David Christie Murray

“ I had almost forgotten that we were not alone when the Baroness Bonnar proclaimed her presence.
“Italy!” she cried; and as I turned at the sound of her voice I saw her bring the palms of her gloved hands together and turn her fine eyes to the ceiling as if the word inspired her—“Italy! oh, if I were a man I would fight for Italy! Ah, those hateful Austrians! And what a man is Cavour! and what a man Garibaldi! Oh, they will fight! They will win!”
“There is plenty of time yet. Liberty, my dear Miss Rossano, will restore your father to health, and he will not lose his share of the glory.” ”

“ That you are a friend to humanity, I know, but a friend to Italy—yes?”
I was still hot from my talk with Miss Rossano, and I assured the count that I was very much a friend to Italy indeed.
“Then, sir,” he cried, “we have need of you! We have need of every counsel—of every hand.”
He was on his feet again, and had intrenched himself behind the arm-chair. He declaimed from that position as if it had been a rostrum, employing a wealth and variety of gesture which no English mimic could succeed in copying in a year. ”

“ I ventured to hope that Miss Rossano was well.
“I am very sorry to tell you,” said Lady Rollinson, “that Miss Rossano is very unwell indeed. She has been greatly upset this morning. We have had the strangest news, and I don't know whether we ought to believe it or not. I don't think I have ever been so flustered in my life; and as for Violet, poor dear, it's no wonder that she's disturbed by it, for she's one of the tenderest-hearted girls in the world, and the idea that she has been happy all the time is quite enough to kill anybody, I am sure.” ”

“ Roncivalli answered. The liquid Italian played against the German guttural like the warble of a flute answering the snarl of a violoncello. “I am doing what I know. Until our friend Rossano came to England I had a place from which he was good enough to depose me. You may say what you like, Herr Sacovitch, but the independence of my country is secure. Italy wins; and I desire Italy to win. I will help you to your Count Rossano if you want him, and if you will pay me for it, because I hate him, and because he is in my way. But Italy wins, all the same.” ”

“ But I fell in love with better fortune, if with no more discretion, than the average man displays, and after many years of trial and happiness I know my wife to be a better woman than I had power to guess all those years ago. And I know, as every husband of a good wife knows, that I was a much better man than I could ever have been without her influence.
All this leads me away from what I meant to say, which was simply that Miss Rossano's wordless reception of Brunow made me furiously jealous of him, and altogether dashed my happiness. ”

“ I thought he might possibly have been raging inwardly at me, and that in his unreasoning anger at me he might find my mere presence hateful to him; but I could not help thinking that his looks expressed fear or suspense rather than anger. When the laughter excited by the accident had died away, Ruffiano turned to him with a voice and gesture of apology; and having once laid his hand on Brunow's shoulder, continued to address him as if the argument he was offering, whatever it might be, concerned Brunow more intimately than any one else there present. ”

“ I was just meditating on Hinge's luck in the fact that on the occasion of his watch the conspirators had thrown open the window as if on purpose that he should secure a hearing of their deliberations, when the baroness put her hand to her round white throat, with an exaggerated gesture of oppression, and then waved it towards the window. Sacovitch bowed and rose from his place. I laid a hand on Hinge, impelling him downward as the Austrian police spy walked towards the window. We each glued ourselves to the wall, and prostrated ourselves on the rainy wood-work of the veranda walk. ”

“ But the day wore itself out at last, and at ten o'clock at night I was wandering along the road by which Brunow must come, and listening with my soul in my ears for the first distant noise of hoof-beats. The sun had gone down in a bank of threatening cloud, and before the moon rose the last look I had taken at the hills which hemmed us in on every side had shown them seemingly hidden by driving mists, which travelled at an astonishing pace, betokening a wild wind up there, while the valley lay in a hot stillness. ”

“ It was so wise, so friendly, so childlike, so gay, so unlike the dull and dreadful aspect his face had worn when I had first known it that it affected me strongly, “My dear Fyffe,” he said, reaching his friendly hand out towards me once more, “why should we talk about money? If you can put Brunow out of your mind I can put money out of mine. My daughter loves me, and the man who saved me loves my daughter; and Violet—well, she shall speak for herself.” ”

“ Then she looked at me with the odd veiled glance I had seen before—a glance which expressed both dislike and fear, and held at the same time a keener and more piercing observation than anybody at first sight would have been likely to charge the butterfly-like woman with.
I have spoken quite openly, and as if what I have had to say had been the most commonplace matter in the world. Violet had heard me, but when we went back to the drawing-room together she asked no questions. ”

