E. W. Hornung_A J Raffles 02 (7 page)

"She was engaged—what! Had I never heard of it? Did I mean to
upset the boat? What was her engagement beside our love?
'Niente, niente,' crooned Faustina, sighing yet smiling through
her tears. No, but what did matter was that the man had
threatened to stab her to the heart—and would do it as soon as
look at her—that I knew.

"I knew it merely from my knowledge of the Neapolitans, for I
had no idea who the man might be. I knew it, and yet I took
this detail better than the fact of the engagement, though now I
began to laugh at both. As if I was going to let her marry
anybody else! As if a hair of her lovely head should be touched
while I lived to protect her! I had a great mind to row away to
blazes with her that very night, and never go near the vineyard
again, or let her either. But we had not a lira between us at
the time, and only the rags in which we sat barefoot in the
boat. Besides, I had to know the name of the animal who had
threatened a woman, and such a woman as this.

"For a long time she refused to tell me, with splendid obduracy;
but I was as determined as she; so at last she made conditions.
I was not to go and get put in prison for sticking a knife into
him—he wasn't worth it—and I did promise not to stab him in
the back. Faustina seemed quite satisfied, though a little
puzzled by my manner, having herself the racial tolerance for
cold steel; and next moment she had taken away my breath. 'It
is Stefano,' she whispered, and hung her head.

"And well she might, poor thing! Stefano, of all creatures on
God's earth—for her!

"Bunny, he was a miserable little undersized wretch—ill-favored
—servile—surly—and second only to his master in bestial
cunning and hypocrisy. His face was enough for me; that was what
I read in it, and I don't often make mistakes. He was
Corbucci's own confidential body-servant, and that alone was
enough to damn him in decent eyes: always came out first on the
Saturday with the spese, to have all ready for his master and
current mistress, and stayed behind on the Monday to clear and
lock up. Stefano! That worm! I could well understand his
threatening a woman with a knife; what beat me was how any woman
could ever have listened to him; above all, that Faustina should
be the one! It passed my comprehension. But I questioned her as
gently as I could; and her explanation was largely the
thread-bare one you would expect. Her parents were so poor.
They were so many in family. Some of them begged—would I
promise never to tell? Then some of them stole—sometimes—and
all knew the pains of actual want. She looked after the cows,
but there were only two of them, and brought the milk to the
vineyard and elsewhere; but that was not employment for more
than one; and there were countless sisters waiting to take her
place. Then he was so rich, Stefano.

"'Rich!' I echoed. 'Stefano?'

"'Si, Arturo mio.'

"Yes, I played the game on that vineyard, Bunny, even to going
my own first name.

"'And how comes he to be rich?' I asked, suspiciously.

"She did not know; but he had given her such beautiful jewels;
the family had lived on them for months, she pretending an
avocat had taken charge of them for her against her marriage.
But I cared nothing about all that.

"'Jewels! Stefano!' I could only mutter.

"'Perhaps the Count has paid for some of them. He is very
kind.'

"'To you, is he?'

"'Oh, yes, very kind.'

"'And you would live in his house afterwards?'

"'Not now, mia cara—not now!'

"'No, by God you don't!' said I in English. 'But you would have
done so, eh?'

"'Of course. That was arranged. The Count is really very
kind.'

"'Do you see anything of him when he comes here?'

"Yes, he had sometimes brought her little presents, sweetmeats,
ribbons, and the like; but the offering had always been made
through this toad of a Stefano. Knowing the men, I now knew
all. But Faustina, she had the pure and simple heart, and the
white soul, by the God who made it, and for all her kindness to
a tattered scapegrace who made love to her in broken Italian
between the ripples and the stars. She was not to know what I
was, remember; and beside Corbucci and his henchman I was the
Archangel Gabriel come down to earth.

"Well, as I lay awake that night, two more lines of Swinburne
came into my head, and came to stay:

"God said 'Let him who wins her take
And keep Faustine.'

