When I saw the lady face to face I perceived that she was older than
I had fancied her to be, and I saw that she adopted certain devices to
hide the ravages of time which had, as they always have, the effect of
emphasizing them. I wonder if women will ever learn the perfect folly
and uselessness of that sort of trickery.
The Baroness Bonnar was very gracious in her manners, but she seemed to
me much less like a real great lady than like an actress who played at
being a great lady. I am not very penetrating in that respect, and, as
I have said already, I knew next to nothing of women and their ways, and
so I was not disposed to trust my own judgment, but put it on one side
with a certain contempt and impatience of myself. As a matter of fact,
as I found out not so long afterwards, the Baroness Bonnar was no more
a baroness than I was a baron, but simply and merely an adventuress who
had spent some time on the Vienna stage, where she had secured no great
success. She was now one of that almost innumerable band of spies who
lived at that time in the service of the Austrian government. She was
not a very clever woman, I am inclined to think, but she had been
clever enough to induce a high official to fall in love with her, and
by keeping this high official hanging off and on she had contrived to
obtain promotion in her abominable calling far beyond her intellectual
deserts. Brunow, it seemed, had known her for a year or two, but I
learned afterwards that he had made no guess as to her real business in
life.
The foolish fellow was so delighted at the unexpected opportunity for a
flirtation that the whole purpose of our journey seemed to be forgotten
by him. The baroness, with her maid and her coachman--. who were both
on the same pay with herself (without her having the least guess of it),
and reported all her doings to her superiors--stayed only one night in
Itzia, and then went on to a village some dozen miles away, where she
put up with some friends of hers who had a country-house there. Then
nothing would please Brunow but that he must hire a horse and ride
off to this country-house, and spend hours in the society of the sham
baroness, while our scheme for the release of Miss Rossano's father hung
in the wind, without making even a sign of progress.
The young lieutenant was almost my only companion, and once or twice
he dined with me at the inn, and twice I had breakfast with him in
the fortress; but these interviews with him brought me no nearer to my
purpose. A third invitation brought something in its train, however,
and, to tell the truth, I asked nothing much better than to have Brunow
out of my scheme. The matter came about in this wise: Breschia and I
were seated in his private room, when a non-commissioned officer entered
with his report for the day, and stood, forage-cap in hand, at attention
while his superior read it over. Some conversation ensued between them,
which my ignorance of the language prevented me from following; but I
understood the phrase with which Breschia brought it to a close.
“Send him here,” he said. “Send him at once.”
The non-commissioned officer saluted and retired, and Breschia turned
laughingly on me.
“We have here an original who is always getting into trouble. A good
fellow, and an honest servant, but so incorrigibly kind-hearted that
he is always breaking our rules. I shall have to be serious with him in
spite of myself.”
He poured out a cup of black coffee as he spoke, and set it with a
bottle of maraschino and an open box of cigars at my elbow. I had
scarcely selected and lit ray cigar, when there came a tap at the door;
and at the lieutenant's call to enter a man in uniform came in, and,
having closed the door behind him, stood rigidly at attention. Breschia
addressed him in a tone of anger, which sounded real enough, and the
man stood like a statue to receive his reproof. There was nothing in the
least degree remarkable about the fellow, who was just a mere simple,
common soldier. He was attired in a sort of fatigue costume, and looked
and smelled as if he had just been sent away from stable duty. His
short cropped hair was of a fiery auburn, and his rough features, with a
prodigious mustache and the most ponderous over-beetling eyebrows I had
ever seen, gave him a look rather of ferocity than of good-nature. But
when in answer to the lieutenant's rating he began to excuse himself,
it was evident even to an ear so untrained and ignorant as mine that
he spoke in a language which was not his own. He spoke haltingly and
stammeringly; and at last, despairing of making himself understood, he
made a little motion of his hands without moving them from his sides,
and so stood as if to receive sentence. Again Breschia spoke to him, and
again the man responded. The lieutenant broke into a fit of laughter,
and the man stood there immovable, with his little fingers at the seams
of his canvas trousers, and his rugged visage frowning straight before
him.
“Go!” said the lieutenant, speaking, to my surprise, in his own halting
English. “You are too much a silly fellow. Go; and do it not again....
Eh? Will you?”
