PART I

PART II

PART III

PART IV

PART I

SUSPENSE

I

A deep red glow flushed the fronts of marble palaces piled up on the

slope of an arid mountain whose barren ridge traced high on the

darkening sky a ghostly and glimmering outline. The winter sun was

setting over the Gulf of Genoa. Behind the massive shore the sky to the

east was like darkening glass. The open water too had a glassy look with

a purple sheen in which the evening light lingered as if clinging to the

water. The sails of, a few becalmed feluccas looked rosy and cheerful,

motionless in the gathering gloom. Their heads were all pointing towards

the superb city. Within the long jetty with the squat round tower at the

end, the water of the harbour had turned black. A bigger vessel with

square sails, issuing from it and arrested by the sudden descent of the

calm, faced the red disc of the sun. Her ensign hung down and its

colours were not to be made out; but a lank man in a shabby sailor's

jacket and wearing a strange cap with a tassel, who lounged with both

his arms thrown over the black breech of an enormous piece of ordnance

that with three of its monstrous fellows squatted on the platform of the

tower, seemed to have no doubt of her nationality; for to the question

of a young civilian in a long coat and Hessian boots and with an

ingenuous young countenance above the folds of a white neckcloth he

answered curtly, taking a short pipe out of his mouth but not turning

his head.

"She's Elban."

He replaced his pipe and preserved an unsociable air. The elegant young

man with the pleasant countenance, (who was Cosmo, the son of Sir

Charles Latham of Latham Hall, Yorkshire), repeated under his breath,

"Elban," and remained wrapped up in still contemplation of the becalmed

ship with her undistinguishable flag.

It was not till the sun had sunk beneath the waters of the Mediterranean

and the undistinguishable flag had been hauled down on board the

motionless ship that he stirred and turned his eyes towards the harbour.

The nearest prominent object in it was the imposing shape of an English

line-of-battle ship moored on the west side not far from the quay. Her

tall spars overtopped the roofs of the houses and the English ensign at

her flagstaff had been just hauled down and replaced by a lantern that

looked strange in the clear twilight. The forms of shipping crowded

towards the head of the harbour were merging into one another. Cosmo let

his eyes wander over the circular platform of the tower. The man leaning

over the gun went on smoking with indifference.

"Are you the guardian of this tower?" asked the young man.

The other gave him a sidelong glance and made answer without changing

his attitude and more as if speaking to himself:

"This is now an unguarded spot. The wars are over."

"Do they close the door at the bottom of this tower at night?" enquired

Cosmo.

"That is a matter worth consideration especially for those like you, for

instance, who have a soft bed to go to for the night."

The young than put his head on one side and looked at his interlocutor

with a faint smile.

"You don't seem to care," he said. "So I conclude I need not. As long as

you are content to stay here I am safe enough. I followed you up the

stairs, you know." The man with the pipe stood up abruptly. "You

followed me here? Why did you do that, in the name of all the saints?"

The young man laughed as if at a good joke. "Because you were walking in

front of me. There was nobody else in view near the Mole. Suddenly you

disappeared. Then I saw that the door at the bottom of the tower was

open and I walked up the stairs on to this platform. And I would have

been very surprised if I hadn't found you here."

The man in the strange cap ornamented with a tassel had taken his pipe

out of his mouth to listen. "That was all?"

"Yes, that was all."

"Nobody but an Englishman would behave like that," commented the other

to himself, a slight appearance of apprehension passing over his

features. "You are an eccentric people."

"I don't see anything eccentric in what I've done. I simply wanted to

walk out of the town. The Mole was as good as any other part. It is very

pleasant here."

A slight breeze touched the two men's faces, while they stood silent,

looking at each other. "I am but an idle traveller," said Cosmo easily.

"I arrived this morning by land. I am glad I had the idea to come out

here to behold your town glowing in the sunset and to get a sight of a

vessel belonging to Elba. There can't be very many of them. But you, my

friend . . ."

"I have as much right to idle away my time here as any English

traveller," interrupted the man hastily.

"It is very pleasant here," repeated the young traveller, staring into

the dusk which had invaded the platform of the tower.

"Pleasant?" repeated the other. "Yes, perhaps. The last time I was on

this platform I was only ten years old. A solid round shot was spinning

and rattling all over the stone floor. It made a wondrous disturbance

and seemed a living thing full of fury."

"A solid shot!" exclaimed Cosmo, looking all over the smooth flagstones

as if expecting to see the traces of that visitation. "Where did it come

from?"

"It came from an English brig belonging to Milord Keith's Squadron. She

stood in quite close and opened fire on us. . . . Heaven only knows why.

The audacity of your people! A single shot from one of those big

fellows," he continued, slapping the enormous bulging breech of the gun

by his side, "would have been enough to sink her like a stone."

"I can well believe it. But the fearlessness of our seamen has ceased to

astonish the world long ago," murmured the young traveller.

"There are plenty of fearless people in the world, but luck is even

better than courage. The brig sailed away unscathed. Yes, luck is even

better than courage. Surer than wisdom and stronger than justice. Luck

is a great thing. It is the only thing worth having on one's side. And

you people have always had it. Yes, signore, you belong to a lucky

nation or else you would not be standing here on this platform looking

across the water in the direction of that crumb of land that is the last

refuge of your greatest enemy."

Cosmo leaned over the stone parapet near the embrasure of the gun on the

other side of which the man with the short pipe in his hand made a

vaguely emphatic gesture: "I wonder what thoughts pass through your

head," he went on in a quiet detached tone. "Or perhaps you are too

young yet to have many thoughts in your head. Excuse my liberty, but I

have always heard that one may be frank in speech with an Englishman;

and by your speech there can be no doubt of you being of that nation."

"I can assure you I have no thoughts of hatred. . . . Look, the Elban

ship is getting farther away. Or is it only the darkness that makes her

seem so?"

"The night air is heavy. There is more wind on the water than up here,

where we stand; but I don't think she has moved away. You are interested

in that Elban ship, signore."

"There is a fascination now about everything connected with that

island," confessed the ingenuous traveller. "You have just said that I

was too young to think. You don't seem so very much older than myself.

I wonder what thoughts you may have."

"The thoughts of a common man, thoughts that could be of no interest to

an English milord," answered the other, in a grimly deprecatory tone.

"Do you think that all Englishmen are lords?" asked Cosmo, with a laugh.

"I didn't think. I went by your appearance. I remember hearing an old

man once say that you were a lordly nation."

"Really!" exclaimed the young man and laughed again in a low, pleasant

note. "I remember hearing of an old man who called us a nation of

traders."

"_Nazione di mercante_," repeated the man slowly. "Well, that may be

true too. Different men, different wisdoms."

"This didn't occur to me," said Cosmo, seating himself with a little

spring on the stone parapet of the tower. He rested one foot on the

massive gun-carriage and fixed his clear eyes on the dark red streak on

the western sky left by the retreating sun like a long gash inflicted on

the suffering body of the universe. . . . "Different men, different

wisdoms," he repeated, musingly. "I suppose it must be. People's lives

are so very different. . . . And of what kind was the wisdom of your old

man?"

"The wisdom of a great plain as level almost as the sea," said the other

gravely. "His voice was as unexpected when I heard it as your own,

signore. The evening shadows had closed about me just after I had seen

to the west, on the edge of the world as it were, a lion miss his spring

on a bounding deer. They went away right into the glow and vanished. It

was as though I had dreamed. When I turned round there was the old man

behind me no farther away than half the width of this platform. He only

smiled at my startled looks. His long silver locks stirred in the

breeze. He had been watching me, it seems, from folds of ground and from

amongst reed beds for nearly half a day, wondering what I might be at. I

had come ashore to wander on the plain. I like to be alone sometimes. My

ship was anchored in a bight of this deserted coast a good many miles

away, too many to walk back in the dark for a stranger like me. So I

spent the night in that old man's ranch, a hut of grass and reeds, near

a little piece of water peopled by a multitude of birds. He treated me

as if I had been his son. We talked till dawn and when the sun rose I

did not go back to my ship. What I had on board of my own was not of

much value, and there was certainly no one there to address me as "My

son" in that particular tone--you know what I mean, signore."

"I don't know--but I think I can guess," was the answer whose

light-hearted yet earnest frankness was particularly boyish and provoked

a smile on the part of the older man. In repose his face was grave. His

English interlocutor went on after a pause. "You deserted from your ship

to join a hermit in a wilderness simply because the tone of his voice

appealed to your heart. Is that your meaning?"

"You have guessed it, signorino. Perhaps there was more in it than that.

There is no doubt about it that I did desert from my ship."

"And where was that?"

"On the coast of South America," answered the man from the other side of

the big gun, with sudden curtness. "And now it is time for us to part."

But neither of them stirred and for some time they remained silent,

growing shadowy to each other on the massive tower, which itself, in the

advancing night, was but a gray shadow above the dark and motionless

sea.

"How long did you stay with that hermit in the desert?" asked Cosmo.

"And how did you leave him?"

"Signore, it was he who left me. After I had buried his body I had

nothing more to do there. I had learned much during that year."

"What is it you learned, my friend? I should like to know."

"Signore, his wisdom was not like that of other men and it would be too

long to explain to you here on this tower and at this late hour of the

day. I learned many things. How to be patient, for instance. . . .