"On that couplet I slept at last, and it was my text and
watchword when I awoke in the morning. I forget how well you
know your Swinburne, Bunny; but don't you run away with the idea
that there was anything else in common between his Faustine and
mine. For the last time let me tell you that poor Faustina was
the whitest and the best I ever knew.

"Well, I was strung up for trouble when the next Saturday came,
and I'll tell you what I had done. I had broken the pledge and
burgled Corbucci's villa in my best manner during his absence
in Naples. Not that it gave me the slightest trouble; but no
human being could have told that I had been in, when I came out.
And I had stolen nothing, mark you, but only borrowed a revolver
from a drawer in the Count's desk, with one or two trifling
accessories; for by this time I had the measure of these damned
Neapolitans. They are spry enough with a knife, but you show
them the business end of a shooting-iron, and they'll streak
like rabbits for the nearest hole. But the revolver wasn't for
my own use. It was for Faustina, and I taught her how to use it
in the cave down there by the sea, shooting at candles stuck
upon the rock. The noise in the cave was something frightful,
but high up above it couldn't be heard at all, as we proved to
each other's satisfaction pretty early in the proceedings. So
now Faustina was armed with munitions of self-defence; and I
knew enough of her character to entertain no doubt as to their
spirited use upon occasion. Between the two of us, in fact, our
friend Stefano seemed tolerably certain of a warm week-end.

"But the Saturday brought word that the Count was not coming
this week, being in Rome on business, and unable to return in
time; so for a whole Sunday we were promised peace; and made
bold plans accordingly. There was no further merit in hushing
this thing up. 'Let him who wins her take and keep Faustine.'
Yes, but let him win her openly, or lose her and be damned to
him! So on the Sunday I was going to have it out with her
people—with the Count and Stefano as soon as they showed their
noses. I had no inducement, remember, ever to return to
surreptitious life within a cab-fare of Wormwood Scrubbs.
Faustina and the Bay of Naples were quite good enough for me.
And the prehistoric man in me rather exulted in the idea of
fighting for my desire.

"On the Saturday, however, we were able to meet for the last
time as heretofore—just once more in secret—down there in the
cave—as soon as might be after dark. Neither of us minded if
we were kept for hours; each knew in the end that the other
would come; and there was a charm of its own even in waiting
with such knowledge. But that night I did lose patience: not in
the cave, but up above, where first on one pretext and then on
another the direttore kept me going until I smelt a rat. He was
not given to exacting overtime, this direttore, whose only fault
was his servile subjection to our common boss. It seemed pretty
obvious, therefore, that he was acting upon some secret
instructions from Corbucci himself, and, the moment I suspected
this, I asked him to his face if it was not the case. And it
was; he admitted it with many shrugs, being a conveniently weak
person, whom one felt almost ashamed of bullying as the
occasion demanded.

"The fact was, however, that the Count had sent for him on
finding he had to go to Rome, and had said he was very sorry to
go just then, as among other things he intended to speak to me
about Faustina. Stefano had told him all about his row with
her, and moreover that it was on my account, which Faustina had
never told me, though I had guessed as much for myself. Well,
the Count was going to take his jackal's part for all he was
worth, which was just exactly what I had expected him to do. He
intended going for me on his return, but meanwhile I was not to
make hay in his absence, and so this tool of a direttore had
orders to keep me at it night and day. I undertook not to give
the poor beast away, but at the same time told him I had not the
faintest intention of doing another stroke of work that night.

"It was very dark, and I remember knocking my head against the
oranges as I ran up the long, shallow steps which ended the
journey between the direttore's lodge and the villa itself. But
at the back of the villa was the garden I spoke about, and also
a bare chunk of the cliff where it was bored by that
subterranean stair. So I saw the stars close overhead, and the
fishermen's torches far below, the coastwise lights and the
crimson hieroglyph that spelt Vesuvius, before I plunged into
the darkness of the shaft. And that was the last time I
appreciated the unique and peaceful charm of this outlandish
spot.

