Called Back

by Hugh Conway

  I wanted no revenge on the man. His manner told me he spoke the truth when he denied that Pauline had ever been in love. As, when last I gazed on her fair face, I knew it would, Macari’s black lie had been scouted. Pauline was innocent as an angel. But I must know who was the man whose death had for a while deprived her of reason.

  Ceneri was glancing at me nervously. Did he guess what I had to ask him? ‘Tell me,’ I said, ‘the name of the young man murdered by Macari in London, in the presence of Pauline; tell me why he was killed.’

  His face grew ashen. He seemed to collapse—to sink back into his chair a helpless heap, without the power of speech or movement, without the power of turning his eyes from my face.

  ‘Tell me—’ I repeated. ‘Stay, I will recall the scene to you, and you will know I am well informed. Here is the table; here is Macari, standing over the man he has stabbed; here are you, and behind you is another man with a scar on his cheek. In the back room, at the piano, is Pauline. She is singing, but her song stops as the murdered man falls dead. Do I describe the scene truly?’

  I had spoken excitedly. I had used gestures and words. Ceneri’s ears had drunk in every syllable; his eyes had followed every gesture. As I pointed to the supposed position of Pauline, he had looked there with a quick, startled glance, as if expecting to see her enter the door. He made no attempt to deny the accuracy of my representation.

  I waited for him to recover. He was looking ghastly. His breath came in spasmodic gasps. For a moment I feared he was about to die then and there. I poured out a glass of wine; he took it in his trembling hand and gulped it down.

  ‘Tell me his name.’ I repeated. ‘Tell me what he had to do with Pauline.’

  Then he found his voice. ‘Why do you come here to ask me? Pauline could have told you. She must be well, or you could not have learned this.’

  ‘She has told me nothing.’

  ‘You are wrong. She must have told you. No one else saw the crime—the murder: for a murder it was.’

  ‘There was another present besides the actors I have named.’

  Ceneri started and looked at me.

  ‘Yes, there was another; there by an accident. A man who could hear but not see. A man whose life I pleaded for as for my own.’

  ‘I thank you for having saved it.’

  ‘You thank me. Why should you thank me?’

  ‘If you saved anyone’s life it was mine. I was that man.’

  ‘You that man?’ He looked at me more attentively. ‘Yes: now the features come back to me. I always wondered that your face seemed so familiar. Yes. I can understand—I am a doctor—your eyes were operated upon?’

  ‘Yes—most successfully.’

  ‘You can see well now—but then! I could not be mistaken, you were blind—you saw nothing.’

  ‘I saw nothing, but I heard everything.’

  ‘And now Pauline has told you what happened?’

  ‘Pauline has not spoken.’

  Ceneri rose, and in great agitation walked up and down the room, his chains rattling as he moved.

  ‘I knew it,’ he muttered, in Italian, ‘I knew it—such a crime cannot be hidden.’

  Then be turned to me. ‘Tell me how you have learned this? Teresa would die before she spoke. Petróff is dead—died, as I told you, raving mad.’

  From his last words I presumed that Petróff was the third man I had seen, and also the fellow-prisoner who had denounced Macari.

  ‘Was it Macari—that double-dyed traitor? No—he was the murderer—such an avowal would defeat his ends. Tell me how you know!’

  ‘I would tell you, but I suspect you would not believe me.’

  ‘Believe you?’ he cried, excitedly. ‘I would believe anything connected with that night—it has never left my thoughts—Mr Vaughan, the truth has come to me in my captivity. I am not condemned to this life for a political crime. My sentence is God’s indirect vengeance for the deed you witnessed.’

  It was clear that Ceneri was not such a hardened human as Macari. He, at least, had a conscience. Moreover, as he appeared to be superstitious, he would perhaps believe me when I told him how my accurate knowledge had been obtained.

  ‘I will tell you,’ I said, ‘provided you pledge your honour to give me the full history of that fearful crime and answer my questions fully and truthfully.’

