Three or four weeks passed. They were deep within the bounds of Tyrol. By avoiding towns and highways, travelling often in the night, making prize of every stray sheep, pig, or fowl, and a diligent robbing of henroosts, they had thus far contrived to elude arrest, and support life.
Morton was greatly changed. Body and mind, he was formed for hardship, and toils which would have broken a weaker frame had nerved and strengthened his. But of late their suffering had increased. They found but poor forage among the poverty-pinched mountaineers, and for two days, had had no better sustenance than the soft inner bark of the pine trees. This, with previous abstinence, had sunk them to the last extremity, and brought Max to the verge of despair.
It was a rainy afternoon; rain drizzling in the valleys, clouds hanging on the mountains, dark vapors steaming up from the chasms, and clinging sullenly to the edge of the pine forests. Max and Morton sat under a dripping rock, on a mountain which overhangs a nameless little valley, not far to the north of the Val di Sole.
"Keep a good heart, Max," said Morton, "it shall go hard but you and I will get out of this scrape yet."
Max shook his head despondingly. His bold spirit was starved out of him. Morton's courage, unlike that of his companion, was the result more of his mental habits than of a native constitutional intrepidity, and was therefore much less subject to the changes of his bodily condition. He had proved Max, and knew him to be brave as he was warm and true-hearted; but the corporal's valor, like that of Homer's heroes, was best displayed on a full stomach.
"There's nothing else for it," said Morton; "we must take the bull by the horns. One of those houses below is an inn, or something that pretends to be one. I can see the bush fastened to the door post. We must go and buy food; or else lie here and die."
"It is better to be shot than starve," said Max.
"Come on, then. You must be spokesman. I am go for nothing in that way; but if there's any trouble, I'll stand by you as well as I can."
Max had had a little money in copper and silver, the greater part of which he had consigned to the keeping of Morton, as the more careful treasurer. With this for their passport, they issued from the cover of the woods, and began to cross the mountain slopes and rough pasture that lay between them and the hamlet.
The latter, as they drew near, seemed by no means so insignificant as at first, a rising ground having hidden a part of it. They came to the inn, a low stone building of a most respectable antiquity, and pushing open the door, were met by a short man who seemed to be the owner. Max produced a handful of kreutzers, and asked for bread and meat. The host looked at the strangers, then at their money; seemed satisfied with both, and showed them up a flight of broken steps to a large room above the half-sunken kitchen. Here, at his call, a girl brought the food and placed it on a table. He next asked if they would not have beer; and Max assenting, went out to bring it.
The fugitives now addressed themselves to their meal with the keenness of starving men; but the prudent Morton took care, at the same time, to secure the more portable of the viands for future need. Having dulled the edge of his appetite, he began to grow uneasy at the landlord's long absence.
"What is that man doing? He might have brewed the beer by this time."
"Hedoestake his time," responded Max, also growing anxious.
"This is no place for us. Take the rest of that biscuit, and let's be off."
Max was following this counsel, when—— "Hark!" cried Morton; "what noise is that?"
"Go to the window and look."
Morton did so.
"My God!" he exclaimed, recoiling, his face ghastly with dismay.
Max sprang to the window. Below, at the door, four or five men were standing, and among them two gendarmes, while others were in the act of entering.
The outlandish dress of the two strangers had at once roused the landlord's suspicion. Of Max's character he had not a moment's doubt; for in him no disguise could hide the look and port of the trained soldier. By ill luck, a party of gendarmes were in the village, weather-bound on their way from Latsch. Having secured his guests' money, the landlord thought to make a farther profit from them; and, sure of his reward, reported to the officer in command, that there were in his house two men, the taller of whom was certainly a deserter, while the other could not be a peasant, though he wore the dress of one. The officer mustered his followers, and hastened to beat up the game.
He entered as Max turned from the window, and came up to him, sword in hand.
"I arrest you. Give yourselves up, you and the other."
But before the words were well out of his mouth, the fist of Max fell between his eyes like a battering ram, and dashed him back against the soldier next behind him.
