In Direst Peril Part 10

She did not find me very sympathetic or very ardent. I was tired, for one thing, and for another I can never take very kindly to humbug, even when a pretty woman offers it. The baroness turned from me to Brunow, beseeching him to introduce her to the acquaintance of that dear and charming Miss Rossano, who had so much her sympathy, and the spectacle of whose natural emotion had so much affected her. I am not very observant in such matters, but though Brunow disguised it pretty well, I am sure that I noticed some reluctance in his manner. He made the presentation, however, and the baroness flowed out in sympathy and congratulation.

"I am myself Hungarian," I heard her say, "but I have lived in Austria half my life. There is no need to tell _you_ anything about that terrible government, but--mon Dieu! the things I have seen and known!

I am a stranger, Mees Rossano, and the hour is sacred; but you will forgive this intrusion, will you not? because I could not help it."

She spoke with so much vivacity and feeling that I felt a little sorry for my contemptuous thoughts of her. She had said her say, and she behaved with more reticence and more apparent delicacy than I should have been disposed to give her credit for. She said something to the count in a low and rapid voice, and he answered by the offer of his hand, and a mere broken murmur of response. I made out that she had asked to be honored by taking the hand of one enn.o.bled by so much suffering, and the quiet and un.o.btrusive fas.h.i.+on in which she slipped from the room after offering this tribute raised her anew in my opinion.

It would have been a just thing, had one known all, to have crushed that dangerous and wicked little viper exactly as if she had really been a snake, instead of a woman with a snake's nature.

She went her way, however, having begun her work of mischief under my eyes.

Another night or two of such emotion would have been fatal to our rescued prisoner; and, indeed, he gave us all a fright before we got him home that evening. All the enthusiasts had cleared away, and I was leading the poor gentleman towards a cab which had been already summoned and was now waiting in the street, when, without warning, he swooned away. I felt his arm slipping rapidly from mine, and caught him just in time to save him from a heavy fall. I carried him back to the vestry, and there we loosened his collar and laid him on the couch, and dashed water in his face, while Brunow ran for brandy. He recovered in a while, but was even then too weak to walk, so that I carried him in my arms to the street, and set him down in the cab. My wife has often told me, in talking over those old times, that she looked on me at that moment as a man possessed of Herculean strength; but, in truth, the poor fellow was so attenuated that his weight was scarcely greater than a child's.

I could hardly do less than call at Lady Rollinson's house next day to inquire after the sufferer's condition; and yet I went with great reluctance. I was so eager to be there, I was so willing to spend every hour in Miss Rossano's company, that I was afraid of being intrusive, and my very anxiety to be near her kept me away from her in this foolish fas.h.i.+on many a time.

The Baroness Bonnar was before me when I called, and I found her there in the daintiest and most becoming of visiting costumes, chatting away with excellent tact and unfailing vivacity.

She gave Miss Rossano time to welcome me, and then a.s.sailed me at once with laudation's of my devotion and courage, which I received, I know, with an extremely evil grace. I resemble my neighbors in liking to have credit for what I have done, but I know nothing more hateful than unmerited praise. I silenced her at last, and she turned upon Miss Rossano with a stage-whisper intended for my hearing: "I adore these brave men who are too modest to endure praise."

"You are too oily for my personal taste, madame," I said to myself, and my earlier dislike for her came back again.

The count, I learned, was better. Immediately on his arrival at Lady Rollinson's the family doctor had been sent for. Like a wise man, he had prescribed rest and complete freedom from all excitement. There were to be no more public meetings, and the sufferer was seriously warned against all stress of emotion.

"We have had great difficulty," said Miss Rossano, "in bringing him to reason. The enthusiasm of last night's meeting has convinced him that a great uprising is near at hand, and that in a year or two at the outside Italy will have her freedom back again. He would die for that," she said, with a flash of her beautiful eyes, and her face suddenly pale with feeling. "The house was overrun with Italians yesterday," she added. "My father saw some of them, and they are all full of the news that Charles Albert is ready to march into Piedmont, and that the Pope is favorable to devolution. One never knows how much truth there is in these stories, but I have lived in an atmosphere of them all my life."

