Chapter XXXVI: "all Goeth but God's Will."

"Whatso it be, howso it be, Amen.
Blessed it is, believing, not to see.
Now God knows all that is; and we shall then,
Whatso it be.
God's Will is best for man whose will is free.
God's Will is better to us, yea, than ten
Desires whereof he holds and weighs the key.
* * * * *
He knows all wants, allots each where and when,
Whatso it be."--CHRISTINA ROSSETTI,

"You have passed a bad night, signor," remarked Lionbruno, glancing up from his work at the prisoner.

Carlo, who to the last retained his sense of fun, saw the double meaning which the remark might bear, and smiled.

"I have not slept," he replied. "And you?"

"I," said Lionbruno, shrugging his shoulders, "have had to wake also, that I might keep guard."

"Do you think, then, that escape would be possible in such irons as these?"

"No, it would be impossible, even if the approach to the upper air were not well guarded. But it is one of Brancaleone's laws that a prisoner should be watched night and day. It would have been irksome enough had I not turned you to account as a model."

The crucifix was now quite finished, and the carver, struck by the face he had had to watch through those long hours, had reproduced it in the wood with marvellous accuracy, catching precisely the expression of pain, with steadfast hope underlying it, which the prisoner's face had borne through the night.

The features, too, had been reproduced so accurately that Carlo could not but recognize himself. He looked shocked, then pained, finally a faint smile dawned in his eyes, and he fell into deep thought.

Lionbruno left him for a few minutes, returning presently with a long loaf of bread tucked under his arm, a flask of _chianti_ swinging from his wrist, and a huge basin of maccaroni in his hands.

"Come," he said, with rough good-nature, "let us eat. I am hungry if you are not."

In silence they shared the food. The cell was now only lighted by one torch, which cast an orange glow over the carved crosses and crucifixes, and shone upon the faces of the two strangely-contrasted men. Carlo, worn-out with all he had gone through, looked pale and exhausted, but Lionbruno was in no wise fatigued by his want of sleep, and ate with the voracious appetite of a school-boy. Carlo watched him with a good deal of curiosity, wondering greatly what his history could be.

"Where did you learn to carve like that?" he said at length, glancing once more at the crucifix.

"It was the one useful thing taught me at school, the one thing I ever took the pains to learn," said Lionbruno, with a laugh. "And when I had mastered all they could teach me, why, I ran away."

"Was it at Naples?"

"No, at Rome," continued Lionbruno, throwing himself lazily on the heap of shavings, and yielding to the fascination of Carlo's manner, as most people did. "_Diavolo_! what did I not suffer in those years! Cooped up in a great stone building, watched every moment, guarded as though I had been a girl, and nothing to hope for in the future but the wretched life of a priest."

"A priest!" echoed Carlo, in astonishment.

"Ay, a preposterous notion, was it not? A mere whim of my mother's,--peace to her soul." He crossed himself with indescribable rapidity. It was the last almost unconscious tribute he still paid to the faith which his mother had held, but in which he himself had ceased to believe. "My father, willing to please her on her death-bed, promised that they should make a priest of me, and he did his best; but what would you have? It is not possible to turn a wolf into a sheep-dog, or an eagle into a canary. I bore it till I was seventeen, then, one night,"--he rubbed his hands with glee at the mere recollection,--"one delightful, moonless night, the happiest in all my life, I broke loose from the fold, got a disguise, was within an ace of being caught, and at last got home to Corsica, half-starved, but free, and as happy as a king."

"Then Corsica is your home?"

"_Insomma!_ I have run on, forgetting that possibly you will be free again to-morrow, and may betray us."

He looked annoyed, and half inclined to be angry.

"Do not be uneasy," said Carlo. "This is my last day in the world, and even did I wished to do so I could not possibly betray your haunts."

"You seem to look death in the face calmly enough; but it is far more likely that you will be set free."

Carlo shook his head.

"If I were set free it would mean that my whole life had failed. Something tells me that it is not so. Therefore, you see, I must face the thought of death. And, while we are speaking of it, just tell me how it will be. Am I to be shot?"

Lionbruno's great black eyes were full of wonder, they were very much like the eyes of some animal. He was completely puzzled by his companion, and somehow awed by him.

"No," he said; "that could not be, here."

"What then, stabbed?"

Lionbruno shook his head.

"Poisoned, or perhaps hung?"

Again the young brigand made a gesture of dissent; then, with unmistakable meaning, he drew out his knife, and passed it lightly across his own throat, glancing significantly at the prisoner.

