset over this wretched business. I know it's dreadfully hard on you, but everybody understands.”

“What business?” he asked in the same dull voice.

“I mean, about Bolla's letter.”

Arthur's face contracted painfully at the name.

“I thought you wouldn't have heard of it,” Gemma went on; “but I suppose they've told you. Bolla must be perfectly mad to have imagined such a thing.”

“Such a thing——?”

“You don't know about it, then? He has written a horrible letter, saying that you have told about the steamers, and got him arrested. It's perfectly absurd, of course; everyone that knows you sees that; it's only the people who don't know you that have been upset by it. Really, that's what I came here for—to tell you that no one in our group believes a word of it.”

“Gemma! But it's—it's true!”

She shrank slowly away from him, and stood quite still, her eyes wide and dark with horror, her face as white as the kerchief at her neck. A great icy wave of silence seemed to have swept round them both, shutting them out, in a world apart, from the life and movement of the street.

“Yes,” he whispered at last; “the steamers—I spoke of that; and I said his name—oh, my God! my God! What shall I do?”

He came to himself suddenly, realizing her presence and the mortal terror in her face. Yes, of course, she must think———

“Gemma, you don't understand!” he burst out, moving nearer; but she recoiled with a sharp cry:

“Don't touch me!”

Arthur seized her right hand with sudden violence.

“Listen, for God's sake! It was not my fault; I——”

“Let go; let my hand go! Let go!”

The next instant she wrenched her fingers away from his, and struck him across the cheek with her open hand.

A kind of mist came over his eyes. For a little while he was conscious of nothing but Gemma's white and desperate face, and the right hand which she had fiercely rubbed on the skirt of her cotton dress. Then the daylight crept back again, and he looked round and saw that he was alone.

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. He paused a moment on the threshold, listening; but the house was quite still; evidently no one was coming to disturb him. He stepped softly into the room and locked the door.

And so he had come to the end. There was nothing to think or trouble about; an importunate and useless consciousness to get rid of—and nothing more. It seemed a stupid, aimless kind of thing, somehow.

He had not formed any resolve to commit suicide, nor indeed had he thought much about it; the thing was quite obvious and inevitable. He had even no definite idea as to what manner of death to choose; all that mattered was to be done with it quickly—to have it over and forget. He had no weapon in the room, not even a pocketknife; but that was of no consequence—a towel would do, or a sheet torn into strips.

There was a large nail just over the window. That would do; but it must be firm to bear his weight. He got up on a chair to feel the nail; it was not quite firm, and he stepped down again and took a hammer from a drawer. He knocked in the nail, and was about to pull a sheet off his bed, when he suddenly remembered that he had not said his prayers. Of course, one must pray before dying; every Christian does that. There are even special prayers for a departing soul.

He went into the alcove and knelt down before the crucifix. “Almighty and merciful God——” he began aloud; and with that broke off and said no more. Indeed, the world was grown so dull that there was nothing left to pray for—or against. And then, what did Christ know about a trouble of this kind—Christ, who had never suffered it? He had only been betrayed, like Bolla; He had never been tricked into betraying.

Arthur rose, crossing himself from old habit. Approaching the table, he saw lying upon it a letter addressed to him, in Montanelli's handwriting. It was in pencil:

“My Dear Boy: It is a great disappointment to me that I cannot see you on the day of your release; but I have been sent for to visit a dying man. I shall not get back till late at night. Come to me early to-morrow morning. In great haste,

“L. M.”

He put down the letter with a sigh; it did seem hard on the Padre.

How the people had laughed and gossiped in the streets! Nothing was altered since the days when he had been alive. Not the least little one of all the daily trifles round him was changed because a human soul, a living human soul, had been struck down dead. It was all just the same as before. The water had plashed in the fountains; the sparrows had twittered under the eaves; just as they had done yesterday, just as they would do to-morrow. And as for him, he was dead—quite dead.

He sat down on the edge of the bed, crossed his arms along the foot-rail, and rested his forehead upon them. There was plenty of time; and his head ached so—the very middle of the brain seemed to ache; it was all so dull and stupid—so utterly meaningless——

The front-door bell rang sharply, and he started up in a breathless agony of terror, with both hands at his throat. They had come back—he had sat there dreaming, and let the precious time slip away—and now he must see their faces and hear their cruel tongues—their sneers and comments—If only he had a knife———

He looked desperately round the room. His mother's work-basket stood in a little cupboard; surely there would be scissors; he might sever an artery. No; the sheet and nail were safer, if he had time.

He dragged the counterpane from his bed, and with frantic haste began tearing off a strip. The sound of footsteps came up the stairs. No; the strip was too wide; it would not tie firmly; and there must be a noose. He worked faster as the footsteps drew nearer; and the blood throbbed in his temples and roared in his ears. Quicker—quicker! Oh, God! five minutes more!

There was a knock at the door. The strip of torn stuff dropped from his hands, and he sat quite still, holding his breath to listen. The handle of the door was tried; then Julia's voice called:

“Arthur!”

He stood up, panting.

“Arthur, open the door, please; we are waiting.”

He gathered up the torn counterpane, threw it into a drawer, and hastily smoothed down the bed.

“Arthur!” This time it was James who called, and the door-handle was shaken impatiently. “Are you asleep?”

Arthur looked round the room, saw that everything was hidden, and unlocked the door.

“I should think you might at least have obeyed my express request that you should sit up for us, Arthur,” said Julia, sweeping into the room in a towering passion. “You appear to think it the proper thing for us to dance attendance for half an hour at your door——”

“Four minutes, my dear,” James mildly corrected, stepping into the room at the end of his wife's pink satin train. “I certainly think, Arthur, that it would have been more—becoming if——”

“What do you want?” Arthur interrupted. He was standing with his hand upon the door, glancing furtively from one to the other like a trapped animal. But James was too obtuse and Julia too angry to notice the look.

Mr. Burton placed a chair for his wife and sat down, carefully pulling up his new trousers at the knees. “Julia and I,” he began, “feel it to be our duty to speak to you seriously about——”

“I can't listen to-night; I—I'm not well. My head aches—you must wait.”

Arthur spoke in a strange, indistinct voice, with a confused and rambling manner. James looked round in surprise.

“Is there anything the matter with you?” he asked anxiously, suddenly remembering that Arthur had come from a very hotbed of infection. “I hope you're not sickening for anything. You look quite feverish.”

“Nonsense!” Julia interrupted sharply. “It's only the usual theatricals, because he's ashamed to face us. Come here and sit down, Arthur.” Arthur slowly crossed the room and sat down on the bed. “Yes?” he said wearily.

Mr. Burton coughed, cleared his throat, smoothed his already immaculate beard, and began the carefully prepared speech over again:

“I feel it to be my duty—my painful duty—to speak very seriously to you about your extraordinary behaviour in connecting yourself with—a—law-breakers and incendiaries and—a—persons of disreputable character. I believe you to have been, perhaps, more foolish than depraved—a——”

He paused.

“Yes?” Arthur said again.

“Now, I do not wish to be hard on you,” James went on, softening a little in spite of himself before the weary hopelessness of Arthur's manner. “I am quite willing to believe that you have been led away by bad companions, and to take into account your youth and inexperience and the—a—a—imprudent and—a—impulsive character which you have, I fear, inherited from your mother.”

Arthur's eyes wandered slowly to his mother's portrait and back again, but he did not speak.

“But you will, I feel sure, understand,” James continued, “that it is quite impossible for me to keep any longer in my house a person who has brought public disgrace upon a name so highly respected as ours.”

“Yes?” Arthur repeated once more.

“Well?” said Julia sharply, closing her fan with a snap and laying it across her knee. “Are you going to have the goodness to say anything but 'Yes,' Arthur?”

“You will do as you think best, of course,” he answered slowly, without moving. “It doesn't matter much either way.”

“Doesn't—matter?” James repeated, aghast; and his wife rose with a laugh.

“Oh, it doesn't matter, doesn't it? Well, James, I hope you understand now how much gratitude you may expect in that quarter. I told you what would come of showing charity to Papist adventuresses and their——”

“Hush, hush! Never mind that, my dear!”

“It's all nonsense, James; we've had more than enough of this sentimentality! A love-child setting himself up as a member of the family—it's quite time he did know what his mother was! Why should we be saddled with the child of a Popish priest's amourettes? There, then—look!”

She pulled a crumpled sheet of paper out of her pocket and tossed it across the table to Arthur. He opened it; the writing was in his mother's hand, and was dated four months before his birth. It was a confession, addressed to her husband, and with two signatures.

Arthur's eyes travelled slowly down the page, past the unsteady letters in which her name was written, to the strong, familiar signature: “Lorenzo Montanelli.” For a moment he stared at the writing; then, without a word, refolded the paper and laid it down. James rose and took his wife by the arm.

“There, Julia, that will do. Just go downstairs now; it's late, and I want to talk a little business with Arthur. It won't interest you.”

She glanced up at her husband; then back at Arthur, who was silently staring at the floor.

“He seems half stupid,” she whispered.

When she had gathered up her train and left the room, James carefully shut the door and went back to his chair beside the table. Arthur sat as before, perfectly motionless and silent.

“Arthur,” James began in a milder tone, now Julia was not there to hear, “I am very sorry that this has come out. You might just as well not have known it. However, all that's over; and I am pleased to see that you can behave with such self-control. Julia is a—a little excited; ladies often—anyhow, I don't want to be too hard on you.”

He stopped to see what effect the kindly words had produced; but Arthur was quite motionless.

“Of course, my dear boy,” James went on after a moment, “this is a distressing story altogether, and the best thing we can do is to hold our tongues about it. My father was generous enough not to divorce your mother when she confessed her fall to him; he only demanded that the man who 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 to-night. I can't talk business with you if you're going on that way. Come to me to-morrow 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 wash-stand, 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 even deep enough to drown a man.

He walked along the canal bank, and came out upon the tiny square by the Medici palace. It was here that Gemma had run up to him with her vivid face, her outstretched hands. Here was the little flight of wet stone steps leading down to the moat; and there the fortress scowling across the strip of dirty water. He had never noticed before how squat and mean it looked.

Passing through the narrow streets he reached the Darsena shipping-basin, where he took off his hat and flung it into the water. It would be found, of course, when they dragged for his body. Then he walked on along the water's edge, considering perplexedly what to do next. He must contrive to hide on some ship; but it was a difficult thing to do. His only chance would be to get on to the huge old Medici breakwater and walk along to the further end of it. There was a low-class tavern on the point; probably he should find some sailor there who could be bribed.

But the dock gates were closed. How should he get past them, and past the customs officials? His stock of money would not furnish the high bribe that they would demand for letting him through at night and without a passport. Besides they might recognize him.

As he passed the bronze statue of the “Four Moors,” a man's figure emerged from an old house on the opposite side of the shipping basin and approached the bridge. Arthur slipped at once into the deep shadow behind the group of statuary and crouched down in the darkness, peeping cautiously round the corner of the pedestal.

It was a soft spring night, warm and starlit. The water lapped against the stone walls of the basin and swirled in gentle eddies round the steps with a sound as of low laughter. Somewhere near a chain creaked, swinging slowly to and fro. A huge iron crane towered up, tall and melancholy in the dimness. Black on a shimmering expanse of starry sky and pearly cloud-wreaths, the figures of the fettered, struggling slaves stood out in vain and vehement protest against a merciless doom.

The man approached unsteadily along the water side, shouting an English street song. He was evidently a sailor returning from a carouse at some tavern. No one else was within sight. As he drew near, Arthur stood up and stepped into the middle of the roadway. The sailor broke off in his song with an oath, and stopped short.

“I want to speak to you,” Arthur said in Italian. “Do you understand me?”

The man shook his head. “It's no use talking that patter to me,” he said; then, plunging into bad French, asked sullenly: “What do you want? Why can't you let me pass?”

“Just come out of the light here a minute; I want to speak to you.”

“Ah! wouldn't you like it? Out of the light! Got a knife anywhere about you?”

“No, no, man! Can't you see I only want your help? I'll pay you for it?”

“Eh? What? And dressed like a swell, too———” The sailor had relapsed into English. He now moved into the shadow and leaned against the railing of the pedestal.

“Well,” he said, returning to his atrocious French; “and what is it you want?”

“I want to get away from here——”

“Aha! Stowaway! Want me to hide you? Been up to something, I suppose. Stuck a knife into somebody, eh? Just like these foreigners! And where might you be wanting to go? Not to the police station, I fancy?”

He laughed in his tipsy way, and winked one eye.

“What vessel do you belong to?”

“Carlotta—Leghorn to Buenos Ayres; shipping oil one way and hides the other. She's over there”—pointing in the direction of the breakwater—“beastly old hulk!”

“Buenos Ayres—yes! Can you hide me anywhere on board?”

“How much can you give?”

“Not very much; I have only a few paoli.”

“No. Can't do it under fifty—and cheap at that, too—a swell like you.”

“What do you mean by a swell? If you like my clothes you may change with me, but I can't give you more money than I have got.”

“You have a watch there. Hand it over.”

Arthur took out a lady's gold watch, delicately chased and enamelled, with the initials “G. B.” on the back. It had been his mother's—but what did that matter now?

“Ah!” remarked the sailor with a quick glance at it. “Stolen, of course! Let me look!”

Arthur drew his hand away. “No,” he said. “I will give you the watch when we are on board; not before.”

“You're not such a fool as you look, after all! I'll bet it's your first scrape, though, eh?”

“That is my business. Ah! there comes the watchman.”

They crouched down behind the group of statuary and waited till the watchman had passed. Then the sailor rose, and, telling Arthur to follow him, walked on, laughing foolishly to himself. Arthur followed in silence.

The sailor led him back to the little irregular square by the Medici palace; and, stopping in a dark corner, mumbled in what was intended for a cautious whisper:

“Wait here; those soldier fellows will see you if you come further.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Get you some clothes. I'm not going to take you on board with that bloody coatsleeve.”

Arthur glanced down at the sleeve which had been torn by the window grating. A little blood from the grazed hand had fallen upon it. Evidently the man thought him a murderer. Well, it was of no consequence what people thought.

After some time the sailor came back, triumphant, with a bundle under his arm.

“Change,” he whispered; “and make haste about it. I must get back, and that old Jew has kept me bargaining and haggling for half an hour.”

Arthur obeyed, shrinking with instinctive disgust at the first touch of second-hand clothes. Fortunately these, though rough and coarse, were fairly clean. When he stepped into the light in his new attire, the sailor looked at him with tipsy solemnity and gravely nodded his approval.

“You'll do,” he said. “This way, and don't make a noise.” Arthur, carrying his discarded clothes, followed him through a labyrinth of winding canals and dark narrow alleys; the mediaeval slum quarter which the people of Leghorn call “New Venice.” Here and there a gloomy old palace, solitary among the squalid houses and filthy courts, stood between two noisome ditches, with a forlorn air of trying to preserve its ancient dignity and yet of knowing the effort to be a hopeless one. Some of the alleys, he knew, were notorious dens of thieves, cut-throats, and smugglers; others were merely wretched and poverty-stricken.

Beside one of the little bridges the sailor stopped, and, looking round to see that they were not observed, descended a flight of stone steps to a narrow landing stage. Under the bridge was a dirty, crazy old boat. Sharply ordering Arthur to jump in and lie down, he seated himself in the boat and began rowing towards the harbour's mouth. Arthur lay still on the wet and leaky planks, hidden by the clothes which the man had thrown over him, and peeping out from under them at the familiar streets and houses.

Presently they passed under a bridge and entered that part of the canal which forms a moat for the fortress. The massive walls rose out of the water, broad at the base and narrowing upward to the frowning turrets. How strong, how threatening they had seemed to him a few hours ago! And now——

He laughed softly as he lay in the bottom of the boat.

“Hold your noise,” the sailor whispered, “and keep your head covered! We're close to the custom house.”

Arthur drew the clothes over his head. A few yards further on the boat stopped before a row of masts chained together, which lay across the surface of the canal, blocking the narrow waterway between the custom house and the fortress wall. A sleepy official came out yawning and bent over the water's edge with a lantern in his hand.

“Passports, please.”

The sailor handed up his official papers. Arthur, half stifled under the clothes, held his breath, listening.

“A nice time of night to come back to your ship!” grumbled the customs official. “Been out on the spree, I suppose. What's in your boat?”

“Old clothes. Got them cheap.” He held up the waistcoat for inspection. The official, lowering his lantern, bent over, straining his eyes to see.

“It's all right, I suppose. You can pass.”

He lifted the barrier and the boat moved slowly out into the dark, heaving water. At a little distance Arthur sat up and threw off the clothes.

“Here she is,” the sailor whispered, after rowing for some time in silence. “Keep close behind me and hold your tongue.”

He clambered up the side of a huge black monster, swearing under his breath at the clumsiness of the landsman, though Arthur's natural agility rendered him less awkward than most people would have been in his place. Once safely on board, they crept cautiously between dark masses of rigging and machinery, and came at last to a hatchway, which the sailor softly raised.

“Down here!” he whispered. “I'll be back in a minute.”

The hold was not only damp and dark, but intolerably foul. At first Arthur instinctively drew back, half choked by the stench of raw hides and rancid oil. Then he remembered the “punishment cell,” and descended the ladder, shrugging his shoulders. Life is pretty much the same everywhere, it seemed; ugly, putrid, infested with vermin, full of shameful secrets and dark corners. Still, life is life, and he must make the best of it.

In a few minutes the sailor came back with something in his hands which Arthur could not distinctly see for the darkness.

“Now, give me the watch and money. Make haste!”

Taking advantage of the darkness, Arthur succeeded in keeping back a few coins.

“You must get me something to eat,” he said; “I am half starved.”

“I've brought it. Here you are.” The sailor handed him a pitcher, some hard biscuit, and a piece of salt pork. “Now mind, you must hide in this empty barrel, here, when the customs officers come to examine to-morrow morning. Keep as still as a mouse till we're right out at sea. I'll let you know when to come out. And won't you just catch it when the captain sees you—that's all! Got the drink safe? Good-night!”

The hatchway closed, and Arthur, setting the precious “drink” in a safe place, climbed on to an oil barrel to eat his pork and biscuit. Then he curled himself up on the dirty floor; and, for the first time since his babyhood, settled himself to sleep without a prayer. The rats scurried round him in the darkness; but neither their persistent noise nor the swaying of the ship, nor the nauseating stench of oil, nor the prospect of to-morrow's sea-sickness, could keep him awake. He cared no more for them all than for the broken and dishonoured idols that only yesterday had been the gods of his adoration.

