He took his arm away brusquely and got up.
"I thought I would find you here," he remarked in an indifferent marital tone. "That man has gone now," he added.
With a deep sigh the maid of Madame de Montevesso struggled out of the depths of despondency, only to fall a prey to anxiety.
"Oh, Bernard, what did that man want with Miss Adèle?"
Bernard knew enough to have formed a conjecture that English fellow must have either left some papers or a message for the Marquis with Madame de Montevesso.
In what seemed to him a very short time Cosmo found himself under the colonnade separating the town piled upon the hills from the flat ground of the waterside. A profound quietness reigned on the darkly polished surface of the harbour and the long, incurved range of the quays. This quietness that surrounded him on all sides through which, beyond the spars of clustered coasters, he could look at the night-horizon of the open sea, relieved that fantastic feeling of confinement within his own body with its intolerable tremors and shrinkings and imperious suggestions. Mere weaknesses all. His desire, however, to climb to the top of the tower, as if only there complete relief could be found for his captive spirit, was as strong as ever.
The only light on shore he could see issued in a dim streak from the door of the guardhouse which he had passed on his return from the tower on his first evening in Genoa. As he did not wish to pass near the Austrian sentry at the head of the landing-steps, Cosmo, instead of following the quay, kept under the portico at the back of the guardhouse. When he came to its end he had a view of the squat bulk of the tower across a considerable space of flat waste ground extending to the low rocks of the seashore. He made for it with the directness of a man possessed by a fixed idea. When he reached the iron-studded low door within the deep dark archway at the foot of the tower he found it immovable. Locked! How stupid! As if those heavy ship guns up there could be stolen! Disappointed, he leaned his shoulders against the side of the deep arch, lingering as people will before the finality of a closed door or of a situation without issue.
His superstitious mood had left him. An old picture was an old picture; and probably the face of that noble saint copied from an old triptych and of Madame de Montevesso were not at all alike. At most, a suggestion which may have been the doing of the copyist and so without meaning. A copyist is not an inspired person; not a seer of visions. He felt critical, almost ironic, towards the Cosmo of the morning, the Cosmo of the day, the Cosmo rushing away like a scared child from a fanciful resemblance, that probably did not even exist. What was he doing there? He might have asked the way to the public gardens. Lurking within the dark archway, muffled up in his blue cloak, he was a suspect figure like an ambushed spadassin waiting for his victim, or a conspirator hiding from the minions of a tyrant. "I am perfectly ridiculous," he thought. "I had better go back as soon as I can." This was his sudden conclusion, but he did not move. It struck him that he was not anxious to face his empty room. Was he ready to get into another panic? he asked himself scornfully. . . . At that moment he heard distinctly the sound of whispering as if through the wall, or from above or from the ground. He held his breath. The whispering went on, loquacious. When it stopped, another voice, as low but deeper and more distinct, muttered the words: "The hour is past."
Ha! Whispers in the air, sounds wandering without bodies, as mysterious as though they had come across a hundred miles, for he had heard no footsteps, no rustle, no sound of any sort. Nothing but the two voices. They were so weirdly disembodied and unbelievable that he had to clothe them in attributes: the excitable—the morose. They were quite near. But he did not know on which side of the arch within which he was hiding. For he was frankly hiding now—no doubt about it. He had remembered that he had left his pistols by his bedside. And he was certain he would hear the voices again. The wait seemed long before the fluent-loquacious came back through space and was punctually followed by the deep voice which this time emitted only an unintelligible grunt.
The disagreeable sense of having no means of defence in case of necessity prevented Cosmo from leaving the shelter of the deep arch. Two men, the excitable and the morose, were within a foot of him. Remembering that the tower was accessible on its seaward face, Cosmo surmised that they had just landed from a boat and had crept round barefooted, secret and, no doubt, ready to use their knives. Smugglers probably. That they should ply their trade within three hundred yards of the guardroom with a sentry outside did not surprise him very much. These were Austrian soldiers, ignorant of local conditions and certainly not concerned with the prevention of smuggling. Why didn't these men go about their business, then? The road was clear. But perhaps they had gone? It seemed to him he had been there glued to that door for an hour. As a matter of fact it was not ten minutes. Cosmo, who had no mind to be stabbed through a mere mistake as to his character, was just thinking of making a dash in the direction of the guardhouse when the morose but cautiously lowered voice began, close to the arch, abruptly: "Where did the beast get to? I thought a moment ago he was coming. Didn't you think too that there were footsteps—just as we landed?"
Cosmo's uplifted foot came down to the ground. Of the excitable whisperer's long rigmarole not a word could be made out. Cosmo imagined him short and thick. The other, whom Cosmo pictured to himself as lean and tall, uttered the word, "Why?" The excitable man hissed fiercely: "To say good-bye."—"Devil take all these women," commented the morose voice dispassionately. The whisper, now raised to the pitch of a strangled wheeze, remarked with some feeling: "He may never see her again."
It was clear they had never even dreamt of any human being besides themselves having anything to do on this part of the shore at this hour of the night. "Won't they be frightened when I rush out," thought Cosmo taking off his cloak and throwing it over his left forearm. If it came to an encounter he could always drop it. But he did not seriously think that he would be reduced to using his fists.
He judged it prudent to leave the archway with a bound which would get him well clear of the tower, and on alighting faced about quickly. He heard an exclamation but he saw no one. They had bolted! He would have laughed had he not been startled himself by a shot fired somewhere in the distance behind his back—the most brutally impressive sound that can break the silence of the night. Instantly, as if it had been a signal, a lot of shouting broke on his ear, yells of warning and encouragement, a savage clamour which made him think of a lot of people pursuing a mad dog. He advanced, however, in the direction of the portico, wishing himself out of the way of this odious commotion, when the flash of a musket shot showed him for a moment the tilted head in a shako and the white cross-belts of an Austrian soldier standing erect in the middle of the open ground. Cosmo stopped short, then inclined to the left, moving cautiously and staring into the darkness. The yelling had died out gradually away from the seashore, where he remembered a cluster of the poorer sort of houses nestled under the cliffs. He could not believe that the shot could have been fired at him, till another flash and report of a musket followed by the whizz of the bullet very near his hand persuaded him to the contrary. Thinking of nothing but getting out of the line of fire, he stooped low and ran on blindly till his shoulder came in contact with some obstacle extremely hard and perfectly immovable.
He put his hand on it, felt it rough and cold, and discovered it was a stone, an enormous square block such as are used in building breakwaters. Several others were lying about in a cluster like a miniature village on a miniature plain. He crept amongst them, spread his cloak on the ground, and sat down with his back against one of the blocks. He wondered at the marvellous eyesight of that confounded soldier. He was not aware that his dark figure had the starry sky for a background. "He nearly had me," he thought. His whole being recoiled with disgust from the risk of getting a musket ball through his body. He resolved to remain where he was till all that incomprehensible excitement had quietened down and that brute with wonderful powers of vision had gone away. Then his road would be clear. He would give him plenty of time.
