became alive to the recollection that our work was terribly behindhand.
Miss Clifton also became grave, and sat at the end of the counter very
quiet and subdued, as if her frolic were over, and it was possible she
might find something to repent of in it. I had told her we should stop
no more until we reached Euston-square station, but to my surprise I felt
our speed decreasing, and our train coming to a standstill. I looked out
and called to the guard in the van behind, who told me he supposed there
was something on the line before us, and that we should go on in a minute
or two. I turned my head, and gave this information to my fellow-clerk
and Miss Clifton.
“Do you know where we are?” she asked, in a frightened tone.
“At Camden-town,” I replied. She sprang hastily from her seat, and came
towards me.
“I am close to my friend’s house here,” she said, “so it is a lucky thing
for me. It is not five minutes’ walk from the station. I will say
good-bye to you now, Mr. Wilcox, and I thank you a thousand times for
your kindness.”
She seemed flurried, and she held out both her little hands to me in an
appealing kind of way, as if she were afraid of my detaining her against
her will. I took them both into mine, pressing them with rather more
ardour than was quite necessary.
“I do not like you to go alone at this hour,” I said, “but there is no
help for it. It has been a delightful time to me. Will you allow me to
call upon you to-morrow morning early, for I leave London at 10.30; or on
Wednesday, when I shall be in town again?”
“O,” she answered, hanging her head, “I don’t know. I’ll write and tell
mamma how kind you have been, and, and—but I must go, Mr. Wilcox.”
“I don’t like your going alone,” I repeated.
“O! I know the way perfectly,” she said, in the same flurried manner,
“perfectly, thank you. And it is close at hand. Goodbye.”
She jumped lightly out of the carriage, and the train started on again at
the same instant. We were busy enough, as you may suppose. In five
minutes more we should be in Euston-square, and there was nearly fifteen
minutes’ work still to be done. Spite of the enjoyment he had afforded
me, I mentally anathematised Mr. Huntingdon and his departure from
ordinary rules, and, thrusting Miss Clifton forcibly out of my thoughts,
I set to work with a will, gathered up the registered letters for London,
tied them into a bundle with the paper bill, and then turned to the
corner of the counter for the despatch-box.
You have guessed already my cursed misfortune. The Premier’s
despatch-box was not there. For the first minute or so I was in nowise
alarmed, and merely looked round, upon the floor, under the bags, into
the boxes, into any place into which it could have fallen or been
deposited. We reached Euston-square while I was still searching, and
losing more and more of my composure every instant. Tom Morville joined
me in my quest, and felt every bag which had been made up and sealed.
The box was no small article which could go into little compass; it was
certainly twelve inches long, and more than that in girth. But it turned
up nowhere. I never felt nearer fainting than at that moment.
“Could Miss Clifton have carried it off?” suggested Tom Morville.
“No,” I said, indignantly but thoughtfully, “she couldn’t have carried
off such a bulky thing as that, without our seeing it. It would not go
into one of our pockets, Tom, and she wore a tight-fitting jacket that
would not conceal anything.”
“No, she can’t have it,” assented Tom; “then it must be somewhere about.”
We searched again and again, turning over everything in the van, but
without success. The Premier’s despatch-box was gone; and all we could
do at first was to stand and stare at one another. Our trance of blank
dismay was of short duration, for the van was assailed by the postmen
from St. Martin’s-le-Grand, who were waiting for our charge. In a stupor
of bewilderment we completed our work, and delivered up the mails; then,
once more we confronted one another with pale faces, frightened out of
our seven senses. All the scrapes we had ever been in (and we had had
our usual share of errors and blunders) faded into utter insignificance
compared with this. My eye fell upon Mr. Huntingdon’s order lying among
some scraps of waste paper on the floor, and I picked it up, and put it
carefully, with its official envelope, into my pocket.
“We can’t stay here,” said Tom. The porters were looking in
inquisitively; we were seldom so long in quitting our empty van.
“No,” I replied, a sudden gleam of sense darting across the blank
bewilderment of my brain; “no, we must go to head-quarters at once, and
make a clean breast of it. This is no private business, Tom.”
We made one more ineffectual search, and then we hailed a cab and drove
as hard as we could to the General Post-office. The secretary of the
Post-office was not there, of course, but we obtained the address of his
residence in one of the suburbs, four or five miles from the City, and we
told no one of our misfortune, my idea being that the fewer who were made
acquainted with the loss the better. My judgment was in the right there.
We had to knock up the household of the secretary—a formidable personage
with whom I had never been brought into contact before—and in a short
time we were holding a strictly private and confidential interview with
him, by the glimmer of a solitary candle, just serving to light up his
severe face, which changed its expression several times as I narrated the
calamity. It was too stupendous for rebuke, and I fancied his eyes
softened with something like commiseration as he gazed upon us. After a
short interval of deliberation, he announced his intention of
accompanying us to the residence of the Secretary of State; and in a few
minutes we were driving back again to the opposite extremity of London.
It was not far off the hour for the morning delivery of letters when we
reached our destination; but the atmosphere was yellow with fog, and we
could see nothing as we passed along in almost utter silence, for neither
of us ventured to speak, and the secretary only made a brief remark now
and then. We drove up to some dwelling enveloped in fog, and we were
left in the cab for nearly half an hour, while our secretary went in. At
the end of that time we were summoned to an apartment where there was
seated at a large desk a small spare man, with a great head, and eyes
deeply sunk under the brows. There was no form of introduction, of
course, and we could only guess who he might be; but we were requested to
repeat our statement, and a few shrewd questions were put to us by the
stranger. We were eager to put him in possession of everything we knew,
but that was little beyond the fact that the despatch-box was lost.
“That young person must have taken it,” he said.
“She could not, sir,” I answered, positively, but deferentially. “She
wore the tightest-fitting pelisse I ever saw, and she gave me both her
hands when she said good-bye. She could not possibly have it concealed
about her. It would not go into my pocket.”
“How did she come to travel up with you in the van, sir?” he asked
severely.
I gave him for answer the order signed by Mr. Huntingdon. He and our
secretary scanned it closely.
“It is Huntingdon’s signature without doubt,” said the latter; “I could
swear to it anywhere. This is an extraordinary circumstance!”
It was an extraordinary circumstance. The two retired into an adjoining
room, where they stayed for another half-hour, and when they returned to
us their faces still bore an aspect of grave perplexity.
“Mr. Wilcox and Mr. Morville,” said our secretary, “it is expedient that
this affair should be kept inviolably secret. You must even be careful
not to hint that you hold any secret. You did well not to announce your
loss at the Post-office, and I shall cause it to be understood that you
had instructions to take the despatch-box direct to its destination.
