CHAPTER V
“You gave me that last night,” I said, holding the scrap of paper before me. “You knew what was in it?”
“I didn't know, sir; I guessed. Poor gentleman's wife, sir? I thought so, sir.”
“Robert Hinge, you're an Englishman, and you've served your queen.”
“And king as well, sir. King William was on the throne when I joined, sir.”
“How long have you known this unhappy gentleman, this Count Rossano, who is imprisoned here?”
“Eight years and over.”
The man stood bolt upright before me until I gave him the word to stand at ease. I questioned him closely, and with a growing belief in him. This was the substance of what I heard from him: He had been in General Rodetzsky's service for a year or thereabouts when he first came to visit the fortress. The stables in which the general's horses were bestowed were in themselves beautifully tidy, but outside, immediately beside the door, was a great heap of manure and rotten straw, the accumulation of years, which was an eyesore to the new groom, who took immediate measures for removing it. He was at work at it a whole day and then left it. Returning a week later to his task, he thrust the prongs of his pitchfork through a pane of glass which lay hidden by the rubbish heap, and heard not only the crash and fall of the glass itself, but a startled cry. A peasant was in charge of the cart which was carrying away the refuse heap, and Robert Hinge took no apparent notice of this cry. He knew that the fortress was a prison. He had heard queer stories about the treatment the Austrians gave their prisoners. His interest was awakened, and his fancy began to be excited. When he had filled the cart, and the peasant had gone away, Hinge cleared from the wall the remainder of the heap, and found that he had laid bare a grated window almost on a level with the ground. The glass was so thickly incrusted with filth as to be as opaque as the wall by which it was surrounded, but at the broken pane a face appeared. The man in telling me the story was honestly moved. He could not describe the condition of the man he saw without imprecations on his jailer and the whole country that held them. He told me that the prisoner's hair grew to his waist, and was of a dreadful unwholesome gray; that his beard and mustache were matted, his eyes were sunken, and his face was unwashed and of the color of stale unbaked bread. The man spoke with difficulty, but had a fair knowledge of English, though he seemed unused to it. He had inhabited that hole in the earth for years. How many years he did not know until Hinge, in answer to his questions, told him the date of the year and the day of the month. The conversation was interrupted by the coming of an officer, and Hinge covered up the window before anything was seen. Afterwards he broke a few more panes and heaped clean straw against the wall to hide the window, but in such a fashion as to admit air and light. Many hundreds of times he had sat outside his stable door within arm's-length of the prisoner, and had listened to him while he talked. They had a preconcerted signal at which the prisoner instantly ceased to speak. Food and water were thrust in upon the unhappy man at regular intervals, but he was never visited, and lived a horrible, lonely death in life there, which made the flesh creep to hear of. The stench of the chamber Hinge described as something horrible and sickening, and he thought it a marvel that the man had lived so long.
The wretched man had never been allowed a minute's exercise outside his cell, and Brunow's pretence of having seen him was, of course, an invention. That did not surprise me, but I hated Brunow for it. The man's shallow and worthless spirit could go hovering about a tragedy like this with his butterfly irresponsible lies. The thought made me angry.
“Hinge,” I said, when the groom had told me all he had to say, “I am going to trust you with a secret. I think you are the man to keep it. I am going to ask you to help me in a difficult and dangerous bit of work. I think you are the man for the job. If we succeed, I am going to pension you handsomely for life.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Hinge.
“Walk quietly with me and listen. I am going to have a try to set that man free. You hear?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And I am going to ask you to help me.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Will you do it?”
“If I can, sir.”
“Very good. Now when can we talk this matter over and get it ship-shape, and see what is to be done?”
“My time's my own, sir,” Hinge answered; “and being mine, sir, it's yours.”
I turned into the deeper recesses of the wood, and Hinge followed me. I had resolved to trust him, and I have never been a believer in half-confidences. I told him the errand which had brought me there. I told him of the countess's early death, and I told him of my meeting with her daughter and of the promise I had made to her. I set before him the fact that, if the venture succeeded and he gave me his aid in it, he would find wealthy friends and protectors. I told him that I was not myself a rich man, but I showed him Miss Rossano's letter and the draft I had for a thousand pounds.
“Better send that money out of the country, sir,” he said, quietly. “They're queer beggars, these Austrians, and they wouldn't be above collaring the lot if we got clear of the country with our man afore you'd got the coin out o' the bank.”
“And now, how to set about the work, Hinge?”
