The Gadfly Part 20

"Yes, he persuaded her the girl was going to be the lion of the season.

Signora Gra.s.sini would do anything for a celebrity."

"I thought it an unfair and unkind thing to do; it put the Gra.s.sinis 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."

CHAPTER III.

THE Gadfly took lodgings outside the Roman gate, near to which Zita was boarding. He was evidently somewhat of a sybarite; and, though nothing in the rooms showed any serious extravagance, there was a tendency to luxuriousness in trifles and to a certain fastidious daintiness in the arrangement of everything which surprised Galli and Riccardo. They had expected to find a man who had lived among the wildernesses of the Amazon more simple in his tastes, and wondered at his spotless ties and rows of boots, and at the ma.s.ses of flowers which always stood upon his writing table. On the whole they got on very well with him. He was hospitable and friendly to everyone, especially to the local members of the Mazzinian party. To this rule Gemma, apparently, formed an exception; he seemed to have taken a dislike to her from the time of their first meeting, and in every way avoided her company. On two or three occasions he was actually rude to her, thus bringing upon himself Martini's most cordial detestation. There had been no love lost between the two men from the beginning; their temperaments appeared to be too incompatible for them to feel anything but repugnance for each other. On Martini's part this was fast developing into hostility.

"I don't care about his not liking me," he said one day to Gemma with an aggrieved air. "I don't like him, for that matter; so there's no harm done. But I can't stand the way he behaves to you. If it weren't for the scandal it would make in the party first to beg a man to come and then to quarrel with him, I should call him to account for it."

"Let him alone, Cesare; it isn't of any consequence, and after all, it's as much my fault as his."

"What is your fault?"

"That he dislikes me so. I said a brutal thing to him when we first met, that night at the Gra.s.sinis'."

"YOU said a brutal thing? That's hard to believe, Madonna."

"It was unintentional, of course, and I was very sorry. I said something about people laughing at cripples, and he took it personally. It had never occurred to me to think of him as a cripple; he is not so badly deformed."

"Of course not. He has one shoulder higher than the other, and his left arm is pretty badly disabled, but he's neither hunchbacked nor clubfooted. As for his lameness, it isn't worth talking about."

"Anyway, he shivered all over and changed colour. Of course it was horribly tactless of me, but it's odd he should be so sensitive. I wonder if he has ever suffered from any cruel jokes of that kind."

"Much more likely to have perpetrated them, I should think. There's a sort of internal brutality about that man, under all his fine manners, that is perfectly sickening to me."

"Now, Cesare, that's downright unfair. I don't like him any more than you do, but what is the use of making him out worse than he is? His manner is a little affected and irritating--I expect he has been too much lionized--and the everlasting smart speeches are dreadfully tiring; but I don't believe he means any harm."

"I don't know what he means, but there's something not clean about a man who sneers at everything. It fairly disgusted me the other day at Fabrizi's debate to hear the way he cried down the reforms in Rome, just as if he wanted to find a foul motive for everything."

Gemma sighed. "I am afraid I agreed better with him than with you on that point," she said. "All you good people are so full of the most delightful hopes and expectations; you are always ready to think that if one well-meaning middle-aged gentleman happens to get elected Pope, everything else will come right of itself. He has only got to throw open the prison doors and give his blessing to everybody all round, and we may expect the millennium within three months. You never seem able to see that he can't set things right even if he would. It's the principle of the thing that's wrong, not the behaviour of this man or that."

"What principle? The temporal power of the Pope?"

"Why that in particular? That's merely a part of the general wrong. The bad principle is that any man should hold over another the power to bind and loose. It's a false relationship to stand in towards one's fellows."

Martini held up his hands. "That will do, Madonna," he said, laughing.

"I am not going to discuss with you, once you begin talking rank Antinomianism in that fashion. I'm sure your ancestors must have been English Levellers in the seventeenth century. Besides, what I came round about is this MS."

He pulled it out of his pocket.

"Another new pamphlet?"

"A stupid thing this wretched man Rivarez sent in to yesterday's committee. I knew we should come to loggerheads with him before long."

"What is the matter with it? Honestly, Cesare, I think you are a little prejudiced. Rivarez may be unpleasant, but he's not stupid."

"Oh, I don't deny that this is clever enough in its way; but you had better read the thing yourself."

The pamphlet was a skit on the wild enthusiasm over the new Pope with which Italy was still ringing. Like all the Gadfly's writing, it was bitter and vindictive; but, notwithstanding her irritation at the style, Gemma could not help recognizing in her heart the justice of the criticism.

"I quite agree with you that it is detestably malicious," she said, laying down the ma.n.u.script. "But the worst thing about it is that it's all true."

"Gemma!"

"Yes, but it is. The man's a cold-blooded eel, if you like; but he's got the truth on his side. There is no use in our trying to persuade ourselves that this doesn't hit the mark--it does!"

"Then do you suggest that we should print it?"

"Ah! that's quite another matter. I certainly don't think we ought to print it as it stands; it would hurt and alienate everybody and do no good. But if he would rewrite it and cut out the personal attacks, I think it might be made into a really valuable piece of work. As political criticism it is very fine. I had no idea he could write so well. He says things which need saying and which none of us have had the courage to say. This pa.s.sage, where he compares Italy to a tipsy man weeping with tenderness on the neck of the thief who is picking his pocket, is splendidly written."

"Gemma! The very worst bit in the whole thing! I hate that ill-natured yelping at everything and everybody!"

"So do I; but that's not the point. Rivarez has a very disagreeable style, and as a human being he is not attractive; but when he says that we have made ourselves drunk with processions and embracing and shouting about love and reconciliation, and that the Jesuits and Sanfedists are the people who will profit by it all, he's right a thousand times. I wish I could have been at the committee yesterday. What decision did you finally arrive at?"

"What I have come here about: to ask you to go and talk it over with him and persuade him to soften the thing."

"Me? But I hardly know the man; and besides that, he detests me. Why should I go, of all people?"

"Simply because there's no one else to do it to-day. Besides, you are more reasonable than the rest of us, and won't get into useless arguments and quarrel with him, as we should."

"I shan't do that, certainly. Well, I will go if you like, though I have not much hope of success."

"I am sure you will be able to manage him if you try. Yes, and tell him that the committee all admired the thing from a literary point of view.

That will put him into a good humour, and it's perfectly true, too."

The Gadfly was sitting beside a table covered with flowers and ferns, staring absently at the floor, with an open letter on his knee. A s.h.a.ggy collie dog, lying on a rug at his feet, raised its head and growled as Gemma knocked at the open door, and the Gadfly rose hastily and bowed in a stiff, ceremonious way. His face had suddenly grown hard and expressionless.

"You are too kind," he said in his most chilling manner. "If you had let me know that you wanted to speak to me I would have called on you."

Seeing that he evidently wished her at the end of the earth, Gemma hastened to state her business. He bowed again and placed a chair for her.

"The committee wished me to call upon you," she began, "because there has been a certain difference of opinion about your pamphlet."

"So I expected." He smiled and sat down opposite to her, drawing a large vase of chrysanthemums between his face and the light.

"Most of the members agreed that, however much they may admire the pamphlet as a literary composition, they do not think that in its present form it is quite suitable for publication. They fear that the vehemence of its tone may give offence, and alienate persons whose help and support are valuable to the party."