"Nevertheless," answered Marc'antonio with some sarcasm, "she appears to have neglected to confide to you what she feared."
Stephanu spread out his hands. "The Prince, and the reverend
Father—who can tell what passes in their minds?"
"Not you, at any rate! Very well, then—the Princess was apprehensive. . . . Yet now, when the mischief (whatever it is) should either be done or on the point of doing, she will have none of our help. Clearly she knows more, yet will have none of our help. That is altogether puzzling to me. . . . And she sends us north. . . . Very well again; we will go north, but not far!"
He glanced back at me over his shoulder. I read his meaning—that he wished to plan his campaign privately with Stephanu—and, reining in my pony, I fell back out of earshot.
The pass towards which we were climbing stood perhaps three thousand feet above the shore and the high road we had left; and the track, when it reached the steeper slopes, ran in long zigzagging terraces at the angles of which our ponies had sometimes to scramble up stairways cut in the living rock. As the sun sank a light mist gradually spread over the coast below us, the distant islands grew dim, and we rode suspended, as it were, over a bottomless vale and a sea without horizon. Slowly, out of these ghostly wastes, the moon lifted herself in full circle, and her rays, crossing the cope of heaven, lit up a tall grey crag on the ridge above us, and the stem of a white-withered bush hanging from it—an isolated mass which (my companions told me) marked the summit of the ascent.
"The path leads round the base of it," said Stephanu. "We shall reach it in another twenty minutes."
"But will it not be guarded?" I asked.
He hunched his shoulders. "The Prince is no general. A hundred times our enemies might have destroyed us; but they prefer to leave us alone. It is more humiliating."
Marc'antonio rode forward deep in thought, his chin sunk upon his breast. At the summit, under the shadow of the great rock, he reined up, and slewing himself about in his saddle addressed Stephanu again.
"As I remember, there is a track below which branches off to the right, towards Nonza. It will take us wide of Olmeta and we can strike down into the lowland somewhere between the two. The Princess commands us to make for the north; so we shall be obeying her, and at the same time we can bivouac close enough to take stock at sunrise and, maybe, learn some news of the camp—yet not so close that our horses can be heard, if by chance one should whinny."
"As to that you may rest easy," Stephanu assured him. "It is known that many of the farms below keep ponies in stable."
From the pass we looked straight down upon another sea, starlit and dimly discernible, and upon slopes and mountain spurs descending into dense woodland over which, along the bluffs of the ridge, the lights of a few lonely hill-farms twinkled. Stephanu found for us the track of which Marc'antonio had spoken, and although on this side of the range the shadows of the crags made an almost total darkness, our ponies took us down at a fair pace. After thirty, or it may be forty, minutes of this jolting and (to me) entirely haphazard progress, Marc'antonio again reined up, on the edge of a mountain-stream which roared across our path so loudly as to drown his instructions. But at a sign from him Stephanu stepped back and took my bridle, and within a couple of minutes I felt that my pony's feet were treading good turf and, at a cry from my guide, ducked my head to avoid the boughs as we threaded our way down through an orchard of stalwart olives.
The slope grew gentler as we descended, and eased almost to a level on the verge of a high road running north and south under the glimmer of the moon—or rather of the pale light heralding the moon's advent. Marc'antonio looked about him and climbed heavily from his saddle. He had been riding since dawn.
I followed his example, though with difficulty—so stiff were my limbs; picketed my pony; and, having unstrapped the blanket from my saddle-bow, wrapped it about me and stretched myself on the thin turf to munch the ration of crust which Marc'antonio doled out from his bag; for he carried our provender.
"Never grudge a hard day's work when 'tis over," said he, as he passed me the wine-skin. "Yonder side of the mountain breeds malaria even in winter, but on this side a man may sleep and rise fit for adventure."
He offered, very politely, to share his blanket with Stephanu, but Stephanu declined. Those two might share one loyalty and together take counsel for it, but between them as men there could be no liking nor acceptance of favours.
I lay listening for a while to the mutter of their voices as they talked there together under the olives; but not for long. The few words and exclamations that reached me carried no meaning. In truth I was worn out. Very soon the chatter of the stream, deep among the trees—the stream which we had just now avoided—confused itself with their talk, and I slept.
Of a sudden I started and sat up erect. I had been dreaming, and in my dream I had seen two figures pass along the road beyond the fringe of the trees. They had passed warily, yet hurriedly, across the patch of it now showing white between the olive trunks, under the risen moon. Yet how could this have happened if I had dreamed it merely? The moon, when I fell asleep, had not surmounted the ridge behind me, and that patch of road, now showing so white and clear, had been dim, if not quite invisible. None the less I could be sworn that two figures had passed up the road . . . two men . . .
Marc'antonio and Stephanu?—reconnoitring perhaps? I rubbed my eyes. No: Marc'antonio and Stephanu lay a few paces away, stretched in profound sleep under the moonlight drifting between the olive boughs; and yonder, past the fringe of the orchard, shone the patch of white high road. Two figures, half a minute since, had passed along it. I could be sworn to it, even while reason insisted that I had been dreaming.
I flung off my rug, and, stepping softly to the verge of the orchard's shadow, peered out upon the road. To my right—that is to say, northward—it stretched away level and visibly deserted so far as the bend, little more than a gunshot distant, where it curved around the base of low cliff and disappeared. A few paces on this side of the cliff glimmered the rail of a footbridge, and to this spot my ears traced the sound of running water which had been singing through my dreams—the same stream which had turned us aside to seek our bivouac. Not even yet could I believe that my two wayfarers had been phantoms merely. I had given them two minutes' start at least, and by this time they might easily have passed the bend. Threading my way swiftly between the boles of the olive trees, I skirted the road to the edge of the stream and stood for a moment at pause before stepping out upon the footbridge and into the moonlight.
The water at my feet, scarcely seen through the dark ferns, ran swiftly and without noise as through a trough channelled in the living rock; but it brought its impetus from a cascade that hummed aloft somewhere in the darkness with a low continuous thunder as of a mill with a turning wheel. I lifted my head to the sound, and in that instant my ears caught a slight creak from the footbridge on my left. I faced about, and stood rigid, at gaze. A woman was stepping across the bridge, there in the moonlight; a slight figure, cloaked and hooded and hurrying fast; a woman, with a gun slung behind her and the barrel of it glimmering. It was the Princess.
I let her pass, and as she turned the bend of the road I stole out to the footbridge and across it in pursuit. I knew now that the two wayfarers had not been phantoms of my dreaming; that she was following, tracking them, and that I must track and follow her. Beyond the bend the road twisted over a low-lying spur of the mountain between outcrops of reddish-coloured rock, and then ran straight for almost three hundred yards, with olive orchards on either hand; so that presently I could follow and hold her in sight, myself keeping well within the trees' line of shadow.