"The stair was in two long flights, with an air-hole or two at
the top of the upper one, but not another pin-prick till you
came to the iron gate at the bottom of the lower. As you may
read of an infinitely lighter place, in a finer work of fiction
than you are ever likely to write, Bunny, it was 'gloomy at
noon, dark as midnight at dusk, and black as the ninth plague of
Egypt at midnight.' I won't swear to my quotation, but I will to
those stairs. They were as black that night as the inside of
the safest safe in the strongest strong-room in the Chancery
Lane Deposit. Yet I had not got far down them with my bare feet
before I heard somebody else coming up in boots. You may
imagine what a turn that gave me! It could not be Faustina,
who went barefoot three seasons of the four, and yet there was
Faustina waiting for me down below. What a fright she must have
had! And all at once my own blood ran cold: for the man sang
like a kettle as he plodded up and up. It was, it must be, the
short-winded Count himself, whom we all supposed to be in Rome!

"Higher he came and nearer, nearer, slowly yet hurriedly, now
stopping to cough and gasp, now taking a few steps by
elephantine assault. I should have enjoyed the situation if it
had not been for poor Faustina in the cave; as it was I was
filled with nameless fears. But I could not resist giving that
grampus Corbucci one bad moment on account. A crazy hand-rail
ran up one wall, so I carefully flattened myself against the
other, and he passed within six inches of me, puffing and
wheezing like a brass band. I let him go a few steps higher,
and then I let him have it with both lungs.

"Buona sera, eccellenza, signori!' I roared after him. And a
scream came down in answer—such a scream! A dozen different
terrors were in it; and the wheezing had stopped, with the old
scoundrel's heart.

"'Chi sta la?' he squeaked at last, gibbering and whimpering
like a whipped monkey, so that I could not bear to miss his
face, and got a match all ready to strike.

"'Arturo, signori.'

"He didn't repeat my name, nor did he damn me in heaps. He did
nothing but wheeze for a good minute, and when he spoke it was
with insinuating civility, in his best English.

"'Come nearer, Arturo. You are in the lower regions down there.
I want to speak with you.'

"'No, thanks. I'm in a hurry,' I said, and dropped that match
back into my pocket. He might be armed, and I was not.

"'So you are in a 'urry!' and he wheezed amusement. 'And you
thought I was still in Rome, no doubt; and so I was until this
afternoon, when I caught train at the eleventh moment, and then
another train from Naples to Pozzuoli. I have been rowed here
now by a fisherman of Pozzuoli. I had not time to stop anywhere
in Naples, but only to drive from station to station. So I am
without Stefano, Arturo, I am without Stefano.'

"His sly voice sounded preternaturally sly in the absolute
darkness, but even through that impenetrable veil I knew it for
a sham. I had laid hold of the hand-rail. It shook violently
in my hand; he also was holding it where he stood. And these
suppressed tremors, or rather their detection in this way,
struck a strange chill to my heart, just as I was beginning to
pluck it up.

"'It is lucky for Stefano,' said I, grim as death.

"'Ah, but you must not be too 'ard on 'im,' remonstrated the
Count. 'You have stole his girl, he speak with me about it, and
I wish to speak with you. It is very audashuss, Arturo, very
audashuss! Perhaps you are even going to meet her now, eh?'

I told him straight that I was.

"'Then there is no 'urry, for she is not there.'

"'You didn't see her in the cave?' I cried, too delighted at the
thought to keep it to myself.

"'I had no such fortune,' the old devil said.

"'She is there, all the same.'

"'I only wish I 'ad known.'

"'And I've kept her long enough!'

"In fact I threw this over my shoulder as I turned and went
running down.

"'I 'ope you will find her!' his malicious voice came croaking
after me. 'I 'ope you will— I 'ope so.'

"And find her I did."

Raffles had been on his feet some time, unable to sit still or
to stand, moving excitedly about the room. But now he stood
still enough, his elbows on the cast-iron mantelpiece, his head
between his hands.

"Dead?" I whispered.

And he nodded to the wall.

"There was not a sound in the cave. There was no answer to my
voice. Then I went in, and my foot touched hers, and it was
colder than the rock . . . Bunny, they had stabbed her to the
heart. She had fought them, and they had stabbed her to the
heart!"