The stillness all around continued, becoming more convincing, as the time passed, inits suggestion of everything being over, convincing enough to shame timidity itself. Why this reluctance to go back to his room? What was a room in an inn, in any house? A small portion of space forced off with bricks or stones in which innumerable individuals had been alone with their good and evil thoughts, temptations, fears, troubles of all sorts, and had gone out without leaving a trace. This train of thought led him to the reflection that no man could leave his troubles behind . . . never . . . never. . . . "It's no use trying," he thought with despair. Why should he go to Livorno? What would be the good of going home? Lengthening the distance would be like lengthening a chain. What use would it be to get out of sight? . . . "If I were to be struck blind to-morrow it wouldn't help me." He forgot where he was till the convincing silence round him crumbled to pieces before a faint and distant shout which recalled him to the sense of his position. Presently he heard more shouting, still distant but much nearer. This took his mind from himself and started his imagination on another track. The man hunt was not over, then! The fellow had broken cover again and had been headed towards the tower. He depicted the hunted man to himself as long-legged, spare, agile, for no other reason than because he wished him to escape. He wondered whether the soldier with the sharp eyes would give him a shot. But no shot broke the silence which had succeeded the distant shouts. Got away perhaps? At least for a time. Very possibly he had stabbed somebody and . . . by heaven! here he was!
Cosmo had caught the faint sound of running feet on the hard ground. And even before he had decided that it was no illusion it stopped short and a bulky object fell hurtling from the sky so near to him that Cosmo instinctively drew in his legs with a general start of his body which caused him to knock his hat off against the stone. He became aware of a man's back almost within reach of his arm. There could be no doubt he had taken a leap over the stone and had landed squatting on his heels. Cosmo expected him to rebound and vanish, but he only extended his arm to seize the hat as it rolled past him and at the same moment pivoted on his toes, preserving his squatting posture.
"If he happens to have a knife in his hand he will plunge it into me," thought Cosmo. So without moving a limb he hastened to say in a loud whisper: "Run to the tower. Your friends are waiting for you." It was a sudden inspiration. The man without rising flung himself forward full length and, propped on his arms, brought his face close to Cosmo. His white eyeballs seemed to be starting out of his head. In this position the silence between them lasted for several seconds.
"My friends, but who are you?" muttered the man.
And then the recognition came, instantaneous and mutual. Cosmo simply said, "Hallo!" while the man, letting himself fall to the ground, uttered in a voice faint with emotion, "My Englishman!"
"There were two of them," said Cosmo.
"Two? Did they see you?"
Cosmo assured him that they had not. The other, still agitated by the unexpectedness of that meeting, asked, incredulous and even a little suspicious: "What am I to think, then? How could you know that they were my friends?"
Cosmo disregarded the question. "You will be caught if you linger here," he whispered.
The other, as though he had not heard the warning, insisted: "How could they have mentioned my name to you?"
"They mentioned no names. . . . Run."
"I don't think they are there now," said the fugitive.
"Yes. There was noise enough to scare anybody away," commented Cosmo. "What have you done?"
The other made no answer, and in the pause both men listened intently. The night remained dark. Cosmo thought: "Some smuggling affair," and the other muttered to himself, "I have misled them." He sat up by the side of Cosmo and put Cosmo's hat, which he had been apparently holding all the time, on the ground between them.
"You are a cool hand," said Cosmo. "The soldiers . . ."
"Who cares for the soldiers? They can't run."
"They have muskets, though."
"Oh, yes. I heard the shots and wondered at whom they were fired."
"At me. That's why I have got in here. There is one of them who can see in the dark," explained Cosmo, who had been very much impressed. His friend of the tower emitted a little chuckle.
"And so you have hidden yourself in here. Soldiers, water, and fire soon make room for themselves. But they did not know who they were after. They got the alarm from that beast."
He paused suddenly, and Cosmo asked: "Who was after you?"
"One traitor and God knows how manysbirri.If they had been only ten minutes later they would have never set eyes on me."
"I wonder they didn't manage to cut you off, if they were so many," said Cosmo.
"They didn't know. Look! Even now I have deceived them by doubling back. You see I was in a house." He seemed to hesitate.
"Oh, yes," said Cosmo. "Saying good-bye."
The man by his side made a slight movement and preserved a profound silence for a time.
"As I have no demon," he began slowly, "to keep me informed about other people's affairs, I must ask you what you were doing here?"
"Why, taking the air like that other evening. But why don't you try to get away while there is time?"
"Yes, but where?"
"You were going to leave Genoa," said Cosmo. "Either on a very long or a very deadly journey."
Again the man by his side made a movement, of surprise and remained silent for a while. This was very extraordinary, as though some devil having his own means to obtain knowledge had taken on himself for a disguise the body of an Englishman of the kind that travels and stays in inns. The acquaintance of Cosmo's almost first horn in Genoa was very much puzzled and a little suspicious, not as before something dangerous but as before something inexplicable, obscure to his mind like the instruments that fate makes use of sometimes in the affairs of men.
"So you did see two men a little while ago waiting for me?"
"I did not see them. They seemed to think you were late," was the surprising answer.
"And how do you know they were waiting for me?"
"I didn't," said Cosmo naturally. And the other muttered a remark that he was glad to hear of something that Cosmo did not know. But Cosmo continued: "Of course I didn't, not till you jumped in here."
The other made a gesture requesting silence and lent his ear to the unbroken stillness of the surroundings.
"Signore," he said suddenly in a very quiet and distinct whisper, "it may be true that I was about to leave this town, but I never thought of leaving it by swimming. No doubt the noise was enough to frighten anybody away, but it has been quiet enough now for a long time and I think that I will crawl on as far as the tower to see whether perchance they didn't think it worth while to bring their boat back to the foot of the tower. I have put my enemies off the track and I fancy they are looking for me in very distant places from here. The treachery, signore, was not in the telling them where I was. Anybody with eyes could have seen me walking about Genoa. No, it was in the telling them who I was."
He paused again to listen and suddenly changed his position, drawing in his legs.
"Well," said Cosmo, "I myself wonder who you are." He noticed the other's eyes rolling, and the whisper came out of his lips much faster and, as it were, more confidential.
"Attilio, at your service," the mocking whisper fell into Cosmo's ear. "I see the signore is not so much of a wizard as I thought." Then with great rapidity: "Should the signore find something, one never knows, Cantelucci would be the man to give it to."
And suddenly with a half turn he ran off on all fours, looking for an instant monstrous and vanishing so suddenly that Cosmo remained confounded. He was trying to think what all this might mean, when his ears were invaded by the sound of many footsteps and before he could make a move to get up he found himself surrounded by quite a number of men. As a matter of fact there were only four; but they stood close over him as he sat on the ground, their dark figures blotting all view, with an overpowering effect. Very prudently Cosmo did not attempt to rise; he only picked up his hat, and as he did so it seemed to him that there was something strange about the feel of it. When he put it on his head some object neither very hard nor very heavy fell on the top of his head. He repressed the impulse to have a look at once. "What on earth can it be?" he thought. It felt like a parcel of papers. It was certainly flat. An awestruck voice said, "That's a foreigner." Another muttered, "What's this deviltry?" As Cosmo made an attempt to rise with what dignity he might, the nearest of the band stooped with alacrity and caught hold of his arm above the elbow as if to help him up, with a muttered, "Permesso, signore." And as soon as he regained his feet his other arm was seized from behind by someone else without any ceremony. A slight attempt to shake himself free convinced Cosmo that they meant to stick on.
"Would it be an accomplice?" wondered a voice.
"No. Look at his hat. That's an Englishman."
"So much the worse. They are very troublesome. Authority is nothing to them."
