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.