Don't you think, signore, that your friends or the servants at the inn

may become uneasy at your long absence?"

"I tell you I haven't been much more than two hours in this town and I

have spoken to nobody in it till I came upon you, except of course to

the people at the inn."

"They may start looking for you."

"Why should they trouble their heads? It isn't late yet. Why should they

notice my absence?"

"Why? . . . Simply because your supper may be ready by this time,"

retorted the man impatiently.

"It may be, but I am not hungry yet," said the young man casually. "Let

them search for me all over the town if they like." Then in a tone of

interest, "Do you think they would think of looking for me here?" he

asked.

"No. This is the last spot anybody would think of," muttered the other

as if to himself. He raised his voice markedly, "We must part indeed.

Good-night, signore."

"Good-night."

The man in the seaman's jacket stared for a moment, then with a brusque

movement cocked his cap with the strange tassel more on the side of his

head. "I am not going away from this spot," he said.

"I thought you were. Why did you wish me good-night then?"

"Because we must part."

"I suppose we must some time or other," agreed Cosmo in a friendly

voice. "I should like to meet you again."

"We must part at once, this moment, on this tower."

"Why?"

"Because I want to be left alone," answered the other after the

slightest of pauses.

"Oh, come! Why on earth do you want to be left alone? What is it you

could do here?" protested the other with great good humour. Then as if

struck by an amusing notion, "Unless indeed you want to practise

incantations," he continued lightly, "and perhaps call the Evil One to

your side." He paused. "There are people, you know, that think it can be

done," he added in a mocking tone.

"They are not far wrong," was the other's ominous reply. "Each man has a

devil not very far from his elbow. Don't argue, signore, don't call him

up in me! You had better say no more and go in peace from here."

The young traveller did not change his careless attitude. The man in the

cap heard him say quietly, almost in a tone of self-communion:

"I prefer to stay in peace here."

It was indeed a wonderful peace. The sound of their quiet voices did not

seem to affect it in the least. It had an enormous and overpowering

amplitude which seemed rather to the man in the cap to take the part of

the Englishman's calm obstinacy against his growing anger. He couldn't

repress an impulsively threatening movement in the direction of his

inconvenient companion but it died out in perplexity. He pushed his cap

still more on one side and simply scratched his head.

"You are one of those people that are accustomed to have their own way.

Well, you can't have your way this time. I have asked you quietly to

leave me alone on this tower. I asked you as man to man. But if you

won't listen to reason I . . ."

Cosmo, putting the palms of his hands against the edge of the parapet,

sprang lightly nearly to the middle of the platform and landed without a

stagger. His voice was perfectly even.

"Reason is my only guide," he declared. "But your request looks like

mere caprice. For what can you possibly have to do here? The sea birds

are gone to sleep and I have as much right to the air up here as you.

Therefore . . ."

A thought seemed to strike him. "Surely this can't be your trysting

place," he commented in a changed tone through which pierced a certain

sympathy.

A short scornful laugh from the other checked him and he muttered to

himself soberly, "No. Altogether unfit . . . amongst those grim old

guns." He raised his voice. "All I can do is to give you all the room."

He backed away from the centre of the platform and perched himself this

time on the massive breech of a sixty-pounder. "Go on with your

incantations," he said then to the tall and dim figure whose immobility

appeared helpless for a moment. It broke the short period of silence,

saying deliberately:

"I suppose you are aware that at any time since we have begun to talk

together it was open to me to fling myself upon you unawares as you sat

on the parapet and knock you over to the bottom of this tower?" He

waited a moment, then in a deeper tone, "Will you deny it?" he said.

"No, I won't deny it," was the careless answer. "I hadn't thought to be

on my guard. But I can swim."

"Don't you know there is a border of big blocks of stone there? It would

have been a terrible death. . . . And now, will the signore do what I

ask him and return to his inn which is a much safer place than this

platform?"

"Safety is not a great inducement; and I don't believe for a moment you

ever thought of attacking me in a treacherous manner."

"Well," the tall shadowy figure crowned by the shape of the strange cap

admitted reluctantly. "Well, since you put it in those words, signore, I

did not."

"You see! I believe you are a fine fellow. But as it is I am under no

sort of obligation to listen to you."

"You are crafty," burst out the other violently. "It's in the blood. How

is one to deal with people like you?"

"You could try to drive me off," suggested the other.

There was no answer for a time, then the tall figure muttered

reflectively to itself.

"After all--he's an Englishman."

"I don't think myself invincible on that account," observed Cosmo

calmly.

"I know. I have fought against English soldiers in Buenos Ayres. I was

only thinking that, to give the devil his due, men of your nation don't

consort with spies or love tyranny either. . . . Tell me, is it true

that you have only been two hours in this town?"

"Perfectly true."

"And yet all the tyrants of the world are your allies," the shadowy man

pursued his train of thought half aloud.

The no less shadowy traveller remarked quietly into the gathering night:

"You don't know who my friends are."

"I don't, but I think you are not likely to go with a tale to the

Austrian spies or consort with the Piedmontese _sbirri._ As to the

priests who are poking their noses everywhere, I . . ."

"I don't know a single soul in Italy," interrupted the other.

"But you will soon. People like you make acquaintances everywhere. But

it's idle talk with strangers that I fear. Can I trust you as an

Englishman not to talk of what you may see?"

"You may. I can't imagine what unlawful thing you are about to commit

here. I am dying from curiosity. Can it be that you are really some sort

of sorcerer? Go on! Trace your magic circle if that is your business,

and call up the spirits of the dead."

A low grunt was the only answer to this speech uttered in a tone between

jest and earnest. Cosmo watched from the breech of his gun with intense

interest the movements of the man who objected so strongly to his

presence but who now seemed to pay no attention to him at all. They were

not the movements of a magician in so far that they certainly had

nothing to do with the tracing of circles. The figure had stepped over

to the seaward face of the tower and seemed to be pulling endless things

out of the breast pocket of his jacket. The young Englishman got down

from the breech of the gun, without ceasing to peer in a fascinated way,

and moved closer step by step till he threw himself back with an

exclamation of astonishment. "By heavens! The fellow is going to fish."

. . . Cosmo remained mute with surprise for a good many seconds and then

burst out loudly:

"Is this what you displayed all this secrecy for? This is the worst hoax

I ever . . ."

"Come nearer, signore, but take care not to tangle all my twine with

your feet. . . . Do you see this box?"

The heads of the two men had come together confidentially and the young

traveller made out a cylindrical object which was in fact a round tin

box. His companion thrust it into his hand with the request, "Hold it

for me a moment, signore," and then Cosmo had the opportunity to

ascertain that the lid of it was hermetically sealed. The man in the

strange cap dived into the pocket of his breeches for flint and steel.

The Englishman beheld with surprise his lately inimical companion

squeeze himself between the massive tube of the piece of ordnance and

the wall of stone and wriggle outwards into the depth of, the thick

embrasure till nothing of him remained visible but his black stockings

and the soles of his heavy shoes. After a time his voice came deadened

along the thickness of the wall:

"Will you hand me the box now, signore?"

Cosmo, enlisted in these mysterious proceedings, the nature of which was

becoming clear enough to him, obeyed at once, and approaching the

embrasure thrust the box in at the full length of his arm till it came

in contact with the ready hand of the man who was lying flat on his

stomach with his head projecting beyond the wall of the tower. His

groping hand found and snatched away the box. The twine was attached to

the box and at once its length laid on the platform began to run out

till the very end disappeared. Then the man lying prone within the

thickness of the gun embrasure lay still as death and the young

traveller strained his ears in the absolute silence to catch the

slightest sound at the foot of the tower. But all he could hear was the

faint sound of some distant clock striking somewhere in the town. He

waited a little longer, then in the cautious tone of a willing

accomplice murmured within the opening:

"Got a bite yet?"

The answer came hardly audible:

"No. But this is the very hour."

Cosmo felt his interest growing. And yet the facts in themselves were

not very exciting, but all this had the complexion and the charm of an

unexpected adventure, heightened by its mystery, playing itself out

before that old town towering like a carved hill decorated with lights

that began to appear quickly on the sombre and colossal mass of that

lofty shore. The last gleam had died out in the west. The harbour was

dark except for the lantern at the stern of the British ship of the

line. The man in the embrasure made a slight movement. Cosmo became more

alert but apparently nothing happened. There was no murmur of voices,

splash of water, or sign of the slightest stir all round the tower.

Suddenly the man in the embrasure began to wriggle back on to the

platform and in a very few minutes stood up to his full height facing

the unexpected helper.

"She has come and gone," he said. "Did you hear anything, signore?"

"Not a sound. She might have been the ghost of a boat--for you are

alluding to a boat, are you not?"

"_Si._ And I hope that if any eye on shore had made her out it had taken

her for only a ghost. Of course that English vessel of war rows guard at

night. But it isn't to look out for ghosts."

"I should think not. Ghosts are of no account. Could there be anything

more futile than the ghost of a boat?"

"You are one of the strong-minded, signore. Ghosts are the concern of

the ignorant--yet who knows? But it does sound funny to talk of the

ghost of a boat, a thing of brute matter. For wouldn't a ghost be a

thing of spirit, a man's soul itself made restless by grief or love, or

remorse or anger? Such are the stories that one hears. But the old

hermit of the plain, of whom I spoke, assured me that the dead are too

glad to be done with life to make trouble on earth."

