CHAPTER LXIV.—THE FATE OF THE WOLF!
“Pleasant that,” resumed Charley, as Laura, having finished reading the note, returned it with looks of alarm. “Evans declares it’s more than two hours since Governor Grant started, and there are no signs of him yet. Why people can’t stay quietly at home when they’ve got a good house over their heads, instead of rushing out to seek dangerous adventures, I can’t think. I should have supposed the General had arrived at a time of life when he would have sense enough not to be gulled by messages from girls, either living or dying. Perhaps the summons was meant for Bellefield after all, and the bearer delivered it to the wrong man; what a joke that would be, eh?”
“Really, Charles, I don’t think it is anything to laugh at,” returned Laura anxiously; “is your brother at home?”
“No, Belle’s out too; my family is becoming shockingly dissipated.”
“Had you not better apply to the police, as the note proposes?” urged Laura.
“Police, indeed!” muttered Charley: “the General can’t remember that he is out of London. I wonder he did not direct me to send a cab for him. These confounded sulky Austrian officials are rather different customers to deal with from our blue-bottles—Messrs. Al & Co. The only thing is to go down to the consul’s office, and that must be done, I suppose, but it’s an awful bore.”
So saying, Charley yawned, stretched himself, made Laura ring for his boots, and had just accomplished the labour of pulling them on, when rapid footsteps were heard—doors opened and shut, and the object of their anxiety stood before them, his face flushed with exercise, and his whole manner bearing traces of excitement and agitation. “Well, General,” began Charley, “we were just going to commence fishing for you in all the canals——” when his auditor interrupted him by inquiring in a quick, eager voice—
“Your brother is not in the house, is he?”
“No; he has been out all the evening, and is not yet returned,” was the reply.
“Leave us, Laura, there’s a good girl,” exclaimed the General; “stay,” he continued, as Laura was quitting the room, “do not say anything which can alarm Annie.”
Laura nodded her acquiescence and departed.
“I am very anxious about your brother,” resumed the General. “As I was returning from this most strange and painful interview, the young man who had summoned me still acting as my guide, some person followed us, and as we were crossing the Rialto approached, and tapping my companion on the shoulder, detained him. They conversed in Italian, but I made out enough of what they said to catch the following words spoken by the new-comer—
“‘I have watched him the evening through. He went from——’ (the names of the places I could not hear) ‘to——, which he has this moment quitted. Jacopo and the others are prepared; we only await your directions. Why have you not joined us sooner?’
“‘It was impossible,’ was the reply; ‘but all will yet go as it should.’
“Then, turning to me, my guide continued, ‘You have now only to walk straight on to reach the Square of St. Mark; no one will interrupt you. Farewell, sir; and remember her wishes.’
“This referred to his poor sister, about whom I will tell you another time. He and his companion then quitted me. Mechanically I walked forward, reflecting on the interview, which had harassed and distressed me greatly, till, recalling the words I had just overheard, a new idea struck me, and I turned and looked back; as I did so I perceived, at some distance off, a man carelessly advancing towards me—at the moment several others rushed out upon him; there was a short struggle, then, as it seemed to me, he was overpowered, a cloak was flung over his head, and he was hurried away. Instantly I ran to the spot, but it was some considerable distance from the place where I had been standing, and when I arrived there, no traces of them were visible. The whole affair from beginning to end was over in less than a minute, but from the glimpse I had, I feel convinced the man I saw carried off was your brother.”
“Nonsense,” exclaimed Charles, starting, “kidnap Bellefield! why, what possible motive could anybody have for doing that?”
“One only too powerful—revenge!” was the alarming reply. “My guide was young Hardy, whose sister Bellefield has cruelly betrayed and forsaken. Come, Charles, let us obtain aid to seek and save him: God grant we may not arrive too late.”
We must now return to Lord Bellefield. After the disturbance at the Casino, his lordship, accompanied by Rastelli, repaired to a shooting-gallery, where he practised with pistols for an hour. Having by repeated successes assured himself that his late fall had not shaken his nerves to a degree which could interfere with his skill as a duellist, he turned to his companion, observing, “Now, Rastelli, devise some method of killing time for the next hour or so; I am anxious not to return to the Palazzo Grassini till the family have retired for the night. I had rather avoid meeting any of them till this little affair is over. What can we contrive to do with ourselves?”