Your business now is to find the young woman, and return with her not
later than six o’clock this afternoon to my office at the General
Post-office. What other steps we think it requisite to take, you need
know nothing about; the less you know, the better for yourselves.”
Another gleam of commiseration in his official eye made our hearts sink
within us. We departed promptly, and, with that instinct of wisdom which
at times dictates infallibly what course we should pursue, we decided our
line of action. Tom Morville was to go down to Camden-town, and inquire
at every house for Miss Clifton, while I—there would be just time for
it—was to run down to Eaton by train and obtain her exact address from
her parents. We agreed to meet at the General Post-office at half-past
five, if I could possibly reach it by that time; but in any case Tom was
to report himself to the secretary and account for my absence.
When I arrived at the station at Eaton, I found that I had only
forty-five minutes before the up train went by. The town was nearly a
mile away, but I made all the haste I could to reach it. I was not
surprised to find the post-office in connexion with a bookseller’s shop,
and I saw a pleasant elderly lady seated behind the counter, while a tall
dark-haired girl was sitting at some work a little out of sight. I
introduced myself at once.
“I am Frank Wilcox, of the railway post-office, and I have just run down
to Eaton to obtain some information from you.”
“Certainly. We know you well by name,” was the reply, given in a cordial
manner, which was particularly pleasant to me.
“Will you be so good as give me the address of Miss Anne Clifton in
Camden-town?” I said.
“Miss Anne Clifton?” ejaculated the lady.
“Yes. Your daughter, I presume. Who went up to London last night.”
“I have no daughter Anne,” she said; “I am Anne Clifton, and my daughters
are named Mary and Susan. This is my daughter Mary.”
The tall dark-haired girl had left her seat, and now stood beside her
mother. Certainly she was very unlike the small golden-haired coquette
who had travelled up to London with me as Anne Clifton.
“Madam,” I said, scarcely able to speak, “is your other daughter a
slender little creature, exactly the reverse of this young lady?”
“No,” she answered, laughing; “Susan is both taller and darker than Mary.
Call Susan, my dear.”
In a few seconds Miss Susan made her appearance, and I had the three
before me—A. Clifton, S. Clifton, and M. Clifton. There was no other
girl in the family; and when I described the young lady who had travelled
under their name, they could not think of any one in the town—it was a
small one—who answered my description, or who had gone on a visit to
London. I had no time to spare, and I hurried back to the station, just
catching the train as it left the platform. At the appointed hour I met
Morville at the General Post-office, and threading the long passages of
the secretary’s offices, we at length found ourselves anxiously waiting
in an ante-room, until we were called into his presence. Morville had
discovered nothing, except that the porters and policemen at Camden-town
station had seen a young lady pass out last night, attended by a swarthy
man who looked like a foreigner, and carried a small black portmanteau.
I scarcely know how long we waited; it might have been years, for I was
conscious of an ever-increasing difficulty in commanding my thoughts, or
fixing them upon the subject which had engrossed them all day. I had not
tasted food for twenty-four hours, nor closed my eyes for thirty-six,
while, during the whole of the time, my nervous system had been on full
strain.
Presently, the summons came, and I was ushered, first, into the inner
apartment. There sat five gentlemen round a table, which was strewed
with a number of documents. There were the Secretary of State, whom we
had seen in the morning, our secretary, and Mr. Huntingdon; the fourth
was a fine-looking man, whom I afterwards knew to be the Premier; the
fifth I recognised as our great chief, the Postmaster-General. It was an
august assemblage to me, and I bowed low; but my head was dizzy, and my
throat parched.
“Mr. Wilcox,” said our secretary, “you will tell these gentlemen again,
the circumstances of the loss you reported to me this morning.”
I laid my hand upon the back of a chair to steady myself, and went
through the narration for the third time, passing over sundry remarks
made by myself to the young lady. That done, I added the account of my
expedition to Eaton, and the certainty at which I had arrived that my
fellow-traveller was not the person she represented herself to be. After
which, I inquired with indescribable anxiety if Mr. Huntingdon’s order
were a forgery?
“I cannot tell, Mr. Wilcox,” said that gentleman, taking the order into
his hands, and regarding it with an air of extreme perplexity. “I could
have sworn it was mine, had it been attached to any other document. I
think Forbes’s handwriting is not so well imitated. But it is the very
ink I use, and mine is a peculiar signature.”
It was a very peculiar and old-fashioned signature, with a flourish
underneath it not unlike a whip-handle, with the lash caught round it in
the middle; but that did not make it the more difficult to forge, as I
humbly suggested. Mr. Huntingdon wrote his name upon a paper, and two or
three of the gentlemen tried to imitate the flourish, but vainly. They
gave it up with a smile upon their grave faces.
“You have been careful not to let a hint of this matter drop from you,
Mr. Wilcox?” said the Postmaster-General.
“Not a syllable, my lord,” I answered.
“It is imperatively necessary that the secret should be kept. You would
be removed from the temptation of telling it, if you had an appointment
in some office abroad. The packet-agency at Alexandria is vacant, and I
will have you appointed to it at once.”
It would be a good advance from my present situation, and would doubtless
prove a stepping-stone to other and better appointments; but I had a
mother living at Fazeley, bedridden and paralytic, who had no pleasure in
existence except having me to dwell under the same roof with her. My
head was growing more and more dizzy, and a strange vagueness was
creeping over me.
“Gentlemen,” I muttered, “I have a bedridden mother whom I cannot leave.
I was not to blame, gentlemen.” I fancied there was a stir and movement
at the table, but my eyes were dim, and in another second I had lost
consciousness.
When I came to myself, in two or three minutes, I found that Mr.
Huntingdon was kneeling on the floor beside me, supporting my head, while
our secretary held a glass of wine to my lips. I rallied as quickly as
possible, and staggered to my feet; but the two gentlemen placed me in
the chair against which I had been leaning, and insisted upon my
finishing the wine before I tried to speak.
“I have not tasted food all day,” I said, faintly.
“Then, my good fellow, you shall go home immediately,” said the
Postmaster-General; “but be on your guard! Not a word of this must
escape you. Are you a married man?”
“No, my lord,” I answered.
“So much the better,” he added, smiling. “You can keep a secret from
your mother, I dare say. We rely upon your honour.”
The secretary then rang a bell, and I was committed to the charge of the
messenger who answered it; and in a few minutes I was being conveyed in a
cab to my London lodgings. A week afterwards, Tom Morville was sent out
to a post-office in Canada, where he settled down, married, and is still
living, perfectly satisfied with his position, as he occasionally informs
me by letter. For myself, I remained as I desired, in my old post as
travelling-clerk until the death of my mother, which occurred some ten or
twelve months afterwards. I was then promoted to an appointment as a
clerk in charge, upon the first vacancy.
