"Is the mistress in, Katie?"
"Yes, sir; she is dressing. If you'll just step
into the parlour she will be down in a few
minutes."
Katie ushered the visitor in with the cheerful
friendliness of a true Devonshire girl. Martini
was a special favourite of hers. He spoke English,
like a foreigner, of course, but still quite respectably;
and he never sat discussing politics at the top
of his voice till one in the morning, when the mistress
was tired, as some visitors had a way of
doing. Moreover, he had come to Devonshire to
help the mistress in her trouble, when her baby
was dead and her husband dying there; and ever
since that time the big, awkward, silent man had
been to Katie as much "one of the family" as was
the lazy black cat which now ensconced itself upon
his knee. Pasht, for his part, regarded Martini
as a useful piece of household furniture. This
visitor never trod upon his tail, or puffed tobacco
smoke into his eyes, or in any way obtruded upon
his consciousness an aggressive biped personality.
He behaved as a mere man should: provided a
comfortable knee to lie upon and purr, and at table
never forgot that to look on while human beings
eat fish is not interesting for a cat. The friendship
between them was of old date. Once, when
Pasht was a kitten and his mistress too ill to think
about him, he had come from England under Martini's
care, tucked away in a basket. Since then,
long experience had convinced him that this
clumsy human bear was no fair-weather friend.
"How snug you look, you two!" said Gemma,
coming into the room. "One would think you
had settled yourselves for the evening."
Martini carefully lifted the cat off his knee. "I
came early," he said, "in the hope that you will
give me some tea before we start. There will
probably be a frightful crush, and Grassini won't
give us any sensible supper--they never do in
those fashionable houses."
"Come now!" she said, laughing; "that's as
bad as Galli! Poor Grassini has quite enough sins
of his own to answer for without having his wife's
imperfect housekeeping visited upon his head.
As for the tea, it will be ready in a minute. Katie
has been making some Devonshire cakes specially
for you."
"Katie is a good soul, isn't she, Pasht? By the
way, so are you to have put on that pretty dress.
I was afraid you would forget."
"I promised you I would wear it, though it is
rather warm for a hot evening like this."
"It will be much cooler up at Fiesole; and
nothing else ever suits you so well as white cashmere.
I have brought you some flowers to wear with it."
"Oh, those lovely cluster roses; I am so fond
of them! But they had much better go into water.
I hate to wear flowers."
"Now that's one of your superstitious fancies."
"No, it isn't; only I think they must get so
bored, spending all the evening pinned to such a
dull companion."
"I am afraid we shall all be bored to-night. The
conversazione will be dull beyond endurance."
"Why?"
"Partly because everything Grassini touches
becomes as dull as himself."
"Now don't be spiteful. It is not fair when we
are going to be a man's guests."
"You are always right, Madonna. Well then,
it will be dull because half the interesting people
are not coming."
"How is that?"
"I don't know. Out of town, or ill, or something.
Anyway, there will be two or three ambassadors
and some learned Germans, and the usual
nondescript crowd of tourists and Russian princes
and literary club people, and a few French officers;
nobody else that I know of--except, of course,
the new satirist, who is to be the attraction of the
evening."
"The new satirist? What, Rivarez? But I
thought Grassini disapproved of him so strongly."
"Yes; but once the man is here and is sure to
be talked about, of course Grassini wants his house
to be the first place where the new lion will be on
show. You may be sure Rivarez has heard nothing
of Grassini's disapproval. He may have guessed
it, though; he's sharp enough."
"I did not even know he had come."
"He only arrived yesterday. Here comes the
tea. No, don't get up; let me fetch the kettle."
He was never so happy as in this little study.
Gemma's friendship, her grave unconsciousness of
the charm she exercised over him, her frank and
simple comradeship were the brightest things for
him in a life that was none too bright; and whenever
he began to feel more than usually depressed
he would come in here after business hours and
sit with her, generally in silence, watching her as
she bent over her needlework or poured out tea.