“Come home with me, and let us have a quiet game at écarté,” was the reply; “that will amuse without exciting you. I wish you to keep cool, in order that you may punish for his temerity the insolent Luigi.” As he spoke the dark eyes of the Italian flashed with the fire of revenge.
Lord Bellefield remarked his eagerness, and smiled contemptuously. “Calm yourself, my good Rastelli,” he said, quietly lighting a cigar; “justice shall be done, depend on it.”
“How cold and phlegmatic you English are!” exclaimed Rastelli, irritated at his companion’s apparent apathy; “had the brigand insulted me as he has insulted you, if I had not stabbed him on the spot, I should have known no peace till he lay bleeding at my feet.”
Lord Bellefield placed his hand on his friend’s shoulder, and approaching his lips to his ear, said in a low, impressive voice, “Listen! we Englishmen do not talk about these things, we do them.” There was a cold, grating bitterness in his tone, which told of such fiendish malice working at his heart that the Italian’s display of boyish passion shrank into insignificance beside it.
Together they repaired to Rastelli’s dwelling; cards were produced, and their game began. With the calculating prudence of an accomplished gamester, Lord Bellefield played cautiously and for moderate sums till he had tested his adversary’s calibre; then, confident in his own skill, he artfully led on the young Italian to propose higher stakes, until, at the expiration of an hour and a half, he had won above a couple of hundred pounds.
“You are becoming excited and beginning to play wildly, amico mio,” he said, pushing back his chair; “we will pause for tonight.”
“And when will you give me my revenge?” inquired the Italian with flushed cheeks and trembling lips.
“When you like—to-morrow evening, if it so please you—always supposing our peep-of-day amusement goes as it should do,” answered Lord Bellefield carelessly.
“And what if you should be hit?” questioned Rastelli with a grim smile, which involuntarily suggested to his auditor the idea that such a catastrophe would not deeply distress him.
“To provide against such a contingency I shall make my will tonight, and appoint you executor and residuary legatee; so that when you have satisfied the few claims against me, the remainder of my property will be yours, to compensate for this evening’s run of ill-luck,” was the jesting reply.
Rastelli, having by this time in a degree recovered his good humour, answered in the same light tone; then having made their final arrangements for the morrow’s meeting, they shook hands and parted.
As Lord Bellefield gained the street, the conventional smile faded from his lips, and a dark, sullen expression imparted a gloomy ferocity to his countenance. His look did not belie the nature of his thoughts, which ran somewhat after the following fashion:—
“A pretty thing I’m in for—to think of that accursed Arundel turning up in such an out-of-the-way place as this! my ill-luck follows me everywhere. That scoundrel is my evil genius. I shall be rid of him to-morrow though, for I’ll shoot him like a dog; that’s some comfort.” He paused, then a new idea seemed to strike him, and he muttered, “Curse him, he means to murder me; I read it in his fiendish eyes. I wonder whether he is anything of a shot? A nice way to lose one’s life, in a quarrel with a tutor! it’s next door to going out with one’s valet. Well, I’m in for it, and must chance it; a quick aim and a hair trigger may pick him off, as it has done many a better fellow, before he has time to be mischievous. I wonder whether Charles or old Grant know of his being here? If not, the thing can be easily hushed up.” A sound as of a man’s footstep caused him to start and look round, but seeing no one he resumed, “Assassination is said to be one of the fashions of this place; I wish I was a little more au fait as to the customs of the natives, or had longer time to act in. I might get my friend quietly disposed of without risk or trouble.” He reflected a moment on the feasibility of such a scheme; but the spirit of revenge and hate was strong within him, and muttering a fearful curse, he added, “No!——————him, I’d rather shoot him with my own hand; that blow sticks by me.”