The business of the clerks in charge is to take possession of any
post-office in the kingdom, upon the death or resignation of the
postmaster, or when circumstances of suspicion cause his suspension from
office. My new duties carried me three or four times into Mr.
Huntingdon’s district. Though that gentleman and I never exchanged a
word with regard to the mysterious loss in which we had both had an
innocent share, he distinguished me with peculiar favour, and more than
once invited me to visit him at his own house. He lived alone, having
but one daughter, who had married, somewhat against his will, one of his
clerks: the Mr. Forbes whose handwriting had been so successfully
imitated in the official order presented to me by the self-styled Miss
Anne Clifton. (By the way, I may here mention, though it has nothing to
do with my story, that my acquaintance with the Cliftons had ripened into
an intimacy, which resulted in my engagement and marriage to Mary.)
It would be beside my purpose to specify the precise number of years
which elapsed before I was once again summoned to the secretary’s private
apartment, where I found him closeted with Mr. Huntingdon. Mr.
Huntingdon shook hands with unofficial cordiality; and then the secretary
proceeded to state the business on hand.
“Mr. Wilcox, you remember our offer to place you in office in
Alexandria?” he said.
“Certainly, sir,” I answered.
“It has been a troublesome office,” he continued, almost pettishly. “We
sent out Mr. Forbes only six months ago, on account of his health, which
required a warmer climate, and now his medical man reports that his life
is not worth three weeks’ purchase.”
Upon Mr. Huntingdon’s face there rested an expression of profound
anxiety; and as the secretary paused he addressed himself to me.
“Mr. Wilcox,” he said, “I have been soliciting, as a personal favour,
that you should be sent out to take charge of the packet-agency, in order
that my daughter may have some one at hand to befriend her, and manage
her business affairs for her. You are not personally acquainted with
her, but I know I can trust her with you.”
“You may, Mr. Huntingdon,” I said, warmly. “I will do anything I can to
aid Mrs. Forbes. When do you wish me to start?”
“How soon can you be ready?” was the rejoinder.
“To-morrow morning.”
I was not married then, and I anticipated no delay in setting off. Nor
was there any. I travelled with the overland mail through France to
Marseilles, embarked in a vessel for Alexandria, and in a few days from
the time I first heard of my destination set foot in the office there.
All the postal arrangements had fallen into considerable irregularity and
confusion; for, as I was informed immediately on my arrival, Mr. Forbes
had been in a dying condition for the last week, and of course the
absence of a master had borne the usual results. I took formal
possession of the office, and then, conducted by one of the clerks, I
proceeded to the dwelling of the unfortunate postmaster and his no less
unfortunate wife. It would be out of place in this narrative to indulge
in any traveller’s tales about the strange place where I was so
unexpectedly located. Suffice it to say, that the darkened sultry room
into which I was shown, on inquiring for Mrs. Forbes, was bare of
furniture, and destitute of all those little tokens of refinement and
taste which make our English parlours so pleasant to the eye. There was,
however, a piano in one of the dark corners of the room, open, and with a
sheet of music on it. While I waited for Mrs. Forbes’s appearance, I
strolled idly up to the piano to see what music it might be. The next
moment my eye fell upon an antique red morocco workbox standing on the
top of the piano—a workbox evidently, for the lid was not closely shut,
and a few threads of silk and cotton were hanging out of it. In a kind
of dream—for it was difficult to believe that the occurrence was a fact—I
carried the box to the darkened window, and there, plain in my sight, was
the device scratched upon the leather: the revolutionary symbol of a
heart with a dagger through it. I had found the Premier’s despatch-box
in the parlour of the packet-agent of Alexandria!
I stood for some minutes with that dream-like feeling upon me, gazing at
the box in the dim obscure light. It could _not_ be real! My fancy must
be playing a trick upon me! But the sound of a light step—for, light as
it was, I heard it distinctly as it approached the room—broke my trance,
and I hastened to replace the box on the piano, and to stoop down as if
examining the music before the door opened. I had not sent in my name to
Mrs. Forbes, for I did not suppose that she was acquainted with it, nor
could she see me distinctly, as I stood in the gloom. But I could see
her. She had the slight slender figure, the childlike face, and the fair
hair of Miss Anne Clifton. She came quickly across the room, holding out
both her hands in a childish appealing manner.
“O!” she wailed, in a tone that went straight to my heart, “he is dead!
He has just died!”
It was no time then to speak about the red morocco workbox. This little
childish creature, who did not look a day older than when I had last seen
her in my travelling post-office, was a widow in a strange land, far away
from any friend save myself. I had brought her a letter from her father.
The first duties that devolved upon me were those of her husband’s
interment, which had to take place immediately. Three or four weeks
elapsed before I could, with any humanity, enter upon the investigation
of her mysterious complicity in the daring theft practised on the
government and the post-office.
I did not see the despatch-box again. In the midst of her new and
vehement grief, Mrs. Forbes had the precaution to remove it before I was
ushered again into the room where I had discovered it. I was at some
trouble to hit upon any plan by which to gain a second sight of it; but I
was resolved that Mrs. Forbes should not leave Alexandria without giving
me a full explanation. We were waiting for remittances and instructions
from England, and in the meantime the violence of her grief abated, and
she recovered a good share of her old buoyancy and loveliness, which had
so delighted me on my first acquaintance with her. As her demands upon
my sympathy weakened, my curiosity grew stronger, and at last mastered
me. I carried with me a netted purse which required mending, and I asked
her to catch up the broken meshes while I waited for it.
“I will tell your maid to bring your workbox,” I said, going to the door
and calling the servant. “Your mistress has a red morocco workbox,” I
said to her, as she answered my summons.
“Yes, sir,” she replied.
“Where is it?”
“In her bedroom,” she said.
“Mrs. Forbes wishes it brought here.” I turned back into the room. Mrs.
Forbes had gone deadly pale, but her eyes looked sullen, and her teeth
were clenched under her lips with an expression of stubbornness. The
maid brought the workbox. I walked, with it in my hands, up to the sofa
where she was seated.
“You remember this mark?” I asked; “I think neither of us can ever forget
it.”
She did not answer by word, but there was a very intelligent gleam in her
blue eyes.
“Now,” I continued, softly, “I promised your father to befriend you, and
I am not a man to forget a promise. But you must tell me the whole
simple truth.”
I was compelled to reason with her, and to urge her for some time. I
confess I went so far as to remind her that there was an English consul
at Alexandria, to whom I could resort. At last she opened her stubborn
lips, and the whole story came out, mingled with sobs and showers of
tears.
She had been in love with Alfred, she said, and they were too poor to
marry, and papa would not hear of such a thing. She was always in want
of money, she was kept so short; and they promised to give her such a
great sum—a vast sum—five hundred pounds.
