CHAPTER LIITREVANION IN THE TOILS
In sending Trevanion that day to the barracks on the Lung’ Arno—whose door Cassidy had once seen him enter and in whose vicinity the naval surgeon, following this clue, had posted his squad of tars—luck had fallen oddly. The coursed hare has small choice of burrow. The Lanfranchi entrance was the quarry’s only loophole and he took it.
As the hunted man sprang across the threshold he snatched the great iron key from the lock and swung it on the head of his pursuer. The marine dropped with a cut forehead, falling full in the doorway of the room where the service was in progress.
Instantly the gathering was in confusion. The sermon ceased, women screamed and their escorts poured into the hall to meet Cassidy, entering from the street, flushed and exultant, with a half-dozen more blue-jackets.
His foremost pursuer fallen, Trevanion leaped like a stag for the stair. But half-way up he stopped at sight of a figure from whom he could hope no grace. Gordon had heard the signal-shot, armed himself and hastened to the stairway.
For once in his life Cassidy was oblivious of things religious. He had forgot the afternoon’s service. He scarcely saw Dr. Nott’s horror-lifted hands as his cassock fluttered between frightened worshipers to the door. His look did not travel to Gordon or beyond, where Teresa’s agitated face watched palely. His round, peering eyes fastened with malignant triumph on the lowering figure midway of the marble ascent.
“Now, my fine ensign,” he said with exultation, “what have you to say to a trip to thePylades?”
Trevanion’s dark face whitened. But his hand still gripped the key.
“I had enough of your cursed ship!” he flung in surly defiance, “and you’ll not take me, either.”
Cassidy laughed and turned to the seamen at his back. They stepped forward.
In Gordon’s mind, in that moment of tension, crucial forces were weirdly contending. Over the heads of the group below, through the open door, he saw a ship’s jolly-boat, pulling along the Arno bank. Leghorn—thePylades—and years in a military fortress. That was what it meant for Trevanion. And what for him? The peace he coveted, a respite of persecution, for him and for Teresa—the right to live and work unmolested.
It was a lawless act—seizure unwarranted and on a foreign soil; an attempt daring but not courageous—they were ten against one. It was a deed of personal and private revenge on the part of Cassidy. And the man had taken refuge under his roof. For any other he would have interposed from a sheer sense of justice and hatred of hypocrisy. But forhim—a poltroon, a skulker, and—his enemy?
What right had he to interfere? The manner was high-handed, but the penalty owed to British admiralty was just. It was not his affair. The hour he had sat in the moonlight near the Ravenna osteria, when his conscience had accepted this Nemesis, he had put away the temptation to harm him; though the other’s weapon had struck, he had lifted no hand. He had left all to fate. And fate was arranging now.Hehad not summoned those marines!
But through these strident voices sounded a clearer one in his soul. It was not for that long-buried shame and cowardice in Greece—not for the attempt on his life at Bagnacavallo, nor for anything belonging to the present—that Trevanion stood now in this plight. It was ostensibly for an act antedating either, one he himself had known and mentally condoned years ago—a boy’s desertion from a hateful routine. If he let him be taken now, was he not a party to Cassidy’s revenge? Would he be any better than Cassidy? Would it be in him also any less than an ignoble and personal retaliation—what he had promised himself, come what might, he would not seek?
He strode down the stair, past Trevanion, and faced the advancing marines.
“Pardon me,” he said. “This man is in my house. By what right do you pursue him?”
The blue-jackets stopped. A blotch of red sprang in Cassidy’s straw-colored cheeks.
“He is a deserter from a king’s ship. These marines are under orders. Hinder them at your peril!”
“This is Italy, not the high seas,” rejoined Gordoncalmly. “British law does not reach here. You may say that to the captain of thePylades.”
Cassidy turned furiously to his men. “Go on and take him!” he commanded.
Again they advanced, but they looked full into Gordon’s pistol and the voice behind it said:
“That, under this roof, no man shall do! On my word as a peer of England!”
A few moments later, Cassidy, his face purpled with disappointment, had led his marines into the street, the agitated clergyman had gathered his flock again, and the hall was clear.
A postern gate opened from the Lanfranchi garden and to this Gordon led Trevanion without a word. The latter passed out with eyes that did not meet his deliverer’s.
As Gordon climbed the stairway to where Teresa waited, shaken with the occurrence, the Rev. Dr. Nott was rounding the services so abruptly terminated with the shorter benediction:
“The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost, be with us all evermore.Amen.”