“Well, sir,” the man answered, speaking, to my astonishment, in good
native-sounding English, “I'm sorry to displease, and I try to do my
duty--”
“Hold your tongue,” cried Breschia, and the man obeyed at once. “Behold
a man,” cried the lieutenant, turning upon me and speaking in his
customary French, “who has been in the English army, and who is as
incapable of an idea of discipline as if he were a popular prima donna.”
“Oh,” said I, turning round on the man and addressing him in English,
“you have been in the army at home, I hear?”
“Yes, sir,” he answered, saluting me as he had done the lieutenant on
his entrance. “Two-and-twenty years, sir.”
“You don't mind my talking to the fellow?” I asked the lieutenant,
reverting to French again.
“Pas du tout,” said the lieutenant. “Vous le trouverez bien bête, je
vous promis.”
“How long have you been in the Austrian service?”
“Not in the service at all, sir. General's groom, sir.”
“You're in fatigue dress?”
“Yes, sir. Old custom, sir. Like the feel of it, sir.”
“Been here long?”
“Ten years, sir.”
“Why, how's this? You don't look a day over forty.”
“Forty-two, sir. Joined the band at home as a boy. Sixteenth Lancers,
sir.”
“What's your name?”
“Hinge, sir. Robert Hinge, sir. Son of Bob Hinge, sir. Tattenham Fancy.
Champion of the light-weights years back, sir.”
“Oh! What have you been getting into trouble about?”
“Beg your pardon, sir. Mustn't talk about that, sir. Discipline, sir.
Can see as you're an officer. That ought to be enough, sir.”
“Quite enough. Drink my health, _if_ there's anything fit to drink it
in. You don't object, Breschia?”
“Not at all,” the lieutenant answered. “You have done with him? Very
good. Go. And let me hear of you no more, or I shall report you. To your
general. Do you hear?”
The man saluted and went out.
“He is so good, and so stupid--that individual there,” said Breschia,
gladly plunging back into a more familiar language than English, though
I could see he was proud of having acquitted himself so well in that
tongue. “He is so stupid and so good, but I do nothing but laugh at him.
But Rodetzsky is a martinet, and if he were here just now the man would
be in trouble.”
“What has he been doing?” I asked.
“He has been smuggling tobacco to the prisoners,” Breschia answered,
and all of a sudden I found my heart beating like a hammer. Was this
the man, I wondered, who had shown compassion to Miss Ros-sano's hapless
father? And was he therefore the man of all others whom I needed to lay
hands on? If that were so it seemed nothing less than a providence that
the man should be English, for my ignorance of all the patois dialects
of the country, and even of its main language, made the speech of the
Austrian soldiers a sealed book to me.
Did it ever happen to you that you have met a person whom you have
never heard of and never thought of before--a person who was destined
to affect your fate in some way--and that from the first moment of
your encounter you seemed fated to renew acquaintance with him? It has
happened more than once to me, and it happened so in this case. That
very afternoon, when I returned from a lonely tramp upon the hills,
I found the man Hinge in the kitchen of the inn. He bore a note from
Breschia to Brunow, and was awaiting the return of that gentleman, who
was once again away in pursuit of the _soi-disant_ baroness, but had
promised to be back in time for dinner. When I entered the kitchen to
demand a draught of milk, the man rose up and saluted me, and explained
his errand. In the course of my ramble I had had hardly anything but
this man in mind, and I had been planning to make use of him. When I met
him all my plans seemed to go to pieces. I shall have to confess before
I have done with it that I am the poorest plotter in the world. Give me
something downright to do, and I will try to do it; but in dodges and
evasions and pretences I have little skill indeed. I took the note from
the man's hand and promised that Brunow should receive it. Then I drank
the milk which the landlady's daughter had already set before me, and
stood there tongue-tied and bewildered, not knowing how to begin. The
man himself relieved me.
“Excuse me, sir,” he said, taking his glass in his left hand, and
saluting again with the right. “Your health, sir.”
“That's poor tack,” I said, nodding towards the glass. He had made a
grimace over the wine.
“Well, so it is, sir,” he replied; “but it's better than nothing, and
it's about all we poor folks can afford, sir.”
“Did you ever taste Scotch whiskey?” I asked him. He smiled a slow smile
as if he remembered something pleasing.
“Why, yes, sir, I have, sir, and I won't deceive you.”
“Come to my room,” I said, “and I'll give you as good a glass as you
ever tasted in your life.”