She never questioned him about his troubles or
expressed any sympathy in words; but he always
went away stronger and calmer, feeling, as he put
it to himself, that he could "trudge through
another fortnight quite respectably." She possessed,
without knowing it, the rare gift of consolation;
and when, two years ago, his dearest
friends had been betrayed in Calabria and shot
down like wolves, her steady faith had been perhaps
the thing which had saved him from despair.
On Sunday mornings he sometimes came in to
"talk business," that expression standing for anything
connected with the practical work of the
Mazzinian party, of which they both were active
and devoted members. She was quite a different
creature then; keen, cool, and logical, perfectly
accurate and perfectly neutral. Those who saw
her only at her political work regarded her as a
trained and disciplined conspirator, trustworthy,
courageous, in every way a valuable member of
the party, but somehow lacking in life and individuality.
"She's a born conspirator, worth any
dozen of us; and she is nothing more," Galli had
said of her. The "Madonna Gemma" whom
Martini knew was very difficult to get at.
"Well, and what is your 'new satirist' like?"
she asked, glancing back over her shoulder as she
opened the sideboard. "There, Cesare, there are
barley-sugar and candied angelica for you. I wonder,
by the way, why revolutionary men are always
so fond of sweets."
"Other men are, too, only they think it beneath
their dignity to confess it. The new satirist? Oh,
the kind of man that ordinary women will rave
over and you will dislike. A sort of professional
dealer in sharp speeches, that goes about the world
with a lackadaisical manner and a handsome ballet-girl
dangling on to his coat-tails."
"Do you mean that there is really a ballet-girl,
or simply that you feel cross and want to imitate
the sharp speeches?"
"The Lord defend me! No; the ballet-girl is
real enough and handsome enough, too, for those
who like shrewish beauty. Personally, I don't.
She's a Hungarian gipsy, or something of that
kind, so Riccardo says; from some provincial
theatre in Galicia. He seems to be rather a cool
hand; he has been introducing the girl to people
just as if she were his maiden aunt."
"Well, that's only fair if he has taken her away
from her home."
"You may look at things that way, dear Madonna,
but society won't. I think most people
will very much resent being introduced to a woman
whom they know to be his mistress."
"How can they know it unless he tells them
so?"
"It's plain enough; you'll see if you meet her.
But I should think even he would not have the
audacity to bring her to the Grassinis'."
"They wouldn't receive her. Signora Grassini
is not the woman to do unconventional things of
that kind. But I wanted to hear about Signor
Rivarez as a satirist, not as a man. Fabrizi told
me he had been written to and had consented to
come and take up the campaign against the
Jesuits; and that is the last I have heard. There
has been such a rush of work this week."
"I don't know that I can tell you much more.
There doesn't seem to have been any difficulty
over the money question, as we feared there would
be. He's well off, it appears, and willing to work
for nothing."
"Has he a private fortune, then?"
"Apparently he has; though it seems rather
odd--you heard that night at Fabrizi's about
the state the Duprez expedition found him
in. But he has got shares in mines somewhere
out in Brazil; and then he has been immensely
successful as a feuilleton writer in Paris and
Vienna and London. He seems to have half a
dozen languages at his finger-tips; and there's
nothing to prevent his keeping up his newspaper
connections from here. Slanging the Jesuits
won't take all his time."
"That's true, of course. It's time to start,
Cesare. Yes, I will wear the roses. Wait just a
minute."
She ran upstairs, and came back with the roses
in the bosom of her dress, and a long scarf of black
Spanish lace thrown over her head. Martini surveyed
her with artistic approval.
"You look like a queen, Madonna mia; like
the great and wise Queen of Sheba."
"What an unkind speech!" she retorted,
laughing; "when you know how hard I've been
trying to mould myself into the image of the typical
society lady! Who wants a conspirator to
look like the Queen of Sheba? That's not the
way to keep clear of spies."