All this time one or another would take a turn to peer closely into Cosmo's face, in a way which struck him as offensive. Cosmo had not the slightest doubt that he was in the hands of the municipalsbirri.That strange Attilio had detected their approach from afar. "He might have given me a warning," he thought. His annoyance with the fugitive did not last long; but he began to be angry with his captors, of which every one, he noticed, carried a cudgel.
"What authority have you to interfere with me?" he asked haughtily. The wretch who was holding his right arm murmured judicially: "An Inglese, without a doubt." A stout man in a wide-brimmed hat, who was standing in front of him, grunted: "The authority of four against one," then addressed his companions to the general effect that he didn't know what the world was coming to if foreigners were allowed to mix themselves up with conspirators. It looked as if they had been at a loss what to do with their captive. One of them insinuated: "I don't know. Those foreigners have plenty of money and are impatient of restraint. A poor man may get a chance."
Cosmo thought that probably each of them was provided with a stiletto. Nothing prevented them from stabbing him in several places, weighting his body with some stones from the seashore, and throwing it into the water. What an unlucky reputation to have! He remembered that he had no money with him. The few coins he used to carry in his pocket were lying on his mantelpiece in the bedroom at the inn. This would have made no difference if those men had been bandits, since they would not be aware of the emptiness of his pockets. "I could have probably bribed them to let me go," he thought, after he had heard the same man add with a little laugh, "I mean obliging poor men. Those Englishsignoriare rich and harmless."
Cosmo regretted more than ever not being able to make them an offer. It would have been probably successful, as they seemed to be in doubt what to do next. He mentioned he was living at the Casa Graziani. "If one of you will go with me there you shall be recompensed for your trouble." No answer was made to that proposal except that one of the men coughed slightly. Their chief in a hat with an enormous brim seemed lost in deep thought, and his immobility in front of Cosmo appeared to the latter amusingly mysterious and sinister. A sort of nervous impatience came over Cosmo, an absurd longing to tear himself away and make a dash for liberty, and then an absurd discouragement as though he were a criminal with no hiding-place to make for. The man in the big hat jerked up his head suddenly and disclosed the irritable state of his feelings at the failure of getting hold of thatfurfante."As to that Englishman," he continued in his rasping voice not corresponding to his physical bulk, "let him be taken to the guardroom. He will have to show his papers."
Cosmo was provoked to say: "Do you expect a gentleman to carry his papers with him when he goes out for a walk?"
He was disconcerted by an outburst of laughter on three sides of him. The leader in the hat did not laugh; he only said bitterly; "We expect papers from a man we find hiding."
"Well, I have no papers on me," said Cosmo, and immediately in a sort of mental illumination thought, "Except in my hat." Of course that object reposing on the top of his head was a bundle of papers, dangerous documents. Attilio was a conspirator. Obviously! The mysterious allusion to something he was to find and hand over to Cantelucci became clear to Cosmo. He felt very indignant with his mysterious acquaintance. "Of course he couldn't foresee I was going to get into this predicament," he thought, as if trying to find an excuse for him already.
"Avanti," commanded the man in front of him.
The grip on his arm of the two others tightened, resistance was no use though he felt sorely tempted again to engage in a struggle. If only he could free himself for a moment, dash off into the darkness, and throw that absurd packet away somewhere before they caught him again. It was a sort of solution; but he discovered in himself an unsuspected and unreasoning loyalty. "No! Somebody would find it and take it to the police," he thought. "If we come near the quay I may manage to fling it on the water."
He said with lofty negligence: "You needn't hold my arms."
This suggestion was met by a profound silence. Neither of the men holding him relaxed his grasp. Another was treading close on his heels, while the police-hound in the big hat marched a couple of paces in front of him, importantly.
Before long they approached the guardhouse close enough for Cosmo to see the sentry at the foot of the steps, who challenged them militarily. The shim in the hat advanced alone and made himself known in the light streaming through the door. It was too late to attempt anything. As he was impelled by his two captors inside the guardroom, which was lighted by a smoky lamp and also full of tobacco smoke, Cosmo thought, "I am in for it. What a horrible nuisance! I wonder whether they will search me?"
At Cosmo's entrance with his escort several soldiers reclining on the floor raised their heads. It was a small place which may have been used as a store for sails or cordage. The furniture consisted of one long bench, a rack of muskets, a table, and one chair. A sergeant sitting on that chair rose and talked with the headsbirrofor a time in a familiar and interested manner about the incidents of the chase, before he even looked at Cosmo. Cosmo could not hear the words. The sergeant was a fine man with long black moustaches and a great scar on his cheek. He nodded from time to time in an understanding manner to the man in the hat, whom the light of the guardroom disclosed as the possessor of very small eyes, a short thick beard, and a pear-shaped yellow physiognomy which had a pained expression. At the suggestion of thesbirri(they had let him go) Cosmo sat down on a bench running along the wall. Part of it was occupied by a soldier stretched at full length with his head on his knapsack and with his shako hung above him on the wall. He was profoundly asleep. "Perhaps that's the fellow who took those shots at me," thought Cosmo. Another of thesbirriapproached Cosmo and with a propitiatory smile handed him his cloak. Cosmo had forgotten all about it.
"I carried it behind the signore all the way," he murmured with an air of secrecy; and Cosmo was moved to say: "You ought to have brought it to me at Cantelucci's inn," in a significant tone. The man made a deprecatory gesture and said in a low voice: "The signore may want it to-night."
He was young. His eyes met Cosmo's without flinching.
"I see," whispered Cosmo. "What is going to be done with me?" The man looked away indifferently and said: "I am new at this work; but there is a post of royal gendarmerie on the other side of the harbour."
He threw himself on the bench by Cosmo's side, stretched his legs out, folded his arms across his breast, and yawned unconcernedly.
"Can I trust him?" Cosmo asked himself. Nobody seemed to pay any attention to him. Thesbirroin the hat bustled out of the guardroom in great haste; the other two remained on guard; the sergeant sitting astride the chair folded his arms on the back of it and stared at the night through the open door. Thesbirroby Cosmo's side muttered, looking up at the ceiling: "I think Barbone is gone to find a boatman." From this Cosmo understood that he was going to be taken across the harbour and given up to the gendarmes. He thought, "If they insist upon searching me I would have to submit and in any case a hat is not a hiding-place. I may just as well hand the packet over without a struggle." A bright idea struck him. "If those fellows take me over there in a boat to save themselves the trouble of walking round the harbour I will simply contrive to drop my hat overboard—even if they do hold my arms during the passage." He was now convinced that Attilio belonged to some secret society. He certainly was no common fellow. He wondered what had happened to him. Was he slinking and dodging about the low parts of the town on his way to some refuge; or had he really found the excitable man and the grumpy man still waiting under the tower with a boat? Most unlikely after such an alarming commotion of yells and shots. He feared that Attilio, unable to get away, could hardly avoid being caught to-morrow, or at the furthest next day. He himself obviously did not expect anything better; or else he would not have been so anxious to get rid of those papers. Cosmo concluded that conspirators were perfectly absurd with their passion for documents, which were invariably found at a critical time and sent them all to the gallows.
He noticed the eyes of the sergeant, a Croat, with pendent black moustaches, fixed on his hat, and at once felt uneasy as if he had belonged to a secret society himself. His hat was the latest thing in men's round hats which he had bought in Paris. But, almost directly, the sergeant's eyes wandered off to the doorway and resumed their stare. Cosmo was relieved. He decided, however, to attempt no communication with the young police fellow whose lounging attitude, abandoned and drowsy, and almost touching elbows with him, seemed to Cosmo too suggestive to be trustworthy. And indeed, he reflected, what could he do for him?
