Bohemian Days Part 8

The little person drew a wallet from his side-pocket and enumerated carefully certain circular notes. "Eleven times twenty is two hundred and twenty; twenty-five times two hundred and twenty, five thousand five hundred, plus nine gold louis--total, five thousand seven hundred and twenty-five francs."

One eye only of the large gentleman was visible through the folds of his collar. It rested like a charmed thing upon the roll of gold and paper.

It was only an eye, but it seemed to be a whole face, an entire man. It was full of thoughts, of hopes, of acts! Had the little person marked it, thus sinister, and glittering and intense, he would have shrunk as from a burning-gla.s.s.

He folded up the wallet, however, and slipped it into his inside-pocket, while the other pushed forward his hat, so that it concealed even the eye, and sat rigid and still in his corner.

"You have not named the fare to Paris."

The tall man only breathed short and hard.

"Don't you recollect?"

"No!"

"I have a 'Galignani' here; perhaps it is advertised. But hallo, Andy!"

The exclamation was loud and abrupt, but the silent person did not move.

"_The Confederate Privateer Planter will sail from Dieppe on Tuesday_--(that is, to-morrow evening)--_she will cruise in the Indian Ocean, if report be true._"

The tall man started suddenly and uncovered his face with a quick gesture. It was flushed and earnest now, and he clutched the journal almost nervously, though his voice was yet calm and suppressed.

"To-morrow night, did you say? A cruise on the broad sea--glory without peril, gold without work; I would to G.o.d that I were on the Planter's deck, Hugenot!"

"Why not do something for ou-ah cause, Andy?"

"I am to return to Paris for what? To be dunned by creditors, to be marked for a parasite at the hotels, to be despised by men whom I serve, and pitied by men whom I hate. This pirate career suits me. What is society to me, whom it has ostracised? I was a gentleman once--quick at books, pleasing in company, shrewd in business. They say that I have power still, but lack integrity. Be it so! Better a freebooter at sea than upon the land. I have half made up my mind to evil. Hugenot, listen to me! I believe that were I to do one bad, dark deed, it would restore me courage, resolution, energy."

The little gentleman examined the other with some alarm; but just now the teams commenced the ascent of a steep hill, and as he beheld the guard a little way in advance, he forgot the other's earnestness, and raised his lunette.

"Andy," he said, "by my great ancestry! I have seen that man before.

Look! the height, the style, the carriage, are familiar. Who is he?"

His co-voyageur was without curiosity; the former pallidness and silentness resumed their dominion over him, and the lesser gentleman settled moodily back to his newspaper.

No word was interchanged for several hours. They pa.s.sed through s.h.a.ggy glens, under toppled towers and battlements, by squalid villages, and within the sound of das.h.i.+ng streams. If they descended ever, it was to gain breath for a longer ascent; for now the mountain snows were above them on either side, and the Alps rose sublimely impa.s.sable in front.

The hawks careened beneath them; the chamois above dared not look down for dizziness, and Hugenot said, at Ariola, that they were taking lunch in a balloon. The manner of Mr. Plade now altered marvellously. It might have been his breakfast that gave him spirit and speech; he sang a merry, bad song, which the rocks echoed back, and all the goitred women at the roadside stopped with their pack burdens to listen. He told a thousand anecdotes. He knew all the story of the pa.s.s; how the Swiss, filing through it, had scattered the Milanese; how Suwarrow and Ma.s.sena had made its sterility fertile with blood.

Hugenot's admiration amounted to envy. He had never known his a.s.sociate so brilliant, so pleasing; the exaltation was too great, indeed, to arise from any ordinary cause; but Hugenot was not shrewd enough to inquire into the affair. He wearied at length of the talk and of the scene, and when at last they reached the region of perpetual ice, he closed the cabriolet windows, and watched the filtering flakes, and heard the snow crush under the wheels, and dropped into a deep sleep which the other seemed to share.

The clouds around them made the mountains dusky, and the interior of the carriage was quite gloomy. At length the large gentleman turned his head, so that his ear could catch every breath, and he regarded the dim outlines of the lesser with motionless interest. Then he took a straw from the litter at his feet, and, bending forward, touched his comrade's throat. The other snored measuredly for a while, but the t.i.tillation startled him at length, and he beat the air in his slumber. When the irritation ceased he breathed tranquilly again, and then the first-named placed his hand softly into the sleeper's pocket. He drew forth the wallet with steady fingers, and as coolly emptied it of its contents.

These he concealed in the leg of his boot, but replaced the book where he had found it. For a little s.p.a.ce he remained at rest, leaning against the back of the carriage, with his head bent upon his breast and his hands clenched like one at bay and in doubt.

The slow advance of the teams and the frequent changes of direction--sometimes so abrupt as almost to reverse the cabriolet--advised him that they were climbing the mountain by zigzags or terraces. He knew that they were in the _Val Tremola_, or Trembling Way, and he shook his comrade almost fiercely, as if relieved by some idea which the place suggested.

"Hugenot," he said, "rouse up! The grandeur of the Alps is round about us; you must not miss this scene. Come with me! Quit the vehicle! I know the place, and will exhibit it."

