The count had been gone a week, and of course no news was as yet to
be looked for. He had sailed with Quorn for some undecided part of the
Italian coast, and we had resigned ourselves to hear no more of him for
at least another fortnight. We were all busy enough at this time, and
news favorable to our enterprise came on us thick and fast every day.
This is no place for a history of the last Italian revolution. That
story has never yet been fitly told, but it will furnish a splendid
epic one of these days for a great historian. It came like a beneficent
earthquake, with toil and trouble and turmoil enough, and it stirred up
all Europe, and shook down many unjust forms of government. To my mind
it is the happiest and most beautiful event in the modern history of
Europe, for the revolution, though it was effected with the sternest
purpose and the most unflinching heroism, was marked by none of the
excesses of revenge and hatred which have disfigured so many popular
risings against tyranny.
I had been hard at work until three o'clock in the morning, had gone to
bed dead tired, and had slept like a log until ten, when Hinge came in
with a cup of steaming coffee, and began with his usual silent dexterity
to lay out my clothes. I paid no especial heed to him at first, but
by-and-by I caught sight of his face reflected in the mirror which
decorated my skimpy wardrobe, and I could see at once that he was
beaming with self-congratulation. He was one of the most faithful and
constant fellows in the world, but as a general thing he was a little
saturnine in temper. Any outward display of cheerfulness was rare
with him, and such an outward sign of inward exultation as I read this
morning was a downright astonishment.
“Why, Hinge,” I asked him, “what's the matter with you?”
“Nothing the matter with me, sir,” responded Hinge.
“You look particularly pleased,” I said. “What has happened? Has anybody
left you a fortune?”
“No, sir,” Hinge answered, turning his hard-bitten, queer old mug
towards me with a shining smile. “Nobody's left me a fortune, sir,
but I'm just as glad as as if they had. You're a-lying a bit late this
morning, sir, and you haven't seen the newspapers.”
“The newspapers!” I cried, springing out of bed at once. “Let me have
them. What's the news?”
“The news is, sir,” Hinge answered, standing in attitude of attention,
and smiling like a happy Gargoyle--“the news is, sir, as the Italians is
playing Old Harry at Milan with them Austrians, and old Louis Philippe
turned up at Newhaven, England, yesterday.”
I made my toilet with unusual haste, and in the meantime Hinge brought
the papers and read out the news.
“I spent some years among them Austrians, sir,” said Hinge, and then
paused suddenly, scratching his head with a look of irritation.
“Yes,” I answered; “what of that?” Something was evidently on the good
fellow's mind, and in the midst of his delight he was troubled with it.
“You're a-going out to Italy, ain't you, sir?” he asked. I was shaving
at the moment, and contented myself with a mere affirmative grunt.
“Well, it's like this, sir,” said Hinge; “I was in a civil capacity when
I was in Austria, wasn't I, sir?”
“Well, yes,” I told him, “I suppose so.”
“They couldn't have sworn me in without my knowing it, could they, sir?”
Hinge demanded. “Of course I picked up a bit of the language in the
course of a year or two, but when I went there I didn't speak a word.
When I was first engaged, sir, there was a lot of things said to me as I
didn't understand no more than the babe unborn. Now, if I was swore
in,” Hinge proceeded, with an air of argument, “and if I was swore in in
anything but a civil capacity, that can't be counted as being binding on
my heart and conscience. Now, can it, sir?”
“You silly fellow,” I answered, “you couldn't have been sworn in without
being aware of it. A man cannot vow and promise that he will do anything
without his own knowledge and desire.”
“Well, then, sir,” said Hinge, apparently relieved a little, “if I was
swore in--and I might have been, you know, sir--I don't know but what
they might have thought they'd done it--but even if it was so, you
wouldn't think it binding?”
“Of course it couldn't be binding, but of course nothing of the sort was
done. You were engaged, as I understand, as a groom.” Hinge assented.
“You happened to be engaged by a gentleman who was an officer in a
foreign army. You don't suppose that an officer makes it his business to
swear in all his civilian servants, do you?”
“Why, no, sir,” Hinge admitted. “But it was a foreign country, and a lot
of things was said to me as I didn't understand no more than the babe
unborn.”
