One Of Them

One Of Them
Charles Lever

Charles James Lever

One Of Them

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE JAMES WHITESIDE, M.P., ETC., ETC., ETC.

My Dear Whiteside, – Amongst all the friends I can count over in my own country, and from whom space and the accidents of life have separated, and may separate me to the last, there is not “One of Them” for whom I entertain a sincerer regard, united with a higher hope, than yourself; and it is in my pride to say so openly, that I ask you to accept of this dedication from

Your attached friend,

CHARLES LEVER.

Spezia, December 90, 1860.

A WORD OF APOLOGY FOR MY TITLE

Before I begin my story, let me crave my reader’s indulgence for a brief word of explanation, for which I know no better form than a parable.

There is an Eastern tale – I forget exactly where or by whom told – of a certain poor man, who, being in extreme distress, and sorely puzzled as to how to eke out a livelihood, bethought him to give out that he was a great magician, endowed with the most marvellous powers, amongst others, that of tracing out crime, and detecting the secret history of all guilty transactions. Day after day did he proclaim to the world his wonderful gifts, telling his fellow-citizens what a remarkable man was amongst them, and bidding them thank Destiny for the blessing of his presence. Now, though the story has not recorded whether their gratitude was equal to the occasion, we are informed that the Caliph heard of the great magician, and summoned him to his presence, for it chanced just at the moment that the royal treasury had been broken into by thieves, and gems of priceless value carried away.

“Find out these thieves for me,” said the Caliph, “or with your own head pay the penalty of their crime.”

“Grant me but forty days, O king,” cried he, “and I will bring them all before you.”

So saying, he went away, but was no sooner at home and in the solitude of his own house than be tore his beard, beat his breast, and, humbling his head to the ground, cried out,

“Son of a burned father was I, not to be content with poverty and a poor existence! Why did I ever pretend to gifts that I had not, or dare to tell men that I possessed powers that were not mine? See to what vainglory and boastfulness have brought me. In forty days I am to die an ignominious death!”

Thus grieving and self-accusing, the weary hours passed over, and the night closed in only to find him in all the anguish of his sorrow; nor was it the least poignant of his sufferings, as he bethought him that already one of his forty days was drawing to its close, for in his heart he had destined this period to enjoyment and self-indulgence.

Now, though aspiring to the fame of a magician, so little learning did he possess, that it was only by recourse to a contrivance he was able to reckon the days as they passed, and calculate how much of life remained to him. The expedient he hit upon was to throw each night into an olive-jar a single date, by counting which at any time he could know how many days had elapsed.

While his own conscience smote him bitterly for the foolish deception he had practised, there were, as it happened, others who had consciences too, and somewhat more heavily charged than his own. These were the thieves who had stolen the treasure, and who firmly believed in the magician’s powers. Now, it so chanced that on the very instant he was about to throw his first date into the jar, one of the robbers had crept noiselessly to the window, and, peering through the half-closed shutter, watched what was doing within. Dimly lighted by a single lamp, the chamber was half shrouded in a mysterious gloom; still, the figure of a man could be descried, as, with gestures of sorrow and suffering, he approached a great jar in the middle of the room and bent over it. It was doubtless an incantation, and the robber gazed with all eagerness; but what was his terror as he beheld the man drop something into the jar, exclaiming, as he did so, in a loud voice, “Let Allah be merciful to us! there is one of them!” With the speed of a guilty heart he hurried back to his confederates, saying, “I had but placed my eye to the chink, when he knew that I was there, and cried, ‘Ha! there is one of them!’”

It is not necessary that I should go on to tell how each night a new thief stole to the window at the same critical moment to witness the same ceremony, and listen to the same terrible words; as little needful to record how, when the last evening of all closed in, and the whole robber band stood trembling without, the magician dropped upon his knees, and, throwing in the last of his dates, cried out, “There are all of them!” The application of the story is easy. You, good reader, are the Caliph, – the mock magician is myself. Our tale will probably, from time to time, reveal who may be

“One of Them.”

ONE OF THEM, Volume I

CHAPTER I. A PIAZZA AFTER SUNSET

One of the most depressing and languid of all objects is the aspect of an Italian city in the full noon of a hot summer’s day. The massive buildings, fortress-like and stern, which show no touch of life and habitation; the glaring streets, un-traversed by a single passer; the wide piazza, staring vacantly in the broiling sun; the shop doors closed, all evidencing the season of the siesta, seem all waiting for the hour when long shadows shall fall over the scorched pavement, and some air – faint though it be – of coming night recall the population to a semblance of active existence.

With the air of a heated wayfarer, throwing open his coat to refresh himself, the city, at last, flings wide jalousie and shutter, and the half-baked inhabitant strolls forth to taste the “bel fresco.” It is the season when nationalities are seen undisturbed by the presence of strangers. No travellers are now to be met with; the heavy rumbling of the travelling-carriage no longer thunders over the massive causeway; no postilion’s whip awakes the echoes of the Piazza; no landlord’s bell summons the eager household to the deep-arched doorway. It is the People alone are abroad, – that gentle Italian people, quiet-looking, inoffensive as they are. A sort of languid grace, a kind of dignified melancholy, pervades their demeanor, not at all unpleasing; and if the stranger come fresh from the west of Europe, with its busy turmoil and zeal of money-getting, he cannot but experience a sense of calm and relief in the aspect of this easily satisfied and simple population. As the gloom of evening thickens the scene assumes more of life and movement. Vendors of cooling drinks, iced lemonades, and such-like, move along with gay flags flaunting over the brilliant urnlike copper that contains the refreshing beverage. Watermelons, in all the gushing richness of color, are at every corner, and piles of delicious fruit lie under the motley glare from many a paper lantern. Along the quays and bridges, on wide terraces or jutting bastions, wherever a breath of fresh air can be caught, crowds are seated, quietly enjoying the cool hour. Not a sound to be heard, save the incessant motion of the fan, which is, to this season, what is the cicala to the hot hour of noon. One cannot help feeling struck by the aspect of a people come thus to blend, like the members of one large family. There they are, of every age and of every condition, mingling with a sort of familiar kindliness that seems like a domesticity.