Twice she turned to look behind her, but rapidly and as if in no great apprehension of pursuit; or perhaps her own quest had made her reckless. At the end of this straight and almost level stretch the road rose steeply to wind over another foot-hill, and here she broke into a run. I pressed after her up the ascent, and from the knap of it, with a shock, found myself looking down at close hand upon a small dim bay of the sea with a white edge of foam curving away into a loom of shore above which a solitary light twinkled. The road, following the curve of the shore a few paces above the waves, lay bare in the moonlight, without cover to right or left, until, a mile away perhaps, it melted into the grey of night. Along that distance my eyes sought and sought in vain for the figure that had been running scarcely two hundred yards ahead of me. The Princess had disappeared.
For a short while I stood at fault; but searching the bushes on my left, I was aware of a parting between them, overgrown indeed, yet plainly indicating a track; along which I had pushed but two-score of paces—perhaps less—before a light glimmered between the greenery and I stepped into an open clearing in full view of a cottage, the light of which fell obliquely across the turf through a warped or cracked window-shutter.
"Camillo!"—it was the Princess's voice, half imperious, half pleading; and from beyond the angle of the cottage wall came the noise of a latch shaken. "Open to me, Camillo, or by the Mother of Christ I will blow the door in! I have a gun, Camillo, and I swear to you!"
The challenge was not answered. Crouching almost on all fours I sprang across the ray of light and gained the wall's shadow. There, as I drew breath, I heard the latch shaken again, more impatiently.
"Camillo!"
The bolt was drawn. Peering around the angle of the wall, I saw the light fall full on her face as the door opened and she stepped into the cottage.
CHAPTER XXIII.
ORDEAL AND CHOOSING.
"Thou coward! Yet
Art living? canst not, wilt not find the road
To the great palace of magnificent death?—
Though thousand ways lead to his thousand doors
Which day and night are still unbarr'd for all."
NAT. LEE.—Oedipus.
"No man"—I am quoting my father—"can be great, or even wise, or even, properly speaking, a man at all, until he has burnt his boats"; but I imagine that those who achieve wisdom and greatness burn their boats deliberately and not—as did I, next moment—upon a sudden wild impulse.
My excuse is, the door was already closing behind the Princess. I knew she had tracked the Prince Camillo and his confessor, and that these two were within the cottage. I knew nothing of their business, save that it must be shameful, since she who had detected and would prevent it chose to hide her knowledge even from Marc'antonio and Stephanu. Then much rather (you may urge) would she choose to hide it from me. The objection is a sound one, had I paused to consider it; but (fortunately or unfortunately, as you may determine) I did not. She had stepped into peril. The door was closing behind her: in another couple of seconds it would be bolted again. I sprang for it, hurled myself in through the entry, and there, pulling myself erect, stared about me.
Four faces returned my stare; four faces, and all dismayed as though a live bombshell had dropped through the doorway. To the priest, whom my impact had flung aside against the wall, I paid no attention. My eyes fastened themselves on the table at which, with a lantern and some scattered papers between them, sat two men—the Prince, and a grey-haired officer in the blue-and-white Genoese uniform. The Prince, who had pushed back his chair and confronted his sister with hands stretched out to cover or to gather up the papers on the table, slewed round upon me a face that, as it turned, slowly stiffened with terror. The Genoese officer rose with one hand resting on the table, while with the other he fumbled at a silver chain hanging across his breast, and as he shot a glance at the Prince I could almost see his lips forming the word "treachery." The Princess's consternation was of all the most absolute. "The Crown! Where is the Crown?"—as I broke in, her voice, half imperious, half supplicatory, had panted out these words, while with outstretched hand and forefinger she pointed at the table. Her hand still pointed there, rigid as the rest of her body, as with dilated eyes she stared into mine.
"Yes, gentlemen," said I, in the easiest tone I could manage, "the Princess asks you a question, which allow me to repeat. Where is the Crown?"
"In the devil's name—" gasped the Prince.
The Genoese interrupted him. "Shut and bolt the door!" he commanded the priest, sharply.
"Master Domenico," said I, "if you move so much as a step, I will shoot you through the body."
The Genoese tugged at the chain on his breast and drew forth a whistle. "Signore," he said quietly and with another side glance at the Prince, "I do not know your name, but mine is Andrea Fornari, and I command the Genoese garrison at Nonza. Having some inherited knowledge of the Corsicans, and some fifty years' experience of my own, I do not walk into traps. A dozen men of mine stand within call here, at the back entrance, and my whistle will call me up another fifty. Bearing this in mind, you will state your business as peaceably as possible."
"Nevertheless," said I, "since I have taken a fancy—call it a whim, if you will—that the door remains at least unbolted. . . ."
He shrugged his shoulders. "It will help you nothing."
"I am an Englishman," said I.
"Indeed? Well, I have heard before now that it will explain anything and everything; but as yet my poor understanding scarcely stretches it to cover your presence here."
"Faith, sir," I answered, "to put the matter briefly, I am here because the Princess is here, whom I have followed—though without her knowledge—because I guessed her to be walking into peril."
"Excuse me. Without her knowledge, you say?" The Commandant turned to the Princess, who bowed her head but continued to gaze at me from under her lowered brows. "Absolutely, sir."
"And without knowledge of her errand? Again excuse me, but does it not occur to you that you may be intruding at this moment upon a family affair?"
Here the Prince broke in with a scornful laugh. For a minute or so his brow had been clearing, but, though he sneered, he could not as yet meet his sister's eye. I noted this as his laugh drew my gaze upon him, and it seemed that my contempt gave me a sudden clear insight; for I found myself answering the Commandant very deliberately—
"The Princess, sir, until a moment ago, perhaps knew not whether I was alive or dead, and certainly knew not that I was within a hundred miles of this place. Had she known it, she would as certainly not have confided her errand to me, mixed up as it is with her brother's shame. She would, I dare rather wager, have taken great pains to hide it from me. And yet I will not pretend that I am quite ignorant of it, as neither will I allow—family affair though it be—that I have no interest in it, seeing that it concerns the crown of Corsica."
The Commandant glanced at the Prince, then at the priest, who stood passive, listening, with his back to the wall, his loose-lidded eyes studying me from the lantern's penumbra.
"What possible interest—" begun the Commandant.
"By the crown of Corsica," I interrupted, "I mean the material crown of the late King Theodore, at this moment concealed (if I mistake not) somewhere in this cottage. In it I may claim a certain interest, seeing that I brought it from England to this island, and that the Prince Camillo here—whose father gave it to me—is trading it to you by fraud. Yes, messere, he may claim that it belongs to him by right; but he obtained it from me by fraud, as neither he nor his sister can deny. That perhaps might pass: but when he—he a son of Corsica—goes on to sell it to Genoa, I reassert my claim."
Again the Commandant shrugged his shoulders. It consoled me to note that his glance at the Prince was by no means an admiring one.