“You may make your mind quite easy on that score, Hinge. You are not
in any way bound to the Austrian service. But what difference can that
possibly make to you now?”
“Why, sir,” said Hinge, scratching his head again, “I've lived among
them Austrians, and I don't like 'em. I'm for Italy, I am. I used to
think, sir, as the Italians was a organ-grinding class of people as a
body, and I never had much respect for 'em. But I've seen a lot in six
months, sir, and I've learned a bit, if I may make so bold as to say so.
There's the count, now, sir; anybody can see as he's a gentleman. Why,
if you'll believe me, sir, I've never seen a gentleman as was more a
gentleman than the count. But, bless your heart, sir, you'd never have
thought so if you'd a known him all the years as I did, off and on,
a-living worse than a wild beast behind a muck-heap, and in a cellar
underneath the stables. Now you know, sir,” proceeded Hinge, growing
warm and even angry with the theme, “that ain't civilized; it ain't
Christian; it ain't treating a man as if you was a man yourself. Because
a gentleman goes and fights for his country--that's a natural thing to
do, ain't it?--they keep him dirtier and darker and 'orribler than any
wild beast I ever see, for twenty years, and would have kept him all his
miserable life, sir. I used to get that 'ot about it when I found it out
I used to feel as if I was ready to do murder. I did, indeed, sir. And
yet I can appeal to you, sir, and ask you fair and square, between an
officer and his servant, if I am not a civil spoken person, as a rule. I
believe I am, sir, and yet I used to feel as if it 'd do me good, every
now and then, to go out and shoot a Austrian.”
“I suppose,” I said, “that the upshot of all this is that when I go to
Italy you want to go with me.”
“That's it, sir,” Hinge returned, delightedly. “If I'm only free, sir,
if I was engaged in nothing but a civil capacity--”
“You are quite free to go,” I told him; “and I had thoroughly made up my
mind to take you with me, supposing always that you were willing to be
taken.”
“I'm more than willing, sir,” Hinge responded. “I should like to hear
'Boot and saddle' again, sir; so would you, I am sure.”
I had never heard Hinge break out like this before, and the good
fellow's enthusiasm and right-thinking pleased me, and as I went on
dressing I kept, him talking.
“I should think, sir,” he said, and he was about me all the while in his
usual handy and unobtrusive fashion--“I should think, sir, as anybody as
knowed the count 'd be glad to fight on his side. It makes you want
to fight for a gentleman like that as has gone through so much. And if
you'll excuse me telling you, sir, what makes me so pertickler glad to
go--”
“Yes,” I said, for he paused and looked a trifle confused. “Go on, what
is it?”
“Well, sir,” he answered, “I know it isn't right in my place to be
talking, but there's Miss Rossano, sir--” I turned rather sharply round
on him at the mention of that name, and Hinge, standing at attention,
saluted. “No harm meant, sir,” he said, “and I 'ope, sir, there's
no offence. But I took a letter from you to Miss Rossano, sir, last
Wednesday week. It was the second time as I was in the house, sir, and
when Miss Rossano came out to give me the answer, she saw as it was
me, and she asks me in; and there was the count, sir, a-sitting in the
parlor. And says Miss Rossano, 'Father,' she says, 'here's the faithful
man,' she says, 'as treated you so kind when you was in prison along
with them blooming Austrians,' she says; and the count he gets up in
his grand way, and he shakes me by the hand, with his other hand on my
shoulder. They'd have made me sit down between them, sir, if I'd a done
it, and the count, sir, with his own hands, he powered me out a glass of
sherry wine. It was the right sort, that was,” said Hinge, passing his
hand across his lips with a gleam of remembrance, and instantly resuming
his rigid attitude, as if he had suddenly found himself at fault, as,
of course, in his own mind he did. “They was that kind between 'era and
that nice way with it I didn't know whether I was a-standing on my head
or my heels. And then the count he says something to Miss Rossano in his
own lingo--language, I should ha' said, sir, begging your pardon--and
Miss Rossano she answers him back again, and they get a-talking till
there was tears in both their eyes, sir. And then Miss Rossano she
fetches out her purse, sir, and she takes a ten-pound note, and here it
is.” Hinge took it from his waistcoat pocket, and opened it out before
me. “Of course, sir, I didn't want to take it, for whatever little bit
I done I done it for my own amusement, as a man may say. I've had a-many
larks in my time, but I never was paid for none of them like that--two
pound a week pension for a lifetime and a easy job into the bargain. I
didn't want to take this, sir,” Hinge continued, folding up the note and
restoring it to his pocket; “but Miss Rossano she comes at me and shut
it into my hand with both her own, whether I would or no, and all of a
sudden, sir--” He stopped with a gulp, and swallowed laboriously twice or
thrice. I was tickled, but I was touched at the same time, and touched
pretty deeply; but I could not afford to show that to Hinge, and I dare
say I looked pretty hard and stern at him.
