Consumed by conflicting emotions, and torn by a thousand hopes and fears, Maxwell set out on his journey to Rome. At any hazards, he was determined to commit no crime, and trusted to time and his own native wit to show him a way out of the awful difficulty which lay before him. All the old familiar country he passed through failed to interest him now; he saw nothing but his own fate before his eyes; and the Eternal City, which had once been a place of mystery and delight to him, now looked to his distorted fancy like a tomb, every broken statue an avenging finger, and every fractured column a solemn warning.
It was night when he arrived and secured apartments—the old ones he had occupied in his student days, the happiest time in his life, he thought now, as every ornament recalled this silent voice or that forgotten memory slumbering in some corner of his brain. He could eat nothing; the very air of the place was oppressive to him; so he put on his hat and walked out into the streets, all alive with the citizens taking their evening walk, and gay with light laughter over flirtations and cigarette smoke. He wandered long and far, so far, that it was late when he returned; and there, lying on the table, was a sealed packet, bearing the device of the Order, and in the corner two crossed daggers. He groaned as he opened it, knowing full well the packet contained the hated ‘instructions,’ as they were called. He tore them open, read them hastily, and then looked out of the window up to the silent stars. And it was Visci, his old friend Carlo Visci, he was sent here—to murder! The whole thing seemed like a ghastly dream. Visci, the truest-hearted friend man ever had; Visci, the handsome genius, whose purse was ever ready for a fellow-creature in need; the man who had sat at his table times out of number; the student who was in his secrets; the man who had saved his life, snatched him from the very jaws of death—from the yellow waters of the Tiber. And this was the friend he was going to stab in the back some dark night! A party of noisy, light-hearted students passed down the street, some English voices amongst them, coming vaguely to Maxwell’s ears, as he sat there looking on the fatal documents, staring him in the face from the table.
‘Et tu, Brute!’
Maxwell looked up swiftly. And there, with one trembling forefinger pointing to the open documents, stood the figure of a man with a look of infinite sorrow on his face, as he gazed mournfully down upon the table. He was young—not more than thirty, perhaps, and his aquiline features bore the marks of much physical suffering. There were something like tears in his eyes now.
‘Carlo! is it possible it is you?’ Maxwell cried, springing to his feet.
‘Yes, Fred, it is I, Carlo Visci, who stand before you. We are well met, old friend; you have not far to seek to do your bidding now. Strike! while I look the other way, for it is your task, I know.’
‘As there is a heaven above us, no!’ Maxwell faltered. ‘Never, my friend! Do you think I would have come for this? Listen to me, Visci. You evidently know why I am here; but sure as I am a man, never shall my hand be the one to do you hurt. I have sworn it!’
‘I had expected something like this,’ Visci replied mournfully. ‘Yes, I know why you came. You had best comply with my request. It would be a kindness to me to kill me, as I stand here now.’
‘Visci, I swear to you that when I joined the Brotherhood, I was in the blackest ignorance of its secret workings. When I was chosen for this mission, I did not even comprehend what I had to do. Then they told me Visci was a traitor. Even then, I did not know it was you. Standing there in the room, I swore never to harm a hair of your head; and, heaven help me, I never will!’
‘Yes, I am a traitor, like you,’ Visci smiled mournfully. ‘Like you, I was deceived by claptrap talk of liberty and freedom; like you, I was allotted to take vengeance on a traitor; and like you, I refused. Better the secret dagger than the crime of fratricide upon one’s soul!’
‘Fratricide! I do not understand.’
‘I do not understand either. Frederick, the man I was detailed to murder—for it is nothing else—is my only brother.—You start! But the League does not countenance relationships. Flesh and blood and such paltry ties are nothing to the friends of liberty, who are at heart the sternest tyrants that ever the mouth of man execrated.—But what brings you here? You can have only one object in coming here. I have told you before it would be a kindness to end my existence.’
‘But why? And yet, when I come to look at you again, you have changed.’