"Come on," cried Max to Morton, and leaped through the open window at the farther end of the room. Morton followed in time to escape two or three bayonet thrusts which were made after him. They both vaulted over a fence, and ran through the narrow passage between an old shed and a huge square stack of the last year's hay. A musket or two were let off at them, but to no effect; and splashing across a shallow brook, they made at headlong speed for the shelter of the mountains.
As they reached the base, Max looked back. Seven or eight gendarmes were after them, and behind, later joining the chase, ran two or three men in a different dress.
"Riflemen!" muttered Max, with an oath.
Breasting the rough heights, clinging to stumps, roots, and bushes, they made their way up with all the speed which desperate need could give them. They were soon among thick trees, hidden from the pursuers, and almost from each other. But the shouts of the soldiers came up from below: they all gave tongue like so many hounds.
"Curse your yelping throats!" gasped Morton. Breathless and half spent, he was clinging to a sapling on the edge of a steep pitch of the hill. One of the soldiers saw him. A musket shot rang from below, the hollow hum of the ball passing high above his head.
Max laughed in fierce derision. They ran forward again across a wide plateau, nearly void of trees; and before they had fairly gained its farther side, the foremost pursuers were at the border of woods they had just left. Their late famine made fatal odds against them. The gendarmes, indeed, gained little in the race; but the more active riflemen were nearer every moment.
Climbing, running, and scrambling among rocks, trees, and bushes, they won their way up till they came to another plateau, which broke the ascent of the mountain a furlong above the former. Across this they dashed at full speed. They were within a rod or two of the woods beyond, Max running on Morton's left, a little in advance of him, when a musket was fired at them from behind. The aim was so bad, that they did not even hear the humming of the bullet. At the next instant, came a dull, plunging report, unlike the former. Max leaped four feet into the air, and fell forward on his face with a force that seemed to shake the earth. Morton kneeled by his side; turned him on his back; lifted him by main strength into a sitting posture. Both his hands were clutched full of grass and earth.
"Max! Max!" cried Morton, in the extremity of anguish; "speak, Max, for God's sake."
But Max said nothing. His hat had fallen off; his eyes rolled wildly under his tangled hair; he gasped; blood flowed from his lips; and a spot of blood was soaking wider and wider upon the breast of his shirt. Then a deathly change came over his dilated eyeballs. Morton had seen the throes of the wounded bison, when the fierce eyes, glaring with angry life, are clouded of a sudden into a dull, cold jelly, fixed unmeaning lumps. It was a change like this that he saw in the eyes of Max. His friend was dead. The fatal rifle of Tyrol had done its work. The ball had pierced him from back to breast, and torn through his heart on its way.
The whole passed in a few moments; but when Morton looked up, nearly all the pursuers were in sight on the open ground, and one of them, the man who had fired the death shot, was almost upon him. He snatched Max's pistol, which had fallen on the grass, and, blind with grief and fury, ran forward, levelled, and pulled the trigger. The pistol, wet with the rain, missed fire. The man was not four paces off. Morton hurled the pistol at his face. The iron barrel clashed against his teeth, and sent him reeling backward, bleeding and half stunned. Griping his hatchet, his best remaining friend, Morton turned for the woods, gained them at three bounds, and tore through the cover like a hunted wolf.
Over rocks, among trees, through thickets and brambles, he struggled and clambered on, seeking safety, like the Rocky Mountain goat, in the rudest and wildest refuge. But in a few minutes, his flight was stopped. Rocks rose before him, and rocks on each side. He was caught in a completecul de sac. He might have climbed the precipices, but, in the act, the shots from below would soon have tumbled him to the earth again. There was no escape; and, grinding his teeth in rage and desperation, he turned savagely at bay.
Three or four of the men were very near him; and almost as he turned, one of them came in sight, pushing through the bushes. As he saw the game, he gave a shout, a sort of view halloo. Then appeared another, and another, all advancing upon him. In a moment, he would have been in their hands, alive or dead; but, without waiting the attack, he sprang on the foremost like a tiger, and plunged his hatchet deep in the soldier's eyes and brain. Then pushing past another, who, with a hesitating movement, was making towards him, he dashed down a sloping mass of rocks, dived into a labyrinth of thickets, and thence into a dark and hollow gorge of the mountain. Along this he ran like one with death's shadow behind him, losing himself deeper and deeper among the chaotic rocks and ragged trees. He stopped, at last, and listened. Far behind, he could hear his pursuers shouting to each other. The pack were at fault, and ranging in vain search after him.