At this moment a man started out from a dark archway so suddenly as nearly to run against Lord Bellefield, who, drawing himself up indignantly, was about to commence an angry remonstrance, when his elbows were pinioned from behind, some person tripped up his heels, a cloak was flung over his head, and despite his attempts to free himself, he was overpowered and hurried away by a party of several men. After proceeding some short distance they reached the bank of a canal; here they paused, and still holding the cloak over the captive’s head to prevent him from giving an alarm, they bound his hands. One who seemed to possess authority over the others superintended this operation in person.
“Not so tight,” he said to an over-zealous individual who was tying the cord as though it were never to be unfastened, “not so tight, it will numb his arms. Now,” he continued, “raise him carefully;” and in obedience to his command Lord Bellefield felt himself lifted from his feet and placed in a lying posture at the bottom of what he rightly imagined to be a gondola.
Having ascertained by listening that a portion of his captors were engaged in rowing the boat, Lord Bellefield made an effort to remove the cloak from his face, at the same time slightly raising himself; immediately a heavy hand pressed him down, and a deep, low voice uttered the following caution, “There is the point of a knife within an inch of your heart; if you again attempt to move or speak I plunge it in!”
Thus warned, nothing remained but to lie still and await his captor’s pleasure, which alternative, distracted by mingled rage and fear, Lord Bellefield was forced to adopt. From the time occupied by their transit it appeared that they must have proceeded some considerable distance ere the gondola again stopped. Carefully guarded as before, the prisoner was taken on shore, and half-led, half-carried over some uneven, stony ground, in traversing which his conductors were more than once forced to turn aside as if to avoid some obstacle that lay in their path; he was then told to ascend steps; doors were unbarred to afford them ingress, and the air struck cold and damp, as from a vault. At length, apparently, they reached their destination, and the prisoner was made to sit down on a stone bench; a light was procured, and then the order was given, “Untie his hands, remove the cloak, and leave us.”
The persons spoken to obeyed, and in another moment Lord Bellefield was able to look round him. The chamber in which he found himself was small, the roof was high and vaulted, and the walls appeared of an immense thickness; the door was of oak, thickly studded with iron nail-heads; there was no fireplace; a ship’s lantern, hanging by a cord from the roof, dimly lighted the apartment, and a grated window, sunk in the thickness of the wall, seemed to afford the only means of communication with the outward air. As Lord Bellefield became aware of these particulars the men who had released his hands and removed the cloak quitted the room, locking and barring the door on the outside; in another moment the sound of their retreating footsteps echoed along the stone passage and died away in the distance. A shudder passed over Lord Bellefield’s frame as he found himself thus strangely left alone with one whose purpose he could scarcely imagine other than hostile. As his companion—who wore one of those half-masks termed a domino, which effectually concealed his features—did not seem inclined to address him, Lord Bellefield had time to examine, with a beating heart, the preparations made for his reception. The only article of furniture the apartment contained, with the exception of the stone bench on which he was seated, was a heavy oak table. At the end nearest him lay a cutlass, the blade crossed by that of a stiletto, in front of which was placed a loaded pistol. A similar arrangement of weapons garnished the other end of the table, at which stood the motionless figure of the stranger. The whole thing was so strange, and so like some fancy of a horrible dream, that it was with difficulty Lord Bellefield could believe the evidence of his senses. At length the silence became unendurable to such a degree that, even at the risk of hurrying on his fate, he resolved to break it. Addressing his captor, he asked, in a voice which trembled in spite of his efforts to appear cool and indifferent, “What place is this to which you have brought me?”
The person addressed paused a moment, and then, without removing his mask, replied, “A vault in the ruins of a convent on an island in the lagunes, a mile from Venice.”
Up to this moment Lord Bellefield had been possessed with a secret belief that his captor was none other than Lewis Arundel; and having already had a convincing proof both of his enemy’s bodily strength and of the implacable nature of his feelings towards him, the idea that he had kidnapped him and carried him off to this desolate place in order to force upon him a combat à l’outrance, with weapons in the use of which his skill as a duellist would avail him little, was by no means an agreeable one. This fear his companion’s speech had dispelled, for the voice, though deep and stern, was not the voice of Lewis. Ignorant of the existence of any other person likely to nourish deep feelings of revenge against him, Lord Bellefield immediately conceived that he had fallen into the hands of some English ruffian connected with banditti, in which case their object would probably be plunder; and the solitary chamber, the naked weapons, etc., mere scenic arrangements got up for the sake of intimidating him, and so making a better bargain. Much relieved by this view of the affair, he began—
“Your object in bringing me here is of course plunder, all this absurd mummery is therefore utterly needless; you have only to name some reasonable sum for my ransom, and as I cannot get out of the scrape otherwise, I must pay it.”