THIRTEEN YEARS LATER.

ONE evening in July, 1846, a few acquaintances met at Professor Fabrizi's house in Florence to discuss plans for future political work.

Several of them belonged to the Mazzinian party and would have been satisfied with nothing less than a democratic Republic and a United Italy. Others were Constitutional Monarchists and Liberals of various shades. On one point, however, they were all agreed; that of dissatisfaction with the Tuscan censorship; and the popular professor had called the meeting in the hope that, on this one subject at least, the representatives of the dissentient parties would be able to get through an hour's discussion without quarrelling.

Only a fortnight had elapsed since the famous amnesty which Pius IX. had granted, on his accession, to political offenders in the Papal States; but the wave of liberal enthusiasm caused by it was already spreading over Italy. In Tuscany even the government appeared to have been affected by the astounding event. It had occurred to Fabrizi and a few other leading Florentines that this was a propitious moment for a bold effort to reform the press-laws.

“Of course,” the dramatist Lega had said, when the subject was first broached to him; “it would be impossible to start a newspaper till we can get the press-law changed; we should not bring out the first number. But we may be able to run some pamphlets through the censorship already; and the sooner we begin the sooner we shall get the law changed.”

He was now explaining in Fabrizi's library his theory of the line which should be taken by liberal writers at the moment.

“There is no doubt,” interposed one of the company, a gray-haired barrister with a rather drawling manner of speech, “that in some way we must take advantage of the moment. We shall not see such a favourable one again for bringing forward serious reforms. But I doubt the pamphlets doing any good. They will only irritate and frighten the government instead of winning it over to our side, which is what we really want to do. If once the authorities begin to think of us as dangerous agitators our chance of getting their help is gone.”

“Then what would you have us do?”

“Petition.”

“To the Grand Duke?”

“Yes; for an augmentation of the liberty of the press.”

A keen-looking, dark man sitting by the window turned his head round with a laugh.

“You'll get a lot out of petitioning!” he said. “I should have thought the result of the Renzi case was enough to cure anybody of going to work that way.”

“My dear sir, I am as much grieved as you are that we did not succeed in preventing the extradition of Renzi. But really—I do not wish to hurt the sensibilities of anyone, but I cannot help thinking that our failure in that case was largely due to the impatience and vehemence of some persons among our number. I should certainly hesitate——”

“As every Piedmontese always does,” the dark man interrupted sharply. “I don't know where the vehemence and impatience lay, unless you found them in the strings of meek petitions we sent in. That may be vehemence for Tuscany or Piedmont, but we should not call it particularly vehement in Naples.”

“Fortunately,” remarked the Piedmontese, “Neapolitan vehemence is peculiar to Naples.”

“There, there, gentlemen, that will do!” the professor put in. “Neapolitan customs are very good things in their way and Piedmontese customs in theirs; but just now we are in Tuscany, and the Tuscan custom is to stick to the matter in hand. Grassini votes for petitions and Galli against them. What do you think, Dr. Riccardo?”

“I see no harm in petitions, and if Grassini gets one up I'll sign it with all the pleasure in life. But I don't think mere petitioning and nothing else will accomplish much. Why can't we have both petitions and pamphlets?”

“Simply because the pamphlets will put the government into a state of mind in which it won't grant the petitions,” said Grassini.

“It won't do that anyhow.” The Neapolitan rose and came across to the table. “Gentlemen, you're on the wrong tack. Conciliating the government will do no good. What we must do is to rouse the people.”

“That's easier said than done; how are you going to start?”

“Fancy asking Galli that! Of course he'd start by knocking the censor on the head.”

“No, indeed, I shouldn't,” said Galli stoutly. “You always think if a man comes from down south he must believe in no argument but cold steel.”

“Well, what do you propose, then? Sh! Attention, gentlemen! Galli has a proposal to make.”

The whole company, which had broken up into little knots of twos and threes, carrying on separate discussions, collected round the table to listen. Galli raised his hands in expostulation.

“No, gentlemen, it is not a proposal; it is merely a suggestion. It appears to me that there is a great practical danger in all this rejoicing over the new Pope. People seem to think that, because he has struck out a new line and granted this amnesty, we have only to throw ourselves—all of us, the whole of Italy—into his arms and he will carry us to the promised land. Now, I am second to no one in admiration of the Pope's behaviour; the amnesty was a splendid action.”

“I am sure His Holiness ought to feel flattered——” Grassini began contemptuously.

“There, Grassini, do let the man speak!” Riccardo interrupted in his turn. “It's a most extraordinary thing that you two never can keep from sparring like a cat and dog. Get on, Galli!”

“What I wanted to say is this,” continued the Neapolitan. “The Holy Father, undoubtedly, is acting with the best intentions; but how far he will succeed in carrying his reforms is another question. Just now it's smooth enough and, of course, the reactionists all over Italy will lie quiet for a month or two till the excitement about the amnesty blows over; but they are not likely to let the power be taken out of their hands without a fight, and my own belief is that before the winter is half over we shall have Jesuits and Gregorians and Sanfedists and all the rest of the crew about our ears, plotting and intriguing, and poisoning off everybody they can't bribe.”

“That's likely enough.”

“Very well, then; shall we wait here, meekly sending in petitions, till Lambruschini and his pack have persuaded the Grand Duke to put us bodily under Jesuit rule, with perhaps a few Austrian hussars to patrol the streets and keep us in order; or shall we forestall them and take advantage of their momentary discomfiture to strike the first blow?”

“Tell us first what blow you propose?”

“I would suggest that we start an organized propaganda and agitation against the Jesuits.”

“A pamphleteering declaration of war, in fact?”

“Yes; exposing their intrigues, ferreting out their secrets, and calling upon the people to make common cause against them.”

“But there are no Jesuits here to expose.”

“Aren't there? Wait three months and see how many we shall have. It'll be too late to keep them out then.”

“But really to rouse the town against the Jesuits one must speak plainly; and if you do that how will you evade the censorship?”

“I wouldn't evade it; I would defy it.”

“You would print the pamphlets anonymously? That's all very well, but the fact is, we have all seen enough of the clandestine press to know——”

“I did not mean that. I would print the pamphlets openly, with our names and addresses, and let them prosecute us if they dare.”

“The project is a perfectly mad one,” Grassini exclaimed. “It is simply putting one's head into the lion's mouth out of sheer wantonness.”

“Oh, you needn't be afraid!” Galli cut in sharply; “we shouldn't ask you to go to prison for our pamphlets.”

“Hold your tongue, Galli!” said Riccardo. “It's not a question of being afraid; we're all as ready as you are to go to prison if there's any good to be got by it, but it is childish to run into danger for nothing. For my part, I have an amendment to the proposal to suggest.”

“Well, what is it?”

“I think we might contrive, with care, to fight the Jesuits without coming into collision with the censorship.”

“I don't see how you are going to manage it.”

“I think that it is possible to clothe what one has to say in so roundabout a form that——”

“That the censorship won't understand it? And then you'll expect every poor artisan and labourer to find out the meaning by the light of the ignorance and stupidity that are in him! That doesn't sound very practicable.”

“Martini, what do you think?” asked the professor, turning to a broad-shouldered man with a great brown beard, who was sitting beside him.

“I think that I will reserve my opinion till I have more facts to go upon. It's a question of trying experiments and seeing what comes of them.”

“And you, Sacconi?”

“I should like to hear what Signora Bolla has to say. Her suggestions are always valuable.”

Everyone turned to the only woman in the room, who had been sitting on the sofa, resting her chin on one hand and listening in silence to the discussion. She had deep, serious black eyes, but as she raised them now there was an unmistakable gleam of amusement in them.

“I am afraid,” she said; “that I disagree with everybody.”

“You always do, and the worst of it is that you are always right,” Riccardo put in.

“I think it is quite true that we must fight the Jesuits somehow; and if we can't do it with one weapon we must with another. But mere defiance is a feeble weapon and evasion a cumbersome one. As for petitioning, that is a child's toy.”

“I hope, signora,” Grassini interposed, with a solemn face; “that you are not suggesting such methods as—assassination?”

Martini tugged at his big moustache and Galli sniggered outright. Even the grave young woman could not repress a smile.

“Believe me,” she said, “that if I were ferocious enough to think of such things I should not be childish enough to talk about them. But the deadliest weapon I know is ridicule. If you can once succeed in rendering the Jesuits ludicrous, in making people laugh at them and their claims, you have conquered them without bloodshed.”

“I believe you are right, as far as that goes,” Fabrizi said; “but I don't see how you are going to carry the thing through.”

“Why should we not be able to carry it through?” asked Martini. “A satirical thing has a better chance of getting over the censorship difficulty than a serious one; and, if it must be cloaked, the average reader is more likely to find out the double meaning of an apparently silly joke than of a scientific or economic treatise.”

“Then is your suggestion, signora, that we should issue satirical pamphlets, or attempt to run a comic paper? That last, I am sure, the censorship would never allow.”

“I don't mean exactly either. I believe a series of small satirical leaflets, in verse or prose, to be sold cheap or distributed free about the streets, would be very useful. If we could find a clever artist who would enter into the spirit of the thing, we might have them illustrated.”

“It's a capital idea, if only one could carry it out; but if the thing is to be done at all it must be well done. We should want a first-class satirist; and where are we to get him?”

“You see,” added Lega, “most of us are serious writers; and, with all respect to the company, I am afraid that a general attempt to be humorous would present the spectacle of an elephant trying to dance the tarantella.”

“I never suggested that we should all rush into work for which we are unfitted. My idea was that we should try to find a really gifted satirist—there must be one to be got somewhere in Italy, surely—and offer to provide the necessary funds. Of course we should have to know something of the man and make sure that he would work on lines with which we could agree.”

“But where are you going to find him? I can count up the satirists of any real talent on the fingers of one hand; and none of them are available. Giusti wouldn't accept; he is fully occupied as it is. There are one or two good men in Lombardy, but they write only in the Milanese dialect——”

“And moreover,” said Grassini, “the Tuscan people can be influenced in better ways than this. I am sure that it would be felt as, to say the least, a want of political savoir faire if we were to treat this solemn question of civil and religious liberty as a subject for trifling. Florence is not a mere wilderness of factories and money-getting like London, nor a haunt of idle luxury like Paris. It is a city with a great history———”

“So was Athens,” she interrupted, smiling; “but it was 'rather sluggish from its size and needed a gadfly to rouse it'——”

Riccardo struck his hand upon the table. “Why, we never thought of the Gadfly! The very man!”

“Who is that?”

“The Gadfly—Felice Rivarez. Don't you remember him? One of Muratori's band that came down from the Apennines three years ago?”

“Oh, you knew that set, didn't you? I remember your travelling with them when they went on to Paris.”

“Yes; I went as far as Leghorn to see Rivarez off for Marseilles. He wouldn't stop in Tuscany; he said there was nothing left to do but laugh, once the insurrection had failed, and so he had better go to Paris. No doubt he agreed with Signor Grassini that Tuscany is the wrong place to laugh in. But I am nearly sure he would come back if we asked him, now that there is a chance of doing something in Italy.”

“What name did you say?”

“Rivarez. He's a Brazilian, I think. At any rate, I know he has lived out there. He is one of the wittiest men I ever came across. Heaven knows we had nothing to be merry over, that week in Leghorn; it was enough to break one's heart to look at poor Lambertini; but there was no keeping one's countenance when Rivarez was in the room; it was one perpetual fire of absurdities. He had a nasty sabre-cut across the face, too; I remember sewing it up. He's an odd creature; but I believe he and his nonsense kept some of those poor lads from breaking down altogether.”

“Is that the man who writes political skits in the French papers under the name of 'Le Taon'?”

“Yes; short paragraphs mostly, and comic feuilletons. The smugglers up in the Apennines called him 'the Gadfly' because of his tongue; and he took the nickname to sign his work with.”

“I know something about this gentleman,” said Grassini, breaking in upon the conversation in his slow and stately manner; “and I cannot say that what I have heard is much to his credit. He undoubtedly possesses a certain showy, superficial cleverness, though I think his abilities have been exaggerated; and possibly he is not lacking in physical courage; but his reputation in Paris and Vienna is, I believe, very far from spotless. He appears to be a gentleman of—a—a—many adventures and unknown antecedents. It is said that he was picked up out of charity by Duprez's expedition somewhere in the wilds of tropical South America, in a state of inconceivable savagery and degradation. I believe he has never satisfactorily explained how he came to be in such a condition. As for the rising in the Apennines, I fear it is no secret that persons of all characters took part in that unfortunate affair. The men who were executed in Bologna are known to have been nothing but common malefactors; and the character of many who escaped will hardly bear description. Without doubt, SOME of the participators were men of high character——”

“Some of them were the intimate friends of several persons in this room!” Riccardo interrupted, with an angry ring in his voice. “It's all very well to be particular and exclusive, Grassini; but these 'common malefactors' died for their belief, which is more than you or I have done as yet.”

“And another time when people tell you the stale gossip of Paris,” added Galli, “you can tell them from me that they are mistaken about the Duprez expedition. I know Duprez's adjutant, Martel, personally, and have heard the whole story from him. It's true that they found Rivarez stranded out there. He had been taken prisoner in the war, fighting for the Argentine Republic, and had escaped. He was wandering about the country in various disguises, trying to get back to Buenos Ayres. But the story of their taking him on out of charity is a pure fabrication. Their interpreter had fallen ill and been obliged to turn back; and not one of the Frenchmen could speak the native languages; so they offered him the post, and he spent the whole three years with them, exploring the tributaries of the Amazon. Martel told me he believed they never would have got through the expedition at all if it had not been for Rivarez.”

“Whatever he may be,” said Fabrizi; “there must be something remarkable about a man who could lay his 'come hither' on two old campaigners like Martel and Duprez as he seems to have done. What do you think, signora?”

“I know nothing about the matter; I was in England when the fugitives passed through Tuscany. But I should think that if the companions who were with a man on a three years' expedition in savage countries, and the comrades who were with him through an insurrection, think well of him, that is recommendation enough to counterbalance a good deal of boulevard gossip.”

“There is no question about the opinion his comrades had of him,” said Riccardo. “From Muratori and Zambeccari down to the roughest mountaineers they were all devoted to him. Moreover, he is a personal friend of Orsini. It's quite true, on the other hand, that there are endless cock-and-bull stories of a not very pleasant kind going about concerning him in Paris; but if a man doesn't want to make enemies he shouldn't become a political satirist.”

“I'm not quite sure,” interposed Lega; “but it seems to me that I saw him once when the refugees were here. Was he not hunchbacked, or crooked, or something of that kind?”

The professor had opened a drawer in his writing-table and was turning over a heap of papers. “I think I have his police description somewhere here,” he said. “You remember when they escaped and hid in the mountain passes their personal appearance was posted up everywhere, and that Cardinal—what's the scoundrel's name?—Spinola, offered a reward for their heads.”

“There was a splendid story about Rivarez and that police paper, by the way. He put on a soldier's old uniform and tramped across country as a carabineer wounded in the discharge of his duty and trying to find his company. He actually got Spinola's search-party to give him a lift, and rode the whole day in one of their waggons, telling them harrowing stories of how he had been taken captive by the rebels and dragged off into their haunts in the mountains, and of the fearful tortures that he had suffered at their hands. They showed him the description paper, and he told them all the rubbish he could think of about 'the fiend they call the Gadfly.' Then at night, when they were asleep, he poured a bucketful of water into their powder and decamped, with his pockets full of provisions and ammunition———”

“Ah, here's the paper,” Fabrizi broke in: “'Felice Rivarez, called: The Gadfly. Age, about 30; birthplace and parentage, unknown, probably South American; profession, journalist. Short; black hair; black beard; dark skin; eyes, blue; forehead, broad and square; nose, mouth, chin———' Yes, here it is: 'Special marks: right foot lame; left arm twisted; two ringers missing on left hand; recent sabre-cut across face; stammers.' Then there's a note put: 'Very expert shot; care should be taken in arresting.'”

“It's an extraordinary thing that he can have managed to deceive the search-party with such a formidable list of identification marks.”

“It was nothing but sheer audacity that carried him through, of course. If it had once occurred to them to suspect him he would have been lost. But the air of confiding innocence that he can put on when he chooses would bring a man through anything. Well, gentlemen, what do you think of the proposal? Rivarez seems to be pretty well known to several of the company. Shall we suggest to him that we should be glad of his help here or not?”

“I think,” said Fabrizi, “that he might be sounded upon the subject, just to find out whether he would be inclined to think of the plan.”

“Oh, he'll be inclined, you may be sure, once it's a case of fighting the Jesuits; he is the most savage anti-clerical I ever met; in fact, he's rather rabid on the point.”

“Then will you write, Riccardo?”

“Certainly. Let me see, where is he now? In Switzerland, I think. He's the most restless being; always flitting about. But as for the pamphlet question——”

They plunged into a long and animated discussion. When at last the company began to disperse Martini went up to the quiet young woman.

“I will see you home, Gemma.”

“Thanks; I want to have a business talk with you.”

“Anything wrong with the addresses?” he asked softly.

“Nothing serious; but I think it is time to make a few alterations. Two letters have been stopped in the post this week. They were both quite unimportant, and it may have been accidental; but we cannot afford to have any risks. If once the police have begun to suspect any of our addresses, they must be changed immediately.”

“I will come in about that to-morrow. I am not going to talk business with you to-night; you look tired.”

“I am not tired.”

“Then you are depressed again.”

“Oh, no; not particularly.”

“Is the mistress in, Katie?”

“Yes, sir; she is dressing. If you'll just step into the parlour she will be down in a few minutes.”

Katie ushered the visitor in with the cheerful friendliness of a true Devonshire girl. Martini was a special favourite of hers. He spoke English, like a foreigner, of course, but still quite respectably; and he never sat discussing politics at the top of his voice till one in the morning, when the mistress was tired, as some visitors had a way of doing. Moreover, he had come to Devonshire to help the mistress in her trouble, when her baby was dead and her husband dying there; and ever since that time the big, awkward, silent man had been to Katie as much “one of the family” as was the lazy black cat which now ensconced itself upon his knee. Pasht, for his part, regarded Martini as a useful piece of household furniture. This visitor never trod upon his tail, or puffed tobacco smoke into his eyes, or in any way obtruded upon his consciousness an aggressive biped personality. He behaved as a mere man should: provided a comfortable knee to lie upon and purr, and at table never forgot that to look on while human beings eat fish is not interesting for a cat. The friendship between them was of old date. Once, when Pasht was a kitten and his mistress too ill to think about him, he had come from England under Martini's care, tucked away in a basket. Since then, long experience had convinced him that this clumsy human bear was no fair-weather friend.

