In Direst Peril Part 19

"You look particularly pleased," I said. "What has happened? Has anybody left you a fortune?"

"No, sir," Hinge answered, turning his hard-bitten, queer old mug towards me with a s.h.i.+ning smile. "n.o.body's left me a fortune, sir, but I'm just as glad as as if they had. You're a-lying a bit late this morning, sir, and you haven't seen the newspapers."

"The newspapers!" I cried, springing out of bed at once. "Let me have them. What's the news?"

"The news is, sir," Hinge answered, standing in att.i.tude of attention, and smiling like a happy Gargoyle--"the news is, sir, as the Italians is playing Old Harry at Milan with them Austrians, and old Louis Philippe turned up at Newhaven, England, yesterday."

I made my toilet with unusual haste, and in the meantime Hinge brought the papers and read out the news.

"I spent some years among them Austrians, sir," said Hinge, and then paused suddenly, scratching his head with a look of irritation.

"Yes," I answered; "what of that?" Something was evidently on the good fellow's mind, and in the midst of his delight he was troubled with it.

"You're a-going out to Italy, ain't you, sir?" he asked. I was shaving at the moment, and contented myself with a mere affirmative grunt.

"Well, it's like this, sir," said Hinge; "I was in a civil capacity when I was in Austria, wasn't I, sir?"

"Well, yes," I told him, "I suppose so."

"They couldn't have sworn me in without my knowing it, could they, sir?"

Hinge demanded. "Of course I picked up a bit of the language in the course of a year or two, but when I went there I didn't speak a word.

When I was first engaged, sir, there was a lot of things said to me as I didn't understand no more than the babe unborn. Now, if I was swore in," Hinge proceeded, with an air of argument, "and if I was swore in in anything but a civil capacity, that can't be counted as being binding on my heart and conscience. Now, can it, sir?"

"You silly fellow," I answered, "you couldn't have been sworn in without being aware of it. A man cannot vow and promise that he will do anything without his own knowledge and desire."

"Well, then, sir," said Hinge, apparently relieved a little, "if I was swore in--and I might have been, you know, sir--I don't know but what they might have thought they'd done it--but even if it was so, you wouldn't think it binding?"

"Of course it couldn't be binding, but of course nothing of the sort was done. You were engaged, as I understand, as a groom." Hinge a.s.sented.

"You happened to be engaged by a gentleman who was an officer in a foreign army. You don't suppose that an officer makes it his business to swear in all his civilian servants, do you?"

"Why, no, sir," Hinge admitted. "But it was a foreign country, and a lot of things was said to me as I didn't understand no more than the babe unborn."

"You may make your mind quite easy on that score, Hinge. You are not in any way bound to the Austrian service. But what difference can that possibly make to you now?"

"Why, sir," said Hinge, scratching his head again, "I've lived among them Austrians, and I don't like 'em. I'm for Italy, I am. I used to think, sir, as the Italians was a organ-grinding cla.s.s of people as a body, and I never had much respect for 'em. But I've seen a lot in six months, sir, and I've learned a bit, if I may make so bold as to say so.

There's the count, now, sir; anybody can see as he's a gentleman. Why, if you'll believe me, sir, I've never seen a gentleman as was more a gentleman than the count. But, bless your heart, sir, you'd never have thought so if you'd a known him all the years as I did, off and on, a-living worse than a wild beast behind a muck-heap, and in a cellar underneath the stables. Now you know, sir," proceeded Hinge, growing warm and even angry with the theme, "that ain't civilized; it ain't Christian; it ain't treating a man as if you was a man yourself. Because a gentleman goes and fights for his country--that's a natural thing to do, ain't it?--they keep him dirtier and darker and 'orribler than any wild beast I ever see, for twenty years, and would have kept him all his miserable life, sir. I used to get that 'ot about it when I found it out I used to feel as if I was ready to do murder. I did, indeed, sir. And yet I can appeal to you, sir, and ask you fair and square, between an officer and his servant, if I am not a civil spoken person, as a rule. I believe I am, sir, and yet I used to feel as if it 'd do me good, every now and then, to go out and shoot a Austrian."

"I suppose," I said, "that the upshot of all this is that when I go to Italy you want to go with me."

"That's it, sir," Hinge returned, delightedly. "If I'm only free, sir, if I was engaged in nothing but a civil capacity--"

"You are quite free to go," I told him; "and I had thoroughly made up my mind to take you with me, supposing always that you were willing to be taken."