Carlo had too vivid an imagination not to shrink a little from the picture which presented itself to his mind; he grew suddenly cold, and felt a strange stirring in his heart, and a tightening about the muscles of his throat. But he quickly recovered himself, and, with no perceptible effort, returned to the interrupted story.

"And so you escaped from your school-life, and from all _espionage_. At first it must have been delightful."

"_Dio!_ I should think it was!" exclaimed the boy. "To be out in the woods night and day, to have done with the hateful old routine, and for work to have nothing but adventure and excitement--why, it was paradise!"

"I fancied all the banditti had been captured at the time of the great extermination," said Carlo.

Lionbruno's face grew dark.

"That time gave us a blow from which we shall never recover," he said. "But my father somehow baffled all detection, and he will always baffle it, for he is more than a match for the Italian police in a body. Nothing but treachery could possibly beat him, and among the whole band there is not one man who would betray him, though they offered him his weight in diamonds."

"I can imagine that he would always meet with obedience and loyalty," said Carlo, recalling the powerful face of the chief.

"Anywhere he would be king of men," said Lionbruno, proudly. "And since the world gave him the cold shoulder, he must be king of banditti. Did you hear but a month or two back of the highway robberies in Corsica! They were planned and carried out by Brancaleone. Do you remember how Count Feroni was carried off in Sicily, and kept up in the mountains till the ransom was paid? That again was due to Brancaleone. And the great jewel robbery in Naples, that, too, was the work of our band. We are like the lightning, here, there, and everywhere; our work is done in a flash, and then--_presto!_ all is darkness once more, and no one can lay hold of us."

"I remember now hearing of the disappearance of Count Feroni," said Carlo; "though the details were never published, perhaps for the sake of our country's honor. Do you know what that work of yours did? It killed the Count's mother; she died of the shock before his return."

"_Ebbene!_ we must all die sooner or later," said Lionbruno, coolly.

There was an indignant light in Carlo's eyes which made the young Corsican shift his position uneasily.

"And this work of yours yesterday," continued Carlo; "it will not only end in murder, it will break hearts, and blight lives. Will you be proud of doing such devil's work as that?"

"A man must live," said Lionbruno, gloomily. "I only do what I was brought up to do. As to cruelty, Brancaleone would not have the hold which he has on the hearts of the people were he a cruel chief. No prisoner has ever been ill-used by him, and if a man must be put out of the way, why, it is done promptly and without barbarity. The day for such things is past; we too, are civilized, our plots are more refined, as well as more successful, now that we have the telegraph always at our command."

Carlo started.

"Do you mean, then, that the telegram I had yesterday was your doing? Was it a mere trick?"

Lionbruno laughed, and rubbed his hands together.

"Was it not clever? The first idea was a note of invitation from the English Captain; but then there would have been the danger of the handwriting not being right. The telegram was my notion, and the sending it in English made it doubly safe; it was only because I had thought of it that I was given the charge of the whole affair, for, after all, I am young for such work. _Dio!_ what sport it was! The watching for the yacht, and dogging your steps everywhere, while all the time you were so happily ignorant; then the breathless race to Pozzuoli to send the telegram, and the anxiety of the afternoon when we did not know whether, perhaps, you might not after all refuse to go. How happy I was when I saw you by the Grotto of Posilipo! And you, too, looked happy. Ah, I shall never again have a better bit of sport!"

Carlo shuddered, the unblushing avowal made him recoil as from some hellish thing. He did not say a word, but Lionbruno noted his expression, and never forgot it.

"Come!" he said, his tone suddenly changing, "I can't stay all day in this dull hole. We will see what the others are up to."

"Can I not stay here in quiet?" pleaded Carlo.

But Lionbruno was inexorable. A prisoner must be watched day and night, and Carlo had to endure as best he could the long hours of that weary day, while his young guard whiled away the time with cards, _mora_, and idle jesting with the elder men of the band.

At length night came, and once more prisoner and jailer made their way through the winding catacomb to the inner cell. Lionbruno, who had slept at intervals through the day, took up his carving once more, and Carlo, wearied with the noise and confusion which for so many hours he had had to bear, and still suffering from the effects of the blow he had received, stretched himself again on the heap of shavings.

"My last night," he reflected, then, turning to the young Corsican, asked what time the messenger would arrive the next day.

"Possibly not till midnight," replied Lionbruno, pausing in his work to look at the prisoner; "but you will be placed in readiness at eleven. Alter all, I would as soon not see you murdered, though I know you think me a sort of devil.