“How snug you look, you two!” said Gemma, coming into the room. “One would think you had settled yourselves for the evening.”

Martini carefully lifted the cat off his knee. “I came early,” he said, “in the hope that you will give me some tea before we start. There will probably be a frightful crush, and Grassini won't give us any sensible supper—they never do in those fashionable houses.”

“Come now!” she said, laughing; “that's as bad as Galli! Poor Grassini has quite enough sins of his own to answer for without having his wife's imperfect housekeeping visited upon his head. As for the tea, it will be ready in a minute. Katie has been making some Devonshire cakes specially for you.”

“Katie is a good soul, isn't she, Pasht? By the way, so are you to have put on that pretty dress. I was afraid you would forget.”

“I promised you I would wear it, though it is rather warm for a hot evening like this.”

“It will be much cooler up at Fiesole; and nothing else ever suits you so well as white cashmere. I have brought you some flowers to wear with it.”

“Oh, those lovely cluster roses; I am so fond of them! But they had much better go into water. I hate to wear flowers.”

“Now that's one of your superstitious fancies.”

“No, it isn't; only I think they must get so bored, spending all the evening pinned to such a dull companion.”

“I am afraid we shall all be bored to-night. The conversazione will be dull beyond endurance.”

“Why?”

“Partly because everything Grassini touches becomes as dull as himself.”

“Now don't be spiteful. It is not fair when we are going to be a man's guests.”

“You are always right, Madonna. Well then, it will be dull because half the interesting people are not coming.”

“How is that?”

“I don't know. Out of town, or ill, or something. Anyway, there will be two or three ambassadors and some learned Germans, and the usual nondescript crowd of tourists and Russian princes and literary club people, and a few French officers; nobody else that I know of—except, of course, the new satirist, who is to be the attraction of the evening.”

“The new satirist? What, Rivarez? But I thought Grassini disapproved of him so strongly.”

“Yes; but once the man is here and is sure to be talked about, of course Grassini wants his house to be the first place where the new lion will be on show. You may be sure Rivarez has heard nothing of Grassini's disapproval. He may have guessed it, though; he's sharp enough.”

“I did not even know he had come.”

“He only arrived yesterday. Here comes the tea. No, don't get up; let me fetch the kettle.”

He was never so happy as in this little study. Gemma's friendship, her grave unconsciousness of the charm she exercised over him, her frank and simple comradeship were the brightest things for him in a life that was none too bright; and whenever he began to feel more than usually depressed he would come in here after business hours and sit with her, generally in silence, watching her as she bent over her needlework or poured out tea. She never questioned him about his troubles or expressed any sympathy in words; but he always went away stronger and calmer, feeling, as he put it to himself, that he could “trudge through another fortnight quite respectably.” She possessed, without knowing it, the rare gift of consolation; and when, two years ago, his dearest friends had been betrayed in Calabria and shot down like wolves, her steady faith had been perhaps the thing which had saved him from despair.

On Sunday mornings he sometimes came in to “talk business,” that expression standing for anything connected with the practical work of the Mazzinian party, of which they both were active and devoted members. She was quite a different creature then; keen, cool, and logical, perfectly accurate and perfectly neutral. Those who saw her only at her political work regarded her as a trained and disciplined conspirator, trustworthy, courageous, in every way a valuable member of the party, but somehow lacking in life and individuality. “She's a born conspirator, worth any dozen of us; and she is nothing more,” Galli had said of her. The “Madonna Gemma” whom Martini knew was very difficult to get at.

“Well, and what is your 'new satirist' like?” she asked, glancing back over her shoulder as she opened the sideboard. “There, Cesare, there are barley-sugar and candied angelica for you. I wonder, by the way, why revolutionary men are always so fond of sweets.”

“Other men are, too, only they think it beneath their dignity to confess it. The new satirist? Oh, the kind of man that ordinary women will rave over and you will dislike. A sort of professional dealer in sharp speeches, that goes about the world with a lackadaisical manner and a handsome ballet-girl dangling on to his coat-tails.”

“Do you mean that there is really a ballet-girl, or simply that you feel cross and want to imitate the sharp speeches?”

“The Lord defend me! No; the ballet-girl is real enough and handsome enough, too, for those who like shrewish beauty. Personally, I don't. She's a Hungarian gipsy, or something of that kind, so Riccardo says; from some provincial theatre in Galicia. He seems to be rather a cool hand; he has been introducing the girl to people just as if she were his maiden aunt.”

“Well, that's only fair if he has taken her away from her home.”

“You may look at things that way, dear Madonna, but society won't. I think most people will very much resent being introduced to a woman whom they know to be his mistress.”

“How can they know it unless he tells them so?”

“It's plain enough; you'll see if you meet her. But I should think even he would not have the audacity to bring her to the Grassinis'.”

“They wouldn't receive her. Signora Grassini is not the woman to do unconventional things of that kind. But I wanted to hear about Signor Rivarez as a satirist, not as a man. Fabrizi told me he had been written to and had consented to come and take up the campaign against the Jesuits; and that is the last I have heard. There has been such a rush of work this week.”

“I don't know that I can tell you much more. There doesn't seem to have been any difficulty over the money question, as we feared there would be. He's well off, it appears, and willing to work for nothing.”

“Has he a private fortune, then?” “Apparently he has; though it seems rather odd—you heard that night at Fabrizi's about the state the Duprez expedition found him in. But he has got shares in mines somewhere out in Brazil; and then he has been immensely successful as a feuilleton writer in Paris and Vienna and London. He seems to have half a dozen languages at his finger-tips; and there's nothing to prevent his keeping up his newspaper connections from here. Slanging the Jesuits won't take all his time.”

“That's true, of course. It's time to start, Cesare. Yes, I will wear the roses. Wait just a minute.”

She ran upstairs, and came back with the roses in the bosom of her dress, and a long scarf of black Spanish lace thrown over her head. Martini surveyed her with artistic approval.

“You look like a queen, Madonna mia; like the great and wise Queen of Sheba.”

“What an unkind speech!” she retorted, laughing; “when you know how hard I've been trying to mould myself into the image of the typical society lady! Who wants a conspirator to look like the Queen of Sheba? That's not the way to keep clear of spies.”

“You'll never be able to personate the stupid society woman if you try for ever. But it doesn't matter, after all; you're too fair to look upon for spies to guess your opinions, even though you can't simper and hide behind your fan like Signora Grassini.”

“Now Cesare, let that poor woman alone! There, take some more barley-sugar to sweeten your temper. Are you ready? Then we had better start.”

Martini had been quite right in saying that the conversazione would be both crowded and dull. The literary men talked polite small-talk and looked hopelessly bored, while the “nondescript crowd of tourists and Russian princes” fluttered up and down the rooms, asking each other who were the various celebrities and trying to carry on intellectual conversation. Grassini was receiving his guests with a manner as carefully polished as his boots; but his cold face lighted up at the sight of Gemma. He did not really like her and indeed was secretly a little afraid of her; but he realized that without her his drawing room would lack a great attraction. He had risen high in his profession, and now that he was rich and well known his chief ambition was to make of his house a centre of liberal and intellectual society. He was painfully conscious that the insignificant, overdressed little woman whom in his youth he had made the mistake of marrying was not fit, with her vapid talk and faded prettiness, to be the mistress of a great literary salon. When he could prevail upon Gemma to come he always felt that the evening would be a success. Her quiet graciousness of manner set the guests at their ease, and her very presence seemed to lay the spectre of vulgarity which always, in his imagination, haunted the house.

Signora Grassini greeted Gemma affectionately, exclaiming in a loud whisper: “How charming you look to-night!” and examining the white cashmere with viciously critical eyes. She hated her visitor rancourously, for the very things for which Martini loved her; for her quiet strength of character; for her grave, sincere directness; for the steady balance of her mind; for the very expression of her face. And when Signora Grassini hated a woman, she showed it by effusive tenderness. Gemma took the compliments and endearments for what they were worth, and troubled her head no more about them. What is called “going into society” was in her eyes one of the wearisome and rather unpleasant tasks which a conspirator who wishes not to attract the notice of spies must conscientiously fulfil. She classed it together with the laborious work of writing in cipher; and, knowing how valuable a practical safeguard against suspicion is the reputation of being a well-dressed woman, studied the fashion-plates as carefully as she did the keys of her ciphers.

The bored and melancholy literary lions brightened up a little at the sound of Gemma's name; she was very popular among them; and the radical journalists, especially, gravitated at once to her end of the long room. But she was far too practised a conspirator to let them monopolize her. Radicals could be had any day; and now, when they came crowding round her, she gently sent them about their business, reminding them with a smile that they need not waste their time on converting her when there were so many tourists in need of instruction. For her part, she devoted herself to an English M.P. whose sympathies the republican party was anxious to gain; and, knowing him to be a specialist on finance, she first won his attention by asking his opinion on a technical point concerning the Austrian currency, and then deftly turned the conversation to the condition of the Lombardo-Venetian revenue. The Englishman, who had expected to be bored with small-talk, looked askance at her, evidently fearing that he had fallen into the clutches of a blue-stocking; but finding that she was both pleasant to look at and interesting to talk to, surrendered completely and plunged into as grave a discussion of Italian finance as if she had been Metternich. When Grassini brought up a Frenchman “who wishes to ask Signora Bolla something about the history of Young Italy,” the M. P. rose with a bewildered sense that perhaps there was more ground for Italian discontent than he had supposed.

Later in the evening Gemma slipped out on to the terrace under the drawing-room windows to sit alone for a few moments among the great camellias and oleanders. The close air and continually shifting crowd in the rooms were beginning to give her a headache. At the further end of the terrace stood a row of palms and tree-ferns, planted in large tubs which were hidden by a bank of lilies and other flowering plants. The whole formed a complete screen, behind which was a little nook commanding a beautiful view out across the valley. The branches of a pomegranate tree, clustered with late blossoms, hung beside the narrow opening between the plants.

In this nook Gemma took refuge, hoping that no one would guess her whereabouts until she had secured herself against the threatening headache by a little rest and silence. The night was warm and beautifully still; but coming out from the hot, close rooms she felt it cool, and drew her lace scarf about her head.

Presently the sounds of voices and footsteps approaching along the terrace roused her from the dreamy state into which she had fallen. She drew back into the shadow, hoping to escape notice and get a few more precious minutes of silence before again having to rack her tired brain for conversation. To her great annoyance the footsteps paused near to the screen; then Signora Grassini's thin, piping little voice broke off for a moment in its stream of chatter.

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? And we are all so fond of dear Gemma! She is a little stiff, poor thing; the English always are, you know; but I think her troubles have made her melancholy, and——”

Gemma stood up and pushed back the boughs of the pomegranate tree. This retailing of her private sorrows for purposes of small-talk was almost unbearable to her, and there was visible annoyance in her face as she stepped into the light.

“Ah! here she is!” exclaimed the hostess, with admirable coolness. “Gemma, dear, I was wondering where you could have disappeared to. Signor Felice Rivarez wishes to make your acquaintance.”

“So it's the Gadfly,” thought Gemma, looking at him with some curiosity. He bowed to her decorously enough, but his eyes glanced over her face and figure with a look which seemed to her insolently keen and inquisitorial.

“You have found a d-d-delightful little nook here,” he remarked, looking at the thick screen; “and w-w-what a charming view!”

“Yes; it's a pretty corner. I came out here to get some air.”

“It seems almost ungrateful to the good God to stay indoors on such a lovely night,” said the hostess, raising her eyes to the stars. (She had good eyelashes and liked to show them.) “Look, signore! Would not our sweet Italy be heaven on earth if only she were free? To think that she should be a bond-slave, with such flowers and such skies!”

“And such patriotic women!” the Gadfly murmured in his soft, languid drawl.

Gemma glanced round at him in some trepidation; his impudence was too glaring, surely, to deceive anyone. But she had underrated Signora Grassini's appetite for compliments; the poor woman cast down her lashes with a sigh.

“Ah, signore, it is so little that a woman can do! Perhaps some day I may prove my right to the name of an Italian—who knows? And now I must go back to my social duties; the French ambassador has begged me to introduce his ward to all the notabilities; you must come in presently and see her. She is a most charming girl. Gemma, dear, I brought Signor Rivarez out to show him our beautiful view; I must leave him under your care. I know you will look after him and introduce him to everyone. Ah! there is that delightful Russian prince! Have you met him? They say he is a great favourite of the Emperor Nicholas. He is military commander of some Polish town with a name that nobody can pronounce. Quelle nuit magnifique! N'est-ce-pas, mon prince?”

She fluttered away, chattering volubly to a bull-necked man with a heavy jaw and a coat glittering with orders; and her plaintive dirges for “notre malheureuse patrie,” interpolated with “charmant” and “mon prince,” died away along the terrace.

Gemma stood quite still beside the pomegranate tree. She was sorry for the poor, silly little woman, and annoyed at the Gadfly's languid insolence. He was watching the retreating figures with an expression of face that angered her; it seemed ungenerous to mock at such pitiable creatures.

“There go Italian and—Russian patriotism,” he said, turning to her with a smile; “arm in arm and mightily pleased with each other's company. Which do you prefer?”

She frowned slightly and made no answer.

“Of c-course,” he went on; “it's all a question of p-personal taste; but I think, of the two, I like the Russian variety best—it's so thorough. If Russia had to depend on flowers and skies for her supremacy instead of on powder and shot, how long do you think 'mon prince' would k-keep that Polish fortress?”

“I think,” she answered coldly, “that we can hold our personal opinions without ridiculing a woman whose guests we are.”

“Ah, yes! I f-forgot the obligations of hospitality here in Italy; they are a wonderfully hospitable people, these Italians. I'm sure the Austrians find them so. Won't you sit down?”

He limped across the terrace to fetch a chair for her, and placed himself opposite to her, leaning against the balustrade. The light from a window was shining full on his face; and she was able to study it at her leisure.

She was disappointed. She had expected to see a striking and powerful, if not pleasant face; but the most salient points of his appearance were a tendency to foppishness in dress and rather more than a tendency to a certain veiled insolence of expression and manner. For the rest, he was as swarthy as a mulatto, and, notwithstanding his lameness, as agile as a cat. His whole personality was oddly suggestive of a black jaguar. The forehead and left cheek were terribly disfigured by the long crooked scar of the old sabre-cut; and she had already noticed that, when he began to stammer in speaking, that side of his face was affected with a nervous twitch. But for these defects he would have been, in a certain restless and uncomfortable way, rather handsome; but it was not an attractive face.

Presently he began again in his soft, murmuring purr (“Just the voice a jaguar would talk in, if it could speak and were in a good humour,” Gemma said to herself with rising irritation).

“I hear,” he said, “that you are interested in the radical press, and write for the papers.”

“I write a little; I have not time to do much.”

“Ah, of course! I understood from Signora Grassini that you undertake other important work as well.”

Gemma raised her eyebrows slightly. Signora Grassini, like the silly little woman she was, had evidently been chattering imprudently to this slippery creature, whom Gemma, for her part, was beginning actually to dislike.

“My time is a good deal taken up,” she said rather stiffly; “but Signora Grassini overrates the importance of my occupations. They are mostly of a very trivial character.”

“Well, the world would be in a bad way if we ALL of us spent our time in chanting dirges for Italy. I should think the neighbourhood of our host of this evening and his wife would make anybody frivolous, in self-defence. Oh, yes, I know what you're going to say; you are perfectly right, but they are both so deliciously funny with their patriotism.—Are you going in already? It is so nice out here!”

“I think I will go in now. Is that my scarf? Thank you.”

He had picked it up, and now stood looking at her with wide eyes as blue and innocent as forget-me-nots in a brook.

“I know you are offended with me,” he said penitently, “for fooling that painted-up wax doll; but what can a fellow do?”

“Since you ask me, I do think it an ungenerous and—well—cowardly thing to hold one's intellectual inferiors up to ridicule in that way; it is like laughing at a cripple, or———”

He caught his breath suddenly, painfully; and shrank back, glancing at his lame foot and mutilated hand. In another instant he recovered his self-possession and burst out laughing.

“That's hardly a fair comparison, signora; we cripples don't flaunt our deformities in people's faces as she does her stupidity. At least give us credit for recognizing that crooked backs are no pleasanter than crooked ways. There is a step here; will you take my arm?”

She re-entered the house in embarrassed silence; his unexpected sensitiveness had completely disconcerted her.

Directly he opened the door of the great reception room she realized that something unusual had happened in her absence. Most of the gentlemen looked both angry and uncomfortable; the ladies, with hot cheeks and carefully feigned unconsciousness, were all collected at one end of the room; the host was fingering his eye-glasses with suppressed but unmistakable fury, and a little group of tourists stood in a corner casting amused glances at the further end of the room. Evidently something was going on there which appeared to them in the light of a joke, and to most of the guests in that of an insult. Signora Grassini alone did not appear to have noticed anything; she was fluttering her fan coquettishly and chattering to the secretary of the Dutch embassy, who listened with a broad grin on his face.

Gemma paused an instant in the doorway, turning to see if the Gadfly, too, had noticed the disturbed appearance of the company. There was no mistaking the malicious triumph in his eyes as he glanced from the face of the blissfully unconscious hostess to a sofa at the end of the room. She understood at once; he had brought his mistress here under some false colour, which had deceived no one but Signora Grassini.

The gipsy-girl was leaning back on the sofa, surrounded by a group of simpering dandies and blandly ironical cavalry officers. She was gorgeously dressed in amber and scarlet, with an Oriental brilliancy of tint and profusion of ornament as startling in a Florentine literary salon as if she had been some tropical bird among sparrows and starlings. She herself seemed to feel out of place, and looked at the offended ladies with a fiercely contemptuous scowl. Catching sight of the Gadfly as he crossed the room with Gemma, she sprang up and came towards him, with a voluble flood of painfully incorrect French.

“M. Rivarez, I have been looking for you everywhere! Count Saltykov wants to know whether you can go to his villa to-morrow night. There will be dancing.”

“I am sorry I can't go; but then I couldn't dance if I did. Signora Bolla, allow me to introduce to you Mme. Zita Reni.”

