Part 2

‘Salvarini advised me to come here. You remember him; he claims to be a true friend of yours,’ Maxwell observed at length. ‘He said it would gain time, and enable me to form my plans.—But tell me how you knew I was in Rome. I have only just arrived.’

‘I had a sure warning. It came from the hand of Isodore herself.’

‘I have heard much of her; she seems all-powerful. But I thought she was too stern a Leaguer to give you such friendly counsel. Have you ever seen her? I hear she is very beautiful.’

‘Beautiful as the stars, I am told, and a noble-hearted woman too. She is a sort of Queen of the League; but she uses her power well, ever erring on the side of mercy. She has a history, report says—the old story of a woman’s trustfulness and a man’s deceit. Poor Isodore! hers is no bed of roses!’

‘And she put you on your guard?’ Maxwell asked. ‘Come, there must be some good in a woman like that, though I cannot say I altogether like your picture. I should like to see her.’

‘I should not be surprised if you did before many days. She is the one to protect you from violence. With her sanction, you could laugh the mandates of the League to scorn. Had I long to live, I should sue for her protection, and wherever she may be, she would come to me. Even now, if she comes to Rome, see her if you can and lay your case before her.’

‘And shield myself behind a woman! That does not sound like the chivalrous Visci of old. She is only a woman, after all.’

‘One in a million,’ Visci answered calmly. ‘If she holds out her right hand to you, cling to it as a drowning desperate man does to a rock; it is your only chance of salvation.—And now it is late. I must go.’

Despite his own better sense, Maxwell began to dwell upon the fact of gaining assistance from the mysterious Isodore. At meetings of the League in London, he had heard her name mentioned, and always with the utmost reverence and affection. If she could not absolutely relieve him from his undertaking, she could at anyrate shield him from non-compliance with the mandate. Full of these cheerful thoughts, he fell asleep.

He found his friend the following morning quite cheerful, but in the daylight the ravages of disease were painfully apparent. The dark rings under the eyes and the thin features bespoke nights of racking pain and broken rest.

Visci noticed this and smiled gently. ‘Yes, I am changed,’ he said. ‘Sometimes, after a bad night, I hardly know myself. It is cruel, weary work lying awake hour after hour fighting with the grim King. But I have been singularly free from pain lately, and I am looking much better than I have been.’

‘There might be a chance yet,’ Maxwell replied with a cheerfulness wholly assumed, and thinking that this ‘looking better’ was the nearest approach to death he had ever seen. ‘An absence from Rome, a change of climate, has done wonders for people before now.’

Visci shook his head. ‘Not when the mainspring of life is broken,’ he said: ‘no human ingenuity, no miracle of surgery can mend that. Maxwell, if they had deferred their vengeance long, they would have been too late. Some inward monitor tells me I shall fail them yet.’

‘You will for me, Visci, you may depend upon that. Time is no object to me.’

‘And if I should die and disappoint you of your revenge, how mad you would be!’ Visci laughed. ‘It is a dreadful tragedy to me; it is a very serious thing for you; and yet there is a comic side to it, as there is in all things. Ah me! I cannot see the droll side of life as I used; but when the bloodthirsty murderer sits down with his victim tête-à-tête, discussing the crime, there is something laughable in it after all.’

‘I daresay there is,’ Maxwell answered grimly, ‘though I am dense enough not to notice it. To me, there is something horribly, repulsively tragic about it, even to hear you discussing death in that light way.’

‘Familiarity breeds contempt. Is not that one of your English proverbs?’ Visci said airily.—‘But, my good Frederick,’ he continued, lowering his voice to a solemn key, ‘the white horseman will not find me unprepared, when he steals upon me, as he might at any moment. I am ready. I do not make a parade of my religion, but I have tried to do what is right and honest and honourable. I have faced death so often, that I treat him lightly at times. But never fear that when he comes to me for the last time’——

Maxwell pressed his friend’s hand in silent sympathy. ‘You always were a good fellow, Visci,’ he said; ‘and if this hour must come so speedily, tell me is there anything I can do for you when—when’——

‘I am dead? No reason to hesitate over the word. No, Maxwell; my house is in order. I have no friends besides my brother; and he, I hope, is far beyond the vengeance of the League now.’

‘Then there is nothing I can do for you in any way?’

‘No, I think not. But you are my principal care now; your life is far more important than mine. I have written to Isodore, laying a statement of all the facts before her; and if she is the woman I take her for, she is sure to lose no time in getting here. Once under her protection, you are safe; there will be no further cause for alarm.’

‘But it seems rather unmanly,’ Maxwell urged.