“But who bribed you?” I inquired.
A foreign gentleman whom she had met in London, called Monsieur Bonnard.
It was a French name, but she was not sure that he was a Frenchman. He
talked to her about her father being a surveyor in the post-office, and
asked her a great number of questions. A few weeks after, she met him in
their own town by accident, she and Mr. Forbes; and Alfred had a long
private talk with him, and they came to her, and told her she could help
them very much. They asked her if she could be brave enough to carry off
a little red box out of the travelling post-office, containing nothing
but papers. After a while she consented. When she had confessed so much
under compulsion, Mrs. Forbes seemed to take a pleasure in the narrative,
and went on fluently.
“We required papa’s signature to the order, and we did not know how to
get it. Luckily he had a fit of the gout, and was very peevish; and I
had to read over a lot of official papers to him, and then he signed
them. One of the papers I read twice, and slipped the order into its
place after the second reading. I thought I should have died with
fright; but just then he was in great pain, and glad to get his work
over. I made an excuse that I was going to visit my aunt at Beckby, but
instead of going there direct, we contrived to be at the station at Eaton
a minute or two before the mail train came up. I kept outside the
station door till we heard the whistle, and just then the postman came
running down the road, and I followed him straight through the
booking-office, and asked him to give you the order, which I put into his
hand. He scarcely saw me. I just caught a glimpse of Monsieur Bonnard’s
face through the window of the compartment next the van, when Alfred had
gone. They had promised me that the train should stop at Camden-town, if
I could only keep your attention engaged until then. You know how I
succeeded.”
“But how did you dispose of the box?” I asked. “You could not have
concealed it about you; that I am sure of.”
“Ah!” she said, “nothing was easier. Monsieur Bonnard had described the
van to me, and you remember I put the box down at the end of the counter,
close to the corner where I hid myself at every station. There was a
door with a window in it, and I asked if I might have the window open, as
the van was too warm for me. I believe Monsieur Bonnard could have taken
it from me by only leaning through his window, but he preferred stepping
out, and taking it from my hand, just as the train was leaving Watford—on
the far side of the carriages, you understand. It was the last station,
and the train came to a stand at Camden-town. After all, the box was not
out of your sight more than twenty minutes before you missed it.
Monsieur Bonnard and I hurried out of the station, and Alfred followed
us. The box was forced open—the lock has never been mended, for it was a
peculiar one—and Monsieur Bonnard took possession of the papers. He left
the box with me, after putting inside it a roll of notes. Alfred and I
were married next morning, and I went back to my aunt’s; but we did not
tell papa of our marriage for three or four months. That is the story of
my red morocco workbox.”
She smiled with the provoking mirthfulness of a mischievous child. There
was one point still, on which my curiosity was unsatisfied.
“Did you know what the despatches were about?” I asked.
“O no!” she answered; “I never understood politics in the least. I knew
nothing about them. Monsieur did not say a word; he did not even look at
the papers while we were by. I would never, never, have taken a
registered letter, or anything with money in it, you know. But all those
papers could be written again quite easily. You must not think me a
thief, Mr. Wilcox; there was nothing worth money among the papers.”
“They were worth five hundred pounds to you,” I said. “Did you ever see
Bonnard again?”
“Never again,” she replied. “He said he was going to return to his
native country. I don’t think Bonnard was his real name.”
Most likely not, I thought; but I said no more to Mrs. Forbes. Once
again I was involved in a great perplexity about this affair. It was
clearly my duty to report the discovery at head-quarters, but I shrank
from doing so. One of the chief culprits was already gone to another
judgment than that of man; several years had obliterated all traces of
Monsieur Bonnard; and the only victim of justice would be this poor
little dupe of the two greater criminals. At last I came to the
conclusion to send the whole of the particulars to Mr. Huntingdon
himself; and I wrote them to him, without remark or comment.
The answer that came to Mrs. Forbes and me in Alexandria was the
announcement of Mr. Huntingdon’s sudden death of some disease of the
heart, on the day which I calculated would put him in possession of my
communication. Mrs. Forbes was again overwhelmed with apparently
heartrending sorrow and remorse. The income left to her was something
less than one hundred pounds a year. The secretary of the post-office,
who had been a personal friend of the deceased gentleman, was his sole
executor; and I received a letter from him, containing one for Mrs.
Forbes, which recommended her, in terms not to be misunderstood, to fix
upon some residence abroad, and not to return to England. She fancied
she would like the seclusion and quiet of a convent; and I made
arrangements for her to enter one in Malta, where she would still be
under British protection. I left Alexandria myself on the arrival of
another packet-agent; and on my return to London I had a private
interview with the secretary. I found that there was no need to inform
him of the circumstances I have related to you, as he had taken
possession of all Mr. Huntingdon’s papers. In consideration of his
ancient friendship, and of the escape of those who most merited
punishment, he had come to the conclusion that it was quite as well to
let bygones be bygones.
At the conclusion of the interview I delivered a message which Mrs.
Forbes had emphatically entrusted to me.
“Mrs. Forbes wished me to impress upon your mind,” I said, “that neither
she nor Mr. Forbes would have been guilty of this misdemeanour if they
had not been very much in love with one another, and very much in want of
money.”
“Ah!” replied the secretary, with a smile, “if Cleopatra’s nose had been
shorter, the fate of the world would have been different!”
NO. 5 BRANCH LINE
THE ENGINEER
His name, sir, was Matthew Price; mine is Benjamin Hardy. We were born
within a few days of each other; bred up in the same village; taught at
the same school. I cannot remember the time when we were not close
friends. Even as boys, we never knew what it was to quarrel. We had not
a thought, we had not a possession, that was not in common. We would
have stood by each other, fearlessly, to the death. It was such a
friendship as one reads about sometimes in books: fast and firm as the
great Tors upon our native moorlands, true as the sun in the heavens.
The name of our village was Chadleigh. Lifted high above the pasture
flats which stretched away at our feet like a measureless green lake and
melted into mist on the furthest horizon, it nestled, a tiny stone-built
hamlet, in a sheltered hollow about midway between the plain and the
plateau. Above us, rising ridge beyond ridge, slope beyond slope, spread
the mountainous moor-country, bare and bleak for the most part, with here
and there a patch of cultivated field or hardy plantation, and crowned
highest of all with masses of huge grey crag, abrupt, isolated, hoary,
and older than the deluge. These were the Tors—Druids’ Tor, King’s Tor,
Castle Tor, and the like; sacred places, as I have heard, in the ancient
time, where crownings, burnings, human sacrifices, and all kinds of
bloody heathen rites were performed. Bones, too, had been found there,
and arrow-heads, and ornaments of gold and glass. I had a vague awe of
the Tors in those boyish days, and would not have gone near them after
dark for the heaviest bribe.
