Vassall Morton Part 34

"Curse your yelping throats!" gasped Morton. Breathless and half spent, he was clinging to a sapling on the edge of a steep pitch of the hill. One of the soldiers saw him. A musket shot rang from below, the hollow hum of the ball pa.s.sing high above his head.

Max laughed in fierce derision. They ran forward again across a wide plateau, nearly void of trees; and before they had fairly gained its farther side, the foremost pursuers were at the border of woods they had just left. Their late famine made fatal odds against them. The gendarmes, indeed, gained little in the race; but the more active riflemen were nearer every moment.

Climbing, running, and scrambling among rocks, trees, and bushes, they won their way up till they came to another plateau, which broke the ascent of the mountain a furlong above the former. Across this they dashed at full speed. They were within a rod or two of the woods beyond, Max running on Morton's left, a little in advance of him, when a musket was fired at them from behind. The aim was so bad, that they did not even hear the humming of the bullet. At the next instant, came a dull, plunging report, unlike the former. Max leaped four feet into the air, and fell forward on his face with a force that seemed to shake the earth. Morton kneeled by his side; turned him on his back; lifted him by main strength into a sitting posture. Both his hands were clutched full of gra.s.s and earth.

"Max! Max!" cried Morton, in the extremity of anguish; "speak, Max, for G.o.d's sake."

But Max said nothing. His hat had fallen off; his eyes rolled wildly under his tangled hair; he gasped; blood flowed from his lips; and a spot of blood was soaking wider and wider upon the breast of his shirt. Then a deathly change came over his dilated eyeb.a.l.l.s. Morton had seen the throes of the wounded bison, when the fierce eyes, glaring with angry life, are clouded of a sudden into a dull, cold jelly, fixed unmeaning lumps. It was a change like this that he saw in the eyes of Max. His friend was dead. The fatal rifle of Tyrol had done its work. The ball had pierced him from back to breast, and torn through his heart on its way.

The whole pa.s.sed in a few moments; but when Morton looked up, nearly all the pursuers were in sight on the open ground, and one of them, the man who had fired the death shot, was almost upon him. He s.n.a.t.c.hed Max's pistol, which had fallen on the gra.s.s, and, blind with grief and fury, ran forward, levelled, and pulled the trigger. The pistol, wet with the rain, missed fire. The man was not four paces off. Morton hurled the pistol at his face. The iron barrel clashed against his teeth, and sent him reeling backward, bleeding and half stunned.

Griping his hatchet, his best remaining friend, Morton turned for the woods, gained them at three bounds, and tore through the cover like a hunted wolf.

Over rocks, among trees, through thickets and brambles, he struggled and clambered on, seeking safety, like the Rocky Mountain goat, in the rudest and wildest refuge. But in a few minutes, his flight was stopped. Rocks rose before him, and rocks on each side. He was caught in a complete _cul de sac_. He might have climbed the precipices, but, in the act, the shots from below would soon have tumbled him to the earth again. There was no escape; and, grinding his teeth in rage and desperation, he turned savagely at bay.

Three or four of the men were very near him; and almost as he turned, one of them came in sight, pushing through the bushes. As he saw the game, he gave a shout, a sort of view halloo. Then appeared another, and another, all advancing upon him. In a moment, he would have been in their hands, alive or dead; but, without waiting the attack, he sprang on the foremost like a tiger, and plunged his hatchet deep in the soldier's eyes and brain. Then pushing past another, who, with a hesitating movement, was making towards him, he dashed down a sloping ma.s.s of rocks, dived into a labyrinth of thickets, and thence into a dark and hollow gorge of the mountain. Along this he ran like one with death's shadow behind him, losing himself deeper and deeper among the chaotic rocks and ragged trees. He stopped, at last, and listened. Far behind, he could hear his pursuers shouting to each other. The pack were at fault, and ranging in vain search after him.