Then she laughed on a sudden, and, clapping her hands together, turned on me with a swift gesture like that of a pleased child. "You saw the Count Ruffiano yesterday?" she asked; and I, answering in the affirmative, she laughed again. "The poor dear old gentleman," she said, "is my father's one surviving comrade, and ever since I have been able to understand he has talked to me about Italy and The Cause. He is in fiery earnest, and such a dreamer that he has been looking forward to every month of his life as the date of Italy's liberty. I have had a great deal of influence with the count"--she was serious again by this time--"and through him over the Italian revolutionists in London, and I have always counselled them not to strike until they were sure of their aim. An unsuccessful revolution is a crime. You think it strange that a girl should be thinking of these things."

"Indeed, no," I answered. "I should think it strange in your case if you had no such thoughts. And let me tell you, Miss Rossano, that I think your friend Count Rumano's dream is coming near at last. He may wake any fine morning to find it very near indeed."

"You think so?" she cried, with a restrained vehemence. "You have heard news while you were abroad?"

"No news," I answered; "but I can see the general trend of things. There is an awakening spirit of liberty on the Continent, and unless I am much mistaken, a map of Europe of this date will be a surprising thing to look at in half a dozen years."

I should be a fool to pretend that I foresaw all the political changes which have taken place since then, but I should have been blind if I had not foreseen some of them. Liberty was in the air; there was an underlying strife and turmoil in the world's affairs which was not evident to everybody, though a soldier of fortune like myself, who made the cause of liberty his trade, was bound to be aware of it. The great politicians knew it all, no doubt; but they kept their knowledge to themselves, and waited, as we know now, with a bitter anxiety and fear for what events might bring. For the great politicians were, for the most part, then, as now, afraid of liberty, and looked on it as being very much of a curse rather than a blessing.

"You would fight for Italy," she said, "if there were a real chance?"

"If there were anything approaching a chance," I responded, "I would fight for Italy."

If I had dared I would have told her what was really at the bottom of my thought: I would have fought gladly for Italy; but the fact that it was her cause, that she espoused it and hoped for it, that her father had been buried alive for it, made it dearer to me than any other in the world. I had almost forgotten that we were not alone when the Baroness Bonnar proclaimed her presence.

"Italy!" she cried; and as I turned at the sound of her voice I saw her bring the palms of her gloved hands together and turn her fine eyes to the ceiling as if the word inspired her--"Italy! oh, if I were a man I would fight for Italy! Ah, those hateful Austrians! And what a man is Cavour! and what a man Garibaldi! Oh, they will fight! They will win!"

"There is plenty of time yet. Liberty, my dear Miss Rossano, will restore your father to health, and he will not lose his share of the glory." We English always excuse a foreigner who shows a tendency to bombast in conversation; and allowing for her partial knowledge of the language, and for the oratorical turn her people have, I saw nothing overstrained in the little woman's raptures. I had even a modified belief in their reality; and even to this day I cannot blame myself for having been deceived by her. She had an astonis.h.i.+ng capacity in her own line, and though she had achieved no great success on the stage, she was the most perfect actress off it I have ever known.

She showed no disposition to prolong her visit, but withdrew after a stay of a quarter of an hour or so, with many expressions of good-will and ardent hope for the count's early recovery. If she might have the honor, she would call again upon Miss Rossano.

"Pardon me," she said; "beside you I am an old woman, and I can take a liberty. I like you for your interest in poor Italy and for your father's sake, who has been a martyr in such a cause. You will let me see you sometimes. People who know me better than you do will tell you that I am a b.u.t.terfly, and without a heart. But that is not true. I do not show my heart often, and never unless I mean it."

She was gone without waiting for a response, and Miss Rossano, turning to me with a blush and a smile, asked me if I did not consider her visitor quite a charming little person. It would have been ungracious on no evidence at all to have stated my real mind, and I compromised by saying nothing. My silence on that topic went un.o.bserved; and until I took my leave we talked about the count and the prospects of The Cause.

It makes me smile now to remember how savagely in earnest I grew to be about that matter of Italian independence when once I had discovered that Miss Rossano was seriously interested in it. That, if I had only thought about it, was the way to her heart; but anxious as I was to secure her good opinion, I was guilty of no pretences. The mere fact that she desired it would have been enough to make me desire it also, even if I had had no wishes that way to begin with.

"Captain Fyffe," said Miss Rossano, suddenly, in the midst of our enthusiastic talk upon this theme, "I am going to ask you a favor. I know very little of my father as yet. I have not spent twelve hours in his society, but it is easy to find out two things about it: he will be mad to join in any effort that The Cause may make, and--"

She paused there, with a look of semi-embarra.s.sment.

"And?" I interrogated.

"I think," she continued, "that he is likely to be very much influenced by your opinion."

