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