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

“I f-forgot,” he stammered apologetically. “I was g-going to t-tell you about⁠—”

“About the⁠—accident or whatever it was that caused your lameness. But if it worries you⁠—”

“The accident? Oh, the smashing! Yes; only it wasn’t an accident, it was a poker.”

She stared at him in blank amazement. He pushed back his hair with a hand that shook perceptibly, and looked up at her, smiling.

“Won’t you sit down? Bring your chair close, please. I’m so sorry I can’t get it for you. R-really, now I come to think of it, the case would have been a p-perfect t-treasure-trove for Riccardo if he had had me to treat; he has the true surgeon’s love for broken bones, and I believe everything in me that was breakable was broken on that occasion⁠—except my neck.”

“And your courage,” she put in softly. “But perhaps you count that among your unbreakable possessions.”

He shook his head. “No,” he said; “my courage has been mended up after a fashion, with the rest of me; but it was fairly broken then, like a smashed teacup; that’s the horrible part of it. Ah⁠—Yes; well, I was telling you about the poker.

“It was⁠—let me see⁠—nearly thirteen years ago, in Lima. I told you Peru was a delightful country to live in; but it’s not quite so nice for people that happen to be at low water, as I was. I had been down in the Argentine, and then in Chili, tramping the country and starving, mostly; and had come up from Valparaiso as odd-man on a cattle-boat. I couldn’t get any work in Lima itself, so I went down to the docks⁠—they’re at Callao, you know⁠—to try there. Well of course in all those shipping-ports there are low quarters where the seafaring people congregate; and after some time I got taken on as servant in one of the gambling hells there. I had to do the cooking and billiard-marking, and fetch drink for the sailors and their women, and all that sort of thing. Not very pleasant work; still I was glad to get it; there was at least food and the sight of human faces and sound of human tongues⁠—of a kind. You may think that was no advantage; but I had just been down with yellow fever, alone in the outhouse of a wretched half-caste shanty, and the thing had given me the horrors. Well, one night I was told to put out a tipsy Lascar who was making himself obnoxious; he had come ashore and lost all his money and was in a bad temper. Of course I had to obey if I didn’t want to lose my place and starve; but the man was twice as strong as I⁠—I was not twenty-one and as weak as a cat after the fever. Besides, he had the poker.”

He paused a moment, glancing furtively at her; then went on:

“Apparently he intended to put an end to me altogether; but somehow he managed to scamp his work⁠—Lascars always do if they have a chance; and left just enough of me not smashed to go on living with.”

“Yes, but the other people, could they not interfere? Were they all afraid of one Lascar?”

He looked up and burst out laughing.

“The other people? The gamblers and the people of the house? Why, you don’t understand! They were negroes and Chinese and Heaven knows what; and I was their servant⁠—their property. They stood round and enjoyed the fun, of course. That sort of thing counts for a good joke out there. So it is if you don’t happen to be the subject practised on.”

She shuddered.

“Then what was the end of it?”

“That I can’t tell you much about; a man doesn’t remember the next few days after a thing of that kind, as a rule. But there was a ship’s surgeon near, and it seems that when they found I was not dead, somebody called him in. He patched me up after a fashion⁠—Riccardo seems to think it was rather badly done, but that may be professional jealousy. Anyhow, when I came to my senses, an old native woman had taken me in for Christian charity⁠—that sounds queer, doesn’t it? She used to sit huddled up in the corner of the hut, smoking a black pipe and spitting on the floor and crooning to herself. However, she meant well, and she told me I might die in peace and nobody should disturb me. But the spirit of contradiction was strong in me and I elected to live. It was rather a difficult job scrambling back to life, and sometimes I am inclined to think it was a great deal of cry for very little wool. Anyway that old woman’s patience was wonderful; she kept me⁠—how long was it?⁠—nearly four months lying in her hut, raving like a mad thing at intervals, and as vicious as a bear with a sore ear between-whiles. The pain was pretty bad, you see, and my temper had been spoiled in childhood with overmuch coddling.”

“And then?”

“Oh, then⁠—I got up somehow and crawled away. No, don’t think it was any delicacy about taking a poor woman’s charity⁠—I was past caring for that; it was only that I couldn’t bear the place any longer. You talked just now about my courage; if you had seen me then! The worst of the pain used to come on every evening, about dusk; 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