“You give your orders, sir, and leave 'em to me.”
“Tell me what you can. Now, how about the guards? Is the prisoner's cell watched on all sides?”
“There's a man on stable sentry at night-time. In the day-time nobody's on watch on my side.”
I had provided myself with a flexible-jointed saw and a small bottle of oil, and they were packed in my knapsack now. I asked Hinge if he would pass these to the prisoner, and he declared that he could do it easily and without the slightest danger of discovery.
He caught eagerly at the idea, and assured me that two or three of the iron bars which guarded the window were quite rotten at the bottom, and could be sawn through in an hour. The day-time would be safest, and he would undertake to be near, to cover any sound which might be made, and give warning of any danger.
“Gettin' out o' the cell is as easy as pie, sir,” said Hinge. “That's all right. But gettin him out o' fortress—that's another pair o' shoes altogether!”
I thought hard for perhaps ten minutes, and then I fancied I saw my way. Half a dozen questions cleared it. The general was away in Vienna. The time of his return was uncertain. There were half a dozen horses under Hinge's charge. It would surprise nobody if a message came from the general ordering Hinge to meet him at any hour with two led horses. If he knew when that hour would come he could have the prisoner ready in uniform, and they could ride out together. But to do this we should need a written order from the general, which would have to pass the officer on duty. That order once being passed and sent on to him, Hinge would be answerable for the rest.
This threw a dreadful difficulty in the way, but the groom was ready with a partial help. He had received a similar order which had been countermanded, and therefore never surrendered, as it would have been if he had passed the gates with it. He thought he knew its whereabouts, and he would look for it.
In effect, he found it, and found means to send it on to me. It was scrawled in pencil from a posting place on the road to Vienna, distant from Itzia four-and-twenty miles English, or thereabouts. I pored over this document in my own room, and made many heart-breaking attempts to imitate it. They were absolute failures, one and all. I had no faculty in that direction, and my own hand stared at me from the written page the more plainly and uncompromisingly for every effort I made to disguise it. Apart from the utter vileness of the imitation, I did not even clearly understand the words employed, and for aught I knew might be giving an order which, if put into execution, would be useless for my purpose.
I was compelled, unwillingly, to appeal to Brunow. He made light of the business, and in less than an hour he brought me an imitation which looked completely deceptive. He had been able, he told me, to trace the greater part of the order on the window-pane from the original I had given him to imitate; for the rest, to my surprise and gratitude, Brunow volunteered. He took advantage of our next meeting with Breschia to tell him that he was off on a three or four days' sketching expedition, leaving me behind. He commended me to the lieutenant's friendly hospitality with all his usual gayety of manner, and on the following morning he rode away. The arrangement made between us was that he should return at about ten o'clock on the following night with news of the general's approach. The general's horses should appear to have come to grief somehow, anyway (he guaranteed to find a plausible story), and Brunow was to pretend to have ridden on with a message ordering remounts. Then Hinge was to meet us at a given point, we being on foot, and we should all make for the frontier with speed.
So long as I live I shall never forget that day or the day that followed it. Hinge was advised of everything, and no doubt was doing all that needed to be done, but the suspense was scarcely bearable. To saunter about and look at those impenetrable walls, and to wonder what was going on behind them—to invent a thousand accidents, any one of which might wreck our plans for good and all, and to suffer in the contemplation of each of these inventions of my own as much as I could have suffered if it had been true, to read knowledge or suspicion in every innocent glance that fell upon me, to fear and suspect everybody and everything, and to keep a constant guard upon myself lest I should seem for an instant to be anxious and preoccupied with all this weight upon me—all this was an agony. I am not afraid to confess all this, for I have shown more than once that I am not deficient in courage of my own kind. But here I was a very coward, hateful and contemptible to myself.
The long day passed, and the long night, and then the real day of waiting came. The thing that weighed upon me most of all was that while I knew that every minute of rest and tranquillity I could snatch might be of moment to me, rest and tranquillity were absolutely impossible. For two whole nights I had not closed my eyes in sleep, and my brain seemed on fire. My nerves were going, too, under this intolerable strain, and I feared that if a crisis should arise I should lack coolness, and plunge into some avoidable disaster.
