In Direst Peril.
by David Christie Murray.
PREFACE
It is not often that an honorable man commits a theft and yet leaves no stain upon his honor. It can happen still less often that a man of honor robs the lady he loves and honors above all womankind, and wins her hand in marriage by the act. Yet before we were married I robbed my wife of forty thousand pounds, breaking into her house to steal it; and here-now that we are both old-she is still so proud of me for having done that, that she must needs make me tell the story. A better writer would have done it better, but my wife has polished my rough phrases; and, at any rate, the plain truth about the strangest things which have happened in my knowledge is here set plainly down.
(Signed)
John Fyffe,
(Late acting) General of Division
under General Garibaldi.
IN DIREST PERIL
CHAPTER I
I have told my wife quite plainly that in my opinion I am as little fitted by nature for the task she has laid upon my shoulders as any man alive. I have spent a great part of my life in action; and though the later part of it has been quieter and more peaceful than the earlier, and though I have enjoyed opportunities of study which I never had before, I am still anything but a bookish man, and I am not at all confident about such essential matters as grammar and spelling. The history I am called upon to tell is one which, if it were put into the hands of a professed man of letters, might be made unusually interesting. I am sure of that, for in a life of strange adventure I have encountered nothing so strange. But, for my own part, the utmost I can do is to tell the thing as it happened as nearly as I can, and if I cannot command those graces of style which would come naturally to a practised pen, I can only ask that the reader will dispense with them.
The natural beginning of the story is that I fell in love with the lady who has now for eight-and-thirty blessed and happy years been my wife.
It may be that I may not again find opportunity to say one thing that should be said. That lady is a pearl among women; and I am prouder of having fallen in love with her at first sight, as I did, than I should be if I had taken a city or won a pitched battle. I have sought opportunities of doing these things far and near, but they have been denied to me. I trust that I have always been on the right side. I know that, except in one case, I have always been on the weaker side; but until my marriage I was what is generally called a soldier of fortune.
I am known to this day as Captain Fyffe, though I never held her most sacred Majesty"s commission. That I should be delighted to fight in my country"s cause goes, I hope, without saying; but I never had the opportunity, and my sword, until the date of my marriage, was always at the service of oppressed nationalities. This, however, is not my story, and I must do my best to hold to that. Should I take to blotting and erasing, there is no knowing when my task would be over. I will be as little garrulous as I can.
It was in the height of the London season of 1847, and I had just got back from the Argentine Republic. I had been fighting for General Rosas, but the man"s greed and his reckless ambition had gradually drawn me away from him, and at last, after an open quarrel, I broke my sword across my knee before him, threw the fragments at his feet, and left the camp. I did it at the risk of my life; and if Rosas had cared to lift a hand, his men would have shot me or hanged me from the nearest tree with all the pleasure in the world. An event which has nothing whatever to do with this story had got into the newspapers, and for a time I was made a lion of. I found it agreeable enough to begin with, but I was beginning to get tired of it, when the event of which I have already spoken happened. My poor friend, the Honorable George Brunow, had taken me, at the d.u.c.h.ess"s invitation, to Belcaster House, and it was there I met my fate. There was a great crush on the stairs, and the rooms were crowded. I never once succeeded in getting as much as a glimpse of our hostess during the whole time of my stay at the house, but before half an hour had gone by I was content to miss that honor. Brunow and I, tight wedged in the crowd, were laughing and talking on the staircase, when I caught sight of a lady a step or two above me. She was signalling with her fan to a friend behind me, and I thought then, and I think still, that her smiling face was the most beautiful thing I had ever beheld. Her hair, which is pure silver now, and no less lovely, was as dark as night, but her face was full of pure color, the brow pale, the cheeks rosy, and the red of the lips unusually bright and full for an Englishwoman, as I at first thought her to be. Her beautiful figure was set off to great advantage by a simple gown of white Indian muslin-the white was of a crearaish tone, I remember, and a string of large pearls was her only ornament. My heart gave a sudden odd leap when I saw her, and I had the feeling I have known more than once when I have been ordered on a dangerous service. But the sensation did not pa.s.s away, as it does under danger when the feeling comes that action is necessary. I continued to flutter like a school-girl; and when by accident her eyes met mine, a moment later, I felt that I blushed like fire. I could read a sort of recognition in her glance, and for a moment it seemed as if she would float down the stairs, in spite of the intervening crush, and speak to me. But instead of that she sighted Brunow at my side and beckoned him.
* _Note by Violet Fyffe_.--My husband had saved the life of his general a day earlier, in circ.u.mstances of extraordinary heroism. I do not expect to find any record of that sort of act in any pages written by his hand.
"Can you contrive to come to me, Mr. Brunow?" she asked, in a voice as lovely as her own eyes. They were the first words I heard her speak, and I seem to hear them again as I write them down, just as I can see her exquisite face and n.o.ble figure instinct with youth, though when I raise my eyes I can see my old wife-G.o.d bless her!-walking a little feebly in the garden, with a walking-stick of mine to help her steps.