He set down his glass of sour wine on the table with an emphatic
quickness, and his soldierly tread sounded behind me in the uncarpeted
passage and up the bare deal steps. When he came to my room I bade him
sit down, but he remained standing, and I had to give the invitation as
an order before he would obey it. Then he sat like a figure carved in
wood, with his shoulders back, his head well up, a hand on either knee,
and a face as expressionless as the back of his head. I got my flask out
of my knapsack, and with it a little collapsible cup of silver, found
the water-bottle, and set everything before him.
“Help yourself!” He took a thimbleful. “Help yourself, man!” He took
another thimbleful. I seized the flask from his hand and poured him
enough for a good tumbler. “Now, there's the water; help yourself to
that.”
He obeyed, and tasted the mixture with a solemn satisfaction.
“My friend, Lieutenant Breschia, tells me,” I said then, for by
this time I had made up my mind how to begin with him, “that you are
constantly breaking the rules of the fortress. He tells me that you have
been giving the prisoners tobacco.”
“That's a fact, sir,” he admitted.
“Give them some more,” I said, “first chance you get.” I laid a gold
coin on the table before him, and sat down in front of him. “I'd give
some of the poor beggars something better than tobacco if I had my way.”
“And so would I, sir,” he answered. “And the Lord knows it. It needn't
all go in tobacco, I suppose, sir?” He had taken up the coin and was
holding it in his thumb and finger by this time. “Any kind o' little
comfort 'l do as well, sir?”
“Any kind of little comfort, as you say,” I answered.
“Thank you, sir,” he said, pocketing the coin. “You're an Englishman and
you're a gentleman, sir, and I'm very much obliged to you.”
I made no answer, for I wanted to see if my man would talk. I thought he
looked as if he would like to ease his mind.
“You haven't been over the fortress, have you, sir?” I shook my head.
“Miserable kind of an 'ole it is, sir, for a man to live in. I think I
should go stark, starin', ravin' mad if I was to live there long, sir.”
“So bad as that?” I asked.
“You may well say that, sir,” he rejoined. “I've got a nice, easy,
comfortable place along with the general, and I don't want to lose it.
So long as we're in Vienna or anywhere else but here, I'm satisfied. But
here! Why, good Lord, sir, it's simply sickening.”
I supposed it was pretty dull.
“Oh, it's dull enough, sir, but it ain't that. It's what you may call
such a miserable hole, sir. There's nothing like it in old England,
thank God, sir!”
“Have they many prisoners here?” I asked.
“Prisoners, sir? There's a regular rookery of 'em. The place swarms with
'em. I should think there's a matter o' five hundred, as near as I can
guess.”
I ejaculated “Nonsense!”
“Don't you believe it's nonsense, sir,” he answered. “They're as thick
on the ground as rats in an old rick, sir. P'litical prisoners most of
'em is, sir; Eyetalians, mainly. Of course one doesn't value that kind
o' rubbish much. They're foreigners, sir, every man Jack of 'em. But
then, sir, these damned Austrians ain't no better, and they treat their
prisoners like they was so much dirt beneath 'em.”
“You look like an honest fellow,” I said, “but you're not very discreet.
Suppose I repeated what you have told me to the general?”
“Why, sir,” he answered, with a twinkle in his eye, “I don't suppose
you'll do that, sir; but if you did, sir, the general's got a good
groom, sir, and he knows it. He's a judge of a horse, sir, and he knows
when a horse is in condition. And, besides that, he knows my opinion
about these here Austrians, sir.”
No, I thought to myself. Robert Hinge sounds very plausible, looks very
honest, and is undeniably an Englishman. But supposing Robert Hinge to
have been put purposely in my way this morning as a very good-natured
and very stupid fellow, and supposing Robert Hinge to have been sent
over to me on purpose to draw me out? Quite possible, quite likely,
indeed--quite in the Austrian manner, as all the world knew well.
“Don't get yourself into more mischief, anyway,” I said, rising from my
seat. He took the hint, finished his glass standing, and left me with
a military salute. I sat for a full hour smoking and thinking, occupied
mainly in wondering whether I had thrown a chance away. There was
nothing to be got by wasting time, and I worried myself into a state of
feverish nervousness by thinking that this man Hinge was probably a true
and genuine fellow, and that I had missed my chance with him. It was the
clattering of a horse's hoof in the back yard of the inn that awoke me
from my reverie, and looking out I saw Brunow in the act of dismounting.
He waved his hand to me, and surrendering his horse to a hostler,
entered the house. I heard Hinge address him in English, and then he
came tearing upstairs. The note Breschia had sent to him lay upon
the table, and when he had read it he shouted from the stair-head,
“Certainly. My compliments to the lieutenant, and we will come with
pleasure.”