Spent as he was, he pressed on again, following upward for an hour or more the course of a brook, which issued from a narrow glen, reaching far back into the solitude of the mountains. His mind was dim and confused, a cloudland of mixed emotions; deep grief for his murdered friend, deep rage that he had been hunted like a wild beast, a longing for further vengeance, a sense, almost to despair, of his own loneliness and peril. He felt himself outcast from mankind, driven back to find a sanctuary among the dens and fastnesses of Nature. She alone, amid the general frown, seemed propitious; for of a sudden the clouds sundered in the west; a gush of warm light poured across the dripping mountains, and flushed the distant glaciers with their evening rose-tint. In the depths where he stood, all was shadow; but the crags above were basking in the sunshine, and the savage old pines, jewelled with rain drops, seemed stretching their s.h.a.ggy arms to welcome the kindly radiance. Morton threw himself on the ground, and commended his desperate fortunes to the G.o.d of the waste and the mountain.

CHAPTER XLIV.

In dread, in danger, and alone, Famished and chilled, through ways unknown, Tangled and steep, he journeyed on.--_Lady of the Lake_.

Whoever, journeying southward from Coire, pa.s.ses through the Via Mala, thence through the village of Andeer, and thence turns to the left, following a mountain path up the torrent of the Aversa, will soon lose himself in the solitudes of the savage valley of Ferrera. Thither Morton made his way; but not by so smooth an access. Ignorant of the country, and guided chiefly by the sun, he had pushed blindly forward by paths best known to the chamois and those who chase them.

His best hope had been to meet some of his travelling countrymen, from whom he could gain help. To this end he had once and again approached the highways, and as often some real or seeming danger had driven him back to the mountains. For a day or more, the food he had taken from the inn served to support him. He had flung away Max's pistol, but still had his own. It served him to kindle a fire; and by loading it with gravel, in place of shot, he contrived to kill thrushes and other small birds. Their nests, too, full at this time of eggs and young, supplied a meagre resource; and once, being hard pressed, he made a Gallic banquet on a party of serenaders who were croaking and trilling their evening concert about the edge of a shallow pool. Frogs have found warm eulogists; but never did the art of Paris or Bologna trans.m.u.te those delectable reptiles into so savory a repast as did the famine-sharpened appet.i.te of Morton.

Upon fare like this, he wandered on, till he stumbled upon the valley of Ferrera.

He had found at last an asylum wild enough to content the most pious of eremites, or the most desperate of bandits. Below he saw the raging water foaming along the depths of its black ravine; above--the stupendous ramparts that walled the valley in--cliffs, along whose giddy verge the firs were dwindled to feathers. Cascades spouted from their tops, scattering to mist and nothingness long before their measureless leap was done. The tribute drawn from the clouds the lavish mountain flung back to the clouds again. Rocks were piled on rocks, ruin on ruin, and, high over all, the glaciers of the Splugen shone like cliffs of silver.

Take a savage from his woods or his prairies, and, school him as you will, the ingrained savage will still declare itself. Take the most polished of mankind, turn him into the wilderness, and forthwith the dormant savage begins to appear. Hunt him with enemies, gnaw him with hunger, beat him with wind and rain, and observe the result; how the delicate tissues of civilization are blown away, how rude pa.s.sions start into life, how his bodily cravings grow clamorous and importunate, how he grows reckless of his own blood and the blood of others. "Men are as the times." Young Lovelace of the hussars singing a duet at Lady Belgrave's _soiree_, would hardly know himself, hewing down Russian artillerymen at Balaklava.

Had Meredith met his old comrade as he was making his slow way among the rocks and ravines, in dress no better than the meanest peasant, his face moustached and bearded, and thin and dark with hardship, he would have needed the eyes of a lynx to detect Morton the millionaire.

The mind of the latter shared, in some sort, the changes of his outer man. Proscribed and hunted, starved into fierceness, his best friend murdered at his side, his mood was, to say the least, none of the most benign. But, as he toiled on his way, he turned aside to rest in a sunny nook, deep sheltered among rocks. Here, where the fresh gra.s.s tempted him, and where, from a jutting crag, the water, trickling from some hidden spring, fell in rapid drops, tinkling into a pool below, and, as they fell, flashing in the sun like a string of diamonds,--here, in this quiet nook, he sat down; and, as he did so, he saw by his side, close nestled in the young gra.s.s, a little family of white and purple blossoms. They were blossoms of the crocus, a native of these valleys.

