The Catholic World Volume I Part 26

There was to be no correspondence whatever; no meetings, no messages.

We protested and pleaded, and finally he said--

"Well, well, Guy; I always liked you, and liked your father before you. Come to us on Christmas day, and you shall find a vacant chair beside Alice. There, now; say 'Good by,' and be off."

I went off. I came to London to one of the little lanes leading out of Cannon street. Five hundred a year in five years! I must work hard.

My uncle took little notice of me; I fancied worked me harder than the rest, and paid me the same. Seventy-five pounds a year is not a large sum. I had spent it in a month before now, after the fashion of my father: now, I h.o.a.rded; made clothes last; ate in musty, cheap, little cook-shops; and kept my enjoying faculties from absolute rust by a weekly half-price to the theatres--the pit.

The year pa.s.sed. I went down on Christmas, and for twenty-four hours was alive; came back, and had a rise of twenty pounds in salary for the next year. I waited for opportunity, and it came not.

This jog-trot routine of office-work continued for two years more, and at the end of that time I was worth but my salary of 135 per year--135! a long way from 500. Oh, for opportunity? I must quit the desk, and become a merchant; all successful men have been merchants; money begets money. But, to oppose all these thoughts of change, came the memory of Alice's last words at Christmas, "Wait and hope, Guy, dear; wait and hope." Certainly; it's so easy to.

"Governor wants you, Westwood. He's sharp this morning; very sharp; so look out, my dear nephy."

"You understand a little Italian, I think?" said my uncle.

"A little, sir."

"You will start to-night for Florence, in the mail train. Get there as rapidly as possible, and find whether a Colonel Wilson is residing there, and what lady he is residing with. Learn all you can as to his position and means, and the terms on which he lives with that lady.

Write to me, and wait there for further instructions. Mr. Williams will give you a cheque for 100; you can get circular notes for 50, and the rest cash. If you have anything to say, come in here at five o'clock; if not, good morning. By-the-by, say nothing in the office."

I need not say that hope made me believe my opportunity was come.

I hurried to Florence and discharged my mission; sent home a {200} careful letter, full of facts without comment or opinion, and in three weeks' time was summoned to return. I had done little or nothing that could help me, and in a disappointed state of mind I packed up and went to the railway station at St. Dominico. A little row with a peasant as to his demand for carrying my baggage caused me to lose the last train that night, and so the steamer at Leghorn. The station-master, seeing my vexation, endeavored to console me:

"There will be a special through train to Leghorn at nine o'clock, ordered for Count Spezzato: he is good-natured, and will possibly let you go in that."

It was worth the chance, and I hung about the station till I was tired, and then walked back toward the village. Pa.s.sing a small wine-shop, I entered, and asked for wine in English. I don't know what whim possessed me when I did it, for they were unable to understand me without dumb motions. I at length got wine by these means, and sat down to while away the time over a railway volume.

I had been seated about half an hour, when a courier entered, accompanied by a railway guard. Two more different examples of the human race it would be difficult to describe.

The guard was a dark, savage-looking Italian, with 'rascal' and 'bully' written all over him; big, black, burly, with bloodshot eyes, and thick, heavy, sensual lips, the man was utterly repulsive.

The courier was a little, neatly-dressed man, of no age in particular; pale, blue-eyed, straight-lipped, his face was a compound of fox and rabbit that only a fool or a patriot would have trusted out of arm's length.

This ill-matched pair called for brandy, and the hostess set it before them. I then heard them ask who and what I was. She replied, I must be an Englishman, and did not understand the Italian for wine. She then left.

They evidently wanted to be alone, and my presence was decidedly disagreeable to them; and muttering that I was an Englishman, they proceeded to try my powers as a linguist. The courier commenced in Italian, with a remark on the weather. I immediately handed him the Newspaper. I didn't speak Italian, that was clear to them.

The guard now struck in with a remark in French as to the fineness of the neighboring country. I shrugged my shoulders, and produced my cigar case. French was not very familiar to me, evidently.

"Those beasts of English think their own tongue so fine they are too proud to learn another," said the guard.