"I am a soldier," he said curtly. "I do not deal in sentiment; nor is it my business, when a bargain comes to me—a bargain in which I can serve my country—to inquire into how's and why's."
"I grant that, sir," said I. "It is your business, now that the crown—with what small profit may go with it—lies under your hand, to grasp it for Genoa. But as a soldier and a brave man, you understand that now you must grasp it by force. God knows in what hope, if in any, the Princess here tracked out your plot; but at least she can compel you—I can compel you—we two, weak as we are, can compel you—to use force. The honour of a race—and that a royal one—shall at least not pass to you on the mere signature of that coward sitting there." I swung round upon the Prince. "You may give up trying to hide those papers, sir, since every one in this room knows what compact you were in the act of signing."
The Princess stepped forward. "All this," she said to me in a low, hard voice, "I could have done without help of you." Her tone promised that she would never forgive, but she looked only at her brother. "Camillo," she said, standing before him, "this Englishman has said only what I came to say. It is not my fault that he is here and has guessed. When I was sure, I hid my knowledge even from Marc'antonio and Stephanu; and he—he shall die for having overheard. The Genoese will see to that, and the Commandant, as he is a gentleman, will write in his report that he took the crown from us, having caught us at unawares. . . . I cannot shoot you, my brother. Even you would not ask this of me—of me that have served you, and that serve you now in the end. . . . See, I make no reproaches. . . . We were badly brought up, we two, and when you were young and helpless, vile men took hold on you and taught you to be capable of—of this thing. But we are Colonne, we two, and can end as Colonne." She dipped a hand within the bosom of her bodice and drew out a phial. "Dear, I will drink after you. It will not be hard; no, believe me, it will not be so very hard—a moment, a pang perhaps, and everything will yet be saved. O brother, what is a pang, a moment, that you can weigh it against a lifetime of dishonour!"
The Prince sprang up cursing.
"Dishonour? And who are you that talk to me of dishonour?—you that come straying here out of the night with your cicisbeo at your heels? You, with the dew on you and your dress bedraggled, arrive straight from companioning in the woods and prate to me of shame—of the blood of the Colonne!" He smote a hand on the table and spat forth a string of vile names upon her, mixed with curses; abominable words before which she drew back cowering, yet less (I think) from the lash of them than from shock and horror of his incredible baseness. Passion twisted his mouth; his tongue stammered with the gush of his abuse; but he was lying, and knew that he was lying, for his eyes would meet neither hers nor mine. Only after drawing breath did he for a moment look straight at her, and then it was to demand; "And who, pray, has driven me to this? What has made Corsica so bitter to me that in weariness I am here to resign it? You, my sister—you, and what is known of you. . . . Why can I do nothing with the patriots? Why were there no recruits? Why, when I negotiated, did the Paolists listen as to a child and smile politely and show me their doors? Again, because of you, O my sister!—because there is not a household in Corsica but has heard whisperings of you, and of Brussels, and of the house in Brussels where you were sought and found. Blood of the Colonne!—and now the blood of the Colonne takes an English lover to warm it! Blood of—"
With one hand I caught him by the throat, with the other by the girdle, and flung him clean across the table into the corner, oversetting the lantern, but not extinguishing the light, for the Commandant caught it up deftly. As he set it back on the table I heard him grunt, and—it seemed to me—with approval.
"I will allow no shooting, sir," said he, quickly, yet with easy authority, noting my hand go down to my gun-stock.
"You misunderstand me," I answered, and indeed I was but shifting its balance on my bandolier, which had slipped awry in the struggle. "There are reasons why I cannot kill this man. But you will give me leave to answer just two of his slanders upon this lady. It is false that I came here to-night by her invitation or in her company, as it is God's truth that for many months until we met in this room and in your presence she has not set eyes on me. She could not have known even that I lived since the hour when her brother there—yes, Princess, your brother there—left me broken and maimed at the far end of the island. For the rest, he utters slanders to which I have no clue save that I know them to be slanders. But at a venture, if you would know how they grew and who nurtured them, I think the priest yonder can tell you."
The Commandant waved a hand politely. "You have spoken well, sir. Believe me, on this point no more is necessary. I have no doubt— there can be no doubt—that the Prince lies under a misapprehension. Nevertheless, there are circumstances which lay me under obligation to him." He paused. "And you will admit that you have placed the lady—thoughtlessly no doubt—in a false position."
"Well and good, sir," I replied. "If, in your opinion as a man of honour, the error demands a victim, by all means call in your soldiers and settle me. I stipulate only that you escort the lady back to her people with honour, under a flag of truce; and I protest only, as she has protested, that this traitor has no warrant to sell you his country's rights."
The Prince had picked himself up, and stood sulkily, still in his corner. I suppose that he was going to answer this denunciation, when the priest's voice broke in, smooth and unctuous.
"Pardon me, messeri, but there occurs to me a more excellent way. This Englishman has brought dishonour on one of the Colonne: therefore it is most necessary that he should die. But before dying let him make the only reparation—and marry her."
I turned on him, staring: and in the flicker of his eyes as he lifted them for one instant towards his master, I read the whole devilish cunning of the plot. They might securely let her go, as an Englishman's widow. The fact had merely to be proclaimed and the islanders would have none of her. I am glad to remember that—my brain keeping clear, albeit my pulse, already fast enough, leapt hotly and quickened its speed—I had presence of mind to admire the suggestion coolly, impersonally, and quite as though it affected me no jot.
The Commandant bent his brows. Behind them—as it seemed to me—I could read his thought working.
"If you, sir, have no objection," he said slowly, looking up and addressing me with grave politeness, "I see much to be said for the reverend father's proposal."
He turned to the Prince, who—cur that he was—directed his spiteful glee upon his sister.
"It appears, O Camilla, that in our race to save each other's honour I am to be winner. Nay, you may wear your approaching widowhood with dignity, and boast in time to come that your husband once bore the crown of Corsica."
"Prince Camillo," said the Commandant, quietly, "I am here to-night in the strict service of my Republic, to do my best for her: but I warn you that if you a second time address your sister in that tone I shall reserve the right to remember it later as a plain Genoese gentleman. Sir," he faced about and addressed me again, "am I to understand that you accept?"
I looked at the Princess. She met my look proudly, with eyes set in a face pale as death. I could not for the life of me read whether they forbade me or implored. They seemed to forbid, protest . . . and yet (the bliss of it!) for one half instant they had also seemed to implore. Thank God at least they did not scorn!
"Princess," I said, "these men propose to do me an infinite honour— an honour far above my deserving—and to kill me while my heart yet beats with the pride of it. Yet say to me now if I must renounce it, and I will die bearing you no grudge. Take thought, not of me, but of yourself only, and sign to me if I must renounce."
Still she eyed me, pale and unblinking. Her bosom panted, and for a moment she half-raised her hand; but dropped it again.