"I think you nothing of the kind," said Carlo, with a vigor of denial which startled his companion. "The pity of it is that you are a man, meant for something very different, and yet willing to do the devil's work."

"I am only taking by force the share of property that the world won't give me fairly," said Lionbruno, doggedly. "If all things were equally divided there would be no need of banditti. As for your devil, I don't believe in him, nor in your God either; and that, too," he pointed to the crucifix, "it is all a fable! If it were true, why, instead of paying a hundred _lire_ for a carving like this, to put in a private oratory, men would be dying on crosses themselves!"

Lionbruno, with his school recollections, and his angry bias against everything connected with the Church, would certainly have had the best of it in an argument, but Carlo was too well accustomed to living with people who despised all that he most revered, to feel moved to speak; he had learnt long ago that, as a rule, words do but stir up strife, and that he at any rate must keep to deeds. He was quite silent now, and through the long, quiet hours the vehement words that had last sounded in the cell kept ringing in his ears. Partly from the strain of physical and mental suffering, partly from a growing sense of nearness to the unseen world, he had all along found it very hard to realize his surroundings; the old Roman building, hidden away below the earth's surface, the winding catacomb, the gloomy little cell with the carvings leaning against the rocky wall, all seemed to him more like scenes that he had read about than actual places where he was now living. Brancaleone, too, and his followers, seemed to him like people in a dream that is over, though he had listened all day to their foul talk, and wearied of their noisy quarrels. But something in the words which his companion had last spoken roused him to a greater feeling of reality; he made an effort to realize to himself the sort of life that this mere boy of eighteen was living, and the more he realized it the more he pitied him, and the more he felt drawn to him. Again and again his eyes turned to the dark, resolute, handsome face of the young Corsican; it had not yet acquired the cold wickedness of Brancaleone's face, it was too young and boyish for that, too full of mere animal delight in existence; but another year or two of this wild life would make him merely a younger and more headstrong edition of his father.

"You do not sleep, signor," observed Lionbruno, looking up from his work as the prisoner moved restlessly and the dismal sound of clanking irons echoed through the quiet cell.

"They say a condemned prisoner always sleeps well on his last night," said Carlo; "but I never felt more wakeful in my life."

"Then tell me your story," said Lionbruno, "for it is dull enough with nothing to do but keep guard. I told you of my life yesterday, now tell me of yours."

Willing to please his companion, and with a feeling that on this his last night it would comfort him to go once more over his memories of the past, Carlo told in his spontaneous, graphic fashion the story of his life, and Lionbruno listened with rapt attention, partly because the prisoner was a good raconteur, but chiefly because he was conscious of something which was a most novel contrast to anything he had yet come across in the world. It was nothing but a summary of facts which Carlo gave him, but Lionbruno was artist enough to have a quick eye for beauty, and a capability of reading between the lines, as it were, while the mingled openness and reserve of the story, the lack of self-consciousness, yet the innate modesty of the speaker, forced him to perceive a new idea.

His own words returned to him,--"If it were true, men would be dying on crosses themselves!" Then he looked from the carved crucifix to the face of the prisoner, and again back to the crucifix. After all, was it something more than a fable? Deep down in his heart there wakened a new, uncomfortable, unwelcome conviction, which he did his best to smother, because he saw that it would work havoc in his life, and Lionbruno in this respect was as lazy and conservative as most people; a revolution in society was what he longed for, but a revolution in his own heart and life could not be tolerated, the bare idea made him feel as uncomfortable and perturbed as a wealthy landowner who thinks with dread of a possible reform of the land laws.

All the next day he was markedly civil to his prisoner. He even sacrificed himself so far as to remain in the dreary little cell, instead of insisting, as before, on spending the time with the rest of the gang. Carlo spoke little, for grief and suspense and the long-continued sleeplessness had brought him almost to the last stage of exhaustion, but what few words he did say were courteous and pleasant, and in tone not otherwise than cheerful. Lionbruno began to think more and more distastefully of the scene that would be enacted that evening, and, as the time drew near, he could bear it no longer, but summoning one of the elder men to keep guard in his place, sought out the chief and begged to speak alone with him.

Brancaleone led the way from the gloomy underground retreat to the open air. Already it was dark, but here and there, through the thick foliage, were little spaces through which stars gleamed down coldly. Lionbruno gave a gasp of relief as he found himself once more above ground, for the atmosphere down below was not a little trying to one accustomed to an out-door life.

"_Padre mio_," he said boldly, "should the red flag be sent to-night, why should you not keep the prisoner longer and make money out of him? He has rich friends, he is a popular singer, thousands would be interested in his fate, we could extort an enormous ransom."

