"ALL GOETH BUT GOD'S WILL."
"Whatso it be, howso it be, Amen.
Blessed it is, believing, not to see.
Now God knows all that is; and we shall then,
Whatso it be.
God's Will is best for man whose will is free.
God's Will is better to us, yea, than ten
Desires whereof he holds and weighs the key.
* * * * *
He knows all wants, allots each where and when,
Whatso it be."--CHRISTINA ROSSETTI,
"You have passed a bad night, signor," remarked Lionbruno, glancing
up from his work at the prisoner.
Carlo, who to the last retained his sense of fun, saw the double
meaning which the remark might bear, and smiled.
"I have not slept," he replied. "And you?"
"I," said Lionbruno, shrugging his shoulders, "have had to wake also,
that I might keep guard."
"Do you think, then, that escape would be possible in such irons as
these?"
"No, it would be impossible, even if the approach to the upper air
were not well guarded. But it is one of Brancaleone's laws that a
prisoner should be watched night and day. It would have been irksome
enough had I not turned you to account as a model."
The crucifix was now quite finished, and the carver, struck by the
face he had had to watch through those long hours, had reproduced it
in the wood with marvellous accuracy, catching precisely the
expression of pain, with steadfast hope underlying it, which the
prisoner's face had borne through the night.
The features, too, had been reproduced so accurately that Carlo could
not but recognize himself. He looked shocked, then pained, finally a
faint smile dawned in his eyes, and he fell into deep thought.
Lionbruno left him for a few minutes, returning presently with a long
loaf of bread tucked under his arm, a flask of _chianti_ swinging
from his wrist, and a huge basin of maccaroni in his hands.
"Come," he said, with rough good-nature, "let us eat. I am hungry if
you are not."
In silence they shared the food. The cell was now only lighted by
one torch, which cast an orange glow over the carved crosses and
crucifixes, and shone upon the faces of the two strangely-contrasted
men. Carlo, worn-out with all he had gone through, looked pale and
exhausted, but Lionbruno was in no wise fatigued by his want of
sleep, and ate with the voracious appetite of a school-boy. Carlo
watched him with a good deal of curiosity, wondering greatly what his
history could be.
"Where did you learn to carve like that?" he said at length, glancing
once more at the crucifix.
"It was the one useful thing taught me at school, the one thing I
ever took the pains to learn," said Lionbruno, with a laugh. "And
when I had mastered all they could teach me, why, I ran away."
"Was it at Naples?"
"No, at Rome," continued Lionbruno, throwing himself lazily on the
heap of shavings, and yielding to the fascination of Carlo's manner,
as most people did. "_Diavolo_! what did I not suffer in those
years! Cooped up in a great stone building, watched every moment,
guarded as though I had been a girl, and nothing to hope for in the
future but the wretched life of a priest."
"A priest!" echoed Carlo, in astonishment.
"Ay, a preposterous notion, was it not? A mere whim of my
mother's,--peace to her soul." He crossed himself with indescribable
rapidity. It was the last almost unconscious tribute he still paid
to the faith which his mother had held, but in which he himself had
ceased to believe. "My father, willing to please her on her
death-bed, promised that they should make a priest of me, and he did
his best; but what would you have? It is not possible to turn a wolf
into a sheep-dog, or an eagle into a canary. I bore it till I was
seventeen, then, one night,"--he rubbed his hands with glee at the
mere recollection,--"one delightful, moonless night, the happiest in
all my life, I broke loose from the fold, got a disguise, was within
an ace of being caught, and at last got home to Corsica,
half-starved, but free, and as happy as a king."
"Then Corsica is your home?"
"_Insomma!_ I have run on, forgetting that possibly you will be free
again to-morrow, and may betray us."
He looked annoyed, and half inclined to be angry.
"Do not be uneasy," said Carlo. "This is my last day in the world,
and even did I wished to do so I could not possibly betray your
haunts."