"I think, sir," said I, facing around on the Commandant, I think by this time the day must be breaking. Will you kindly open the shutters? Also you would oblige me further—set it down to an Englishman's whim—by forming up your men outside; and we will have a soldier's wedding."
"Willingly, cavalier." The Commandant stepped to the shutter and unbarred it, letting in daylight with the cool morning breeze—a greenish-grey daylight, falling across the glade without as softly as ever through cathedral aisles, and a breeze that was wine to the taste as it breathed through the exhausted air of the cottage—a sacramental dawn, and somewhere deep in the arcades of the tree-boles a solitary bird singing!
The Commandant leaned forth and blew his whistle. The bird's song ceased, and was followed by the tramp of men. My brain worked so clearly, I could almost count their footsteps. I saw them, across the Commandant's shoulder, as they filed past the corner of the window and, having formed into platoon, grounded arms, the butts of their muskets thudding softly on the turf—a score of men in blue-and-white uniforms, spick and span in the clear morning light.
I counted them and drew a long breath. "Master priest," said I, and held out my hand to the Princess, "in your Church, I believe, matrimony is a sacrament. If you are ready, I am ready."
His loose lip twitched as he stepped forward. . . . When he paused in his muttering I lifted the Princess's cold hand and drew a seal from my pocket—a heavy seal with a ring attached, which I fitted on her finger; and so I held her hand, letting drop on it by degrees the weight of the heavy seal.
From the first she had offered no resistance, made no protest. I pressed the seal into the palm of her hand, not telling her that it was her own father's great seal of Corsica. But I folded her fingers back on it, reverently touched the one encircled by the ring, and said I—
"It is the best I can give;" and a little later, "It is all I brought in my pockets but this handkerchief. Take that, too; lead me out; and bandage my eyes, my wife."
She took my arm obediently and we stepped out by the doorway, bridegroom and bride, in face of the soldiery. A sergeant saluted and came forward for the Commandant's orders.
"A moment, sir," said I, and, laying two fingers on the Commandant's arm, I nodded towards the bole of a stout pine-tree across the clearing. "Will that distance suit you?"
He nodded in reply and as I swung on my heel touched my arm in his turn.
"You will do me the honour, sir, to shake hands?"
"Most willingly, sir." I shook hands with him, casting, as I did so, a glance over my shoulder at the Prince and Father Domenico, who hung back in the doorway—two men afraid. "Come," said I to the Princess, and, as she seemed to hesitate, "Come, my wife," I commanded, and walked to the pine-tree, she following. I held out the handkerchief. She took it, still obediently, and as she took it I clasped her hand and lifted it to my lips.
"Nay," said I, challenging, "what was it you told your brother? A moment? A pang? What are they to weigh against a lifetime of dishonour?"
I saw her blench: yet even while she bandaged me at my bidding, I did not arrive at understanding the folly—the cruel folly of that speech. Nay, even when, having bandaged me, she stepped away and left me, I considered not nor surmised what second meaning might be read in it.
Shall I confess the truth? I was too consciously playing a part and making a handsome exit. After all, had I not some little excuse? . . . Here was I, young, lusty, healthful, with a man's career before me, and across it, trenched at my feet, the grave. A saying of Billy Priske's comes into my mind—a word spoken, years after, upon a poor fisherman of Constantine parish whose widow, as by will directed, spent half his savings on a tombstone of carved granite. "A man," said Billy, "must cut a dash once in his lifetime, though the chance don't come till he's dead." . . . Looking back across these years I can smile at the boy I was and forgive his poor brave flourish. But his speech was thoughtless: the woman (ah! but he knows her better now) was withdrawn with its wound in her heart: and between them Death was stepping forward to make the misunderstanding final.
I remember setting my shoulder-blades firmly against the bole of the tree. A kind of indignation sustained me; a scorn to be cut off thus, a scorn especially for the two cowards by the doorway. They were talking with the Commandant. Their voices sounded across the interval between me and the firing-party. Why were they wasting time? . . .
I could not distinguish their words, save that twice I heard the Prince curse viciously. The hound (I told myself, shutting my teeth) might have restrained his tongue for a few moments.
The voices ceased. In a long pause I heard the insects humming in the grasses at my feet. Would the moment never come?
It came at last. A flash of light winked above the edge of my bandage, and close upon it broke the roar and rattle of the volley . . . Death? I put out my hands and groped for it. Where was Death?
Nay, perhaps this was Death? If so, what fools were men to fear it! The hum of the insects had given place to silence—absolute silence. If bullet had touched me, I had felt no pang at all. I was standing, yes, surely I was standing . . . Slowly it broke on me that I was unhurt, that they had fired wide, prolonging their sport with me; and I tore away the bandage, crying out upon them to finish their cruelty.
At a little distance sat the Princess watching me, her gun across her knees. Beyond her and beyond the cottage, by the edge of the wood the firing-party had fallen into rank and were marching off among the pine-stems, the Prince and Father Domenico with them. I stared stupidly after the disappearing uniforms, and put out a hand as if to brush away the smoke which yet floated across the clearing. The Commandant, turning to follow his men, at the same moment lifted his hand in salute. So he, too, passed out of sight.
I turned to the Princess. She arose slowly and came to me.
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE WOOING OF PRINCESS CAMILLA.
"Take heed of loving me,
At least remember I forbade it thee; . . .
If thou love me, take heed of loving me."
DONNE, The Prohibition.
"You have conquered."
She had halted, a pace or two from me, with downcast eyes. She said it very slowly, and I stared at her and answered with an unmeaning laugh.
"Forgive me, Princess. I—I fancy my poor wits have been shaken and need a little time to recover. At any rate, I do not understand you."
"You have conquered," she repeated in a low voice that dragged upon the words. Then, after a pause,—"You remember, once, promising me that at the last I should come and place my neck under your foot . . ." She glanced up at me and dropped her eyes again. "Yes, I see that you remember. Eccu—I am here."
"I remember, Princess: but even yet I do not understand. Why, and for what, should you beseech me?"
"In the first place for death. I am your wife . . ." She broke off with a shiver. "There is something in the name, messere—is there not?—that should move you to kindness, as a sportsman takes his game not unkindly to break its neck. That is all I ask of you—"
"Princess!"
She lifted a hand. "—except that you will let me say what I have to say. You shall think hard thoughts of me, and I am going to make them harder; but for your own sake you shall put away vile ones-if you can."
I stared at her stupidly dizzied a little with the words I am your wife, humming in my brain. Or say that I am naturally not quick-witted, and I will plead that for once my dullness did me no discredit.
At all events it saved me for the moment: for while I stared at her, utterly at a loss, a crackle of twigs warned us, and we turned together as, by the pathway leading from the high-road, the bushes parted and the face of Marc'antonio peered through upon the clearing.
"Salutation, O Princess!" said he gravely, and stepped out of cover attended by Stephanu, who likewise saluted.
The Princess drew herself up imperiously. "I thought, O Stephanu, that I had made plain my orders, that you two were neither to follow nor to watch me?"