I have said that we were born in the same village. He was the son of a
small farmer, named William Price, and the eldest of a family of seven; I
was the only child of Ephraim Hardy, the Chadleigh blacksmith—a
well-known man in those parts, whose memory is not forgotten to this day.
Just so far as a farmer is supposed to be a bigger man than a blacksmith,
Mat’s father might be said to have a better standing than mine; but
William Price, with his small holding and his seven boys, was, in fact,
as poor as many a day-labourer; whilst the blacksmith, well-to-do,
bustling, popular, and open-handed, was a person of some importance in
the place. All this, however, had nothing to do with Mat and myself. It
never occurred to either of us that his jacket was out at elbows, or that
our mutual funds came altogether from my pocket. It was enough for us
that we sat on the same school-bench, conned our tasks from the same
primer, fought each other’s battles, screened each other’s faults,
fished, nutted, played truant, robbed orchards and birds’ nests together,
and spent every half-hour, authorised or stolen, in each other’s society.
It was a happy time; but it could not go on for ever. My father, being
prosperous, resolved to put me forward in the world. I must know more,
and do better, than himself. The forge was not good enough, the little
world of Chadleigh not wide enough, for me. Thus it happened that I was
still swinging the satchel when Mat was whistling at the plough, and that
at last, when my future course was shaped out, we were separated, as it
then seemed to us, for life. For, blacksmith’s son as I was, furnace and
forge, in some form or other, pleased me best, and I chose to be a
working engineer. So my father by-and-by apprenticed me to a Birmingham
iron-master; and, having bidden farewell to Mat, and Chadleigh, and the
grey old Tors in the shadow of which I had spent all the days of my life,
I turned my face northward, and went over into “the Black Country.”
I am not going to dwell on this part of my story. How I worked out the
term of my apprenticeship; how, when I had served my full time and become
a skilled workman, I took Mat from the plough and brought him over to the
Black Country, sharing with him lodging, wages, experience—all, in short,
that I had to give; how he, naturally quick to learn and brimful of quiet
energy, worked his way up a step at a time, and came by-and-by to be a
“first hand” in his own department; how, during all these years of
change, and trial, and effort, the old boyish affection never wavered or
weakened, but went on, growing with our growth and strengthening with our
strength—are facts which I need do no more than outline in this place.
About this time—it will be remembered that I speak of the days when Mat
and I were on the bright side of thirty—it happened that our firm
contracted to supply six first-class locomotives to run on the new line,
then in process of construction, between Turin and Genoa. It was the
first Italian order we had taken. We had had dealings with France,
Holland, Belgium, Germany; but never with Italy. The connexion,
therefore, was new and valuable—all the more valuable because our
Transalpine neighbours had but lately begun to lay down the iron roads,
and would be safe to need more of our good English work as they went on.
So the Birmingham firm set themselves to the contract with a will,
lengthened our working hours, increased our wages, took on fresh hands,
and determined, if energy and promptitude could do it, to place
themselves at the head of the Italian labour-market, and stay there.
They deserved and achieved success. The six locomotives were not only
turned out to time, but were shipped, despatched, and delivered with a
promptitude that fairly amazed our Piedmontese consignee. I was not a
little proud, you may be sure, when I found myself appointed to
superintend the transport of the engines. Being allowed a couple of
assistants, I contrived that Mat should be one of them; and thus we
enjoyed together the first great holiday of our lives.
It was a wonderful change for two Birmingham operatives fresh from the
Black Country. The fairy city, with its crescent background of Alps; the
port crowded with strange shipping; the marvellous blue sky and bluer
sea; the painted houses on the quays; the quaint cathedral, faced with
black and white marble; the street of jewellers, like an Arabian Nights’
bazaar; the street of palaces, with its Moorish court-yards, its
fountains and orange-trees; the women veiled like brides; the
galley-slaves chained two and two; the processions of priests and friars;
the everlasting clangour of bells; the babble of a strange tongue; the
singular lightness and brightness of the climate—made, altogether, such a
combination of wonders that we wandered about, the first day, in a kind
of bewildered dream, like children at a fair. Before that week was
ended, being tempted by the beauty of the place and the liberality of the
pay, we had agreed to take service with the Turin and Genoa Railway
Company, and to turn our backs upon Birmingham for ever.
Then began a new life—a life so active and healthy, so steeped in fresh
air and sunshine, that we sometimes marvelled how we could have endured
the gloom of the Black Country. We were constantly up and down the line:
now at Genoa, now at Turin, taking trial trips with the locomotives, and
placing our old experiences at the service of our new employers.
In the meanwhile we made Genoa our headquarters, and hired a couple of
rooms over a small shop in a by-street sloping down to the quays. Such a
busy little street—so steep and winding that no vehicles could pass
through it, and so narrow that the sky looked like a mere strip of
deep-blue ribbon overhead! Every house in it, however, was a shop, where
the goods encroached on the footway, or were piled about the door, or
hung like tapestry from the balconies; and all day long, from dawn to
dusk, an incessant stream of passers-by poured up and down between the
port and the upper quarter of the city.
Our landlady was the widow of a silver-worker, and lived by the sale of
filigree ornaments, cheap jewellery, combs, fans, and toys in ivory and
jet. She had an only daughter named Gianetta, who served in the shop,
and was simply the most beautiful woman I ever beheld. Looking back
across this weary chasm of years, and bringing her image before me (as I
can and do) with all the vividness of life, I am unable, even now, to
detect a flaw in her beauty. I do not attempt to describe her. I do not
believe there is a poet living who could find the words to do it; but I
once saw a picture that was somewhat like her (not half so lovely, but
still like her), and, for aught I know, that picture is still hanging
where I last looked at it—upon the walls of the Louvre. It represented a
woman with brown eyes and golden hair, looking over her shoulder into a
circular mirror held by a bearded man in the background. In this man, as
I then understood, the artist had painted his own portrait; in her, the
portrait of the woman he loved. No picture that I ever saw was half so
beautiful, and yet it was not worthy to be named in the same breath with
Gianetta Coneglia.
You may be certain the widow’s shop did not want for customers. All
Genoa knew how fair a face was to be seen behind that dingy little
counter; and Gianetta, flirt as she was, had more lovers than she cared
to remember, even by name. Gentle and simple, rich and poor, from the
red-capped sailor buying his earrings or his amulet, to the nobleman
carelessly purchasing half the filigrees in the window, she treated them
all alike—encouraged them, laughed at them, led them on and turned them
off at her pleasure. She had no more heart than a marble statue; as Mat
and I discovered by-and-by, to our bitter cost.