The other, accustomed to obey, leaped to the ground immediately, and followed through the snow, ankle deep, till they pa.s.sed the diligence, which kept in advance. The guard could not be seen--he might have resorted to the interior; and the two pedestrians at once left the roadway, climbing its elbows by a path more or less distinctly marked, so that after a half hour they were perhaps a mile ahead. The agility of Mr. Plade during this episode was the marvel of his companion. He scaled the rocks like a goatherd, and his foot-tracks in the snow were long, like the route of a giant. The ice could not betray the sureness of his stride; the rare, thin atmosphere was no match for his broad, deep chest. He shouted as he went, and tossed great boulders down the mountain, and urged on his flagging comrade by cheer and taunt and invective. No madman set loose from captivity could be guilty of so extravagant, exaggerated elation.

At last they stood upon a little bridge spanning a chasm like a cobweb.

A low parapet divided it from the awful gulf. On the other side the mountain lifted its jagged face, clammy with icicles, and far over all towered the sterile peaks, above the reach of clouds or lightnings, forever in the suns.h.i.+ne--forever desolate.

"Stand fast!" said the leader, suddenly cold and calm. "Uncover, that the snow-flakes may give us the baptism of nature! There is no human G.o.d at this vast height; they wors.h.i.+p _Him_ in the flat world below. Give me your hand and look down! You are not dizzy? One should be free from the baseness of fear, standing here upon St. Gothard."

"If I had no qualm before," said Hugenot, "your words would make me shudder."

"You have heard of the 'valley of the shadow'? Was your ideal like this?

I told you in Florence of the great poet Dante. You have here at a glance more beauty and dread conjoined than even his mad fancy could conjure up. That is the Tessino, braining itself in cataracts. Yonder, where the clouds make a golden lake, laving forests of firs, lies Italy as the Goths first beheld it, with their spears quivering. See how the eagles beat the mist beneath!--that was a symbol that the Roman standards should be rent."

The other, half in charm, half in awe, listened like one spell-bound, with his fingers tingling and his eyeb.a.l.l.s throbbing.

"This silence," said the elder, "is more freezing to me than the bitterness of the cold. The very snow-flakes are dumb; nothing makes discord but the avalanche; it is always twilight; men lie down in the snows to die, but they are numb and cannot cry."

"Be still," replied the other, "your talk is strangely out of place. I feel as if my ancestors in their shrouds were beside me."

"You are not wrong," cried the greater, raising his voice till it became shrill and terrible; "your last moments are pa.s.sing; that yawning ravine is your grave. I told you an hour ago how one bad, dark deed would redeem me. It is done! I have robbed you, and your death is essential to my safety."

Hugenot sank upon the snow of the parapet, speechless and almost lifeless. He clasped his hands, but could not raise his head; the whole scene faded from his eye. If he had been weak before, he was impotent now.

The strong man held him aloft by the shoulders with an iron grasp, and his cold eye gave evidence to the horrible validity of his words.

"I do not lie or play, Hugenot," he said, in the same clear voice; "I have premeditated this deed for many weeks. You are doomed! Only a miracle can help you. The dangers of the pa.s.s will be my exculpation; it will be surmised that you fell into the ravine. There will be no marks of violence upon you but those of the sharp stones. We have been close comrades. Only Omniscience can have seen premeditation. I have brought you into this wilderness to slay you!"

The victim had recovered sufficiently to catch a part of this confession. His lips framed only one reply--the dying man's last straw:

"After death!" he said; "have you thought of that?"

"Ay," answered the other, "long and thoroughly. Phantoms, remorses and h.e.l.ls--they have all had their argument. I take the chances."

It was only a moment's struggle that ensued. The wretch clung to the parapet, and called on G.o.d and mercy. He was lifted on high in the strong arms, and whirled across the barrier. The other looked grimly at the falling burden. He wondered if a dog or a goat would have been so long falling. The distance was profound indeed; but to the murderer's sanguine thought the body hung suspended in the air. It would not sink.

The clouds seemed to bear it up for testimony; the cold cliffs held aloft their heads for justice; the snow-flakes fell like the ballots of jurymen, voting for revenge--all nature seemed roused to animation by this one act. An icicle dropped with a keen ring like a knife, and the stream below pealed a shrill alarum.

He had done the bad, dark deed. Was he more resolute or courageous now that he had taken blood upon his hands and shadow upon his soul?

The body disappeared at length, carried downward by the torrent; but a wild bird darted after it, as if to reveal the secret of its concealment, and then a noise like a human footfall crackled in the snow.

"I like a man who takes the chances," said a cold, hard voice; "but Chance, Andy Plade, decides against you to-day."

IX.

THE ONE GOOD DEED OF A PRIVATEERSMAN.

The murderer turned from his reverie with hands extended and trembling; the snow was not more bleached than his bloodless face, and his feet grew slippery and infirm. An alcove, which he had not marked, was hewn in the brow of the precipice. It had been intended to shelter pilgrims from the wind and the snow; and there, wrapped in his buff garments, whose hue, a.s.similating to that of the rock, absorbed him from detection, stood a witness to the deed--the guard to the diligence--none other than Auburn Risque.

For an instant only the accused shrank back. Then his body grew short and compact; he was gathering himself up for a life-struggle.