“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.”