Spent as he was, he pressed on again, following upward for an hour or more the course of a brook, which issued from a narrow glen, reaching far back into the solitude of the mountains. His mind was dim and confused, a cloudland of mixed emotions; deep grief for his murdered friend, deep rage that he had been hunted like a wild beast, a longing for further vengeance, a sense, almost to despair, of his own loneliness and peril. He felt himself outcast from mankind, driven back to find a sanctuary among the dens and fastnesses of Nature. She alone, amid the general frown, seemed propitious; for of a sudden the clouds sundered in the west; a gush of warm light poured across the dripping mountains, and flushed the distant glaciers with their evening rose-tint. In the depths where he stood, all was shadow; but the crags above were basking in the sunshine, and the savage old pines, jewelled with rain drops, seemed stretching their shaggy arms to welcome the kindly radiance. Morton threw himself on the ground, and commended his desperate fortunes to the God of the waste and the mountain.
Whoever, journeying southward from Coire, passes through the Via Mala, thence through the village of Andeer, and thence turns to the left, following a mountain path up the torrent of the Aversa, will soon lose himself in the solitudes of the savage valley of Ferrera. Thither Morton made his way; but not by so smooth an access. Ignorant of the country, and guided chiefly by the sun, he had pushed blindly forward by paths best known to the chamois and those who chase them.
His best hope had been to meet some of his travelling countrymen, from whom he could gain help. To this end he had once and again approached the highways, and as often some real or seeming danger had driven him back to the mountains. For a day or more, the food he had taken from the inn served to support him. He had flung away Max's pistol, but still had his own. It served him to kindle a fire; and by loading it with gravel, in place of shot, he contrived to kill thrushes and other small birds. Their nests, too, full at this time of eggs and young, supplied a meagre resource; and once, being hard pressed, he made a Gallic banquet on a party of serenaders who were croaking and trilling their evening concert about the edge of a shallow pool. Frogs have found warm eulogists; but never did the art of Paris or Bologna transmute those delectable reptiles into so savory a repast as did the famine-sharpened appetite of Morton.
Upon fare like this, he wandered on, till he stumbled upon the valley of Ferrera.
He had found at last an asylum wild enough to content the most pious of eremites, or the most desperate of bandits. Below he saw the raging water foaming along the depths of its black ravine; above—the stupendous ramparts that walled the valley in—cliffs, along whose giddy verge the firs were dwindled to feathers. Cascades spouted from their tops, scattering to mist and nothingness long before their measureless leap was done. The tribute drawn from the clouds the lavish mountain flung back to the clouds again. Rocks were piled on rocks, ruin on ruin, and, high over all, the glaciers of the Splugen shone like cliffs of silver.
Take a savage from his woods or his prairies, and, school him as you will, the ingrained savage will still declare itself. Take the most polished of mankind, turn him into the wilderness, and forthwith the dormant savage begins to appear. Hunt him with enemies, gnaw him with hunger, beat him with wind and rain, and observe the result; how the delicate tissues of civilization are blown away, how rude passions start into life, how his bodily cravings grow clamorous and importunate, how he grows reckless of his own blood and the blood of others. "Men are as the times." Young Lovelace of the hussars singing a duet at Lady Belgrave'ssoirée, would hardly know himself, hewing down Russian artillerymen at Balaklava.
Had Meredith met his old comrade as he was making his slow way among the rocks and ravines, in dress no better than the meanest peasant, his face moustached and bearded, and thin and dark with hardship, he would have needed the eyes of a lynx to detect Morton the millionaire. The mind of the latter shared, in some sort, the changes of his outer man. Proscribed and hunted, starved into fierceness, his best friend murdered at his side, his mood was, to say the least, none of the most benign. But, as he toiled on his way, he turned aside to rest in a sunny nook, deep sheltered among rocks. Here, where the fresh grass tempted him, and where, from a jutting crag, the water, trickling from some hidden spring, fell in rapid drops, tinkling into a pool below, and, as they fell, flashing in the sun like a string of diamonds,—here, in this quiet nook, he sat down; and, as he did so, he saw by his side, close nestled in the young grass, a little family of white and purple blossoms. They were blossoms of the crocus, a native of these valleys.