‘Unmanly!’ echoed Visci scornfully. ‘What has manliness to do with fighting cowardly _vendetti_ in the dark? You must, you shall do it!’ he continued vehemently; but the exertion was too much for him, and he swayed forward over the table as if he would fall. Presently, a little colour crept into the pallid face, and he continued: ‘You see, even that is too much for me. Maxwell, if you contradict me and get me angry, my blood will be upon your head after all. Now, do listen to reason.’

‘If my want of common-sense hurts you as much as that, certainly. But I do not see how this mysterious princess can help me.’

‘Listen to me,’ Visci said solemnly. Then he laid all his schemes before the other—his elaborate plans for his friend’s safety, designs whose pure sacrifice of self were absolutely touching.

Maxwell began to take heart again. ‘You are very good,’ he said gratefully, ‘to take all this infinite pains for me.’

‘In a like strait you would do the same for me, Fred.’

‘Yes,’ Maxwell answered simply. ‘How Salvarini’s words come back to me now! Do you remember, when I wanted to throw my insignia out of the window that evening, the last we all spent together?’

‘I recollect. It was two days before little Genevieve disappeared,’ Visci answered sadly.—‘Do you know, I have never discovered any trace of her or Lucrece. Poor child, poor little girl! I wonder where she is now.’

‘Perhaps you may see her again some day.’

‘It has long been my dearest wish; but it will never be fulfilled now. If ever you do see her once more, say that I’——

‘Visci!’

As the last words fell from the Italian’s lips, his head hung forward, and he fell from his chair. For a moment he lay motionless, then raised his face slightly and smiled. A thin stream of blood trickled down his fair beard, staining it scarlet. He lay quietly on Maxwell’s shoulder.

‘Do not be alarmed,’ he said faintly. ‘It has come at last.—There are tears in your eyes, Fred. Do not weep for me. Do not forget Carlo Visci, when you see old friends; and when you meet little Genevieve, tell her I forgave her, and to the last loved and grieved for her.—Good-bye, old friend. Take hold of my hand. Let me look in your honest face once more. It is not hard to die, Fred. Tell them that my last words——Jesu, mercy!’

‘Speak to me, Carlo—speak to me!’

Never again on this side of the grave. And so the noble-hearted Italian died; and on the third day they buried him in a simple grave under the murmuring pines.

No call to remain longer now. One last solitary evening ramble, Maxwell took outside the city wall ere his departure. As he walked along wrapped in his own sad thoughts, he did not heed that his footsteps were being dogged. Then with a sudden instinct of danger, he turned round. The feet that followed stopped. ‘Who is there?’ he cried.

A muffled figure came towards him, and another stealthily from behind. A crash, a blow, a fierce struggle for a moment, a man’s cry for help borne idly on the breeze, a mist rising before the eyes, a thousand stars dancing and tumbling, then deep, sleepy unconsciousness.

(_To be concluded next month._)

THE PLEASURES OF RUIN.

There must be many people to whom the above heading will be at once suggestive of the famous chapter upon Snakes in Iceland; but to the philosophical mind—and it is marvellous how philosophical one can become under adversity—there are certain compensating advantages in the state of ruin, which, if not quite so intense as the Pleasures of Hope, or Memory, or Imagination, do much to reconcile us to the change in our circumstances. The first feeling is one of extreme relief that the whole thing is over and we are out of suspense. The smash has come; writs and summonses have blossomed into sheriffs’ officers, and the auctioneer, whose fell and inexorable hammer has made short work of our goods and chattels; our wealthy friends have said that they knew it would come to this; and Jones, who used to look dinners and five-pound notes at us whenever he met us formerly, now crosses over to the opposite side of the street. The cheap lodgings in the shady neighbourhood have become hard and ineradicable facts, and we can look about us at last and endeavour to make the best we can of the position.

You now have a newly acquired sense of freedom and independence to which perhaps you have long been a stranger. It is no longer a question of whether you shall dine at the _Bristol_ or the _Blue Posts_, but in all likelihood the choice will lie between the _diner du jour_ in Leicester Square, a chop, or Duke Humphrey. Nor, if you be a married man, need you now vex your soul with the proper precedence of a brigadier-general, an Indian judge, a colonial bishop, and a resident commissioner from the Punjab, as has happened in the days gone by when you gave a dinner. Nor will the varying merits of asparagus soup and turtle, salmon mayonnaise and aspic of lobster, truffled turkey and oyster-stuffed capon, and all the rest of it, come between you and your night’s rest. Again, your circumstances are such that you are no longer harassed by the touters for subscriptions, male and female, and you find it therefore needless to discuss the comparative merits of the claims put forward by the friends of the Cannibal Islanders for French mustard, and by the friends of the Mayor of Little Pedlington for a new pump in the market-place in honour of that excellent cheesemonger and municipal chief.

