Frank sat up. “That is indeed a good idea,” he exclaimed. “How stupid of me not to have thought of questioning the prison people! Yes; it is quite likely that if any of the prisoners were removed, he would be one of them.”
“I have no doubt you would have thought of it, Frank, if it had not been that you were completely upset by that strong tobacco. Mind, I don’t blame you for taking it: it is better to be poisoned with nicotine than by the stenches of a Neapolitan prison. The thought only struck Garibaldi after we had chatted over the matter for some time. I went over there this morning with Colonel Nullo. Although the officials at first asserted that no prisoners had been taken away, they soon recovered their memories when he said that he would interrogate every one of the warders separately, and if he found that any prisoners had been sent away he would have them taken out into the courtyard and shot for lying to him. They then remembered that four prisoners had been taken away, but all declared with adjurations to all the saints that they did not know who they were: they were delivered over to them under numbers only. One had been there seven years, and two had been there five years, and one two years. Again threatening to examine all the turnkeys, he learned that the last prisoner received had been confined in one of the lower dungeons, where they yesterday asserted that no one had for years been imprisoned; the other three were also kept in the most rigid seclusion, but in the upper cells.
“I insisted on seeing the man who had attended on the prisoner kept in the lower cell. He was a surly ruffian, and it was not until Nullo ordered four men to load, and to put the fellow with his back to the wall, that he would answer my questions. He said then that the prisoner was, he should say, between forty and fifty, but it was not easy to judge of age after a man had been below there for a few months. He had never said more than a few words to him, and it had never struck him that he was not an Italian. I questioned him more closely as to this, and he admitted that he had sometimes, when he went down, heard the prisoner singing. He had listened, but could not understand the words, and they might have been in a foreign language. He had no more interest in that prisoner than in any other. He supposed, by his being sent down below there, that it was hoped he would die off as soon as possible. They seldom lived many months in those dungeons, but this man seemed tougher than usual, though his strength had failed a good deal lately. He was able to walk up from his cell to the carriage when he was taken away. Now we mustn’t feel too sanguine, Frank, but although there is no proof that this prisoner is your father, the evidence, so far as it goes, is rather in favour of such a supposition than against it.”
“It is indeed,” Frank said eagerly. “The fact that they put him down into the cells where, as the man says, it was almost certain he would soon die, and that when it was found that he had not done so, he was at the last moment taken away, shows that there was some very strong motive for preventing the fact that he was a prisoner becoming public; and we know that they had the very strongest reason in the case of my father. The age would be about right, and the fact that he was singing would show, at any rate, that it was some one who was determined not to give in, but to keep up his spirits till the very last, and I am sure my father would have done that. Well, I will get up now. I could not lie here quietly; it would be impossible, after what you have been telling me.”
“I think you are right, Frank. I will have a basin of soup sent in for you. When you have eaten that, and dressed, we will take a carriage and go for a long drive by the road along the shore to Pompeii. The sea-breeze will do you more good than anything, and the lovely view, and a stroll through Pompeii itself, will distract your thoughts. There is nothing to be done until Capua is taken, which may not be for a long time yet. However, events are moving. We hear that Victor Emmanuel and his government, alarmed at the success of Garibaldi, and feeling that if they are to have any voice in the matter they must not be content to rest passive while he is carrying all before him, have resolved upon taking some part in the affair. Under the pretext that in order to restore peace and order it is necessary that they should interfere, they are about to despatch an army to Ancona by sea; and, landing there, will advance into Central Italy, and act, as they say, as circumstances may demand. All of which means, that now Garibaldi has pulled the chestnuts out of the fire for them they will proceed to appropriate them.”
“It is too bad!” Frank exclaimed angrily.
“No doubt it is mean and ungracious in the extreme, but Garibaldi will not feel it as other men would; he is human, and therefore he would like to present the Kingdom of Naples and the States of Rome, free from the foreigner, to Victor Emmanuel. But that feeling, natural as it is, is but secondary to his loyalty to Italy. He desires to see her one under Victor Emmanuel, and so long as that end is achieved he cares comparatively little how it comes about. Moreover, he cannot but see that, though he has accomplished marvels, that which remains to be done would tax the power of his army to the utmost. The Neapolitans have still some seventy thousand men, who are encouraged by their king being among them. They have in Capua a most formidable fortress, which could defy the efforts of irregular troops, wholly unskilled in sieges and deficient in heavy guns, for many months. Moreover, it would no longer be mountain warfare, but we should have to fight in plains where the enemy’s cavalry would give them an enormous advantage. There is another thing: the intrigues of Cavour’s agents here are already giving him very serious trouble, and this will doubtless increase; therefore I can well understand that he will be glad rather than otherwise that Sardinia at last should do her part towards the freeing of Italy, from which she will benefit so vastly.”
CHAPTER XVII.
THE BATTLE OF THE VOLTURNO.
BEFORE starting for his drive Frank telegraphed to his mother: “Have not found him here. I do not yet despair. Have a faint clue that may lead to something.”