Morton bent over them, and put aside the grass from the delicate petals. A flower will now and then find a voice, and that not a weak one. As he looked, there came in upon him such a surge of recollection, such a memory of New England gardens, such a vision of loved faces, and, chief before them all, the face he best loved, such an awakening of every tender thought that had once possessed him, and all in such overpowering contrast with his present misery, that the famished outlaw burst into a flood of tears.
The Honorable Charles Augustus Murray, recreating himself with a hunting tour among the Pawnees, killed a buffalo; and being, as he assures us, ravenously hungry, proceeded to regale himself on his game, without asking the aid of the cook. Morton, in his wandering, had the good luck to kill a straggling sheep; and being twice as hungry as the Honorable Charles Augustus Murray, it may be set down largely to his credit, if he did not follow that gentleman's example. At all events, the sheep was a windfall of the first magnitude. Morton had woodcraft enough to turn the fleece into a receptacle for carrying such parts of the flesh as best answered his purposes; and thus he was well provisioned for several days.
After various roamings, by night and by day, he came upon a broad road, clearly one of the great alpine passes. Which of them he could not tell. He would have given the world to learn; for he knew nothing of his whereabouts, and thought himself still in Tyrol, or, at the best, in Bormio. His attempts to gain information from the peasants had always failed, and, in one or two instances, had seemed to threaten serious consequences. Though brave enough in the front of an open danger, the secret toils which had been about him so long had taught him to shrink from the face of man. Moreover, he could not speak the prevalent language of the district, and his Italian, which might sometimes have served him, was none of the best. A little local knowledge could have saved him a world of suffering; but, in the lack of it, he pushed blindly on, resolved to die on the mountains rather than risk another prison.
The sky for some days had been overclouded. He had lost the points of the compass; and when he saw the great highway stretching before him, dim and lonely in the gray of the morning, he thought, or hoped, that it would lead him into the heart of Switzerland. It was the pass of the Splugen, where it leaves the Rheinwald. Turning his back on safety, he began to plod on towards the lion's jaws.
Seeing a small cottage, in a recess of the forest, he reconnoitred it, with the laudable view of robbing a henroost. While thus employed, he saw two men leave the house, and betake themselves to their work in some remote part of the mountain. After a long reconnaissance, he could see no one about the place but a young woman, about six feet high, who, fork in hand, was busying herself in a field with labors much less elegant than useful. Morton watched her for a time, then, taking heart of grace, walked towards her from his lurking-place, holding between his fingers, as a talisman, a piece of silver, part of the scanty trust which Max had left him.
When he beheld her lusty proportions, her white teeth, grinning between perplexity at his appearance and pleasure at sight of the coin, and her broad cheeks, ruddy with health, good-nature, and stupidity, his apprehensions vanished. She seemed not at all afraid of him. In truth, she and her pitchfork might between them have put two common men to flight. He spoke to her in bad Italian, and asked for food, proffering the money in exchange. She answered in apatoiswhich was Greek to him, mixed with a few words of Italian, worse than his own. She seemed, however, to catch his meaning very clearly; for, running to the house, she presently emerged with a loaf of barley bread and a formidable piece of bacon. These she gave him, and, taking the silver, tied it up with much care in a corner of her apron.
Thus far successful, Morton next tried to learn something touching the country and the routes; but here his failure was signal. Where food and drink were the topics in hand, and especially when her wits were quickened by the sight of silver, she had contrived to understand him; but with matters more abstruse her faculties had never been trained to grapple. She showed, however, no lack of good-will, nodding, laughing, and answering, "Si, si!" to all his questions indiscriminately. With this he had to content himself. He bade her "addio," received a friendly nod and grin in return, and went on his way, much less bitter against mankind than he had been ten minutes before.
Auf.Your hand! Most welcome.1 Serv.Here's a strange alteration!2 Serv.By my hand, I had thought to have strucken him with a cudgel; and yet my mind gave me his clothes made a false report of him.—Coriolanus.