"You and your hermit!" exclaimed Cosmo in a boyish and marvelling tone.

"I suppose it is no use me asking you what I have been just helping you

in."

"A little smuggling operation, signore. Surely, signore, England has

custom houses and therefore must have smugglers too."

"One has heard of them of course. But I wouldn't mind a bet that there

is not one of them that resembles you. Neither do I believe that they

deal with packages as small as the one you lowered into that ghostly

boat. You saw her of course. There was a boat."

"There was somebody to cut the string, as you see, signore. Look, here

is all that twine, all of it but a little piece. It may have been a man

swimming in the dark water. A man with a soul, fit to make a ghost of . . .

let us call him a ghost, signore."

"Oh yes, let us," the other said lightly. "I am sure that when I wake up

to-morrow all this will seem to me a dream. Even now I feel inclined to

pinch myself."

"What's that for, in Heaven's name?"

"It's a saying we have in our country. Yes, you, your hermit, our talk,

and this very tower, all this will be like a dream."

"I would say 'nothing better' if it was not that most people are only

too ready to talk about their dreams. No, signore, let all this be to

you of less consequence than if it were a tale of ghosts, of mere ghosts

in which you do not believe. You forced yourself on me as if you were

the lord of this place, but I feel friendly enough to you."

"I didn't ask for your friendship," retorted the young traveller in a

clear voice so void of all offence that the other man accepted it for a

mere statement of a fact.

"Certainly not. I spoke of my own feelings, and though I am, you may

say, a new-comer and a stranger in my own native city, I assure you it

is better to have me for a friend than for an enemy. And the best thing

of all would be to forget all about me. It would be also the kindest

thing you could do."

"Really?" said Cosmo in a tone of sympathy. "How can you expect me to

forget the most extraordinary thing that ever happened to me in all my

life?"

"In all your life! H'm! You have a long life before you yet, signorino."

"Oh, but this is an adventure."

"That's what I mean. You have so many marvellous adventures before you,

signorino, that this one is sure to be forgotten very soon. Then why not

at once?"

"No, my friend, you don't seem somehow a person one could easily

forget."

"I---- God forbid. . . . Good-night, signore."

No sooner were the words out of his mouth than the man in the cap

bounded across the platform, dived into the black square opening on its

landward side, and ran down the steps so lightly that not a sound

reached the ears of the other. Cosmo went down the winding stair, but

cautiously in the profound darkness. The door at the bottom stood open

and he stepped out on to the deserted jetty. He could see on it nothing

in the shape of a fleeting shadow.

On the very edge of the shore a low little building with three arcades

sent a dim gleam of light through its open door. It seemed to be a sort

of guardroom, for there was a sentry, an Austrian soldier apparently, in

a white coat. His duty, however, seemed to be concerned with the

landing-steps in front of the guardhouse, and he let the young traveller

pass on as though he had not seen him at all. Dark night had settled

upon the long quay. Here and there a dim street lamp threw a feeble

light on the uneven stones which the feet of the young traveller with

his springy walk seemed hardly to touch. The pleasurable sensation of

something extraordinary having happened to him accelerated his

movements. He was also feeling very hungry and he was making haste

towards his inn to dine first and then to think his adventure over, for

there was a strong conviction within him that he certainly had had an

adventure of a nature at the same time stimulating and obscure.

II

Cosmo Latham had an inborn faculty of orientation in strange

surroundings, most invaluable in a cavalry officer, but of which he had

never made much use, not even during the few months when he served as a

cornet of horse in the Duke of Wellington's army in the last year of the

peninsular campaign. There had been but few occasions to make use of it

for a freshly joined subaltern. It stood him in good stead that night,

however, while making his way to his inn in a town in which he was a

complete stranger, for it allowed him, with but little concern for the

direction he took, to think of his home which he loved for itself, every

stone and every tree of it--and of the two people he left there, whom he

loved too, each in a different way: his father, Sir Charles, and his

sister Henrietta.

Latham Hall, a large straggling building showing traces of many styles,

flanked by a romantic park and commanding a vast view of the Yorkshire

hills, had been the hereditary home of Lathams from the times before the

Great Rebellion. That it escaped confiscation then might have been the

effect of the worldly prudence of the Latham of the time. He probably

took good care not to shock persons of position and influence. That,

however, was not the characteristic of the later Lathams down to Sir

Charles, Cosmo's father.

Sir Charles's unconventional individuality had never been understood by

his country neighbours. Born endowed with a good intellect, a lively

imagination, and a capacity for social intercourse, it had been his

fate, owing to the idiosyncrasies of his own father, to spend his early

youth in the depths of Yorkshire in surroundings not at all congenial to

his tastes. Later he served for a time in the Guards; but he very soon

left the army to make an extended tour in France and Italy. In those

last days before the Revolution _le chevalier_ Latham obtained a great

social recognition in Paris and Versailles amongst the very best people,

not so much by his brilliance as by the depth of his character and the

largeness of his ideas. But suddenly he tore himself away from his

friendships and successes and proceeded to Italy. There, amongst the

members of the English colony in Florence, he met the two Aston girls

and, for some reason or other, became a great favourite with their

widowed mother. But at the end of some months he suddenly made up his

mind to return home. During a long, sleepless night, which he spent

pacing up and down in the agony of an internal struggle with himself in

the magnificent rooms of his lodgings in Florence, he concluded that he

would go home by sea. It was the easiest way of avoiding coming near

Paris. He had heard not long before that the best friends he had made in

the brilliant society he had frequented in France, the Marquis and the

Marquise d'Armand, had a daughter born to them. At Leghorn on the very

eve of embarking he had another struggle with himself--but he went by

sea. By the time when, after a long sea passage, he put his foot on

native soil he had renounced the idea of hurrying on north to shut

himself up in his country home. He lingered in London, disdainful and

idle, and began reluctantly to fall into the ways of a man about town,

when a friend returning from Italy brought him news that Miss Aston was

going to marry a Tuscan nobleman of mature years, and, as a piece of

queer Florentine gossip, that if the younger sister. Miss Molly Aston,

had refused two suitors in quick succession it was because she regarded

herself in some way as being engaged to him, Charles Latham.

Whether stung by his conscience or urged by indignation Sir Charles

started impulsively for Italy, travelling across the south of France. It

was a long road. At first he had been amazed, confounded, and angry; but

before he came to the end of his journey he had time to reflect upon

what might have easily become an absurd and odious situation. He said to

himself that a lot of bother of one sort and another would be saved by

his marrying Molly Aston. He did so, to the applause of all right-minded

people, and at the end of two years spent abroad came home with his wife

to shut himself up in his ancestral hall commanding the view of a wide

and romantic landscape, which he thought one of the finest in the world.

Molly Aston had been beautiful enough in her time to inspire several

vagrant poets and at least one Italian sculptor; but as Cosmo grew older

he began to understand that his mother had been a nonentity in the

family life. The greatest piece of self-assertion on her part was his

name. She had insisted on calling him Cosmo because the Astons counted,

far back in the past, an ancestress of Florentine origin, supposed to

have been a connection of the Medici family. Cosmo was fair, and the

name was all about him that he had received from his mother. Henrietta

was a type of dark beauty. Lady Latham died when both her children were

still young. In her life she adorned Latham Hall in the same way as a

statue might have adorned it. Her household power was limited to the

ordering of the dinner. With habits of meticulous order and a

marvellously common-place mind she had a temperament which, if she had

not fallen violently in love at the age of eighteen with the same man

whom she married, would have made her fond of society, of amusement, and

perhaps even of dissipation. But her only amusement and dissipation

consisted of writing long letters to innumerable relations and friends

all over the world, of whom after her marriage she saw but very little.

She never complained. Her hidden fear of all initiative and the secret

ardour of her temperament found their fulfilment in an absolute

submission to Sir Charles's will. She would never have dreamed of asking

for horses for a visit in the neighbourhood, but when her husband

remarked, "I think it would be advisable for you, my lady, to call at

such and such a house," her face would light up, she would answer with

alacrity, "Certainly, Sir Charles," and go off to array herself

magnificently indeed (perhaps because of that drop of Medici blood), but

also with great taste.

As the years went on Sir Charles aged more than he ought to have done,

and even began to grow a little stout, but no one could fail to see that

he had been a very handsome man in his time and that his wife's early

infatuation for him was justified in a way. In politics he was a

partisan of Mr. Pitt rather than a downright Tory. He loved his country,

believed in its greatness, in its superior virtue, in its irresistible

power. Nothing could shake his fidelity to national prejudices of every

sort. He had no great liking for grandees and mere aristocrats, despised

the fashionable world, and would have nothing whatever to do with any

kind of "upstart." Without being gentle he was naturally kind and

hospitable. His native generosity was so well known that no one was

surprised when he offered the shelter of his Yorkshire house to a family

of French refugees, the Marquis and the Marquise d'Armand and their

little daughter Adèle. They had arrived in England in a state of almost

complete destitution but with two servants who had shared the dangers

and the miseries of their flight from the excesses of the Revolution.

The presence of all these people at Latham Hall which, considered at

first as a temporary arrangement, was to last for some years, did not

affect in the least Lady Latham's beautifully dressed, idle equanimity.