But the day wore itself out at last, and at ten o'clock at night I was wandering along the road by which Brunow must come, and listening with my soul in my ears for the first distant noise of hoof-beats. The sun had gone down in a bank of threatening cloud, and before the moon rose the last look I had taken at the hills which hemmed us in on every side had shown them seemingly hidden by driving mists, which travelled at an astonishing pace, betokening a wild wind up there, while the valley lay in a hot stillness. The light of the moon was in the sky long before she rose above the mountains, and I could see that the wild work up there was growing wilder every minute. The wind was descending, too, from its lofty altitude, and I could hear it now roaring and now muttering in the gullies like a discontented giant.
In the course of that waiting I was often mistaken in the sound of distant hoofs. I was tricked at least a thousand times. Now it was the wind in the trees, now it was a gurgle in the river, now it was a murmur of life in the village, now it was the movement of a goat, a cow, or a horse upon the hill-side. But at last I caught the real sound, and knew it at once from all the noises which had till then deceived my fancy. The rider came along at a good round pace, and in a while I heard Brunow singing—a signal to me, no doubt. I called aloud “Hello! that you, Brunow?” and he answered with a whoop, expressive of high spirits. There was light enough to see me as he passed without drawing rein.
“I've a message from the governor to the officer in charge,” he shouted. “Meet you at the inn by-and-by.” There was no reason why we should have met at all, but the sense of precaution which touched me in his words allayed my anxiety a little. If by any very improbable chance anybody within hearing had understood him, the pretence justified itself. It could do no harm, and it was worth while to look natural. I betook myself at once to the point we had agreed upon for a meeting-place, and waited there in a renewed suspense, to which all the wretchedness of waiting I had hitherto known seemed as nothing. Suddenly the wind took me with a great gust, which almost carried me off my feet; a clap of thunder directly overhead seemed actually simultaneous with a piercing glare of lightning, and the rain came down in torrents. After the flash of lightning everything looked so impenetrably black and formless that I might as well have stared about me with my eyes shut, but a second flash showed me the gate of the fortress quivering in the light, and so distinct and near that I might have believed it no more than a stone's throw off, though I knew it to be a full mile away. In the sudden howling of the wind and the pelting of the rain I could hear nothing, but I kept my aching eyes fixed in the direction of the fortress, and over and over again I saw it leap out of darkness distinct and seeming near, but quivering as if it were built of air and shaken by a wind. The river, which flowed quite near me, began to take a roaring and ominous tone, and I grew anxious lest the ford we meant to attempt three or four miles below should have become impassable by the time we reached it. To have passed through the village would have betrayed the fact that we were going in an opposite direction to the one proposed, and might have excited suspicion and immediate inquiry and pursuit. While the river growled in a more and more menacing tone beside me, I began to wish that our arrangements could be recast. We might easily have dared the village, trusting to a half-hour's start and the chapter of accidents, while now the swollen ford might delay us for whole hours. The plans could not be changed, however, and there was nothing to be done but wait.
I was wet to the skin, and dazed by the noises of the storm, and weary with want of sleep, but every sense of fatigue vanished when I saw, by the glare of the lightning between me and the fortress, the recognizable figures of Brunow and Hinge on horseback. There was a third horseman with them, and a led horse, and for a fraction of a second I could see them all wildly prancing and leaping together, as if the beasts were maddened by the storm, as no doubt they were. It seemed an hour—I have known a day seem to go by more quickly many a time—when another flash showed them nearer, like a dark group of statuary, the horses quivering at the glare, and the heads of the riders bent against the wind and rain. I ran forward, not daring to call, and found them again in the lightning and lost them again in the dark half a dozen times. When at last we met I hailed them in a guarded tone, though it was a marvel to me that nobody was abroad at such an hour. Brunow replied boisterously, and I mounted in the dark, being half doubled as I did so by a kick from one of the plunging horses. I was fortunately too near for the full effect of the blow, but the hoof took me at the hipbone, and for the moment paralyzed me. I had much difficulty in getting astride my own beast, but I judged it best to say nothing of what had happened. All sense of power had gone from my right leg, and I could get no grip upon the saddle; but as the first sensation of numbness passed away I became persuaded that no great hurt was done, though I was in much pain and found a difficulty in keeping my seat.
The fear of the horses made this no easy task, for at every flash they reared and broke away, and the ground over which we rode was difficult, and would have been uncanny even in the daylight, so that we made slow progress. I had travelled the way repeatedly, for this was the route by which I had decided to travel if ever we were so lucky as to be allowed the experiment, and I never had more reason to be thankful for my own care and foresight.