His excitement about this adventure was combined in a strange way with a state of inward peace which he had not known for hours. He wondered at his loyalty to the astute Attilio. He would have been justified in regarding the transaction as a scurvy trick; whereas he found that he could not help contemplating it as a matter of trust. He went on exercising his wits upon the problem of those documents (he was sure those were papers of some kind) which he had been asked to give to Cantelucci (how surprised he would be), since apparently the innkeeper was a conspirator too. Yet, he thought, it would be better to destroy them than to let them fall into the hands of the Piedmontese justice, or the Austrian military command. "I must contrive," he thought, "to get rid of them in the boat. I can always shake my hat overboard accidentally." But the packet would float and some boatman would be sure to find it during the day. On the other hand, by the time daylight came the handwriting would probably have become illegible. Or perhaps not? Fire, not water, was what he needed. If there had been a fire in that inexpressibly dirty guardroom he would have made use of it at once under the very noses of those wild-looking Croats. But would that have been the proper thing to do in such a hurry?
He had not come to any conclusion before Barbone returned, accompanied by a silver-haired, meek old fellow, with a nut-brown face, bare-footed and bare-armed, and carrying a pair of sculls over his shoulder, whom Barbone pushed in front of the sergeant. The latter took his short pipe out of his mouth, spat on one side, looked at the old man with a fixed savage stare, and finally nodded. At Cosmo he did not look at all, but to Barbone he handed a key with the words, "Bring it back." Thesbirriclosed round Cosmo and Barbone uttered a growl with a gesture towards the door. Why Barbone should require a key to take him out of doors Cosmo could not understand. Unless it were the key of liberty. But it was not likely that the fierce Croat and the gloomy Barbone should have indulged in symbolic actions. The mariner with the sculls on his shoulder followed the group patiently to where, on the very edge of the quay, the Austrian soldier with his musket shouldered paced to and fro across the streak of reddish light from the garrison door. He swung round and stood, very martial, in front of the group, but at the sight of the key exhibited to him by Barbone moved out of the way. The air was calm but chilly. Below the level of the quay there was the clinking of metal and the rattling of small chains, and Cosmo then discovered that the key belonged to a padlock securing the chain to which quite a lot of small rowing boats were moored. The young policeman said from behind into Cosmo's ear, "The signore is always forgetting his cloak," and threw it lightly on Cosmo's shoulders. He explained also that every night all the small boats in the port were collected and secured like this on both sides of the port and the Austrians furnished the sentry to look after them on this side. The object was that there should be no boats moving after ten o'clock, except the galley of thedoganaand of course the boat of the English man-of-war.
"Come and see me at noon at Cantelucci's inn," whispered Cosmo, to which the other breathed out a "Certainly, Excellency," feelingly before going up the steps.
Cosmo found himself presently sitting in a boat between twosbirri.The ancient fellow shoved off and shipped his oars. From the quay, high above, Barbone's voice shouted to him, "The gendarmes will take charge of your boat for the rest of the night." The old boatman's only answer was a deep sigh, and in a very few strokes the quay with the sentry receded into the darkness. One of thesbirriremarked in a tone of satisfaction, "Our service will be over after we have given up the signore there." The other said, "I hope the signore will consider we have been kept late on his account." Cosmo, who was contemplating with immense distaste the prospect of being delivered up to the gendarmes, emitted a mirthless laugh, and after a while said in a cold tone: "Why waste your time in pulling to the other side of the harbour? Put me on board the nearest vessel. I'll soon find my way to the quay from onetartaneto another, and your service would be over at once."
The fellow on his left assumed an astonishing seriousness: "Most of thosetartaneshave a dog on board. We could not expose an illustrious stranger to get bitten by one of these ugly brutes."
But the other had no mind for grave mockery. In a harsh and overbearing tone he ordered the boatman to pull well into the middle of the harbour away from the moored craft.
It was like crossing a lake overshadowed by the hills with the breakwaters prolonging the shore to seaward. The old man raised and dipped his oars slowly, without a sound, and the long trails of starlight trembled on the ripples on each side of the boat. When they had progressed far enough to open the harbour entrance Cosmo detected between the end of the jetties far away—he was glancing casually about—a dark speck about the size of a man's head, which ought not to have been there. The air was perfectly still and the stars thick on the horizon. It struck him at once that it could be nothing than either the English man-of-war's boat or the boat of thedogana, since no others were allowed to move at night. His thoughts were, however, so busy with speculating as to what he had better do that he paid no more attention to that remarkable speck. He looked absently at the silver-haired boatman pulling an easy stroke and asked himself: Was it or was it not time to lose his hat overboard? How could he contrive to make it look plausible in this absurd calm? Then he reproached himself for reasoning as if those two low fellows (whose proximity had grown extremely irksome to him) had wits of preternatural sharpness. If he were to snatch it and fling it away they would probably conclude that he was trying to make himself troublesome, or simply mad, or anything in the world rather than guess that he had in his hat something which he wanted to destroy. He undid quietly the clasp of his cloak and rested his hands on his knees. His guardians did not think it necessary now to hold his arms. In fact they did not seem to pay much attention to him. Cosmo asked himself for a moment whether he would island up suddenly and jump into the water. Of course he knew that fully clothed and in his boots they would very soon get hold of him, but the object would have been attained. However, the prospect of being towed behind a boat to the custom-house quay by the collar of his coat and being led into the presence of the gendarmes looking like a drowned rat was so disagreeable that he rejected that plan.
By that time the boat had reached little more than half way across the harbour. The great body of the shipping was merged with the shore. The nearest vessels were a polacca brig and xebec lying at anchor. Both were shadowy, and the last, with her low spars, a mere low smudge on the dim sheen of the water. From time to time the aged boatman emitted a moan. The boat seemed hardly to move. Everything afloat was silent and dark. The crews of the coasters were ashore or asleep; and if there were any dogs on board any of them they too seemed plunged in the same slumber that lay over all things of the earth, and by contrast with which the stars of heaven looked intensely wakeful. In the midst of his perplexities Cosmo enjoyed the feeling of peace that had come to him directly his trouble had begun.
"We will be all night getting across," growled suddenly the man on his left. ". . . I don't know what Barbone was thinking of to get this antiquity out of his bed."
"I told him there was hardly any breath in my old body," declared the boatman's tranquil voice.
Apparently in order to speak he had to cease rowing, for he rested on his oars while he went on in the grave-like silence. "But he raged like a devil; and rather than let him wake up all the neighbours I came out. I may just as well die in the boat as in bed."
Bothsbirriexclaimed indignantly against Barbone, but neither offered to take the sculls. With a painful groan the old man began to pull again. Cosmo asked: "What's that dark thing between the heads of the jetties?" One of his captors, turning his head to look, said, "That must be the galley. I wish she would come this way. We would ask her for a tow." The other man remarked sarcastically, "No fear, they are all snoozing in her except one perhaps to keep a lookout. It's an easy life. . . .Voga, vecchio, yoga."
