Out with Garibaldi: A story of the liberation of Italy

by G. A. Henty

“Or, mother?”—and he stood surprised as Mrs. Percival burst suddenly into tears, and the signora, rising from her seat, went hastily to her, and put her arm round her neck. It was a minute or two before Mrs. Percival took her hands from her face, and went on,—

“I was going to say, Frank, or of your father.”

Frank started, as if he had been suddenly struck. “My father,” he repeated, in a low tone. “Do you think, mother—do you think it possible? I thought there was no doubt as to how he was killed.”

“I have never let myself doubt,” Mrs. Percival went on. “Whenever the thought has come into my mind during the past two years I have resolutely put it aside. It would have been an agony more than I could bear to think it possible that he could be alive and lingering in a dungeon beyond human aid. Never have I spoken on the subject, except to my mother, when she first suggested the possibility; but now that there is a chance of the prison doors being opened, I may let myself not hope—it can hardly be that—but pray that in God’s mercy I may yet see him again.” And as she again broke down altogether, Frank, with a sudden cry, threw himself on his knees beside her, and buried his face in his arms on her lap, his whole figure shaken by deep sobs.

Mrs. Percival was the first to recover her composure, and gently stroked his hair, saying: “You must not permit yourself to hope, my boy; you must shut that out from your mind as I have done, thinking of it only as a vague, a very vague and distant possibility.”

“But how, mother, could it be?” he asked presently, raising his head. “Did we not hear all about his being killed, how Beppo saw him shot, and how one of the band testified that he was dead and buried?”

“So it seemed to me, Frank, when my mother first pointed out to me that all this might be false, and that just as the government of Naples declared they were absolutely ignorant as to your grandfather’s disappearance when it appeared to us a certainty that it was due to their own act, so they would not hesitate a moment to get rid of your father, whose letters as to the state of their prisons were exciting an intense feeling against them in every free country. She said it would be easy for them to bribe or threaten his servant into telling any tale they thought fit; he or some other agent might have informed the banditti that a rich Englishman would be passing along the road at a certain time, and that the government would be ready to pay for his capture and delivery to them. The prisoner taken may have been promised a large sum to repeat the story of the Englishman having died and been buried. It was all possible, and though I was determined not to think of him as a prisoner, my mother, who knew more of these things than I did, and how matters like this were managed in Italy, thought that it was so. Still to my mind there were, and still are, reasons against hope, for surely the Neapolitan government would have preferred that the brigands should kill him, rather than that they themselves should have the trouble of keeping him in prison.”

“Possibly they would have preferred that,” Signora Forli said, speaking for the first time. “They knew that he was an Englishman, and doubtless learned that he carried loaded pistols, and may have reckoned confidently upon his resisting and being killed, and may have been disappointed because the brigands, hoping for a large ransom, carried him off wounded.”

“But even then,” Mrs. Percival said, “they could have sent up their agents to the brigands and paid them to finish their work.”

“Yes, possibly that is what they did do; but though I have never spoken to you on the subject since you told me not to, I have thought it over many and many times, and it seems to me that they would scarcely do so, for they might thus put themselves into the power of these bandits. Any one of the band might make his way to Naples, go to the British legation, and under the promise of a large sum of money and protection denounce the whole plot. It seems to me more likely that they would send an agent to the chief brigand, and pay him a sum of money to deliver the captive up to men who would meet him at a certain place. It is probable that the chief would, on some excuse or other, get rid of all his band but two or three, hand over the prisoner, and share the money only with those with him, and when the others returned, tell them that the prisoner had died and that they had buried him. Then the carabinieri would use every effort to kill those who were in the secret, and being in earnest for once, they probably did kill the chief and those with him.