"You seem to look death in the face calmly enough; but it is far more
likely that you will be set free."
Carlo shook his head.
"If I were set free it would mean that my whole life had failed.
Something tells me that it is not so. Therefore, you see, I must
face the thought of death. And, while we are speaking of it, just
tell me how it will be. Am I to be shot?"
Lionbruno's great black eyes were full of wonder, they were very much
like the eyes of some animal. He was completely puzzled by his
companion, and somehow awed by him.
"No," he said; "that could not be, here."
"What then, stabbed?"
Lionbruno shook his head.
"Poisoned, or perhaps hung?"
Again the young brigand made a gesture of dissent; then, with
unmistakable meaning, he drew out his knife, and passed it lightly
across his own throat, glancing significantly at the prisoner.
Carlo had too vivid an imagination not to shrink a little from the
picture which presented itself to his mind; he grew suddenly cold,
and felt a strange stirring in his heart, and a tightening about the
muscles of his throat. But he quickly recovered himself, and, with
no perceptible effort, returned to the interrupted story.
"And so you escaped from your school-life, and from all _espionage_.
At first it must have been delightful."
"_Dio!_ I should think it was!" exclaimed the boy. "To be out in
the woods night and day, to have done with the hateful old routine,
and for work to have nothing but adventure and excitement--why, it
was paradise!"
"I fancied all the banditti had been captured at the time of the
great extermination," said Carlo.
Lionbruno's face grew dark.
"That time gave us a blow from which we shall never recover," he
said. "But my father somehow baffled all detection, and he will
always baffle it, for he is more than a match for the Italian police
in a body. Nothing but treachery could possibly beat him, and among
the whole band there is not one man who would betray him, though they
offered him his weight in diamonds."
"I can imagine that he would always meet with obedience and loyalty,"
said Carlo, recalling the powerful face of the chief.
"Anywhere he would be king of men," said Lionbruno, proudly. "And
since the world gave him the cold shoulder, he must be king of
banditti. Did you hear but a month or two back of the highway
robberies in Corsica! They were planned and carried out by
Brancaleone. Do you remember how Count Feroni was carried off in
Sicily, and kept up in the mountains till the ransom was paid? That
again was due to Brancaleone. And the great jewel robbery in Naples,
that, too, was the work of our band. We are like the lightning,
here, there, and everywhere; our work is done in a flash, and
then--_presto!_ all is darkness once more, and no one can lay hold of
us."
"I remember now hearing of the disappearance of Count Feroni," said
Carlo; "though the details were never published, perhaps for the sake
of our country's honor. Do you know what that work of yours did? It
killed the Count's mother; she died of the shock before his return."
"_Ebbene!_ we must all die sooner or later," said Lionbruno, coolly.
There was an indignant light in Carlo's eyes which made the young
Corsican shift his position uneasily.
"And this work of yours yesterday," continued Carlo; "it will not
only end in murder, it will break hearts, and blight lives. Will you
be proud of doing such devil's work as that?"
"A man must live," said Lionbruno, gloomily. "I only do what I was
brought up to do. As to cruelty, Brancaleone would not have the hold
which he has on the hearts of the people were he a cruel chief. No
prisoner has ever been ill-used by him, and if a man must be put out
of the way, why, it is done promptly and without barbarity. The day
for such things is past; we too, are civilized, our plots are more
refined, as well as more successful, now that we have the telegraph
always at our command."
Carlo started.
"Do you mean, then, that the telegram I had yesterday was your doing?
Was it a mere trick?"
Lionbruno laughed, and rubbed his hands together.
"Was it not clever? The first idea was a note of invitation from the
English Captain; but then there would have been the danger of the
handwriting not being right. The telegram was my notion, and the
sending it in English made it doubly safe; it was only because I had
thought of it that I was given the charge of the whole affair, for,
after all, I am young for such work. _Dio!_ what sport it was! The
watching for the yacht, and dogging your steps everywhere, while all
the time you were so happily ignorant; then the breathless race to
Pozzuoli to send the telegram, and the anxiety of the afternoon when
we did not know whether, perhaps, you might not after all refuse to
go. How happy I was when I saw you by the Grotto of Posilipo! And
you, too, looked happy. Ah, I shall never again have a better bit of
sport!"