"Is that all you have to say?" said Brancaleone, with scorn. "Did you ever know me go back from my word? If Comerio is true to his bargain, do you think I shall play him false?"

"At least I have some right to speak for the prisoner since I was the one who took him," said Lionbruno, with deep resentment in his voice.

"No right whatever," said the chief, coldly; "you are merely one of my band; your duty is to obey orders, not to think."

"I tell you," said Lionbruno, with an angry gesture, "if you kill him you will regret it some day. A man like that can't be murdered lightly."

"What do you know about him?" said the chief, tauntingly.

"I know that he is the only true man I have ever seen, while we are brutes--worse than brutes!" said Lionbruno, with passionate vehemence.

Brancaleone suddenly turned upon him and grasped him by the shoulder. "Say another word, and you yourself shall be the one to cut his throat!" he said in a voice that was none the less furious because low and restrained.

With a heavy heart Lionbruno followed the chief back into the secret retreat, returning an impatient oath to the teasing inquiries of the other men, while he lighted his torch at the fire before making his way through the catacomb.

"Bring the prisoner in at once," said the chief, eyeing his son distrustfully.

Releasing Nicolo from his post in the cell, Lionbruno, still bearing the torch, came close to the pile of shavings and bent down over the prisoner.

"I have tried to save you," he murmured, "but it was all in vain. When I took you prisoner I did not know what I know now. Give me your pardon, signor. I would gladly undo the past, were that possible."

Carlo grasped his hand.

"Undo it by breaking with it and starting afresh," he said. "And, look, will you do one thing for me?"

Lionbruno made a gesture of assent.

"See, to-day, while you slept, I wrote this letter; if necessary you can read it, there is not a line in it that can betray you. Promise me when I am dead to send it. I have no stamp, but there is the address."

Lionbruno glanced at the note, saw that it was directed to "Miss Britton," and without further comment thrust it into his pocket.

"Brancaleone orders you to be brought in," he said huskily. "Are you prepared, signor?"

"Quite," replied Carlo, standing up, and speaking as calmly as though no terrible ordeal awaited him.

And yet it was not that he shrank from it less than other men would have done; he looked regretfully round the little gloomy cell, and slowly followed his guide through the winding catacomb and out into the larger building, perceiving even then the picturesqueness of the scene with its deep shadows and glowing torchlight. Brancaleone sat smoking as composedly as though no murder were contemplated that night; close by, Nicolo stirred the contents of a caldron which hung over a charcoal brazier, while the rest of the men were playing cards and quarrelling among themselves. The chief turned his cold eyes on the prisoner.

"My messenger may arrive any time within the next hour," he said. "You will therefore be ready for your fate, whatever it may be. Should we have been betrayed, and should a rescuing-party be sent with him, you will instantly be shot. Should you see him wave a white handkerchief, it will mean that you are free; should he wave a red one, you will feel the sharpness of this knife."

Carlo replied only by a slight gesture. His dignity appealed to Brancaleone, who eyed him curiously, knowing that never before had he met with such a prisoner.

"Rocco! Maso! take your places!" he called peremptorily.

Two of the men instantly threw down their cards; and Carlo found himself taken to that end of the building which was farthest from a dark archway, presumably leading to another catacomb, and from thence to the upper air. On either side of him stood a ruffianly-looking Neapolitan, with a loaded pistol held within a few inches of his temple; and to the right hand, and a little in advance of the others, sat the chief ostentatiously sharpening his knife. It was an ordeal that would have tried the strongest nerves; the horrible, grim suspense of it was a torture such as Carlo had never conceived; and nothing but long practice in self-control could have enabled him to keep under the sickening anticipations of the butchery that was soon to take place. With a strong effort he turned from such thoughts, not even allowing himself to watch the dark archway opposite, where his imagination kept picturing a confusion of red tokens and white tokens, until he was as much dazzled as Gigi used to be over the Pears' soap puzzle in England. With a pang he remembered that he had never said good-bye to the little fellow; and a hundred trifling recollections of unfinished work rushed through his brain, till a flash of Brancaleone's knife in the torchlight recalled him to the terrible present. Then he fixed his eyes steadily on the cross which Lionbruno was carving, and again the thought of his visible surroundings faded.

By and by came visions of what lay beyond this hour of torture. He thought of the evil defeated, of Anita saved for ever from Comerio's influence. He pictured to himself how she would pass unscathed through her hard life, with Gigi to shield her, with Francesca to comfort her and cling to her for his sake, with a love for him which should be an actual safeguard, not a vague regret. But with the thought of Francesca, there came once more the wild clinging to life. She would be his, indeed, in another world; but he craved for her now, he shrank back from the parting--the unknown change.