The gipsy glanced round at Gemma with a half defiant air and bowed stiffly. She was certainly handsome enough, as Martini had said, with a vivid, animal, unintelligent beauty; and the perfect harmony and freedom of her movements were delightful to see; but her forehead was low and narrow, and the line of her delicate nostrils was unsympathetic, almost cruel. The sense of oppression which Gemma had felt in the Gadfly's society was intensified by the gypsy's presence; and when, a moment later, the host came up to beg Signora Bolla to help him entertain some tourists in the other room, she consented with an odd feeling of relief.

“Well, Madonna, and what do you think of the Gadfly?” Martini asked as they drove back to Florence late at night. “Did you ever see anything quite so shameless as the way he fooled that poor little Grassini woman?”

“About the ballet-girl, you mean?”

“Yes, he persuaded her the girl was going to be the lion of the season. Signora Grassini would do anything for a celebrity.”

“I thought it an unfair and unkind thing to do; it put the Grassinis into a false position; and it was nothing less than cruel to the girl herself. I am sure she felt ill at ease.”

“You had a talk with him, didn't you? What did you think of him?”

“Oh, Cesare, I didn't think anything except how glad I was to see the last of him. I never met anyone so fearfully tiring. He gave me a headache in ten minutes. He is like an incarnate demon of unrest.”

“I thought you wouldn't like him; and, to tell the truth, no more do I. The man's as slippery as an eel; I don't trust him.”

THE Gadfly took lodgings outside the Roman gate, near to which Zita was boarding. He was evidently somewhat of a sybarite; and, though nothing in the rooms showed any serious extravagance, there was a tendency to luxuriousness in trifles and to a certain fastidious daintiness in the arrangement of everything which surprised Galli and Riccardo. They had expected to find a man who had lived among the wildernesses of the Amazon more simple in his tastes, and wondered at his spotless ties and rows of boots, and at the masses of flowers which always stood upon his writing table. On the whole they got on very well with him. He was hospitable and friendly to everyone, especially to the local members of the Mazzinian party. To this rule Gemma, apparently, formed an exception; he seemed to have taken a dislike to her from the time of their first meeting, and in every way avoided her company. On two or three occasions he was actually rude to her, thus bringing upon himself Martini's most cordial detestation. There had been no love lost between the two men from the beginning; their temperaments appeared to be too incompatible for them to feel anything but repugnance for each other. On Martini's part this was fast developing into hostility.

“I don't care about his not liking me,” he said one day to Gemma with an aggrieved air. “I don't like him, for that matter; so there's no harm done. But I can't stand the way he behaves to you. If it weren't for the scandal it would make in the party first to beg a man to come and then to quarrel with him, I should call him to account for it.”

“Let him alone, Cesare; it isn't of any consequence, and after all, it's as much my fault as his.”

“What is your fault?”

“That he dislikes me so. I said a brutal thing to him when we first met, that night at the Grassinis'.”

“YOU said a brutal thing? That's hard to believe, Madonna.”

“It was unintentional, of course, and I was very sorry. I said something about people laughing at cripples, and he took it personally. It had never occurred to me to think of him as a cripple; he is not so badly deformed.”

“Of course not. He has one shoulder higher than the other, and his left arm is pretty badly disabled, but he's neither hunchbacked nor clubfooted. As for his lameness, it isn't worth talking about.”

“Anyway, he shivered all over and changed colour. Of course it was horribly tactless of me, but it's odd he should be so sensitive. I wonder if he has ever suffered from any cruel jokes of that kind.”

“Much more likely to have perpetrated them, I should think. There's a sort of internal brutality about that man, under all his fine manners, that is perfectly sickening to me.”

“Now, Cesare, that's downright unfair. I don't like him any more than you do, but what is the use of making him out worse than he is? His manner is a little affected and irritating—I expect he has been too much lionized—and the everlasting smart speeches are dreadfully tiring; but I don't believe he means any harm.”

“I don't know what he means, but there's something not clean about a man who sneers at everything. It fairly disgusted me the other day at Fabrizi's debate to hear the way he cried down the reforms in Rome, just as if he wanted to find a foul motive for everything.”

Gemma sighed. “I am afraid I agreed better with him than with you on that point,” she said. “All you good people are so full of the most delightful hopes and expectations; you are always ready to think that if one well-meaning middle-aged gentleman happens to get elected Pope, everything else will come right of itself. He has only got to throw open the prison doors and give his blessing to everybody all round, and we may expect the millennium within three months. You never seem able to see that he can't set things right even if he would. It's the principle of the thing that's wrong, not the behaviour of this man or that.”

“What principle? The temporal power of the Pope?”

“Why that in particular? That's merely a part of the general wrong. The bad principle is that any man should hold over another the power to bind and loose. It's a false relationship to stand in towards one's fellows.”

Martini held up his hands. “That will do, Madonna,” he said, laughing. “I am not going to discuss with you, once you begin talking rank Antinomianism in that fashion. I'm sure your ancestors must have been English Levellers in the seventeenth century. Besides, what I came round about is this MS.”

He pulled it out of his pocket.

“Another new pamphlet?”

“A stupid thing this wretched man Rivarez sent in to yesterday's committee. I knew we should come to loggerheads with him before long.”

“What is the matter with it? Honestly, Cesare, I think you are a little prejudiced. Rivarez may be unpleasant, but he's not stupid.”

“Oh, I don't deny that this is clever enough in its way; but you had better read the thing yourself.”

The pamphlet was a skit on the wild enthusiasm over the new Pope with which Italy was still ringing. Like all the Gadfly's writing, it was bitter and vindictive; but, notwithstanding her irritation at the style, Gemma could not help recognizing in her heart the justice of the criticism.

“I quite agree with you that it is detestably malicious,” she said, laying down the manuscript. “But the worst thing about it is that it's all true.”

“Gemma!”

“Yes, but it is. The man's a cold-blooded eel, if you like; but he's got the truth on his side. There is no use in our trying to persuade ourselves that this doesn't hit the mark—it does!”

“Then do you suggest that we should print it?”

“Ah! that's quite another matter. I certainly don't think we ought to print it as it stands; it would hurt and alienate everybody and do no good. But if he would rewrite it and cut out the personal attacks, I think it might be made into a really valuable piece of work. As political criticism it is very fine. I had no idea he could write so well. He says things which need saying and which none of us have had the courage to say. This passage, where he compares Italy to a tipsy man weeping with tenderness on the neck of the thief who is picking his pocket, is splendidly written.”

“Gemma! The very worst bit in the whole thing! I hate that ill-natured yelping at everything and everybody!”

“So do I; but that's not the point. Rivarez has a very disagreeable style, and as a human being he is not attractive; but when he says that we have made ourselves drunk with processions and embracing and shouting about love and reconciliation, and that the Jesuits and Sanfedists are the people who will profit by it all, he's right a thousand times. I wish I could have been at the committee yesterday. What decision did you finally arrive at?”

“What I have come here about: to ask you to go and talk it over with him and persuade him to soften the thing.”

“Me? But I hardly know the man; and besides that, he detests me. Why should I go, of all people?”

“Simply because there's no one else to do it to-day. Besides, you are more reasonable than the rest of us, and won't get into useless arguments and quarrel with him, as we should.”

“I shan't do that, certainly. Well, I will go if you like, though I have not much hope of success.”

“I am sure you will be able to manage him if you try. Yes, and tell him that the committee all admired the thing from a literary point of view. That will put him into a good humour, and it's perfectly true, too.”

The Gadfly was sitting beside a table covered with flowers and ferns, staring absently at the floor, with an open letter on his knee. A shaggy collie dog, lying on a rug at his feet, raised its head and growled as Gemma knocked at the open door, and the Gadfly rose hastily and bowed in a stiff, ceremonious way. His face had suddenly grown hard and expressionless.

“You are too kind,” he said in his most chilling manner. “If you had let me know that you wanted to speak to me I would have called on you.”

Seeing that he evidently wished her at the end of the earth, Gemma hastened to state her business. He bowed again and placed a chair for her.

“The committee wished me to call upon you,” she began, “because there has been a certain difference of opinion about your pamphlet.”

“So I expected.” He smiled and sat down opposite to her, drawing a large vase of chrysanthemums between his face and the light.

“Most of the members agreed that, however much they may admire the pamphlet as a literary composition, they do not think that in its present form it is quite suitable for publication. They fear that the vehemence of its tone may give offence, and alienate persons whose help and support are valuable to the party.”

He pulled a chrysanthemum from the vase and began slowly plucking off one white petal after another. As her eyes happened to catch the movement of the slim right hand dropping the petals, one by one, an uncomfortable sensation came over Gemma, as though she had somewhere seen that gesture before.

“As a literary composition,” he remarked in his soft, cold voice, “it is utterly worthless, and could be admired only by persons who know nothing about literature. As for its giving offence, that is the very thing I intended it to do.”

“That I quite understand. The question is whether you may not succeed in giving offence to the wrong people.”

He shrugged his shoulders and put a torn-off petal between his teeth. “I think you are mistaken,” he said. “The question is: For what purpose did your committee invite me to come here? I understood, to expose and ridicule the Jesuits. I fulfil my obligation to the best of my ability.”

“And I can assure you that no one has any doubt as to either the ability or the good-will. What the committee fears is that the liberal party may take offence, and also that the town workmen may withdraw their moral support. You may have meant the pamphlet for an attack upon the Sanfedists: but many readers will construe it as an attack upon the Church and the new Pope; and this, as a matter of political tactics, the committee does not consider desirable.”

“I begin to understand. So long as I keep to the particular set of clerical gentlemen with whom the party is just now on bad terms, I may speak sooth if the fancy takes me; but directly I touch upon the committee's own pet priests—'truth's a dog must to kennel; he must be whipped out, when the—Holy Father may stand by the fire and——-' Yes, the fool was right; I'd rather be any kind of a thing than a fool. Of course I must bow to the committee's decision, but I continue to think that it has pared its wit o' both sides and left—M-mon-signor M-m-montan-n-nelli in the middle.”

“Montanelli?” Gemma repeated. “I don't understand you. Do you mean the Bishop of Brisighella?”

“Yes; the new Pope has just created him a Cardinal, you know. I have a letter about him here. Would you care to hear it? The writer is a friend of mine on the other side of the frontier.”

“The Papal frontier?”

“Yes. This is what he writes——” He took up the letter which had been in his hand when she entered, and read aloud, suddenly beginning to stammer violently:

“'Y-o-you will s-s-s-soon have the p-pleasure of m-m-meeting one of our w-w-worst enemies, C-cardinal Lorenzo M-montan-n-nelli, the B-b-bishop of Brisig-g-hella. He int-t——'”

He broke off, paused a moment, and began again, very slowly and drawling insufferably, but no longer stammering:

“'He intends to visit Tuscany during the coming month on a mission of reconciliation. He will preach first in Florence, where he will stay for about three weeks; then will go on to Siena and Pisa, and return to the Romagna by Pistoja. He ostensibly belongs to the liberal party in the Church, and is a personal friend of the Pope and Cardinal Feretti. Under Gregory he was out of favour, and was kept out of sight in a little hole in the Apennines. Now he has come suddenly to the front. Really, of course, he is as much pulled by Jesuit wires as any Sanfedist in the country. This mission was suggested by some of the Jesuit fathers. He is one of the most brilliant preachers in the Church, and as mischievous in his way as Lambruschini himself. His business is to keep the popular enthusiasm over the Pope from subsiding, and to occupy the public attention until the Grand Duke has signed a project which the agents of the Jesuits are preparing to lay before him. What this project is I have been unable to discover.' Then, further on, it says: 'Whether Montanelli understands for what purpose he is being sent to Tuscany, or whether the Jesuits are playing on him, I cannot make out. He is either an uncommonly clever knave, or the biggest ass that was ever foaled. The odd thing is that, so far as I can discover, he neither takes bribes nor keeps mistresses—the first time I ever came across such a thing.'”

He laid down the letter and sat looking at her with half-shut eyes, waiting, apparently, for her to speak.

“Are you satisfied that your informant is correct in his facts?” she asked after a moment.

“As to the irreproachable character of Monsignor M-mon-t-tan-nelli's private life? No; but neither is he. As you will observe, he puts in the s-s-saving clause: 'So far as I c-can discover——

“I was not speaking of that,” she interposed coldly, “but of the part about this mission.”

“I can fully trust the writer. He is an old friend of mine—one of my comrades of '43, and he is in a position which gives him exceptional opportunities for finding out things of that kind.”

“Some official at the Vatican,” thought Gemma quickly. “So that's the kind of connections you have? I guessed there was something of that sort.”

“This letter is, of course, a private one,” the Gadfly went on; “and you understand that the information is to be kept strictly to the members of your committee.”

“That hardly needs saying. Then about the pamphlet: may I tell the committee that you consent to make a few alterations and soften it a little, or that——”

“Don't you think the alterations may succeed in spoiling the beauty of the 'literary composition,' signora, as well as in reducing the vehemence of the tone?”

“You are asking my personal opinion. What I have come here to express is that of the committee as a whole.”

“Does that imply that y-y-you disagree with the committee as a whole?” He had put the letter into his pocket and was now leaning forward and looking at her with an eager, concentrated expression which quite changed the character of his face. “You think——”

“If you care to know what I personally think—I disagree with the majority on both points. I do not at all admire the pamphlet from a literary point of view, and I do think it true as a presentation of facts and wise as a matter of tactics.”

“That is———”

“I quite agree with you that Italy is being led away by a will-o'-the-wisp and that all this enthusiasm and rejoicing will probably land her in a terrible bog; and I should be most heartily glad to have that openly and boldly said, even at the cost of offending or alienating some of our present supporters. But as a member of a body the large majority of which holds the opposite view, I cannot insist upon my personal opinion; and I certainly think that if things of that kind are to be said at all, they should be said temperately and quietly; not in the tone adopted in this pamphlet.”

“Will you wait a minute while I look through the manuscript?”

He took it up and glanced down the pages. A dissatisfied frown settled on his face.

“Yes, of course, you are perfectly right. The thing's written like a cafe chantant skit, not a political satire. But what's a man to do? If I write decently the public won't understand it; they will say it's dull if it isn't spiteful enough.”

“Don't you think spitefulness manages to be dull when we get too much of it?”

He threw a keen, rapid glance at her, and burst out laughing.

“Apparently the signora belongs to the dreadful category of people who are always right! Then if I yield to the temptation to be spiteful, I may come in time to be as dull as Signora Grassini? Heavens, what a fate! No, you needn't frown. I know you don't like me, and I am going to keep to business. What it comes to, then, is practically this: if I cut out the personalities and leave the essential part of the thing as it is, the committee will very much regret that they can't take the responsibility of printing it. If I cut out the political truth and make all the hard names apply to no one but the party's enemies, the committee will praise the thing up to the skies, and you and I will know it's not worth printing. Rather a nice point of metaphysics: Which is the more desirable condition, to be printed and not be worth it, or to be worth it and not be printed? Well, signora?”

“I do not think you are tied to any such alternative. I believe that if you were to cut out the personalities the committee would consent to print the pamphlet, though the majority would, of course, not agree with it; and I am convinced that it would be very useful. But you would have to lay aside the spitefulness. If you are going to say a thing the substance of which is a big pill for your readers to swallow, there is no use in frightening them at the beginning by the form.”

He sighed and shrugged his shoulders resignedly. “I submit, signora; but on one condition. If you rob me of my laugh now, I must have it out next time. When His Eminence, the irreproachable Cardinal, turns up in Florence, neither you nor your committee must object to my being as spiteful as I like. It's my due!”

He spoke in his lightest, coldest manner, pulling the chrysanthemums out of their vase and holding them up to watch the light through the translucent petals. “What an unsteady hand he has,” she thought, seeing how the flowers shook and quivered. “Surely he doesn't drink!”

“You had better discuss the matter with the other members of the committee,” she said, rising. “I cannot form any opinion as to what they will think about it.”

“And you?” He had risen too, and was leaning against the table, pressing the flowers to his face.

She hesitated. The question distressed her, bringing up old and miserable associations. “I—hardly know,” she said at last. “Many years ago I used to know something about Monsignor Montanelli. He was only a canon at that time, and Director of the theological seminary in the province where I lived as a girl. I heard a great deal about him from—someone who knew him very intimately; and I never heard anything of him that was not good. I believe that, in those days at least, he was really a most remarkable man. But that was long ago, and he may have changed. Irresponsible power corrupts so many people.”

The Gadfly raised his head from the flowers, and looked at her with a steady face.

“At any rate,” he said, “if Monsignor Montanelli is not himself a scoundrel, he is a tool in scoundrelly hands. It is all one to me which he is—and to my friends across the frontier. A stone in the path may have the best intentions, but it must be kicked out of the path, for all that. Allow me, signora!” He rang the bell, and, limping to the door, opened it for her to pass out.

“It was very kind of you to call, signora. May I send for a vettura? No? Good-afternoon, then! Bianca, open the hall-door, please.”

Gemma went out into the street, pondering anxiously. “My friends across the frontier”—who were they? And how was the stone to be kicked out of the path? If with satire only, why had he said it with such dangerous eyes?

MONSIGNOR MONTANELLI arrived in Florence in the first week of October. His visit caused a little flutter of excitement throughout the town. He was a famous preacher and a representative of the reformed Papacy; and people looked eagerly to him for an exposition of the “new doctrine,” the gospel of love and reconciliation which was to cure the sorrows of Italy. The nomination of Cardinal Gizzi to the Roman State Secretaryship in place of the universally detested Lambruschini had raised the public enthusiasm to its highest pitch; and Montanelli was just the man who could most easily sustain it. The irreproachable strictness of his life was a phenomenon sufficiently rare among the high dignitaries of the Roman Church to attract the attention of people accustomed to regard blackmailing, peculation, and disreputable intrigues as almost invariable adjuncts to the career of a prelate. Moreover, his talent as a preacher was really great; and with his beautiful voice and magnetic personality, he would in any time and place have made his mark.

Grassini, as usual, strained every nerve to get the newly arrived celebrity to his house; but Montanelli was no easy game to catch. To all invitations he replied with the same courteous but positive refusal, saying that his health was bad and his time fully occupied, and that he had neither strength nor leisure for going into society.

“What omnivorous creatures those Grassinis are!” Martini said contemptuously to Gemma as they crossed the Signoria square one bright, cold Sunday morning. “Did you notice the way Grassini bowed when the Cardinal's carriage drove up? It's all one to them who a man is, so long as he's talked about. I never saw such lion-hunters in my life. Only last August it was the Gadfly; now it's Montanelli. I hope His Eminence feels flattered at the attention; a precious lot of adventurers have shared it with him.”