"You'll never be able to personate the stupid
society woman if you try for ever. But it doesn't
matter, after all; you're too fair to look upon for
spies to guess your opinions, even though you
can't simper and hide behind your fan like Signora
Grassini."
"Now Cesare, let that poor woman alone!
There, take some more barley-sugar to sweeten
your temper. Are you ready? Then we had
better start."
Martini had been quite right in saying that the
conversazione would be both crowded and dull.
The literary men talked polite small-talk and
looked hopelessly bored, while the "nondescript
crowd of tourists and Russian princes" fluttered
up and down the rooms, asking each other who
were the various celebrities and trying to carry on
intellectual conversation. Grassini was receiving
his guests with a manner as carefully polished as
his boots; but his cold face lighted up at the sight
of Gemma. He did not really like her and indeed
was secretly a little afraid of her; but he realized
that without her his drawing room would lack a
great attraction. He had risen high in his profession,
and now that he was rich and well known
his chief ambition was to make of his house a
centre of liberal and intellectual society. He was
painfully conscious that the insignificant, overdressed
little woman whom in his youth he had
made the mistake of marrying was not fit, with
her vapid talk and faded prettiness, to be the
mistress of a great literary salon. When he could
prevail upon Gemma to come he always felt that
the evening would be a success. Her quiet
graciousness of manner set the guests at their ease,
and her very presence seemed to lay the spectre
of vulgarity which always, in his imagination,
haunted the house.
Signora Grassini greeted Gemma affectionately,
exclaiming in a loud whisper: "How charming
you look to-night!" and examining the white
cashmere with viciously critical eyes. She hated
her visitor rancourously, for the very things for
which Martini loved her; for her quiet strength
of character; for her grave, sincere directness;
for the steady balance of her mind; for the very
expression of her face. And when Signora Grassini
hated a woman, she showed it by effusive tenderness.
Gemma took the compliments and
endearments for what they were worth, and
troubled her head no more about them. What
is called "going into society" was in her eyes one
of the wearisome and rather unpleasant tasks
which a conspirator who wishes not to attract the
notice of spies must conscientiously fulfil. She
classed it together with the laborious work of
writing in cipher; and, knowing how valuable a
practical safeguard against suspicion is the reputation
of being a well-dressed woman, studied the
fashion-plates as carefully as she did the keys of
her ciphers.
The bored and melancholy literary lions brightened
up a little at the sound of Gemma's name;
she was very popular among them; and the radical
journalists, especially, gravitated at once to her
end of the long room. But she was far too practised
a conspirator to let them monopolize her.
Radicals could be had any day; and now, when
they came crowding round her, she gently sent
them about their business, reminding them with a
smile that they need not waste their time on converting
her when there were so many tourists in
need of instruction. For her part, she devoted
herself to an English M. P. whose sympathies the
republican party was anxious to gain; and, knowing
him to be a specialist on finance, she first won
his attention by asking his opinion on a technical
point concerning the Austrian currency, and then
deftly turned the conversation to the condition of
the Lombardo-Venetian revenue. The Englishman,
who had expected to be bored with small-talk,
looked askance at her, evidently fearing that
he had fallen into the clutches of a blue-stocking;
but finding that she was both pleasant to look at
and interesting to talk to, surrendered completely
and plunged into as grave a discussion of Italian
finance as if she had been Metternich. When
Grassini brought up a Frenchman "who wishes to
ask Signora Bolla something about the history of
Young Italy," the M. P. rose with a bewildered
sense that perhaps there was more ground for
Italian discontent than he had supposed.
Later in the evening Gemma slipped out on to
the terrace under the drawing-room windows to
sit alone for a few moments among the great
camellias and oleanders. The close air and continually
shifting crowd in the rooms were beginning to give her
a headache. At the further end of the terrace stood a
row of palms and tree-ferns, planted in large tubs
which were hidden by a bank of lilies and other
flowering plants. The whole formed a complete screen,
behind which was a little nook commanding a beautiful
view out across the valley. The branches of a pomegranate
tree, clustered with late blossoms, hung beside the
narrow opening between the plants.
