Arthur Quiller-Couch

“ The Princess, suddenly pallid, shot a look at Paoli—a look which at once defied and implored him.
"It is true, dear mother," said she, steadying her voice.
"God help us all!" The Queen clasped her hands. "The Genoese have no pity."
"Let your Majesty be reassured," said Paoli, slowly, "The Genoese, to be sure, have no pity; yet I can almost promise they will not proceed to extremities with your son. An enemy, madam, may have good reasons for negotiating; and although the Genoese Government would be delighted to break me on the wheel, yet, on some points, I can compel them to bargain with me." ”

“ This turf, these boulders, had made her bower, these matted creepers her curtain. Here she had lived secure among savage men, each one of them ready to die—so Marc'antonio assured me, and all that I had seen confirmed it—rather than injure a hair of her head or suffer it to be injured. She was a king's daughter. Yet this lad of the Rocca Serras, noble, of the best blood of the island, had turned his own gun upon himself rather than wed with her.
I thought much upon this lad Rocca Serra. Why had he died? Was it for loathing her? But men do not easily loathe such beauty. ”

“ At that instant I heard a short warning cry from somewhere by the helm; not a call of alarm, but just such a gasp as a man will utter when slapped on the shoulder at unawares from behind; then a patter of naked feet rushing aft; then a score of outcries blending into one wild yell as the whole boatload of Moors leapt and swarmed over the starboard bulwarks.
The tow-rope, tautening under the last stroke of our oars, had drawn the boat back in its recoil, and she now drifted close under the Gauntlet's jibboom, which ran out upon a very short bowsprit. ”

“ Let strength return to me and I will help her yet, and in spite of all her champions."
"In hate or in love, cavalier?" Marc'antonio's voice shook with his whole body.
"That shall be my secret," answered I. (Yet well I knew what the answer was, and had known it since the moment she had bent over me in the sty, filing at my chain.) "It had better be hate—eh, Marc'antonio?—seeing that for some reason she hates all men, except you, perhaps, and Stephanu, and her brother."
"We do not count, I and Stephanu. Her brother she adores. But the rest of men she hates, cavalier, and with good cause." ”

“ Has this cursed rumour spread, then, all over the countryside that honest men avoid us like a plague—us, the Colonne!" He checked his tongue as she drew herself up and turned from him, before the staring soldiery, with drawn mouth and stony eyes; but stepped a pace after her on a fresh tack of rage.
"But you have not answered me. Who is this man, I repeat? And eh?— but what in God's name have we here?" He halted, staring at the half-digged grave and Nat's body laid beside it.
Marc'antonio stepped forward. "These are two prisoners, O Prince, of whom, as you see, we are burying one." ”

“ The Vicar smiled. "You counsel lethargy?—you, who in an hour or two start for Corsica, and with no more to-do than if bound on a picnic!"
"Ay, but for love," answered my father. "In love no man can be too prompt."
"I believe you, sir," hiccuped Mr. Fett, who had been drinking more than was good for him. "And so, begad, does your man Priske. Did any one mark, just now, how like a shooting star he glided in the night from Venus' eye? Love, sir?" he turned to me. "The tender passion? Is that our little game? ”

“ I am in Italy—in Genoa, to be sure, which of all Italian cities passes for the unfriendliest to the Muse: but that is my probation. I have embraced the mission of my life. Here in Italy—here in the land of the vine, the olive—of Maecenas and the Medicis—it shall be mine to revive the arts and to make them pay; and if I can win out of this city of skinflints at a profit, I shall have served my apprenticeship and shall know my success assured. The Genoese, cavalier, are a banausic race, and penurious at that; they will go where the devil cannot, which is between the oak and the rind ”

“ But no sooner had we loaded the little gun and trained her ready for use, than my father, pausing to mop his brow, cried out that the Moor was losing her breeze again. She perceptibly slackened way, and before long the water astern of her ceased to be ruffled. An oily calm spreading across the sea from shoreward overhauled her by degrees, overtook, and held her, with sails idle and sheets tautening and sagging as she rolled on the heave of the swell.
Captain Pomery promptly checked our rejoicing, telling us this was about the worst that could happen. ”

