TOWARDS the middle of February the Gadfly went to Leghorn. Gemma had introduced him to a young Englishman there, a shipping-agent of liberal views, whom she and her husband had known in England. He had on several occasions performed little services for the Florentine radicals: had lent money to meet an unforeseen emergency, had allowed his business address to be used for the party's letters, etc.; but always through Gemma's mediumship, and as a private friend of hers. She was, therefore, according to party etiquette, free to make use of the connexion in any way that might seem good to her. Whether any use could be got out of it was quite another question. To ask a friendly sympathizer to lend his address for letters from Sicily or to keep a few documents in a corner of his counting-house safe was one thing; to ask him to smuggle over a transport of firearms for an insurrection was another; and she had very little hope of his consenting.
“You can but try,” she had said to the Gadfly; “but I don't think anything will come of it. If you were to go to him with that recommendation and ask for five hundred scudi, I dare say he'd give them to you at once—he's exceedingly generous,—and perhaps at a pinch he would lend you his passport or hide a fugitive in his cellar; but if you mention such a thing as rifles he will stare at you and think we're both demented.”
“Perhaps he may give me a few hints, though, or introduce me to a friendly sailor or two,” the Gadfly had answered. “Anyway, it's worth while to try.”
One day at the end of the month he came into her study less carefully dressed than usual, and she saw at once from his face that he had good news to tell.
“Ah, at last! I was beginning to think something must have happened to you!”
“I thought it safer not to write, and I couldn't get back sooner.”
“You have just arrived?”
“Yes; I am straight from the diligence; I looked in to tell you that the affair is all settled.”
“Do you mean that Bailey has really consented to help?”
“More than to help; he has undertaken the whole thing,—packing, transports,—everything. The rifles will be hidden in bales of merchandise and will come straight through from England. His partner, Williams, who is a great friend of his, has consented to see the transport off from Southampton, and Bailey will slip it through the custom house at Leghorn. That is why I have been such a long time; Williams was just starting for Southampton, and I went with him as far as Genoa.”