“You will find it no mummery, and are wrong in supposing money will be of the slightest avail to you,” was the reply.
Lord Bellefield, however, still considering his idea a right one, and accounting for this speech as he had already accounted for the presence of the weapons—viz., as a means of intimidating him, in order to extort from his fears a higher ransom, continued—
“My good fellow, you have completely mistaken your man; all your tragedy nonsense is quite thrown away upon me. The affair is simply a matter of business: you require money, and knowing my rank, imagine me a Croesus. I am nothing of the kind, but I can make it well worth your while to set me free; conduct me safely to the Square of St. Mark, and I will give you a hundred Napoleons.”
“A million curses on your money!” exclaimed the other furiously; “may the bitter malediction of a desperate man cleave to the rank and riches which have served to add a false splendour to as mean and pitiful a scoundrel as ever disgraced God’s earth. Fool! let me undeceive you—I am Miles Hardy” (as he spoke he flung down his mask), “the brother of Jane—your victim—I have brought you here to die. Now do you think your money, that money which you refused to give to save her from a life of infamy, or a beggar’s death, is likely to bribe me to change my purpose?”
For a moment Lord Bellefield was utterly confounded by this declaration; he had never been aware that Jane possessed a brother, and the surprise added to his discomfiture; besides, hardened as he was, he knew that he had deeply wronged the girl, and a superstitious instinct of the justice of the retribution which had overtaken him helped still more effectually to terrify and crush him: for once both his haughty spirit and his presence of mind failed him, and mistaking the character of the man with whom he had to deal, he resolved first if possible to deceive, then to cajole and bribe him.
“Refuse money to Jane Hardy!” he began in a tone of feigned surprise; “you must have strangely deceived yourself: while she remained with me I lavished hundreds upon her, and when, with the caprice of her sex, she chose to leave me for some more favoured swain, as I imagine, ignorance of her abode alone prevented my settling a liberal allowance upon her. Even now I am ready to do so if she wishes it—where is she?”
A look of contemptuous anger, which had overspread Miles Hardy’s face as Lord Bellefield uttered these falsehoods, gave place to an expression of deep solemnity as he replied, “She is where you will be ere another hour has passed, wretched liar that you are—gone to answer for her sins before her God!”
“Dead!” exclaimed Lord Bellefield, involuntarily shocked into an expression of feeling. Miles regarded him attentively; had he discerned in him any symptoms of real grief for her loss, any signs of true penitence for the destruction he had wrought, there was that working in the brother’s heart which might even yet have saved him. But a doom was upon the seducer, and a fresh display of his evil, sordid nature hastened it. “Poor girl!” he said; “ ’pon my word, Hardy, I’m quite shocked at this sudden intelligence; I really was excessively fond of her at one time—a—I mean to say, before she chose to run away from me. However, you must not take the affair so deeply to heart: I can assure you these things are happening every day, and I always meant to make her a liberal settlement; but as that is now unfortunately impossible, we must see what can be done for you.” Having delivered himself of this heartless speech, which he considered a model of diplomacy, Lord Bellefield paused to observe its effects upon his auditor. Miles stood for a moment as if absorbed in grief, murmuring to himself, “My poor Jane, and was it for such a thing as this you sacrificed your young life? My poor, poor sister!” Then suddenly raising his head, he said, with a glance of the most withering scorn—
“Your mean lies will prove of as little use to you as your money; I loathe it, them, and you alike. I have told you I brought you here to die, and I have told you true; but I am no assassin, and if you have the courage of a man, you have one chance yet remaining. On that table lie six weapons, three for you and three for me; choose which you will, and come on; only if the first fails we must try the second, and if that does not end the matter there still remains the third. Come, make your choice.”