Brunow made his way to her, and they talked for a minute. I couldn"t help listening to her voice, and I heard my own name.
"You know the gentleman who stood beside you?" she asked. And Brunow answering that he and I were old friends, she said, "It is Captain Fyffe, I think."
"No other, Miss Rossano," said Brunow.
"Bring him here and introduce me to him," she said. "I have a great desire to know Captain Fyffe."
At this I hardly knew whether I stood on my head or my heels; but Brunow calling me by name, and the crush thinning just then for a moment, I made my way easily to the step below the one she stood on, and Brunow introduced us to each other. Now I had lived very much away from women all my life. I lost my mother early, and of sisters and cousins and such-like feminine furniture I had none, so that I had never had practice among them; and I speak quite honestly in saying that I would sooner have stormed a breach than have faced this young lady. Not that even my intolerable shyness and the sense of my own clumsiness before her could make it altogether disagreeable to be there, but because there was such a riot in my head-and in my heart, too--and I was mortally afraid of blurting out something which should tell her how I felt. And if you will look at it rightly, a gentleman--and when I say a gentleman I mean nothing more or less than a man of good birth and right feeling--has no right to think, even in his own heart, too admiringly of a young lady at their first meeting. At the very moment when I saw my wife I thought her, I knew her, indeed, to be the most faultlessly beautiful woman I had ever seen, and I was as certain as I am now that her soul was as flawless as her face. My heart was right, but I was too precipitate in my feelings, and if I had dared I would have knelt before her. All this, I dare say, is romantic and old-fashioned to the verge of absurdity; but it is so true that all the other truths I have known, excepting those I have no right to speak of here, seem to fall into insignificance beside it. I fell in love with my wife there and then; and without even knowing it I was vowed to her service as truly as I have been in the forty-two years that have gone by since then. I thank Heaven for it humbly, for there is nothing which can so help a man in his struggles against what is base and unworthy in himself as his love for a good woman. If that has grown to be an old-fashioned doctrine in these days I am sorry for the world. It is true, it has been true, and will be true again.
"I have heard of you often, Captain Fyffe," said the charming voice, "and I am delighted to meet you. Your old comrade, Jack Rollinson, is a cousin of mine."
I blushed again at this; but I could have heard nothing that would have pleased me more, for, early as it was, I would have given anything to stand well in this lady"s eyes, and Rollinson and I were fast friends.
I had the good-fortune to save his life in a row at Santa Fe, and from that hour poor Jack sang my praises in and out of season. I knew that if Miss Rossano had gained any opinion of me from Jack Rollinson it would not be a bad one. Indeed, my only fear was that Jack had probably praised me so far beyond my merits that n.o.body who had seen the portrait would have the slightest chance of recognizing the original. But when I had once heard my old comrade"s name I was able to identify this charming young lady. Rollinson had more than once spoken of his beautiful cousin, Violet Rossano, and I knew a little of her history.
I learned more of it that night, and myself became concerned in it in a very surprising manner.
Miss Rossano and I talked of Jack and of our common adventures, and to my delight, and the great easing of my embarra.s.sment, she treated me almost like an old friend. She was swept off by the crowd at last; but in going she bade me call upon her at her aunt"s house-Lady Rollinson"s-where I might have news of my friend; and it need scarce be said that I promised eagerly to accept her invitation.
When I saw that I had seen the last of her for that evening I had no desire to stay in the crush which filled the rooms; and finding Brunow in the same mind as myself, I went away with him. Brunow lived off Regent Street, in a garret handsomely furnished and tenantable, but stuffy and confined to my notions, used as I had been to the open-air life of a soldier on active service. We threw the windows wide open, and sat down beside them with a tumbler of cool liquor apiece, Brunow with his cigar, and I with my pipe-which I was glad to get back to after a regimen of those beastly South American cigarettes--and we made ourselves comfortable. My mind was so full of my beautiful new acquaintance that I must needs approach her in my talk, and I used Jack Rollinson as a sort of stalking-horse. Brunow, as I found out later on, was in love with her-after his fashion--which, as I shall have to show you, was not very profound or manly; but, at any rate, he was glad of a chance to talk about her, and I was glad to listen.
"That beautiful girl you met to-night," he told me, "has a strange history. She is one-and-twenty years of age, and her father is still living, but she and he never saw each other in their lives."
I said something to the effect that this was strange, and I asked the reason of it.
"I dare say," Brunow answered, "that I am the only man in England who knows the truth about the matter. The world has given the Conte di Rossano up for dead years and years ago. His daughter has no idea that he is alive. Yet I saw him no more than six weeks ago."
"And you have not told her?" I asked.
"Why should I pain her for nothing?" he demanded in his turn. "She never saw him. She never even knew enough of him to grieve for him. He is not so much as a memory in her mind. And since they can never come together, it is better for her to go on believing that he died while she was in her babyhood."
