In Direst Peril Part 8

CHAPTER VII

It was a strange and memorable journey home with the escaped prisoner, and men have been rarely more embarra.s.sed than Brunow and myself. We had to deal with the strangest creature, a thing alternately beast and gentleman, sensitive in every fibre of his nature, and so animalized by that awful life of imprisonment that he was a constant dread and terror to himself. To see him slinking in his corner of the railway carriage or any room at our one or two halting-places, dull, blear-eyed, with his fingers tapping at his teeth, was pitiable and dreadful, but not so pitiable and dreadful as to see him grow suddenly conscious of his state and aspect and awake to some shamefaced effort to arouse himself and rea.s.sert the manhood that had once been in him.

The most astonis.h.i.+ng thing in him was the way in which, through all these silent and horrible years, he had possessed his faculty of speech. He had been an exceptional linguist in his youth, and he was an exceptional linguist still. He was most companionable and least embarra.s.sed with us when he was in the dark, and it was in the dark on the deck of the steam-packet which carried us to Dover that he gave me the secret of his retention of this faculty.

He sat with one arm thrown over the vessel's rail and with his face half averted.

"Do you know, sir," I said, after trying in a dozen ways to draw him out, and after having failed in all of them--"do you know, sir, that I am quite sure of one thing about you?"

"What is that?" he asked.

"During all those years of cruel solitude you never abandoned the hope of freedom."

"How should you know that?" he demanded, with a strange and vivid manner. I had never known him so roused and interested, even when I bad told him of the existence of his daughter.

"You have carefully preserved your power over language," I answered.

"You would never have cared to do that if you had not had some hope of future freedom."

"I had no hope of freedom," he returned. "But everything else had gone that held me from the beasts, and that I determined should not go. I am no poet, but I have occupied myself in making verses. I have done into verse every incident of my life, and the character and aspect of every person I have known. I have translated every line into every language of which I am master. I have hundreds of thousands of lines in my head--how can I tell how many? They are poor enough, I dare say, but I could talk every working day for weeks and not exhaust them. They are in French, Italian, German, English, Spanish, in Greek and Latin, in the patois of a half-dozen districts of my native country. How many hundreds of thousands of hours have had no other occupation. But for that I had gone mad, my friend."

He rose and began to pace the deck, and I watched him. The night was calm, and the sea was like a mill-pond. Sometimes he forgot himself, and prowled with bent shoulders and clasped hands in a limited s.p.a.ce, walking to and fro, with a sharp check at the end of such brief promenade, as if an invisible world had put a limit to the s.p.a.ce he moved in; that was the jail-bird's gait, and the prison limits were about him again to his unconscious memory. Then, at other times he would a.s.sert himself with an effort only too visible. He would lift his head, throw out his chest, and march the full length of the deck with an a.s.surance of freedom and manhood. But the slouching gait was always back in a minute, and his unconscious fancy began to confine his footsteps once more. On a sudden he paused in his walk and stretched out his right hand.

"That light?" he said.

"Dover," I answered. "We shall land in half an hour."

We were fortunately alone, for I would not have had it happen in the presence of a stranger for a thousand pounds. I had scarcely spoken when he dropped his face into both his hands and broke into an hysteric fit of crying. His limbs failed him; and in the pa.s.sion of his emotion he would certainly have fallen to the deck if I had not put an arm about him. His poor body was all crate and basket, ribs and spine; and the wretched man's skeleton figure shook in my arms as if each sob were an explosion. He laid his head on my shoulder at last, and I put my other arm round him and held him to my breast. I love my country, and I thank G.o.d for her daily that she is free, and has taught the world the lessons of freedom, for that is the great and just pride of all Englishmen; but I never blessed her in my heart as I did then.

"G.o.d bless the dear old land," I said. "There is freedom there at least."

I did not know that I had spoken until he answered me.

"There is freedom there," he said, in his foreign voice, broken with sobs. "Thank G.o.d for freedom."