Had not the D'Armands been Sir Charles's intimate friends years ago, in

France? But she had no curiosity. She was vaguely impressed by the fact

that the Marquise was a god-daughter of the Queen of Naples. For the

rest it was only so many people more in the servants' hall, at the

dinner table, and in the drawing room where the evenings were spent.

High up on one of the walls a lamp with a shaded reflector concentrated

its light on the yellow satin coat on the half-length portrait of a

rubicund Latham in a white coburg, which but for the manly and sensitive

mouth might have been the portrait of his own coachman. Apart from that

spot of beautiful colour the vast room with its windows giving on a

terrace (from which Sir Charles was in the habit of viewing sunsets)

remained dim with an effect of immensity in which the occupants, and

even Sir Charles himself, acquired the appearance of unsubstantial

shadows uttering words that had to travel across long, almost unlighted

distances.

On one side of the mantelpiece of Italian marbles (a late addition

designed by Sir Charles himself) Lady Latham's profuse jewellery

sparkled about her splendid and restful person posed placidly on a sofa.

Opposite her, the Marquise would be lying down on a deep couch with one

of Lady Latham's shawls spread over her feet. The D'Armands in their

flight from the Terror had saved very little besides their lives, and

the Marquise d'Armand's life had by this time become a very precarious

possession.

Sir Charles was perhaps more acutely aware of this than the Marquis her

husband. Sir Charles remembered her gentle in her changing moods of

gaiety and thought, charming, active, fascinating, and certainly the

most intelligent as she was the most beautiful of the women of the

French court. Her voice reaching him clear but feeble across the drawing

room had a pathetic appeal; and the tone of his answers was tinged with

the memory of a great sentiment and with the deference due to great

misfortunes. From time to time Lady Latham would make a remark in a

matter-of-fact tone which would provoke something resembling curtness in

Sir Charles's elaborately polite reply, and the thought that woman would

have made the very Lord's Prayer sound prosaic. And then in the long

pauses they would pursue their own thoughts as perplexed and full of

unrest as the world of seas and continents that began at the edge of the

long terrace graced by gorgeous sunsets; the wide world filled with the

strife of ideas and the struggle of nations in perhaps the most troubled

time of its history.

From the depths of the Italian chimneypiece the firelight of blazing

English logs would fall on Adèle d'Armand sitting quietly on a low

stool near her mother's couch. Her fair hair, white complexion, and dark

blue eyes contrasted strongly with the deeper colour scheme of Henrietta

Latham, whose locks were rich chestnut brown and whose eyes had a dark

lustre full of intelligence rather than sentiment. Now and then the

French child would turn her head to look at Sir Charles, for whom in her

silent existence she had developed a filial affection.

In those days Adèle d'Armand did not see much of her own father. Most

of the time the Marquis was away. Each of his frequent absences was an

act of devotion to his exiled Princes, who appreciated it no doubt but

found devotion only natural in a man of that family. The evidence of

their regard for the Marquis took the shape mainly of distant and

dangerous missions to the courts of north Germany, and northern Italy.

In the general disruption of the old order those missions were all

futile, because no one ever stopped an avalanche by means of plots and

negotiations. But in the Marquis the perfect comprehension of that

profound truth was mingled with the sort of enthusiasm that fabricates

the very hopes on which it feeds. He would receive his instructions for

those desperate journeys with extreme gravity and depart on them without

delay, after a flying visit to the Hall to embrace his ailing wife and

his silent child and hold a grave conference with his stately English

friend from whom he never concealed a single one of his thoughts or his

hopes. And Sir Charles approved of them both; because the thoughts were

sober and absolutely free from absurd illusions common to all exiles,

thus appealing to Sir Charles's reason and also to his secret disdain of

all great aristocracies--and the second, being based on the Marquis's

conviction of England's unbroken might and consistency, seemed to Sir

Charles the most natural thing in the world.

They paced a damp laurel-bordered walk together for an hour or so: Sir

Charles lame and stately like a disabled child of Jupiter himself, the

Marquis restraining his stride and stooping with a furrowed brow to talk

in measured, level tones. The wisdom of Sir Charles expressed itself in

curt sentences in which scorn for men's haphazard activities and

shortsighted views was combined with a calm belief in the future.

After the peace of Amiens the Compte d'Artois, the representative of the

exiled dynasty in England, having expressed the desire to have the

Marquis always by his side, the Marquise and Adèle left Latham Hall for

the poverty and the makeshifts of the life of well-nigh penniless exiles

in London. It was as great a proof of devotion to his royal cause as any

that could be given. They settled down in a grimy house of yellow brick

in four rooms up a very narrow and steep staircase. For attendants they

had a dark mulatto maid, brought as a child from the West Indies before

the Revolution by an aunt of the Marquise, and a man of rather

nondescript nationality called Bernard, who had been at one time a

hanger-on in the country house of the D'Armands, but following the

family in its flight and its wanderings before they had found refuge in

England, had displayed unexpected talents as a general factotum. Life at

Latham Hall had bored him exceedingly. The sense of complete security

was almost too much for his patience. The regularity of the hours and

the certitude of abundant meals depressed his spirits at times. The

change to London revived him greatly, for there he had something to do

and found daily occasion to display his varied gifts. He went marketing

in the early morning, dusted the room he called the salon, cooked the

meals, inspired and made happy by the large white smile of Mlle. Aglae,

the Negress, with whom he was very much in love. At twelve o'clock,

after tidying himself a bit, he would go in on the tips of his heavy

square shoes and carry the Marquise from her room to the sofa in the

salon with elaborate sureness and infinite respect, while Aglae followed

with pillow, shawl, and smelling bottle, wearing a forced air of

gravity. Bernard was acutely aware of her presence and would be

certain--the Marquise once settled on her sofa--to get a flash of a

white grin all to himself. Later Mlle. Adèle, white and fair, would go

out visiting, followed by Aglae as closely as night follows day; and

Bernard would watch them down the depths of the staircase in the hope of

catching a sight of a quickly upturned dark brown face with fine rolling

eyes. This would leave him happy for the rest of the afternoon. In the

evening his function was to announce visitors who had toiled up the

stairs: some of the first names in France that had come trudging on foot

through the mud or dust of the squalid streets to fill the dimly lighted

room which was the salon of the Marquise d'Armand. For those duties

Bernard would put on a pair of white stockings, which Miss Aglae washed

for him every second day, and encase his wide shoulders in a very tight

green shabby jacket with large metal buttons. Miss Aglae always found a

minute or two to give him a hasty inspection and a brush-down. Those

were delightful instants. Holding his breath and in a state of rigid

beatitude he turned about as ordered in gay whispers by his exotic

lady-love. Later he would sit on a stool outside the closed door

listening to the well-bred soft uproar of conversation; and when the

guests began to depart he lighted them downstairs, holding a tallow dip

in a small candlestick over the banister of the landing. When his duties

for the day were over he made up for himself a bed on the floor of a

narrow passage which separated the living rooms from a sort of large

cupboard in which Miss Aglae reposed from her daily labours. Bernard,

lying under a pair of thin blankets and with the tallow candle burning

on the floor, kept slumber off till Miss Aglae stuck out her head tied

up in an old red foulard--nothing but her head through the crack of the

door--in order to have a little whispered conversation. That was the

time when the servants exchanged their views and communicated to each

other their ideas and observations. The black maid's were shrewder than

the white factotum's. Being a personal attendant of the two ladies she

had occasion to see and hear more than her admirer. They commented on

the evident decline of the Marquise's health, not dolefully but simply

as a significant fact of the situation; on the Marquis's manner of daily

life which had become domestic and almost sedentary. He went out every

day but now he never went away for weeks and months as he used to

before. Those sudden and mysterious missions for which a misanthropic

Yorkshire baronet had paid out of his own pocket had come to an end. A

Marquis d'Armand could not be sent out as a common spy and there was now

no court in Christendom that would dare to receive an emissary, secret

or open, of the royal exiles. Bernard, who could read, explained these

things shortly to Miss Aglae. All great folk were terrified at that

Bonaparte. He made all the generals tremble. On those facts Miss Aglae

would have it that he must be a sorcerer. Bernard had another view of

Napoleonic greatness. It was nothing but the power of lies. And on one

occasion after a slight hesitation he burst out: "Shall I tell you the

truth about him. Miss Aglae?" The tied-up black head protruding through

the crack of the door nodded assent many times in the dim light of the

tallow dip. "Well then," continued Bernard with another desperate

effort, "he is of no account."

Miss Aglae repressed with difficulty the loud burst of laughter which

was the usual expression of her unsophisticated emotions. She had heard

ladies and gentlemen in the salon express a very similar opinion of

Bonaparte, but she thought suddenly of Miss Adèle and emitted a sigh.

"He seems to get him paw on the whole world, anyhow. What sort of a

fellow is he, Bernard? You have seen him."

Bernard had seen the fellow. He assured Miss Aglae that he was a

miserable shrimp of a man in big boots and with lank hair hanging down

his yellow cheeks. "I could break him in two like a straw if I could

only get him into my hands."

Believing it implicitly, the black maid suggested that Bernard should go

and do it.

"I would go at once," said the faithful follower. "But if I went I would

never see you again. He has always a hundred thousand men around him."