"What is to prevent their coming together?" I asked.
"He is a prisoner," said Brunow, gravely. "Mind you, Fyffe, I tell you this in the strictest confidence, and I know you well enough to trust you."
I knew Brunow well enough to know that if there were any truth in the story, it would be told in the strictest confidence until it was property as common as the news of the town crier. I knew him well enough to know also that if it were not true, but merely one of his countless romances, it would be forgotten in the morning in the growth of some new invention as romantic and as baseless as itself. In any case, I gave him the a.s.surance he asked for, and he went on with his story.
"More than two-and-twenty years ago Miss Ros-sano"s grandfather, General Sir Arthur Rawlings, and his wife made a trip through Italy. They took with them their daughter Violet, and in Rome they met the Conte di Rossano, who by all accounts was then a young, rich, handsome fellow, and the hope of the National party. The National party in Italy has always had a hope of some sort, and their hope is always just about as hopeful as a sane man"s despair."
"I am not so sure of that," I cried. "I shall live to see the Italians a free people yet!"
"You are one of the enthusiasts," said Brunow, laughing. "And I suppose that if you got an opportunity you"d lend the cause a hand." I said "a.s.suredly," and Brunow laughed again. "Well, to keep to the story," he went on, "the count saw Miss Rawlings, and fell head over ears in love with her at first sight. He was young, he was handsome; he had spent years in England, and spoke the language like a native. He made love like Romeo, but the young lady at first would not listen to him. He followed the party to England, stuck to his cause like a man, and finally won it. The only objection anybody had to urge against him was that he was hand in glove with the conspirators against Austrian rule.
The Austrian"s were just as much a fixture in Italy as they are at this day; the Italians were just as hotly bent as they are now on getting rid of them, and Sir Arthur, who was an old diplomat, was afraid of the prospective son-in-law"s political ideas. He tried at first to make marriage a question of surrender of the cause, but the count was ultra-romantic, ultra-patriotic, ultra-Italian all over in point of fact. Not even for love"s sake would he throw over his country, and, oddly enough, it was this bit of romanticism which clinched the lady"s affection."
"And why oddly?" I asked him.
"My dear fellow," said Brunow, "why should I characterize or a.n.a.lyze a woman"s whims. The story is the main point. Miss Rawlings married the count. Within three months of their marriage the count went back to Italy to a.s.sist in the stirring up of some confounded Italian hot-pot or other, and was never heard of again. Seven or eight months after, the girl you met to-night was born. Her mother died a few months later. The count"s estates were confiscated by the Austrian government, and the little orphan was bred by her grandparents. They are dead now, and Miss Rossano is chaperoned by her aunt, Lady Rollinson, and lives with her.
When she is two-and-twenty she will come in for her dead mother"s money, some forty or maybe fifty thousand pounds. In the meantime she inherits some two thousand a year from her grandfather. There are better things in the marriage market, but--"
There he stopped and sipped at his tumbler, and I sat thinking for a while. Barring that one little point in the story at which Brunow introduced himself, I was disposed to give the history entire credence.
But that Brunow should have seen the mournful hero of the tale within the last six weeks was altogether too like Brunow to be believed without some confirmation. One rarely tells even the most practised romancer outright and in so many words that he is not telling the truth, but I fenced for a time.
"And the count"s alive, you say?"
"Alive? I saw him barely six weeks ago. I"ll tell you all about it."
He leaned forward in his chair, and I would have sworn that he was inventing as he went on. "I was at a little place called Itzia, in the Tyrol, when by pure chance I stumbled on a fellow I had known in Paris and Vienna--a fellow named Reschia, Lieutenant Reschia. He was on General Radetsky"s staff when I knew him first--an empty-headed fellow rather; but a man"s glad to meet anybody in a place like Itzia; and when he asked me to dine with him at the fortress, I was jolly glad to go.
"We"ve got an old file here," he told me, "the Italians would give anything to get hold of if they only knew where he was. I believe they"d tear the place down with their nails to get at him." It was after dinner, and he was ridiculously confidential. He pledged me to secrecy of course, and of course I told him that I should respect any confidence he reposed in me. Of course I did, out there; and equally, of course, I"m not bound here. It came out they"d got the Conte di Rossano there, and when I heard the name I jumped. Reschia didn"t take notice of my surprise, and after a time I said I should like to see the fellow. He pointed him out to me next day, taking exercise in the court-yard."
"The count," I said, still less than doubtful of the truth of Brunow"s story--"the count must have been a man of unusual importance to the political party to be remembered with such a pa.s.sionate devotion after so many years."
"G.o.d bless your soul," cried Brunow, "it was devotion! Those Austrian fellows are as cunning as the devil. The Italians have been made to believe these twenty years that the count was playing fast and loose with both parties. His jailers made out that he had been a paid spy in their service, and pretended that he had been killed by one of the Nationalist party, whom they hanged."
"Of course you made no effort to release him?"