“ I looked in Billy's face, and in all my life (as I have since often reminded him) I never saw a man worse scared. The woman had actually thrown off her jacket and stood up in a loose under-bodice that left her arms free—and exceedingly red and brawny arms they were. How he had come into this plight I could guess as little as what the issue was like to be, when in the gateway there appeared my uncle and Mr. Knox, and close at their heels a rabble of men and women arm-in-arm, headed by a red-nosed clergyman with an immense white favour pinned to his breast. ”

“ More than this Marc'antonio would not tell me, though I laid many traps for more during the long weeks my bones were healing. But although he denied me his confidence in this matter, he told me much of this Corsica I had so childishly invaded, and a great deal to make me blush for my random ignorance; of the people, their untiring feud with Genoa, their insufferable wrongs, their succession of heroic leaders. He did not speak of their passion for liberty, as a man will not of what is holiest in his love. ”

“ But at a sign from him Stephanu stepped back and took my bridle, and within a couple of minutes I felt that my pony's feet were treading good turf and, at a cry from my guide, ducked my head to avoid the boughs as we threaded our way down through an orchard of stalwart olives.
The slope grew gentler as we descended, and eased almost to a level on the verge of a high road running north and south under the glimmer of the moon—or rather of the pale light heralding the moon's advent. Marc'antonio looked about him and climbed heavily from his saddle. He had been riding since dawn. ”

“ They gazed at us curiously there in the light of the conflagration, and from us away to the burning island, and talked together in whispers, in a patois of which I caught but one word in three. They asked us no questions. Their voices filled the beach with a kind of subdued murmuring, all alike gentle and patiently explanatory.
"It is the island of Giraglia," said one to me. "Yes, yes; this will be the work of the patriots—a brave feat too, there's no denying."
I pointed to a line of fishing-boats moored in the shoal water a short furlong off the shore. ”

“ I was staring at the shadow of the porch into which he had disappeared, when my father touched my elbow.
"There goes a good lad," said he, quietly.
"And my best friend."
"He has sobered down strangely from the urchin I remember on Winchester meads; and in the sobering he has grown exalted. A man might almost say," mused my father, "that the imp in him had shed itself off and taken flesh in that Master Fett I left snoring with his head on my dining-table. An earthy spirit, that Master Fett; earthy and yet somewhat inhuman. Your Nat Fiennes has the clue of life—if only Atropos do not slit it." ”

“ I was her hostage, and, though it killed me, I would hold her to the last inch of her bond. As a Catholic, she must believe in hell. I would carry my wrong even to hell then, and meet her there with it and master her.
I was mad. After hours of such a crucifixion a man must needs be mad. . . . "Prosper, lad, your ideas are naught and your ambitions earth: but you have a streak of damned obstinacy which makes me not altogether hopeless of you!" These had been Nat's words, a month ago; and Nat lay in his grave yonder. ”

“ The moon, when I fell asleep, had not surmounted the ridge behind me, and that patch of road, now showing so white and clear, had been dim, if not quite invisible. None the less I could be sworn that two figures had passed up the road . . . two men . . .
Marc'antonio and Stephanu?—reconnoitring perhaps? I rubbed my eyes. No: Marc'antonio and Stephanu lay a few paces away, stretched in profound sleep under the moonlight drifting between the olive boughs; and yonder, past the fringe of the orchard, shone the patch of white high road. ”

“ For another three minutes we waited—the Princess silent, standing a little apart, with thoughtful brow, the two men conversing in rapid guttural undertones; then far up the track beneath the boughs a musket-barrel glinted, and another and another, glint following glint, as a file of men came swinging down between the pines, disappeared for a moment, and rounding a thicket of the undergrowth emerged upon the level clearing. In dress and bearing they were not to be distinguished from Marc'antonio, Stephanu, or any of the bandits on the mountain. ”

