‘I am to blame, Maxwell, not you. You wonder why I am so taken up with this League; if you will listen, I will tell you. The story is old now; but I will tell you as best I can remember.’
‘Then, perhaps you will wait till I have found a seat and lighted my cigarette,’ exclaimed a voice from the background at this moment. ‘If Salvarini is going to oblige, I cut in as a listener.’
At these words, uttered in a thin, slightly sneering voice, the trio turned round suddenly. Had it been lighter, they would have seen a trim, well-built figure, with head well set on square shoulders, and a perfectly cut, deadly pale face, lighted with piercing black eyes, and adorned by a well-waxed, pointed moustache. From his accents, there must have been something like a sneer upon his lips. But whatever he might have been, he seemed to be welcome enough now as he drew a chair to the open window.
‘Better late than never,’ Maxwell cried. ‘Help yourself to wine, Le Gautier; and make all due apologies for not turning up to dinner.’
‘I will do so,’ the new-comer said languidly. ‘I was detained out of town.—No; you need not ask if a pair of bright eyes were the lodestars to my ardent soul, for I shall not tell you; and in the second place, I have been obtaining your permit as a Brother of the League. I offered up myself on the shrine of friendship; I lost my dinner, voilà tout;’ and saying these words, he put a narrow slip of parchment in Maxwell’s hands.
‘I suppose I had better take care of this?’ the Englishman answered carelessly. ‘I got so exasperated with Salvarini, that I came near pitching the sacred moidore out of the window. I presume, it would not be wise?’
‘Not if you have any respect for a sound body,’ Le Gautier returned dryly. ‘I gather that Luigi has been talking largely about the sacredness of the mission. Well, he is young yet, and the gilt of his enthusiasm does not yet show the nickel beneath, which reminds me. Did my ears deceive me, or were we going to hear a story?’
‘It is no story,’ the Italian replied, ‘merely a little family record, to show you how even patriots are not exempt from tyranny.—You remember my brother, Visci? and his wife. He settled down, after fighting years for his country, not many miles from here. Living with him was his wife’s father, an aged man, universally beloved—a being who had not a single enemy in the world. Well, time went on, till one day, without the slightest warning, the old fellow was arrested for compliance in some so-called plot. My brother’s wife clung round her father’s neck; and there, in my brother’s sight, he saw his wife stricken brutally down by the ruffianly soldiers—dead; dead, mind—her only crime that little act of affection—killed by order of the officer in charge. But revenge followed. Paulo shot three of the scoundrels dead, and left the officer, as he thought, dying. Since then, I have never heard of Paulo.—And now, do you wonder why I am a Socialist, with my hand against all authority and order, when it is backed up by such cowardly, unprovoked oppression as this?’
For a time the listeners remained silent, watching the twinkling stars as they peeped out one by one, nothing to be seen now of each but the glowing tip of his cigarette as the blue smoke drifted from the casement.
‘You do not think that your brother and Paulo Lucci, the celebrated brigand we hear so much of, are the same men?’ Visci asked at length. ‘People have said so, you understand.’