In passing the Splugen, Morton journeyed chiefly in the night, making a wide detour over the crusted snow to avoid the station at the summit. By day, he found some safe retreat where he could rest and sleep in tolerable ease and warmth. His night progress was, for the most part, on a broad, clear road, very different from that rugged path by the Cardinel, where, some forty-seven years before, the avalanches cut through Macdonald's columns, and swept men and horses to bottomless ruin.
The sky was still clouded; but there was a full moon behind the clouds, and the mountains reflected its light, from their vast surfaces of snow. He could hear any approaching foot from a great distance, for there was nothing to break the stillness but the hollow fall of torrents, and the whisper and moan of winds through ravines and gorges.
On the third night, he was descending the defiles that lead from Campo Dolcino to Chiavenna. He passed Chiavenna, and soon a new scene opened upon him. The Alps were behind him, cliff and chasm, torrent and ravine, and the icy sheen of glaciers. Italy received him, robed in her "fatal gift of beauty;" in the midst of her shame, radiant as in her day of honor; breathing still of history, and art, and poetry.
Standing on the heights behind Colico, he saw the Lake of Como stretching southward, its banks studded with villas, its hills green with the chestnut and the laurel, the fig, pomegranate, and vine. But, to the north, the sheer cliffs rose like a battlement, and, higher yet, towered cold white peaks, aloof in stern and lofty desolation.
Reality will now and then make fancy blush for herself. The Easter illumination of St. Peter's may match the wildest dream of the Arabian Nights; and this scene on the Lake of Como, with the sunset upon it, may outvie the highest wrought counterfeit of Claude or Salvator, or both combined. The world, much abused as she is, does her part. She is profuse of beauties; but, in the midst of them, one still drags with him his own work-day identity. Go where he will, his old Adam still hangs about him; and the spell-breaking sense that he is himself and no other scatters every charm that Art and Nature would cast over him.
Morton, poor devil, had other matters to think of than scenery. Hunger and danger are a cure for the most rabid love of landscape. His bread and bacon had given out, and the phantom of an Austriansbirrorode him like a nightmare. Mustering his best recollections of geography, he came to the belief that he was either on the Lake of Como, or, as seemed to him much more likely, on the lake farther eastward, that of Garda. One thing was certain: he was on a great route of travel. His best course, as he thought, was to watch for the chance of a meeting with some American or English tourist, to whom he could make his case known; and meanwhile, though a worse actor never appeared on any stage, to pass himself off, if he could, as a beggar.
He passed a night on the hills above Colico, and happily for him, above the malaria; woke half famished from his miserably broken sleep, and wearily walked on his way, wondering if, in support of his character, he could ever find grace to say, "Datemi qualche cosa." There was something in the idea of thus sneaking through a country that grated on him with peculiar discomfort; and to have headed the forlorn hope of a storming party would have been less trying to his nerve.
The thought how to content the cravings of his hunger soon absorbed all other thoughts. Looking about him, he saw a small white house, standing alone on the road by the shore of the lake; and over the door he could read from afar the sign, "Spaccio di Vino." Famine got the better of caution. He approached warily, ensconced himself behind an old wall, and, quite unseen, began his observations. The house was but a few rods off, on the other side of the road. An old wayfarer sat in the porch, busy in breakfasting on curds, pressed hard like a cheese, a slice of very black and solid-looking bread serving him for a plate. In a few moments, the landlord, a freckled-faced Italian, came to the door, and began to chat with his customer. Morton took a coin from his pocket, walked forth from his hiding-place, and was approaching, still unnoticed, when he was startled by the sound of a horse's tread, on the road beyond the house. A single glance at the rider told him that there was no danger, and made his heart beat with sudden hope.
"Il signor Inglese," remarked the host to his friend.—"Buon' giorno, eccellenza, buon' giorno,"—lifting his white night cap, and bowing with a great flourish.
The young man touched his hat with a careless smile, and half-turning his horse, asked,—
"Padrone, has my man passed this way?"
He had, to Morton's eye, rather the easy manner of a well-bred American, than the more distant bearing common with an English gentleman.
"Eccellenza, si," replied the padrone,—"he passed a quarter of an hour ago, with the birds your excellency has shot."
The young man rode on, passing Morton, as he stood by the roadside.
"I have seen that face before," said the latter to himself—"in a dream, for what I know, but I have seen it."
