“Action,” he responded, “decisive and immediate!”
“Action,” I retorted, “well matured and sane!”
“Ah! yes, yes,” cried Ruffiano; “again, dear sir, you correct me. That is why I am here. But do not think because I have no patience—do not think because I am an old—an old—” He searched in his mind for a simile, and burst out with “gas-balloon” with a laugh of childish amusement at his own impetuosity. “Do not you think because I am an old gas-balloon that there are not among us no wiser and cooler heads than mine! We are at a white-heat now, but there are men among us who can keep their wits even in a furnace like this. I, dear sir”—he would have been on his feet again but that I checked him—“I am of the inner council. We meet to-night, and, hot as I am, I fear my own heat and that of others. If you wish well to Italy, be one of us. And be sure, sir, that the rescuer of our one most dearest and most prized shall be received with honor.”
I promised; and he undertook to call upon me at nine o'clock that evening. And thus, within a day of my return to London, I found myself pledged to Italy; and a few hours later made one of a caucus of conspirators, poor and needy and inconsiderable enough to look at, but holding in their hands, after all, one or two of the strings which, being pulled at the ripe hour of time, changed the scene for more than one land in Europe.
CHAPTER IX
And now it seems to me as if I might go on writing to the end of what remains of my lifetime, and never come to a finish. But I have to take hold of myself, as it were, with resolution, and to refrain from speaking of a hundred thousand things which interest me in memory.
The story I am bidden to tell is of how and why I came to rob Miss Rossano of forty thousand pounds, and yet not to suffer one whit in her esteem or in my own. It is an easy thing to say to a man, “You took part in such and such an adventure; you know all about it; take your pen in your hand and write a history of it.” The trouble is in the selection; and I have found myself so gravely puzzled as to what I shall leave out that I see nothing for it but to set down formally before myself, for my own guidance, the names of the people who are most closely and intimately concerned in what I have to tell; and having done that, I must resolve to restrict my narrative to the history of their sayings and doings. Such a countless crowd of people surge up into memory that this is more difficult than any one would fancy. All my old comrades in deliberation, my friends in council, my companions in the war of later on are with me at times as I sit and think over the incidents of this story. The odd part of it is that a thousand things I had forgotten come back as clearly as if they had happened yesterday, and I should feel a greater pleasure in dwelling upon them than upon the main incidents to which I am bound to confine myself. Roaring nights by the camp-fire, when a chance-found skin of wine made the time glorious; jolly little touches of mirth and camaraderie here and there; heats of battle, splendors of victory, miseries of retreat—all come back upon me, and the faces of many dead comrades people the air.
But to come to my resolution. There is Brunow, who was the fatal cause of it all; and the Baroness Bonnar, who made her cat's-paw of him; and Ruffiano, whom the two betrayed between them; and then there are left the count, and Miss Rossano, and the faithful Hinge. Then there is the ghost of poor Constance Pleyel, who came like a wraith out of the past and vanished again into the darkness; then there is myself for the centre of the story, whether I like it or not. Here are now my dramatis persono before me. The stage of my mind is crowded with auxiliaries, but I dare scarcely glance at them.
And who was Constance Pleyel? In a sense she was the motive and main-spring of my life, for it was she who embarked me on that career of adventure which has made me what I am.