Cosmo thought suddenly that if by any chance the man-of-war boat happened to be pulling that way he would hail her without hesitation, and, surely, the officer in charge would not leave him in the hands of those villains without at least listening to his tale. Unluckily their way across the harbour did not take them near the man-of-war. The light at her mizzen peak seemed to Cosmo very far away; so that if it had not burned against the dark background of the land it would have seemed more distant than any star, and not half as brightly vigilant. He took his eyes from it and let them rest idly on the water ahead. Thesbirroon his right hand emitted an immense yawn. This provided the other to mutter curses on the tediousness of all this affair. Cosmo had been too perplexed to feel bored. Just then as if in antagonism to those offensive manifestations he felt very alert. Moreover, the moment when something would have to be done was approaching, a tension of all his senses accumulating in a sort of all-over impatience. While in that state, staring into the night, he caught sight of the man-of-war's boat.
But was it?—well, it was something dark on the water, and as there was no other boat about . . . It was small—well, far off and probably end on. . . . He had heard no sound of rowing . . . lying on her oars . . . He could see nothing now . . . well, here goes, on the chance.
Without stirring a limb he took a long breath and let out the shout of "Boat ahoy" with all the force of his lungs. The volume of tone astonished himself. It seemed to fill the whole of the harbour so effectually that he felt he needn't shout again and he remained as still as a statue. The effect on his neighbours was that both gave a violent start, which set the boat rolling slightly, and in their bewilderment they bent forward to peer into his face with immense eyes. After a time one of them asked in an awestruck murmur, "What's the matter, signore?" and seized his cloak. The other, Cosmo heard distinctly whisper to himself, "That was a war cry," while he also grabbed the cloak. The clasp being undone, it slipped off Cosmo's shoulders and then they clung to his arms. It struck Cosmo as remarkable that the old boatman, had not ceased his feeble rowing for a moment.
The shout had done Cosmo good. It reestablished his self-respect somehow and it sent the blood moving through his veins as if indeed it had been a war cry. He had shaken their nerves. If they had not remained perfectly motionless holding his arms there would have started a scrimmage in that boat which would certainly have ended in the water. But their grip was feeble. They did nothing, but, bending towards each other in front of Cosmo till their heads almost touched, watched his lips from which such an extraordinary shout had come. Cosmo stared stonily ahead as if unconscious of their existence, and again he had that strange illusion of a dark spot ahead of the boat. He thought, "That's no illusion. What a fool I was. It must be a mooring buoy." A couple of minutes elapsed before he thought again, "That old fellow will be right into it, presently."
He didn't consider it his business to utter a warning because the bump he expected happened almost immediately. He had misjudged the distance. Owing to the slow pace the impact was very slight, slighter even than Cosmo expected against such a heavy body as a mooring buoy would be. It was really more like a feeble hollow sound than a shock. Cosmo, who was prepared for it, was really the one that felt it at once, and the ancient boatman looked sharply over his shoulder. He uttered no sound and did not even attempt to rise from the thwart. He simply, as it seemed to Cosmo, let go the oars. Thesbirrionly became aware of something having happened after the hollow bump was repeated, and Cosmo had become aware that the object on the water was not a buoy but another boat not much bigger than theirs. Then they both exclaimed and in their surprise their grip relaxed. One of them cried in astonishment, "An empty boat." It was indeed a surprising occurrence. With no particular purpose in his mind Cosmo stood up while one of thesbirristood up either to catch hold of the boat or push it away, for the two boats were alongside each other by that time. A strange voice in the dark said very loud: "The man in the hat," and as if by enchantment three figures appeared standing in a row. Cosmo had not even time to feel surprised. The two boats started knocking about considerably, and he felt himself seized by the collar and one arm and dragged away violently from between the twosbirriby the power of irresistible arms which as suddenly let him go as if he were an inanimate object, and he fell heavily in the bottom of the second boat almost before his legs were altogether clear of the other. During this violent translation his hat fell off his head without any scheming on his part.
He was not exactly frightened but he was excusably flustered. One is not kidnapped like this without any preliminaries every day. He was painfully aware of being in the way of his new captors. He was kicked in the ribs and his legs were trodden upon. He heard blows being struck against hard substances which he knew were human skulls because of the abortive yells ending in groans. There was a determination and ferocity in this attack combined with the least possible amount of noise. All he could hear were the heavy blows and the hard breathing of the assailants. Then came a sort of helpless splash. "Somebody will get drowned," he thought.
He made haste to pull himself forward from under the feet of the combatants. Luckily for his ribs they were bare, which also added to the quietness of that astonishing development. Once in the bows he sat up, and by that time everything was over. Three shadowy forms were standing in! a row in the boat, motionless, like labourers who had accomplished a notable task. The boat out of which he had been dragged was floating within a yard or two, apparently empty. The whole affair, which could not have lasted more than a minute, seemed to Cosmo to have been absolutely instantaneous. Not a sound came from the shipping along the quays, not even from the brig and the xebec which were the nearest. A sense of final stillness such as follows, for instance, the explosion of a mine and resembles the annihilation of all one's perceptive faculties took possession of Cosmo for a moment. Presently he heard a very earnest but low voice cautioning the silent world: "If you dare make a noise I will come back and kill you." It was perfectly impersonal; it had no direction, no particular destination. Cosmo, who heard the words distinctly, could connect no image of a human being with them. He was roused at last when, dropping his hand on the gunwale, he felt human fingers under it. He snatched his hand away as if burnt and only then looked over. The white hair of the old boatman seemed to rest on the water right against the boat's side. He was holding on silently, even in this position displaying the meek patience of his venerable age—and Cosmo contemplated him in silence. A voice, not at all impersonal this time, said from the stem sheets, "Get out your oars."
"There is a man in the water here," said Cosmo, wondering at his own voice being heard in those fantastic conditions. It produced, however, the desired effect, and almost as soon as he had spoken Cosmo had to help a bearded sailor, who was a complete stranger to him, to haul the old man inside the boat. He was no great weight to get over the gunwale, but they had to handle him as if he had been drowned. He never attempted to help himself. The other men in the boat took an interest in the proceedings.
"Is he dead?" came a subdued inquiry from aft.
"He is very old and feeble," explained Cosmo in an undertone. Somebody swore long but softly, ending with the remark: "Here's a complication."
"That scoundrel Barbone dragged out a dying man," began Cosmo impulsively.
"Va bene, va bene. . . Bundle him in and come aft, signore."
Cosmo, obeying this injunction, found himself sitting in the stem sheets by the side of a man whose first act was to put his hand lightly upon his shoulder in a way that conveyed a sort of gentle exultation. The discovery that the man was Attilio was too startling for comment at the first moment. The next it seemed the most natural thing in the world.
"It seems as if nothing could keep us apart," said that extraordinary man in a low voice. He took his hand off Cosmo's shoulder and directed the two rowers—who, Cosmo surmised, were the whisperers of the tower—to pull under the bows of the brig. "We must hide from those custom-house fellows," he said. "I fancy the galley is coming along."
No other word was uttered till one of the men got hold of the brig's cable and the boat came to a rest with her side against the stem of that vessel, when Cosmo, who now could himself hear the faint noise of rowing, asked Attilio in a whisper: "Are they after you?"
"If they are after anything," answered the other coolly, "they are after a very fine voice. What made you give that shout?"
"I had to behave like a frightened mouse before thosesbirri, on account of those papers you left with me, and I felt that I must assert myself." Cosmo gave this psychological explanation grimly. He changed his tone to add that, fancying he had seen the shape of the English man-of-war's boat, the temptation to hail her had been irresistible.