It was a frank and open face, manly, yet full of kindliness, not without a tinge of melancholy.
"Come of it what will," thought the fugitive, "I will speak to him."
He walked after the retiring horseman, and when an angle of the road concealed him from the inn, quickened his pace almost to a run. But at that moment the Englishman struck into a sharp trot, and disappeared over the ridge of a hill. Morton soon gained sight of him again, and kept him in view for about a mile, when he saw him enter the gateway belonging to a small villa, between the road and the water. It was a very pretty spot; the grounds terraced to the edge of the lake; with laurels, cypresses, box hedges, a fountain or two, an artificial grotto, and a superb diorama of water and mountains.
Morton stood waiting at the gate. At length he saw a female domestic, evidently Italian, passing through the shrubbery before the house, and disappearing behind it. In a few minutes more, a solemn personage appeared at the door, whom he would have known at a mile's distance for an old English servant. He stood looking with great gravity out upon the grounds. Morton approached, and accosting him in Italian, asked to see his master.
John was not a proficient in the tongue of Ariosto and Dante. Indeed, in his intercourse with the natives, he had seen occasion for one phrase alone, and that a somewhat pithy and repellant one,—Andate al diavolo.
He glared with supreme and savage scorn on the tatterdemalion stranger, and uttered his talismanic words,—
"Andarty al devillio!"
Morton changed his tactics; and, looking fixedly at the human mastiff, said in English,—
"Go to your master, sir, and tell him that I wish to speak with him."
The Saxon words and the tone of authority coming from one whom he had taken for a vagrant beggar, astonished the old man beyond utterance. He stared for a moment,—turned to obey,—then turned back again,—
"Mr. Wentworth is at breakfast, sir."
The last monosyllable was spoken in a doubtful tone, the speaker being perplexed between respect for the tone and language of the stranger, and contempt for his vagabond attire.
"Then bring me pen, ink, and paper—I will write to him."
And pushing past the servant, he seated himself on a chair in the hall.
John went for the articles required, first glancing around to see what items of plunder might be within the intruder's reach. Morton in his absence opened several books which lay upon a table; and in one of them he saw, pencilled on the fly leaf, the name of the owner, Robert Wentworth.
The pen, ink, and paper arriving, he wrote as follows, John meanwhile keeping a vigilant guard over him:—
Sir: I am a native of the United States, who, for the past four years, have been a prisoner in the Castle of Ehrenberg, confined for no offence, political or otherwise, but on a groundless suspicion. I escaped by the assistance of a soldier in the garrison, and have made my way thus far in the dress of a peasant. I am anxious to reach Genoa, or some other port beyond the power of Austria, but am embarrassed and endangered by my ignorance of the routes and the state of the country. Information on these points, and the means of communicating with an American consul, are the only aid of which I am in necessity; and I take the liberty of applying to you in the hope of obtaining it. By giving it, you will oblige me in a matter of life and death. The people of the country cannot be trusted; but I may rely securely on the generosity of an English gentleman.Your obedient servant,VASSALLMORTON.
Your obedient servant,VASSALLMORTON.
He sealed the note, and gave it to the old servant. The latter mounted the stairs, and reappearing in a few moments, said, in his former doubtful tone, "Please to walk up."
Morton followed him to the door of a small room looking upon the lake. Near the window stood the young man whom he had seen at the inn, with the note open in his hand. Morton entered, inclining his head slightly. The other returned his salutation, looked at him for an instant without speaking, and then, coming forward, gave him his hand, and bade him welcome with the utmost frankness.
Astonished, and half overcome, Morton could only stammer his acknowledgments for such a reception of one who came with no passport but his own word.
"O," said Wentworth, smiling, "when I meet an honest man, I know him by instinct, as Falstaff knew the true prince. Sit down; I am glad to see you; and shall be still more glad if I can help you."
The old servant received some whispered directions, and left the room. Morton gave a short outline of his story, to which his host listened with unequivocal signs of interest.
"I wish," said Wentworth, "that you were the only innocent victim of Austrian despotism. It is a monstrous infamy, built on fraud and force, but too refined, too artificial, too complicated to endure."
"Bullets and cold steel are the medicines for it," said Morton.