“What did she do?” I asked, rather gruffly.
“She--she kissed my 'and, sir; that un.” He held out his right hand
and looked at it as if it were, in some sort, a wonder. “I never seen
anything done like it,” said Hinge. “And I was that took aback, and that
delighted, and that flabbergastered!”
Hinge positively began to blubber, and what with, the mirth of it, and
my own vivid sense of Violet's feeling at the time, and this revelation
of the simple fellow's goodness, I was very near doing the same myself.
I verily believe that I should have joined Hinge, and a very pretty pair
we should have made (for I have found at the theatre and elsewhere that
there is no way of disposing a man to tears like the way of making
him laugh through affection and sympathy beforehand); but luckily for
myself, I made shift to ask him, in a blustering way, what he meant by
it, and to order him out of the room. He was so very shamefaced while
he waited upon me at breakfast after this that I would have given a good
deal to shake hands with him, and to tell him that he was a very fine
fellow; but though I have known that impulse many times in my life, and
have sometimes felt it very strongly, I have never been able to obey it,
and I know that with many people I have passed through life as a hard
man--perhaps to my own advantage.
This was the beginning of a strange day--the day on which I had my first
suspicion of Brunow, and the day of poor old Ruffiano's betrayal, in
which I myself had an unconscious hand. It came about in this way: I had
seen at a gun-maker's shop in the Strand some weeks before a brace
of revolvers which had greatly taken my fancy. They were not the
old-fashioned, clumsy pepper-caster which I can very well remember as
having been used in actual warfare, and, indeed, esteemed as a deadly
weapon, but were new from America, with all the latest patents. I had
already examined them thoroughly, and had made up my mind to buy them
when the time came; but I was afraid of accumulating expenses, and it
was only now when the pinch of war was so near that I could find the
heart to part with the money. Hinge went with me, keeping his usual
place at a pace or half a pace behind my right shoulder, so that I could
talk to him whenever I had a mind, while he still kept the position
which he thought consistent with his master's dignity. Just as I came
upon Charing Cross I sighted Ruffiano; and he, seeing me at the same
moment, hurried across the street in his impetuous fashion, and barely
escaped being run over. The escape was so very close, that when he
reached me I congratulated him heartily, though if I had known what was
going to happen I might much more properly have commiserated him. But
the future is in no man's knowledge, and I have often been forced to
think that that is a blessed thing, and one to be heartily thankful for.
I have been happy at many moments, and so have those nearest and dearest
to me, when, if we could have known what an hour would bring forth, we
should have been profoundly mournful in anticipation of an event not yet
guessed of.
Poor old Ruffiano was full of enthusiasm and full of news. He was
better dressed than I had ever seen him before, and in consequence less
remarkable to look at.
“You shall congratulate me on more than that,” said the good old man,
smilingly. “Within a few hours I shall have news straight from home, and
but for you--see now how one thing depends upon another--it might never
have reached me at all. Had I never known you I might never have known
your excellent and estimable young friend, the Honorable Mr. Brunow,
and,” he continued, smiling and bending over me, to lay the tip of a
bony finger on either of my shoulders before he straightened himself to
his gaunt height, “it is evident that if I had never met the Honorable
Mr. Brunow it would not have been possible for the Honorable Mr. Brunow
to bring me news.”