They had been hearing Montanelli preach in the Cathedral; and the great building had been so thronged with eager listeners that Martini, fearing a return of Gemma's troublesome headaches, had persuaded her to come away before the Mass was over. The sunny morning, the first after a week of rain, offered him an excuse for suggesting a walk among the garden slopes by San Niccolo.

“No,” she answered; “I should like a walk if you have time; but not to the hills. Let us keep along the Lung'Arno; Montanelli will pass on his way back from church and I am like Grassini—I want to see the notability.”

“But you have just seen him.”

“Not close. There was such a crush in the Cathedral, and his back was turned to us when the carriage passed. If we keep near to the bridge we shall be sure to see him well—he is staying on the Lung'Arno, you know.”

“But what has given you such a sudden fancy to see Montanelli? You never used to care about famous preachers.”

“It is not famous preachers; it is the man himself; I want to see how much he has changed since I saw him last.”

“When was that?”

“Two days after Arthur's death.”

Martini glanced at her anxiously. They had come out on to the Lung'Arno, and she was staring absently across the water, with a look on her face that he hated to see.

“Gemma, dear,” he said after a moment; “are you going to let that miserable business haunt you all your life? We have all made mistakes when we were seventeen.”

“We have not all killed our dearest friend when we were seventeen,” she answered wearily; and, leaning her arm on the stone balustrade of the bridge, looked down into the river. Martini held his tongue; he was almost afraid to speak to her when this mood was on her.

“I never look down at water without remembering,” she said, slowly raising her eyes to his; then with a nervous little shiver: “Let us walk on a bit, Cesare; it is chilly for standing.”

They crossed the bridge in silence and walked on along the river-side. After a few minutes she spoke again.

“What a beautiful voice that man has! There is something about it that I have never heard in any other human voice. I believe it is the secret of half his influence.”

“It is a wonderful voice,” Martini assented, catching at a subject of conversation which might lead her away from the dreadful memory called up by the river, “and he is, apart from his voice, about the finest preacher I have ever heard. But I believe the secret of his influence lies deeper than that. It is the way his life stands out from that of almost all the other prelates. I don't know whether you could lay your hand on one other high dignitary in all the Italian Church—except the Pope himself—whose reputation is so utterly spotless. I remember, when I was in the Romagna last year, passing through his diocese and seeing those fierce mountaineers waiting in the rain to get a glimpse of him or touch his dress. He is venerated there almost as a saint; and that means a good deal among the Romagnols, who generally hate everything that wears a cassock. I remarked to one of the old peasants,—as typical a smuggler as ever I saw in my life,—that the people seemed very much devoted to their bishop, and he said: 'We don't love bishops, they are liars; we love Monsignor Montanelli. Nobody has ever known him to tell a lie or do an unjust thing.'”

“I wonder,” Gemma said, half to herself, “if he knows the people think that about him.”

“Why shouldn't he know it? Do you think it is not true?”

“I know it is not true.”

“How do you know it?”

“Because he told me so.”

“HE told you? Montanelli? Gemma, what do you mean?”

She pushed the hair back from her forehead and turned towards him. They were standing still again, he leaning on the balustrade and she slowly drawing lines on the pavement with the point of her umbrella.

“Cesare, you and I have been friends for all these years, and I have never told you what really happened about Arthur.”

“There is no need to tell me, dear,” he broke in hastily; “I know all about it already.”

“Giovanni told you?”

“Yes, when he was dying. He told me about it one night when I was sitting up with him. He said—— Gemma, dear, I had better tell you the truth, now we have begun talking about it—he said that you were always brooding over that wretched story, and he begged me to be as good a friend to you as I could and try to keep you from thinking of it. And I have tried to, dear, though I may not have succeeded—I have, indeed.”

“I know you have,” she answered softly, raising her eyes for a moment; “I should have been badly off without your friendship. But—Giovanni did not tell you about Monsignor Montanelli, then?”

“No, I didn't know that he had anything to do with it. What he told me was about—all that affair with the spy, and about——”

“About my striking Arthur and his drowning himself. Well, I will tell you about Montanelli.”

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 step-brothers, 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. I remember the student saying to me: 'It is at least some consolation that we know he was innocent' My father held my hands and tried to comfort me; he did not know then about the blow. Then I went back to my room and sat there all night alone. In the morning my father went out again with the Burtons to see the harbour dragged. They had some hope of finding the body there.”

“It was never found, was it?”

“No; it must have got washed out to sea; but they thought there was a chance. I was alone in my room and the servant came up to say that a 'reverendissimo padre' had called and she had told him my father was at the docks and he had gone away. I knew it must be Montanelli; so I ran out at the back door and caught him up at the garden gate. When I said: 'Canon Montanelli, I want to speak to you,' he just stopped and waited silently for me to speak. Oh, Cesare, if you had seen his face—it haunted me for months afterwards! I said: 'I am Dr. Warren's daughter, and I have come to tell you that it is I who have killed Arthur.' I told him everything, and he stood and listened, like a figure cut in stone, till I had finished; then he said: 'Set your heart at rest, my child; it is I that am a murderer, not you. I deceived him and he found it out.' And with that he turned and went out at the gate without another word.”

“And then?”

“I don't know what happened to him after that; I heard the same evening that he had fallen down in the street in a kind of fit and had been carried into a house near the docks; but that is all I know. My father did everything he could for me; when I told him about it he threw up his practice and took me away to England at once, so that I should never hear anything that could remind me. He was afraid I should end in the water, too; and indeed I believe I was near it at one time. But then, you know, when we found out that my father had cancer I was obliged to come to myself—there was no one else to nurse him. And after he died I was left with the little ones on my hands until my elder brother was able to give them a home. Then there was Giovanni. Do you know, when he came to England we were almost afraid to meet each other with that frightful memory between us. He was so bitterly remorseful for his share in it all—that unhappy letter he wrote from prison. But I believe, really, it was our common trouble that drew us together.”

Martini smiled and shook his head.

“It may have been so on your side,” he said; “but Giovanni had made up his mind from the first time he ever saw you. I remember his coming back to Milan after that first visit to Leghorn and raving about you to me till I was perfectly sick of hearing of the English Gemma. I thought I should hate you. Ah! there it comes!”

The carriage crossed the bridge and drove up to a large house on the Lung'Arno. Montanelli was leaning back on the cushions as if too tired to care any longer for the enthusiastic crowd which had collected round the door to catch a glimpse of him. The inspired look that his face had worn in the Cathedral had faded quite away and the sunlight showed the lines of care and fatigue. When he had alighted and passed, with the heavy, spiritless tread of weary and heart-sick old age, into the house, Gemma turned away and walked slowly to the bridge. Her face seemed for a moment to reflect the withered, hopeless look of his. Martini walked beside her in silence.

“I have so often wondered,” she began again after a little pause; “what he meant about the deception. It has sometimes occurred to me——”

“Yes?”

“Well, it is very strange; there was the most extraordinary personal resemblance between them.”

“Between whom?”

“Arthur and Montanelli. It was not only I who noticed it. And there was something mysterious in the relationship between the members of that household. Mrs. Burton, Arthur's mother, was one of the sweetest women I ever knew. Her face had the same spiritual look as Arthur's, and I believe they were alike in character, too. But she always seemed half frightened, like a detected criminal; and her step-son's wife used to treat her as no decent person treats a dog. And then Arthur himself was such a startling contrast to all those vulgar Burtons. Of course, when one is a child one takes everything for granted; but looking back on it afterwards I have often wondered whether Arthur was really a Burton.”

“Possibly he found out something about his mother—that may easily have been the cause of his death, not the Cardi affair at all,” Martini interposed, offering the only consolation he could think of at the moment. Gemma shook her head.

“If you could have seen his face after I struck him, Cesare, you would not think that. It may be all true about Montanelli—very likely it is—but what I have done I have done.”

They walked on a little way without speaking.

“My dear,” Martini said at last; “if there were any way on earth to undo a thing that is once done, it would be worth while to brood over our old mistakes; but as it is, let the dead bury their dead. It is a terrible story, but at least the poor lad is out of it now, and luckier than some of those that are left—the ones that are in exile and in prison. You and I have them to think of, we have no right to eat out our hearts for the dead. Remember what your own Shelley says: 'The past is Death's, the future is thine own.' Take it, while it is still yours, and fix your mind, not on what you may have done long ago to hurt, but on what you can do now to help.”

In his earnestness he had taken her hand. He dropped it suddenly and drew back at the sound of a soft, cold, drawling voice behind him.

“Monsignor Montan-n-nelli,” murmured this languid voice, “is undoubtedly all you say, my dear doctor. In fact, he appears to be so much too good for this world that he ought to be politely escorted into the next. I am sure he would cause as great a sensation there as he has done here; there are p-p-probably many old-established ghosts who have never seen such a thing as an honest cardinal. And there is nothing that ghosts love as they do novelties——”

“How do you know that?” asked Dr. Riccardo's voice in a tone of ill-suppressed irritation.

“From Holy Writ, my dear sir. If the Gospel is to be trusted, even the most respectable of all Ghosts had a f-f-fancy for capricious alliances. Now, honesty and c-c-cardinals—that seems to me a somewhat capricious alliance, and rather an uncomfortable one, like shrimps and liquorice. Ah, Signor Martini, and Signora Bolla! Lovely weather after the rain, is it not? Have you been to hear the n-new Savonarola, too?”

Martini turned round sharply. The Gadfly, with a cigar in his mouth and a hot-house flower in his buttonhole, was holding out to him a slender, carefully-gloved hand. With the sunlight reflected in his immaculate boots and glancing back from the water on to his smiling face, he looked to Martini less lame and more conceited than usual. They were shaking hands, affably on the one side and rather sulkily on the other, when Riccardo hastily exclaimed:

“I am afraid Signora Bolla is not well!”

She was so pale that her face looked almost livid under the shadow of her bonnet, and the ribbon at her throat fluttered perceptibly from the violent beating of the heart.

“I will go home,” she said faintly.

A cab was called and Martini got in with her to see her safely home. As the Gadfly bent down to arrange her cloak, which was hanging over the wheel, he raised his eyes suddenly to her face, and Martini saw that she shrank away with a look of something like terror.

“Gemma, what is the matter with you?” he asked, in English, when they had started. “What did that scoundrel say to you?”

“Nothing, Cesare; it was no fault of his. I—I—had a fright——”

“A fright?”

“Yes; I fancied——” She put one hand over her eyes, and he waited silently till she should recover her self-command. Her face was already regaining its natural colour.

“You are quite right,” she said at last, turning to him and speaking in her usual voice; “it is worse than useless to look back at a horrible past. It plays tricks with one's nerves and makes one imagine all sorts of impossible things. We will NEVER talk about that subject again, Cesare, or I shall see fantastic likenesses to Arthur in every face I meet. It is a kind of hallucination, like a nightmare in broad daylight. Just now, when that odious little fop came up, I fancied it was Arthur.”

THE Gadfly certainly knew how to make personal enemies. He had arrived in Florence in August, and by the end of October three-fourths of the committee which had invited him shared Martini's opinion. His savage attacks upon Montanelli had annoyed even his admirers; and Galli himself, who at first had been inclined to uphold everything the witty satirist said or did, began to acknowledge with an aggrieved air that Montanelli had better have been left in peace. “Decent cardinals are none so plenty. One might treat them politely when they do turn up.”

The only person who, apparently, remained quite indifferent to the storm of caricatures and pasquinades was Montanelli himself. It seemed, as Martini said, hardly worth while to expend one's energy in ridiculing a man who took it so good-humouredly. It was said in the town that Montanelli, one day when the Archbishop of Florence was dining with him, had found in the room one of the Gadfly's bitter personal lampoons against himself, had read it through and handed the paper to the Archbishop, remarking: “That is rather cleverly put, is it not?”

One day there appeared in the town a leaflet, headed: “The Mystery of the Annunciation.” Even had the author omitted his now familiar signature, a sketch of a gadfly with spread wings, the bitter, trenchant style would have left in the minds of most readers no doubt as to his identity. The skit was in the form of a dialogue between Tuscany as the Virgin Mary, and Montanelli as the angel who, bearing the lilies of purity and crowned with the olive branch of peace, was announcing the advent of the Jesuits. The whole thing was full of offensive personal allusions and hints of the most risky nature, and all Florence felt the satire to be both ungenerous and unfair. And yet all Florence laughed. There was something so irresistible in the Gadfly's grave absurdities that those who most disapproved of and disliked him laughed as immoderately at all his squibs as did his warmest partisans. Repulsive in tone as the leaflet was, it left its trace upon the popular feeling of the town. Montanelli's personal reputation stood too high for any lampoon, however witty, seriously to injure it, but for a moment the tide almost turned against him. The Gadfly had known where to sting; and, though eager crowds still collected before the Cardinal's house to see him enter or leave his carriage, ominous cries of “Jesuit!” and “Sanfedist spy!” often mingled with the cheers and benedictions.

But Montanelli had no lack of supporters. Two days after the publication of the skit, the Churchman, a leading clerical paper, brought out a brilliant article, called: “An Answer to 'The Mystery of the Annunciation,'” and signed: “A Son of the Church.” It was an impassioned defence of Montanelli against the Gadfly's slanderous imputations. The anonymous writer, after expounding, with great eloquence and fervour, the doctrine of peace on earth and good will towards men, of which the new Pontiff was the evangelist, concluded by challenging the Gadfly to prove a single one of his assertions, and solemnly appealing to the public not to believe a contemptible slanderer. Both the cogency of the article as a bit of special pleading and its merit as a literary composition were sufficiently far above the average to attract much attention in the town, especially as not even the editor of the newspaper could guess the author's identity. The article was soon reprinted separately in pamphlet form; and the “anonymous defender” was discussed in every coffee-shop in Florence.

The Gadfly responded with a violent attack on the new Pontificate and all its supporters, especially on Montanelli, who, he cautiously hinted, had probably consented to the panegyric on himself. To this the anonymous defender again replied in the Churchman with an indignant denial. During the rest of Montanelli's stay the controversy raging between the two writers occupied more of the public attention than did even the famous preacher himself.

Some members of the liberal party ventured to remonstrate with the Gadfly about the unnecessary malice of his tone towards Montanelli; but they did not get much satisfaction out of him. He only smiled affably and answered with a languid little stammer: “R-really, gentlemen, you are rather unfair. I expressly stipulated, when I gave in to Signora Bolla, that I should be allowed a l-l-little chuckle all to myself now. It is so nominated in the bond!”

At the end of October Montanelli returned to his see in the Romagna, and, before leaving Florence, preached a farewell sermon in which he spoke of the controversy, gently deprecating the vehemence of both writers and begging his unknown defender to set an example of tolerance by closing a useless and unseemly war of words. On the following day the Churchman contained a notice that, at Monsignor Montanelli's publicly expressed desire, “A Son of the Church” would withdraw from the controversy.

The last word remained with the Gadfly. He issued a little leaflet, in which he declared himself disarmed and converted by Montanelli's Christian meekness and ready to weep tears of reconciliation upon the neck of the first Sanfedist he met. “I am even willing,” he concluded; “to embrace my anonymous challenger himself; and if my readers knew, as his Eminence and I know, what that implies and why he remains anonymous, they would believe in the sincerity of my conversion.”

In the latter part of November he announced to the literary committee that he was going for a fortnight's holiday to the seaside. He went, apparently, to Leghorn; but Dr. Riccardo, going there soon after and wishing to speak to him, searched the town for him in vain. On the 5th of December a political demonstration of the most extreme character burst out in the States of the Church, along the whole chain of the Apennines; and people began to guess the reason of the Gadfly's sudden fancy to take his holidays in the depth of winter. He came back to Florence when the riots had been quelled, and, meeting Riccardo in the street, remarked affably:

“I hear you were inquiring for me in Leghorn; I was staying in Pisa. What a pretty old town it is! There's something quite Arcadian about it.”

In Christmas week he attended an afternoon meeting of the literary committee which was held in Dr. Riccardo's lodgings near the Porta alla Croce. The meeting was a full one, and when he came in, a little late, with an apologetic bow and smile, there seemed to be no seat empty. Riccardo rose to fetch a chair from the next room, but the Gadfly stopped him. “Don't trouble about it,” he said; “I shall be quite comfortable here”; and crossing the room to a window beside which Gemma had placed her chair, he sat down on the sill, leaning his head indolently back against the shutter.

As he looked down at Gemma, smiling with half-shut eyes, in the subtle, sphinx-like way that gave him the look of a Leonardo da Vinci portrait, the instinctive distrust with which he inspired her deepened into a sense of unreasoning fear.

The proposal under discussion was that a pamphlet be issued setting forth the committee's views on the dearth with which Tuscany was threatened and the measures which should be taken to meet it. The matter was a somewhat difficult one to decide, because, as usual, the committee's views upon the subject were much divided. The more advanced section, to which Gemma, Martini, and Riccardo belonged, was in favour of an energetic appeal to both government and public to take adequate measures at once for the relief of the peasantry. The moderate division—including, of course, Grassini—feared that an over-emphatic tone might irritate rather than convince the ministry.

“It is all very well, gentlemen, to want the people helped at once,” he said, looking round upon the red-hot radicals with his calm and pitying air. “We most of us want a good many things that we are not likely to get; but if we start with the tone you propose to adopt, the government is very likely not to begin any relief measures at all till there is actual famine. If we could only induce the ministry to make an inquiry into the state of the crops it would be a step in advance.”

Galli, in his corner by the stove, jumped up to answer his enemy.

“A step in advance—yes, my dear sir; but if there's going to be a famine, it won't wait for us to advance at that pace. The people might all starve before we got to any actual relief.”

“It would be interesting to know——” Sacconi began; but several voices interrupted him.

“Speak up; we can't hear!”

“I should think not, with such an infernal row in the street,” said Galli, irritably. “Is that window shut, Riccardo? One can't hear one's self speak!”

Gemma looked round. “Yes,” she said, “the window is quite shut. I think there is a variety show, or some such thing, passing.”

The sounds of shouting and laughter, of the tinkling of bells and trampling of feet, resounded from the street below, mixed with the braying of a villainous brass band and the unmerciful banging of a drum.

“It can't be helped these few days,” said Riccardo; “we must expect noise at Christmas time. What were you saying, Sacconi?”

“I said it would be interesting to hear what is thought about the matter in Pisa and Leghorn. Perhaps Signor Rivarez can tell us something; he has just come from there.”

The Gadfly did not answer. He was staring out of the window and appeared not to have heard what had been said.

