CHAPTER IV.

SEPARATION.

Scarcely had the upper rim of the golden sun dipped below the horizon, when the dark curtain of night was thrown over the landscape, spangled with tremulous stars. Horace was startled from his disagreeable reflections by what seemed almost like sudden darkness; and Mrs. Cleveland became yet more nervously alive to the dangers of the road, when she could no longer see their approach.

Having reached the bottom of a long, steep hill, Jacomo got down from his seat, and lit the carriage lamps. In reply to the lady's anxious question as to whether it would not yet be better to go back, he replied that it would now be as easy to proceed to Staiti as to return to the inn, for the road down which they had just descended was one fitted for goats rather than for horses. Jacomo muttered and: grumbled a good deal, as he remounted his seat, about the folly of having started at all; and words, though but half understood, did not tend reassure Mrs. Cleveland.

The momentary glare which the lamps threw in passing on gray rock, or gloomy thicket, seemed to make the darkness beyond more deep and oppressive; and the jingle of the horse-bells, and rumble of the wheels, but drearily broke the stillness of that unfrequented road.

Horace knew well that his mother was in an agony of nervous alarm, dreading to catch sight of a bandit behind every bush; and notwithstanding his natural courage, he began in some measure to share her apprehensions. Raphael's warning rang in his ears—and the more vividly memory recalled the countenance of him who had given it, the more Horace wondered at himself for having allowed so little weight to his words. Horace had often longed for an adventure; but night traveling through a wild and desolate country, known to be infested by robbers, has in it more of romance than of pleasure even to one of courageous spirit.

The road now lay through the deep recesses of a wood, where the boughs, meeting and intermingling above, formed an arch over the way, and blotted out from view the few stars that had gleamed in the sky.

Suddenly there was heard the sharp report of a pistol, which made Mrs. Cleveland start and shriek. The next moment, the horses were thrown violently back upon their haunches, and the lamplight dimly showed indistinct forms glancing like phantoms through the darkness. Then came wild, fierce faces at the window; the door was forced open and the travelers dragged out of the carriage almost before they had time to be certain that all was not some terrible dream!

Horace's first impulse was to defend his mother. All unarmed as he was, he struck at the man who had seized her, but received himself a sharp blow on the arm which made it drop stunned to his side. He glanced round, and that glance was sufficient to assure him that resistance would be utterly hopeless. There were at least five or six robbers around, most of them already busily engaged in rifling the carriage; and strange sounded their laughter and their jests as they drew forth now this thing—now that—dragging cloaks, bandboxes, dressing-case, umbrella, fan, to be piled in a heap on the road.

The bandit who had seized Mrs. Cleveland had already torn from her neck the gold chain, and with it the watch which she wore; and plunging his coarse hand into her pocket had turned it inside out, to make sure that none of its contents should escape him. Trembling as in a fit of ague, the poor lady had been constrained to pull off her gloves, and draw hastily from her icy fingers the jeweled rings which adorned them. Horace was half-maddened at the sight, but he had no power to protect his mother, he could but pass his left arm around her to support her from sinking, and glare at the spoilers with the vain wrath of one whose strength does not equal his spirit. Jacomo was on his knees, invoking the Virgin and all the saints to defend him! The robbers took little notice of him, save that one spurned him with his foot in passing and another sternly bade him cease his whining or he would dash out his brains.

Amidst the confusion and terrors of the scene, Horace yet retained his self-possession sufficiently to notice that none of the bandits kept any of the plunder, but that they placed it together in the heap before mentioned, probably with a view to division. The word "Matteo" was also occasionally heard amid the tumult of voices, and presently every eye was turned in one direction, whence came a crashing sound as if some one were forcing his way through the brushwood. Mrs. Cleveland had sunk on the ground, Horace was kneeling beside her, half supporting her drooping form, when there strode into the dimly lighted space, the tall figure of the chief of the banditti.

Matteo was a large and powerful man, with a countenance on which the character of ruffianism was so legibly stamped, that had he appeared in gentlemen's society under whatever auspices, with whatever name, or in whatever dress, a child would have instinctively shrunk from him, and a stranger's first thought have been:

"There is one whom I would rather not meet alone at night in a solitary place."

Grizzled was the shock of coarse hair thrown back from his dark face,—grizzled the untrimmed beard; but his thick beetling brows were intensely black, and almost joined together in one. The most repulsive feature was the mouth, of which the lower jaw projected, and which was furnished with teeth so irregular and large, that they suggested the idea of the fangs of some beast of prey. The alarm of Mrs. Cleveland increased when the light fell on the countenance of the man in whose power she knew herself to be. Clasping her hands, she gasped forth in broken Italian:

"Oh, mercy—we will pay ransom—we will give anything—only spare me and my son!"

"Ransom!" repeated Matteo in a hoarse voice. "We want from you something more than money." And turning sharply round to one of his companions, he inquired, "Has not the Rossignol returned?"

"Not yet," replied the young man addressed, who, though seemingly several years older than Raphael, bore so strong a likeness to him, that the first impression of the bewildered travelers had been that the musician whose warning they had neglected, and whom they had left behind at the little inn, had by some strange means overtaken the carriage. The second glance at Enrico had however quite removed such impression. The cast of the features might be alike,—there might be the same classical outline, the same delicately penciled brow,—but the expression of the face was utterly dissimilar. Instead of the calm thoughtfulness, tinged with melancholy, which had struck Mrs. Cleveland in the improvisatore, there was a restless wildness in this young man's eye, like that of a hunted animal, and a nervous twitch in his lip peculiarly apparent whenever he was addressed by Matteo.