“You get your news from Brunow?” I responded, little guessing what it
meant, and feeling in my blind ignorance quite friendly towards Brunow
for having done anything to give the sad exile so much pleasure. “And I
needn't ask you if the news is good news.”
“I am told it is,” he responded; “but I have it yet to hear.” He
explained to me that he had two sisters resident in Italy, who lived at
tolerable ease upon what the family confiscations had left them of their
property. “They would have maintained me well,” said the old man, with
his cordial, innocent smile, “but I have always pretended to them to
want nothing. They have children, and young men will be expensive, and
I get on very well without infringing on their little store. They live
together at Posilippo, and a neighbor of theirs, one Signor Alfieri, the
bearer of a great name, you observe--it is like an Englishman having Mr.
Shakespeare coming to see him--this Signor Alfieri is a neighbor and a
friend of theirs. He would have called upon me, but he failed to find
me, and he sails for Italy to-night. I meet him at--I forget the name,
but it is on your river, and the Honorable Mr. Brunow is so good as to
be my guide. Come with me,” he said, suddenly. “You will learn the very
latest news of Italy, and you will meet a good patriot who will tell you
what was actually doing three weeks ago.”
Now it happened, as fate would have it, that I was free that evening and
that Violet was engaged. If I had had any chance of meeting her I should
have declined Ruffiano's invitation; but the night seemed likely to be
vacant of employment, the old man seemed solicitous, and I saw no reason
for refusing him. Quite apart from that it would, as he suggested,
be agreeable and perhaps useful to know at first-hand what an Italian
thought of the chances of the rising which must have been imminent when
he left his country. So I made arrangements to meet Ruffiano and to dine
with him at the same Italian restaurant in the upper room of which we
held our meeting, and after this I shook hands and went about my own
business.
It was dark when we met again, for this was only the fifth day of March,
and it was about half-past six in the evening. Ruffiano told me that he
had left word at Brunow's lodgings that he might be found here, and we
ate our simple dinner, drank our half-flask of Chianti together, and
had already reached our coffee and cigars when Brunow came to keep
his appointment. He was astonished to find me there, and, I thought,
disagreeably astonished. Remembering the terms on which we had parted
when we had last Been each other, I was a little surprised at this. I
have said already that at our parting on that occasion we shook hands
for the last time. It was not because I did not offer him my hand on
this occasion, but he seemed not to see it, and I took it back again,
resolved in my own mind not to be angry with him, and thinking it
probable that he had some attack of his old infirmity of temper.
“Ah, you are here!” cried Ruffiano, rising and half embracing him. “It
is a pity you were not here earlier. We have had a jolly little dinner
and a jolly little talk.”
I seem to hear the old fellow's voice now, with its quaint accent,
the “jollia leetle dinnera” and the “jol-lia leetle talka,” with his
half-childish-sounding vowel at the end of almost every word. Poor old
Ruffiano! He has seen the end of his trouble this many and many a year.
I never knew a more loyal gentleman, or one less capable of digging such
a wicked trap as he fell into. Brunow's manner was altogether a puzzle
to me, and even next day, enlightened as I was by events, I was unable
to understand it, because it seemed altogether so silly a thing for him
to run his neck into the noose as he did. I have sometimes thought it
possible that he counted on his own apparent simplicity for safety, but
in that case he could not have counted how far his embarrassment at the
beginning had invited suspicion and misunderstanding.
