The Gadfly Part 43

"Listen a moment," she went on, taking his hand in both of hers to steady its convulsive trembling. "I have not tried to lay hands on a thing that is not mine to touch. But now that you have given me, of your own free will, so much of your confidence, will you not give me a little more--as you would do if I were your sister. Keep the mask on your face, if it is any consolation to you, but don't wear a mask on your soul, for your own sake."

He bent his head lower. "You must be patient with me," he said. "I am an unsatisfactory sort of brother to have, I'm afraid; but if you only knew---- I have been nearly mad this last week. It has been like South America again. And somehow the devil gets into me and----" He broke off.

"May I not have my share in your trouble?" she whispered at last.

His head sank down on her arm. "The hand of the Lord is heavy."

PART III.

CHAPTER I.

THE next five weeks were spent by Gemma and the Gadfly in a whirl of excitement and overwork which left them little time or energy for thinking about their personal affairs. When the arms had been safely smuggled into Papal territory there remained a still more difficult and dangerous task: that of conveying them un.o.bserved from the secret stores in the mountain caverns and ravines to the various local centres and thence to the separate villages. The whole district was swarming with spies; and Domenichino, to whom the Gadfly had intrusted the ammunition, sent into Florence a messenger with an urgent appeal for either help or extra time. The Gadfly had insisted that the work should be finished by the middle of June; and what with the difficulty of conveying heavy transports over bad roads, and the endless hindrances and delays caused by the necessity of continually evading observation, Domenichino was growing desperate. "I am between Scylla and Charybdis," he wrote. "I dare not work quickly, for fear of detection, and I must not work slowly if we are to be ready in time. Either send me efficient help at once, or let the Venetians know that we shall not be ready till the first week in July."

The Gadfly carried the letter to Gemma and, while she read it, sat frowning at the floor and stroking the cat's fur the wrong way.

"This is bad," she said. "We can hardly keep the Venetians waiting for three weeks."

"Of course we can't; the thing is absurd. Domenichino m-might unders-s-stand that. We must follow the lead of the Venetians, not they ours."

"I don't see that Domenichino is to blame; he has evidently done his best, and he can't do impossibilities."

"It's not in Domenichino that the fault lies; it's in the fact of his being one person instead of two. We ought to have at least one responsible man to guard the store and another to see the transports off. He is quite right; he must have efficient help."

"But what help are we going to give him? We have no one in Florence to send."

"Then I m-must go myself."

She leaned back in her chair and looked at him with a little frown.

"No, that won't do; it's too risky."

"It will have to do if we can't f-f-find any other way out of the difficulty."

"Then we must find another way, that's all. It's out of the question for you to go again just now."

An obstinate line appeared at the corners of his under lip.

"I d-don't see that it's out of the question."

"You will see if you think about the thing calmly for a minute. It is only five weeks since you got back; the police are on the scent about that pilgrim business, and scouring the country to find a clue. Yes, I know you are clever at disguises; but remember what a lot of people saw you, both as Diego and as the countryman; and you can't disguise your lameness or the scar on your face."

"There are p-plenty of lame people in the world."

"Yes, but there are not plenty of people in the Romagna with a lame foot and a sabre-cut across the cheek and a left arm injured like yours, and the combination of blue eyes with such dark colouring."

"The eyes don't matter; I can alter them with belladonna."

"You can't alter the other things. No, it won't do. For you to go there just now, with all your identification-marks, would be to walk into a trap with your eyes open. You would certainly be taken."

"But s-s-someone must help Domenichino."

"It will be no help to him to have you caught at a critical moment like this. Your arrest would mean the failure of the whole thing."

But the Gadfly was difficult to convince, and the discussion went on and on without coming nearer to any settlement. Gemma was beginning to realize how nearly inexhaustible was the fund of quiet obstinacy in his character; and, had the matter not been one about which she felt strongly, she would probably have yielded for the sake of peace. This, however, was a case in which she could not conscientiously give way; the practical advantage to be gained from the proposed journey seemed to her not sufficiently important to be worth the risk, and she could not help suspecting that his desire to go was prompted less by a conviction of grave political necessity than by a morbid craving for the excitement of danger. He had got into the habit of risking his neck, and his tendency to run into unnecessary peril seemed to her a form of intemperance which should be quietly but steadily resisted. Finding all her arguments unavailing against his dogged resolve to go his own way, she fired her last shot.

"Let us be honest about it, anyway," she said; "and call things by their true names. It is not Domenichino's difficulty that makes you so determined to go. It is your own personal pa.s.sion for----"

"It's not true!" he interrupted vehemently. "He is nothing to me; I don't care if I never see him again."

He broke off, seeing in her face that he had betrayed himself. Their eyes met for an instant, and dropped; and neither of them uttered the name that was in both their minds.

"It--it is not Domenichino I want to save," he stammered at last, with his face half buried in the cat's fur; "it is that I--I understand the danger of the work failing if he has no help."

She pa.s.sed over the feeble little subterfuge, and went on as if there had been no interruption:

"It is your pa.s.sion for running into danger which makes you want to go there. You have the same craving for danger when you are worried that you had for opium when you were ill."

"It was not I that asked for the opium," he said defiantly; "it was the others who insisted on giving it to me."

"I dare say. You plume yourself a little on your stoicism, and to ask for physical relief would have hurt your pride; but it is rather flattered than otherwise when you risk your life to relieve the irritation of your nerves. And yet, after all, the distinction is a merely conventional one."

He drew the cat's head back and looked down into the round, green eyes.

"Is it true, Pasht?" he said. "Are all these unkind things true that your mistress is s-saying about me? Is it a case of mea culpa; mea m-maxima culpa? You wise beast, you never ask for opium, do you? Your ancestors were G.o.ds in Egypt, and no man t-trod on their tails. I wonder, though, what would become of your calm superiority to earthly ills if I were to take this paw of yours and hold it in the c-candle.

Would you ask me for opium then? Would you? Or perhaps--for death? No, p.u.s.s.y, we have no right to die for our personal convenience. We may spit and s-swear a bit, if it consoles us; but we mustn't pull the paw away."

"Hus.h.!.+" She took the cat off his knee and put it down on a footstool.

"You and I will have time for thinking about those things later on. What we have to think of now is how to get Domenichino out of his difficulty.

What is it, Katie; a visitor? I am busy."

"Miss Wright has sent you this, ma'am, by hand."

The packet, which was carefully sealed, contained a letter, addressed to Miss Wright, but unopened and with a Papal stamp. Gemma's old school friends still lived in Florence, and her more important letters were often received, for safety, at their address.

"It is Michele's mark," she said, glancing quickly over the letter, which seemed to be about the summer-terms at a boarding house in the Apennines, and pointing to two little blots on a corner of the page.

"It is in chemical ink; the reagent is in the third drawer of the writing-table. Yes; that is it."

He laid the letter open on the desk and pa.s.sed a little brush over its pages. When the real message stood out on the paper in a brilliant blue line, he leaned back in his chair and burst out laughing.

"What is it?" she asked hurriedly. He handed her the paper.

"DOMENICHINO HAS BEEN ARRESTED. COME AT ONCE."