Morton bent over them, and put aside the gra.s.s from the delicate petals. A flower will now and then find a voice, and that not a weak one. As he looked, there came in upon him such a surge of recollection, such a memory of New England gardens, such a vision of loved faces, and, chief before them all, the face he best loved, such an awakening of every tender thought that had once possessed him, and all in such overpowering contrast with his present misery, that the famished outlaw burst into a flood of tears.

CHAPTER XLV.

The lamentable change is from the best; The worst returns to laughter. Welcome, then, Thou unsubstantial air that I embrace.--_Lear_.

The Honorable Charles Augustus Murray, recreating himself with a hunting tour among the p.a.w.nees, killed a buffalo; and being, as he a.s.sures us, ravenously hungry, proceeded to regale himself on his game, without asking the aid of the cook. Morton, in his wandering, had the good luck to kill a straggling sheep; and being twice as hungry as the Honorable Charles Augustus Murray, it may be set down largely to his credit, if he did not follow that gentleman's example.

At all events, the sheep was a windfall of the first magnitude. Morton had woodcraft enough to turn the fleece into a receptacle for carrying such parts of the flesh as best answered his purposes; and thus he was well provisioned for several days.

After various roamings, by night and by day, he came upon a broad road, clearly one of the great alpine pa.s.ses. Which of them he could not tell. He would have given the world to learn; for he knew nothing of his whereabouts, and thought himself still in Tyrol, or, at the best, in Bormio. His attempts to gain information from the peasants had always failed, and, in one or two instances, had seemed to threaten serious consequences. Though brave enough in the front of an open danger, the secret toils which had been about him so long had taught him to shrink from the face of man. Moreover, he could not speak the prevalent language of the district, and his Italian, which might sometimes have served him, was none of the best. A little local knowledge could have saved him a world of suffering; but, in the lack of it, he pushed blindly on, resolved to die on the mountains rather than risk another prison.

The sky for some days had been overclouded. He had lost the points of the compa.s.s; and when he saw the great highway stretching before him, dim and lonely in the gray of the morning, he thought, or hoped, that it would lead him into the heart of Switzerland. It was the pa.s.s of the Splugen, where it leaves the Rheinwald. Turning his back on safety, he began to plod on towards the lion's jaws.

Seeing a small cottage, in a recess of the forest, he reconnoitred it, with the laudable view of robbing a henroost. While thus employed, he saw two men leave the house, and betake themselves to their work in some remote part of the mountain. After a long reconnaissance, he could see no one about the place but a young woman, about six feet high, who, fork in hand, was busying herself in a field with labors much less elegant than useful. Morton watched her for a time, then, taking heart of grace, walked towards her from his lurking-place, holding between his fingers, as a talisman, a piece of silver, part of the scanty trust which Max had left him.

When he beheld her l.u.s.ty proportions, her white teeth, grinning between perplexity at his appearance and pleasure at sight of the coin, and her broad cheeks, ruddy with health, good-nature, and stupidity, his apprehensions vanished. She seemed not at all afraid of him. In truth, she and her pitchfork might between them have put two common men to flight. He spoke to her in bad Italian, and asked for food, proffering the money in exchange. She answered in a _patois_ which was Greek to him, mixed with a few words of Italian, worse than his own. She seemed, however, to catch his meaning very clearly; for, running to the house, she presently emerged with a loaf of barley bread and a formidable piece of bacon. These she gave him, and, taking the silver, tied it up with much care in a corner of her ap.r.o.n.

Thus far successful, Morton next tried to learn something touching the country and the routes; but here his failure was signal. Where food and drink were the topics in hand, and especially when her wits were quickened by the sight of silver, she had contrived to understand him; but with matters more abstruse her faculties had never been trained to grapple. She showed, however, no lack of good-will, nodding, laughing, and answering, "_Si, si!_" to all his questions indiscriminately. With this he had to content himself. He bade her "_addio_," received a friendly nod and grin in return, and went on his way, much less bitter against mankind than he had been ten minutes before.

CHAPTER XLVI.

_Auf._ Your hand! Most welcome.

_1 Serv._ Here's a strange alteration!

_2 Serv._ By my hand, I had thought to have strucken him with a cudgel; and yet my mind gave me his clothes made a false report of him.--_Coriola.n.u.s_.