The town lights were almost blotted out for me; but I hugged him and patted him with less shame than I should have felt if he had been an Englishman. He disengaged himself at last and shook me by the hand, and began his promenade again. Before we had exchanged another word we were slowing alongside the pier, and men were bustling along the deck and racing beside us on the land. Brunow came on deck, and Hinge got together our simple baggage.

We had but just landed when I saw two ladies, whom I recognized at once.

Miss Rossano and Lady Rollinson were waiting to meet us. Miss Rossano came to me and took my hand in both hers.

"Thank you, Captain Fyffe," she said. "My father is here?"

"You are my daughter?" said the count.

She bent and kissed him on the forehead gravely, and with perfect self-possession. An onlooker, who had known nothing of the story, would have guessed little from their meeting. They had a carriage in waiting, and Miss Rossano led the count towards it.

"You will join us at the Lord Warden?" she said. And at that minute Brunow approached her. She took his hand in both of her own, precisely as she had taken mine; but entered the carriage without a word to him.

Now, I have said nothing lately of my feeling for Miss Rossano; but anybody who reads this record may be sure that what had happened since I had last seen her had not tended to put her out of my mind. I knew that I was going to be very happy, or very unhappy, about her. I knew that the power lay in her hands to make my life mainly cloud or mainly suns.h.i.+ne. That was quite settled in my own mind by this time, and my wife and I have laughed a thousand times and more about it. Yes; I knew scarcely anything about her, and yet I was prepared to fight in the a.s.surance that she possessed every virtue and every grace of character which I have since proved in her. This is the folly of love; but it is at the same time that which makes it so beautiful. Most young men, and most young women, live to be disillusioned. 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. She had spoken to me--_ergo_, she could speak. She had not spoken to him--_ergo_, the emotion of encountering him was too great for her. We had been six years married when I told her of this.

I saw her with both hands reached out to help her father into the carriage. I saw her beautiful face, so soft and serious and lofty in its look that I have no words to say how it touched me. The carriage drove away. Hinge shouldered our bit of luggage easily, and Brunow and I walked up to the hotel side by side. We were met in the hall by a waiter who asked us if we would go to Lady Rollinson's sitting-room in half an hour, and then Brunow and I went to a private room of our own, and drank each a pint of English ale, as every Englishman did on reaching the Lord Warden in those days. It was a libation to liberty, the health of welcome home which the loneliest traveller poured when he felt himself upon his native land again after an absence however temporary.

When we had got through this ceremony we sat glum and silent enough, and I have since thought it likely that Brunow was as much hurt at the difference in our greetings as I had been. For Miss Rossano had thanked me in words and had not spoken to him, and he was probably reading the thing the other way about. But he was much more at home within himself than I was, and at any time I don't think he was capable of any very deep feeling. Perhaps I do him less than justice, and we are all apt to think our sensations more striking and real than those of other people.

At the appointed time we went out into the corridor and walked to the room which bore the number the waiter had already given us. I tapped at the door, and Lady Rollinson admitted us. The count sat in a plush-covered arm-chair and his daughter leaned above him with a hand on either shoulder. The scene looked purely domestic, and if a stranger had seen it he would have discovered nothing unusual in it. At the moment at which I entered the count's hand strayed to his shoulder, and for a mere instant touched the hand which rested there. His daughter's hand closed upon it and held it, and she looked up with her beautiful face bright with feeling.

"Be seated, gentlemen," said the count, and we obeyed him. "I have tried to thank you often, but I have never succeeded. I shall succeed less than ever now, but I thank you."

Lady Rollinson sat in one corner of the room with some trifle of woman's work in her hand, pretending to be busy over it. She looked up at Miss Rossano once or twice, and it was plain to see that she had been crying.

As for the girl herself, her eyes shone, her beautiful lips were apart, her color came and went, and it would have been evident to the dullest sight that she was deeply moved; but she showed no sign of having shed tears, and looked altogether brave and exultant. It was a beautiful thing to notice the caressing and protecting air with which she leaned above the count; and it was strange to read the likeness which existed between her bright young face and his worn lineaments.