At this Miss Aglae, who had begun to smile, ended with a sigh of such a

deeply sorrowful nature that Bernard assured her that the time would

come, yes, some day the time would come when everybody would get back

his own. Aglae was ready to believe this prophecy. But meantime there

was Miss Adèle. That sweet child was now ready to get married, but

everybody was so very poor. Bernard put on a sentimental expression in

the dim light of the tallow dip, the flame of which swayed by the side

of his straw mattress and made the shadow of his head, protected by a

nightcap, dance too, high up the wall of the drafty passage. Timidly he

muttered of love. That would get over all the difficulties.

"You very stupid man, Mr. Bernard. Love! What sort of trash you talk?

Love don't buy fish for dinner." Then with sudden anxiety she inquired:

"Have you got money for marketing to-morrow?" Bernard had the money. Not

much, but he had the money. "Then you go out early and buy fish for

dinner. This Madame la Marquise orders. Easier than killing an emperor,"

she continued sarcastically. "And take care fat woman in Billingsgate

don't cheat you too much," she added with dignity before drawing her

head in and shutting the door of her dark cupboard.

A month later, sitting upon his straw bed and with his eyes fixed on the

door of Miss Aglae's cupboard, Bernard had just begun to think that he

had done something to offend, and that he would be deprived of his

whispered midnight chat, when the door opened, the head of the girl

appeared in its usual position. It drooped. Its white eyeballs glistened

full of tears. It said nothing for a long time. Bernard was extremely

alarmed. He wanted to know in an anxious whisper what was wrong. The

maid let him cudgel his brains for a whole minute before she made the

statement that oh! she did not like the looks of a certain gentleman

visitor in a "too-much-laced coat."

Bernard, relieved but uncomprehending, snatched the candlestick off the

floor and raised it to the protruded head of the maid.

"What is there to cry about?" he asked. The tears glistening on the

dusky cheek astonished him beyond measure; and as an African face lends

itself to the expression of sorrow more than any other type of human

countenance, he was profoundly moved, and without knowing the cause, by

mere sympathy felt ready to cry himself.

"You don't see! You don't understand anything, Bernard. You stand there

at the door like a stick. What is the use of you I can't tell."

Bernard would have felt the injustice to be unbearable if he had not had

a strong sense of his own merits. Moreover, it was obvious that Aglae

was thoroughly upset. As to the man in the too-much-laced coat, Bernard

remembered that he was dressed very splendidly indeed. He had called

first in company of a very fine English gentleman, a friend of the

family, and he had repeated the call always with that same friend. It

was a fact he had never called by himself yet. The family had dined with

him only the day before, as Bernard knew very well because he had had to

call the hackney coach and had given the address, not to mention the

confidential task of carrying the Marquise down the stairs and then up

again on their return from that entertainment. There could be nothing

wrong with a man with whom the family dined. And the Marquise herself

too, she who, so to speak, never went out anywhere!

"What has he done?" he asked without marked excitement. "I have never

seen you so distressed. Miss Aglae."

"Me upset? I should think me upset. I fear him wants carry off Mlle.

Adèle--poor child."

This staggered the faithful Bernard. "I should like him to try," he said

pugnaciously. "I keep a cudgel there in this passage." A scornful

exclamation from the maid made him pause. "Oh!" he said in a changed

tone, "carry her off for a wife? Well, what's wrong in that?"

"Oh! you silly!" whimpered Aglae. "Can't you see him twice, twice and a

half, the age of Miss Adèle?"

Bernard remained silent a minute. "Fine-looking man," he remarked at

last. "Do you know anything else about him?"

"Him got plenty of money," sobbed out Aglae.

"I suppose the parents will have something to say about that," said

Bernard, after a short meditation. "And if Mlle. Adèle herself . . ."

But Aglae wailed under her breath, as it were. "It's done, Bernard, it's

done!"

Bernard, fascinated, stared upwards at the maid. A mental reference to

abundance of money for marketing flashed through his mind.

"I suppose Mlle. Adèle can love a man like that. Why not?"

"Him got very fine clothes certainly," hissed Aglae furiously. Then she

broke down and became full of desolation. "Oh, Bernard, them poor

people, you should have seen their faces this morning when I served the

breakfast. I feel as if I must make a big howl while I give plate to M.

le Marquis. I hardly dare to look at anybody."

"And Mademoiselle?" asked Bernard in an anxious whisper.

"I don't like to look at her either," went on Aglae in a tone of

anguish. "She got quite a flush on her face. She think it very great and

fine, make everybody rich. I ready to die with sorrow, Bernard. She

don't know. She too young. Why don't you cry with me?--you great stupid

man."

III

The marriage, the prospect of which failed to commend itself to the

coloured maid, took place in due course. The contract which expressed

the business side of that alliance was graced by the signature of a

Prince of the blood and by two other signatures of a most aristocratic

complexion. The French colony in London refrained from audible comments.

The gracious behaviour of H.R.H. the Duc de Berry to the bridegroom

killed all criticism in the very highest circles of the emigration. In

less exalted circles there were slight shrugs and meaning glances, but

very little else besides, except now and then a veiled sarcasm which

could be ascribed to envy as much as to any other sentiment. Amongst the

daughters of the emigration there must have been more than one who in

her heart of hearts thought Adèle d'Armand a very lucky girl. The

splendour of the entertainments which were given to the London society

by the newly wedded couple after their return from the honeymoon put it

beyond all doubt that the man whom Aglae described as wearing a

"too-much-laced coat" was very rich. It began also to be whispered that

he was a man of fantastic humours and of eccentric whims of the sort

that do not pass current in the best society; especially in the case of

a man whose rank was dubious and whose wealth was but recently acquired.

But the embittered and irreconcilable remnant of the exiled aristocracy

gave but little of its sympathy to Adèle d'Armand. She ought to have

waited till the King was restored, and either married suitably--or else

entered a convent for ladies of rank. For these too would soon be

restored.

The Marquis, before the engagement of his daughter had become public,

had written to his friend Sir Charles of the impending marriage in

carefully selected terms which demanded nothing but a few words of

formal congratulation. Of his son-in-law he mentioned little more than

the name. It was, he said, that of a long-impoverished Piedmontese

family with good French connections formed in the days before it had

fallen into comparative obscurity but, the Marquis insisted, fully

recognized by the parties concerned. It was the family De Montevesso.

The world had heard nothing of it for more than a century, the Marquis

admitted parenthetically. His daughter's intended husband's name was

Helion--Count Helion de Montevesso. The title had been given to him by

the King of Sardinia just before that unfortunate monarch was driven out

of his dominions by the armies of republican France. It was the reward

of services rendered at a critical time and none the less meritorious

because, the Marquis admitted, they were of a financial nature. Count

Helion, who went away very young from his native country and wandered in

many lands, had amassed a large personal fortune, the Marquis went on to

say, which luckily was invested in a manner that made it safe from

political revolutions and social disasters overwhelming both France and

Italy. That fortune, as a matter of fact, had not been made in Europe,

but somewhere beyond the seas. The Marquis's letter reached Latham Hall

in the evening of an autumn day.

The very young Miss Latham, seated before an embroidery frame, watched

across the drawing room her father reading the letter under the glare of

the reflector lamp and at the feet, as it were, of the Latham in the

yellow satin coat. Sir Charles raised his eyebrows, which with passing

years had become bushy and spoiled a little the expression of his

handsome face. Miss Latham was made very anxious by his play of

physiognomy. She had already been told after the first rustle of

unfolded paper that her big friend Adèle d'Armand (Miss Latham was four

years younger) was going to be married, and had become suddenly, but

inwardly, excited. Every moment she expected her father to tell her

something more. She was dying from impatience; but there was nothing

further except the rustle of paper--and now this movement of the

eyebrows. Then Sir Charles lowered his hands slowly. She could contain

herself no longer.

"Who is it, Papa?" she asked with animation.

Henrietta Latham was fifteen then. Her dark eyes had remained as large

as ever. The purity of her complexion, which was not of the milk-white

kind, was admirable and the rich shade of the brown curls clustering on

each side of her faintly glowing cheeks made a rich and harmonious

combination. Sir Charles gazed at his daughter's loveliness with an air

of shocked abstraction. But he too could not contain himself. He

departed from his stateliness so far as to growl out scathingly:

"An upstart of some kind."

Miss Latham was, for all her lively manner, not given to outward

manifestations of emotions. This intelligence was too shocking for a

gasp or an exclamation. She only flushed slowly to the roots of her

pretty hair. An upstart simply meant to her everything that was bad in

the way of a human being, but the scathing tone of Sir Charles's

outburst also augmented her profound emotion, for it seemed to extend to

Adèle d'Armand herself. It shocked her tender loyalty towards the

French girl, which had not been diminished by a separation of more than

three years. She said quietly:

"Adèle . . . Impossible!"

The flush ebbed out of her healthy cheeks and left them pale, with the

eyes darker than Sir Charles had ever seen them before. Those evidences

of his daughter's emotion recalled Sir Charles to himself. After looking

at his daughter fixedly for a moment he murmured the word "impossible"

without any particular accent and again raised the letter to his eyes.

He did not find it in anything to modify his first impression of the man

whom Adèle d'Armand was about to marry. Once more in his vaguely

explanatory message the Marquis alluded to the wealth of his prospective

son-in-law. It gave him a standing in the best society which his

personal merits could not perhaps have secured for him so completely.