In pa.s.sing the Splugen, Morton journeyed chiefly in the night, making a wide detour over the crusted snow to avoid the station at the summit. By day, he found some safe retreat where he could rest and sleep in tolerable ease and warmth. His night progress was, for the most part, on a broad, clear road, very different from that rugged path by the Cardinel, where, some forty-seven years before, the avalanches cut through Macdonald's columns, and swept men and horses to bottomless ruin.

The sky was still clouded; but there was a full moon behind the clouds, and the mountains reflected its light, from their vast surfaces of snow. He could hear any approaching foot from a great distance, for there was nothing to break the stillness but the hollow fall of torrents, and the whisper and moan of winds through ravines and gorges.

On the third night, he was descending the defiles that lead from Campo Dolcino to Chiavenna. He pa.s.sed Chiavenna, and soon a new scene opened upon him. The Alps were behind him, cliff and chasm, torrent and ravine, and the icy sheen of glaciers. Italy received him, robed in her "fatal gift of beauty;" in the midst of her shame, radiant as in her day of honor; breathing still of history, and art, and poetry.

Standing on the heights behind Colico, he saw the Lake of Como stretching southward, its banks studded with villas, its hills green with the chestnut and the laurel, the fig, pomegranate, and vine. But, to the north, the sheer cliffs rose like a battlement, and, higher yet, towered cold white peaks, aloof in stern and lofty desolation.

Reality will now and then make fancy blush for herself. The Easter illumination of St. Peter's may match the wildest dream of the Arabian Nights; and this scene on the Lake of Como, with the sunset upon it, may outvie the highest wrought counterfeit of Claude or Salvator, or both combined. The world, much abused as she is, does her part. She is profuse of beauties; but, in the midst of them, one still drags with him his own work-day ident.i.ty. Go where he will, his old Adam still hangs about him; and the spell-breaking sense that he is himself and no other scatters every charm that Art and Nature would cast over him.

Morton, poor devil, had other matters to think of than scenery. Hunger and danger are a cure for the most rabid love of landscape. His bread and bacon had given out, and the phantom of an Austrian _sbirro_ rode him like a nightmare. Mustering his best recollections of geography, he came to the belief that he was either on the Lake of Como, or, as seemed to him much more likely, on the lake farther eastward, that of Garda. One thing was certain: he was on a great route of travel. His best course, as he thought, was to watch for the chance of a meeting with some American or English tourist, to whom he could make his case known; and meanwhile, though a worse actor never appeared on any stage, to pa.s.s himself off, if he could, as a beggar.

He pa.s.sed a night on the hills above Colico, and happily for him, above the malaria; woke half famished from his miserably broken sleep, and wearily walked on his way, wondering if, in support of his character, he could ever find grace to say, "_Datemi qualche cosa_."

There was something in the idea of thus sneaking through a country that grated on him with peculiar discomfort; and to have headed the forlorn hope of a storming party would have been less trying to his nerve.

The thought how to content the cravings of his hunger soon absorbed all other thoughts. Looking about him, he saw a small white house, standing alone on the road by the sh.o.r.e of the lake; and over the door he could read from afar the sign, "_s.p.a.ccio di Vino_." Famine got the better of caution. He approached warily, ensconced himself behind an old wall, and, quite unseen, began his observations. The house was but a few rods off, on the other side of the road. An old wayfarer sat in the porch, busy in breakfasting on curds, pressed hard like a cheese, a slice of very black and solid-looking bread serving him for a plate.

In a few moments, the landlord, a freckled-faced Italian, came to the door, and began to chat with his customer. Morton took a coin from his pocket, walked forth from his hiding-place, and was approaching, still unnoticed, when he was startled by the sound of a horse's tread, on the road beyond the house. A single glance at the rider told him that there was no danger, and made his heart beat with sudden hope.

"_Il signor Inglese_," remarked the host to his friend.--"_Buon'

giorno, eccellenza, buon' giorno_,"--lifting his white night cap, and bowing with a great flourish.

The young man touched his hat with a careless smile, and half-turning his horse, asked,--

"Padrone, has my man pa.s.sed this way?"