In Direst Peril

by David Christie Murray

“Yes,” I said, for he paused and looked a trifle confused. “Go on, what is it?”

“Well, sir,” he answered, “I know it isn't right in my place to be talking, but there's Miss Rossano, sir—” I turned rather sharply round on him at the mention of that name, and Hinge, standing at attention, saluted. “No harm meant, sir,” he said, “and I 'ope, sir, there's no offence. But I took a letter from you to Miss Rossano, sir, last Wednesday week. It was the second time as I was in the house, sir, and when Miss Rossano came out to give me the answer, she saw as it was me, and she asks me in; and there was the count, sir, a-sitting in the parlor. And says Miss Rossano, 'Father,' she says, 'here's the faithful man,' she says, 'as treated you so kind when you was in prison along with them blooming Austrians,' she says; and the count he gets up in his grand way, and he shakes me by the hand, with his other hand on my shoulder. They'd have made me sit down between them, sir, if I'd a done it, and the count, sir, with his own hands, he powered me out a glass of sherry wine. It was the right sort, that was,” said Hinge, passing his hand across his lips with a gleam of remembrance, and instantly resuming his rigid attitude, as if he had suddenly found himself at fault, as, of course, in his own mind he did. “They was that kind between 'era and that nice way with it I didn't know whether I was a-standing on my head or my heels. And then the count he says something to Miss Rossano in his own lingo—language, I should ha' said, sir, begging your pardon—and Miss Rossano she answers him back again, and they get a-talking till there was tears in both their eyes, sir. And then Miss Rossano she fetches out her purse, sir, and she takes a ten-pound note, and here it is.” Hinge took it from his waistcoat pocket, and opened it out before me. “Of course, sir, I didn't want to take it, for whatever little bit I done I done it for my own amusement, as a man may say. I've had a-many larks in my time, but I never was paid for none of them like that—two pound a week pension for a lifetime and a easy job into the bargain. I didn't want to take this, sir,” Hinge continued, folding up the note and restoring it to his pocket; “but Miss Rossano she comes at me and shut it into my hand with both her own, whether I would or no, and all of a sudden, sir—” He stopped with a gulp, and swallowed laboriously twice or thrice. I was tickled, but I was touched at the same time, and touched pretty deeply; but I could not afford to show that to Hinge, and I dare say I looked pretty hard and stern at him.

“What did she do?” I asked, rather gruffly.

“She—she kissed my 'and, sir; that un.” He held out his right hand and looked at it as if it were, in some sort, a wonder. “I never seen anything done like it,” said Hinge. “And I was that took aback, and that delighted, and that flabbergastered!”

Hinge positively began to blubber, and what with, the mirth of it, and my own vivid sense of Violet's feeling at the time, and this revelation of the simple fellow's goodness, I was very near doing the same myself. I verily believe that I should have joined Hinge, and a very pretty pair we should have made (for I have found at the theatre and elsewhere that there is no way of disposing a man to tears like the way of making him laugh through affection and sympathy beforehand); but luckily for myself, I made shift to ask him, in a blustering way, what he meant by it, and to order him out of the room. He was so very shamefaced while he waited upon me at breakfast after this that I would have given a good deal to shake hands with him, and to tell him that he was a very fine fellow; but though I have known that impulse many times in my life, and have sometimes felt it very strongly, I have never been able to obey it, and I know that with many people I have passed through life as a hard man—perhaps to my own advantage.

This was the beginning of a strange day—the day on which I had my first suspicion of Brunow, and the day of poor old Ruffiano's betrayal, in which I myself had an unconscious hand. It came about in this way: I had seen at a gun-maker's shop in the Strand some weeks before a brace of revolvers which had greatly taken my fancy. They were not the old-fashioned, clumsy pepper-caster which I can very well remember as having been used in actual warfare, and, indeed, esteemed as a deadly weapon, but were new from America, with all the latest patents. I had already examined them thoroughly, and had made up my mind to buy them when the time came; but I was afraid of accumulating expenses, and it was only now when the pinch of war was so near that I could find the heart to part with the money. Hinge went with me, keeping his usual place at a pace or half a pace behind my right shoulder, so that I could talk to him whenever I had a mind, while he still kept the position which he thought consistent with his master's dignity. Just as I came upon Charing Cross I sighted Ruffiano; and he, seeing me at the same moment, hurried across the street in his impetuous fashion, and barely escaped being run over. The escape was so very close, that when he reached me I congratulated him heartily, though if I had known what was going to happen I might much more properly have commiserated him. But the future is in no man's knowledge, and I have often been forced to think that that is a blessed thing, and one to be heartily thankful for. I have been happy at many moments, and so have those nearest and dearest to me, when, if we could have known what an hour would bring forth, we should have been profoundly mournful in anticipation of an event not yet guessed of.

Poor old Ruffiano was full of enthusiasm and full of news. He was better dressed than I had ever seen him before, and in consequence less remarkable to look at.

“You shall congratulate me on more than that,” said the good old man, smilingly. “Within a few hours I shall have news straight from home, and but for you—see now how one thing depends upon another—it might never have reached me at all. Had I never known you I might never have known your excellent and estimable young friend, the Honorable Mr. Brunow, and,” he continued, smiling and bending over me, to lay the tip of a bony finger on either of my shoulders before he straightened himself to his gaunt height, “it is evident that if I had never met the Honorable Mr. Brunow it would not have been possible for the Honorable Mr. Brunow to bring me news.”

“You get your news from Brunow?” I responded, little guessing what it meant, and feeling in my blind ignorance quite friendly towards Brunow for having done anything to give the sad exile so much pleasure. “And I needn't ask you if the news is good news.”

“I am told it is,” he responded; “but I have it yet to hear.” He explained to me that he had two sisters resident in Italy, who lived at tolerable ease upon what the family confiscations had left them of their property. “They would have maintained me well,” said the old man, with his cordial, innocent smile, “but I have always pretended to them to want nothing. They have children, and young men will be expensive, and I get on very well without infringing on their little store. They live together at Posilippo, and a neighbor of theirs, one Signor Alfieri, the bearer of a great name, you observe—it is like an Englishman having Mr. Shakespeare coming to see him—this Signor Alfieri is a neighbor and a friend of theirs. He would have called upon me, but he failed to find me, and he sails for Italy to-night. I meet him at—I forget the name, but it is on your river, and the Honorable Mr. Brunow is so good as to be my guide. Come with me,” he said, suddenly. “You will learn the very latest news of Italy, and you will meet a good patriot who will tell you what was actually doing three weeks ago.”