“Here's Breschia suddenly left almost alone,” he explained when he
re-entered the room. “He writes apologizing for troubling us with his
poor hospitality so often, but will I go over and take you with me?
He declares it will be a charity, and in the great hereafter will be
remembered in our favor.”
I was willing enough to go; and the hour being already near, we made
some slight change in our attire and strolled across to the fortress.
Breschia met us gayly and entertained us well, but nothing of note
happened at the dinner. We sat late over our wine, and it was pitch dark
when at last we rose to go. Breschia at first insisted on accompanying
us, but, to tell the plain truth about the matter, he had taken more
than was altogether good for him, and was not to be trusted to return
alone. We compromised for a man with a lantern, and on that shook hands
and took our leave. A man in uniform met us at the gate of the grim
place, and was about to set out with us when Hinge appeared, and,
without a word, took the lantern from his hand. As we made our way along
the dark and stony road, with the little circle of light dancing and
waving in front of us, Hinge stumbled against me twice or thrice. At
first it crossed me that he had been making free with the gift of that
afternoon, and that he had spent a portion of it for his own benefit,
rather than that of the prisoners, in whom he professed to take so great
an interest; but at the third or fourth lurch he gave it dawned upon me
that with his left hand he was groping for my right. Brunow was just a
step in front of us, and I held my hand out openly. The man slipped
into it a twisted scrap of paper, which I transferred carefully to my
waistcoat pocket.
“Here's the bridge, gentlemen,” said Hinge, “and that's the inn right
before you, where the lights are.”
“All right,” I answered. “We can find the way now quite easily.
Good-night!”
“Good-night, gentlemen,” he answered, and so turned away, while Brunow
and I footed it home in silence.
We occupied the same room, and I did not care to read whatever message
I might have received in his presence. He had proved so lukewarm in
the enterprise on which we had both embarked, and had now so apparently
forgotten all about it in dancing attendance on the Baroness Bonnar,
that I should have made no scruple of leaving him out of my councils
altogether. When he had half undressed I made some pretence of wanting
something from below, and read my missive in the kitchen. It was late,
and the room was empty.
I was not surprised to find I knew the handwriting, and that it was the
same that Brunow had shown me in his rooms on the night on which I had
first seen Miss Rossano.
This is what I read:
“The wretched prisoner, the Conte di Rossano, who has languished
for years in this fortress, asks, for the love of Heaven, that the
Englishman for whose hands this is meant will send a line to the
Contessa di Rossano, daughter of General Sir Arthur Rollinson, to assure
her that her husband still lives. If she should still live, and have
remarried, for pity find some means to let the writer know it.”
I went to bed saying nothing of this, but held sleepless by it all
the night. With the idea which had come to me that afternoon of the
possibility of Hinge being set upon me to act as a spy and to discover
my intent so strong upon me that I could not shake it off, I tossed
and tumbled in a very sea of doubt and trouble. I was more than half
persuaded all along that this fancy was a mere chimera, and yet it took
such force in my mind. It was past two o'clock when the moon rose. I
got up noiselessly, filled and lit my pipe, and sat staring at the great
solemn bulk of the fortress, as it stood for the time being almost white
in the moonlight against the monstrous shadow of the bills. My mind
was in a miserable whirl, and I knew not what to make of anything. This
wretched state lasted until broad dawn, and I was still troubled by it
when I walked into the keen morning air, towel in hand, for my customary
swim. I undressed slowly by the river-side and stood thinking, until I
was so nipped by the keen breath of the wind which blew clear down from
the mountain-tops that I plunged into the stream for refuge from it. I
remember as distinctly as if it had happened a minute ago, that at the
very second when I dived an impulse came into my mind. I thought as I
struck the water, “I'll trust that fellow!” I dived far, and swam under
water until I was forced to rise for air. “I'll trust that fellow!” I
thought again; and as I passed my hand across my forehead to squeeze the
water from my hair, I saw “that fellow” on the very top of a little rise
of land which lay between me and the fortress, and hid it entirely from
my sight.
I swam back to the place from which I had originally dived, towelled
myself hastily, dressed, and set out at a round pace towards the bridge.
I reached it when he was within a hundred yards, and with a signal to
him to follow, sauntered on towards the pine wood.
A backward glance assured me that he had seen my signal and was coming.