Here the servant reappeared.
"Here, at all events, you are safe. Stay with me to-day, and I think I can promise you that in a few days more you may stand on the deck of an American frigate. If you will go with John, he will help you to get rid of that villanous disguise."
Morton followed the old man into an adjoining room, where he found a bath, a suit of clothes, and the various appliances of the toilet prepared for him. And here he was left alone to indulge his reflections and revolutionize his outward man.
Meanwhile Wentworth sat musing by the window: "His face haunts me; and yet, for my life, I cannot remember where I have seen him before. I would stake all on his truth and honor. That firm lip and undespairing eye are a history in themselves. Strange—the difference between man and man. How should I have borne such suffering? Why, gone mad, I suppose, or destroyed myself. One sorrow—no, nor a hundred—would never unmanhim, and make him dream away his life, watching the sun rise and set, here by the Lake of Como. I scarcely know why, but my heart warms towards him like an old friend. Cost what it may, I will not leave him till he is out of danger."
He was still musing in this strain, when Morton returned, a changed man in person and in mind. It seemed as if, in casting off his squalid livery of misery and peril, a burden of care had fallen with it; as if the sullen cloud that had brooded over him so long had been pierced at length by a gladdening beam of sunlight, and the sombre landscape were smiling again with pristine light and promise. His buoyant and defiant spirit resumed its native tone; and a strange confidence sprang up within him, as if a desperate crisis of his destiny had been safely passed.
Wentworth saw the change at a glance.
"Why, man, I see freedom in your eye already. But sit down; 'it's ill talking between a full man and a fasting,' and you must be half starved."
Morton was so, in truth. He seated himself at the table, and addressed himself to the repast provided for him with the keenness of a mountain trapper, while his entertainer played with his knife and fork to keep him in countenance.
"Do you know," said Wentworth, at length—"I am sure I have seen you before."
"And I have seen you—I could swear to it; and yet I do not know where."
"Were you ever in England?"
"Only for a few days."
"I was once in America."
"When?"
"In 1839. I was at Boston in March of that year."
Morton shook his head. "I remember that time perfectly. I was in New Orleans in March, and afterwards in Texas."
"From Boston I went westward—up the Missouri and out upon the prairies."
Morton paused a moment in doubt; then sprang to his feet with a joyful exclamation,—
"The prairies! Have you forgotten the Big Horn Branch of the Yellow Stone, and the camp under the old cottonwood trees!"
Wentworth leaped up, and grasped both his guest's hands.
"Forgotten! No; I shall never forget the morning when you came over to us with that tall, half-breed fellow, in a Canadian capote."
"Yes,—Antoine Le Rouge."
"We should have starved if you had not found us, and perhaps lost our scalps into the bargain."
"The Rickarees had made a clean sweep of your horses."
"Not a hoof was left to us. Our four Canadians were scared to death; I was ill; not one of us was fit for service but Ireton; and we had not three days' provision. If you had not given us your spare mules and horses, and seen us safe to Fort Cass, the wolves would have made a supper of some of us."
"And do you remember," said Morton, "after we broke up camp that morning, how the Rickaree devils came galloping at us down the hill, and thought they could ride over us, and how we fought them all the forenoon, lying on our faces behind the pack saddles and baggage?"
"I remember it as if it were yesterday. I can hear the crack of the rifles now, and the yelling of those bloodthirsty vagabonds."
"It is strange," pursued Wentworth, "that I did not recognize you at once. I have thought of you a thousand times; but it is eight years since we met, and you are very much changed. Besides we were together only two days. And yet I can hardly forgive myself."
"Any wandering trapper would have done as much for you as I did; or, if he had not, he would have deserved a cudgelling. What has become of the young man, or boy, rather, who was with you?"
"You mean Ireton. Dead, poor fellow—dead."
"I am very sorry. He was the coolest of us all in the fight. He had a singular face, but a very handsome one. I can recall it distinctly at this moment."
Wentworth took a miniature from a desk, opened it, and placed it before Morton.
"These are his features," said the latter, "but this is the portrait of a lady."
"His sister—his twin sister. Dead too!"