These mountain storms are very often things of an hour, and so to-night it proved. By the time we had reached the ford the thunder and lightning were far away, the wind had sunk to an occasional sob and moan, the rain had cleared, and the moon rode high in a mass of skurrying cloud, which at times obscured her light and at times left her almost clear. But the river was terribly swollen, and it was evident that we should not be able to cross it for a considerable time.
So far not a word had been exchanged among us; but now that we were compelled to pause, I turned to our companion and looked at him, in such dim and changing light as there was, with a profound interest. He sat with a tired stoop in his saddle, and his head was bent upon his breast. He wore a peaked forage-cap and a large, rough, military cloak, which effectually disguised his figure.
“This is the Conte di Rossano?” I asked, leaning towards him.
“The same, sir,” he answered, in a voice which I shall never forget. “I know from my faithful friend here, to whom I am indebted, but I cannot distinguish my friends as yet.”
“This is the Honorable George Brunow, sir,” I said, “and I am Captain Fyffe, at your service.”
“Mr. Brunow,” he responded, raising his forage-cap and bowing, “Captain Fyffe, my dear friend Corporal Hinge, I am without words to thank you. God knows I thank you in my heart!”
His voice failed him altogether then, and we all sat silent for a time.
“What are we waiting for?” asked Brunow. “Every minute is precious. Let us push along.”
“You see the ford,” I answered. “It may be passable in an hour, now that the storm has ceased; but at present—”
“Great God!” cried Brunow, with a savage impatience in his tone. “Why didn't we cross by the bridge? We could have made four times the distance by the road!”
“It was a mistake as things have turned out,” I answered; “but we both thought it best when we talked things over the night before last.”
“I never thought it best!” cried Brunow, fuming. “Hark! What the devil's that?”
There was no need to call our attention to the sound, for everybody heard it. There was no need to ask what it was, for it was impossible to mistake it. It was the sound of a cannon from the fortress. We stared at each other in the uncertain light.
“That's my fault, gentlemen,” said Hinge, calmly. “They've found the stable sentry, and he's told 'em what has happened. He came up, sir,” addressing himself to me, “just as the count was climbing out o' window. I knocked him on the 'ead of course, but they go the rounds at midnight, and they've come across him. Not a doubt about it.”
Just as he finished speaking another gun sounded. We were between three and four miles away, but in the stillness of the night it seemed much nearer.
“And with a good road under us we might by this time have been within half a dozen miles of the frontier and safe.”
“Safe?” said Hinge. “Quite so, sir. Safe to run into the ground at the toll-gate, sir. We're a lot better off where we are. I know Captain Fyffe's plan, sir, and it's the best whatever happens.”
“Gentlemen,” said the count, “let us dismount and rest our horses. We may have need of all that they can do for us.”
A third gun banged from the distant battery. The river was raging before us. The clouds parted, and the full moon shone down with a light almost as clear as that of day.
CHAPTER VI
Pursuit was afoot, and what should be done to avoid it no man among us could guess. The foaming river ran in such volume that only madness would have attempted to ford it. Flight was cut off, and of course resistance was hopeless. The first place our pursuers would make for would be the bridge and the ford, since they were the only roads by which we could hope to reach the frontier. To take to the mountains would have been a purposeless folly. We could look for nothing but starvation and ultimate surrender there.
Happily for myself I was in my element again. We were forced into inaction once more, but it was a form of inaction which differed from that weary waiting which had so torn my nerves for the past eight-and-forty hours.
“I suppose, gentlemen,” I said, “that, in any case, surrender is out of the question.”
“I decline,” cried Brunow, “to be the victim of your folly. If you had taken the road we should have been out of danger long ago. You choose to be caught like a rat in a trap, and I wash my hands of the whole business. I shall walk back to the inn.”
He was already in the act of dismounting, when Hinge spoke.
“I wonder,” he said, very dryly, “what them Austrians will think of the gentleman as brought the letter from the general?”
Brunow settled back in his saddle with a muffled exclamation, and spoke no more.
“Gentlemen,” said the count, “if there is any possible way of escape without me I beseech you to take it.”
Nobody answered. We sat for a long time in silence, and the river roared by. We strained our ears to listen, but not a sound reached us from the direction of the fortress. The night, late so stormy, was quite light and quiet. An intense silence reigned on the hills, and not a sound was heard but the noise of the tumbling, hurrying water near at hand.