  He smiled bitterly. ‘You forget my position, Mr Vaughan, when you speak of “honour”. Yet I promise all you ask.’

  So I told him, as shortly and simply as I could, all that had occurred; all I had seen. He shuddered as I again described the terrible vision.

  ‘Spare me,’ he said, ‘I know it all. Thousands of times I have seen it or have dreamed it—it will never leave me. But why come to me? Pauline, you say, is recovering her senses—she would have told you all.’

  ‘I would not ask her until I saw you. She is herself again, but I am a stranger to her—and unless your answer is the one I hope for, we shall never meet again.’

  ‘If anything I can do to atone—’ he began, eagerly.

  ‘You can only speak the truth. Listen. I taxed the murderer, your accomplice, with the crime. Like you he could not deny it, but he justified it.’

  ‘How?—tell me,’ panted Ceneri.

  For a moment I paused. I fixed my eyes upon him to catch every change of feature—to read the truth in more than words.

  ‘He vowed to me that the young man was killed by your instructions—that he was—oh God, how can I repeat it?—the lover of Pauline, who having dishonoured her, refused to repair his fault. The truth! Tell me the truth!’

  I almost shouted the last words—my calmness vanished as I thought of the villain who had, with a mocking smile, coupled Pauline’s name with shame.

  Ceneri, on the other hand, grew calmer as he grasped the purport of my question. Bad as the man might be, even stained with innocent blood, I could have clasped him in my arms as I read in his wondering eyes the baselessness of the foul accusation.

  ‘That young man—the boy struck down by Macari’s dagger—was Pauline’s brother—my sister’s son—Anthony March!’

  CHAPTER XIII

  A TERRIBLE CONFESSION

  CENERI, having made this astounding announcement, threw his wasted arms across the rough table and laid his head upon them with a gesture of despair. I sat like one stupefied, repeating mechanically, ‘Pauline’s brother—Anthony March!’ Every vestige of the black lie was swept away from my mind; but the crime in which Ceneri had been concerned assumed more fearful proportions. It was more dreadful than I had suspected. The victim a near blood relation—his own sister’s child! Nothing, I felt, could be urged to excuse or palliate the crime. Even had he not ordered and planned it, he had been present; had assisted in hiding all traces of it; had been, until recently, on terms of friendship with the man who had struck the blow. I could scarcely control the loathing and contempt I felt for the abject wretch before me. My burning indignation would scarcely allow me to ask him, in intelligible speech, the object of the cruel deed. But for once and all I must have everything made clear to me.

  I was spared the necessity of asking the question I was trying to force to my lips. The convict raised his head and looked at me with miserable eyes.

  ‘You shrink from me. No wonder. Yet I am not so guilty as you think.’

  ‘Tell me all, first; the excuses may come afterward, if anything can be urged in excuse of the crime.’

  I spoke as I felt—sternly and contemptuously.

  ‘None can be urged for the murder. For me, God knows I would willingly have let that bright boy live. He forsook and forgot his country, but that I forgave.’

  ‘His country! his father’s country was England!’

  ‘His mother’s was Italy,’ replied Ceneri, almost fiercely. ‘He had our blood in his veins. His mother was a true Italian. She would have given fortune, life—aye, even honour, for Italy.’

  ‘No matter. Tell me the whole terrible story.’

&nb
sp; He told me. In justice to a penitent man, I do not use his own words in re-telling it. Without his accent and stress they would sound cold and unemotional. Criminal he had been, but not so utterly black as my fancy had painted him. His great fault was that in the cause of liberty any weapons were allowable, any crimes were pardonable. We Englishmen, whose idea of tyranny and oppression is being debarred from the exercise of the franchise, can neither understand nor sympathize with a man of his type. We may call the government righteous or corrupt as we are Whigs or Tories, and one side happens to be in or out; but, at least, we are ruled by our countrymen, elected by some of us for that purpose. Let us be for years and years at the mercy of a foreigner, and we may understand what patriotism in Ceneri’s sense means.