"Nevertheless," Marc'antonio made answer, "when one misses a comrade and hears, at a little distance, the firing of a volley . . . not to mention that some one has been burning gunpowder hereabouts," he wound up, sniffing the air with an expression that absurdly reminded me of our Vicar, at home, tasting wine.
"I warn you, O Marc'antonio," said the Princess, "to be wise and ask no more questions."
"I have asked none, O Princess," he answered again, still very gravely, and after a glance at me turned to Stephanu. "But it runs in my head, comrade, that the time has come to consider other things than wisdom."
"For example?" I challenged him sharply.
"For example, cavalier, that I cannot reconcile this smell with any
Corsican gunpowder."
"And you are right," said I. "Nay, Princess, you have sworn not long since to obey me, and I choose that they shall know. That salvo, sirs, was fired, five minutes ago, by the Genoese."
"A 'salvo' did you say, cavalier?"
"For our wedding, Marc'antonio." I took the Princess's hand—which neither yielded nor resisted—and lifting it a little way, released it to fall again limply. So for a while there was silence between us four.
"Marc'antonio," said I, "and you, Stephanu—it is I now who speak for the Princess and decide for her; and I decide that you, who have served her faithfully, deserve to be told all the truth. It is truth, then, that we are married. The priest who married us was Fra Domenico, and with assent of his master the Prince Camillo. I can give you, moreover, the name of the chief witness: he is a certain Signor or General Andrea Fornari, and commands the Genoese garrison in Nonza."
"Princess!" Marc'antonio implored her.
"It is true," said she. "This gentleman has done me much honour, having heard what my brother chose to say."
"But I do not comprehend!" The honest fellow cast a wild look around the clearing. "Ah, yes-the volley! They have taken the Prince, and shot him . . . But his body—they would not take his body—and you standing here and allowing it—"
"My friends," I interrupted, "they have certainly taken his body, and his soul too, for that matter; and I doubt if you can overtake either on this side of Nonza. But with him you will find the crown of Corsica, and the priest who helped him to sell it. I tell you this, who are clansmen of the Colonne. Your mistress, who discovered the plot and was here to hinder it, will confirm me."
Their eyes questioned her; not for long. In the droop of her bowed head was confirmation.
"And therefore," I went on, "you two can have no better business than to help me convey the Princess northward and bring her to her mother, whom in this futile following after a wretched boy you have all so strangely forgotten. By God!" said I, "there is but one man in Corsica who has hunted, this while, on a true scent and held to it; and he is an Englishman, solitary and faithful at this moment upon Cape Corso!"
"Your pardon, cavalier," answered Marc'antonio after a slow pause. "What you say is just, in part, and I am not denying it. But so we saw not our duty, since the Queen Emilia bade us follow her son. With him we have hunted (as you tell us) too long and upon a false scent. Be it so: but, since this has befallen, we must follow on the chase a little farther. For you, you have now the right to protect our well-beloved; not only to the end of Cape Corso, but to the end of the world. But for us, who are two men used to obey, the Princess your wife must suffer us to disobey her now for the first time. The road to the Cape, avoiding Nonza, is rough and steep and must be travelled afoot; yet I think you twain can accomplish it. At the Cape, if God will, we will meet you and stand again at your service. But we travel by another road—the road which does not avoid Nonza."
He glanced at Stephanu, who nodded.
"Farewell then, O Princess; and if this be the end of our service, forgive what in the past has been done amiss. Farewell, O cavalier, and be happy to protect her in perils wherein we were powerless."
The Princess stretched out both hands.
"Nay, mistress," said Marc'antonio, with another glance at Stephanu; "but first cross them, that there be no telling the right from the left: for we are two jealous men."
She crossed them obediently, and the two took each a hand and kissed it.
Now all this while I could see that she was struggling for speech, and as they released her hands she found it.
"But wherefore must you go by Nonza, O Marc'antonio? And how many will you take with you?"
Marc'antonio put the first question aside. "We go alone, Princess. You may call it a reconnaissance, on which the fewer taken the better."
"You will not kill him! Nay, then, O Marc'antonio, at least—at least you will not hurt him!"
"We hope, Princess, that there will be no need," he answered seriously, and, saluting once more, turned on his heel. Stephanu also saluted and turned, and the pair, falling into step, went from us across the clearing.
I watched them till their forms disappeared in the undergrowth, and turned to my bride.
"And now, Princess, I believe you have something to say to me. Shall it be here? I will not suggest the cottage, which is overfull maybe of unpleasant reminders; but here is a tree-trunk, if you will be seated."
"That shall be as my lord chooses."
I laughed. "Your lord chooses, then, that you take a seat. It seems (I take your word for it) that there must be hard thoughts between us. Well, a straight quarrel is soonest ended, they say: let us have them out and get them over."
"Ah, you hurt! Is it necessary that you hurt so?" Her eyes no less than her voice sobered me at once, shuddering together as though my laugh had driven home a sword and it grated on the bone. I remembered that she always winced at laughter, but this evident anguish puzzled me.
"God knows," said I, "how I am hurting you. But pardon me.
Speak what you have to speak; and I will be patient while I learn."
"'A lifetime of dishonour,' you said, and yet you laugh . . . A lifetime of dishonour, and you were blithe to be shot and escape it; yet now you laugh. Ah, I cannot understand!"
"Princess!" I protested, although not even now did I grasp what meaning she had misread into my words.
"But you said rightly. It is a lifetime of dishonour you have suffered them to put on you: and I—I have taken more than life from you, cavalier—yet I cannot grieve for you while you laugh. O sir, do not take from me my last help, which is to honour you!"
"Listen to me, Princess," said I, stepping close and standing over her. "What do you suppose that I meant by using those words? They were your own words, remember."
"That is better. It will help us both if we are frank—only do not treat me as a child. You heard what my brother said. Yes, and doubtless you have heard other things to my shame? Answer me."
"If your brother chose to utter slanders—"
"Yes, yes; it was easy to catch him by the throat. That is how one man treats another who calls a woman vile in her presence. It does not mean that he disbelieves, and therefore it is worthless; but a gallant man will act so, almost without a second thought, and because it is dans les formes." She paused. "I learned that phrase in Brussels, cavalier."
I made no answer.
"In Brussels, cavalier," she repeated, "where it was often in the mouths of very vile persons. You have heard, perhaps, that we—that my brother and I—lived our childhood in Brussels?"
I bent my head, without answering; but still she persisted.
"I was brought to Corsica from Brussels, cavalier. Marc'antonio and Stephanu fetched us thence, being guided by that priest who is now my brother's confessor."
"I have been told so, Princess. Marc'antonio told me."
"Did he also tell you where he found me?"
"No, Princess."
"Did he tell you that, being fetched hither, I was offered by my brother in marriage to a young Count Odo of the Rocca Serra, and that the poor boy slew himself with his own gun?"