When I had gone to look at the ford I had taken keen note of everything, for to have mistaken the spot might have been fatal to us, even if no pursuit had been started. I had noticed a rock which stood in mid-stream about a score of yards above the ford, rising some four feet above the level of the stream. When we had reached the water-side this rock had been invisible, and I could only guess how deeply it was covered. I noticed on a sudden that its forehead was bare once more, and I stared at it with my heart in my eyes until I was persuaded that it was growing above water every instant. The river ran in this spot in a perfect torrent, with an incline, I should say, of nearly three feet in a hundred. The stream bore off the rainfall of a whole net-work of hills, but at the pace at which it ran it could not take long before it would become passable at some risk. I said nothing as yet, but the conversation I had held with Lieutenant Breschia on the morning of our first meeting filled my mind with hope. The torrent seemed no less noisy, but measuring it by the projecting arms of the rock I could see that it was falling with a greater rapidity than I had dared to hope for. Within ten minutes it had dropped six iuches, but for the next ten minutes it hung stationary; and sometimes to my fancy seemed to gain. The thousand mountain rills and watercourses which helped to fill its bed, and which had themselves been latest to receive the rainfall, were charging down with new forces; and thinking of this I almost surrendered myself to despair. But I had not even yet given way, when the volume of water fell with an astonishing suddenness, and in little more than five minutes by my watch I could see a foot of the rock clear.
At ordinary times the ford was about a foot deep, and even then the rapid incline of the ground sent the shallow water swirling along at such a pace that it made a horse's foothold on the sliding pebbles precarious. Now it was four feet deep at least, and to cross at present was as impossible as it had been half an hour before. But as I watched it became more and more evident that the stream had received its last impetus, and the very element of speed which made the passage dangerous would diminish danger every moment.
The river seemed to grow noisier as it fell, chafing against obstacles which it had hitherto overflowed, and listen as one might we could make out nothing but its sullen roar. I told Hinge what I had noticed about the stream, and with a few words to my companions I rode until the noise of rushing water was no longer oppressive to the ear, and listened with all my might. I heard a thousand distant-seeming noises, which had in them no reality—shoutings and stealthy whispers, the thud and jingle of cantering troops of horse, lonely far-away footfalls, all manner of phantom sounds. Suddenly, in the midst of these illusions, my heart stood still for a mere half-beat at a noise which I knew in an instant to be real. A troop of cavalry at a gallop crossed the wooden bridge which spanned the river a couple of miles away. It sounded like a peal of thunder, but I knew what it meant well enough. The pursuers would be ahead of us, and every pass and pathway would be threaded, and guards would be everywhere.
Half an hour passed away without bringing anything further, and I rode back to the ford. All three of my companions were watching it with an absorbed and gloomy interest, and the rock by which I marked the fall of the stream stood a clear three feet above its surface.
“Let us try it now,” I counselled, and was heading my horse at the water, when Hinge interposed.
“What's the depth, sir?” he called out to me.
“About two feet,” I answered.
“Then I shall wade,” said Hinge. “It 'll give the hoss more confidence, and I'll back leather against iron for a foothold.”
I saw the force of his advice, and, dismounting, I stepped cautiously down into the stream. At first the rush of water carried me off my legs, and if it had not been that I had firm hold of the reins, and that my horse still stood on dry land, my share in the enterprise would in all probability have been then and there over. As it was I succeeded in regaining a foothold; but though the stream reached only to mid-thigh, it swept along with such violence that I had all my work cut out to stand against it. My horse, encouraged by hand and voice, came tremblingly after me, and the others followed. The stiffest bit of all the crossing lay at the point where the rush of water diverted by the rock caught us, and here we were at the deepest. This spot once passed we were under partial shelter, and from the centre of the stream the bank rose so rapidly that in half a dozen yards we were scarcely knee deep. We gained the farther bank and remounted, and then I called a council of war.
“I have already gone over the ground we shall have to travel,” I began, “and we ought to be within three hours of safety. But the alarm has been given, and we shall find every pass guarded. What is to be done?”
“Sir,” said the count, “I have no claim upon you or your companions. I thank you from my heart for your brave attempt in my behalf. But the fates are against us. For my own part, I counsel that we resign the struggle, and that you do your best to cross the frontier singly. I shall not be taken alive.”
“There is no going back,” I answered. “It is no safer now to abandon the enterprise than to go on with it. We are not likely to be intercepted until we reach the pass. My advice is that we ride as far as we dare, and then take to the hills on foot, avoiding the passes. We shall have a scramble for it, but life and liberty are worth that.”