I cannot tell to this day how it came about, or what first led me to
suspect how things were going with us both; but long before the waning of
that autumn a coldness had sprung up between my friend and myself. It
was nothing that could have been put into words. It was nothing that
either of us could have explained or justified, to save his life. We
lodged together, ate together, worked together, exactly as before; we
even took our long evening’s walk together, when the day’s labour was
ended; and except, perhaps, that we were more silent than of old, no mere
looker-on could have detected a shadow of change. Yet there it was,
silent and subtle, widening the gulf between us every day.
It was not his fault. He was too true and gentle-hearted to have
willingly brought about such a state of things between us. Neither do I
believe—fiery as my nature is—that it was mine. It was all hers—hers
from first to last—the sin, and the shame, and the sorrow.
If she had shown a fair and open preference for either of us, no real
harm could have come of it. I would have put any constraint upon myself,
and, Heaven knows! have borne any suffering, to see Mat really happy. I
know that he would have done the same, and more if he could, for me. But
Gianetta cared not one sou for either. She never meant to choose between
us. It gratified her vanity to divide us; it amused her to play with us.
It would pass my power to tell how, by a thousand imperceptible shades of
coquetry—by the lingering of a glance, the substitution of a word, the
flitting of a smile—she contrived to turn our heads, and torture our
hearts, and lead us on to love her. She deceived us both. She buoyed us
both up with hope; she maddened us with jealousy; she crushed us with
despair. For my part, when I seemed to wake to a sudden sense of the
ruin that was about our path and I saw how the truest friendship that
ever bound two lives together was drifting on to wreck and ruin, I asked
myself whether any woman in the world was worth what Mat had been to me
and I to him. But this was not often. I was readier to shut my eyes
upon the truth than to face it; and so lived on, wilfully, in a dream.
Thus the autumn passed away, and winter came—the strange, treacherous,
Genoese winter, green with olive and ilex, brilliant with sunshine, and
bitter with storm. Still, rivals at heart and friends on the surface,
Mat and I lingered on in our lodging in the Vicolo Balba. Still Gianetta
held us with her fatal wiles and her still more fatal beauty. At length
there came a day when I felt I could bear the horrible misery and
suspense of it no longer. The sun, I vowed, should not go down before I
knew my sentence. She must choose between us. She must either take me
or let me go. I was reckless. I was desperate. I was determined to
know the worst, or the best. If the worst, I would at once turn my back
upon Genoa, upon her, upon all the pursuits and purposes of my past life,
and begin the world anew. This I told her, passionately and sternly,
standing before her in the little parlour at the back of the shop, one
bleak December morning.
“If it’s Mat whom you care for most,” I said, “tell me so in one word,
and I will never trouble you again. He is better worth your love. I am
jealous and exacting; he is as trusting and unselfish as a woman. Speak,
Gianetta; am I to bid you good-bye for ever and ever, or am I to write
home to my mother in England, bidding her pray to God to bless the woman
who has promised to be my wife?”
“You plead your friend’s cause well,” she replied, haughtily. “Matteo
ought to be grateful. This is more than he ever did for you.”
“Give me my answer, for pity’s sake,” I exclaimed, “and let me go!”
“You are free to go or stay, Signor Inglese,” she replied. “I am not
your jailor.”
“Do you bid me leave you?”
“Beata Madre! not I.”
“Will you marry me, if I stay?”
She laughed aloud—such a merry, mocking, musical laugh, like a chime of
silver bells!
“You ask too much,” she said.
“Only what you have led me to hope these five or six months past!”
“That is just what Matteo says. How tiresome you both are!”
“O, Gianetta,” I said, passionately, “be serious for one moment! I am a
rough fellow, it is true—not half good enough or clever enough for you;
but I love you with my whole heart, and an Emperor could do no more.”
“I am glad of it,” she replied; “I do not want you to love me less.”
“Then you cannot wish to make me wretched! Will you promise me?”
“I promise nothing,” said she, with another burst of laughter; “except
that I will not marry Matteo!”
Except that she would not marry Matteo! Only that. Not a word of hope
for myself. Nothing but my friend’s condemnation. I might get comfort,
and selfish triumph, and some sort of base assurance out of that, if I
could. And so, to my shame, I did. I grasped at the vain encouragement,
and, fool that I was! let her put me off again unanswered. From that
day, I gave up all effort at self-control, and let myself drift blindly
on—to destruction.
At length things became so bad between Mat and myself that it seemed as
if an open rupture must be at hand. We avoided each other, scarcely
exchanged a dozen sentences in a day, and fell away from all our old
familiar habits. At this time—I shudder to remember it!—there were
moments when I felt that I hated him.
Thus, with the trouble deepening and widening between us day by day,
another month or five weeks went by; and February came; and, with
February, the Carnival. They said in Genoa that it was a particularly
dull carnival; and so it must have been; for, save a flag or two hung out
in some of the principal streets, and a sort of festa look about the
women, there were no special indications of the season. It was, I think,
the second day when, having been on the line all the morning, I returned
to Genoa at dusk, and, to my surprise, found Mat Price on the platform.
He came up to me, and laid his hand on my arm.
“You are in late,” he said. “I have been waiting for you three-quarters
of an hour. Shall we dine together to-day?”
Impulsive as I am, this evidence of returning good will at once called up
my better feelings.
“With all my heart, Mat,” I replied; “shall we go to Gozzoli’s?”
“No, no,” he said, hurriedly. “Some quieter place—some place where we
can talk. I have something to say to you.”
I noticed now that he looked pale and agitated, and an uneasy sense of
apprehension stole upon me. We decided on the “Pescatore,” a little
out-of-the-way trattoria, down near the Molo Vecchio. There, in a dingy
salon, frequented chiefly by seamen, and redolent of tobacco, we ordered
our simple dinner. Mat scarcely swallowed a morsel; but, calling
presently for a bottle of Sicilian wine, drank eagerly.
“Well, Mat,” I said, as the last dish was placed on the table, “what news
have you?”
“Bad.”
“I guessed that from your face.”
“Bad for you—bad for me. Gianetta.”
“What of Gianetta?”
He passed his hand nervously across his lips.
“Gianetta is false—worse than false,” he said, in a hoarse voice. “She
values an honest man’s heart just as she values a flower for her
hair—wears it for a day, then throws it aside for ever. She has cruelly
wronged us both.”
“In what way? Good Heavens, speak out!”
“In the worst way that a woman can wrong those who love her. She has
sold herself to the Marchese Loredano.”
The blood rushed to my head and face in a burning torrent. I could
scarcely see, and dared not trust myself to speak.