I stuffed my hands deep in my pockets, and said I, standing over her—
"All this has been told me, Princess, though not the precise reason for it: and since you desire me to be frank I will tell you that I have given some thought to that dead lad—that rival of mine (if you will permit the word) whom I never knew. The mystery of his death is a mystery to me still; but in all my blind guesses this somehow remained clear to me, that he had loved you, Princess; and this (again I ask your leave to say it), because I could understand it so well, forbade me to think unkindly of him."
"He loved his honour better, sir." Her face had flushed darkly.
"I am sorry, then, if I must suffer by comparison."
"No, no," she protested. "Oh, why will you twist my words and force me to seem ungrateful? He died rather than have me to wife: you took me on the terms that within a few minutes you must die. For both of you the remedy was at hand, only you chose to save me before taking it. On my knees, sir, I could thank you for that. The crueller were they that, when you stood up claiming your right to die, they broke the bargain and cheated you."
"Princess," I said, after musing a moment, "if my surviving seemed to you so pitiable, there was another way." I pointed to her musket.
"Yes, cavalier, and I will confess to you that when, having fired wide, they turned to go and the cheat was evident, twice before you pulled the bandage away I had lifted my gun. But I could not fire it, cavalier. To make me your executioner! Me, your wife—and while you thought so vilely of me!"
"Faith," said I grimly, "it was asking too much, even for a Genoese! Yet again I think you overrate their little trick, since, after all"—I touched my own gunstock—"there remains a third way—the way chosen by young Odo of Rocca Serra."
She put out a hand. "Sir, that way you need not take—if you will be patient and hear me!"
"Lady," said I, "you may hastily despise me; but I am neither going to take that way, nor to be patient, nor to hear you. But I am, as you invited me, going to be very frank and confess to you, risking your contempt, that I am extremely thankful the Genoese did not shoot me, a while ago. Indeed, I do not remember in all my life to have felt so glad, as I feel just now, to be alive. Give me your gun, if you please."
"I do not understand."
"No, you do not understand. . . . Your gun, please . . . nay, you can lay it on the turf between us. The phial, too, that you offered your brother. . . . Thank you. And now, my wife, let us talk of your country and mine; two islands which appear to differ more than I had guessed. In Corsica it would seem that, let a vile thing be spoken against a woman, it suffices. Belief in it does not count: it suffices that a shadow has touched her, and rather than share that shadow, men will kill themselves—so tender a plant is their honour. Now, in England, O Princess, men are perhaps even more irrational. They, no more than your Corsicans, listen to the evidence and ask themselves, 'Is this good evidence or bad? Do I believe it or disbelieve?' They begin father back, Princess—Shall I tell you how? They look in the face of their beloved, and they say, 'Slander this, not as you wish for belief, but only as you dare; for here my faith is fixed beforehand.'
"And therefore, O Princess," I went on, after a pause in which we eyed one another slowly, "therefore, I disbelieve any slander concerning you; not merely because your brother's confessor was its author—though that, to any rational man, should be enough—but because I have looked in your face. Therefore also I, your husband, forbid you to speak what would dishonour us both."
"But, cavalier—if—if it were true?"
"True?"—I let out a harsh laugh. "Take up that phial. Hold it in your hand, so. Now look me in the face and drink—if you dare! Look me in the face, read how I trust you, and so, if you can say the lie to me say it—and drink!"
She lifted the phial steadily, almost to her lips, keeping her eyes on mine—but of a sudden faltered and let it fall upon the turf: where I, whose heart had all but stood still, crushed my heel upon it savagely.
"I cannot. You have conquered," she gasped.
"Conquered?" I swore a bitter oath. "O Princess, think you this is the way I promised to conquer you? Take up your gun again and follow me. . . . Eh? You do not ask where I lead?"
"It is enough that I follow you, my husband," she said humbly.
"It is something, indeed; but before God it is not enough, nor half enough. I see now that 'enough' may never come: almost I doubt if I, who swore to you it should come, and since have desired it madly, desire it any longer; and until it comes you are still the winner. 'Enough' shall be said, Princess—for my price rises—not when (as I promised) you come to me without choosing to be loved or hated, only beseeching your master, but when you shall come to me having made your choice. . . . But so far, so good," said I, cheerfully, changing my tone. "You do not ask where I lead. I am leading you, if I can to Cape Corso, to my father; and by his help, if it shall serve, to your mother."
"I thank you, cavalier," she said, still in her restrained voice. "You are a good man; and for that reason I am sorry you will not hearken to me."
"The mountains are before us," said I, shouldering my gun. "Listen, Princess: let us be good comrades, us two. Let us forget what lies at the end of the journey—the convent for you, may be, and for me at least the parting. My life has been spared to-day, and I tell you frankly that I am glad of the respite. For you, the mountains hold no slanders, and shall hold no evil. Put your hand in mine on the compact, and we will both step it bravely. Forget that you were ever a Princess or I a promised king of this Corsica! O beloved, travel this land, which can never be yours or mine, and let it be ours only for a while as we journey."
I turned and led the way up the path between the bushes: and she followed my stride almost at a run. On the bare mountain-spur above the high-road she overtook and fell into pace with me: and so, skirting Nonza, we breasted the long slope of the range.
CHAPTER XXV.
MY WEDDING DAY.
Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the field; let us lodge
in the villages. Let us get up early to the vineyards; let us
see whether the vine hath budded and the tender grape appear.—
The Song of Songs.
Ahead of us, high on our right, rose the mountain ridges, scarp upon scarp, to the snowy peak of Monte Stella; low on our left lay Nonza, and beyond it a sea blue as a sapphire, scarcely rippled, void save for one white sail far away on the south-west horizon—not the Gauntlet; for, distant though she was, I could make out the shape of her canvas, and it was square cut.
Nonza itself lay in the shadow of the shore with the early light shimmering upon its citadel and upper works—a fortress to all appearance asleep: but the Genoese pickets would be awake and guarding the northward road for at least a league beyond, and to avoid them we must cross the high mountain spurs, using where we could their patches of forest and our best speed where these left the ridges bare.
The way was hard—harder by far than I had deemed possible—and kept us too busy for talk. Our silence was not otherwise constrained at all. Passion fell away from us as we climbed; fell away with its strife, its confusion, its distempered memories of the night now past; and was left with the vapours of the coast where the malaria brooded. Through the upper, clearer atmosphere we walked as gods on the roof of the world, saw with clear eyes, knew with mind and spirit untroubled by self-sickness. We were silent, having fallen into an accord which made all speech idle. Arduous as the road soon became, and, while unknown to both of us, more arduous to me because of my inexperience, we chose without hesitating, almost without consulting. Each difficulty brought decision, and with decision, its own help. Now it was I who steadied her leap across a chasm; now came her turn to underprop my foothold till I clambered to a ledge whence I could reach down a hand and drag her up to me. As a rule I may call myself a blundering climber, my build being too heavy; but I made no mistake that day.