  He and his sister were the children of respectable middle-class people—not noble as Macari asserted. He had been given a liberal education, and adopted the profession of a doctor. His sister, from whom Pauline inherited her great beauty, lived the life of an ordinary Italian girl—a duller life, perhaps, than many of them led, as, following her brother’s example, she refused to share in gaieties whilst the white-coated foe ruled the land. No doubt she would have been faithful to her mourning for her country had not love come upon the scene. An Englishman named March saw the fair Italian girl, won her heart, wedded her and carried her away in triumph to his native land. Ceneri never quite forgave his sister for her desertion and defection; but the prospects opened before her by the marriage were so great that he made little opposition to it. March was a very rich man. He was the only son of an only son, which fact accounts for Pauline having, so far as Ceneri knew, no near relatives on her father’s side. For several years the young husband and his beautiful dark-eyed wife lived in great happiness. Two children, a son and a daughter, were born to them. When the son was twelve and the daughter ten years old the father died. The widow, who had made few close friends in England, and only loved the country for her husband’s sake, flew back to her native land. She was cordially welcomed by her old friends. She was considered fabulously wealthy. Her husband, in the first flush of his passion, had made a will bequeathing everything he possessed to her absolutely. Although children had since come, so perfectly did he trust her that no change had been made as to the disposition of his property. So, with such a fortune at her command, Mrs March was honoured and courted by all.

  She had, until she met her future husband, loved her brother above everyone in the world. She had echoed his patriotism, sympathized with him in his schemes and listened to the wild plots he was always planning He was some years older than she was, and upon her return to Italy she found him, outwardly, nothing more than a quiet, hard-working, ill-paid doctor. She marvelled at the change from the headstrong, visionary, daring young man she had left. It was not until he was certain her heart had not forsaken her country that Ceneri allowed her to see that under his prosaic exterior lurked one of the subtlest and ablest minds of all those engaged in working out the liberation of Italy. Then all his old sway came back. She admired, almost worshipped him. She, too, was ready to make any sacrifice when the time should come.

  What she would have done had she been called upon it is impossible to say; but there is little doubt but her fortune and her children’s fortune would have been freely spent in the good cause. As it was, she died long before the pear was ripe, and when she died, such was her faith in her brother, everything was left in his hands as sole trustee for her children. In her last moments the thought of her husband’s decided English proclivities made her exact a promise that both the boy and the girl should be given an English education. Then she closed her eyes, and the orphans were left entirely to the trustee’s mercy.

  He obeyed her spoken commands to the letter. Anthony and Pauline were sent to English schools; but having no friends in their father’s native land, or all old friends having been lost sight of during their mother’s widowhood, the holidays were spent in Italy. They grew up almost as much Italian as English. Ceneri husbanded, invested, and managed their fortune with care and in a businesslike way. I have no doubt, so far as it went, his honesty was unimpeachable.

  Then the longed-for moment came! The great blow was to be struck. Ceneri, who had kept himself out of little abortive plots, felt that now or never he must do all he could do for his country. He hailed the coming man. He knew that Garibaldi was to be the saviour of his oppressed land. The first rash step had been taken and led to success. The time and the man were at hand. Recruits were flocking by thousands to the scene of war, but the cry was ‘Money, money, money!’ Money for arms and ammunition—money for stores, food and clothing—money for bribes—money for everything! Those who furnished the sinews of war would be the real liberators of their country!

  Why should he hesitate? Had his sister lived she would have given all the fortune she possessed as freely as she would have given her life! Were not her children half Italian? Liberty laughed at such a small thing as breach of trust.

  Except a few thousand pounds, he ruthlessly realized and sacrificed the whole of the children’s inheritance. He poured their thousands and thousands into the hands held out for them. The large sum was spent where it was most wanted, and Ceneri averred that he freed Italy by the opportune aid. Perhaps he did—who can tell?