Then the Marquis talked about his wife's health. The Marquise required

many comforts, constant care, and cheerful surroundings. He had been

enabled to leave the disagreeable lodgings in a squalid street for a

little house in Chiswick very near London. He complained to his old

friend that the uncompromising royalists reproached him bitterly for

having signed a three-years' lease. It seemed to them an abominable

apostasy from the faith in a triumphal return of the old order of things

in a month or two. "I have caused quite a scandal by acting in this

sensible manner," he wrote. "I am very much abused, but I have no doubt

that even those who judge me most severely will be glad enough to come

to Adèle's wedding."

Then, as if unable to resist the need to open his heart, he began the

next line with the words:

I need not tell you that all this is my daughter's own doing. The demand

for her hand was made to us regularly through Lord G., who is a good

friend of mine, though he belongs to the faction of Mr. Fox in which the

Count of Montevesso numbers most of his English friends. But directly we

had imparted the proposal to Adèle she took a step you may think

incredible, and which from a certain point of view might even be called

undutiful, if such a word could ever be applied to the sweet and devoted

child our Adèle has always been to us. At her personal request, made

without consulting either her mother or myself. Lord G. had the weakness

to arrange a meeting between her and the Count at his own house. What

those two could have said to each other I really cannot imagine. When we

heard of it, the matter was so far settled that there was nothing left

for us but to accept the inevitable . . .

Again Sir Charles let his big white aristocratic hands descend on his

knees. His daughter's dark head drooped over the frame, and he had a

vision of another head, very different and very fair, by its side. It

had been a part of his retired life and had had a large share of his

affection. How large it was he discovered only now, at this moment, when

he felt that it was in a sense lost to him for ever. "Inevitable," he

muttered to himself with a half-scornful, half-pained intonation. Sir

Charles could understand the sufferings, the difficulties, the

humiliations of poverty. But the Marquis might have known that, far or

near, he could have counted on the assistance of his friend. For some

years past he had never hesitated to dip into his purse. But that was

for those mysterious journeys and those secret and important missions

his Princes had never hesitated to entrust him with without ever

troubling their heads about the means. Such was the nature of Princes,

Sir Charles reflected with complete bitterness. And now came this . . .

A whole young life thrown away perhaps, in its innocence, in its

ignorance. . . . How old could Adèle be now? Eighteen or nineteen. Not

so very much younger than her mother was when he used to see so much of

her in Paris and Versailles, when she had managed to put such an impress

on his heart that later he did not care whom he married or where he

lived. . . . Inevitable! . . . Sir Charles could not be angry with the

Marquise, now a mere languid shadow of that invincible charm that his

heart had not been able to resist. She and her husband must have given

up all their hopes, all their loyal royalist hopes before they could bow

like this to the Inevitable. It had not been difficult for him to learn

to love that fascinating French child as though she had been another

daughter of his own. For a moment he experienced an anguish so acute

that it made him move slightly in his chair. Half aloud he muttered the

thought that came into his mind:

"Austerlitz has done it."

Miss Latham raised her lustrous dark eyes with an enquiring expression

and murmured, "Papa?"

Sir Charles got up and seized his stick. "Nothing, my dear, nothing." He

wanted to be alone. But on going out of the room he stopped by the

embroidery frame and, bending down, kissed the forehead of his

daughter--his English daughter. No issue of a great battle could affect

her future. As to the other girl, she was lost to him and it couldn't be

helped. A battle had destroyed the fairness of her life. This was the

disadvantage of having been born French or indeed belonging to any other

nation of the continent. There were forces there that pushed people to

rash or unseemly actions; actions that seemed dictated by despair and

therefore wore an immoral aspect. Sir Charles understood Adèle d'Armand

even better than he understood his own daughter, or at least he

understood her with greater sympathy. She had a generous nature. She was

too young, too inexperienced to know what she was doing when she took in

hand the disposal of her own person in favour of that apparently

Piedmontese upstart with his obscure name and his mysteriously acquired

fortune. "I only hope the fortune is there," thought Sir Charles with

grim scepticism. But as to that there could be no doubt, judging from

the further letters he received from his old friend. After a short but

brilliant period of London life the upstart had carried Adèle off to

France. He had bought an estate in Piedmont, which was his native

country, and another with a splendid house, near Paris. Sir Charles was

not surprised to hear a little later that the Marquise and the Marquis

had also returned to France. The time of persecution was over; most of

the great royalist families were returning, unreconciled in sentiment if

wavering in their purposes. That his old friend should ever be dazzled

by imperial grandeurs Sir Charles could not believe. Though he had

abandoned his daughter to an upstart, he was too good a royalist to

abandon his principles, for which certainly he would have died if that

had been of any use. But he had returned to France. Most of his exiled

friends had returned too, and Sir Charles understood very well that the

Marquis and his wife wanted to be somewhere near their daughter. This

departure closed a long chapter in his life, and afterwards Sir Charles

hardly ever mentioned his French friends. The only positive thing which

Henrietta knew was that Adèle d'Armand had married an upstart and had

returned to France. She had communicated that knowledge to her brother,

who had stared with evident surprise but had made no comment. Living

away from home at school and afterwards in Cambridge, his father's

French friends had remained for him as shadowy figures on the shifting

background of a very poignant, very real, and intense drama of

contemporary history, dominated by one enormously vital and in its

greatness immensely mysterious individuality--the only man of his time.

Cosmo Latham at the threshold of life had adopted neither of the

contrasted views of Napoleon Emperor entertained by his contemporaries.

For him as for his father before him, the world offered a scene of

conflicting emotions in which facts appraised by reason preserved a

mysterious complexity and a dual character. One evening during an

artless discussion with young men of his own age, it had occurred to him

to say that Bonaparte seemed to be the only man amongst a lot of old

scarecrows. "Look how he knocks them over," he had explained. A moment

of silence followed. Then a voice objected:

"Then perhaps he is not so great as some of you try to make him out."

"I didn't mean that exactly," said Cosmo in a sobered tone. "Nobody can

admire that man more than I do. Perhaps the world may be none the worse

for a scarecrow here and there left on the borders of what is right or

just. I only wished to express my sense of the moving force in his

genius."

"What does he stand for?" asked the same voice.

Cosmo shook his head. "Many things, and some of them too obvious to

mention. But I can't help thinking that there are some which we cannot

see yet."

"And some of them that are dead already," retorted his interlocutor.

"They died in his very hands. But there is one thing for which he stands

and that will never die. You seem to have forgotten it. It is the spirit

of hostility to this nation; to what we in this room, with our different

views and opinions, stand for in the last instance."

"Oh, that!" said Cosmo confidently. "What we stand for isn't an old

scarecrow. Great as he is he will never knock that over. His arm is not

long enough, however far his thoughts may go. He has got to work with

common men."

"I don't know what you mean. What else are we? I believe you admire

him."

"I do," confessed Cosmo sturdily.

This did not prevent him from joining the army in Spain before the year

was out, and that without asking for Sir Charles's approval. Sir Charles

condemned severely the policy of using the forces of the Crown in the

Peninsula. He did not like the ministry of the day and he had a strong

prejudice against all the Wellesleys to whose aggrandizement this whole

policy seemed effected. But when at the end of a year and a half, after

the final victory of Toulouse, his son appeared in Yorkshire, the two

made up for the past coolness by shaking hands warmly for nearly a whole

minute. Cosmo really had done very little campaigning and soon declared

to his father the wish to leave the army. There would be no more

fighting for years and years, he argued, and though he did not dislike

fighting in a good cause, he had no taste for mere soldiering. He wanted

to see something of the world which had been closed to us for so long.

Sir Charles, ageing and dignified, leaned on his stick on the long

terrace.

"All the world was never closed to us," he said.

"I wasn't thinking of the East, sir," explained Cosmo. "I heard some

people talk about its mystery, but I think Europe is mysterious enough

just now, and even more interesting."

Sir Charles nodded his bare gray head in the chill evening breeze.

"France, Germany," he murmured.

Cosmo thought that he would prefer to see something of Italy first. He

would go north afterwards.

"Through Vienna, I suppose," suggested Sir Charles with an impassive

face.

"I don't think so, sir," said Cosmo frankly. "I don't care much for the

work which is going on there and perhaps still less for the men who are

putting their hands to it."

This time Sir Charles's slow nod expressed complete agreement. He too

had no liking for the work that was about to begin there. But no

objection could be raised against Italy. He had known Italy well thirty

or more years ago, but it must have been changed out of his knowledge.

He remained silent, gazing at the wide landscape of blue wooded rises

and dark hollows under the gorgeous colours of the sunset. They began to

die out.

"You may travel far before you see anything like this," he observed to

his son. "And don't be in a hurry to leave us. You have only just come

home. Remember I am well over sixty."

Cosmo was quite ready to surrender himself to the peace of his Yorkshire

home, so different from the strenuous atmosphere of the last campaign in

the South of France. Autumn was well advanced before he fixed the day

for his departure. On his last day at home Sir Charles addressed him

with perfect calmness.

"When you pass into Italy you must not fail to see my old friend the

Marquis d'Armand. The French King has appointed him as ambassador in

Turin. It's a sign of high favour, I believe. He will be either in Turin

or Genoa. . . ." Sir Charles paused, then after a perfectly audible sigh

added with an effort: "The Marquise is dead. I knew her in her youth.

She was a marvellous woman. . . ." Sir Charles checked himself, and then

with another effort, "But the daughter of my old friend is I believe

with her father now, a married daughter, the Countess of Montevesso."