"We have scarcely exchanged a word together on that topic," I responded.

"Ah," she returned, quickly, "you have influenced his judgment without that. He has formed opinions about you, and he has expressed them more than once. He thinks you are a man of unusually solid character, and I am sure you will be able to influence him greatly. You must remember, too, what a debt of grat.i.tude he owes you. The more warmly you are disposed to The Cause yourself, the more necessary it seems to beg you not to allow him to rush into any new danger. Give us, at least, a little time in which to know each other before he leaves me again."

I promised earnestly that I would never say a word to induce him to leave her side. I promised that if any undertaking should seem to lead him into useless danger, I would do my best to warn him from the enterprise. I promised further (but this was to myself, and I said no word about it) that in the event of any effort being made the count should be my comrade, and that I would do my loyal best for him.

That brought our conversation to an end, and I took leave of her, but not before she had a.s.sured me that I should always be a welcome visitor.

I went away mighty proud and happy, and when I got home to my chambers who should I find awaiting me but the Count Ruffiano, b.u.t.toned to the throat to disguise the absence of the linen which had been so shabbily conspicuous yesterday. He was in a state of intense excitement, and when I entered was pacing up and down the room like one scarcely able to control himself.

"Pardon this second intrusion, my dear sir," he began; "I will explain its purport in a moment."

I induced him to be seated; but before he had got out half his statement he was on his feet again, striding about my little room in such a heat of excitement that, lean as he was, the perspiration fell in big drops from his thatched eyebrows and the tip of his Quixote nose.

"To begin with, sir," he said, when I had persuaded him to be seated, "you are one of us? That you are a friend to humanity, I know, but a friend to Italy--yes?"

I was still hot from my talk with Miss Rossano, and I a.s.sured the count that I was very much a friend to Italy indeed.

"Then, sir," he cried, "we have need of you! We have need of every counsel--of every hand."

He was on his feet again, and had intrenched himself behind the arm-chair. He declaimed from that position as if it had been a rostrum, employing a wealth and variety of gesture which no English mimic could succeed in copying in a year.

News, it appeared, had arrived that morning from Paris which led to the belief that an uprising against Louis Philippe might shortly be looked for. The messenger who brought that news had within twenty-four hours encountered a messenger from Turin, who prophesied insurrection there; this messenger in turn had news from Vienna from another comrade, who was a.s.sured that Metternich was trembling in his shoes at the thought of Charles Albert's threatened advance on Piedmont.

"The wine," cried my Italian Quixote, "is in ferment! We drink of it, and our hearts are turned to madness! We need more of your English sang-froid"--he called it "sanga-froida," and puzzled me for a pa.s.sing instant. "The hour is here," he declared, "and the men are here! But, until now, we have ruined everything by too much precipitation, and against that we must now be on our guard!"

Of the volubility and energy with which he delivered himself of all this, and much more, I cannot convey even the slightest idea. I can give no notion of his fertility in unnecessary vowels, and I should be afraid to say how many syllables he made of the word precipitation, or how he would have spelled it in English if he had tried.

"It is for you, sir," he thundered, stopping in his headlong walk to shake a long forefinger in my face--"it is for you to teach us to be calm!"

I asked him to take his first lesson there and then, and to begin it by being seated.

"Ah," said he, "that is to be practical--that is to be English. To be practical and to be English is to be successful. You shall advise us--you shall lead us to victory!"

In his discovery of the excellence of my practical method he had forgotten all about it, and was pounding up and down the room at as great a rate as ever, when I took him by the shoulders and forced him into a chair.

"Let us talk business," I said, severely; "if this means anything at all, it means action."

"Action," he responded, "decisive and immediate!"

"Action," I retorted, "well matured and sane!"

"Ah! yes, yes," cried Ruffiano; "again, dear sir, you correct me. That is why I am here. But do not think because I have no patience--do not think because I am an old--an old--" He searched in his mind for a simile, and burst out with "gas-balloon" with a laugh of childish amus.e.m.e.nt at his own impetuosity. "Do not you think because I am an old gas-balloon that there are not among us no wiser and cooler heads than mine! We are at a white-heat now, but there are men among us who can keep their wits even in a furnace like this. I, dear sir"--he would have been on his feet again but that I checked him--"I am of the inner council. We meet to-night, and, hot as I am, I fear my own heat and that of others. If you wish well to Italy, be one of us. And be sure, sir, that the rescuer of our one most dearest and most prized shall be received with honor."