“ At this very instant, when I hold your life in my hands, when it is in my power to hand you over to justice by a word, and when I propose—partly for old friendship's sake and partly because I am ashamed that a fellow-countryman of mine should have been such a blackguard—to let you go, you are fool enough to tell me that my mercy has no effect upon you, and that you will do your best to be revenged upon me. Think that over, Brunow. ”

“ When at last Ruffiano left us, the count detained me.
“The world is full of changes,” he said, “and no man knows what may happen. We may never meet again, Fyffe, and I have a solemn charge to leave you. If I am caught again they will make short work of me. I do not mean to be caught if I can help it, but I know the risk I run. If anything should happen to me, I counsel you, for Violet's sake, to retire from The Cause. She cannot spare us both, and Italy has no claim on you.” ”

“ You are a man and a patriot, and you love your country”—her voice rang and her bosom heaved—“and you have given all the best years of your life in suffering for her; and that is why I love and honor you. But that is what a man could never understand. You love your cause, and we women love you for loving it; and love it because you love it, and we would die for it just as soon as you would. Oh, you heroic, noble, beautiful—goose!” She rushed at him, and kissed him with a passionate impetuosity. “And you think it's all Italy. It isn't Italy ”

“ Count Rossano has gone peacefully to his rest now this many a year, but I had learned to love the man with a loyal affection and esteem, the like of which I never felt for any human creature, except my wife and my own children. It made for a good deal in my affection for him that I had been instrumental in rescuing him from that living death he had suffered for so many years, for I have found over and over again in my own experience that one of the surest ways of learning to love a man is to do him a good turn. ”

“ There are thousands of Italian refugees in London at this minute, and they will all be there to cheer the illustrious Fyffe, and the no less illustrious Brunow. All the exiled noblemen who live in Hatton Garden, and make London stand and deliver at the barrel-organ's mouth, all the dukes and counts who shave and teach dancing, and sell penny ices, and keep cheap restaurants, will be there to welcome their delivered compatriot. The railway terminus will be odorous with garlic and the humanity of Italy. ”

“ A lover is always jealous, and I had envied my rival his faculty of small talk, his cheery, easy temper, and those touches of gallant attention of which practice and nature had made him master. I had been very angry sometimes at his success in pleasing. But a certain contempt had always mingled with my anger, and I had never really been afraid of him. Yet in the count's declaration of Brunow's belief that Miss Rossano was not indifferent to him I could see more than a touch of reason. ”

“ Poor old Ruffiano! He has seen the end of his trouble this many and many a year. I never knew a more loyal gentleman, or one less capable of digging such a wicked trap as he fell into. Brunow's manner was altogether a puzzle to me, and even next day, enlightened as I was by events, I was unable to understand it, because it seemed altogether so silly a thing for him to run his neck into the noose as he did. ”

“ People were laughing and crying and cheering and fighting all at once, and I had a glimpse of the count in the arms of a score of mustachioed, sallow-featured men who were weeping and shouting, and hugging and kissing him and each other like a pack of lunatics inspired with the instinct of welcome. ”

“ You would be a drag upon every step, and with you I should not dare to face a single peril. I must go alone; I know the hardship, but that is the task of women. They wait at home and suffer, while the man goes out to enjoy adventure and excitement. It was your mother's fortune, my child, and you inherit it. She was all English, and yet she endured it for my sake. You are at least half of Italy, and Italy has need of both of us. If Italy needs my life, she is welcome to it. If she had need of yours, I would say not a word to hold you back. But your place is at home. Is it not so, Fyffe? ”

“ It is a terrible thing to say to a lady, but it must be said. It is all the more terrible to say, because I had at one time a sentimental worship for that poor creature who has proved herself so often to be unworthy of any honest man's regard. No lady who knows the reputation of Miss Constance Pleyel, or who, being warned of her reputation, declines to test the truth of the warning and remains her friend, can be permitted to associate, to my knowledge, with anybody for whom I entertain the slightest regard or esteem.”
“Do I understand you to threaten me, Captain Fyffe?” asked the baroness. ”

“ Dinner was announced at the very instant of her arrival, and the count himself took her in to dinner. That, in the light of my latest knowledge of the lady, was the cruellest thing to remember, but the little traitress was all smiles and pompousness, and smiled and chatted as if no thought of mischief had ever entered her heart. Lady Rollinson had confided Violet to my care, and I sat at table between her and the baroness. ”