"Possibly that's what started them. They know nothing of us. Luck was on our side. We slipped in unseen." The sound of rowing meantime had grown loud enough to take away from them all desire for further conversation, for the noise of heavy oars working in their rowlocks has a purposeful relentless character on a still night, and the big twelve-oared galley, pulled with a short quick stroke, seemed to hold an unerring way in its hollow thundering progress. For those in the boat concealed under the bows of the brig the strain of having to listen without being able to see was growing intolerable. Cosmo asked himself anxiously whether he was going to be captured once more before this night of surprises was out, but at the last moment the galley swerved and passed under the stem of the polacca as if bent on taking merely a sweep round the harbour. Everybody in the boat drew a long breath. But almost immediately afterwards the sound of rowing stopped short and everyone in the boat seemed turned again into stone.
At last Attilio breathed into Cosmo's ear, "Per Dio!They have found the other boat."
Cosmo was almost ashamed at the swift eagerness of his fearfully whispered inquiry:
"Are the men in her dead?"
"All I know is that if either of them is able to talk we are lost," Attilio whispered back.
"Thesesbirriwere going to deliver me to the gendarmes," Cosmo began under his breath, when all at once the noise of the oars burst again on their ears abruptly; but soon all apprehension was at an end, because it became clear that the sound was receding towards the east side of the harbour. In fact the custom-house people who had started to row round because of a vague impression that there had been some shouting in the harbour had to their immense surprise come upon a boat which at first seemed empty but which, they soon discovered, contained two human forms huddled up on the bottom boards, apparently dead, but at any rate insensible if they were still breathing. Attilio's surmise that as the quickest way of dealing with this mystery the custom-house officer had decided to tow the boat at once to the police station on the east side was perfectly right; and also his conviction that now or never was his chance to slip out of that harbour where he and his companions felt themselves in a trap the door of which might snap to at any time. At the best it was a desperate situation, he felt. Cosmo felt it, too, if in a more detached way—like a rather unwilling spectator. Yet his anxiety for the safety of his companions was as great as though he had known them all his life. Though he had in a way lost sight of his personal connection he could not help forming his own view, which he poured into Attilio's ear while the two rowers put all their strength into their work.
Tensely rigid at the tiller, Attilio had listened, keeping his eyes fixed on the gap of dark gleaming water between the black heads of the two breakwaters.
"The signore is right," he assented. "We could not hope to escape from that galley once she caught sight of us. Our only chance is to slip out of the port before she gets back to her station outside the jetties. This affair will be a great puzzle to them. They will lose some time talking it over with the gendarmes. Unless one or another of thosesbirricomes to himself."
"Yes. Thosesbirri. . ." murmured Cosmo.
"What would you have? We did our best with the boat-stretchers, I can assure you."
Cosmo had no doubt of that. The sound of crashing blows rained on those wretches' heads had been sickening, but the memory comforted him now. So did the return of the profound stillness after the noise of the galley's oars had died out in the distance. Cosmo took heart till it came upon him suddenly that there never had been a starry sky that gave so much light, no night so amazingly clear, no harbour of such an enormous extent. He felt he must not lose a minute. He jumped up and began to tear off his coat madly. Attilio exclaimed in dismay, "Stay! Don't!" It looked as though his Englishman had made up his mind to swim for it. But Cosmo with a muttered, "I must lend a hand," stepped lightly forward past the rowers, and began to feel under thwarts for a spare oar. Before he found it his hand came in contact with a naked foot. This recalled to him the existence of the ancient boatman. The poor old fellow who had taken no part in the fray had fallen overboard from mere weakness and had had a long soaking in chilly water. He lay curled up in the bows, shivering violently like a dog. For the moment Cosmo was simply vexed at this additional dead weight in the boat. He could think of nothing but of the custom-house galley. He imagined her long, slim, cleaving the glassy water, as if endowed with life, while the clumsy tub in which he sat felt to him a dead thing which had to be tugged along by main force every inch of the way. He set his teeth hard and pulled doggedly as if rowing in a losing race, without turning his head once. Suddenly he became aware of the end of the old Mole gliding past the boat, and that Attilio instead of holding on this way had taken a sweep and was following the outer side of the breakwater towards the shore. Presently, at his word, the oars were taken in, and the boat floated arrested in shallow water amongst the boulders strewn along the base of the Mole. The men panted after their exertions. Not a breath of wind stirred the chilly air. Cosmo returned aft and sat down by Attilio after putting on his coat.
It seemed as though Attilio, while steering with one hand, had managed with the other to go through the pockets of Cosmo's coat, for his first words murmured in an anxious tone were "Signore, where are those papers?"
Cosmo had forgotten all about them. The shock was severe. "The papers," he exclaimed faintly. "In my hat."
"Yes, I put them there. You had it on your head in the boat. I recognized you by it."
"Of course I had it on. Where is it?"
"God knows," said Attilio bitterly. "I was asking you for the papers."
"I only discovered that the packet was in my hat after I put it on," protested Cosmo. "Four were standing over me already."
"Is it possible?" exclaimed Attilio, very low.
"Afterwards I was watched all the time."
While they were exchanging those words in the extremity of their consternation, the man nearest to them went down suddenly on his knees and began to grope under the thwarts industriously. Having heard the word "hat" he had remembered that while battling with thesbirrihe had trodden on some round object which had given way under his foot. He assured the signore that it was a thing that could not be helped while he tendered to him apologetically the rim with one hand and the crown with the other. It was crushed flat like an empty bag, but it was seized with avidity and presently Cosmo's feelings were relieved by the discovery that it still contained the parcel of papers. Attilio took possession of it with a low nervous laugh. It was an emotional sound which, coming from that man, gave Cosmo food for wonder during the few moments the silence lasted before Attilio announced in a whisper, "Here she is."
Cosmo, looking seaward, saw on the black and gleaming water, polished like a mirror for the stars, an opaque hummock resembling the head of a rock; and he thought that the race had been won by a very narrow margin. The galley in fact had reached the heads of the jetties a very few minutes only after the boat. On getting back to his station the officer in the galley pulled about fifty yards clear of the end of the old Mole and ordered his men to lay oars in. He had left the solution of the mystery to the police. It was not his concern; and as he knew nothing of the existence of an outside boat, it never occurred to him to investigate along the coast. Attilio's boat lurking close inshore was invisible from seaward. The distance between the two was great enough to cause the considerable clatter which is made when several oars are laid in together at the word of command to reach Cosmo only as a very faint, almost mysterious, sound. It was the last he was to hear for a very long time. He surrendered to the soft and invincible stillness of air and sea and stars enveloping the active desires and the secret fears of men who have the sombre earth for their stage. At every momentary pause in his long and fantastic adventure it returned with its splendid charm and glorious serenity, resembling the power of a great and unfathomable love whose tenderness like a sacred spell lays to rest all the vividities and all the violences of passionate desire.
Dreamily Cosmo had lost control of the trend of his thoughts, as one does on the verge of sleep. He regained it with a slight start and looked up at the round tower looming up, bulky, at the water's edge. He was back again, having completed the cycle of his adventures and not knowing what would happen next. Everybody was silent. The two men at the thwarts had folded their arms and had let their chins sink on their breasts; while Attilio, sitting in the stern sheets, held his head up in an immobility to which his open eyes lent an air of extreme vigilance. The waste of waters seemed to extend from the shores of Italy to the very confines of the universe, with nothing on it but the black spot of the galley which moved no more than the head of a rock. "We can't stay here till daylight," thought Cosmo.