Carlo shuddered, the unblushing avowal made him recoil as from some
hellish thing. He did not say a word, but Lionbruno noted his
expression, and never forgot it.
"Come!" he said, his tone suddenly changing, "I can't stay all day in
this dull hole. We will see what the others are up to."
"Can I not stay here in quiet?" pleaded Carlo.
But Lionbruno was inexorable. A prisoner must be watched day and
night, and Carlo had to endure as best he could the long hours of
that weary day, while his young guard whiled away the time with
cards, _mora_, and idle jesting with the elder men of the band.
At length night came, and once more prisoner and jailer made their
way through the winding catacomb to the inner cell. Lionbruno, who
had slept at intervals through the day, took up his carving once
more, and Carlo, wearied with the noise and confusion which for so
many hours he had had to bear, and still suffering from the effects
of the blow he had received, stretched himself again on the heap of
shavings.
"My last night," he reflected, then, turning to the young Corsican,
asked what time the messenger would arrive the next day.
"Possibly not till midnight," replied Lionbruno, pausing in his work
to look at the prisoner; "but you will be placed in readiness at
eleven. Alter all, I would as soon not see you murdered, though I
know you think me a sort of devil.
"I think you nothing of the kind," said Carlo, with a vigor of denial
which startled his companion. "The pity of it is that you are a man,
meant for something very different, and yet willing to do the devil's
work."
"I am only taking by force the share of property that the world won't
give me fairly," said Lionbruno, doggedly. "If all things were
equally divided there would be no need of banditti. As for your
devil, I don't believe in him, nor in your God either; and that,
too," he pointed to the crucifix, "it is all a fable! If it were
true, why, instead of paying a hundred _lire_ for a carving like
this, to put in a private oratory, men would be dying on crosses
themselves!"
Lionbruno, with his school recollections, and his angry bias against
everything connected with the Church, would certainly have had the
best of it in an argument, but Carlo was too well accustomed to
living with people who despised all that he most revered, to feel
moved to speak; he had learnt long ago that, as a rule, words do but
stir up strife, and that he at any rate must keep to deeds. He was
quite silent now, and through the long, quiet hours the vehement
words that had last sounded in the cell kept ringing in his ears.
Partly from the strain of physical and mental suffering, partly from
a growing sense of nearness to the unseen world, he had all along
found it very hard to realize his surroundings; the old Roman
building, hidden away below the earth's surface, the winding
catacomb, the gloomy little cell with the carvings leaning against
the rocky wall, all seemed to him more like scenes that he had read
about than actual places where he was now living. Brancaleone, too,
and his followers, seemed to him like people in a dream that is over,
though he had listened all day to their foul talk, and wearied of
their noisy quarrels. But something in the words which his companion
had last spoken roused him to a greater feeling of reality; he made
an effort to realize to himself the sort of life that this mere boy
of eighteen was living, and the more he realized it the more he
pitied him, and the more he felt drawn to him. Again and again his
eyes turned to the dark, resolute, handsome face of the young
Corsican; it had not yet acquired the cold wickedness of
Brancaleone's face, it was too young and boyish for that, too full of
mere animal delight in existence; but another year or two of this
wild life would make him merely a younger and more headstrong edition
of his father.
"You do not sleep, signor," observed Lionbruno, looking up from his
work as the prisoner moved restlessly and the dismal sound of
clanking irons echoed through the quiet cell.
"They say a condemned prisoner always sleeps well on his last night,"
said Carlo; "but I never felt more wakeful in my life."
"Then tell me your story," said Lionbruno, "for it is dull enough
with nothing to do but keep guard. I told you of my life yesterday,
now tell me of yours."