"I'm more than willing, sir," Hinge responded. "I should like to hear 'Boot and saddle' again, sir; so would you, I am sure."

I had never heard Hinge break out like this before, and the good fellow's enthusiasm and right-thinking pleased me, and as I went on dressing I kept, him talking.

"I should think, sir," he said, and he was about me all the while in his usual handy and un.o.btrusive fas.h.i.+on--"I should think, sir, as anybody as knowed the count 'd be glad to fight on his side. It makes you want to fight for a gentleman like that as has gone through so much. And if you'll excuse me telling you, sir, what makes me so pertickler glad to go--"

"Yes," I said, for he paused and looked a trifle confused. "Go on, what is it?"

"Well, sir," he answered, "I know it isn't right in my place to be talking, but there's Miss Rossano, sir--" I turned rather sharply round on him at the mention of that name, and Hinge, standing at attention, saluted. "No harm meant, sir," he said, "and I 'ope, sir, there's no offence. But I took a letter from you to Miss Rossano, sir, last Wednesday week. It was the second time as I was in the house, sir, and when Miss Rossano came out to give me the answer, she saw as it was me, and she asks me in; and there was the count, sir, a-sitting in the parlor. And says Miss Rossano, 'Father,' she says, 'here's the faithful man,' she says, 'as treated you so kind when you was in prison along with them blooming Austrians,' she says; and the count he gets up in his grand way, and he shakes me by the hand, with his other hand on my shoulder. They'd have made me sit down between them, sir, if I'd a done it, and the count, sir, with his own hands, he powered me out a gla.s.s of sherry wine. It was the right sort, that was," said Hinge, pa.s.sing his hand across his lips with a gleam of remembrance, and instantly resuming his rigid att.i.tude, as if he had suddenly found himself at fault, as, of course, in his own mind he did. "They was that kind between 'era and that nice way with it I didn't know whether I was a-standing on my head or my heels. And then the count he says something to Miss Rossano in his own lingo--language, I should ha' said, sir, begging your pardon--and Miss Rossano she answers him back again, and they get a-talking till there was tears in both their eyes, sir. And then Miss Rossano she fetches out her purse, sir, and she takes a ten-pound note, and here it is." Hinge took it from his waistcoat pocket, and opened it out before me. "Of course, sir, I didn't want to take it, for whatever little bit I done I done it for my own amus.e.m.e.nt, as a man may say. I've had a-many larks in my time, but I never was paid for none of them like that--two pound a week pension for a lifetime and a easy job into the bargain. I didn't want to take this, sir," Hinge continued, folding up the note and restoring it to his pocket; "but Miss Rossano she comes at me and shut it into my hand with both her own, whether I would or no, and all of a sudden, sir--" He stopped with a gulp, and swallowed laboriously twice or thrice. I was tickled, but I was touched at the same time, and touched pretty deeply; but I could not afford to show that to Hinge, and I dare say I looked pretty hard and stern at him.

"What did she do?" I asked, rather gruffly.

"She--she kissed my 'and, sir; that un." He held out his right hand and looked at it as if it were, in some sort, a wonder. "I never seen anything done like it," said Hinge. "And I was that took aback, and that delighted, and that flabbergastered!"

Hinge positively began to blubber, and what with, the mirth of it, and my own vivid sense of Violet's feeling at the time, and this revelation of the simple fellow's goodness, I was very near doing the same myself.

I verily believe that I should have joined Hinge, and a very pretty pair we should have made (for I have found at the theatre and elsewhere that there is no way of disposing a man to tears like the way of making him laugh through affection and sympathy beforehand); but luckily for myself, I made s.h.i.+ft to ask him, in a bl.u.s.tering way, what he meant by it, and to order him out of the room. He was so very shamefaced while he waited upon me at breakfast after this that I would have given a good deal to shake hands with him, and to tell him that he was a very fine fellow; but though I have known that impulse many times in my life, and have sometimes felt it very strongly, I have never been able to obey it, and I know that with many people I have pa.s.sed through life as a hard man--perhaps to my own advantage.

