The Gadfly by Ethel Voynich (top fiction books of all time .txt) 📕

get so bored, spending all the evening pinned to such a dull companion.”

“I am afraid we shall all be bored tonight. 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 coattails.”

“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 fingertips; 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