Willing to please his companion, and with a feeling that on this his
last night it would comfort him to go once more over his memories of
the past, Carlo told in his spontaneous, graphic fashion the story of
his life, and Lionbruno listened with rapt attention, partly because
the prisoner was a good raconteur, but chiefly because he was
conscious of something which was a most novel contrast to anything he
had yet come across in the world. It was nothing but a summary of
facts which Carlo gave him, but Lionbruno was artist enough to have a
quick eye for beauty, and a capability of reading between the lines,
as it were, while the mingled openness and reserve of the story, the
lack of self-consciousness, yet the innate modesty of the speaker,
forced him to perceive a new idea.
His own words returned to him,--"If it were true, men would be dying
on crosses themselves!" Then he looked from the carved crucifix to
the face of the prisoner, and again back to the crucifix. After all,
was it something more than a fable? Deep down in his heart there
wakened a new, uncomfortable, unwelcome conviction, which he did his
best to smother, because he saw that it would work havoc in his life,
and Lionbruno in this respect was as lazy and conservative as most
people; a revolution in society was what he longed for, but a
revolution in his own heart and life could not be tolerated, the bare
idea made him feel as uncomfortable and perturbed as a wealthy
landowner who thinks with dread of a possible reform of the land laws.
All the next day he was markedly civil to his prisoner. He even
sacrificed himself so far as to remain in the dreary little cell,
instead of insisting, as before, on spending the time with the rest
of the gang. Carlo spoke little, for grief and suspense and the
long-continued sleeplessness had brought him almost to the last stage
of exhaustion, but what few words he did say were courteous and
pleasant, and in tone not otherwise than cheerful. Lionbruno began
to think more and more distastefully of the scene that would be
enacted that evening, and, as the time drew near, he could bear it no
longer, but summoning one of the elder men to keep guard in his
place, sought out the chief and begged to speak alone with him.
Brancaleone led the way from the gloomy underground retreat to the
open air. Already it was dark, but here and there, through the thick
foliage, were little spaces through which stars gleamed down coldly.
Lionbruno gave a gasp of relief as he found himself once more above
ground, for the atmosphere down below was not a little trying to one
accustomed to an out-door life.
"_Padre mio_," he said boldly, "should the red flag be sent to-night,
why should you not keep the prisoner longer and make money out of
him? He has rich friends, he is a popular singer, thousands would be
interested in his fate, we could extort an enormous ransom."
"Is that all you have to say?" said Brancaleone, with scorn. "Did
you ever know me go back from my word? If Comerio is true to his
bargain, do you think I shall play him false?"
"At least I have some right to speak for the prisoner since I was the
one who took him," said Lionbruno, with deep resentment in his voice.
"No right whatever," said the chief, coldly; "you are merely one of
my band; your duty is to obey orders, not to think."
"I tell you," said Lionbruno, with an angry gesture, "if you kill him
you will regret it some day. A man like that can't be murdered
lightly."
"What do you know about him?" said the chief, tauntingly.
"I know that he is the only true man I have ever seen, while we are
brutes--worse than brutes!" said Lionbruno, with passionate vehemence.
Brancaleone suddenly turned upon him and grasped him by the shoulder.
"Say another word, and you yourself shall be the one to cut his
throat!" he said in a voice that was none the less furious because
low and restrained.
With a heavy heart Lionbruno followed the chief back into the secret
retreat, returning an impatient oath to the teasing inquiries of the
other men, while he lighted his torch at the fire before making his
way through the catacomb.
"Bring the prisoner in at once," said the chief, eyeing his son
distrustfully.
Releasing Nicolo from his post in the cell, Lionbruno, still bearing
the torch, came close to the pile of shavings and bent down over the
prisoner.
"I have tried to save you," he murmured, "but it was all in vain.
When I took you prisoner I did not know what I know now. Give me
your pardon, signor. I would gladly undo the past, were that
possible."
Carlo grasped his hand.