“Signor Rivarez!” said Gemma. She was the only person sitting near to him, and as he remained silent she bent forward and touched him on the arm. He slowly turned his face to her, and she started as she saw its fixed and awful immobility. For a moment it was like the face of a corpse; then the lips moved in a strange, lifeless way.

“Yes,” he whispered; “a variety show.”

Her first instinct was to shield him from the curiosity of the others. Without understanding what was the matter with him, she realized that some frightful fancy or hallucination had seized upon him, and that, for the moment, he was at its mercy, body and soul. She rose quickly and, standing between him and the company, threw the window open as if to look out. No one but herself had seen his face.

In the street a travelling circus was passing, with mountebanks on donkeys and harlequins in parti-coloured dresses. The crowd of holiday masqueraders, laughing and shoving, was exchanging jests and showers of paper ribbon with the clowns and flinging little bags of sugar-plums to the columbine, who sat in her car, tricked out in tinsel and feathers, with artificial curls on her forehead and an artificial smile on her painted lips. Behind the car came a motley string of figures—street Arabs, beggars, clowns turning somersaults, and costermongers hawking their wares. They were jostling, pelting, and applauding a figure which at first Gemma could not see for the pushing and swaying of the crowd. The next moment, however, she saw plainly what it was—a hunchback, dwarfish and ugly, grotesquely attired in a fool's dress, with paper cap and bells. He evidently belonged to the strolling company, and was amusing the crowd with hideous grimaces and contortions.

“What is going on out there?” asked Riccardo, approaching the window. “You seem very much interested.”

He was a little surprised at their keeping the whole committee waiting to look at a strolling company of mountebanks. Gemma turned round.

“It is nothing interesting,” she said; “only a variety show; but they made such a noise that I thought it must be something else.”

She was standing with one hand upon the window-sill, and suddenly felt the Gadfly's cold fingers press the hand with a passionate clasp. “Thank you!” he whispered softly; and then, closing the window, sat down again upon the sill.

“I'm afraid,” he said in his airy manner, “that I have interrupted you, gentlemen. I was l-looking at the variety show; it is s-such a p-pretty sight.”

“Sacconi was asking you a question,” said Martini gruffly. The Gadfly's behaviour seemed to him an absurd piece of affectation, and he was annoyed that Gemma should have been tactless enough to follow his example. It was not like her.

The Gadfly disclaimed all knowledge of the state of feeling in Pisa, explaining that he had been there “only on a holiday.” He then plunged at once into an animated discussion, first of agricultural prospects, then of the pamphlet question; and continued pouring out a flood of stammering talk till the others were quite tired. He seemed to find some feverish delight in the sound of his own voice.

When the meeting ended and the members of the committee rose to go, Riccardo came up to Martini.

“Will you stop to dinner with me? Fabrizi and Sacconi have promised to stay.”

“Thanks; but I was going to see Signora Bolla home.”

“Are you really afraid I can't get home by myself?” she asked, rising and putting on her wrap. “Of course he will stay with you, Dr. Riccardo; it's good for him to get a change. He doesn't go out half enough.”

“If you will allow me, I will see you home,” the Gadfly interposed; “I am going in that direction.”

“If you really are going that way——”

“I suppose you won't have time to drop in here in the course of the evening, will you, Rivarez?” asked Riccardo, as he opened the door for them.

The Gadfly looked back over his shoulder, laughing. “I, my dear fellow? I'm going to see the variety show!”

“What a strange creature that is; and what an odd affection for mountebanks!” said Riccardo, coming back to his visitors.

“Case of a fellow-feeling, I should think,” said Martini; “the man's a mountebank himself, if ever I saw one.”

“I wish I could think he was only that,” Fabrizi interposed, with a grave face. “If he is a mountebank I am afraid he's a very dangerous one.”

“Dangerous in what way?”

“Well, I don't like those mysterious little pleasure trips that he is so fond of taking. This is the third time, you know; and I don't believe he has been in Pisa at all.”

“I suppose it is almost an open secret that it's into the mountains he goes,” said Sacconi. “He has hardly taken the trouble to deny that he is still in relations with the smugglers he got to know in the Savigno affair, and it's quite natural he should take advantage of their friendship to get his leaflets across the Papal frontier.”

“For my part,” said Riccardo; “what I wanted to talk to you about is this very question. It occurred to me that we could hardly do better than ask Rivarez to undertake the management of our own smuggling. That press at Pistoja is very inefficiently managed, to my thinking; and the way the leaflets are taken across, always rolled in those everlasting cigars, is more than primitive.”

“It has answered pretty well up till now,” said Martini contumaciously. He was getting wearied of hearing Galli and Riccardo always put the Gadfly forward as a model to copy, and inclined to think that the world had gone well enough before this “lackadaisical buccaneer” turned up to set everyone to rights.

“It has answered so far well that we have been satisfied with it for want of anything better; but you know there have been plenty of arrests and confiscations. Now I believe that if Rivarez undertook the business for us, there would be less of that.”

“Why do you think so?”

“In the first place, the smugglers look upon us as strangers to do business with, or as sheep to fleece, whereas Rivarez is their personal friend, very likely their leader, whom they look up to and trust. You may be sure every smuggler in the Apennines will do for a man who was in the Savigno revolt what he will not do for us. In the next place, there's hardly a man among us that knows the mountains as Rivarez does. Remember, he has been a fugitive among them, and knows the smugglers' paths by heart. No smuggler would dare to cheat him, even if he wished to, and no smuggler could cheat him if he dared to try.”

“Then is your proposal that we should ask him to take over the whole management of our literature on the other side of the frontier—distribution, addresses, hiding-places, everything—or simply that we should ask him to put the things across for us?”

“Well, as for addresses and hiding-places, he probably knows already all the ones that we have and a good many more that we have not. I don't suppose we should be able to teach him much in that line. As for distribution, it's as the others prefer, of course. The important question, to my mind, is the actual smuggling itself. Once the books are safe in Bologna, it's a comparatively simple matter to circulate them.”

“For my part,” said Martini, “I am against the plan. In the first place, all this about his skilfulness is mere conjecture; we have not actually seen him engaged in frontier work and do not know whether he keeps his head in critical moments.”

“Oh, you needn't have any doubt of that!” Riccardo put in. “The history of the Savigno affair proves that he keeps his head.”

“And then,” Martini went on; “I do not feel at all inclined, from what little I know of Rivarez, to intrust him with all the party's secrets. He seems to me feather-brained and theatrical. To give the whole management of a party's contraband work into a man's hands is a serious matter. Fabrizi, what do you think?”

“If I had only such objections as yours, Martini,” replied the professor, “I should certainly waive them in the case of a man really possessing, as Rivarez undoubtedly does, all the qualifications Riccardo speaks of. For my part, I have not the slightest doubt as to either his courage, his honesty, or his presence of mind; and that he knows both mountains and mountaineers we have had ample proof. But there is another objection. I do not feel sure that it is only for the smuggling of pamphlets he goes into the mountains. I have begun to doubt whether he has not another purpose. This is, of course, entirely between ourselves. It is a mere suspicion. It seems to me just possible that he is in connexion with some one of the 'sects,' and perhaps with the most dangerous of them.”

“Which one do you mean—the 'Red Girdles'?”

“No; the 'Occoltellatori.'”

“The 'Knifers'! But that is a little body of outlaws—peasants, most of them, with neither education nor political experience.”

“So were the insurgents of Savigno; but they had a few educated men as leaders, and this little society may have the same. And remember, it's pretty well known that most of the members of those more violent sects in the Romagna are survivors of the Savigno affair, who found themselves too weak to fight the Churchmen in open insurrection, and so have fallen back on assassination. Their hands are not strong enough for guns, and they take to knives instead.”

“But what makes you suppose Rivarez to be connected with them?”

“I don't suppose, I merely suspect. In any case, I think we had better find out for certain before we intrust our smuggling to him. If he attempted to do both kinds of work at once he would injure our party most terribly; he would simply destroy its reputation and accomplish nothing. However, we will talk of that another time. I wanted to speak to you about the news from Rome. It is said that a commission is to be appointed to draw up a project for a municipal constitution.”

GEMMA and the Gadfly walked silently along the Lung'Arno. His feverish talkativeness seemed to have quite spent itself; he had hardly spoken a word since they left Riccardo's door, and Gemma was heartily glad of his silence. She always felt embarrassed in his company, and to-day more so than usual, for his strange behaviour at the committee meeting had greatly perplexed her.

By the Uffizi palace he suddenly stopped and turned to her.

“Are you tired?”

“No; why?”

“Nor especially busy this evening?”

“No.”

“I want to ask a favour of you; I want you to come for a walk with me.”

“Where to?”

“Nowhere in particular; anywhere you like.”

“But what for?”

He hesitated.

“I—can't tell you—at least, it's very difficult; but please come if you can.”

He raised his eyes suddenly from the ground, and she saw how strange their expression was.

“There is something the matter with you,” she said gently. He pulled a leaf from the flower in his button-hole, and began tearing it to pieces. Who was it that he was so oddly like? Someone who had that same trick of the fingers and hurried, nervous gesture.

“I am in trouble,” he said, looking down at his hands and speaking in a hardly audible voice. “I—don't want to be alone this evening. Will you come?”

“Yes, certainly, unless you would rather go to my lodgings.”

“No; come and dine with me at a restaurant. There's one on the Signoria. Please don't refuse, now; you've promised!”

They went into a restaurant, where he ordered dinner, but hardly touched his own share, and remained obstinately silent, crumbling the bread over the cloth, and fidgeting with the fringe of his table napkin. Gemma felt thoroughly uncomfortable, and began to wish she had refused to come; the silence was growing awkward; yet she could not begin to make small-talk with a person who seemed to have forgotten her presence. At last he looked up and said abruptly:

“Would you like to see the variety show?”

She stared at him in astonishment. What had he got into his head about variety shows?

“Have you ever seen one?” he asked before she had time to speak.

“No; I don't think so. I didn't suppose they were interesting.”

“They are very interesting. I don't think anyone can study the life of the people without seeing them. Let us go back to the Porta alla Croce.”

When they arrived the mountebanks had set up their tent beside the town gate, and an abominable scraping of fiddles and banging of drums announced that the performance had begun.

The entertainment was of the roughest kind. A few clowns, harlequins, and acrobats, a circus-rider jumping through hoops, the painted columbine, and the hunchback performing various dull and foolish antics, represented the entire force of the company. The jokes were not, on the whole, coarse or offensive; but they were very tame and stale, and there was a depressing flatness about the whole thing. The audience laughed and clapped from their innate Tuscan courtesy; but the only part which they seemed really to enjoy was the performance of the hunchback, in which Gemma could find nothing either witty or skilful. It was merely a series of grotesque and hideous contortions, which the spectators mimicked, holding up children on their shoulders that the little ones might see the “ugly man.”

“Signor Rivarez, do you really think this attractive?” said Gemma, turning to the Gadfly, who was standing beside her, his arm round one of the wooden posts of the tent. “It seems to me——”

She broke off and remained looking at him silently. Except when she had stood with Montanelli at the garden gate in Leghorn, she had never seen a human face express such fathomless, hopeless misery. She thought of Dante's hell as she watched him.

Presently the hunchback, receiving a kick from one of the clowns, turned a somersault and tumbled in a grotesque heap outside the ring. A dialogue between two clowns began, and the Gadfly seemed to wake out of a dream.

“Shall we go?” he asked; “or would you like to see more?”

“I would rather go.”

They left the tent, and walked across the dark green to the river. For a few moments neither spoke.

“What did you think of the show?” the Gadfly asked presently.

“I thought it rather a dreary business; and part of it seemed to me positively unpleasant.”

“Which part?”

“Well, all those grimaces and contortions. They are simply ugly; there is nothing clever about them.”

“Do you mean the hunchback's performance?”

Remembering his peculiar sensitiveness on the subject of his own physical defects, she had avoided mentioning this particular bit of the entertainment; but now that he had touched upon the subject himself, she answered: “Yes; I did not like that part at all.”

“That was the part the people enjoyed most.”

“I dare say; and that is just the worst thing about it.”

“Because it was inartistic?”

“N-no; it was all inartistic. I meant—because it was cruel.”

He smiled.

“Cruel? Do you mean to the hunchback?”

“I mean—— Of course the man himself was quite indifferent; no doubt, it is to him just a way of getting a living, like the circus-rider's way or the columbine's. But the thing makes one feel unhappy. It is humiliating; it is the degradation of a human being.”

“He probably is not any more degraded than he was to start with. Most of us are degraded in one way or another.”

“Yes; but this—I dare say you will think it an absurd prejudice; but a human body, to me, is a sacred thing; I don't like to see it treated irreverently and made hideous.”

“And a human soul?”

He had stopped short, and was standing with one hand on the stone balustrade of the embankment, looking straight at her.

“A soul?” she repeated, stopping in her turn to look at him in wonder.

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 tender-hearted 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.”

She made no answer, and they walked on in silence. As they passed by the gateway of the Uffizi, he crossed the road and stooped down over a dark bundle that was lying against the railings.

“What is the matter, little one?” he asked, more gently than she had ever heard him speak. “Why don't you go home?”

The bundle moved, and answered something in a low, moaning voice. Gemma came across to look, and saw a child of about six years old, ragged and dirty, crouching on the pavement like a frightened animal. The Gadfly was bending down with his hand on the unkempt head.

“What is it?” he said, stooping lower to catch the unintelligible answer. “You ought to go home to bed; little boys have no business out of doors at night; you'll be quite frozen! Give me your hand and jump up like a man! Where do you live?”

He took the child's arm to raise him. The result was a sharp scream and a quick shrinking away.

“Why, what is it?” the Gadfly asked, kneeling down on the pavement. “Ah! Signora, look here!”

The child's shoulder and jacket were covered with blood.

“Tell me what has happened?” the Gadfly went on caressingly. “It wasn't a fall, was it? No? Someone's been beating you? I thought so! Who was it?”

“My uncle.”

“Ah, yes! And when was it?”

“This morning. He was drunk, and I—I——”

“And you got in his way—was that it? You shouldn't get in people's way when they are drunk, little man; they don't like it. What shall we do with this poor mite, signora? Come here to the light, sonny, and let me look at that shoulder. Put your arm round my neck; I won't hurt you. There we are!”

He lifted the boy in his arms, and, carrying him across the street, set him down on the wide stone balustrade. Then, taking out a pocket-knife, he deftly ripped up the torn sleeve, supporting the child's head against his breast, while Gemma held the injured arm. The shoulder was badly bruised and grazed, and there was a deep gash on the arm.

“That's an ugly cut to give a mite like you,” said the Gadfly, fastening his handkerchief round the wound to prevent the jacket from rubbing against it. “What did he do it with?”

“The shovel. I went to ask him to give me a soldo to get some polenta at the corner shop, and he hit me with the shovel.”

The Gadfly shuddered. “Ah!” he said softly, “that hurts; doesn't it, little one?”

“He hit me with the shovel—and I ran away—I ran away—because he hit me.”

“And you've been wandering about ever since, without any dinner?”

Instead of answering, the child began to sob violently. The Gadfly lifted him off the balustrade.

“There, there! We'll soon set all that straight. I wonder if we can get a cab anywhere. I'm afraid they'll all be waiting by the theatre; there's a grand performance going on to-night. I am sorry to drag you about so, signora; but——”

“I would rather come with you. You may want help. Do you think you can carry him so far? Isn't he very heavy?”

“Oh, I can manage, thank you.”

At the theatre door they found only a few cabs waiting, and these were all engaged. The performance was over, and most of the audience had gone. Zita's name was printed in large letters on the wall-placards; she had been dancing in the ballet. Asking Gemma to wait for him a moment, the Gadfly went round to the performers' entrance, and spoke to an attendant.

“Has Mme. Reni gone yet?”

“No, sir,” the man answered, staring blankly at the spectacle of a well-dressed gentleman carrying a ragged street child in his arms, “Mme. Reni is just coming out, I think; her carriage is waiting for her. Yes; there she comes.”

Zita descended the stairs, leaning on the arm of a young cavalry officer. She looked superbly handsome, with an opera cloak of flame-coloured velvet thrown over her evening dress, and a great fan of ostrich plumes hanging from her waist. In the entry she stopped short, and, drawing her hand away from the officer's arm, approached the Gadfly in amazement.

“Felice!” she exclaimed under her breath, “what HAVE you got there?”

“I have picked up this child in the street. It is hurt and starving; and I want to get it home as quickly as possible. There is not a cab to be got anywhere, so I want to have your carriage.”

“Felice! you are not going to take a horrid beggar-child into your rooms! Send for a policeman, and let him carry it to the Refuge or whatever is the proper place for it. You can't have all the paupers in the town——”

“It is hurt,” the Gadfly repeated; “it can go to the Refuge to-morrow, if necessary, but I must see to the child first and give it some food.”

Zita made a little grimace of disgust. “You've got its head right against your shirt! How CAN you? It is dirty!”

The Gadfly looked up with a sudden flash of anger.

“It is hungry,” he said fiercely. “You don't know what that means, do you?”

“Signor Rivarez,” interposed Gemma, coming forward, “my lodgings are quite close. Let us take the child in there. Then, if you cannot find a vettura, I will manage to put it up for the night.”

He turned round quickly. “You don't mind?”

“Of course not. Good-night, Mme. Reni!”

The gipsy, with a stiff bow and an angry shrug of her shoulders, took her officer's arm again, and, gathering up the train of her dress, swept past them to the contested carriage.

“I will send it back to fetch you and the child, if you like, M. Rivarez,” she said, pausing on the doorstep.

“Very well; I will give the address.” He came out on to the pavement, gave the address to the driver, and walked back to Gemma with his burden.

Katie was waiting up for her mistress; and, on hearing what had happened, ran for warm water and other necessaries. Placing the child on a chair, the Gadfly knelt down beside him, and, deftly slipping off the ragged clothing, bathed and bandaged the wound with tender, skilful hands. He had just finished washing the boy, and was wrapping him in a warm blanket, when Gemma came in with a tray in her hands.

“Is your patient ready for his supper?” she asked, smiling at the strange little figure. “I have been cooking it for him.”

The Gadfly stood up and rolled the dirty rags together. “I'm afraid we have made a terrible mess in your room,” he said. “As for these, they had better go straight into the fire, and I will buy him some new clothes to-morrow. Have you any brandy in the house, signora? I think he ought to have a little. I will just wash my hands, if you will allow me.”

When the child had finished his supper, he immediately went to sleep in the Gadfly's arms, with his rough head against the white shirt-front. Gemma, who had been helping Katie to set the disordered room tidy again, sat down at the table.