There was a change, as he spoke, in his voice and manner, so marked that Morton forbore to pursue the subject farther. He studied the picture in silence. It was a young and beautiful face, delicate, yet full of fire; and by some subtilty of his craft, the artist had given to the eyes an expression which reminded him of the restless glances which he had seen a caged falcon at the Garden of Plants cast upwards at the sky, into which he was debarred from soaring.
In a few moments, Wentworth spoke in his accustomed tone.
"The point first to be thought of, is to get you out of this predicament. I have a man who took to his bed this morning, and is at present shaking in an ague fit. He is of about your age, height, and complexion; and by wearing his dress, you could travel under his passport. I am not at all a suspected person, and if my friend will pass for a few days as my servant, I do not doubt that we shall reach Genoa without interruption."
Morton warmly expressed his gratitude, but protested against Wentworth's undertaking the journey on his account.
"O, I am going to Genoa for my pleasure, and shall be glad of your company. The steamer for Como touches here this afternoon. 'Dull not device by coldness and delay;' we will go on board, and be in Milan to-morrow."
They conversed for an hour, when Morton withdrew to adjust his new disguise. Wentworth followed him with his eye as he disappeared; then sank into the musing mood which had grown habitual to him.
"When I saw him last,"—so his thoughts shaped themselves,—"my drama was opening; and now it is played out—light and darkness, smiles and tears—and the curtain is dropped forever. When I saw him last, I was gathering the prairie flowers and dedicating them to her,—though she did not suspect it,—and dreaming of her by camp fires and in night watches."
The miniature still lay on the table. He drew it towards him and gazed on it fixedly:—
"Mine for a space, and now—gone—vanished like a dream. You were a meteor between earth and sky, with a light that flickered and blazed and darkened, but a warmth constant and unchanged. Of all who admired the brightness of that erratic star, how few could know what gladness it shed around it, what desolation it has left behind!"
He gazed on the picture till his eyes grew dim; then sat for a few moments, listless and abstracted; then rose, with an effort, and bent his mind to the task before him.
The diligence rolled into Genoa. Wentworth was in thecoupé, and on the top sat Morton, as his servant. They had made the journey without interruption.
Morton reported himself to the American consul, and told his story. The wrath and astonishment of that official were great; but they were as nothing to the patriotic fury of three New York dry goods importers, who, mingling pleasure with business, were just arrived from Paris. Nothing was talked of but an immediate bombardment of Trieste, and a probable assault of Vienna.
Escaping as soon as he could from this demonstration, Morton bade his fervid countrymen good morning, and went out with Wentworth, who introduced him to his banker. He learned from the consul that a merchant brig was in port, nearly ready to sail for home, and gladly took passage in her.
And now at last he was safe; and safety should have brought with it a lightening of the spirits, a sense of relief. In fact, however, it brought little or nothing of the kind. The human mind, happily, cannot well hold more than one crowning evil at a time. One black thought, firmly lodged, will commonly keep the rest at bay. The fear of famine and a prison had left him no leisure to plague himself with less imminent mischiefs; but now, this fear being ousted, a new devil leaped into its empty seat. At the first moment when he could find himself alone, he wrote to Edith Leslie, telling her how he had been imprisoned, how, for almost five wretched years, her image had been his constant friend, how he had escaped, and how he was hastening homeward to claim the fulfilment of her word. He hinted nothing of his conviction that Vinal had been instrumental to his detention. He began divided between hope and fear, but as he wrote, a foreboding grew upon him that she was no longer living, or, at least, no longer living for him. The letter, despatched post haste, would reach home a full fortnight before his own arrival.
Having seen his friend in safety, Wentworth set out on his return; and, as they shook hands at parting, their eyes met with a look that showed how clearly the two men understood each other.
Wentworth smiled as Morton tried to express his gratitude.
"You have cleared that score. I do not mean now the old affair on the Big Horn. I have been dreaming, lately, and you have waked me."
"I should never have imagined that you were dozing."
"Call it what you will. The truth is," added Wentworth, with some hesitation, "an old memory has been hanging about me, and I believe has made a girl of me. But that is past and done. I shall leave the Lake of Como. There is a career for me at home, and a good one, if I will but take it. Come to England, and you will find me there."
Morton went with him past the gates, and, with a heavy heart, watched him on his way northward.