“Neither life nor liberty should have been in danger,” said Brunow, sullenly. “It is your fault if they are, and if I lose either through your folly, on your head be it.”
I reminded him that we had laid our plans together, and that they had had his full approval; but he was not in a mood to listen to reason, and I got no answer from him but a grunt of anger and disdain. The council of war had not served any very great purpose so far, and I turned away with a touch of desperation in my mind. I rode on, and the others followed. We skirted a wood which stretched from the river towards the nearest range of hills, and our horses' footfall on the turf, sodden as it was by the recent raiu, made hardly a sound. We kept well in shadow, and had advanced perhaps a couple of miles, when I made out the highway at a little distance looking like a broad ribbon in the moonlight. Suddenly a bugle-call shrilled on the air, and while we shrank closer into the shadow of the trees a tumult of hoof-beats filled the quiet night, and a whole squadron of cavalry came in sight, riding full tilt in the direction of the fortress. We could feel the reverberation caused by the galloping mass beneath us, and in a minute they were out of sight and almost out of hearing.
“That's a curious thing, sir,” said Hinge, speaking almost at my ear.
“What is a curious thing?” I asked.
“That is,” he replied, stretching out a hand in the direction of the vanished body of horsemen. “They've left nobody to guard the roads.”
“How do you know that?” I asked, eagerly.
“I counted 'em as they went by,” he answered. “There's every mounted man they've got in the place. They're all there down to the farriers. I'm a born fool, I am,” he added, in an accent of the greatest delight. “They've never been after us at all, sir. It's a bit of midnight drill. That's what it is. I'll bet the road's as clear in front of us as ever it was.”
After the fright we had had the news seemed too good to be true, but a brief consultation decided us to act on Hinge's hope, and to push boldly forward. We made for the highway, and following it at a road trot found ourselves breasting the first upward slope of the pass within a quarter of an hour. By-and-by the hills began to enfold us round, but the moon rode high and the road was clear and firm. For the first mile or so we kept an anxious outlook, but as the minutes went on our fears of interruption grew fainter, and our hopes rose to fever heat. We were all well mounted, our horses were fresh and full of vigor, and to all but one of us the ride itself was the merest bagatelle. But I noticed, riding side by side with the count, that he was reeling in the saddle like a drunken man, and at one moment he gave such a lurch towards me that if I had not been at hand to support him he would have fallen to the ground.
“I am weak,” he said, as I checked his horse and mine. “It is no wonder. I am surprised that I have come as far.”
He spoke with a gasping voice as if in pain, and with one hand clasped to his side.
“No hurry,” I answered. “Let us go at an easier pace.”
He soon recovered, and professed himself ready to push on again; but half a mile at the old pace brought him once more to a standstill. I gave him a little brandy from a flask with which I had been careful to supply myself, and once more he managed to ride on. From this time forward, however, he had to be watched with the utmost carefulness, and his feebleness so delayed us that we were a good three hours later in Teaching the end of the pass than we had expected. I had ascertained that the downs, which showed the frontier line, might be skirted by taking a lonely and difficult road to the right within a mile or so of our exit from Austrian territory. I had ascertained also that a sentry was on duty on this pathway night and day, his main duty being to prevent the passage of contraband goods. That we should have to deal with this fellow was an absolute certainty, and had been from the first, but it was easier to reckon with one man than with the dozen posted at the barrier.
We had come at so easy a pace that our horses showed no signs of distress or travel, and by this time the daylight was shining broadly. The dawn was two hours old, and there was on the face of things suspicion in our being on the road at such a time. Already the land of promise lay in sight, when the last obstacle to be encountered on our journey presented itself. The sentry sat as if dozing, with his rifle between his knees, but at the noise of our approach he sprang to his feet and hailed us sharply. We had passed a quick bend in the road, and had come upon him rather suddenly. We had already decided to ride up to him without reply, but he cocked his piece and called on us to halt. I waved my hand to him and we all rode on quickly. He seemed puzzled and irresolute for a moment, but he ended by clapping the butt of his rifle to his shoulder, and sang out “Halt!” once more.
“Good! good! my friend,” I answered. “We are Englishmen, and travellers. There is no need to fire.”
My foreign accent was proof enough that we were strangers, and he hesitated again. I was almost abreast of him by this time, and wishing him a good-day I was in some hope of being able to push by without further parley, but he set himself in the way with his rifle across his breast.