  Titles and honours were afterwards offered him for this great though secret service. It makes me think better of the man that he refused all reward. His conscience may have told him he had not robbed himself. Anyway, he remained plain Doctor Ceneri, and broke with his old leaders and friends when he found that Italy was to be a kingdom, not a republic.

  He had kept, I said, a few thousand pounds. The boy and the girl were growing up, and their uncle thought that even his patriotism permitted him to keep back enough to complete their education and start them in life. Pauline was promising to be so beautiful that he troubled little about her future. A rich husband would set everything right with her. But Anthony—who was becoming a wild, headstrong young fellow—was another affair.

  As soon as the youth should reach man’s estate, Ceneri had resolved to make a clean breast of his defalcations—to tell him how the money had been spent—to beg his forgiveness, and, if necessary, bear the penalty of his fraudulent act. But so long as any money remained he delayed doing so. The young man, if evincing no sympathy with his uncle’s regeneration schemes and pursuit of liberty, fully believed in his integrity. Feeling assured that when he came of age he would succeed to a splendid inheritance, swelled by accumulated savings, he threw away money in a thousand and one extravagant ways, till Ceneri soon saw that the end of the reserve fund was drawing near.

  So long as he had the money in hand to meet Anthony’s demands, he postponed the evil day of confession. The idea, which Macari had tried to work out with my aid, of appealing to the Italian Government for a return of some of the amounts expended, suggested itself to him; but to carry this out it would be necessary to let his nephew know what had taken place—the appeal must be made in his name.

  As the inevitable exposure drew near he dreaded it more and more. He had studied Anthony’s character, and felt sure that when he knew the truth his one wish would be to take revenge on the fraudulent trustee. Ceneri could see nothing before him but a well-deserved term of penal servitude. If the English law failed to touch him, that of his own country might be brought against him.

  It seems to me that until this time he had committed no crime from which he could not absolve himself on the grounds of patriotism; but now the desire to save himself from punishment grew upon him, and he determined to avoid the consequences of his acts.

  He had never felt any great affection for the two children. No doubt they had latterly appeared in the light of wronged innocents who would one day demand a reckoning with him. They were in disposition too much like their father for him to be greatly drawn toward them. He despised Anthony for his gay, frivolous life—a life without plans or ambition—and contrasted it with his own. He honestly believed he was doing
good work in the world; that his plots and conspiracies quickened the steps of universal liberty. In his dark, secret circle, he was a figure of considerable importance. If he were ruined and imprisoned he would be missed. Had he not a right to weigh his own high purposes against the butterfly existence of his nephew?

  So he reasoned and persuaded himself that, for the sake of mankind, he might do almost anything to save himself.

  Anthony March was now twenty-two. Trusting his uncle; careless and easy going; so long as his wants had been supplied he had accepted, until now, the excuses made for deferring the settlement of his affairs. Whether his suspicions had at last been awakened or not cannot be said; but recently he had taken another tone, and was insisting that his fortune should be at once placed in his hands. Ceneri, whose schemes called him for a time to England, pacified him by assuring that he would, during his stay in London, explain everything.

  The explanation must indeed be given now, as Anthony’s last drafts had reduced the remnant of his father’s wealth almost to nothing.

  Now, as to Macari’s part in the affair. He had been for years a useful and trusted agent of Ceneri’s; but most probably without the latter’s lofty and unselfish aims. He appears to have followed conspiracy as a trade by which money might be made. The fact, which seems beyond a doubt, that he fought bravely and distinguished himself on the battlefield, may be accounted for by the natural ferocity of the man’s nature, which bade him fight for the sake of fighting.

  Being mixed up in all his plots he was often at Ceneri’s house, wherever for the time being it might be; and on many occasions saw Pauline. He fell in love with her when she was but a young girl, and tried everything he knew to win her heart. To her he was soft and kind. She had no reason to mistrust him, but she utterly refused to give him the love he asked for. The pursuit went on at intervals for years—the man, to give him his due, was constancy itself. Again and again Pauline assured him of the hopelessness of his suit, but after each rebuff he returned to the attack.