That same thought was in Attilio's mind. The race between his boat and the galley had been very close. It was very probable that had it not been for Cosmo volunteering to pull the third oar it would have resulted in a dead heat, which of course would have meant capture. As it was, Attilio had just escaped being seen by pulling short round the jetty instead of holding on into the open sea. It was a risky thing to do, but then, since he had jeopardized the success of his escape through his desire to get hold of Cosmo again, there was nothing before him but a choice of risks.
Attilio was a native of a tiny white townlet on the eastern shore of the Gulf of Genoa. His people were all small cultivators and fishermen. Their name was Pieschi, from whose blood came the well-known conspirator against the power of the Dorias and in the days of the Republic. Of this fact Attilio had heard only lately (Cantelucci had told him) with a certain satisfaction. In his early youth, spent on the coast of the South American continent, he had heard much talk of a subversive kind and had become familiar with the idea of revolt looked upon as an assertion of manly dignity and the spiritual aim of life. He had come back to his country about six months before and, beholding the aged faces of some of his people in the unchanged surroundings, it seemed to him that it was his own life that had been very long, though he was only about thirty. Being a relation of Cantelucci he found himself very soon in touch with the humbler members of secret societies, survivals of the revolutionary epoch, stirred up by the downfall of the Empire and inspired by grandiose ideas, by the hatred of the Austrian invaders bringing back with them the old tyrannical superstitions of religion and the oppression of privileged classes. Like the polite innkeeper he believed in the absolute equality of all men. He respected all religions but despised the priests who preached submission and perceived nothing extravagant in the formation of an Italian empire (of which he had the first hint from the irritable old cobbler, the uncle of Cecchina) since there was a great man—a great Emperor—to put at its head, very close at hand. The great thing was to keep him safe from the attempts of all these kings and princes now engaged in plotting against his life in Vienna—till the hour of action came. No small task, for the world outside the ranks of the people was full of his enemies.
Attilio, still and silent by Cosmo's side, was not reproaching himself for having gone in the evening to say good-bye to Cecchina. The girl herself had been surprised to see him, for they had said good-bye already in the afternoon. But this love affair was not quite two months old and he could not have been satisfied with a hurried wordless good-bye, snatched behind a half-closed door, with several people drinking at the long table in Cantelucci's kitchen on one side and a crabbed old woman rummaging noisily in a storeroom at the end of the dark passage. Cecchina had, of course, reproached him for coming, but not very much. Neither of them dreamed of there being any danger in it. Then, straight out of her arms, as it were, he had stepped into that ambush! His presence of mind and his agility proved too much for the party of the stupid Barbone. It was only after he had given them the slip in the maze of small garden plots at the back of the houses that he had time, while lying behind a low wall, to think over this unexpected trouble. He knew that the fellows who were after him belonged to the police, because they had called on the soldiers for assistance; but he concluded that he owed this surprise to some jealous admirer of Cecchina. It was easy enough for any base scoundrel to set the police after a man in these troubled times. It may even have been one of Cantelucci's affiliated friends. His suspicions rested on the small employees who took their meals at the inn, and especially on a lanky scribe with a pointed nose like a rat who had the habit of going in and out through the courier's room, only, Attilio believed, in order to make eyes at Cecchina. That the ambush had been laid on the evening fixed for his departure was a mere coincidence.
The real danger of the position was in having the papers on him, but, anxious that his friends at the tower should not give him up, he came out of his hiding-place too soon. The soldiers had gone away, but thesbirriwere still half-heartedly poking about in dark corners and caught sight of him. Another rush saved him for the moment. The position he felt was growing desperate. He dared not throw away the papers. The discovery of Cosmo sitting amongst the stones was an event so extraordinary in itself that it revolutionized his rational view of life as a whole in the way a miracle might have done. He felt suddenly an awed and confiding love for that marvellous person fate had thrown in his way. The pursuit was close. There was no time to explain. There was no need.
But directly he found himself safe in the boat Attilio began to regret having parted with the papers. It was not much use proceeding on his mission without these documents entrusted to him by Cantelucci, acting on behalf of superior powers.
He asked himself what could have happened to Cosmo? Did the fellows arrest him on suspicion? That was not very likely, and at worst it would not mean more than a short detention. They would not dare to search him, surely. But even if they found the packet Cosmo would declare it his own property and object to its being opened. He had a complete confidence in Cosmo's loyalty and, what was more, in that young Englishman's power to have his own way. He had the manner for that and the face for that. The face and bearing of a man with whom it was lucky to be associated in anything.
The galley being just then at the other end of her beat, Attilio saw his way clear to slip into the harbour. The state of perfect quietness over the whole extent of the harbour encouraged his native audacity. He began by pulling to the east side where the gendarmerie office was near the quay. Everything was quiet there. He made his men lay their oars amongst the shadows of the anchored shipping and waited. Sleep, breathless sleep, reigned on shore and afloat. Attilio began to think that Cosmo could not have been discovered. If so, then he must be nearing Cantelucci's inn by this time. He resolved then to board one of the empty coasters moored to the quay, wait for the morning there, and then go himself to the inn, where he could remain concealed till another departure could be arranged. He told his men to pull gently to the darkest part of the quay. And then he heard Cosmo's mighty shout. He was nearly as confounded by it as thesbirriin the boat. That voice bursting out on the profound stillness seemed loud enough to wake up every sleeper in the town, to bring the stones rolling down the hillsides. And almost at once he thought, "What luck!" The luck of the Englishman's amazing impudence; for what other man would have thought of doing that thing? He told his rowers to lay their oars in quietly and get hold of the boat-stretchers. The extremely, feeble pulling of the old boatman gave the time for these preparations. He whispered his instructions: "We've got to get a foreign signore out of that boat. The others in her will besbirri.Hit them hard." Just before the boats came into contact he recognized Cosmo's form standing up. It was then that he pronounced the words, "the man in the hat," which were heard by Cosmo. Attilio ascribed it all to luck that attended those who had anything to do with that Englishman. Even the very escape unseen from the harbour he ascribed, not to Cosmo's extra oar, but to Cosmo's peculiar personality.
Without departing from his immobility he broke silence by a "signore," pronounced in a distinct but restrained voice. Cosmo was glad to learn the story before the moment came for them to part. But the theory of luck which Attilio tacked on to the facts did not seem to him convincing. He remarked that if Attilio had not come for him at all he would have been far on the way in his mysterious affairs, whereas now he was only in another trap.
For all answer the other murmured, "Si, but I wonder if it would have been the same. Signore, isn't it strange that we should have been drawn together from the first moment you put foot in Genoa?"
"It is," said Cosmo, with an emphasis that encouraged the other to continue, but with a less assured voice.
"Some people of old believed that stars have something to do with meetings and partings by their disposition and that some if not all men have each a star allotted to them."
"Perhaps," said Cosmo in the same subdued voice. "But I believe there is a man greater than you or I who believes he has a star of his own."
"Napoleon, perhaps."
"So I have heard," said Cosmo, and thought, "Here he is, whenever two men meet he is a third, one can't get rid of him."
"I wonder where it is," said Attilio, as if to himself, looking up at the sky. "Or yours, or mine," he added in a still lower tone. "They must be pretty close together."