“What brings you travelling this way?” I made him out to ask. “You have no right to pass by here. Take the lower road,” he added, with a gesture which helped me to his meaning.
“We have passports,” I told him, producing my own paper and holding it towards him. “This is my friend, and this is my servant. The guide they gave us at Itzia has fallen ill.”
“You cannot pass this way,” he answered, gruffly, disregarding the passport. “You must go round by the lower road.”
“My good fellow,” Brunow broke in, airily, “you mustn't talk nonsense. We are going by, and there is an end of it. This gentlemen and I are personal friends of General Rodetzsky's. We have been on a visit to my friend Lieutenant Breschia at the fortress at Itzia, and we are now on our way to Pollia. That is the town below there I believe.”
I more than half made him out at the time, and he confirmed my guesses later on. Suave and easy as he was, he made no impression on the sentry, who stood there immovable, bent on duty.
“We don't want to be troublesome,” said Brunow, “and it's too absurd to talk of one man stopping four. Look at our papers if you like, and there's a little something for yourself.” He threw the man a gold coin. The fellow stooped to pick it up, and we rode on like men whose business was accomplished. He ran after us, shouting and gesticulating for a minute or two, but we paid no heed to him, and in a while he left us to ourselves.
In five minutes we were breathing free air in a free land.
Half an hour later we rode into the main street of the town and hammered at the gate of a hotel. When we had awakened everybody else in the neighborhood our summons was answered by a sleepy hostler, who admitted us to the yard and took in our horses. A sleepy waiter appeared and led us to a room, the shutters of which were still closed against the daylight. We asked for coffee; and the man having thrown open the window to admit the light and air, and having gone away, I turned to our rescued prisoner, who had fallen all in a heap on a couch in one corner of the room.
Until now I had but little opportunity of observing him, for he had ridden all the way wrapped up in his great common soldier's cloak with its big collar turned up until it obscured every feature but his eyes and the mere point of a beak-like nose. Now, as he lay in an attitude of exhaustion, I went to assist him to a position of more comfort. I took the hook-and-eye which fastened the collar of the cloak and drew them apart; and such a countenance revealed itself as I never saw before, and pray Heaven I may never see again. A huge sweeping beard descended to the waist, and its whiteness was obscured by filth incredible. The long locks that mingled with it and overlay it on either side were roped together and tangled beyond hope of severance. The face was horribly pinched and meagre, and was of the color or want of color which you see in plants which have grown wholly in the dark. I will not describe further what I saw—what loathsome evidences of foul neglect. I have no heart for it, and I feel as if it insulted the memory of a gentleman to recall the evidences of the long and miserable martyrdom he had endured. They had kept him stabled like a wild beast—those accursed Austrians—for twenty years, and during all that time the martyred wretch had never known the use of the simplest appliance of cleanliness. In all the years I have lived I have never met a man who was more completely a gentleman by nature—more fastidious in his nicety of dress and person. I had to learn that afterwards; but for the moment, whether rage or pity or repulsion most filled my heart at this first clear sight of him, I could not have told. I think he saw nothing but the horror in my face, for he blushed crimson, and started to his feet with his coarse cloak clutched about his neck, and stared at me half appealing and all ashamed.
If I had had one of his jailers to account with at that moment it would have gone ill with him, I fancy. I have lived to see the death of that horrible tyranny, and I know now, that outside the borders of the one blackguard power which still darkens in the East, no such a life as this man had led is possible for any political prisoner in Europe; but even now, when I am an old man, and ought to be able to take things quietly, my blood surges in my veins when I think of that one minute of my life. I was no milksop, and I had led a soldier's life, and had seen plenty of things that were not pretty to look at. But I was horrified, and I can't even write about it now without the old wrath and disgust and shame.
I got the poor gentleman a room to himself, and when, in the course of a few hours, the town was alive, I wandered out into the streets and bought a pair of scissors. Any old campaigner may be a tolerable barber, and I was a pretty good one. I trimmed the late prisoner into decency, and with my own hands carried up a pail of water, a piece of soap, and towels. I had taken good stock of him, and carried his bodily measurements in my mind when I went out again to an outfitter's, taking Hinge with me to translate. I bought underclothing, and a suit of clothes; and I took back a shoemaker with me, and when the-count had dressed sent the man to him to try on a number of pairs of boots he had brought with him in a basket.