I sat quietly, sipping my wine, and reading.

"Well, my dear Michael Pultuski," began the guard.

"For the love of G.o.d, call me by that name. My name is Alexis Alexis Dzentzol, now."

"Oh! oh!" laughed the guard; "you've changed your name, you fox; it's like you. Now I am the same that you knew fifteen years ago, Conrad Ferrate--to-day, yesterday, and for life, Conrad Ferrate. Come, lad, tell us your story. How did you get out of that little affair at Warsaw? How they could have trusted you, with your face, with their secrets, I can't for the life of me tell; you look so like a sly knave, don't you, lad?"

The courier, so far from resenting this familiarity, smiled, as if he had been praised.

"My story is soon said. I found, after my betrayal to the police of the secrets of that little conspiracy which you and I joined, that Poland was too hot for me, and my name too well known. I went to France, who values her police, and for a few years was useful to them.

But it was dull work; very dull; native talent was more esteemed. I was to be sent on a secret service to Warsaw; I declined for obvious reasons."

"Good! Michael--Alexis; good, {201} Alexis. This fox is not to be trapped." And he slapped the courier on the shoulder heartily.

"And," resumed the other, "I resigned. Since then I have travelled as courier with n.o.ble families, and I trust I give satisfaction."

"Good! Alexis; good Mich--good Alexis! To yourself you give satisfaction. You are a fine rascal!--the prince of rascals! So decent; so quiet; so like the cure of a convent. Who would believe that you had sold the lives of thirty men for a few hundred roubles?"

"And who," interrupted the courier, "would believe that you, bluff, honest Conrad Ferrate, had run away with all the money those thirty men had collected during ten years of labor, for rescuing their country from the Russian?"

"That was good, Alexis, was it not? I never was so rich in my life as then; I loved--I gamed--I drank on the patriots' money."

"For how long? Three years?"

"More--and now have none left. Ah! Times change, Alexis; behold me."

And the guard touched his b.u.t.tons and belt, the badges of his office.

"Never mind--here's my good friend, the bottle--let us embrace--the only friend that is always true--if he does not gladden, he makes us to forget."

"Tell me, my good Alexis, whom do you rob now? Who pays for the best, and gets the second best? Whose money do you invest, eh! my little fox? Why are you here? Come, tell me, while I drink to your success."

"I have the honor to serve his Excellency the Count Spezzato."

"Ten thousand devils! My accursed cousin!" broke in the guard. "He who has robbed me from his birth; whose birth itself was a vile robbery of me--me, his cousin, child of his father's brother. May he be accursed for ever!"

I took most particular pains to appear only amused at this genuine outburst of pa.s.sion, for I saw the watchful eye of the courier was on me all the time they were talking.

The guard drank off a tumbler of brandy.

"That master of yours is the man of whom I spoke to you years ago, as the one who had ruined me; and you serve him! May he be strangled on his wedding night, and cursed for ever."

"Be calm, my dearest Conrad, calm yourself; that beast of an Englishman will think you are drunk, like one of his own swinish people, if you talk so loud as this."

"How can I help it? I must talk. What _he_ is, that _I_ ought to be: I was brought up to it till I was eighteen; was the heir to all his vast estate; there was but one life between me and power--my uncle's--and he, at fifty, married a girl, and had this son, this son of perdition, my cousin. And after that, I, who had been the pride of my family, became of no account; it was 'Julian' sweet Julian!'"

"I heard," said the courier, "that some one attempted to strangle the sweet child, that was----?"

"Me--you fox--me. I wish I had done it; but for that wretched dog that worried me, I should have been Count Spezzato now. I killed that dog, killed him, no not suddenly; may his master die like him!"

"And you left after that little affair?"

"Oh yes! I left and became what you know me."

"A clever man, my dear Conrad. I know no man who is more clever with the ace than yourself, and, as to bullying to cover a mistake, you are an emperor at that. Is it not so, Conrad? Come, drink good health to my master, your cousin."

"You miserable viper, I'll crush you if you ask me to do that again.