"Why has he not returned?" growled Matteo. "And why did he go at all?"

"He went for tidings of your son, and he has not had time to return," was the answer.

"If he play me false," commenced the brigand,—grinding his white fangs instead of completing his sentence.

"He has not played you false, or these birds would not be in your net," cried Enrico, as he pointed to Horace and his mother.

Horace at once comprehended that "the Rossignol" (the Italian word for "nightingale") must be a cant name for Raphael; and that the musician, whatever might have been his motive in uttering his words of warning, must have incurred some risk by doing so.

Matteo now turned again towards his captives, and spoke as follows to the trembling lady, using violent gesticulation, and giving emphasis to his speech with the action of hand and foot:—

"You know, or you do not know, that the dogs of soldiers have seized my son; that they have dragged him off to a dungeon; that the sentence of a tyrannical judge may condemn him, as it has condemned other bold spirits before him. You are rich; a golden key opens all doors—ay, even the barred and bolted gate of a prison! You shall write to the government. You shall say that you are in Matteo's hands, at Matteo's mercy. You shall tell what conditions I offer. If Otto be set free, you shall be set free; if they hurt a hair of his head—" Matteo half unsheathed his stiletto, and the gleam of the cold blue steel spoke more forcibly than words.

"There is little use in writing," suggested Enrico; "these people are strangers—foreigners—a mere letter is thrown aside—blood is spilt while officials take their drive or their siesta. * Let one of the prisoners go, knowing that the life of the other hangs on the issue, and the dullest employé will be made to hear, the slowest to act: gold will be lavished freely, and Otto be a free man again."

* The noonday sleep which Italians habitually take

Mrs. Cleveland glanced anxiously from one speaker to the other, unable to catch the whole of their meaning, but understanding in a general way the nature of a discussion in which she was so deeply concerned.

"Right! Right!" exclaimed the robber. "We'll keep the lady and send off the boy."

"No!" exclaimed Horace, starting to his feet. "If a prisoner must remain in your hands, keep me and release my mother."

"Oh, my child! My child!" cried the lady. "Never shall they part us—never!" and she stretched out her clasped hands to Matteo in an attitude of agonizing entreaty.

"I'll send her," growled the brigand; "she is a mother. She will not spare cries or tears to wring mercy out of the merciless. Hear me, woman!" he continued in a louder tone, to the trembling supplicant before him. "You shall go to those high in power and plead for my son as you would plead for your son; and pour out your gold to those who never yet refused gold, yea, if it were the last ducat which you possessed to keep you from beggary. If Otto be standing here in three days—"

"Three days are not enough," interrupted Enrico, "you require an impossibility; application may have to be made to Naples, to the king himself."

"Ay, ay," said the brigand impatiently; "Naples is more than a stone's throw, and time may be needed, even though love and fear alike give wings. If, woman, in seven days my son be standing here free and uninjured," Matteo stamped on the ground as he spake, "free and uninjured shall your son be restored; if there be an hour's delay—" Matteo uttered with an oath some threat which the lady could not understand, but of its horrible nature she could judge both by the gesture of him who made it, and by the livid paleness which overspread the face of her son.

"O Horace! What does he say?" she exclaimed.

"Never mind, mother; it was something that you had better not understand. You know quite enough. You know that my life depends upon your procuring within seven days the release of this Otto, this son of Matteo."

Horace spake less distinctly than usual, and even his lips looked bloodless and white.

Matteo turned to the heap of plunder. "Is everything here?" he sternly inquired.

"Everything," promptly replied several voices.

The brigand pointed to Jacomo. "Make that fellow take the reins again," he said, "and drive as one who drives for his life. Thrust the woman back into the carriage; she must be at Staiti within the hour."

Two or three rude hands were instantly laid on Mrs. Cleveland, but she clung to her son as if it were to death instead of to liberty and safety that she was to be hurried. In that moment of terror and anguish, all his faults and her own perils were forgotten. The mother thought only of her child. To tear her from him was to rend asunder the very strings of her heart!

"Mother, dear, don't give way like this. There's no use resisting, no use entreating. We may yet meet again. All may be well. Don't you give these wretches an excuse for treating you roughly." And as he uttered these broken sentences, Horace tried gently himself to unclose those clinging arms.

It was only, however, by sheer force that the robbers tore Mrs. Cleveland away from her boy, and her cry as they were severed, rang in the ears of Horace like a death-knell. He had a terrible persuasion at that moment that he was parted from his mother never to see her again. A crowd of recollections rushed through the youth's brain: a consciousness that he had been a self-willed, undutiful son; that his conduct had caused all this misery; that he had forgiveness to implore for a thousand faults, and yet that his tongue had no power to ask for it.

Horace saw his mother dragged to the carriage, and rather thrown than lifted into it. From her silence after that one cry, he believed that her senses must have failed her, and was almost thankful for that belief.

He saw a robber strike one of the horses with something that made it, weary as it was, bound forward with such frantic violence that Jacomo was almost unseated. His exclamation of terror raised hoarse laughter from the lawless band, and before that laughter had ceased, the carriage with its gleaming lamps had disappeared in the darkness, and Horace stood, helpless and alone, a captive in the midst of banditti.