“I saw her going towards the cathedral,” he went on, hurriedly. “It was
about three hours ago. I thought she might be going to confession, so I
hung back and followed her at a distance. When she got inside, however,
she went straight to the back of the pulpit, where this man was waiting
for her. You remember him—an old man who used to haunt the shop a month
or two back. Well, seeing how deep in conversation they were, and how
they stood close under the pulpit with their backs towards the church, I
fell into a passion of anger and went straight up the aisle, intending to
say or do something: I scarcely knew what; but, at all events, to draw
her arm through mine, and take her home. When I came within a few feet,
however, and found only a big pillar between myself and them, I paused.
They could not see me, nor I them; but I could hear their voices
distinctly, and—and I listened.”
“Well, and you heard—”
“The terms of a shameful bargain—beauty on the one side, gold on the
other; so many thousand francs a year; a villa near Naples—Pah! it makes
me sick to repeat it.”
And, with a shudder, he poured out another glass of wine and drank it at
a draught.
“After that,” he said, presently, “I made no effort to bring her away.
The whole thing was so cold-blooded, so deliberate, so shameful, that I
felt I had only to wipe her out of my memory, and leave her to her fate.
I stole out of the cathedral, and walked about here by the sea for ever
so long, trying to get my thoughts straight. Then I remembered you, Ben;
and the recollection of how this wanton had come between us and broken up
our lives drove me wild. So I went up to the station and waited for you.
I felt you ought to know it all; and—and I thought, perhaps, that we
might go back to England together.”
“The Marchese Loredano!”
It was all that I could say; all that I could think. As Mat had just
said of himself, I felt “like one stunned.”
“There is one other thing I may as well tell you,” he added, reluctantly,
“if only to show you how false a woman can be. We—we were to have been
married next month.”
“_We_? Who? What do you mean?”
“I mean that we were to have been married—Gianetta and I.”
A sudden storm of rage, of scorn, of incredulity, swept over me at this,
and seemed to carry my senses away.
“_You_!” I cried. “Gianetta marry you! I don’t believe it.”
“I wish I had not believed it,” he replied, looking up as if puzzled by
my vehemence. “But she promised me; and I thought, when she promised it,
she meant it.”
“She told me, weeks ago, that she would never be your wife!”
His colour rose, his brow darkened; when his answer came, it was as calm
as the last.
“Indeed!” he said. “Then it is only one baseness more. She told me that
she had refused you; and that was why we kept our engagement secret.”
“Tell the truth, Mat Price,” I said, well-nigh beside myself with
suspicion. “Confess that every word of this is false! Confess that
Gianetta will not listen to you, and that you are afraid I may succeed
where you have failed. As perhaps I shall—as perhaps I shall, after
all!”
“Are you mad?” he exclaimed. “What do you mean?”
“That I believe it’s just a trick to get me away to England—that I don’t
credit a syllable of your story. You’re a liar, and I hate you!”
He rose, and, laying one hand on the back of his chair, looked me sternly
in the face.
“If you were not Benjamin Hardy,” he said, deliberately, “I would thrash
you within an inch of your life.”
The words had no sooner passed his lips than I sprang at him. I have
never been able distinctly to remember what followed. A curse—a blow—a
struggle—a moment of blind fury—a cry—a confusion of tongues—a circle of
strange faces. Then I see Mat lying back in the arms of a bystander;
myself trembling and bewildered—the knife dropping from my grasp; blood
upon the floor; blood upon my hands; blood upon his shirt. And then I
hear those dreadful words:
“O, Ben, you have murdered me!”
He did not die—at least, not there and then. He was carried to the
nearest hospital, and lay for some weeks between life and death. His
case, they said, was difficult and dangerous. The knife had gone in just
below the collarbone, and pierced down into the lungs. He was not
allowed to speak or turn—scarcely to breathe with freedom. He might not
even lift his head to drink. I sat by him day and night all through that
sorrowful time. I gave up my situation on the railway; I quitted my
lodging in the Vicolo Balba; I tried to forget that such a woman as
Gianetta Coneglia had ever drawn breath. I lived only for Mat; and he
tried to live more, I believe, for my sake than his own. Thus, in the
bitter silent hours of pain and penitence, when no hand but mine
approached his lips or smoothed his pillow, the old friendship came back
with even more than its old trust and faithfulness. He forgave me, fully
and freely; and I would thankfully have given my life for him.
At length there came one bright spring morning, when, dismissed as
convalescent, he tottered out through the hospital gates, leaning on my
arm, and feeble as an infant. He was not cured; neither, as I then
learned to my horror and anguish, was it possible that he ever could be
cured. He might live, with care, for some years; but the lungs were
injured beyond hope of remedy, and a strong or healthy man he could never
be again. These, spoken aside to me, were the parting words of the chief
physician, who advised me to take him further south without delay.
I took him to a little coast-town called Rocca, some thirty miles beyond
Genoa—a sheltered lonely place along the Riviera, where the sea was even
bluer than the sky, and the cliffs were green with strange tropical
plants, cacti, and aloes, and Egyptian palms. Here we lodged in the
house of a small tradesman; and Mat, to use his own words, “set to work
at getting well in good earnest.” But, alas! it was a work which no
earnestness could forward. Day after day he went down to the beach, and
sat for hours drinking the sea air and watching the sails that came and
went in the offing. By-and-by he could go no further than the garden of
the house in which we lived. A little later, and he spent his days on a
couch beside the open window, waiting patiently for the end. Ay, for the
end! It had come to that. He was fading fast, waning with the waning
summer, and conscious that the Reaper was at hand. His whole aim now was
to soften the agony of my remorse, and prepare me for what must shortly
come.
“I would not live longer, if I could,” he said, lying on his couch one
summer evening, and looking up to the stars. “If I had my choice at this
moment, I would ask to go. I should like Gianetta to know that I forgave
her.”
“She shall know it,” I said, trembling suddenly from head to foot.
He pressed my hand.
“And you’ll write to father?”
“I will.”
I had drawn a little back, that he might not see the tears raining down
my cheeks; but he raised himself on his elbow, and looked round.
“Don’t fret, Ben,” he whispered; laid his head back wearily upon the
pillow—and so died.
* * * * *
And this was the end of it. This was the end of all that made life life
to me. I buried him there, in hearing of the wash of a strange sea on a
strange shore. I stayed by the grave till the priest and the bystanders
were gone. I saw the earth filled in to the last sod, and the
gravedigger stamp it down with his feet. Then, and not till then, I felt
that I had lost him for ever—the friend I had loved, and hated, and
slain. Then, and not till then, I knew that all rest, and joy, and hope
were over for me. From that moment my heart hardened within me, and my
life was filled with loathing. Day and night, land and sea, labour and
rest, food and sleep, were alike hateful to me. It was the curse of
Cain, and that my brother had pardoned me made it lie none the lighter.