In this nook Gemma took refuge, hoping that
no one would guess her whereabouts until she had
secured herself against the threatening headache
by a little rest and silence. The night was warm
and beautifully still; but coming out from the
hot, close rooms she felt it cool, and drew her lace
scarf about her head.
Presently the sounds of voices and footsteps
approaching along the terrace roused her from the
dreamy state into which she had fallen. She drew
back into the shadow, hoping to escape notice and
get a few more precious minutes of silence before
again having to rack her tired brain for conversation.
To her great annoyance the footsteps
paused near to the screen; then Signora Grassini's
thin, piping little voice broke off for a moment in
its stream of chatter.
The other voice, a man's, was remarkably soft
and musical; but its sweetness of tone was marred
by a peculiar, purring drawl, perhaps mere affectation,
more probably the result of a habitual
effort to conquer some impediment of speech, but
in any case very unpleasant.
"English, did you say?" it asked. "But
surely the name is quite Italian. What was it--
Bolla?"
"Yes; she is the widow of poor Giovanni Bolla,
who died in England about four years ago,--
don't you remember? Ah, I forgot--you lead
such a wandering life; we can't expect you to
know of all our unhappy country's martyrs--they
are so many!"
Signora Grassini sighed. She always talked in
this style to strangers; the role of a patriotic
mourner for the sorrows of Italy formed an effective
combination with her boarding-school manner and
pretty infantine pout.
"Died in England!" repeated the other voice.
"Was he a refugee, then? I seem to recognize
the name, somehow; was he not connected with
Young Italy in its early days?"
"Yes; he was one of the unfortunate young
men who were arrested in '33--you remember
that sad affair? He was released in a few months;
then, two or three years later, when there was a
warrant out against him again, he escaped to
England. The next we heard was that he was
married there. It was a most romantic affair altogether,
but poor Bolla always was romantic."
"And then he died in England, you say?"
"Yes, of consumption; he could not stand that
terrible English climate. And she lost her only
child just before his death; it caught scarlet fever.
Very sad, is it not? And we are all so fond of
dear Gemma! She is a little stiff, poor thing; the
English always are, you know; but I think her
troubles have made her melancholy, and----"
Gemma stood up and pushed back the boughs
of the pomegranate tree. This retailing of her
private sorrows for purposes of small-talk was
almost unbearable to her, and there was visible
annoyance in her face as she stepped into the
light.
"Ah! here she is!" exclaimed the hostess, with
admirable coolness. "Gemma, dear, I was wondering
where you could have disappeared to.
Signor Felice Rivarez wishes to make your
acquaintance."
"So it's the Gadfly," thought Gemma, looking
at him with some curiosity. He bowed to her
decorously enough, but his eyes glanced over her
face and figure with a look which seemed to
her insolently keen and inquisitorial.
"You have found a d-d-delightful little nook
here," he remarked, looking at the thick screen;
"and w-w-what a charming view!"
"Yes; it's a pretty corner. I came out here to
get some air."
"It seems almost ungrateful to the good God
to stay indoors on such a lovely night," said the
hostess, raising her eyes to the stars. (She had
good eyelashes and liked to show them.) "Look,
signore! Would not our sweet Italy be heaven
on earth if only she were free? To think that she
should be a bond-slave, with such flowers and such
skies!"
"And such patriotic women!" the Gadfly murmured
in his soft, languid drawl.
Gemma glanced round at him in some trepidation;
his impudence was too glaring, surely, to
deceive anyone. But she had underrated Signora
Grassini's appetite for compliments; the poor
woman cast down her lashes with a sigh.
"Ah, signore, it is so little that a woman can
do! Perhaps some day I may prove my right to
the name of an Italian--who knows? And now
I must go back to my social duties; the French
ambassador has begged me to introduce his ward
to all the notabilities; you must come in presently
and see her. She is a most charming girl.