In all this open-air life, with its inseparable equality, one sees the embers of that old fire which once kindled the Italian heart in the days of their proud and glorious Republics. They are the descendants of those who, in the self-same spots, discussed the acts of Doges and Senates, haughty citizens of states, the haughtiest of all their age – and now —

Whether come by chance or detained by some accident, two English travellers were seated one evening in front of the Café Doney, at Florence, in contemplation of such a scene as this, listlessly smoking their cigars; they conversed occasionally, in that “staccato” style of conversation known to smokers.

One was an elderly, fine-looking man, of that hale and hearty stamp we like to think English; the young fellow at his side was so exactly his counterpart in lineament and feature that none could doubt them to be father and son. It is true that the snow-white hair of one was represented by a rich auburn in the other, and the quiet humor that lurked about the father’s mouth was concealed in the son’s by a handsome moustache, most carefully trimmed and curled.

The café behind them was empty, save at a single table, where sat a tall, gaunt, yellow-cheeked man, counting and recounting a number of coins the waiter had given him in change, and of whose value he seemed to entertain misgivings, as he held them up one by one to the light and examined them closely. In feature he was acute and penetrating, with a mixture of melancholy and intrepidity peculiarly characteristic; his hair was long, black, and wave-less, and fell heavily over the collar of his coat behind; his dress was a suit of coffee-colored brown, – coat, waistcoat, and trousers; and even to his high-peaked conical hat the same tint extended. In age, he might have been anything from two-and-thirty to forty, or upwards.

Attracted by an extraordinary attempt of the stranger to express himself in Italian to the waiter, the young Englishman turned round, and then as quickly leaning down towards his father, said, in a subdued voice, “Only think; there he is again! The Yankee we met at Meurice’s, at Spa, Ems, the Righi, Como, and Heaven knows where besides! There he is talking Italian, own brother to his French, and with the same success too!”

“Well, well, Charley,” said the other, good-humoredly, “it is not from an Englishman can come the sneer about such blunders. We make sad work of genders and declensions ourselves; and as for our American, I rather like him, and am not sorry to meet him again.”

“You surely cannot mean that. There’s not a fault of his nation that he does not, in one shape or other, represent; and, in a word, he is a bore of the first water.”

“The accusation of boredom is one of those ugly confessions which ennui occasionally makes of its own inability to be interested. Now, for my part, the Yankee does not bore me. He is a sharp, shrewd man, always eager for information.”

“I ‘d call him inquisitive,” broke in the younger.

“There’s an honest earnestness, too, in his manner, – a rough vigor – ”

“That recalls stump-oratory, and that sledge-hammer school so popular ‘down west.’”

“It is because he is intensely American that I like him, Charley. I heartily respect the honest zeal with which he tells you that there are no institutions, no country, no people to be compared with his own.”

“To me, the declaration is downright offensive; and I think there is a wide interval between prejudice and an enlightened patriotism. And when I hear an American claim for his nation a pre-eminence, not alone in courage, skill, and inventive genius, but in all the arts of civilization and refinement, I own I’m at a loss whether to laugh at or leave him.”

“Take my advice, Charley, don’t do either; or, if you must do one of the two, better even the last than the first.”

Half stung by the tone of reproof in these words, and half angry with himself, perhaps, for his own petulance, the young man flung the end of his cigar away, and walked out into the street. Scarcely, however, had he done so when the subject of their brief controversy arose, and approached the Englishman, saying, with a drawling tone and nasal accent, “How is your health, stranger? I hope I see you pretty well?”

“Quite so, I thank you,” said the other cordially, as he moved a chair towards him.

“You’ve made a considerable tour of it [pronounced ‘tower’] since we met, I reckon. You were bound to do Lombardy, and the silkworms, and the rice-fields, and the ancient cities, and the galleries, and such-like, – and you ‘ve done them?”

The Englishman bowed assent.

“Well, sir, so have I, and it don’t pay. No, it don’t! It’s noways pleasing to a man with a right sense of human natur’ to see a set of half-starved squalid loafers making a livin’ out of old tombs and ruined churches, with lying stories about martyrs’ thumb-nails and saints’ shin-bones. That won’t make a people, sir, will it?”

“But you must have seen a great deal to interest you, notwithstanding.”

“At Genoa, sir. I like Genoa, – they ‘re a wide-awake, active set there. They ‘ve got trade, sir, and they know it.”

“The city, I take it, is far more prosperous than pleasant, for strangers?”

“Well now, sir, that ere remark of yours strikes me as downright narrow, and, if I might be permitted, I ‘d call it mean illiberal. Why should you or I object to people who prefer their own affairs to the pleasant task of amusing us?”

“Nay, I only meant to observe that one might find more agreeable companions than men intently immersed in money-getting.”

“Another error, and a downright English error too; for it’s one of your national traits, stranger, always to abuse the very thing that you do best. What are you as a people but a hard-working, industrious, serious race, ever striving to do this a little cheaper, and that a little quicker, so as to beat the foreigner, and with all that you ‘ll stand up and say there ain’t nothing on this universal globe to be compared to loafing!”

“I would hope that you have not heard this sentiment from an Englishman.”