“Signor Rivarez, you must take something before you go home—you had hardly any dinner, and it's very late.”

“I should like a cup of tea in the English fashion, if you have it. I'm sorry to keep you up so late.”

“Oh! that doesn't matter. Put the child down on the sofa; he will tire you. Wait a minute; I will just lay a sheet over the cushions. What are you going to do with him?”

“To-morrow? Find out whether he has any other relations except that drunken brute; and if not, I suppose I must follow Mme. Reni's advice, and take him to the Refuge. Perhaps the kindest thing to do would be to put a stone round his neck and pitch him into the river there; but that would expose me to unpleasant consequences. Fast asleep! What an odd little lump of ill-luck you are, you mite—not half as capable of defending yourself as a stray cat!”

When Katie brought in the tea-tray, the boy opened his eyes and sat up with a bewildered air. Recognizing the Gadfly, whom he already regarded as his natural protector, he wriggled off the sofa, and, much encumbered by the folds of his blanket, came up to nestle against him. He was by now sufficiently revived to be inquisitive; and, pointing to the mutilated left hand, in which the Gadfly was holding a piece of cake, asked:

“What's that?”

“That? Cake; do you want some? I think you've had enough for now. Wait till to-morrow, little man.”

“No—that!” He stretched out his hand and touched the stumps of the amputated fingers and the great scar on the wrist. The Gadfly put down his cake.

“Oh, that! It's the same sort of thing as what you have on your shoulder—a hit I got from someone stronger than I was.”

“Didn't it hurt awfully?”

“Oh, I don't know—not more than other things. There, now, go to sleep again; you have no business asking questions at this time of night.”

When the carriage arrived the boy was again asleep; and the Gadfly, without awaking him, lifted him gently and carried him out on to the stairs.

“You have been a sort of ministering angel to me to-day,” he said to Gemma, pausing at the door. “But I suppose that need not prevent us from quarrelling to our heart's content in future.”

“I have no desire to quarrel with anyone.”

“Ah! but I have. Life would be unendurable without quarrels. A good quarrel is the salt of the earth; it's better than a variety show!”

And with that he went downstairs, laughing softly to himself, with the sleeping child in his arms.

ONE day in the first week of January Martini, who had sent round the forms of invitation to the monthly group-meeting of the literary committee, received from the Gadfly a laconic, pencil-scrawled “Very sorry: can't come.” He was a little annoyed, as a notice of “important business” had been put into the invitation; this cavalier treatment seemed to him almost insolent. Moreover, three separate letters containing bad news arrived during the day, and the wind was in the east, so that Martini felt out of sorts and out of temper; and when, at the group meeting, Dr. Riccardo asked, “Isn't Rivarez here?” he answered rather sulkily: “No; he seems to have got something more interesting on hand, and can't come, or doesn't want to.”

“Really, Martini,” said Galli irritably, “you are about the most prejudiced person in Florence. Once you object to a man, everything he does is wrong. How could Rivarez come when he's ill?”

“Who told you he was ill?”

“Didn't you know? He's been laid up for the last four days.”

“What's the matter with him?”

“I don't know. He had to put off an appointment with me on Thursday on account of illness; and last night, when I went round, I heard that he was too ill to see anyone. I thought Riccardo would be looking after him.”

“I knew nothing about it. I'll go round to-night and see if he wants anything.”

The next morning Riccardo, looking very pale and tired, came into Gemma's little study. She was sitting at the table, reading out monotonous strings of figures to Martini, who, with a magnifying glass in one hand and a finely pointed pencil in the other, was making tiny marks in the pages of a book. She made with one hand a gesture requesting silence. Riccardo, knowing that a person who is writing in cipher must not be interrupted, sat down on the sofa behind her and yawned like a man who can hardly keep awake.

“2, 4; 3, 7; 6, 1; 3, 5; 4, 1;” Gemma's voice went on with machine-like evenness. “8, 4; 7, 2; 5, 1; that finishes the sentence, Cesare.”

She stuck a pin into the paper to mark the exact place, and turned round.

“Good-morning, doctor; how fagged you look! Are you well?”

“Oh, I'm well enough—only tired out. I've had an awful night with Rivarez.”

“With Rivarez?”

“Yes; I've been up with him all night, and now I must go off to my hospital patients. I just came round to know whether you can think of anyone that could look after him a bit for the next few days. He's in a devil of a state. I'll do my best, of course; but I really haven't the time; and he won't hear of my sending in a nurse.”

“What is the matter with him?”

“Well, rather a complication of things. First of all——”

“First of all, have you had any breakfast?”

“Yes, thank you. About Rivarez—no doubt, it's complicated with a lot of nerve trouble; but the main cause of disturbance is an old injury that seems to have been disgracefully neglected. Altogether, he's in a frightfully knocked-about state; I suppose it was that war in South America—and he certainly didn't get proper care when the mischief was done. Probably things were managed in a very rough-and-ready fashion out there; he's lucky to be alive at all. However, there's a chronic tendency to inflammation, and any trifle may bring on an attack——”

“Is that dangerous?”

“N-no; the chief danger in a case of that kind is of the patient getting desperate and taking a dose of arsenic.”

“It is very painful, of course?”

“It's simply horrible; I don't know how he manages to bear it. I was obliged to stupefy him with opium in the night—a thing I hate to do with a nervous patient; but I had to stop it somehow.”

“He is nervous, I should think.”

“Very, but splendidly plucky. As long as he was not actually light-headed with the pain last night, his coolness was quite wonderful. But I had an awful job with him towards the end. How long do you suppose this thing has been going on? Just five nights; and not a soul within call except that stupid landlady, who wouldn't wake if the house tumbled down, and would be no use if she did.”

“But what about the ballet-girl?”

“Yes; isn't that a curious thing? He won't let her come near him. He has a morbid horror of her. Altogether, he's one of the most incomprehensible creatures I ever met—a perfect mass of contradictions.”

He took out his watch and looked at it with a preoccupied face. “I shall be late at the hospital; but it can't be helped. The junior will have to begin without me for once. I wish I had known of all this before—it ought not to have been let go on that way night after night.”

“But why on earth didn't he send to say he was ill?” Martini interrupted. “He might have guessed we shouldn't have left him stranded in that fashion.”

“I wish, doctor,” said Gemma, “that you had sent for one of us last night, instead of wearing yourself out like this.”

“My dear lady, I wanted to send round to Galli; but Rivarez got so frantic at the suggestion that I didn't dare attempt it. When I asked him whether there was anyone else he would like fetched, he looked at me for a minute, as if he were scared out of his wits, and then put up both hands to his eyes and said: 'Don't tell them; they will laugh!' He seemed quite possessed with some fancy about people laughing at something. I couldn't make out what; he kept talking Spanish; but patients do say the oddest things sometimes.”

“Who is with him now?” asked Gemma.

“No one except the landlady and her maid.”

“I'll go to him at once,” said Martini.

“Thank you. I'll look round again in the evening. You'll find a paper of written directions in the table-drawer by the large window, and the opium is on the shelf in the next room. If the pain comes on again, give him another dose—not more than one; but don't leave the bottle where he can get at it, whatever you do; he might be tempted to take too much.”

When Martini entered the darkened room, the Gadfly turned his head round quickly, and, holding out to him a burning hand, began, in a bad imitation of his usual flippant manner:

“Ah, Martini! You have come to rout me out about those proofs. It's no use swearing at me for missing the committee last night; the fact is, I have not been quite well, and——”

“Never mind the committee. I have just seen Riccardo, and have come to know if I can be of any use.”

The Gadfly set his face like a flint.

“Oh, really! that is very kind of you; but it wasn't worth the trouble. I'm only a little out of sorts.”

“So I understood from Riccardo. He was up with you all night, I believe.”

The Gadfly bit his lip savagely.

“I am quite comfortable, thank you, and don't want anything.”

“Very well; then I will sit in the other room; perhaps you would rather be alone. I will leave the door ajar, in case you call me.”

“Please don't trouble about it; I really shan't want anything. I should be wasting your time for nothing.”

“Nonsense, man!” Martini broke in roughly. “What's the use of trying to fool me that way? Do you think I have no eyes? Lie still and go to sleep, if you can.”

He went into the adjoining room, and, leaving the door open, sat down with a book. Presently he heard the Gadfly move restlessly two or three times. He put down his book and listened. There was a short silence, then another restless movement; then the quick, heavy, panting breath of a man clenching his teeth to suppress a groan. He went back into the room.

“Can I do anything for you, Rivarez?”

There was no answer, and he crossed the room to the bed-side. The Gadfly, with a ghastly, livid face, looked at him for a moment, and silently shook his head.

“Shall I give you some more opium? Riccardo said you were to have it if the pain got very bad.”

“No, thank you; I can bear it a bit longer. It may be worse later on.”

Martini shrugged his shoulders and sat down beside the bed. For an interminable hour he watched in silence; then he rose and fetched the opium.

“Rivarez, I won't let this go on any longer; if you can stand it, I can't. You must have the stuff.”

The Gadfly took it without speaking. Then he turned away and closed his eyes. Martini sat down again, and listened as the breathing became gradually deep and even.

The Gadfly was too much exhausted to wake easily when once asleep. Hour after hour he lay absolutely motionless. Martini approached him several times during the day and evening, and looked at the still figure; but, except the breathing, there was no sign of life. The face was so wan and colourless that at last a sudden fear seized upon him; what if he had given too much opium? The injured left arm lay on the coverlet, and he shook it gently to rouse the sleeper. As he did so, the unfastened sleeve fell back, showing a series of deep and fearful scars covering the arm from wrist to elbow.

“That arm must have been in a pleasant condition when those marks were fresh,” said Riccardo's voice behind him.

“Ah, there you are at last! Look here, Riccardo; ought this man to sleep forever? I gave him a dose about ten hours ago, and he hasn't moved a muscle since.”

Riccardo stooped down and listened for a moment.

“No; he is breathing quite properly; it's nothing but sheer exhaustion—what you might expect after such a night. There may be another paroxysm before morning. Someone will sit up, I hope?”

“Galli will; he has sent to say he will be here by ten.”

“It's nearly that now. Ah, he's waking! Just see the maidservant gets that broth hot. Gently—gently, Rivarez! There, there, you needn't fight, man; I'm not a bishop!”

The Gadfly started up with a shrinking, scared look. “Is it my turn?” he said hurriedly in Spanish. “Keep the people amused a minute; I—— Ah! I didn't see you, Riccardo.”

He looked round the room and drew one hand across his forehead as if bewildered. “Martini! Why, I thought you had gone away. I must have been asleep.”

“You have been sleeping like the beauty in the fairy story for the last ten hours; and now you are to have some broth and go to sleep again.”

“Ten hours! Martini, surely you haven't been here all that time?”

“Yes; I was beginning to wonder whether I hadn't given you an overdose of opium.”

The Gadfly shot a sly glance at him.

“No such luck! Wouldn't you have nice quiet committee-meetings? What the devil do you want, Riccardo? Do for mercy's sake leave me in peace, can't you? I hate being mauled about by doctors.”

“Well then, drink this and I'll leave you in peace. I shall come round in a day or two, though, and give you a thorough overhauling. I think you have pulled through the worst of this business now; you don't look quite so much like a death's head at a feast.”

“Oh, I shall be all right soon, thanks. Who's that—Galli? I seem to have a collection of all the graces here to-night.”

“I have come to stop the night with you.”

“Nonsense! I don't want anyone. Go home, all the lot of you. Even if the thing should come on again, you can't help me; I won't keep taking opium. It's all very well once in a way.”

“I'm afraid you're right,” Riccardo said. “But that's not always an easy resolution to stick to.”

The Gadfly looked up, smiling. “No fear! If I'd been going in for that sort of thing, I should have done it long ago.”

“Anyway, you are not going to be left alone,” Riccardo answered drily. “Come into the other room a minute, Galli; I want to speak to you. Good-night, Rivarez; I'll look in to-morrow.”

Martini was following them out of the room when he heard his name softly called. The Gadfly was holding out a hand to him.

“Thank you!”

“Oh, stuff! Go to sleep.”

When Riccardo had gone, Martini remained a few minutes in the outer room, talking with Galli. As he opened the front door of the house he heard a carriage stop at the garden gate and saw a woman's figure get out and come up the path. It was Zita, returning, evidently, from some evening entertainment. He lifted his hat and stood aside to let her pass, then went out into the dark lane leading from the house to the Poggio Imperiale. Presently the gate clicked and rapid footsteps came down the lane.

“Wait a minute!” she said.

When he turned back to meet her she stopped short, and then came slowly towards him, dragging one hand after her along the hedge. There was a single street-lamp at the corner, and he saw by its light that she was hanging her head down as though embarrassed or ashamed.

“How is he?” she asked without looking up.

“Much better than he was this morning. He has been asleep most of the day and seems less exhausted. I think the attack is passing over.”

She still kept her eyes on the ground.

“Has it been very bad this time?”

“About as bad as it can well be, I should think.”

“I thought so. When he won't let me come into the room, that always means it's bad.”

“Does he often have attacks like this?”

“That depends—— It's so irregular. Last summer, in Switzerland, he was quite well; but the winter before, when we were in Vienna, it was awful. He wouldn't let me come near him for days together. He hates to have me about when he's ill.”

She glanced up for a moment, and, dropping her eyes again, went on:

“He always used to send me off to a ball, or concert, or something, on one pretext or another, when he felt it coming on. Then he would lock himself into his room. I used to slip back and sit outside the door—he would have been furious if he'd known. He'd let the dog come in if it whined, but not me. He cares more for it, I think.”

There was a curious, sullen defiance in her manner.

“Well, I hope it won't be so bad any more,” said Martini kindly. “Dr. Riccardo is taking the case seriously in hand. Perhaps he will be able to make a permanent improvement. And, in any case, the treatment gives relief at the moment. But you had better send to us at once, another time. He would have suffered very much less if we had known of it earlier. Good-night!”

He held out his hand, but she drew back with a quick gesture of refusal.

“I don't see why you want to shake hands with his mistress.”

“As you like, of course,” he began in embarrassment.

She stamped her foot on the ground. “I hate you!” she cried, turning on him with eyes like glowing coals. “I hate you all! You come here talking politics to him; and he lets you sit up the night with him and give him things to stop the pain, and I daren't so much as peep at him through the door! What is he to you? What right have you to come and steal him away from me? I hate you! I hate you! I HATE you!”

She burst into a violent fit of sobbing, and, darting back into the garden, slammed the gate in his face.

“Good Heavens!” said Martini to himself, as he walked down the lane. “That girl is actually in love with him! Of all the extraordinary things——”

THE Gadfly's recovery was rapid. One afternoon in the following week Riccardo found him lying on the sofa in a Turkish dressing-gown, chatting with Martini and Galli. He even talked about going downstairs; but Riccardo merely laughed at the suggestion and asked whether he would like a tramp across the valley to Fiesole to start with.

“You might go and call on the Grassinis for a change,” he added wickedly. “I'm sure madame would be delighted to see you, especially now, when you look so pale and interesting.”

The Gadfly clasped his hands with a tragic gesture.

“Bless my soul! I never thought of that! She'd take me for one of Italy's martyrs, and talk patriotism to me. I should have to act up to the part, and tell her I've been cut to pieces in an underground dungeon and stuck together again rather badly; and she'd want to know exactly what the process felt like. You don't think she'd believe it, Riccardo? I'll bet you my Indian dagger against the bottled tape-worm in your den that she'll swallow the biggest lie I can invent. That's a generous offer, and you'd better jump at it.”

“Thanks, I'm not so fond of murderous tools as you are.”

“Well, a tape-worm is as murderous as a dagger, any day, and not half so pretty.”

“But as it happens, my dear fellow, I don't want the dagger and I do want the tape-worm. Martini, I must run off. Are you in charge of this obstreperous patient?”

“Only till three o'clock. Galli and I have to go to San Miniato, and Signora Bolla is coming till I can get back.”

“Signora Bolla!” the Gadfly repeated in a tone of dismay. “Why, Martini, this will never do! I can't have a lady bothered over me and my ailments. Besides, where is she to sit? She won't like to come in here.”

“Since when have you gone in so fiercely for the proprieties?” asked Riccardo, laughing. “My good man, Signora Bolla is head nurse in general to all of us. She has looked after sick people ever since she was in short frocks, and does it better than any sister of mercy I know. Won't like to come into your room! Why, you might be talking of the Grassini woman! I needn't leave any directions if she's coming, Martini. Heart alive, it's half-past two; I must be off!”

“Now, Rivarez, take your physic before she comes,” said Galli, approaching the sofa with a medicine glass.

“Damn the physic!” The Gadfly had reached the irritable stage of convalescence, and was inclined to give his devoted nurses a bad time. “W-what do you want to d-d-dose me with all sorts of horrors for now the pain is gone?”

“Just because I don't want it to come back. You wouldn't like it if you collapsed when Signora Bolla is here and she had to give you opium.”

“My g-good sir, if that pain is going to come back it will come; it's not a t-toothache to be frightened away with your trashy mixtures. They are about as much use as a t-toy squirt for a house on fire. However, I suppose you must have your way.”

He took the glass with his left hand, and the sight of the terrible scars recalled Galli to the former subject of conversation.

“By the way,” he asked; “how did you get so much knocked about? In the war, was it?”

“Now, didn't I just tell you it was a case of secret dungeons and——”

“Yes, that version is for Signora Grassini's benefit. Really, I suppose it was in the war with Brazil?”

“Yes, I got a bit hurt there; and then hunting in the savage districts and one thing and another.”

“Ah, yes; on the scientific expedition. You can fasten your shirt; I have quite done. You seem to have had an exciting time of it out there.”

“Well, of course you can't live in savage countries without getting a few adventures once in a way,” said the Gadfly lightly; “and you can hardly expect them all to be pleasant.”

“Still, I don't understand how you managed to get so much knocked about unless in a bad adventure with wild beasts—those scars on your left arm, for instance.”

“Ah, that was in a puma-hunt. You see, I had fired——”

There was a knock at the door.

“Is the room tidy, Martini? Yes? Then please open the door. This is really most kind, signora; you must excuse my not getting up.”

“Of course you mustn't get up; I have not come as a caller. I am a little early, Cesare. I thought perhaps you were in a hurry to go.”

“I can stop for a quarter of an hour. Let me put your cloak in the other room. Shall I take the basket, too?”