Gemma, dear, I brought Signor Rivarez out to
show him our beautiful view; I must leave him
under your care. I know you will look after him
and introduce him to everyone. Ah! there is
that delightful Russian prince! Have you met
him? They say he is a great favourite of the
Emperor Nicholas. He is military commander
of some Polish town with a name that nobody can
pronounce. Quelle nuit magnifique! N'est-ce-pas,
mon prince?"
She fluttered away, chattering volubly to a
bull-necked man with a heavy jaw and a coat glittering
with orders; and her plaintive dirges for
"notre malheureuse patrie," interpolated with
"charmant" and "mon prince," died away along
the terrace.
Gemma stood quite still beside the pomegranate
tree. She was sorry for the poor, silly
little woman, and annoyed at the Gadfly's languid
insolence. He was watching the retreating figures
with an expression of face that angered her; it
seemed ungenerous to mock at such pitiable creatures.
"There go Italian and--Russian patriotism,"
he said, turning to her with a smile; "arm in arm
and mightily pleased with each other's company.
Which do you prefer?"
She frowned slightly and made no answer.
"Of c-course," he went on; "it's all a question
of p-personal taste; but I think, of the two, I like
the Russian variety best--it's so thorough. If
Russia had to depend on flowers and skies for her
supremacy instead of on powder and shot, how
long do you think 'mon prince' would k-keep
that Polish fortress?"
"I think," she answered coldly, "that we can
hold our personal opinions without ridiculing a
woman whose guests we are."
"Ah, yes! I f-forgot the obligations of hospitality
here in Italy; they are a wonderfully hospitable
people, these Italians. I'm sure the
Austrians find them so. Won't you sit down?"
He limped across the terrace to fetch a chair
for her, and placed himself opposite to her, leaning
against the balustrade. The light from a
window was shining full on his face; and she was
able to study it at her leisure.
She was disappointed. She had expected to
see a striking and powerful, if not pleasant face;
but the most salient points of his appearance were
a tendency to foppishness in dress and rather more
than a tendency to a certain veiled insolence of
expression and manner. For the rest, he was as
swarthy as a mulatto, and, notwithstanding his
lameness, as agile as a cat. His whole personality
was oddly suggestive of a black jaguar. The forehead
and left cheek were terribly disfigured by
the long crooked scar of the old sabre-cut; and
she had already noticed that, when he began to
stammer in speaking, that side of his face was
affected with a nervous twitch. But for these
defects he would have been, in a certain restless
and uncomfortable way, rather handsome; but it
was not an attractive face.
Presently he began again in his soft, murmuring
purr ("Just the voice a jaguar would talk in,
if it could speak and were in a good humour,"
Gemma said to herself with rising irritation).
"I hear," he said, "that you are interested in
the radical press, and write for the papers."
"I write a little; I have not time to do much."
"Ah, of course! I understood from Signora
Grassini that you undertake other important
work as well."
Gemma raised her eyebrows slightly. Signora
Grassini, like the silly little woman she was, had
evidently been chattering imprudently to this
slippery creature, whom Gemma, for her part, was
beginning actually to dislike.
"My time is a good deal taken up," she said
rather stiffly; "but Signora Grassini overrates
the importance of my occupations. They are
mostly of a very trivial character."
"Well, the world would be in a bad way if we
ALL of us spent our time in chanting dirges for
Italy. I should think the neighbourhood of our
host of this evening and his wife would make anybody
frivolous, in self-defence. Oh, yes, I know
what you're going to say; you are perfectly right,
but they are both so deliciously funny with their
patriotism.--Are you going in already? It is so
nice out here!"
"I think I will go in now. Is that my scarf?
Thank you."
He had picked it up, and now stood looking at
her with wide eyes as blue and innocent as forget-me-nots
in a brook.
"I know you are offended with me," he said
penitently, "for fooling that painted-up wax doll;
but what can a fellow do?"
