Tina fell back against the wall with a cry at the sight of the blood.
She would have fainted, but something told her that she would be well advised to keep her senses about her at that moment.
"I can"t imagine why he should attack me," said Standish, as he bared his arm to be bandaged. "I never saw him before, and I have had no quarrel with any one. It could not have been robbery, for I was too near the hotel. I cannot understand it."
"Oh," began old Lenz, "it"s easy enough to account for it. He----"
Tina darted one look at her father that went through him as the blade had gone through the outstretched arm. His mouth closed like a steel trap.
"Please go for Doctor Zandorf, papa," she said sweetly, and the old man went. "These Italians," she continued to Standish, "are always quarrelling. The villain mistook you for some one else in the dusk."
"Ah, that"s it, very likely. If the rascal has returned to his senses, he probably regrets having waked up the wrong pa.s.senger."
When the authorities searched for Pietro they found that he had disappeared as absolutely as though Standish had knocked him through into China. When he came to himself and rubbed his head, he saw the blood on the road, and he knew his stroke had gone home somewhere. The missing knife would be evidence against him, so he thought it safer to get on the Austrian side of the fence. Thus he vanished over the Stelvio pa.s.s, and found horses to drive on the other side.
The period during which Standish loafed around that lovely garden with his arm in a sling, waited upon a.s.siduously and tenderly by Tina, will always be one of the golden remembrances of the Englishman"s life. It was too good to last for ever, and so they were married when it came to an end. The old man would still have preferred a Swiss innkeeper for a son-in-law, yet the Englishman was better than the beggarly Italian, and possibly better than the German who had occupied a place in Tina"s regards before the son of sunny Italy appeared on the scene. That is one trouble in the continental hotel business; there is such a bewildering mixture of nationalities.
Standish thought it best not to go back to England at once, as he had not quite settled to his own satisfaction how the _pension_ was to be eliminated from the affair and transformed into a palace. He knew a lovely and elevated castle in the Tyrol near Meran where they accepted pa.s.sers-by in an un.o.btrusive sort of way, and there, he resolved, they would make their plans. So the old man gave them a great set-out with which to go over the pa.s.s, privately charging the driver to endeavour to get a return fare from Meran so as to, partly at least, cover the outlay. The carriage was drawn by five horses, one on each side of the pole and three in front. They rested the first night at Bormeo, and started early next day for over the pa.s.s, expecting to dine at Franzenshohe within sight of the snowy Ortler.
It was late in the season and the weather was slightly uncertain, but they had a lovely Italian forenoon for going up the wonderful, zigzag road on the western side of the pa.s.s. At the top there was a slight sprinkling of snow, and clouds hung over the lofty Ortler group of peaks. As they got lower down a steady persistent rain set in, and they were glad to get to the shelter and warmth of the oblong stone inn at Franzenshohe, where a good dinner awaited them. After dinner the weather cleared somewhat, but the clouds still obscured the tops of the mountains, and the roads were slippery. Standish regretted this, for he wanted to show his bride the splendid scenery of the next five miles where the road zigzags down to Trefoi, each elbow of the dizzy thoroughfare overhanging the most awful precipices. It was a dangerous bit of road, and even with only two horses, requires a cool and courageous driver with a steady head. They were the sole guests at the inn, and it needed no practised eye to see that they were a newly married couple. The news spread abroad, and every lounger about the place watched them get into their carriage and drive away, one hind wheel of the carriage sliding on its skid, and all breaks on.
At the first turning Standish started, for the carriage went around it with dangerous speed. The whip cracked, too, like a succession of pistol shots, which was unusual going down the mountain. He said nothing to alarm his bride, but thought that the driver had taken on more wine than was good for him at the inn. At the second turn the wheel actually slid against and b.u.mped the stone post that was the sole guard from the fearful precipice below. The sound and shock sent a cold chill up the back of Standish, for he knew the road well and there were worse places to come. His arm was around his wife, and he withdrew it gently so as not to alarm her. As he did so she looked up and shrieked.
Following her glance to the front window of their closed carriage, where the back of the driver is usually to be seen, he saw pressed against the gla.s.s the distorted face of a demon. The driver was kneeling on his seat instead of sitting on it, and was peering in at them, the reins drawn over his shoulder, and his back to the horses. It seemed to Standish that the light of insanity gleamed from his eyes, but Tina saw in them the revengeful glare of the _vendetti_; the rage of the disappointed lover.
"My G.o.d! that"s not our driver," cried Standish, who did not recognise the man who had once endeavoured to kill him. He sprang up and tried to open the front window, but the driver yelled out--
"Open that window if you dare, and I"ll drive you over here before you get halfway down. Sit still, and I take you as far as the Weisse Knott.
That"s where you are going over. There you"ll have a drop of a mile (_un miglio_)."
"Turn to your horses, you scoundrel," shouted Standish, "or I"ll break every bone in your body!"
"The horses know the way, Signor Inglese, and all our bones are going to be broken, yours and your sweet bride"s as well as mine."
