The Gadfly Part 10

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 doc.u.ment 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 doc.u.ment 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 acc.u.mulations 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 pa.s.sed 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 gla.s.s 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 a.s.sure 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.