“Well, but hear me——” began Lord Bellefield, turning very pale.
“Not a word,” was the angry answer, “instantly defend yourself. If you refuse, I will shoot you where you stand;” so saying he advanced a step towards the table.
Lord Bellefield, who had risen during the last speech, slowly followed his example, casting, as he did so, a scrutinising look round the apartment, and especially towards the window; the action did not escape Hardy’s quick sight.
“Your search is useless,” he said, smiling contemptuously. “Were you here alone, with proper tools at hand, and knowing how to use them to the best advantage, it would take you two hours to break out of this place. If you call ever so loudly, there is no one to hear you—my companions are half-way back to Venice by this time. You have nothing left but to overcome me, or to die the dog’s death you deserve.”
“’Tis false!” exclaimed Lord Bellefield eagerly; “my friends have succeeded in tracing me, and even now I hear the tread of soldiers in the passage—hark!”
With a gesture of surprise Hardy turned towards the door. This was all Lord Bellefield required. Springing forward, he seized the pistol nearest to him, levelled it, and with the speed of thought, fired. Looking round, Hardy perceived too late the snare that had been laid for him. As he did so, a sharp, stinging pain, followed by a sensation like the burn of a red-hot iron, passed round his left side. The ball, aimed at his heart, had struck against the handle of a clasp-knife which, sailor-fashion, he wore slung round his neck by a string, and glancing off, entered the side and passed round one of the ribs under the skin, lodging among the muscular fibres of the shoulder-blade. Furious at the cowardly stratagem to which he had so nearly fallen a victim, and half-maddened with the pain of his wound, Hardy seized the other pistol, and shouting, “Die, you infernal, treacherous scoundrel!” snapped it at his adversary; but owing to the priming being damp, the pistol rusty, or from some other unexplained cause, the cap exploded without discharging the weapon. Flinging it down with an oath, he snatched up the sword that lay nearest to him, and exclaiming, “Come on, and be ———— to you!” scarcely gave his antagonist time to follow his example, ere he attacked him furiously.
For a minute or two cut and thrust followed each other so rapidly that all seemed confusion. Then as their first fury became expended, and they fought more cautiously, Lord Bellefield perceived, to his extreme satisfaction, that he was the better swordsman of the two, Hardy having merely picked up the use of the cutlass on board a man-o’-war, while his antagonist had learned fencing amongst the other military exercises of a cavalry regiment in which, till within the last two or three years, he had held a commission. If, therefore, he could contrive to defend himself till Hardy’s fury should have in some degree worn out his strength, he trusted either to disarm his adversary, or by a well-directed thrust to rid himself of him for ever. Nor was he disappointed in this expectation; for having with some difficulty parried a furious thrust, he caught Hardy’s sword with the blade of his own weapon, and by a sudden turn of the wrist sent it flying out of his hand, leaving his enemy defenceless and at his mercy. But mercy being a quality for which his lordship was never famous, more especially when, as in the present instance, its exercise might compromise his own safety, he drew back a step to get room for his thrust, with the intention of running his opponent through the body. With the speed of lightning, Hardy perceived the only chance remaining for him, and unhesitatingly adopted it. Snatching up one of the stilettos, he rushed upon Lord Bellefield, and receiving his thrust through the fleshy part of his left arm, closed with him and buried the dagger in his heart. Uttering a sound between a gasping sob and a groan, the young nobleman staggered, raised his arm as if in the act to strike, and fell back a corpse.
Thus did the vengeance of the great God whom he had insulted by a life of selfish crime overtake this wicked man in the pride of his youth and strength, and thus in the same night were the libertine and his victim called to appear before the Judge of all the earth to answer for their deeds, whether they had done good, or whether they had done evil. For the humble penitent we may indeed sorrow, yet not as without hope; but for the impenitent sinner, cut off in the midst of crime, dying with his selfish heart untouched, his evil nature unregenerated, “there remaineth no longer any hope, but a fearful looking-for of judgment to come.”