Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  “Brute!” exclaimed Clare, in a low voice, and her face grew paler.

  Johnstone said nothing, and his face did not change as they advanced.

  “Don’t you see?” cried the young girl. “Can’t you do anything? Can’t you stop him?”

  “Oh yes. I think I can do that,” answered Brook indifferently. “It is rather rough on the mule.”

  “Rough! It’s brutal, it’s beastly, it’s cowardly, it’s perfectly inhuman!”

  At that moment the unfortunate animal stumbled, struggled to recover itself as the lash descended pitilessly upon its thin flanks, and then fell headlong and tumbled upon its side. The heavy cart pulled back, half turning, so that the shafts were dragged sideways across the mule, whose weight prevented the load from rolling down hill. The carrier stopped singing and swore, beating the beast with all his might, as it lay still gasping for breath.

  “Ah, assassin! Ah, carrion! I will teach thee! Curses on the dead of thy house!” he roared.

  Brook and Clare were coming nearer.

  “That’s not very intelligent of the fellow,” observed Johnstone indifferently. “He had much better get down.”

  “Oh, stop it, stop it!” cried the young girl, suffering acutely for the helpless creature.

  But the man had apparently recognised the impossibility of producing any impression unless he descended from his perch. He threw the whip to the ground and slid off the sacks. He stood looking at the mule for a moment, and then kicked it in the back with all his might. Then, just as Johnstone and Clare came up, he went round to the back of the cart, walking unsteadily, for he was evidently drunk. The two stopped by the parapet and looked on.

  “He’s going to unload,” said Johnstone. “That’s sensible, at all events.”

  The sacks, as usual in Italy, were bound to the cart by cords, which were fast in front, but which wound upon a heavy spindle at the back. The spindle had three holes in it, in which staves were thrust as levers, to turn it and hold the ropes taut. Two of the staves were tightly pressed against the load, while the third stood nearly upright in its hole.

  The man took the third stave, a bar of elm four feet long and as thick as a man’s wrist, and came round to the mule again on the side away from Clare and Johnstone. He lifted the weapon high in air, and almost before they realised what horror he was perpetrating he had struck three or four tremendous blows upon the creature’s back, making as many bleeding wounds. The mule kicked and shivered violently, and its eyes were almost starting from its head.

  Johnstone came up first, caught the stave in air as it was about to descend again, wrenched it out of the man’s hands, and hurled it over Clare’s head, across the parapet and into the sea. The man fell back a step, and his face grew purple with rage. He roared out a volley of horrible oaths, in a dialect perfectly incomprehensible even to Clare, who knew Italian well.

  “You needn’t yell like that, my good man,” said Johnstone, smiling at him.

  The man was big and strong, and drunk. He clenched his fists, and made for his adversary, head down, in the futile Italian fashion. The Englishman stepped aside, landed a left-handed blow behind his ear, and followed it up with a tremendous kick, which sent the fellow upon his face in the ditch under the rocks. Clare looked on, and her eyes brightened singularly, for she had fighting blood in her veins. The man seemed stunned, and lay still where he had fallen. Johnstone turned to the fallen mule, which lay bleeding and gasping under the shafts, and he began to unbuckle the harness.

  “Could you put a big stone behind the wheel?” he asked, as Clare tried to help him.

  He knew that the cart must roll back if it were not blocked, for he had noticed how it stood. Clare looked about for a stone, picked one up by the roadside, and went to the back of the cart, while Johnstone patted the mule’s head, and busied himself with the buckles of the harness, bending low as he did so. Clare also bent down, trying to force the stone under the wheel, and did not notice that the carter was sitting up by the roadside, feeling for something in his pocket.

  An instant later he was on his feet. When Clare stood up, he was stepping softly up behind Johnstone. As he moved, she saw that he had an open clasp-knife in his right hand. Johnstone was still bending down unconscious of his danger. The young girl was light on her feet and quick, and not cowardly. The man was before her, halfway between her and Brook. She sprang with all her might, threw her arms round the drunken man’s neck from behind, and dragged him backward. He struck wildly behind him with the knife, and roared out curses.

  “Quick!” cried Clare, in her high, clear voice. “He’s got a knife! Quick!”

  But Johnstone had heard their steps, and was already upon him from before, while the young girl’s arms tightened round his neck from behind. The fellow struck about him wildly with his blade, staggering backwards as Clare dragged upon him.

  “Let go, or you’ll fall!” Brook shouted to her.

  As he spoke, dodging the knife, he struck the man twice in the face, left and right, in an earnest, business-like way. Clare caught herself by the wheel of the cart as she sprang aside, almost falling under the man’s weight. A moment later, Brook was kneeling on his chest, having the knife in his hand and holding it near the carter’s throat.