"You mean little Adèle, sir," said Cosmo, with interest, but on Sir

Charles's face there passed a distinct shade of distress.

"Oh, you remember the child," he said, and his tone was tender but it

changed to contempt as he went on. "I don't know whether the fellow, I

mean the man she married, is staying with them or whether they are

living with him, or whether . . . I know nothing!"

The word "upstart," heard many years ago from his sister Henrietta,

crossed Cosmo's mind. He thought to himself, "There is something wrong

there," and to his father he said, "I will be able to tell you all about

it."

"I don't want to know," Sir Charles replied with a surprising solemnity

of tone and manner which hid some deeper feeling. "But give the Marquis

my love and tell him that when he gets tired of all his grandeurs he may

remember that there is a large place for him in this house as long as I

live."

Late that evening Cosmo, saying good-bye to his sister, took her in his

arms, kissed her forehead, and holding her out at arm's length said:

"You have grown into a charming girl, Henrietta."

"I am glad you think so," she said. "Alas, I am too dark. I can never be

as charming as Adèle must have been at my age. You seem to have

forgotten her."

"Oh no," protested Cosmo carelessly. "A marvel of fairness, wasn't she?

I remember you telling me years ago that she married an upstart."

"That was Father's expression. You know what that means, Cosmo."

"I do know what it means, exactly," he said, laughing. "But from what

Father said this afternoon it seems as if he were a rather nasty

upstart. What made Adèle do it?"

"I am awed," confessed Henrietta. "I don't know what made her do it. I

was never told. Father never talked much about the D'Armands afterwards.

I was with him in the yellow drawing room the evening he got the letter

from the Marquis. After he read it he said something very extraordinary.

You know it's full nine years ago and I was yet a child, yet I could not

have dreamed it. I heard it distinctly. He dropped his hands and said,

'Austerlitz has done it.' What could he have meant?"

"It would be hard to guess the connection," said Cosmo, smiling at his

sister's puzzled face. "Father must have been thinking of something

else."

"Father was thinking of nothing else for days," affirmed Henrietta

positively.

"You must have been a very observant child," remarked her brother. "But

I believe you were always a clever girl, Henrietta. Well, I am going to

see Adèle."

"Oh yes, you start in the morning to travel ever so far and for ever so

long," said Miss Latham enviously. "Oh Cosmo, you are going to write to

me--lots?"

He looked at her appreciatively and gave her another brotherly hug.

"Certainly I will write, whole reams," he said.

IV

On his way from the harbour to the upper part of the town where his inn

was situated Cosmo Latham met very few people. He had to pass through a

sort of covered way; its arch yawned in front of him very black with

only a feeble glimmer of a light in its depths. It did not occur to him

that it was a place where one could very well be knocked on the head by

evil-intentioned men if there were any prowling about in that early part

of the evening, for it was early yet, though the last gleams of sunset

had gone out completely off the earth and out of the sky. On issuing

from the dark passage a maze of narrow streets presented itself to his

choice, but he knew that as long as he kept walking uphill he could not

fail to reach the middle of the town. Projecting at long intervals from

the continuous mass of thick walls, wrought-iron arms held lanterns

containing dim gleams of light. The enormous doors of the lofty gateways

he passed were closed, and the only sound he could hear was that of his

own deliberate footsteps. At a wider spot where several of those lanes

met he stopped, and looking about him asked himself whether all those

enormous and palatial houses were empty, or whether it was the thickness

of walls that killed all the signs of life within; for as to the

population being already asleep he could not believe it for a moment.

All at once he caught sight of a muffled feminine form. In the heavy

shadow she seemed to emerge out of one wall and gliding on seemed to

disappear into another. It was undoubtedly a woman. Cosmo was startled

by this noiseless apparition and had a momentary feeling of being lost

in an enchanted city. Presently the enchanted silence was broken by the

increasing sound of an iron-shod stick tapping the flagstones, till

there walked out of one of the dark and tortuous lanes a man who by his

rolling gait, general outline, and the characteristic shape of the hat,

Cosmo could not doubt, was a seaman belonging to the English man-of-war

in the harbour. The tapping of his stick ceased suddenly and Cosmo

hailed him in English, asking for the way.

The sturdy figure in the tarpaulin hat put its cudgel under its arm and

answered him in a deep pleasant voice. Yes, he knew the inn. He was just

coming from there. If His Honour followed the street before him he would

come to a large open space and His Honour's inn would be across the

square. In the deep shadows Cosmo could make out of the seaman's face

nothing but the bushy whiskers and the gleam of the eyes. He was pleased

at meeting the very day he had reached the Mediterranean shore (he had

come down to Genoa from Turin) such a fine specimen of a man-of-war's

man. He thanked him for the direction and the sailor, touching his hat,

went off at his slightly rolling gait. Cosmo observed that he took a

turning very near the spot where the muffled woman had a moment before

vanished from his sight. It was a very dark and a very narrow passage

between two towering buildings. Cosmo, continuing on his way, arrived at

a broad thoroughfare badly lighted but full of people. He knew where he

was then. In a very few moments he found himself at the door of his inn

in a great square which in comparison with the rest of the town might

have been said to blaze with lights.

Under an iron lantern swung above a flight of three broad steps, Cosmo

recognized his servant gazing into the square with a worried expression

which changed at once into one of relief on perceiving his master. He

touched his cap and followed Cosmo into a large hall with several doors

opening into it and furnished with many wooden chairs and tables. At one

of them bearing four candlesticks several British naval officers sat

talking and laughing in subdued tones. A compactly built clean-shaven

person with slightly sunken cheeks, wearing black breeches and a maroon

waistcoat with sleeves, but displaying a very elaborate frill to his

white shirt, stood in the middle of the floor, glancing about with

vigilance, and bowed hurriedly to his latest client. Cosmo returned the

greeting of Signor Cantelucci, who, snatching up the nearest

candlestick, began to ascend a broad stone staircase with an air of

performing a solemn duty. Cosmo followed him, and Cosmo's servant

followed his master. They went up and up. At every flight broad archways

gave a view of dark perspective in which nothing but a few drops of dim

fire were forlornly visible. At last Signor Cantelucci threw open a door

on a landing and bowing again:

"See, milord! There is a fire. I know the customs and habits of the

English."

Cosmo stepped into a large and lofty room where in the play of bright

flames under a heavy and tall mantelpiece the shadows seemed very much

disturbed by his entrance. Cosmo approached the blaze with satisfaction.

"I had enough trouble to get them to light it," remarked the valet in a

resentful tone. "If it hadn't been for a jack-tar with big whiskers I

found down in the hall it wouldn't be done yet. He came up from the ship

with one of these sea officers downstairs. He drove the fellows with the

wood in fine style up here for me. He knows the people here. He cursed

them each separately by their Christian names, and then had a glass of

wine in the kitchen with me."

Meantime Signor Cantelucci, wearing the aspect of a deaf man, had

lighted, on two separate tables, two clusters of candles which drove the

restless gloom of the large apartment half way up to the ceiling, and

retired with noiseless footsteps. He stopped in the doorway to cast a

keen glance at the master and the man standing by the fire. Those two

turned their heads only at the sound of the closing door.

"I couldn't think what became of you, sir. I was getting quite worried

about you. You disappeared without saying anything to me."

"I went for a walk down to the sea," said Cosmo while the man moved off

to where several cowhide trunks were ranged against the wall. "I like to

take a look round on arriving at a new place."

"Yes, sir; but when it got dark I wondered."

"I tarried on a tower to watch the sunset," murmured Cosmo.

"I have been doing some unpacking," said the servant, "but not knowing

how long you mean to stay . . ."

"It may be a long stay."

"Then I will go on, sir; that is if you are going to keep this room."

"Yes. The room will do. Spire. It's big enough."

Spire took up one of the two candelabras and retired into the

neighbourhood of a sort of state bed heavily draped at the other end of

the room. There, throwing open the trunks and the doors of closets, he

busied himself systematically, without noise, till he heard the quiet

voice of his young master.

"Spire."

"Yes, sir," he answered, standing still with a pile of shirts on his

arm.

"Is this inn very full?"

"Yes, very," said Spire. "The whole town is full of travellers and

people from the country. A lot of our nobility and gentry are passing

this way."

He deposited the shirts on a shelf in the depths of the wall and turned

round again.

"Have you heard any names, Spire?"

Spire stooped over a trunk and lifted up from it carefully a lot of

white neckcloths folded neatly one within the other.

"I haven't had much time yet, sir. I heard a few."

He laid down the neckcloths by the side of the shirts while Cosmo, with

his elbow on the mantelpiece, asked down the whole length of the room:

"Anybody I know?"

"Not in this place, sir. There is generally a party of officers from the

man-of-war staying here. They come and go. I have seen some Italian

gentlemen in square-cut coats and powdered hair. Very old-fashioned,

sir. There are some Austrians too, I think; but I haven't seen any

ladies. . . . I am afraid, sir, this isn't the right sort of inn. There

is another about a hundred yards from here on the other side of the

square."

"I don't want to meet anybody I know," said Cosmo Latham in a low voice.

Spire thought that this would make his stay in Genoa very dull. At the

same time he was convinced that his young master would alter his mind

before very long and change to that other inn patronized by travellers

of fashion. For himself he was not averse from a little quiet time.