We had paused more than once upon our journey, and he was in all respects trimmed and dressed as became a gentleman. As he sat there with his face alight and his whole manner animated, there was no trace of the jail-bird period about him. I remembered the man I had first seen at Pollia--the man with the colorless face, the sunken eyes, the matted hair and beard--and was puzzled to identify him with the polished gentleman who sat before me. And yet, in spite of the disguise, the jail-bird was back again in as little time as it would take to snap your thumb and finger. The cloud lowered upon him in a second, and he sat biting his nails with an air altogether lost and furtive. I think his daughter first read the change in him from my own look, for after one swift glance at me she bent over him and gazed into his face. He seemed unconscious of her presence or of ours.

"You were saying, dear--" she said, and there halted.

He looked up with an undecided half-return to his former brightness.

"I was saying--" he began, and then stopped, as if searching in his own mind for the clew to what had pa.s.sed a moment earlier.

"You were thanking Captain Fyffe and Mr. Brunow."

"Gentlemen," said the count, with a complete momentary repossession of himself, "I know not how to thank you. You have seen enough already to know that the life I have led this many year's has left its mark upon me. I fail in words--sometimes, to tell you the whole truth, I fail in feelings. There are moments when I have not even the heart to be glad that I am free again. But you will understand, and you will forgive because you understand. If words of grat.i.tude do not come easily to my tongue, it is not because you have not deserved them."

"The man who really deserves the thanks of all of us," I answered, "is Corporal Hinge. Without him we should have been nonplussed; with him everything fell out in the simplest way. We have encountered no difficulty, and run no dangers."

"But," said Brunow, in his lightest and airiest fas.h.i.+on, as if he disclaimed credit in the very act of claiming it, "I need hardly tell Miss Rossano that in fulfilling the commission we accepted at her hands we should have been delighted to encounter either. As it was we had the most extraordinary good-fortune in the world. The whole thing has been a chapter of happy accidents."

"It pleases you to say so," said the count; "but my daughter and I enjoy no less the privilege of grat.i.tude."

The position was embarra.s.sing; for the more I thought about it the more I saw how little we had done, and how plain and simple a piece of duty it had been to do that little.

"Your father is tired, Miss Rossano," I said, taking the shortest way out of the difficulty. "You and he, besides, will have a thousand things to say to each other with which n.o.body else will have a right to interfere." I rose and held out my hand, and she came from behind her father's chair to meet me with an exquisite frankness.

"You shall have my thanks, Captain Fyffe," she said, "all my life long, whether you disclaim them or not. And you too, Mr. Brunow. I suppose we all go to town together?"

The count had risen from his seat while she spoke, and stood before us with one hand stretched out to Brunow and the other to myself. "I am poor in words," he said, with a shaking voice; "I am poor in everything.

But believe me, gentlemen, I thank you, and shall thank you always. For whatever of life is left to me I am yours."

Two or three tears rolled over from his bright, sunken eyes, ran down the deep-channelled line in his cheeks, which misery and solitude had bitten there, and rested in his white mustache. He gripped our hands hard, and, turning away from us, sat down again.

We said good-night in hushed voices, as if we were speaking in a church or a sick-chamber, and came away.

Even at this, distance of time I am ashamed of my own sensations; but when I got away to my own room my whole feeling was one of disappointment and dissatisfaction. I had meant to do everything by myself--to have had no rival, to have brought back Miss Rossano's father unaided, and to have taken whatever grat.i.tude was due for that service entirely to myself. As it turned out, I had done nothing. The original discovery of the count's whereabouts was entirely due to Brunow. Without him the expedition would have been fruitless, and but for the pure accident of Hinge's presence we should both have been helpless.

My bedroom window overlooked the sea, and I sat at it for three or four hours, smoking and staring across the motionless waste of water before the truth about myself occurred to me. When it came it brought as little comfort as the truth is apt to bring. I saw that my whole purpose had been to do something that should make me look n.o.ble and exceptional in Miss Rossano's eyes, and that the recovery of a living man from that infernal dungeon meant almost nothing in contrast with my own selfish wishes.

It took a long time to swallow that pill, and it took a longer time yet to digest it; but it had a wholesome effect upon me, and I was all the better for it in the end.