The Bramleighs of Bishop's Folly

“You remember a young Englishman who made his escape from Ischia last June?”

“To be sure I do, – my comrade.”

“You will be astonished to know he was a Bramleigh, – a brother of the owner of the estate.”

“It was so like my luck to have trusted him,” said the other, bitterly.

“You are wrong there. He was always your friend, – he is so at this moment. I have heard him talk of you with great kindliness.”

A careless shrug of the shoulders was the reply.

“Tell him from me,” said he, with a savage grin, “that Onofrio, – don’t forget the name, – Onofrio is dead. We threw him over the cliff the night we broke the jail. There, let me write it for you,” said he, taking the pencil from Cutbill’s hand, and writing the word Onofrio in a large bold character.

“Keep that pencil-case, will you, as a souvenir?” said Cutbill.

“Give me ten francs instead, and I’ll remember you when I pay for my dinner,” said he, with a grating laugh; and he took the handful of loose silver Cutbill offered him, and thrust it into his pocket. “Is n’t that Souza we see in the valley there? Yes; I remember it well. I’ll go no further with you – there’s a police-station where I had trouble once. I ‘ll take the cross-path here that leads down to the Pinarola Road. I thank you heartily. I wanted a little good-nature much when you overtook me. Goodbye.”

He leaped from the carriage as he spoke, and crossing the little embankment of the road, descended a steep slope, and was out of sight almost in an instant.

CHAPTER LXVIII. A MEETING AND A PARTING

In the same room where Pracontal and Longworth had parted in anger, the two men, reconciled and once more friends, sat over their dessert and a cigar. The handsome reparation Pracontal had offered in a letter had been frankly and generously met, and it is probable that their friendship was only the more strongly ratified by the incident.

They were both dressed with unusual care, for Lady Augusta “received” a few intimate friends on that evening, and Pracontal was to be presented to them in his quality of accepted suitor.

“I think,” said Longworth, laughingly, “it is the sort of ordeal most Englishmen would feel very awkward in. You are trotted out for the inspection of a critical public, who are to declare what they think of your eyes and your whiskers, if they augur well of your temper, and whether, on the whole, you are the sort of person to whom a woman might confide her fate and future.”

“You talk as if I were to be sent before a jury and risk a sentence,” said Pracontal, with a slight irritation in his tone.

“It is something very like it.”

“And I say, there is no resemblance whatever.”

“Don’t you remember what Lord Byron in one of his letters says of a memorable drive through Ravenna one evening, where he was presented as the accepted? – There’s that hang-dog rascal that followed us through the gardens of the Vatican this morning, there he is again, sitting directly in front of our window, and staring at us.”

“Well, I take it those benches were placed there for fellows to rest on who had few arm-chairs at home.”

“I don’t think, in all my experience of humanity, I ever saw a face that revolted me more. He is n’t ugly, but there is something in the expression so intensely wicked, that mockery of all goodness, that Retsch puts into Mephistopheles; it actually thrills me.”

“I don’t see that – there is even drollery in the mouth.”

“Yes, diabolic humor, certainly. Did you see that?”

“See what?”

“Did n’t you see that when I lifted my glass to my lips, he made a pantomime of drinking too, and bowed to me, as though in salutation?”

“I knew there was fun in the fellow. Let us call him over and speak to him.”

“No, no, Pracontal; do not, I beseech you. I feel an aversion towards him that I cannot explain. The rascal poisons the very claret I ‘m drinking just by glancing at me.”

“You are seldom so whimsical.”

“Would n’t you say the fellow knew we were talking of him? See he is smiling now; if that infernal grin can be called a smile.”

“I declare, I will have him over here; now don’t go, sit down like a good fellow; there’s no man understands character better than yourself, and I am positively curious to see how you will read this man on a closer inspection.”

“He does not interest, he merely disgusts, me.”

Pracontal arose, drew nigh the window, and waved his napkin in sign to the man, who at once got up from his seat, and slowly, and half indolently, came over to the window. He was dressed in a sort of gray uniform of jacket and trousers, and wore a kerchief on his head for a cap, a costume which certainly in no degree contributed to lessen the unfavorable impression his face imparted, for there was in his look a mixture of furtiveness and ferocity positively appalling.

“Do you like him better now?” asked Longworth, in English.

And the fellow grinned at the words.

“You understand English, eh?” asked Pracontal.

“Ay, I know most modern languages.”

“What nation are you?”

“A Savoyard.”

“Whence do you come now?”

“From the galleys at Ischia.”

“Frank that, anyhow,” cried Longworth. “Were you under sentence there?”

“Yes, for life.”

“For what offence?”

“For a score that I committed, and twice as many that I failed in.”

“Murder, assassination?”

He nodded.

“Let us hear about some of them,” said Pracontal, with interest.

“I don’t talk of these things; they are bygones, and I ‘d as soon forget them.”

“And do you fancy they ‘ll be forgotten up there,” said Pracontal, pointing upwards as he spoke.

“What do you know about ‘up there,’” said he, sternly, “more than myself? Are not your vague words, ‘up there,’ the proof that it ‘s as much a mystery to you as to me?”

“Don’t get into theology with him, or you ‘ll have to listen to more blasphemy than you bargain for,” whispered Longworth; and whether the fellow overheard or merely guessed the meaning of the words, he grinned diabolically, and said, —