In the course of a three hours' scramble she spoke to me (as I remember) once only, and then as a comrade, in quiet approval of my mountaineering. We had come to a crag over which—with no word said—I had lowered her by help of my bandolier. She had waited at the foot while I followed her down without assistance, traversing on the way an outward-sloping ledge of smooth rock which overhung a precipice and a sheer fall of at least three hundred feet. The ledge had nowhere a notch in it to grip the boot-sole, and was moreover slippery with the green ooze of a mountain spring. It has haunted my dreams since then; I would not essay it again for my weight in money; but I crossed it that day, so to speak, with my hands in my pockets.
The most curious (you might call it the most uncanny) part of the whole adventure, was that from time to time we came out of these breathless scrambles plump upon a patch of cultivated ground and a hill-farm with its steading; the explanation being that these farms stand each at the head of its own ravine, and, inaccessible one to another, have communication with the world only by the tracks which lead down their ravines. Here, three thousand feet and more above the sea—upon which we looked down between cliff and woodland as through a funnel, and upon the roofs and whitewashed walls of fishing-villages on the edge of the blue—lived slow, sedate folks, who called their dogs off us and stared upon us as portents and gave us goat's-milk and bread, refusing the coins we proffered. The inhabitants of this Cape (I have since learned) are a race apart in Corsica; slow, peaceable, without politics and almost (as we should say) without patriotism. We came to them as gods from the heights, and they received and sped us as gods. They were too slow of speech to question us, or even to express their astonishment.
There was one farm with a stream plunging past it, and, by the house wall, a locked mill-wheel (God knows what it had ever ground), and by the door below it a woman, seated on a flight of steps, with her bosom half-covered and a sucking-child laid asleep in her lap. She blinked in the sunshine as we came across the yard to her, and said she—
"Salutation, O strangers, and pardon that I cannot rise: but the little one is sick of a fever and I fear to stir him, for he makes as if he would sleep. Nor is there any one else to entertain you, since my husband has gone down to the marina to fetch the wise woman who lives there."
The Princess stepped close and stood over her. "O paesana," said she, "do you and your man live here alone, so far up the mountain?"
"There is the bambino," said the mother, simply. "He is my first— and a boy, by the gift of the Holy Virgin. Already he takes notice, and soon he will be learning to talk: but since we both talk to him and about him, you may say that already there are three of us, and anon the good Lord may send us others. It is hard work, O bella donna, on such a farm as ours, and doubly hard on my husband now for these months that I have been able to help him but little. But with a good man and his child—if God spare the child—I shall want no happiness."
"Give me the child," said the Princess, taking a seat on the stone slab beside her. "He shall not hurt with me while you fetch us a draught of milk."
The woman stared at her and at me, fearfully at first, then with a strange look in her eyes, between awe and disbelief and a growing hope.
"Even when you came," she said hoarsely after a while, "I was praying for an angel to help my child. . . . O blind, O hard of faith that I am! And when I lifted my eyes and saw you, I bethought me not that none walk this mountain by the path you have come, nor has this land any like you twain for beauty and stature. . . . O lady—whether from heaven or earth—you will not take my child but to cure it? He is my only one."
"Give him to me."
The woman laid her child in the Princess's arms and ran into the house, throwing one look of terror back at us from the doorstep. The Princess sat motionless, gazing down on the closed lids, frowning, deep in thoughts I could not follow.
"You will not," said I, "leave this good foolish soul in her error?"
"I have heard," she answered quietly, without lifting her eyes, "that a royal touch has virtue to heal sometimes—and there was a time when you claimed to be King of Corsica. Nay, forgive me," she took herself up quickly, "there is bitterness yet left in me, but that speech shall be the last of it. . . . O husband, O my friend, I was thinking that this child will grow into a man; and of what his mother said, that there is such a thing as a good man: and I am trying to believe her. . . . Eccu! he sleeps, poor mite! Listen to his breathing."
The farm-wife came out with a full bowl of milk. Her hands shook and spilled some as she handed it to me, so eager were they to hold her infant again. Taking it and feeling the damp sweat as she passed a hand over its brow, she broke forth into blessings.
We told her of her mistake: but I doubt if she heard.
"I have dwelt here these three years," she persisted, "and none ever walked the mountain by the path you have come." She watched us as I held the bowl for the Princess to drink, and asked quaintly, "But is there truly no marrying in heaven? I have thought upon that many times, and always it puzzles me."
We said farewell to her, and took her blessings with us as she watched us across the head of the ravine. Then followed another half-hour of silence and sharp climbing: but the worst was over, and by-and-by the range tailed off into a chain of lessening hills over which in the purple distance rose a solitary sharp cone with a ruinous castle upon it, which (said the Princess) was Seneca's Tower at the head of the Vale of Luri.
We were now beyond the danger of the Genoese, and therefore turned aside to the left and descended the slopes to the high-road, along which we made good speed until, having passed the tower and the mouth of the gorge which leads up to it from the westward, we came, almost at nightfall, within sight of Pino by the sea.
Here I proposed that I should go forward to the village and find a night's lodging for her, pointing out that, the night being warm and dry, I could make my couch comfortably enough in one of the citron orchards that here lined the road on the landward side. To this at first she assented—it seemed to me, even eagerly. But I had scarcely taken forty paces up the road before I heard her voice calling me back, and back I went obediently.
"O husband," she said, "the dusk has fallen, and now in the dusk I can say a word I have been longing all day to be free of. Nay"—she put out a hand—"you must not forbid me. You must not even delay me now."
"What is it, that I should forbid you?"
"It is—about Brussels."
I dropped my hand impatiently and was turning away, but she touched my arm and the touch pleaded with me to face her.
"I have a right. . . . Yes, it was good of you to refuse it; but you cannot go on refusing, because—see you—your goodness makes my right the stronger. This morning I could have told you, but you refused me. All this day I have known that refusal unjust."
"All this day? Then—pardon, Princess—but why should I hear you now, at this moment?"
"The daylight is past," she said. "You can listen now and not see my face."
On the hedge of the ditch beside the high-road lay a rough fragment of granite, a stone cracked and discarded, once the base of an olive-mill. She found a seat upon it and motioned to me to come close, and I stood close, staring down on her while she stared down at her feet, grey with dust almost as the road itself.