For, reason about it as we may, all endings are hard. We ended our school-days regretfully, and shrank a little from stepping out alone into the fuller and freer life, for which all along we had been preparing. It was not that home was less dear; it was not that we were less eager to begin life; it was only that human nature cannot say their revocable "never again" without a pang.

And, after all, the past had been happy, spite of all the troubles. Standing there, face to face with death, he seemed to live it all through once more. He thought of his quiet childhood, of his mother's devotion, of his happy betrothal. Once more he lived through the story of his love for Francesca, with its brief gleams of rapture and its long years of wearing separation; once more he lived his art-life--triumphed in this character, failed in that, faced abuse on and off the stage, felt the glow of genuine success. And again he lived through the pain and bliss of that night at Genoa, with its violent reaction, its rapture of faithful love; again he felt Francesca clinging to him, heard her words of perfect trust, knew that the anguish of the past had been a mere device of Satan.

But Brancaleone moved, and the torchlight fell again on the cold steel blade. In a few minutes there must come that awful helplessness, that violence, and anguish, and slaughter. His heart throbbed wildly; and once more, to calm himself, he turned his eyes to Lionbruno's cross. The boy's words returned to him, "As to that, it's a mere fable! If it were true, men would be dying on crosses themselves!"

"How little I have done to prove that it is truest truth, and no fable," he thought, sadly.

"Yet for these last three years you have honestly tried to follow me," said a voice in his heart. And the words of comfort brought him a great gladness, for he knew that, slowly and stumblingly, and with an amount of effort that proved his own weakness and the strength of the Divine help that had been his, he really had tried to live the life of the Crucified, with its whole-hearted seeking of the Divine will. After all, was any happiness to be compared to the happiness that came to him even in this last extremity? Was there not a deep truth in the poet's idea that the Divine will is sweetest to us "when it triumphs at our cost."

"If ever a man were ready to die it is that man," reflected Lionbruno. "But, _Corpo di Bacco!_ how shall I sit patiently by and see him murdered!"

He shuddered, and yet something in the beautiful, manly face raised him above the thought of the scene of bloodshed. How was it that this man, in the first flush of youth and strength, could willingly give up everything--even life itself--to save another from sin? How was it that he could stand for an hour face to face with a most horrible death, yet show neither fear, nor resentment, nor bravado--only a noble, intrepid calm?

Into the brigand's semi-cultivated mind the sight flashed something more than the unwelcome conviction of the previous night. All his shallow unbelief died in the light of that revelation. It was not that he now believed there was a God, he knew it; he knew that the Son of God must indeed have taught men how to live and die; he saw that he had before him, on the one hand a proof of the heights to which men could rise who followed at all costs the guidance of the Holy Spirit; on the other of the depths to which men could sink who sought at all costs their own pleasures.

The place had been strangely still for some minutes. Nicolo had left his caldron, and now lay on the floor smoking; the card-players had finished their game, and seemed to think it was not worth while to begin another before the event of the evening came off; one swarthy, black-bearded fellow shuffled the cards, the others lounged at ease, watching the prisoner indifferently.

When at length a voice in the distance spoke the password, every one present started slightly. Carlo drew himself up to his full height, and looked steadily towards the dark archway; Brancaleone rose, and, with one hand on his victim and the knife in the other, glanced over his shoulder, ready either to strike or to forbear; Lionbruno dropped his cross, and glanced in great agitation from the archway to the prisoner, and back again to the archway. The footsteps drew nearer; the messenger suddenly turned the corner, and emerged into sight; the torchlight fell on the token in his hand--was it white or red? With a gasp of relief, Lionbruno sprang forward and seized the handkerchief, waving it joyfully in the air; while the messenger advanced and handed a sealed packet to the chief, who at once sheathed his knife and turned to the prisoner.

"You are free, signor," he said, gravely.

"Nita is ruined! I have failed!" thought Carlo.

The sharpest pang he had ever had to bear shot through him: and, without a word, he fell to the ground.

"_Diavolo!_" exclaimed the chief. "I have often seen a prisoner overcome on hearing his death-sentence, but never yet on getting a reprieve!"

Lionbruno looked with many conflicting feelings at the face which had grown so familiar to him. "_Per quanta è vero Dio!_" he remarked, with an expressive gesture, "he really did then care more for his sister's honor than for his own life!"