The Gadfly by E. L. Voynich (latest novels to read .txt) 📖

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