When the Conte di Rossano, clothed like himself for the first time in twenty years, came into the room in which breakfast was set for us, I hardly recognized him, though I myself had taken part in bringing about the transformation which had been worked in him. He came in alert and erect, and for a mere second looked every inch a gentleman. But the broad light to which he had been so long a stranger made him blink, and sent his hand to his eyes. He came across to the table with a faltering and uncertain tread, and with a curious crouch in his walk. It struck me for the first time then, but I saw it so often afterwards that I almost ceased to notice it at all. For an instant pride and liberty had buoyed him so that he could present a passing semblance of what he had been, but the change fell upon him as quick as lightning, and no flash of lightning could have blighted him more dreadfully. He approached the table shuffling, with bent head, and purblind eyes peering this way and that. I placed a chair for him, but he seemed uncertain what to do with it until I helped him to seat himself. The filthy floor of that unspeakable dungeon had been his only seat and couch for a score of years.
He sat crouching at the table as if hugging himself together for warmth, though the day was balmy, and the sun was bright and hot outside. When he drank he took his cup in both hands as an ape would have done, and as he tasted the fragrant coffee he made an animal noise of satisfaction. He caught himself at this, and a swift tide of crimson passed over his face; but a minute later the old felon habit was upon him again, and I saw him tearing his bread with his teeth in quite the jail-bird way. Looking at his thin hands, I saw that he had clipped his nails; but the skin had overgrown them, and had split into ragged fragments. I caught him peering at them in a distasteful way, and when he detected me in the act of watching him he hid them beneath the table.
We were still at table, when there came a sudden bang at the door, and without waiting for any reply in walked a gentleman with every sign of the public functionary about him, cocked hat, official stick, and all. He bowed, closed the door, stepped forward, and bowed again.
“The gentlemen speak French?” he asked.
I answered in the affirmative, and our visitor announced himself as the huissier of the magistrates court. It was his duty to demand our presence before the bench. On what ground, I asked. The functionary responded fluently and with an evident sense of his own importance that we had passed the frontier without showing our papers, and by an unrecognized route; that one of us was an escaped political prisoner; that the others were charged with assisting in his flight; that a lieutenant of lancers had been sent to demand our return, and that we were at once to appear at court. To all of which I answered flatly that we would not go; whereupon the functionary retired, leaving, as we discovered afterwards, a guard outside the house. A little later came a gentleman in official robes, who turned out to be the chief-magistrate. He explained his errand with some pomp.
“Sir,” I said, when he had come to a peremptory end, “I am an Englishman and a soldier. Here are my credentials. This gentleman, the Honorable George Brunow, is a son of Lord Balmeyle, and is also an Englishman. This gentleman is the Conte di Rossano.”
And here, to my surprise, the Conte di Rossano arose from his seat at the table, and, turning towards the official, with one hand on the back of his chair, said, in a clear, loud voice:
“Also an English subject! I was naturalized before my marriage,” he added in a changed tone, and so sank into his seat again.
“You hear, sir,” I said, respectfully. “I am about to order a carriage, and in half an hour shall leave the town with these gentlemen and my servant on my way to England. Any official person molesting us will be held officially responsible for his conduct.”
The mayor wavered.
“I have the honor, sir, to wish you a good-day.”
I opened the door, and in walked Lieutenant Breschia.
“These are my birds,” he said, laughingly. “I haven't the pleasure of being acquainted with this gentleman,” signalizing the count, “but I dare say we shall learn to know each other.”
“My dear Breschia,” cried Brunow, “we are sorry to have defrauded you; but you know us, and you know it will not pay to meddle with us. We are on neutral soil. We are all three British subjects. You have no authority here, and you know it.”
“Eh, bien!” said the lieutenant, laughing still. “Civis Romanus sum. His excellency, the mayor, will bear out my statement that I came and saw and strove to conquer. You do not find it in your competence, sir, to arrest these gentlemen, who are all subjects of the British crown?”
“It is not my affair,” said the mayor.
“And I am not authorized to employ force,” said the lieutenant. “We are nonplussed, Monsieur le Maire.”
“It would so appear,” said the puzzled functionary; and being bowed from the room by the lieutenant, he retired.
“Civis Romanus sum,” repeated Breschia, when we were left alone. “It is a great saying. And so you positively won't come back?”
“Positively we will not,” said Brunow.
“Then, positively,” returned the lieutenant, “I will go back and report my failure.”
“Permit that I condole,” said Brunow.
“Permit that I felicitate,” answered Breschia; and so with a burlesque friendly bow on either side they parted.