“ They had a preconcerted signal at which the prisoner instantly ceased to speak. Food and water were thrust in upon the unhappy man at regular intervals, but he was never visited, and lived a horrible, lonely death in life there, which made the flesh creep to hear of. The stench of the chamber Hinge described as something horrible and sickening, and he thought it a marvel that the man had lived so long.
The wretched man had never been allowed a minute's exercise outside his cell, and Brunow's pretence of having seen him was, of course, an invention. ”

“ I am told that people who suffer from kleptomania cannot be taught to be ashamed of stealing, though even a dog has grace enough to be abashed if you catch him in an act of dishonesty. I have met in my lifetime two or three men like Brunow, who lie without temptation, and who do not feel disgraced when detected.
For once I could not help believing him, and his story stuck in my mind in a very disagreeable way, for Miss Rossano fairly haunted me, and anything which was associated with her had an importance in my eyes. ”

“ No man had been louder in denunciation of the Austrian cruelty, no man apparently more sincere. There never lived a man who had more reason for sincerity. My first impression was that he must be spying upon the spies, for my opinion of his patriotism had been so lofty, that next to the Count Rossano and poor old Ruffiano, whom Brunow had betrayed, I should have counted him the last man in all the Italian ranks to be bought by Austrian gold. ”

“ He held out a long, lean hand, and when I gave him my own stooped over it and kissed it.
“Sir,” he said, “you have done more than restore an individual to liberty. You have reanimated a cause: you have inspired a people. There are a thousand of us at this hour in London to whom the name of the Conte di Rossano is a legend and an inspiration. Twenty years ago he was our leader—a spirit of the subtlest and most indomitable. A soul without fear, and of resource astonishingly varied. 'You have restored him to us, and before a month is over his name will ring through Italy. ”

“ But the fates are against us. For my own part, I counsel that we resign the struggle, and that you do your best to cross the frontier singly. I shall not be taken alive.”
“There is no going back,” I answered. “It is no safer now to abandon the enterprise than to go on with it. We are not likely to be intercepted until we reach the pass. My advice is that we ride as far as we dare, and then take to the hills on foot, avoiding the passes. We shall have a scramble for it, but life and liberty are worth that.”
“Neither life nor liberty should have been in danger,” said Brunow, sullenly. ”

“ I cannot read my daughter's mind at all, and so far as I can tell she may have no such preference as leads to marriage for either of you. She is half English by birth, and wholly English by education. If she would marry at all she will follow her own inclination, after the fashion of young ladies in this country. Even if I had had the authority which a life-long watch over her would have given me, I should never have dreamed of using it. But this is the plain English of the matter. I would gladly trust my child with you, and I should be sorry to trust her with Mr. Brunow. ”

“ I will give you the Count Rossano, who is in my way, and I will not give you any real chance over Italy for anything you may offer me. I will take your money because I want it, and I will serve your turn because it suits me. How I reconcile these matters with my own conscience is my own affair.”
“Your conscience is your own,” Sacovitch answered; “the question of your conduct is our consideration. I want you only to understand that a single false move on either side—” He took a deep pull at his cigar there, and made a purposed pause for effect. ”

“ It was Lady Rollinson herself who received me; a fat and comfortable lady of something more than fifty, as I should judge, though it is a perilous thing for a man to be meddling with guesses at a lady's age. She looked as if she could enjoy a good dinner, and as if she liked to have things soft and cosey about her; but in spite of that, she wore a countenance of pronounced kindliness, and received me, so to speak, with open arms. ”

“ The thought of the Baroness Bonnar, fresh from contact with her, coming into Violet's presence was anything but agreeable. I am not much of a prude, and was never disposed to hound a woman down for an error in love; but the plain English of the matter was that no woman who would care to know Constance Pleyel had a right to exchange a word with Violet. My mind was a good deal exercised about this matter as I walked swiftly homeward. I thought about it while I was dressing, and as I drove back to Lady Rollinson's that strange rencontre filled my thoughts to the exclusion of everything else. ”

“ I suppose the surprise I felt at receiving such advice from such a quarter showed itself in my face, for he went on with a smile:
“I see you wonder at me, but I have had time to think since Violet spoke out her mind this afternoon. A man may have a cause and may set it above everything in the world, but a woman sees an individual—her father—her lover—her brother—her husband—a baby—any solitary human trifle—and to her the one individual is more valuable than any ideal. You will do as I wish, Fyffe?” ”

“ I don't care to talk much about my own character, but I have often laughed to hear myself spoken of as a man whose life has been guided by romantic considerations. If I know anything about myself at all it is that I am severely practical. I could not even think of so far-away an enterprise as the attempted rescue of the count, a thing which, at the time, I was altogether unlikely and unable to attempt, without taking account of all the pros and cons, so, far as I could see them. ”