The Gadfly - E. L. Voynich (phonics readers .txt) 📗
- Author: E. L. Voynich
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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
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