The driver took the whip and fired off a fusilade of cracks overhead, beside them, and under them. The horses dashed madly down the slope, almost sending the carriage over at the next turn. Standish looked at his wife. She had apparently fainted, but in reality had merely closed her eyes to shut out the horrible sight of Pietro"s face. Standish thrust his arm out of the open window, unfastened the door, and at the risk of his neck jumped out. Tina shrieked when she opened her eyes and found herself alone. Pietro now pushed in the frame of the front window and it dropped out of sight, leaving him face to face with her, with no gla.s.s between them. "Now that your fine Inglese is gone, Tina, we are going to be married; you promised it, you know."
"You coward," she hissed; "I"d rather die his wife than live yours."
"You"re plucky, little Tina, you always were. But he left you. I wouldn"t have left you. I won"t leave you. We"ll be married at the chapel of the Three Holy Springs, a mile below the Weisse Knott; we"ll fly through the air to it, Tina, and our bed will be at the foot of the Madatseh Glacier. We will go over together near where the man threw his wife down. They have marked the spot with a marble slab, but they will put a bigger one for us, Tina, for there"s two of us."
Tina crouched in the corner of the carriage and watched the face of the Italian as if she were fascinated. She wanted to jump out as her husband had done, but she was afraid to move, feeling certain that if she attempted to escape Pietro would pounce down upon her. He looked like some wild beast crouching for a spring. All at once she saw something drop from the sky on the footboard of the carriage. Then she heard her husband"s voice ring out--
"Here, you young fool, we"ve had enough of this nonsense."
The next moment Pietro fell to the road, propelled by a vigorous kick.
His position lent itself to treatment of that kind. The carriage gave a b.u.mp as it pa.s.sed over Pietro"s leg, and then Tina thinks that she fainted in earnest, for the next thing she knew the carriage was standing still, and Standish was rubbing her hands and calling her pleasant names. She smiled wanly at him.
"How in the world did you catch up to the carriage and it going so fast?" she asked, a woman"s curiosity prompting her first words.
"Oh, the villain forgot about the short cuts. As I warned him, he ought to have paid more attention to what was going on outside. I"m going back now to have a talk with him. He"s lying on the road at the upper end of this slope."
Tina was instantly herself again.
"No, dearest," she said caressingly; "you mustn"t go back. He probably has a knife."
"I"m not afraid."
"No, but I am, and you mustn"t leave me."
"I would like to tie him up in a hard knot and take him down to civilisation b.u.mping behind the carriage as luggage. I think he"s the fellow who knifed me, and I want to find out what his game is."
Here Tina unfortunately began to faint again. She asked for wine in a far-off voice, and Standish at once forgot all about the demon driver.
He mounted the box and took the reins himself. He got wine at the little cabin of the Weisse Knott, a mile or two farther down. Tina, who had revived amazingly, probably on account of the motion of the carriage, shuddered as she looked into the awful gulf and saw five tiny toy houses in the gloom nearly a mile below.
"That," said Standish, "is the chapel of the Three Holy Springs. We will go there to-night, if you like, from Trefoi."
"No, no!" cried Tina, shivering. "Let us get out of the mountains at once."
At Trefoi they found their own driver awaiting them.
"What the devil are you doing here, and how did you get here?" hotly inquired Standish.
"By the short cuts," replied the bewildered man. "Pietro, one of master"s old drivers, wanted--I don"t know why--to drive you as far as Trefoi. Where is he, sir?"
"I don"t know," said Standish. "We saw nothing of him. He must have been pushed off the box by the madman. Here, jump up and let us get on."
Tina breathed again. That crisis was over.
They live very happily together, for Tina is a very tactful little woman.
THE HOUR AND THE MAN.
Prince Lotarno rose slowly to his feet, casting one malignant glance at the prisoner before him.
"You have heard," he said, "what is alleged against you. Have you anything to say in your defence?"
The captured brigand laughed.
"The time for talk is past," he cried. "This has been a fine farce of a fair trial. You need not have wasted so much time over what you call evidence. I knew my doom when I fell into your hands. I killed your brother; you will kill me. You have proven that I am a murderer and a robber; I could prove the same of you if you were bound hand and foot in my camp as I am bound in your castle. It is useless for me to tell you that I did not know he was your brother, else it would not have happened, for the small robber always respects the larger and more powerful thief. When a wolf is down, the other wolves devour him. I am down, and you will have my head cut off, or my body drawn asunder in your courtyard, whichever pleases your Excellency best. It is the fortune of war, and I do not complain. When I say that I am sorry I killed your brother, I merely mean I am sorry you were not the man who stood in his shoes when the shot was fired. You, having more men than I had, have scattered my followers and captured me. You may do with me what you please. My consolation is that the killing me will not bring to life the man who is shot, therefore conclude the farce that has dragged through so many weary hours. p.r.o.nounce my sentence. I am ready."
There was a moment"s silence after the brigand had ceased speaking.
Then the Prince said, in low tones, but in a voice that made itself heard in every part of the judgment-hall--
"Your sentence is that on the fifteenth of January you shall be taken from your cell at four o"clock, conducted to the room of execution, and there beheaded."
The Prince hesitated for a moment as he concluded the sentence, and seemed about to add something more, but apparently he remembered that a report of the trial was to go before the King, whose representative was present, and he was particularly desirous that nothing should go on the records which savoured of old-time malignity; for it was well known that his Majesty had a particular aversion to the ancient forms of torture that had obtained heretofore in his kingdom. Recollecting this, the Prince sat down.