“ It widens, lad; it is not slackening; it is passing, enlarging into a diviner light.
"By that light you shall see all men, women, children—yes, and all living things—akin with you and deserving your help. It is the light of God upon earth, and its warmth is God's charity, though He kindle it first as a selfish spark between a youth and a maid.
"Trust it, then, most of all when it frightens you, its first passion fading. For then, sickening of what is transient, it dies to put on permanence; as the creature dies—as I am dying, Prosper—into the greatness of the Creator. ”

“ Marc'antonio let him pass into the workshop and he stood before the brazier, stretching out his palms as though to warm them.
"These!" he whispered hoarsely, pointing to the instruments on the brazier.
"Your Highness misunderstands. We are not torturers, we of the
Colonne," answered Marc'antonio, gravely.
A clock on the mantelpiece tinkled out the hour of nine.
"No, nor shall be murderers," I interposed. "The Princess is yet your mistress, O Marc'antonio, and I am her husband. In the Princess's name I command you both that you do not harm him." ”

“ For you, the mountains hold no slanders, and shall hold no evil. Put your hand in mine on the compact, and we will both step it bravely. Forget that you were ever a Princess or I a promised king of this Corsica! O beloved, travel this land, which can never be yours or mine, and let it be ours only for a while as we journey."
I turned and led the way up the path between the bushes: and she followed my stride almost at a run. On the bare mountain-spur above the high-road she overtook and fell into pace with me: and so, skirting Nonza, we breasted the long slope of the range. ”

“ For any sign that reached to us there, in our cup of he hills, the whole island might have been desolate. The forest and the beasts in it, tame and wild, belonged—so Marc'antonio informed me—to the Colonne; the slopes between us and the sea to the lost great colony of Paomia. No one disturbed us. Week followed week, yet since the Prince had passed with his men no traveller came down the path which ran between our hut and Nat's grave, over which the undergrowth already was pushing its autumn shoots. ”

“ The priest, a sensual, loose-lipped man, whose mere aspect invited one to kick him, smiled sideways and downwards with a deprecating air, and spread out his hands as who should say that here was no place for a domestic discussion.
I could make no guess at what the youth had meant; but the girl's face told me that the stroke was cruel, and (as often happens with the weak) his own cruelty worked him into a passion.
"But who is this man with you?" he demanded, the blood rushing to his face. "And how came you alone with him, and Stephanu, and Marc'antonio? ”

“ Here, three thousand feet and more above the sea—upon which we looked down between cliff and woodland as through a funnel, and upon the roofs and whitewashed walls of fishing-villages on the edge of the blue—lived slow, sedate folks, who called their dogs off us and stared upon us as portents and gave us goat's-milk and bread, refusing the coins we proffered. The inhabitants of this Cape (I have since learned) are a race apart in Corsica; slow, peaceable, without politics and almost (as we should say) without patriotism. ”

“ Each panel held a portrait, and over every panel, in faded gilt against the morning sun, shone an imperial crown. The windows were draped with hangings of rotten velvet. At the far end on a dais stood a porphyry table, and behind it, facing down the room, a single chair, or throne, also of porphyry and rudely carved. For the rest the room held nothing but dust—dust so thick that our visitors' naked feet left imprints upon it as they huddled after their leader to the dais, where my father took his seat, after beckoning me forward to stand on his right. ”

“ It showed us a steep shore near at hand, with many grey pinnacles of granite glimmering high over dark masses of forest trees, and in the farthest angle of the bight its rays travelled in silver down the waters of a miniature creek.
The hawser ran out into five fathoms of water. We had lost our boat: but Billy Priske had spent his afternoon in fashioning a raft out of four empty casks and a dozen broken lengths of deck-planking; and on this, leaving the seamen on board, the rest of us pushed off for shore. For paddles we used a couple of spare oars. ”

“ Stephanu assured him. "It is known that many of the farms below keep ponies in stable."
From the pass we looked straight down upon another sea, starlit and dimly discernible, and upon slopes and mountain spurs descending into dense woodland over which, along the bluffs of the ridge, the lights of a few lonely hill-farms twinkled. Stephanu found for us the track of which Marc'antonio had spoken, and although on this side of the range the shadows of the crags made an almost total darkness, our ponies took us down at a fair pace. ”