"Undo it by breaking with it and starting afresh," he said. "And,
look, will you do one thing for me?"
Lionbruno made a gesture of assent.
"See, to-day, while you slept, I wrote this letter; if necessary you
can read it, there is not a line in it that can betray you. Promise
me when I am dead to send it. I have no stamp, but there is the
address."
Lionbruno glanced at the note, saw that it was directed to "Miss
Britton," and without further comment thrust it into his pocket.
"Brancaleone orders you to be brought in," he said huskily. "Are you
prepared, signor?"
"Quite," replied Carlo, standing up, and speaking as calmly as though
no terrible ordeal awaited him.
And yet it was not that he shrank from it less than other men would
have done; he looked regretfully round the little gloomy cell, and
slowly followed his guide through the winding catacomb and out into
the larger building, perceiving even then the picturesqueness of the
scene with its deep shadows and glowing torchlight. Brancaleone sat
smoking as composedly as though no murder were contemplated that
night; close by, Nicolo stirred the contents of a caldron which hung
over a charcoal brazier, while the rest of the men were playing cards
and quarrelling among themselves. The chief turned his cold eyes on
the prisoner.
"My messenger may arrive any time within the next hour," he said.
"You will therefore be ready for your fate, whatever it may be.
Should we have been betrayed, and should a rescuing-party be sent
with him, you will instantly be shot. Should you see him wave a
white handkerchief, it will mean that you are free; should he wave a
red one, you will feel the sharpness of this knife."
Carlo replied only by a slight gesture. His dignity appealed to
Brancaleone, who eyed him curiously, knowing that never before had he
met with such a prisoner.
"Rocco! Maso! take your places!" he called peremptorily.
Two of the men instantly threw down their cards; and Carlo found
himself taken to that end of the building which was farthest from a
dark archway, presumably leading to another catacomb, and from thence
to the upper air. On either side of him stood a ruffianly-looking
Neapolitan, with a loaded pistol held within a few inches of his
temple; and to the right hand, and a little in advance of the others,
sat the chief ostentatiously sharpening his knife. It was an ordeal
that would have tried the strongest nerves; the horrible, grim
suspense of it was a torture such as Carlo had never conceived; and
nothing but long practice in self-control could have enabled him to
keep under the sickening anticipations of the butchery that was soon
to take place. With a strong effort he turned from such thoughts,
not even allowing himself to watch the dark archway opposite, where
his imagination kept picturing a confusion of red tokens and white
tokens, until he was as much dazzled as Gigi used to be over the
Pears' soap puzzle in England. With a pang he remembered that he had
never said good-bye to the little fellow; and a hundred trifling
recollections of unfinished work rushed through his brain, till a
flash of Brancaleone's knife in the torchlight recalled him to the
terrible present. Then he fixed his eyes steadily on the cross which
Lionbruno was carving, and again the thought of his visible
surroundings faded.
By and by came visions of what lay beyond this hour of torture. He
thought of the evil defeated, of Anita saved for ever from Comerio's
influence. He pictured to himself how she would pass unscathed
through her hard life, with Gigi to shield her, with Francesca to
comfort her and cling to her for his sake, with a love for him which
should be an actual safeguard, not a vague regret. But with the
thought of Francesca, there came once more the wild clinging to life.
She would be his, indeed, in another world; but he craved for her
now, he shrank back from the parting--the unknown change.
For, reason about it as we may, all endings are hard. We ended our
school-days regretfully, and shrank a little from stepping out alone
into the fuller and freer life, for which all along we had been
preparing. It was not that home was less dear; it was not that we
were less eager to begin life; it was only that human nature cannot
say their revocable "never again" without a pang.
And, after all, the past had been happy, spite of all the troubles.