"Since you ask me, I do think it an ungenerous
and--well--cowardly thing to hold one's intellectual
inferiors up to ridicule in that way; it is
like laughing at a cripple, or------"
He caught his breath suddenly, painfully; and
shrank back, glancing at his lame foot and mutilated
hand. In another instant he recovered his
self-possession and burst out laughing.
"That's hardly a fair comparison, signora; we
cripples don't flaunt our deformities in people's
faces as she does her stupidity. At least give us
credit for recognizing that crooked backs are no
pleasanter than crooked ways. There is a step
here; will you take my arm?"
She re-entered the house in embarrassed silence;
his unexpected sensitiveness had completely disconcerted her.
Directly he opened the door of the great reception
room she realized that something unusual
had happened in her absence. Most of the gentlemen
looked both angry and uncomfortable;
the ladies, with hot cheeks and carefully feigned
unconsciousness, were all collected at one end of
the room; the host was fingering his eye-glasses
with suppressed but unmistakable fury, and a little
group of tourists stood in a corner casting amused
glances at the further end of the room. Evidently
something was going on there which appeared to
them in the light of a joke, and to most
of the guests in that of an insult. Signora Grassini
alone did not appear to have noticed anything;
she was fluttering her fan coquettishly
and chattering to the secretary of the Dutch
embassy, who listened with a broad grin on his
face.
Gemma paused an instant in the doorway, turning
to see if the Gadfly, too, had noticed the disturbed
appearance of the company. There was
no mistaking the malicious triumph in his eyes as
he glanced from the face of the blissfully unconscious
hostess to a sofa at the end of the room.
She understood at once; he had brought his mistress
here under some false colour, which had
deceived no one but Signora Grassini.
The gipsy-girl was leaning back on the sofa,
surrounded by a group of simpering dandies and
blandly ironical cavalry officers. She was gorgeously
dressed in amber and scarlet, with an
Oriental brilliancy of tint and profusion of ornament
as startling in a Florentine literary salon
as if she had been some tropical bird among
sparrows and starlings. She herself seemed to
feel out of place, and looked at the offended
ladies with a fiercely contemptuous scowl. Catching
sight of the Gadfly as he crossed the room
with Gemma, she sprang up and came towards
him, with a voluble flood of painfully incorrect
French.
"M. Rivarez, I have been looking for you everywhere!
Count Saltykov wants to know whether
you can go to his villa to-morrow night. There
will be dancing."
"I am sorry I can't go; but then I couldn't
dance if I did. Signora Bolla, allow me to introduce
to you Mme. Zita Reni."
The gipsy glanced round at Gemma with a half
defiant air and bowed stiffly. She was certainly
handsome enough, as Martini had said, with a
vivid, animal, unintelligent beauty; and the perfect
harmony and freedom of her movements were
delightful to see; but her forehead was low and
narrow, and the line of her delicate nostrils was
unsympathetic, almost cruel. The sense of
oppression which Gemma had felt in the Gadfly's
society was intensified by the gypsy's presence;
and when, a moment later, the host came up to
beg Signora Bolla to help him entertain some
tourists in the other room, she consented with an
odd feeling of relief.
. . . . .
"Well, Madonna, and what do you think of the
Gadfly?" Martini asked as they drove back to
Florence late at night. "Did you ever see anything
quite so shameless as the way he fooled that
poor little Grassini woman?"
"About the ballet-girl, you mean?"
"Yes, he persuaded her the girl was going to
be the lion of the season. Signora Grassini would
do anything for a celebrity."
"I thought it an unfair and unkind thing to
do; it put the Grassinis into a false position; and
it was nothing less than cruel to the girl herself.
I am sure she felt ill at ease."
"You had a talk with him, didn't you? What
did you think of him?"
"Oh, Cesare, I didn't think anything except
how glad I was to see the last of him. I never
met anyone so fearfully tiring. He gave me a
headache in ten minutes. He is like an incarnate
demon of unrest."
"I thought you wouldn't like him; and, to tell
the truth, no more do I. The man's as slippery
as an eel; I don't trust him."