Cosmo humoured the superstitious strain absently, for he felt a secret sympathy for that man. "Yes, it looks as if yours and mine had been fated to draw together."
"No, I mean all three together."
"Do you? Then you must know more than I do. Though indeed as a matter of fact he is not very far from us where we sit. But don't you think, my friend, that there are men and women, too, whose stars mark them for loneliness no man can approach?"
"You mean because they are great."
"Because they are incomparable," said Cosmo after a short pause, in which Attilio seemed to ponder.
"I like that what you said," Attilio was heard at last. "Their stars may be lonely. Look how still they are. But men are more like ships that come suddenly upon each other without a warning. And yet they, too, are guided by the stars. I can't get over the wonder of our meeting to-night."
"If you hadn't been so long in saying good-bye we wouldn't have met," said Cosmo, looking at the two men dozing on the thwarts, the whisperers of the tower. They were not at all like what he had imagined them to be.
Attilio gazed at his Englishman for a time closely. He seemed to see a smile on Cosmo's lips. Wonder at his omniscience prevented him from making a reply. He preferred not to ask, and yet he was incapable of forming a guess, for there are certain kinds of obviousness that escape speculation.
"You may be right," he said. "It's the first time in my life that I found it hard to say good-bye. I begin to believe," he went on murmuring, "that there are people it would be better for one not to know. There are women . . ."
"Yes," said Cosmo, very low and as if unconscious of what he was saying. "I have seen your faces very close together."
The other made a slight movement away from Cosmo and then bent towards him. "You have seen," he said slowly and stopped short. He was thinking of something that had happened only two hours before. "Oh well," he said with composure, "you know everything, you see everything that happens. Do you know what will happen to us two?"
"It's very likely that when we part we will never see each other again," Cosmo said, resting his elbows on his knees and taking his head between his hands. He did not look like a man preparing to go ashore.
There were no material difficulties absolutely to prevent him from landing. The foot of the tower with the narrow strip of ground which a boat could approach was not sixty yards off, and all this was in the shadow of its own reflection, the high side of the breakwater, the bulk of the tower, making the glassy water dark in that corner of the shore. And besides, the water in which the boat floated was so shallow that Cosmo could have got to land by wading from where the boat lay without wetting himself much above the knees, should Attilio refuse to come out from under the shelter of the rock. But probably Attilio would not have objected. The difficulty was not there.
Attilio must have been thinking on the same subject, as became evident when he asked Cosmo whether thosesbirriknew where he lived. After some reflection Cosmo said that he was quite certain they knew nothing about it. Thesbirrihad put no questions to him. They had not, he said, displayed any particular curiosity about what he was. "But why do you ask?"
"Don't you know?" said Attilio, with only half-affected surprise. "There might have been a dozen of them waiting for you in the neighbourhood on the chance of your returning, and you have no other place to go to."
"No, I haven't," said Cosmo in a tone as though he regretted that circumstance. He thought, however, that there might have been some of them out between the port and the town, and he knew only one way and that not very well, he added.
As a matter of fact that danger was altogether imaginary, because Barbone, who certainly was in the pay of the police for work of that sort, was not imaginative enough to do things without orders, and after sending his prisoner off left the rest of the gendarmes and went home to bed, while his young acolyte went about his own affairs. The other twosbirriwere being medically attended to, one of them especially being very nearly half killed by an unlucky blow on the temple. All the othersbirrocould say in a feeble voice was that there were four in the boat, that they were attacked by an inexplicable murderous gang, and that he imagined that the other two, the prisoner and the boatman, were now dead and very likely at the bottom of the harbour. The brigadier of the gendarmerie could not get any more out of him, and, knowing absolutely nothing of the affair, thought it would be time to make his report to the superior authorities in the morning. All he did was to go round to the places where the boats were chained, which were under his particular charge, and count the boats. Not one was wanting. His responsibility was not engaged.
Thus there was nothing between Cosmo and Cantelucci's inn except his own distaste. There was a strange tameness in that proceeding, a lack of finality, something almost degrading. He imagined himself slinking like a criminal at the back of the beastly guardhouse, starting at shadows, creeping under the colonnade, getting lost in those dreadful deep lanes between palaces, with the constant dread of having suddenly the paws of those vile fellows laid on him and being dragged to some police post with an absurd tale on his lips and without a hat on his head and what for? Simply to get back to that abominable bedroom. However, he would have to go through it.
"Pity you don't know the town," Attilio's cautious voice was heard again, "or else I could tell you of a place where you could spend the remainder of the night and send word to your servant to-morrow. But you could not find it by yourself. And that's a pity. I assure Your Excellency that she is a real good woman. To have a secret place is not such a bad thing. One never knows what one may need, and she is a creature to be trusted. She has an Italian heart and she is agiardinieratoo. What more could I tell you?"
Cosmo thought to himself vaguely that the girl he had seen in Cantelucci's kitchen did not look like a woman gardener, though of course if Attilio had a love affair it would be naturally amongst people of that sort. But it occurred to him that perhaps it was some other woman Attilio was talking about. He made no movement. Attilio's murmurs took on a tone of resignation. "Your luck, signore, will depart with you, and perhaps ours will follow after." Cosmo protested against that unreasonable assumption, which was of course an absurdity but nevertheless touched him in one of those sensitive spots which are like adéfaut d'armurein the battle-harness of various conceits which one wears against one's kind. He considered luck less in a sudden overwhelming conviction of it, in the manner of a man who had crossed the path of a radiating influence, or who had awakened a sleeping and destructive power which would now pursue him to the end of his life. He was young, farouche, mistrustful and austere, not like a stoic, but in the more human way like a man who has been born fastidious. In a sense altogether unworldly. Attilio emitted an audible sigh.
"You won't call it your luck," he pursued. "Well, let us leave it without a name. It is something in you. Your carelessness in following your fantasy, signore, as when you forced your presence on me only two days ago," he insisted, as if carelessness and fantasy were the compelling instruments of success. His voice was at its lowest as he added: "Your genius makes you true to your will."
No human being could have been insensible to such words uttered unexpectedly in a tone of secret earnestness. But Cosmo's inward response was a feeling of profound despondency. He was crushed by their appalling unfitness. For the last twenty-four hours he had been asking himself whether he had a will of his own, and it had seemed to him that he had lost the notion of the real nature of courage. At that very moment while listening to the mysteriously low pitch of Attilio's voice the thought flashed through his mind that there was something within him that made of him a predestined victim of remorse.
"You can't possibly know anything about me, Attilio," he said, "and whatever you like to imagine about me, you will have to put me on shore presently. I can't stay here till the morning, and neither can you," he added. "What are you thinking of doing? What can you do?"
"Is it possible that it is of any interest to the signore? Only the other evening I could not induce you to leave me to myself, and now you are impatient to leave me to my fate. What can I do? I can always take a desperate chance," he paused, and added through his clenched teeth, "and when I think what little I need to make it almost safe . . ." The piously uttered exclamation, "Ah, Dio!" was accompanied by a shake of a clenched fist apparently addressed to the universe, but made as it were discreetly, in keeping with the low and forcible tones.
"And what is that?" asked Cosmo, raising his head.
"Two pairs of stout arms, nothing more. With four oars and this boat and using a little judgment in getting away I would defy that fellow there." He jerked his head towards the galley which in this tideless sea had not shifted her position a yard. "Yes," he went on, "I could even hope to remain unseen on account of a quick dash."