First of all, he made some little effort to back out of the undertaking,
and then, Ruffiano describing himself as being altogether disappointed,
he became resigned, and undertook to pilot us to the place of
rendezvous. He had a cab outside, one of the old-fashioned four-wheeled
hackney-coaches, and as he led us to it some stranger, entering the
restaurant, jostled him at the door. He turned with his face towards me
at this instant by accident, and I saw that he was as pale as death,
and had a queer flush of color at the eyes. His manner was alternately
strangely alert and curiously preoccupied, and altogether I knew not
what to make of him. The man who drove the cab had evidently had his
orders beforehand, and knew exactly where he was expected to go, for
he started off without a word. We seemed, to my mind, to travel
interminably, for in the course of the journey I fell rather more than
half asleep, and at wakeful and observant intervals found myself in
portions of the town which, though I have always boasted to know London
pretty well, were altogether strange to me. First I made out, with a
kind of half-wakeful start, that we were at Whitechapel, and waking, as
it seemed to me, a wink or two later, I found that we were in a region
of docks and public-houses, with here and there a sulky gleam of
dock-water or of river showing under the dark sky--rare passengers
and rarer tenements. But, of course, I had not the faintest reason for
suspecting anybody, and we went rumbling on, I pretty sleepy, and
pretty full of a satisfactory dinner after a hungry day, and Brunow
and Ruffiano silent, as it seemed to me, nearly the whole length of the
road. After, perhaps, an hour and a half's driving, Brunow woke me by
calling impatiently to the cabman, and I came to the full possession
of myself in time to see the vehicle swerve suddenly to the right. My
prolonged drowse half refreshed me, and the cold, wet air which blew up
from the river through the window Brunow had opened fell freshly on
my cheek. I could see the river gleaming ahead, with spaces of liquid
blackness in it, and a red or green light burning here and there. It
was still raining, and the clouds were heavy in the south and west. We
stopped almost at the river-side, before a tumble-down-looking little
public-house, and here Brunow alighted hastily. A hulking fellow leaned
against the door-jamb smoking a short pipe; and Brunow addressing an
inquiry to him, he jerked his thumb towards the river, and answered:
“Just got steam up. Start in an hour at the outside.”
“Is there no boat?” Brunow asked.
“Boat?” said the man, spitting lazily into the road; “boats enough, if
you care to pay for 'em.”
“You hear,” said Brunow, turning, and Ruffiano, dragging his gaunt
length out of the cab and stumbling with some difficulty to the rough,
dark pavement, called out for a boat by all means.
“I will see him but for a minute,” he said; “but it will be better than
nothing. I should be loath to make such a journey without result.”
“Find us a boat,” said Brunow. He spoke in such a voice as a man might
have used if he had ordered his own execution, and I remarked that at
the time. I can see now that a hundred thousand things were happening to
advise me of the truth, but I was as ignorant and as unsuspicious of it
as if I had been a baby. The man at the door lounged out into the road,
and with a turn of the head invited us to follow him. We obeyed this
voiceless bidding, and in a very little while found ourselves on a rough
quay at the river-side. We descended a set of break-neck steps, and in
another minute found ourselves afloat. The man pulled with leisurely,
strong strokes to where a boat lay in midstream, with its green light
towards us; and nearing the vessel, raised a hoarse cry, “Ship ahoy
there!” The cry was answered from aboard the boat, and a ladder was
lowered to us by which we climbed on deck. Brunow went first, Ruffiano
followed, and I went third. It struck me as a surprising thing that at
the very minute on which my foot struck the ladder the boat shot from
under me. I sang out aloud to the man to ask where he was going, but he
returned no answer save in a sneering and insolent-sounding growl, which
might have meant anything or nothing. My conclusion was that he was
coming back in time to take us away again, and I gave the matter no
further heed, but followed Ruffiano on deck, still unsuspicious. My
first surprise came when a man in a dreadnaught jacket and a sou'wester
asked in German, “Is that the man?” and, without waiting for an answer,
sang below, “Full steam ahead!” Even then I had no idea of a plan to
carry off anybody, but I was astonished to find a man talking German and
giving orders in German on a craft which I had imagined to be Italian.
“But why full steam ahead?” I asked Brunow; and he turned upon me in the
darkness with a faltering in his voice.
“I don't know,” he said. “There's something infernally strange about all
this. Have we been trapped? This fellow's a German.”
“Trapped!” I answered. “How should we be trapped?”
“This,” cried Brunow, in a loud and quavering tone, “is not the ship I
meant to board. There's some mistake here! Hi, you there!”
“Halloa!” said the man in the dreadnaught, approaching and speaking in
broken English. “You can hoult your chaw. There is nothing for you to
cry out about. Gom dis vays.”
Still in growing wonderment, and feeling on the whole that I should have
been much better satisfied if I had had with me the brace of revolvers I
had bought that morning, I followed the man down the companion-ladder.