Peace on earth was for me no more, and goodwill towards men was dead in
my heart for ever. Remorse softens some natures; but it poisoned mine.
I hated all mankind; but above all mankind I hated the woman who had come
between us two, and ruined both our lives.
He had bidden me seek her out, and be the messenger of his forgiveness.
I had sooner have gone down to the port of Genoa and taken upon me the
serge cap and shotted chain of any galley-slave at his toil in the public
works; but for all that I did my best to obey him. I went back, alone
and on foot. I went back, intending to say to her, “Gianetta Coneglia,
he forgave you; but God never will.” But she was gone. The little shop
was let to a fresh occupant; and the neighbours only knew that mother and
daughter had left the place quite suddenly, and that Gianetta was
supposed to be under the “protection” of the Marchese Loredano. How I
made inquiries here and there—how I heard that they had gone to
Naples—and how, being restless and reckless of my time, I worked my
passage in a French steamer, and followed her—how, having found the
sumptuous villa that was now hers, I learned that she had left there some
ten days and gone to Paris, where the Marchese was ambassador for the Two
Sicilies—how, working my passage back again to Marseilles, and thence, in
part by the river and in part by the rail, I made my way to Paris—how,
day after day, I paced the streets and the parks, watched at the
ambassador’s gates, followed his carriage, and at last, after weeks of
waiting, discovered her address—how, having written to request an
interview, her servants spurned me from her door and flung my letter in
my face—how, looking up at her windows, I then, instead of forgiving,
solemnly cursed her with the bitterest curses my tongue could devise—and
how, this done, I shook the dust of Paris from my feet, and became a
wanderer upon the face of the earth, are facts which I have now no space
to tell.
The next six or eight years of my life were shifting and unsettled
enough. A morose and restless man, I took employment here and there, as
opportunity offered, turning my hand to many things, and caring little
what I earned, so long as the work was hard and the change incessant.
First of all I engaged myself as chief engineer in one of the French
steamers plying between Marseilles and Constantinople. At Constantinople
I changed to one of the Austrian Lloyd’s boats, and worked for some time
to and from Alexandria, Jaffa, and those parts. After that, I fell in
with a party of Mr. Layard’s men at Cairo, and so went up the Nile and
took a turn at the excavations of the mound of Nimroud. Then I became a
working engineer on the new desert line between Alexandria and Suez; and
by-and-by I worked my passage out to Bombay, and took service as an
engine fitter on one of the great Indian railways. I stayed a long time
in India; that is to say, I stayed nearly two years, which was a long
time for me; and I might not even have left so soon, but for the war that
was declared just then with Russia. That tempted me. For I loved danger
and hardship as other men love safety and ease; and as for my life, I had
sooner have parted from it than kept it, any day. So I came straight
back to England; betook myself to Portsmouth, where my testimonials at
once procured me the sort of berth I wanted. I went out to the Crimea in
the engine-room of one of her Majesty’s war steamers.
I served with the fleet, of course, while the war lasted; and when it was
over, went wandering off again, rejoicing in my liberty. This time I
went to Canada, and after working on a railway then in progress near the
American frontier, I presently passed over into the States; journeyed
from north to south; crossed the Rocky Mountains; tried a month or two of
life in the gold country; and then, being seized with a sudden, aching,
unaccountable longing to revisit that solitary grave so far away on the
Italian coast, I turned my face once more towards Europe.
Poor little grave! I found it rank with weeds, the cross half shattered,
the inscription half effaced. It was as if no one had loved him, or
remembered him. I went back to the house in which we had lodged
together. The same people were still living there, and made me kindly
welcome. I stayed with them for some weeks. I weeded, and planted, and
trimmed the grave with my own hands, and set up a fresh cross in pure
white marble. It was the first season of rest that I had known since I
laid him there; and when at last I shouldered my knapsack and set forth
again to battle with the world, I promised myself that, God willing, I
would creep back to Rocca, when my days drew near to ending, and be
buried by his side.
From hence, being, perhaps, a little less inclined than formerly for very
distant parts, and willing to keep within reach of that grave, I went no
further than Mantua, where I engaged myself as an engine-driver on the
line, then not long completed, between that city and Venice. Somehow,
although I had been trained to the working engineering, I preferred in
these days to earn my bread by driving. I liked the excitement of it,
the sense of power, the rush of the air, the roar of the fire, the
flitting of the landscape. Above all, I enjoyed to drive a night
express. The worse the weather, the better it suited with my sullen
temper. For I was as hard, and harder than ever. The years had done
nothing to soften me. They had only confirmed all that was blackest and
bitterest in my heart.
I continued pretty faithful to the Mantua line, and had been working on
it steadily for more than seven months when that which I am now about to
relate took place.
It was in the month of March. The weather had been unsettled for some
days past, and the nights stormy; and at one point along the line, near
Ponte di Brenta, the waters had risen and swept away some seventy yards
of embankment. Since this accident, the trains had all been obliged to
stop at a certain spot between Padua and Ponte di Brenta, and the
passengers, with their luggage, had thence to be transported in all kinds
of vehicles, by a circuitous country road, to the nearest station on the
other side of the gap, where another train and engine awaited them.
This, of course, caused great confusion and annoyance, put all our
time-tables wrong, and subjected the public to a large amount of
inconvenience. In the meanwhile an army of navvies was drafted to the
spot, and worked day and night to repair the damage. At this time I was
driving two through trains each day; namely, one from Mantua to Venice in
the early morning, and a return train from Venice to Mantua in the
afternoon—a tolerably full day’s work, covering about one hundred and
ninety miles of ground, and occupying between ten and eleven hours. I
was therefore not best pleased when, on the third or fourth day after the
accident, I was informed that, in addition to my regular allowance of
work, I should that evening be required to drive a special train to
Venice. This special train, consisting of an engine, a single carriage,
and a break-van, was to leave the Mantua platform at eleven; at Padua the
passengers were to alight and find post-chaises waiting to convey them to
Ponte di Brenta; at Ponte di Brenta another engine, carriage, and
break-van were to be in readiness. I was charged to accompany them
throughout.
“Corpo di Bacco,” said the clerk who gave me my orders, “you need not
look so black, man. You are certain of a handsome gratuity. Do you know
who goes with you?”
“Not I.”
“Not you, indeed! Why, it’s the Duca Loredano, the Neapolitan
ambassador.”
“Loredano!” I stammered. “What Loredano? There was a Marchese—”
“Certo. He was the Marchese Loredano some years ago; but he has come
into his dukedom since then.”
“He must be a very old man by this time.”
“Yes, he is old; but what of that? He is as hale, and bright, and
stately as ever. You have seen him before?”
“Yes,” I said, turning away; “I have seen him—years ago.”
“You have heard of his marriage?”