This was the beginning of a strange day--the day on which I had my first suspicion of Brunow, and the day of poor old Ruffiano's betrayal, in which I myself had an unconscious hand. It came about in this way: I had seen at a gun-maker's shop in the Strand some weeks before a brace of revolvers which had greatly taken my fancy. They were not the old-fas.h.i.+oned, clumsy pepper-caster which I can very well remember as having been used in actual warfare, and, indeed, esteemed as a deadly weapon, but were new from America, with all the latest patents. I had already examined them thoroughly, and had made up my mind to buy them when the time came; but I was afraid of acc.u.mulating expenses, and it was only now when the pinch of war was so near that I could find the heart to part with the money. Hinge went with me, keeping his usual place at a pace or half a pace behind my right shoulder, so that I could talk to him whenever I had a mind, while he still kept the position which he thought consistent with his master's dignity. Just as I came upon Charing Cross I sighted Ruffiano; and he, seeing me at the same moment, hurried across the street in his impetuous fas.h.i.+on, and barely escaped being run over. The escape was so very close, that when he reached me I congratulated him heartily, though if I had known what was going to happen I might much more properly have commiserated him. But the future is in no man's knowledge, and I have often been forced to think that that is a blessed thing, and one to be heartily thankful for.

I have been happy at many moments, and so have those nearest and dearest to me, when, if we could have known what an hour would bring forth, we should have been profoundly mournful in antic.i.p.ation of an event not yet guessed of.

Poor old Ruffiano was full of enthusiasm and full of news. He was better dressed than I had ever seen him before, and in consequence less remarkable to look at.

"You shall congratulate me on more than that," said the good old man, smilingly. "Within a few hours I shall have news straight from home, and but for you--see now how one thing depends upon another--it might never have reached me at all. Had I never known you I might never have known your excellent and estimable young friend, the Honorable Mr. Brunow, and," he continued, smiling and bending over me, to lay the tip of a bony finger on either of my shoulders before he straightened himself to his gaunt height, "it is evident that if I had never met the Honorable Mr. Brunow it would not have been possible for the Honorable Mr. Brunow to bring me news."

"You get your news from Brunow?" I responded, little guessing what it meant, and feeling in my blind ignorance quite friendly towards Brunow for having done anything to give the sad exile so much pleasure. "And I needn't ask you if the news is good news."

"I am told it is," he responded; "but I have it yet to hear." He explained to me that he had two sisters resident in Italy, who lived at tolerable ease upon what the family confiscations had left them of their property. "They would have maintained me well," said the old man, with his cordial, innocent smile, "but I have always pretended to them to want nothing. They have children, and young men will be expensive, and I get on very well without infringing on their little store. They live together at Posilippo, and a neighbor of theirs, one Signor Alfieri, the bearer of a great name, you observe--it is like an Englishman having Mr.

Shakespeare coming to see him--this Signor Alfieri is a neighbor and a friend of theirs. He would have called upon me, but he failed to find me, and he sails for Italy to-night. I meet him at--I forget the name, but it is on your river, and the Honorable Mr. Brunow is so good as to be my guide. Come with me," he said, suddenly. "You will learn the very latest news of Italy, and you will meet a good patriot who will tell you what was actually doing three weeks ago."

Now it happened, as fate would have it, that I was free that evening and that Violet was engaged. If I had had any chance of meeting her I should have declined Ruffiano's invitation; but the night seemed likely to be vacant of employment, the old man seemed solicitous, and I saw no reason for refusing him. Quite apart from that it would, as he suggested, be agreeable and perhaps useful to know at first-hand what an Italian thought of the chances of the rising which must have been imminent when he left his country. So I made arrangements to meet Ruffiano and to dine with him at the same Italian restaurant in the upper room of which we held our meeting, and after this I shook hands and went about my own business.

It was dark when we met again, for this was only the fifth day of March, and it was about half-past six in the evening. Ruffiano told me that he had left word at Brunow's lodgings that he might be found here, and we ate our simple dinner, drank our half-flask of Chianti together, and had already reached our coffee and cigars when Brunow came to keep his appointment. He was astonished to find me there, and, I thought, disagreeably astonished. Remembering the terms on which we had parted when we had last Been each other, I was a little surprised at this. I have said already that at our parting on that occasion we shook hands for the last time. It was not because I did not offer him my hand on this occasion, but he seemed not to see it, and I took it back again, resolved in my own mind not to be angry with him, and thinking it probable that he had some attack of his old infirmity of temper.

"Ah, you are here!" cried Ruffiano, rising and half embracing him. "It is a pity you were not here earlier. We have had a jolly little dinner and a jolly little talk."

I seem to hear the old fellow's voice now, with its quaint accent, the "jollia leetle dinnera" and the "jol-lia leetle talka," with his half-childish-sounding vowel at the end of almost every word. 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. I have sometimes thought it possible that he counted on his own apparent simplicity for safety, but in that case he could not have counted how far his embarra.s.sment at the beginning had invited suspicion and misunderstanding.