Spire was no longer young. Thirty years ago, before the War and before

the Revolution, he had travelled with Sir Charles in France and Italy.

He was then only eighteen, but being a steady and trustworthy lad was

taken abroad to look after the horses. Sir Charles kept four horses in

Florence, and Spire had often ridden on Tuscan roads behind Sir Charles

and the two Misses Aston, of whom one later became Lady Latham. After

the family settled in Yorkshire he passed from the stables to the house,

acquired a confidential position, and whenever Lady Latham took a

journey he sat in the rumble with a pair of double-barrelled pistols in

the pockets of his greatcoat and ordered all things on the road. Later

he became intermediary between Sir Charles and the stables, the gardens,

and in all out-of-door things about the house. He attended Lady Latham

on her very last drive, all the details for that lady's funeral having

been left to his management. He was also a very good valet. He had been

called one evening into the library where Sir Charles, very gouty that

day, leaning with one hand on a thick stick and with the other on the

edge of a table, had said to him: "I am lending you to Mr. Cosmo for his

travels in France and Italy. You will know your way about. And mind you

draw the charges of the pistols in the carriage every morning and load

them afresh."

Spire was then requested to help Sir Charles up the stairs and had a few

more words said to him when Sir Charles stopped at the door of his

bedroom.

"Mr. Cosmo has plenty of sense. You are not to make yourself a nuisance

to him."

"No, Sir Charles," said the imperturbable Spire. "I will know how to

look after Mr. Cosmo."

And if he had been asked. Spire would have been able to say that during

the stay in Paris and all through France and Switzerland on the way to

Genoa Mr. Cosmo had given him no trouble at all.

Spire, still busy unpacking, glanced at his young master. He certainly

looked very quiet now, leaning on his elbow with the firelight playing

from below on his young thoughtful face with its smooth and pale

complexion. "Very good-looking indeed," thought Spire. In that

thoughtful mood he recalled very much the Sir Charles of thirty or

thirty-five years ago. Would he too find his wife abroad? There had been

women enough in Paris of every kind and degree, English and French and

all sorts. But it was a fact that Mr. Cosmo sought most of his company

amongst men, of whom also there had been no lack and of every degree. In

that, too, the young man resembled very much his father. Men's company.

But were he to get caught he would get caught properly; at any rate for

a time, reflected Spire, remembering Sir Charles Latham's rush back to

Italy, the inwardness of which had been no more revealed to him than to

the rest of the world.

Spire, approaching the candelabra, unfolded partly a very fine coat,

then refolded it before putting it away on a convenient shelf. He had a

moment of regret for his own young days. He had never married, not

because there had been any lack of women to set their caps at him, but

from a sort of half-conscious prudence. Moreover, he had a notion

somehow or other that Sir Charles would not have liked it. Perhaps it

was just as well. Now he was carefree, attending on Mr. Cosmo without

troubling his head about who had remained at home.

Spire, arranging the contents of a dressing case on the table, cast

another sidelong look at the figure by the fire. Very handsome.

Something like Sir Charles and yet not like. There was a touch of

something unusual, perhaps foreign, and yet no one with a pair of eyes

in his head could mistake Mr. Cosmo for anything but an English

gentleman.

Spire's memories of his tour with Sir Charles had been growing dim. But

he remembered enough of the old-time atmosphere to have become aware of

a feeling of tension, of a suggestion of restlessness which certainly

was new to him.

The silence had lasted very long. Cosmo before the fire had not moved.

Spire ventured on a remark.

"I notice people are excited about one thing and another hereabouts,

sir."

"Excited. I don't wonder at it. In what way?"

"Sort of discontented, sir. They don't like the Austrians, sir. You may

have noticed as we came along . . ."

"Did they like us when we held the town?"

"I can hardly say that, sir. I have been sitting for an hour or more in

the couriers' room, with all sorts of people coming in and out, and

heard very wild sort of talk."

"What can you know about its wildness?"

"To look at their faces was enough. It's a funny place, that room

downstairs," went on Spire, rubbing with a piece of silk a travelling

looking-glass mounted cunningly in a silver case which when opened made

a stand for it. He placed it exactly in the middle of a little table and

turned round to look at his master. Seeing that Cosmo seemed disposed to

listen he continued: "It is vaulted like a cellar and has a little door

giving into a side street. People come in and put as they like. All

sorts of low people, sir, _facchini_ and carters and boatmen and

suchlike. There was an old fellow came in, a gray-headed man, a cobbler,

I suppose, as he brought a bagful of mended shoes for the servants of

the house. He emptied the lot on the stone floor, sir, and instead of

trying to collect his money from the people that were scrambling for

them he made them a speech. He spouted, sir, without drawing a breath.

The courier-valet of an English doctor staying here, a Swiss I think he

is, says to me in his broken English: 'He would cut every Austrian

throat in this town.' We were having a glass of wine together and I

asked him, 'And what do you think of that?' And he says to me, after

thinking a bit, 'I agree with him. . . .' Very dreadful, sir," concluded

Spire with a perfectly unmoved face.

Cosmo looked at him in silence for a time. "It was very bold talk if

that is what the man really said," he remarked. "Especially as the place

is so public as you say it is."

"Absolutely open to the street, sir; and that same Swiss fellow had told

me just before that the town was full of spies and what they call

_sbirri_ that came from Turin with the King. The King is staying at the

Palace, sir. They are expecting the Queen of Sardinia to arrive any day.

You didn't know, sir? They say she will come in an English man-of-war.

That old cobbler was very abusive about the King of Piedmont too. Surely

talk like that can't be safe anywhere."

Spire paused suddenly and Cosmo Latham turned his back to the fire.

"Well, and what happened?" he asked with a smile.

"You could have heard a pin drop," said Spire in equable tones, "till

that Signor Cantelucci--that's the padrone of this inn, sir . . ."

"The man who lighted me up?" said Cosmo.

"Yes, sir. . . . I didn't know he was in the room till suddenly he spoke

behind my back telling one of the scullions that was there to give the

man a glass of wine. And what the old fellow must do but raise it above

his head and shout a toast to the Destructor of the Austrians before he

tossed it down his throat. I was quite astonished, but Signor Cantelucci

never turned a hair. He offered his snuffbox to that doctor's courier

and myself and shrugged his shoulders. 'It was only Pietro,' he said, 'a

little mad'--he tapped his forehead, you know, sir. The doctor's courier

sat there grinning. I got suddenly uneasy about you, sir, and went out

to the front door to see whether you were coming. It's very different

from what it was thirty years ago. There was no talk in Italy of cutting

foreigners' throats when Sir Charles and I were here. It was quite a

startling experience."

Cosmo nodded. "You seem impressed. Spire. Well, I too had an experience,

just as the sun was setting."

"I am sorry to hear that, sir."

"What do you mean? Why should you be sorry?"

"I beg your pardon, sir, I thought it was something unpleasant."

Cosmo had a little laugh. "Unpleasant? No! Not exactly, though I think

it was more dangerous than yours, but if there was any madness connected

with it, it had a very visible method. It was not all talk either. Yes,

Spire, it was exciting."

"I don't know what's come to them all. Everybody seems excited. There

was not excitement in Italy thirty years ago when I was with Sir Charles

and took four horses with only one helper from this very town to

Florence, sir."

Cosmo with fixed eyes did not seem to hear Spire's complaining remark.

He exclaimed: "Really it was very extraordinary," so suddenly that Spire

gave a perceptible start. He pulled himself together and asked in a

purely business tone:

"Are you going to dine in your room, sir? Time is getting on."

Cosmo's mood too seemed to have changed completely.

"I don't know. I am not hungry. I want you to move one of those screens

here near the fire and place a table and chair there. I will do some

correspondence to-night. Yes, I will have my dinner here, I think."

"I will go down and order it, sir," said Spire. "The cook here is a

Frenchman who married a native and . . ."

"Who on earth is swearing like this outside?" exclaimed Cosmo, while

Spire's face also expressed astonishment at the loud burst of voices

coming along the corridor, one angry, the other argumentative, in a

crescendo of scolding and expostulation which, passing the door at its

highest, died away into a confused murmur in the distance of the long

corridor.

"That was an English voice," said Cosmo. "I mean the angry one."

"I should think it's that English doctor from Tuscany that has been

three or four days here already. He has been put on this floor."

"From what I have been able to catch," said Cosmo, "he seems very angry

at having a neighbour on it. That must be me. Have you heard his name?"

"It's Marvel or some such name. He seems to be known here; he orders

people about as if he were at home. The other was Cantelucci, sir."

"Very likely. Look here. Spire. I will dine in the public room

downstairs. I want to see that angry gentleman. Did you see him, Spire?"

"Only his back, sir. Very broad, sir. Tall man. In boots and a riding

coat. Are you going down now, sir? The dinner must be on already."

"Yes," said Cosmo, preparing to go out. "And by the by. Spire, if you

ever see in the street or in that room downstairs, where everyone comes

in and out as you say, a long fellow wearing a peculiar cap with a

tassel, just try to find out something about him; or at any rate let me

know when you have seen him. . . . You could perhaps follow him for a

bit and try to see where he goes."

After saying those words Cosmo left the room before Spire could make any

answer. Spire's astonishment expressed itself by a low exclamation,

"Well, I never!"