When you go to the theatre or opera, you are no longer compelled to pay fifty or a hundred per cent. for the privilege of receiving your ticket from an agent, and you go to the pit, where, if the orange peel and ginger beer and nuts are a bit of a nuisance at first, you are not long in getting used to it; and at anyrate you are permitted to hear the piece without being bored by one of Smith’s ‘good stories’ during Patti’s chief _aria_, or while Irving is giving some fine piece of declamation. You discover sources of gratuitous amusement which indifference has hitherto hidden from you. That glorious rotunda in Bloomsbury, the British Museum Reading-room—the mausoleum of the mind of the world—gives you opportunities for study and recreation of which you have never before thought of availing yourself; and the treasures of South Kensington and the National Gallery, which you have hitherto neglected as ‘slow’ and ‘bad form,’ are now a source of delight to you. The only fault that you can now find with the latter institution is, that it spoils you for all the modern galleries about Pall Mall and Piccadilly. You have a feeling of proprietorship now in the royal parks, which you never had when you sauntered in the Row, or attended the meet of the Coaching Club at the Magazine, or dawdled about the Mall in St James’s Park on a Drawing-room day. You don’t attend these ‘functions’ now, for, though they are open to you as to the rest of the world, you feel yourself rather out of the race. But you often enjoy the air in the higher ground of Hyde Park, which you will come to consider as bracing as the Sussex Downs; nor are you to be persuaded that Burnham Beeches has a much finer show of trees than Kensington Gardens.

But the time when you do really and thoroughly enjoy the Pleasures of Ruin is when that delectable moment comes—which it inevitably will, sooner or later—when a temporary, or, let us hope, it may be a permanent, change in your fortunes takes place. Your book has found a publisher; your picture a buyer; some one pays up an old debt; or an unknown relative mentions your name in his will. Whatever it may be, the keen appreciation of the benefits we formerly enjoyed which our vicissitudes have taught us, and the knowledge we have acquired of the dingier side of nature, give a remarkable zest to our return to a brighter life. And if a man has good health and good spirits, he will find that it is as true that ‘hope springs eternal in the human breast,’ as that when things are at their worst they mend; and if he is of an extra-hopeful disposition, he will welcome the increased depression of his fortunes as a sure forerunner of a change of luck.

COUSIN GEORGE.

IN TWO CHAPTERS.—CHAP. II.

All went well in the Smethby circle, indeed things had never before gone so smoothly in that not unprosperous group. Harriet, it is true, did not get more manageable in the Robert Crewe direction; she was perfectly ready to flatter and please the Australian cousin, and had an eye to the main chance as keen as others; but the young doctor was not to be jeopardised. Thus Harriet might be regarded as an exception; so, of course, might Mr Crewe; but after all, as he does not actually appear in our narrative, he need not count for much.

There were frequent indications that the ridiculous disguise, the absurd plea of poverty, at first put forth by Styles was being gradually discarded—was ‘peeling off,’ Mr Joe said, with a happy touch of description. But Mr Smethby would not see all these indications—pretended not to notice any flaws; he would humour his cousin just as long as the latter chose.

The proposed investment was still in favour, was about to be made, indeed; and so earnest was Cousin George in the matter, that when Smethby said he had given notice at the bank for his money, he confidentially told him that if there was any difficulty about getting it, his friend would advance the sum for a week or two—or for a year, if Smethby would like it. The latter thanked him, but declined. Of course he could see through this, as he had seen through the other flimsy screens.

The bank was good enough, he explained, and so it was, for the money was duly paid to him; and it was proposed that they should go up to town together, Smethby and Cousin George, where the latter would see his friend’s broker and arrange for the purchase of this stock.

In a confiding mood, not usual with him, Smethby had proposed that Styles should send a cheque up, or go up with it by himself, if going up were necessary; but the latter declined to do this. He seemed to have a strange dislike to cheques or drafts, and as he said: ‘It was not their way at the diggings; a man liked to look after his own business there.’ So Cousin Nick must go with him.

He, Cousin George, had also asked Harriet what kind of bracelet she preferred; for his friend had desired him to consult some lady’s taste, as he, the friend, was thinking of making a little present. Harriet was not proof against this temptation, so explained that amethyst bracelets with amethyst pendants—or sapphire and diamonds, if she _did_ have her choice—was what she liked. Cousin George, with a highly expressive wink on hearing this, said his friend would be much obliged by her opinion. He should perhaps see him on the next day but one when he, Styles, and her father went to London.

‘All which means, my dear,’ said Smethby, when he had a chance of whispering to his daughter, ‘that this farce is about to end. He means to present me with the whole of these twenty thousand shares, and you will have a present also. Beyond this, you will have an offer in plain language—his language has already been plain enough to show what he means; so, be a sensible girl, and don’t lose a chance the like of which will not occur again, if you live for a hundred years.’