"We were children, Camillo and I," she said at length, "in keep of an ill woman we called Maman Trebuchet, and in a house near the entrance of a court leading off the Rue de la Madeleine and close beside the Market. How we had come there we never inquired. . . . I suppose all children take such things as they find them. The house was of five storys, all let out in tenements, and we inhabited two rooms on the fourth floor to the left as you went up the staircase. . . . Some of the men quarrelled with their wives and beat them. There was always a noise of quarrelling in the house: but outside, before the front door, the men who were not beating their women would sit for hours together and smoke and spit and tell one another stories against the Church and against women. The pavement where they sat and the street before it were strewn always with rotting odds and ends of vegetables, for almost every one in that quarter earned his living by the Market, and Maman Trebuchet among the rest. She divided her time between walking the streets with a basket and drinking the profits away in the cabarets, and in the intervals she cursed and beat us. We lived for the most part on the refuse she brought home at night— on so much of her stock as had found no purchaser—and we played about the gutters and alleys of the Market. So far as I remember we were neither very happy nor yet very miserable. We knew that we were brother and sister, and that Maman Trebuchet was not our real mother. Beyond this we were not inquisitive, but took life as we found it.
"Nevertheless, I know now that we were not altogether lost, but that eyes in Brussels were watching us; though how far they were friendly I cannot tell you. I think sometimes that the agents of the Genoese, who had hidden us there, must have been playing their own game as well as their masters'. There was, for example, a dark man who often visited the Market: he called himself a lay-brother, and seemed to be busy with religious work among the poor of the quarter. We knew him as Maitre Antoine at first, and so he was generally called: but he told us that his real name was Antonio—or Antoniu, as he spoke it—and that he came from Italy. He took a great fancy to us and obtained leave of Maman Trebuchet to teach us the Scriptures: but what he really taught us was to speak with him in Italian. We did not know at the time that, though he called it Tuscan, he was all the while teaching us our own Corsican. Nor, I believe, did our guardian know this; but one day, finding out by chance that we knew Italian (for we had begun to talk it together, that she might not understand what we said) and discovering how we had picked it up, she flew into a dreadful rage, lay in wait next day to catch Maitre Antoine as he came up the stairs, and fell upon him with such fury that the poor man fled out of the house and we never saw him again.
"After this—I believe about a year later—there came a day when she bought a new cap and shawl for herself and new clothes for us, and, having seen that we were thoroughly washed, took us up the hill to a fine street near the palace, and to a hotel which was almost the grandest house in the street. We entered, and were led into the presence of a very noble-looking gentleman in a long yellow dressing-gown, who blessed us and gave us a kiss apiece, and some gold money, and afterwards poured out wine for Maman Trebuchet and thanked her for taking such good care of us."
"That was your father, Princess."
"I have often thought so. But I remember nothing of his face except that he had tears in his eyes when we said good-bye to him; at which I wondered a great deal, for I had never seen a man crying. When we were outside again in the street Maman Trebuchet took the gold away from us. I think she too must have received money: for from that day she neglected her marketing and drank more heavily than before. About a month later she was dead.
"On the day of the funeral there came to our house a man dressed like a gentleman—yet I believe rather that he must have been some kind of courier or valet. He spoke to us very kindly, and said that we had friends, who had sent him to us; that when we grew up we should not want for money; but that just now it was most important we should be put to school and made fit for our proper position in life. We must make up our minds to be separated, he said—and at this we both wept—but we should see one another often. For Camillo he had found lodgings with an excellent tutor, in whose care, after a year's study, he was to travel abroad and see the world: while for me he had chosen a home with some discreet ladies who would attend to my schooling."
"The house was in the Rue de Luxembourg—a corner house, where the street is joined by a lane running from the Place du Parvis. He led me to it that same evening, and Camillo came too, to make sure that I was comfortable. It was a strange house and full of ladies, the most of them young and all very handsomely dressed. But for their dresses I could almost have fancied it some kind of convent. At all events, they received me kindly, and many of them wept when they saw my parting with Camillo."
Here the Princess paused, and sat silent for so long that I bent forward in the dusk to read her face. She drew away, shivering, and put up both hands as if to cover it.
"Well, Princess?"
"That house, Cavalier! . . . that horrible house! . . . Ah, remember that I was a child, scarcely twelve years old—I had heard vile words among the market folk, but they were words and meant nothing to me: and now I saw things which I did not understand and—and I became used to them before ever guessing that these were the things those vile words had meant. The women were pretty, you see . . . and merry, and kind to me at first. Before God I never dreamed that I was looking on harm—not at first—but afterwards, when it was too late. The people who had put me there ceased to send money, and being a strong child and willing to work, at first I was put to make the women their chocolate, and carry it up to them of a morning, and so, little by little, I came to be their house-drudge. I had lost all news of Camillo. For hours I have hunted through the streets of Brussels, if by chance I might get sight of him . . . but he was lost. And I—O Cavalier, have pity on me!"
"Wife," said I, standing before her, "why have you told me this? Did I not say to you that I have seen your face and believe, and no story shall shake my belief? . . . Nay, then, I am glad—yes, glad. Dear enough, God knows, you would have been to me had I met you, a child among these hills and ignorant of evil as a child. How much dearer you, who have trodden the hot plough-shares and come to me through the fires! . . . See now, I could kneel to you, O queen, for shame at the little I have deserved."
But she put out a hand to check me. "O friend," she said sadly, "will you never understand? For the great faith you pay me I shall go thankfully all my days: but the faith that should answer it I cannot give you. . . . Ah, there lies the cruelty! You are able to trust, and I can never trust in return. You can believe, but I cannot believe. I have seen all men so vile that the root of faith is withered in me. . . . Sir, believe, that though everything that makes me will to thank you must make me seem the more ungrateful, yet I honour you too much to give you less than an equal faith. I am your slave, if you command. But if you ask what only can honour us two as man and wife, you lose all, and I am for ever degraded."
I stepped back a pace. "O Princess," I said slowly, "I shall never claim your faith until you bring it to me. . . . And now, let all this rest for a while. Take up your story again and tell me the story to the end."
So in the darkness, seated there upon the millstone with her gun across her knees, she told me all the story, very quietly:—How at the last she had been found in the house in Brussels by Marc'antonio and Stephanu and fetched home to the island; how she had found there her brother Camillo in charge of Fra Domenico, his tutor and confessor; with what kindness the priest had received her, how he had confessed her and assured her that the book of those horrible years was closed; and how, nevertheless, the story had crept out, poisoning the people's loyalty and her brother's chances.
I heard her to the end, or almost to the end: for while she drew near to conclude, and while I stood grinding my teeth upon the certainty that the whole plot—from the kidnapping to the spreading of the slanders—had been Master Domenico's work, and his only, the air thudded with a distant dull concussion: whereat she broke off, lifting her head to listen.
"It is the sound of guns," said I, listening too, while half a dozen similar concussions followed. "Heavy artillery, too, and from the southward."
"Nay; but what light is yonder, to the north?"
She pointed into the night behind me, and I turned to see a faint glow spreading along the northern horizon, and mounting, and reddening as it mounted, until the black hills between us and Cape Corso stood up against it in sharp outline.
"O wife," said I, "since you must be weary, sleep for a while, and I will keep watch: but wake soon, for yonder is something worth your seeing."
"Whose work is it, think you?"
"The work," said I, "of a man who would set the whole world on fire, and only for love."