First of all, he made some little effort to back out of the undertaking, and then, Ruffiano describing himself as being altogether disappointed, he became resigned, and undertook to pilot us to the place of rendezvous. He had a cab outside, one of the old-fas.h.i.+oned four-wheeled hackney-coaches, and as he led us to it some stranger, entering the restaurant, jostled him at the door. He turned with his face towards me at this instant by accident, and I saw that he was as pale as death, and had a queer flush of color at the eyes. His manner was alternately strangely alert and curiously preoccupied, and altogether I knew not what to make of him. The man who drove the cab had evidently had his orders beforehand, and knew exactly where he was expected to go, for he started off without a word. We seemed, to my mind, to travel interminably, for in the course of the journey I fell rather more than half asleep, and at wakeful and observant intervals found myself in portions of the town which, though I have always boasted to know London pretty well, were altogether strange to me. First I made out, with a kind of half-wakeful start, that we were at Whitechapel, and waking, as it seemed to me, a wink or two later, I found that we were in a region of docks and public-houses, with here and there a sulky gleam of dock-water or of river showing under the dark sky--rare pa.s.sengers and rarer tenements. But, of course, I had not the faintest reason for suspecting anybody, and we went rumbling on, I pretty sleepy, and pretty full of a satisfactory dinner after a hungry day, and Brunow and Ruffiano silent, as it seemed to me, nearly the whole length of the road. After, perhaps, an hour and a half's driving, Brunow woke me by calling impatiently to the cabman, and I came to the full possession of myself in time to see the vehicle swerve suddenly to the right. My prolonged drowse half refreshed me, and the cold, wet air which blew up from the river through the window Brunow had opened fell freshly on my cheek. I could see the river gleaming ahead, with s.p.a.ces of liquid blackness in it, and a red or green light burning here and there. It was still raining, and the clouds were heavy in the south and west. We stopped almost at the river-side, before a tumble-down-looking little public-house, and here Brunow alighted hastily. A hulking fellow leaned against the door-jamb smoking a short pipe; and Brunow addressing an inquiry to him, he jerked his thumb towards the river, and answered: "Just got steam up. Start in an hour at the outside."

"Is there no boat?" Brunow asked.

"Boat?" said the man, spitting lazily into the road; "boats enough, if you care to pay for 'em."

"You hear," said Brunow, turning, and Ruffiano, dragging his gaunt length out of the cab and stumbling with some difficulty to the rough, dark pavement, called out for a boat by all means.

"I will see him but for a minute," he said; "but it will be better than nothing. I should be loath to make such a journey without result."

"Find us a boat," said Brunow. He spoke in such a voice as a man might have used if he had ordered his own execution, and I remarked that at the time. I can see now that a hundred thousand things were happening to advise me of the truth, but I was as ignorant and as unsuspicious of it as if I had been a baby. The man at the door lounged out into the road, and with a turn of the head invited us to follow him. We obeyed this voiceless bidding, and in a very little while found ourselves on a rough quay at the river-side. We descended a set of break-neck steps, and in another minute found ourselves afloat. The man pulled with leisurely, strong strokes to where a boat lay in midstream, with its green light towards us; and nearing the vessel, raised a hoa.r.s.e cry, "s.h.i.+p ahoy there!" The cry was answered from aboard the boat, and a ladder was lowered to us by which we climbed on deck. Brunow went first, Ruffiano followed, and I went third. It struck me as a surprising thing that at the very minute on which my foot struck the ladder the boat shot from under me. I sang out aloud to the man to ask where he was going, but he returned no answer save in a sneering and insolent-sounding growl, which might have meant anything or nothing. My conclusion was that he was coming back in time to take us away again, and I gave the matter no further heed, but followed Ruffiano on deck, still unsuspicious. My first surprise came when a man in a dreadnaught jacket and a sou'wester asked in German, "Is that the man?" and, without waiting for an answer, sang below, "Full steam ahead!" Even then I had no idea of a plan to carry off anybody, but I was astonished to find a man talking German and giving orders in German on a craft which I had imagined to be Italian.

"But why full steam ahead?" I asked Brunow; and he turned upon me in the darkness with a faltering in his voice.

"I don't know," he said. "There's something infernally strange about all this. Have we been trapped? This fellow's a German."

"Trapped!" I answered. "How should we be trapped?"