Standing there, face to face with death, he seemed to live it all
through once more. He thought of his quiet childhood, of his
mother's devotion, of his happy betrothal. Once more he lived
through the story of his love for Francesca, with its brief gleams of
rapture and its long years of wearing separation; once more he lived
his art-life--triumphed in this character, failed in that, faced
abuse on and off the stage, felt the glow of genuine success. And
again he lived through the pain and bliss of that night at Genoa,
with its violent reaction, its rapture of faithful love; again he
felt Francesca clinging to him, heard her words of perfect trust,
knew that the anguish of the past had been a mere device of Satan.
But Brancaleone moved, and the torchlight fell again on the cold
steel blade. In a few minutes there must come that awful
helplessness, that violence, and anguish, and slaughter. His heart
throbbed wildly; and once more, to calm himself, he turned his eyes
to Lionbruno's cross. The boy's words returned to him, "As to that,
it's a mere fable! If it were true, men would be dying on crosses
themselves!"
"How little I have done to prove that it is truest truth, and no
fable," he thought, sadly.
"Yet for these last three years you have honestly tried to follow
me," said a voice in his heart. And the words of comfort brought him
a great gladness, for he knew that, slowly and stumblingly, and with
an amount of effort that proved his own weakness and the strength of
the Divine help that had been his, he really had tried to live the
life of the Crucified, with its whole-hearted seeking of the Divine
will. After all, was any happiness to be compared to the happiness
that came to him even in this last extremity? Was there not a deep
truth in the poet's idea that the Divine will is sweetest to us "when
it triumphs at our cost."
"If ever a man were ready to die it is that man," reflected
Lionbruno. "But, _Corpo di Bacco!_ how shall I sit patiently by and
see him murdered!"
He shuddered, and yet something in the beautiful, manly face raised
him above the thought of the scene of bloodshed. How was it that
this man, in the first flush of youth and strength, could willingly
give up everything--even life itself--to save another from sin? How
was it that he could stand for an hour face to face with a most
horrible death, yet show neither fear, nor resentment, nor
bravado--only a noble, intrepid calm?
Into the brigand's semi-cultivated mind the sight flashed something
more than the unwelcome conviction of the previous night. All his
shallow unbelief died in the light of that revelation. It was not
that he now believed there was a God, he knew it; he knew that the
Son of God must indeed have taught men how to live and die; he saw
that he had before him, on the one hand a proof of the heights to
which men could rise who followed at all costs the guidance of the
Holy Spirit; on the other of the depths to which men could sink who
sought at all costs their own pleasures.
The place had been strangely still for some minutes. Nicolo had left
his caldron, and now lay on the floor smoking; the card-players had
finished their game, and seemed to think it was not worth while to
begin another before the event of the evening came off; one swarthy,
black-bearded fellow shuffled the cards, the others lounged at ease,
watching the prisoner indifferently.
When at length a voice in the distance spoke the password, every one
present started slightly. Carlo drew himself up to his full height,
and looked steadily towards the dark archway; Brancaleone rose, and,
with one hand on his victim and the knife in the other, glanced over
his shoulder, ready either to strike or to forbear; Lionbruno dropped
his cross, and glanced in great agitation from the archway to the
prisoner, and back again to the archway. The footsteps drew nearer;
the messenger suddenly turned the corner, and emerged into sight; the
torchlight fell on the token in his hand--was it white or red? With
a gasp of relief, Lionbruno sprang forward and seized the
handkerchief, waving it joyfully in the air; while the messenger
advanced and handed a sealed packet to the chief, who at once
sheathed his knife and turned to the prisoner.
"You are free, signor," he said, gravely.
"Nita is ruined! I have failed!" thought Carlo.
The sharpest pang he had ever had to bear shot through him: and,
without a word, he fell to the ground.
"_Diavolo!_" exclaimed the chief. "I have often seen a prisoner
overcome on hearing his death-sentence, but never yet on getting a
reprieve!"
Lionbruno looked with many conflicting feelings at the face which had
grown so familiar to him. "_Per quanta è vero Dio!_" he remarked,
with an expressive gesture, "he really did then care more for his
sister's honor than for his own life!"