“Take care; those are new-laid eggs. Katie brought them in from Monte Oliveto this morning. There are some Christmas roses for you, Signor Rivarez; I know you are fond of flowers.”

She sat down beside the table and began clipping the stalks of the flowers and arranging them in a vase.

“Well, Rivarez,” said Galli; “tell us the rest of the puma-hunt story; you had just begun.”

“Ah, yes! Galli was asking me about life in South America, signora; and I was telling him how I came to get my left arm spoiled. It was in Peru. We had been wading a river on a puma-hunt, and when I fired at the beast the powder wouldn't go off; it had got splashed with water. Naturally the puma didn't wait for me to rectify that; and this is the result.”

“That must have been a pleasant experience.”

“Oh, not so bad! One must take the rough with the smooth, of course; but it's a splendid life on the whole. Serpent-catching, for instance——”

He rattled on, telling anecdote after anecdote; now of the Argentine war, now of the Brazilian expedition, now of hunting feats and adventures with savages or wild beasts. Galli, with the delight of a child hearing a fairy story, kept interrupting every moment to ask questions. He was of the impressionable Neapolitan temperament and loved everything sensational. Gemma took some knitting from her basket and listened silently, with busy fingers and downcast eyes. Martini frowned and fidgeted. The manner in which the anecdotes were told seemed to him boastful and self-conscious; and, notwithstanding his unwilling admiration for a man who could endure physical pain with the amazing fortitude which he had seen the week before, he genuinely disliked the Gadfly and all his works and ways.

“It must have been a glorious life!” sighed Galli with naive envy. “I wonder you ever made up your mind to leave Brazil. Other countries must seem so flat after it!”

“I think I was happiest in Peru and Ecuador,” said the Gadfly. “That really is a magnificent tract of country. Of course it is very hot, especially the coast district of Ecuador, and one has to rough it a bit; but the scenery is superb beyond imagination.”

“I believe,” said Galli, “the perfect freedom of life in a barbarous country would attract me more than any scenery. A man must feel his personal, human dignity as he can never feel it in our crowded towns.”

“Yes,” the Gadfly answered; “that is——”

Gemma raised her eyes from her knitting and looked at him. He flushed suddenly scarlet and broke off. There was a little pause.

“Surely it is not come on again?” asked Galli anxiously.

“Oh, nothing to speak of, thanks to your s-s-soothing application that I b-b-blasphemed against. Are you going already, Martini?”

“Yes. Come along, Galli; we shall be late.”

Gemma followed the two men out of the room, and presently returned with an egg beaten up in milk.

“Take this, please,” she said with mild authority; and sat down again to her knitting. The Gadfly obeyed meekly.

For half an hour, neither spoke. Then the Gadfly said in a very low voice:

“Signora Bolla!”

She looked up. He was tearing the fringe of the couch-rug, and kept his eyes lowered.

“You didn't believe I was speaking the truth just now,” he began.

“I had not the smallest doubt that you were telling falsehoods,” she answered quietly.

“You were quite right. I was telling falsehoods all the time.”

“Do you mean about the war?”

“About everything. I was not in that war at all; and as for the expedition, I had a few adventures, of course, and most of those stories are true, but it was not that way I got smashed. You have detected me in one lie, so I may as well confess the lot, I suppose.”

“Does it not seem to you rather a waste of energy to invent so many falsehoods?” she asked. “I should have thought it was hardly worth the trouble.”

“What would you have? You know your own English proverb: 'Ask no questions and you'll be told no lies.' It's no pleasure to me to fool people that way, but I must answer them somehow when they ask what made a cripple of me; and I may as well invent something pretty while I'm about it. You saw how pleased Galli was.”

“Do you prefer pleasing Galli to speaking the truth?”

“The truth!” He looked up with the torn fringe in his hand. “You wouldn't have me tell those people the truth? I'd cut my tongue out first!” Then with an awkward, shy abruptness:

“I have never told it to anybody yet; but I'll tell you if you care to hear.”

She silently laid down her knitting. To her there was something grievously pathetic in this hard, secret, unlovable creature, suddenly flinging his personal confidence at the feet of a woman whom he barely knew and whom he apparently disliked.

A long silence followed, and she looked up. He was leaning his left arm on the little table beside him, and shading his eyes with the mutilated hand, and she noticed the nervous tension of the fingers and the throbbing of the scar on the wrist. She came up to him and called him softly by name. He started violently and raised his head.

“I f-forgot,” he stammered apologetically. “I was g-going to t-tell you about——”

“About the—accident or whatever it was that caused your lameness. But if it worries you——”

“The accident? Oh, the smashing! Yes; only it wasn't an accident, it was a poker.”

She stared at him in blank amazement. He pushed back his hair with a hand that shook perceptibly, and looked up at her, smiling.

“Won't you sit down? Bring your chair close, please. I'm so sorry I can't get it for you. R-really, now I come to think of it, the case would have been a p-perfect t-treasure-trove for Riccardo if he had had me to treat; he has the true surgeon's love for broken bones, and I believe everything in me that was breakable was broken on that occasion—except my neck.”

“And your courage,” she put in softly. “But perhaps you count that among your unbreakable possessions.”

He shook his head. “No,” he said; “my courage has been mended up after a fashion, with the rest of me; but it was fairly broken then, like a smashed tea-cup; that's the horrible part of it. Ah—— Yes; well, I was telling you about the poker.

“It was—let me see—nearly thirteen years ago, in Lima. I told you Peru was a delightful country to live in; but it's not quite so nice for people that happen to be at low water, as I was. I had been down in the Argentine, and then in Chili, tramping the country and starving, mostly; and had come up from Valparaiso as odd-man on a cattle-boat. I couldn't get any work in Lima itself, so I went down to the docks,—they're at Callao, you know,—to try there. Well of course in all those shipping-ports there are low quarters where the sea-faring people congregate; and after some time I got taken on as servant in one of the gambling hells there. I had to do the cooking and billiard-marking, and fetch drink for the sailors and their women, and all that sort of thing. Not very pleasant work; still I was glad to get it; there was at least food and the sight of human faces and sound of human tongues—of a kind. You may think that was no advantage; but I had just been down with yellow fever, alone in the outhouse of a wretched half-caste shanty, and the thing had given me the horrors. Well, one night I was told to put out a tipsy Lascar who was making himself obnoxious; he had come ashore and lost all his money and was in a bad temper. Of course I had to obey if I didn't want to lose my place and starve; but the man was twice as strong as I—I was not twenty-one and as weak as a cat after the fever. Besides, he had the poker.”

He paused a moment, glancing furtively at her; then went on:

“Apparently he intended to put an end to me altogether; but somehow he managed to scamp his work—Lascars always do if they have a chance; and left just enough of me not smashed to go on living with.”

“Yes, but the other people, could they not interfere? Were they all afraid of one Lascar?”

He looked up and burst out laughing.

“THE OTHER PEOPLE? The gamblers and the people of the house? Why, you don't understand! They were negroes and Chinese and Heaven knows what; and I was their servant—THEIR PROPERTY. They stood round and enjoyed the fun, of course. That sort of thing counts for a good joke out there. So it is if you don't happen to be the subject practised on.”

She shuddered.

“Then what was the end of it?”

“That I can't tell you much about; a man doesn't remember the next few days after a thing of that kind, as a rule. But there was a ship's surgeon near, and it seems that when they found I was not dead, somebody called him in. He patched me up after a fashion—Riccardo seems to think it was rather badly done, but that may be professional jealousy. Anyhow, when I came to my senses, an old native woman had taken me in for Christian charity—that sounds queer, doesn't it? She used to sit huddled up in the corner of the hut, smoking a black pipe and spitting on the floor and crooning to herself. However, she meant well, and she told me I might die in peace and nobody should disturb me. But the spirit of contradiction was strong in me and I elected to live. It was rather a difficult job scrambling back to life, and sometimes I am inclined to think it was a great deal of cry for very little wool. Anyway that old woman's patience was wonderful; she kept me—how long was it?—nearly four months lying in her hut, raving like a mad thing at intervals, and as vicious as a bear with a sore ear between-whiles. The pain was pretty bad, you see, and my temper had been spoiled in childhood with overmuch coddling.”

“And then?”

“Oh, then—I got up somehow and crawled away. No, don't think it was any delicacy about taking a poor woman's charity—I was past caring for that; it was only that I couldn't bear the place any longer. You talked just now about my courage; if you had seen me then! The worst of the pain used to come on every evening, about dusk; and in the afternoon I used to lie alone, and watch the sun get lower and lower—— Oh, you can't understand! It makes me sick to look at a sunset now!”

A long pause.

“Well, then I went up country, to see if I could get work anywhere—it would have driven me mad to stay in Lima. I got as far as Cuzco, and there——— Really I don't know why I'm inflicting all this ancient history on you; it hasn't even the merit of being funny.”

She raised her head and looked at him with deep and serious eyes. “PLEASE don't talk that way,” she said.

He bit his lip and tore off another piece of the rug-fringe.

“Shall I go on?” he asked after a moment.

“If—if you will. I am afraid it is horrible to you to remember.”

“Do you think I forget when I hold my tongue? It's worse then. But don't imagine it's the thing itself that haunts me so. It is the fact of having lost the power over myself.”

“I—don't think I quite understand.”

“I mean, it is the fact of having come to the end of my courage, to the point where I found myself a coward.”

“Surely there is a limit to what anyone can bear.”

“Yes; and the man who has once reached that limit never knows when he may reach it again.”

“Would you mind telling me,” she asked, hesitating, “how you came to be stranded out there alone at twenty?”

“Very simply: I had a good opening in life, at home in the old country, and ran away from it.”

“Why?”

He laughed again in his quick, harsh way.

“Why? Because I was a priggish young cub, I suppose. I had been brought up in an over-luxurious home, and coddled and faddled after till I thought the world was made of pink cotton-wool and sugared almonds. Then one fine day I found out that someone I had trusted had deceived me. Why, how you start! What is it?”

“Nothing. Go on, please.”

“I found out that I had been tricked into believing a lie; a common bit of experience, of course; but, as I tell you, I was young and priggish, and thought that liars go to hell. So I ran away from home and plunged into South America to sink or swim as I could, without a cent in my pocket or a word of Spanish in my tongue, or anything but white hands and expensive habits to get my bread with. And the natural result was that I got a dip into the real hell to cure me of imagining sham ones. A pretty thorough dip, too—it was just five years before the Duprez expedition came along and pulled me out.”

“Five years! Oh, that is terrible! And had you no friends?”

“Friends! I”—he turned on her with sudden fierceness—“I have NEVER had a friend!”

The next instant he seemed a little ashamed of his vehemence, and went on quickly:

“You mustn't take all this too seriously; I dare say I made the worst of things, and really it wasn't so bad the first year and a half; I was young and strong and I managed to scramble along fairly well till the Lascar put his mark on me. But after that I couldn't get work. It's wonderful what an effectual tool a poker is if you handle it properly; and nobody cares to employ a cripple.”

“What sort of work did you do?”

“What I could get. For some time I lived by odd-jobbing for the blacks on the sugar plantations, fetching and carrying and so on. It's one of the curious things in life, by the way, that slaves always contrive to have a slave of their own, and there's nothing a negro likes so much as a white fag to bully. But it was no use; the overseers always turned me off. I was too lame to be quick; and I couldn't manage the heavy loads. And then I was always getting these attacks of inflammation, or whatever the confounded thing is.

“After some time I went down to the silver-mines and tried to get work there; but it was all no good. The managers laughed at the very notion of taking me on, and as for the men, they made a dead set at me.”

“Why was that?”

“Oh, human nature, I suppose; they saw I had only one hand that I could hit back with. They're a mangy, half-caste lot; negroes and Zambos mostly. And then those horrible coolies! So at last I got enough of that, and set off to tramp the country at random; just wandering about, on the chance of something turning up.”

“To tramp? With that lame foot!”

He looked up with a sudden, piteous catching of the breath.

“I—I was hungry,” he said.

She turned her head a little away and rested her chin on one hand. After a moment's silence he began again, his voice sinking lower and lower as he spoke:

“Well, I tramped, and tramped, till I was nearly mad with tramping, and nothing came of it. I got down into Ecuador, and there it was worse than ever. Sometimes I'd get a bit of tinkering to do,—I'm a pretty fair tinker,—or an errand to run, or a pigstye to clean out; sometimes I did—oh, I hardly know what. And then at last, one day———”

The slender, brown hand clenched itself suddenly on the table, and Gemma, raising her head, glanced at him anxiously. His side-face was turned towards her, and she could see a vein on the temple beating like a hammer, with quick, irregular strokes. She bent forward and laid a gentle hand on his arm.

“Never mind the rest; it's almost too horrible to talk about.”

He stared doubtfully at the hand, shook his head, and went on steadily:

“Then one day I met a travelling variety show. You remember that one the other night; well, that sort of thing, only coarser and more indecent. The Zambos are not like these gentle Florentines; they don't care for anything that is not foul or brutal. There was bull-fighting, too, of course. They had camped out by the roadside for the night; and I went up to their tent to beg. Well, the weather was hot and I was half starved, and so—I fainted at the door of the tent. I had a trick of fainting suddenly at that time, like a boarding-school girl with tight stays. So they took me in and gave me brandy, and food, and so on; and then—the next morning—they offered me——”

Another pause.

“They wanted a hunchback, or monstrosity of some kind; for the boys to pelt with orange-peel and banana-skins—something to set the blacks laughing——— You saw the clown that night—well, I was that—for two years. I suppose you have a humanitarian feeling about negroes and Chinese. Wait till you've been at their mercy!

“Well, I learned to do the tricks. I was not quite deformed enough; but they set that right with an artificial hump and made the most of this foot and arm—— And the Zambos are not critical; they're easily satisfied if only they can get hold of some live thing to torture—the fool's dress makes a good deal of difference, too.

“The only difficulty was that I was so often ill and unable to play. Sometimes, if the manager was out of temper, he would insist on my coming into the ring when I had these attacks on; and I believe the people liked those evenings best. Once, I remember, I fainted right off with the pain in the middle of the performance—— When I came to my senses again, the audience had got round me—hooting and yelling and pelting me with———”

“Don't! I can't hear any more! Stop, for God's sake!”

She was standing up with both hands over her ears. He broke off, and, looking up, saw the glitter of tears in her eyes.

“Damn it all, what an idiot I am!” he said under his breath.

She crossed the room and stood for a little while looking out of the window. When she turned round, the Gadfly was again leaning on the table and covering his eyes with one hand. He had evidently forgotten her presence, and she sat down beside him without speaking. After a long silence she said slowly:

“I want to ask you a question.”

“Yes?” without moving.

“Why did you not cut your throat?”

He looked up in grave surprise. “I did not expect YOU to ask that,” he said. “And what about my work? Who would have done it for me?”

“Your work—— Ah, I see! You talked just now about being a coward; well, if you have come through that and kept to your purpose, you are the very bravest man that I have ever met.”

He covered his eyes again, and held her hand in a close passionate clasp. A silence that seemed to have no end fell around them.

Suddenly a clear and fresh soprano voice rang out from the garden below, singing a verse of a doggerel French song:

  “Eh, Pierrot! Danse, Pierrot!
   Danse un peu, mon pauvre Jeannot!
   Vive la danse et l'allegresse!
   Jouissons de notre bell' jeunesse!
   Si moi je pleure ou moi je soupire,
   Si moi je fais la triste figure—
   Monsieur, ce n'est que pour rire!
   Ha! Ha, ha, ha!
   Monsieur, ce n'est que pour rire!”
 

At the first words the Gadfly tore his hand from Gemma's and shrank away with a stifled groan. She clasped both hands round his arm and pressed it firmly, as she might have pressed that of a person undergoing a surgical operation. When the song broke off and a chorus of laughter and applause came from the garden, he looked up with the eyes of a tortured animal.

“Yes, it is Zita,” he said slowly; “with her officer friends. She tried to come in here the other night, before Riccardo came. I should have gone mad if she had touched me!”

“But she does not know,” Gemma protested softly. “She cannot guess that she is hurting you.”

“She is like a Creole,” he answered, shuddering. “Do you remember her face that night when we brought in the beggar-child? That is how the half-castes look when they laugh.”

Another burst of laughter came from the garden. Gemma rose and opened the window. Zita, with a gold-embroidered scarf wound coquettishly round her head, was standing in the garden path, holding up a bunch of violets, for the possession of which three young cavalry officers appeared to be competing.

“Mme. Reni!” said Gemma.

Zita's face darkened like a thunder-cloud. “Madame?” she said, turning and raising her eyes with a defiant look.

“Would your friends mind speaking a little more softly? Signor Rivarez is very unwell.”

The gipsy flung down her violets. “Allez-vous en!” she said, turning sharply on the astonished officers. “Vous m'embetez, messieurs!”

She went slowly out into the road. Gemma closed the window.

“They have gone away,” she said, turning to him.

“Thank you. I—I am sorry to have troubled you.”

“It was no trouble.” He at once detected the hesitation in her voice.

“'But?'” he said. “That sentence was not finished, signora; there was an unspoken 'but' in the back of your mind.”

“If you look into the backs of people's minds, you mustn't be offended at what you read there. It is not my affair, of course, but I cannot understand——”

“My aversion to Mme. Reni? It is only when——”

“No, your caring to live with her when you feel that aversion. It seems to me an insult to her as a woman and as——”

“A woman!” He burst out laughing harshly. “Is THAT what you call a woman? 'Madame, ce n'est que pour rire!'”

“That is not fair!” she said. “You have no right to speak of her in that way to anyone—especially to another woman!”

He turned away, and lay with wide-open eyes, looking out of the window at the sinking sun. She lowered the blind and closed the shutters, that he might not see it set; then sat down at the table by the other window and took up her knitting again.

“Would you like the lamp?” she asked after a moment.

He shook his head.

When it grew too dark to see, Gemma rolled up her knitting and laid it in the basket. For some time she sat with folded hands, silently watching the Gadfly's motionless figure. The dim evening light, falling on his face, seemed to soften away its hard, mocking, self-assertive look, and to deepen the tragic lines about the mouth. By some fanciful association of ideas her memory went vividly back to the stone cross which her father had set up in memory of Arthur, and to its inscription:

  “All thy waves and billows have gone over me.”
 

An hour passed in unbroken silence. At last she rose and went softly out of the room. Coming back with a lamp, she paused for a moment, thinking that the Gadfly was asleep. As the light fell on his face he turned round.

“I have made you a cup of coffee,” she said, setting down the lamp.

“Put it down a minute. Will you come here, please.”

He took both her hands in his.