Harriet did not reply; there was indeed a recurrence of the pouting and flouncing; she could not resist the jewelry; but when Robert Crewe was endangered, she exhibited some of the old perverseness.

In the morning, Cousin George took a stroll into the town, as was his habit. Smethby knew quite well that his eccentric relative went to the post-office, whither his letters, as every one knew, were directed. No one, however, pretended to suspect anything like this arrangement, which was just as shallow and easily penetrated as his other schemes. On his return, he was in higher spirits than usual; a little fitful, perhaps, but certainly more jocular and fuller of sly allusions than he had hitherto allowed himself to be. This was evidence enough, to such a man as Smethby, to show that the end of the scheme was approaching. He broached a capital joke—he undoubtedly so considered it—in the way of a question as to what his cousin Nick would have thought of and said to him, Styles, if he had come back from the diggings loaded with shiners—‘Not one or two, Nick, but some scores of thousands, eh!—what then, Nick?’ he exclaimed.

Smethby was of course acute enough to seize such a palpable chance, so replied with the utmost heartiness and frankness, that, delighted as he should have been at such good fortune, it never could have made any difference in his feelings to his old friend and cousin, George Styles. The latter grasped his hand at this, and seemed for the moment almost overcome by his feelings. He was indeed about to say something, which Smethby expected would prove a clearing-up avowal; but he checked himself, and saying abruptly, ‘No; wait a day or two,’ turned the conversation.

Yet, all through the day, there was an uneasiness in Cousin George’s manner which could not escape the attention of those around him; and he took several short strolls in the open air to soothe his nerves, which, he admitted, seemed rather shaky. On the last occasion that he took his saunter, it was in the twilight, and in the glance which he naturally threw around him before entering the house, he could see, standing in relief against the clear summer sky, the figures of two men, who were apparently conversing earnestly as they paused on a knoll not far from Mr Smethby’s residence.

Then Styles went in, and found the lamps were just lighted, the curtains were drawn, while his host and his daughter, evidently in the best of moods, were awaiting him. With a decision which was almost like abruptness, Styles began about the visit to London on the morrow. He explained, as he had done before, that until the transaction was completed, he did not want any one, not even the broker, to know that the stock was not entirely for his friend, who had promised to take over all the disposable shares; and that was why he had asked Mr Smethby to provide money instead of a cheque for the payment.

‘I understand,’ smiled Smethby; ‘and, as you know, I have arranged to get notes in the morning. But here is the cheque, if that would suit you—you can have it to-night, if you like.’

‘No; O no!’ returned Styles; but the response came so slowly, that it seemed as if he had hesitated before deciding. ‘There will be no use in that; so long as I can see the broker alone, that will do.’

‘Just as you please,’ said Mr Smethby. As he paused, a ring at the street door was heard.

‘And now a word or two about that little villa my friend thought of buying at Richmond,’ resumed Styles. ‘I had a letter this morning’——

‘If you please, sir,’ said the maid-servant, appearing at the door, ‘a gentleman wishes to see you.’

‘To see me, or to see Mr Styles?’ asked her master. Another ring was heard at the street door as he said this.

‘I believe I want to see both of you,’ said a voice behind the servant, which voice being deep and harsh in its tone, and coming so unexpectedly, made each person in the room start; ‘so I shall take the liberty of coming in here,’ continued ‘the gentleman;’ then, suiting the action to the word, he pushed past the attendant, and came close to the table which filled the centre of the room.

All looked at him in amazement; while, before any one spoke, Mr Joe and Mr Brooks, who had called just then to have a chat with Mr Styles, also entered, and gazed at the stranger with as much astonishment as was shown by their friends. The stranger was an elderly, grizzled, but powerfully built man, with hard features, high cheek-bones, indented nose, square jaws, hidden by his stiff iron-gray beard, and moustache.

‘You are Mr Smethby—Nicholas Smethby, I believe: in fact, I know it,’ said the man.—‘But may I ask who this is?’ pointing to Cousin George as he spoke.

‘I really do not know what your business here is, or why you make this inquiry,’ returned Smethby, a good deal nettled by the intrusion; ‘but I certainly am Nicholas Smethby, and this gentleman is Mr George Styles. Have you any business with either of us?’

‘Did you ever see George Styles look like a cross between a skittle-sharp and a stage smuggler?’ continued the visitor, ‘which is what this fellow looks like.’

‘Do you mean’—— began Cousin George, but he spoke falteringly; while Mr Joe and Mr Brooks, who stood behind the stranger, could see that the speaker turned pale.