‘I have changed,’ Visci echoed mournfully—‘changed in mind and body. My heart is affected, diseased beyond all hope of remedy. I may die now, at any moment; I cannot live four months.’
They sat down together, and fell to discussing old times when they were happy careless students together, and Maxwell did not fail to notice the painful breathing and quick gasping spasms of his friend, altered almost beyond recognition from the gallant Visci of other days.
‘Salvarini advised me to come here. You remember him; he claims to be a true friend of yours,’ Maxwell observed at length. ‘He said it would gain time, and enable me to form my plans.—But tell me how you knew I was in Rome. I have only just arrived.’
‘I had a sure warning. It came from the hand of Isodore herself.’
‘I have heard much of her; she seems all-powerful. But I thought she was too stern a Leaguer to give you such friendly counsel. Have you ever seen her? I hear she is very beautiful.’
‘Beautiful as the stars, I am told, and a noble-hearted woman too. She is a sort of Queen of the League; but she uses her power well, ever erring on the side of mercy. She has a history, report says—the old story of a woman’s trustfulness and a man’s deceit. Poor Isodore! hers is no bed of roses!’
‘And she put you on your guard?’ Maxwell asked. ‘Come, there must be some good in a woman like that, though I cannot say I altogether like your picture. I should like to see her.’
‘I should not be surprised if you did before many days. She is the one to protect you from violence. With her sanction, you could laugh the mandates of the League to scorn. Had I long to live, I should sue for her protection, and wherever she may be, she would come to me. Even now, if she comes to Rome, see her if you can and lay your case before her.’
‘And shield myself behind a woman! That does not sound like the chivalrous Visci of old. She is only a woman, after all.’
‘One in a million,’ Visci answered calmly. ‘If she holds out her right hand to you, cling to it as a drowning desperate man does to a rock; it is your only chance of salvation.—And now it is late. I must go.’
Despite his own better sense, Maxwell began to dwell upon the fact of gaining assistance from the mysterious Isodore. At meetings of the League in London, he had heard her name mentioned, and always with the utmost reverence and affection. If she could not absolutely relieve him from his undertaking, she could at anyrate shield him from non-compliance with the mandate. Full of these cheerful thoughts, he fell asleep.
He found his friend the following morning quite cheerful, but in the daylight the ravages of disease were painfully apparent. The dark rings under the eyes and the thin features bespoke nights of racking pain and broken rest.
Visci noticed this and smiled gently. ‘Yes, I am changed,’ he said. ‘Sometimes, after a bad night, I hardly know myself. It is cruel, weary work lying awake hour after hour fighting with the grim King. But I have been singularly free from pain lately, and I am looking much better than I have been.’
‘There might be a chance yet,’ Maxwell replied with a cheerfulness wholly assumed, and thinking that this ‘looking better’ was the nearest approach to death he had ever seen. ‘An absence from Rome, a change of climate, has done wonders for people before now.’
Visci shook his head. ‘Not when the mainspring of life is broken,’ he said: ‘no human ingenuity, no miracle of surgery can mend that. Maxwell, if they had deferred their vengeance long, they would have been too late. Some inward monitor tells me I shall fail them yet.’
‘You will for me, Visci, you may depend upon that. Time is no object to me.’
‘And if I should die and disappoint you of your revenge, how mad you would be!’ Visci laughed. ‘It is a dreadful tragedy to me; it is a very serious thing for you; and yet there is a comic side to it, as there is in all things. Ah me! I cannot see the droll side of life as I used; but when the bloodthirsty murderer sits down with his victim tête-à-tête, discussing the crime, there is something laughable in it after all.’
‘I daresay there is,’ Maxwell answered grimly, ‘though I am dense enough not to notice it. To me, there is something horribly, repulsively tragic about it, even to hear you discussing death in that light way.’
‘Familiarity breeds contempt. Is not that one of your English proverbs?’ Visci said airily.—‘But, my good Frederick,’ he continued, lowering his voice to a solemn key, ‘the white horseman will not find me unprepared, when he steals upon me, as he might at any moment. I am ready. I do not make a parade of my religion, but I have tried to do what is right and honest and honourable. I have faced death so often, that I treat him lightly at times. But never fear that when he comes to me for the last time’——
Maxwell pressed his friend’s hand in silent sympathy. ‘You always were a good fellow, Visci,’ he said; ‘and if this hour must come so speedily, tell me is there anything I can do for you when—when’——
‘I am dead? No reason to hesitate over the word. No, Maxwell; my house is in order. I have no friends besides my brother; and he, I hope, is far beyond the vengeance of the League now.’
‘Then there is nothing I can do for you in any way?’
‘No, I think not. But you are my principal care now; your life is far more important than mine. I have written to Isodore, laying a statement of all the facts before her; and if she is the woman I take her for, she is sure to lose no time in getting here. Once under her protection, you are safe; there will be no further cause for alarm.’
‘But it seems rather unmanly,’ Maxwell urged.
‘Unmanly!’ echoed Visci scornfully. ‘What has manliness to do with fighting cowardly vendetti in the dark? You must, you shall do it!’ he continued vehemently; but the exertion was too much for him, and he swayed forward over the table as if he would fall. Presently, a little colour crept into the pallid face, and he continued: ‘You see, even that is too much for me. Maxwell, if you contradict me and get me angry, my blood will be upon your head after all. Now, do listen to reason.’
‘If my want of common-sense hurts you as much as that, certainly. But I do not see how this mysterious princess can help me.’
‘Listen to me,’ Visci said solemnly. Then he laid all his schemes before the other—his elaborate plans for his friend’s safety, designs whose pure sacrifice of self were absolutely touching.
Maxwell began to take heart again. ‘You are very good,’ he said gratefully, ‘to take all this infinite pains for me.’
‘In a like strait you would do the same for me, Fred.’
‘Yes,’ Maxwell answered simply. ‘How Salvarini’s words come back to me now! Do you remember, when I wanted to throw my insignia out of the window that evening, the last we all spent together?’
‘I recollect. It was two days before little Genevieve disappeared,’ Visci answered sadly.—‘Do you know, I have never discovered any trace of her or Lucrece. Poor child, poor little girl! I wonder where she is now.’
‘Perhaps you may see her again some day.’
‘It has long been my dearest wish; but it will never be fulfilled now. If ever you do see her once more, say that I’——
‘Visci!’
As the last words fell from the Italian’s lips, his head hung forward, and he fell from his chair. For a moment he lay motionless, then raised his face slightly and smiled. A thin stream of blood trickled down his fair beard, staining it scarlet. He lay quietly on Maxwell’s shoulder.
‘Do not be alarmed,’ he said faintly. ‘It has come at last.—There are tears in your eyes, Fred. Do not weep for me. Do not forget Carlo Visci, when you see old friends; and when you meet little Genevieve, tell her I forgave her, and to the last loved and grieved for her.—Good-bye, old friend. Take hold of my hand. Let me look in your honest face once more. It is not hard to die, Fred. Tell them that my last words——Jesu, mercy!’
‘Speak to me, Carlo—speak to me!’
Never again on this side of the grave. And so the noble-hearted Italian died; and on the third day they buried him in a simple grave under the murmuring pines.
No call to remain longer now. One last solitary evening ramble, Maxwell took outside the city wall ere his departure. As he walked along wrapped in his own sad thoughts, he did not heed that his footsteps were being dogged. Then with a sudden instinct of danger, he turned round. The feet that followed stopped. ‘Who is there?’ he cried.
A muffled figure came towards him, and another stealthily from behind. A crash, a blow, a fierce struggle for a moment, a man’s cry for help borne idly on the breeze, a mist rising before the eyes, a thousand stars dancing and tumbling, then deep, sleepy unconsciousness.
(To be concluded next month.)