  “Lie still!” he said rather quietly, in English. “Give me the halter, please!” he said to Clare, without looking up. “It’s hanging to the shaft there in a coil.”

  Kneeling on the man’s chest — to tell the truth, he was badly stunned, though not unconscious — Brook took two half-hitches with the halter round one wrist, passed the line under his neck as he lay, and hauled on it till the arm came under his side, then hitched the other wrist, passed the line back, hauled on it, and finally took two turns round the throat. Clare watched the operation, very pale and breathing hard.

  “He’s drunk,” observed Johnstone. “Otherwise I wouldn’t tie him up, you know. Now, if you move,” he said in English to his prisoner, “you’ll strangle yourself.”

  Thereupon he rose, forced the fellow to roll over, and hitched the fall of the line round both wrists again, and made it fast, so that the man lay, with his head drawn back by his own hands, which he could not move without tightening the rope round his neck.

  “He’s frightened now,” said Brook. “Let’s get the poor mule out of that.”

  In a few minutes he got the wretched beast free. It was ready enough to rise as soon as it felt that it could do so, and it struggled to its feet, badly hurt by the beating and bleeding in many places, but not seriously injured. The carter watched them as he lay on the road, half strangled, and cursed them in a choking voice.

  “And now, what in the world are we going to do with them?” asked Brook, rubbing the mule’s nose. “It’s a pretty bad case,” he continued, thoughtfully. “The mule can’t draw the load, the carter can’t be allowed to beat the mule, and we can’t afford to let the carter have his head. What the dickens are we to do?”

  He laughed a little. Then he suddenly looked hard at Clare, as though remembering something.

  “It was awfully plucky of you to jump on him in that way,” he said. “Just at the right moment, too, by Jove! That devil would have got at me if you hadn’t stopped him. Awfully plucky, upon my word! And I’m tremendously obliged, Miss Bowring, indeed I am!”

  “It’s nothing to be grateful for, it seems to me,” Clare answered. “I suppose there’s nothing to be done but to sit down and wait until somebody comes. It’s a lonely road, of course, and we may wait a long time.”

  “I say,” exclaimed Johnstone, “you’ve torn your frock rather badly! Look at it!”

  She drew her skirt round with her hand. There were long, clean rents in the skirt, on her right side.

  “It was his knife,” she said, thoughtfully surveying the damage. “He kept trying to get at me with it. I’m sorry, for I haven’t another serge skirt with me.”

  Then she felt herself blushing, and turned away.

  “I’ll jus
t pin it up,” she said, and she disappeared behind the cart rather precipitately.

  “By Jove! You have pretty good nerves!” observed Johnstone, more to himself than to her. “Shut up!” he cried to the carter, who was swearing again. “Stop that noise, will you?”

  He made a step angrily towards the man, for the sight of the slit frock had roused him again, when he thought what the knife might have done. The fellow was silent instantly, and lay quite still, for he knew that he should strangle himself if he moved.

  “I’ll have you in prison before night,” continued Johnstone, speaking English to him. “Oh yes! the carabinieri will come, and you will go to galera — do you understand that?”

  He had picked up the words somewhere. The man began to moan and pray.

  “Stop that noise!” cried Brook, with slow emphasis.

  He was not far wrong in saying that the carabineers would come. They patrol the roads day and night, in pairs, as they patrol every high road and every mountain path in Italy, all the year round. And just then, far up the road down which Johnstone and Clare had come, two of them appeared in sight, recognisable a mile away by their snow-white crossbelts and gleaming accoutrements. There are twelve or fourteen thousand of them in the country, trained soldiers and picked men, by all odds the finest corps in the army. Until lately no man could serve in the carabineers who could not show documentary evidence that neither he nor his father nor his mother had ever been in prison even for the smallest offence. They are feared and respected, and it is they who have so greatly reduced brigandage throughout the country.

  Clare came back to Johnstone’s side, having done what she could to pin the rents together.

  “It’s all right now,” she cried. “Here come the carabineers. They will take the man and his cart to the next village. Let me talk to them — I can speak Italian, you know.”

  She was pale again, and very quiet. She had noticed that her hands trembled violently when she was pinning her frock, though they had been steady enough when they had gone round the man’s throat.

  When the patrol men came up, she stepped forward and explained what had happened, clearly and briefly. There was the bleeding mule, Johnstone standing before it and rubbing its dusty nose; there was the knife; there was the man. With a modest gesture she showed them where her frock had been cut to shreds. Johnstone made remarks in English, reflecting upon the Italian character, which she did not think fit to translate.

  The carabineers were silent fellows with big moustaches — the one very dark, the other as fair as a Swede — they were clean, strong, sober men, with frank eyes, and they said very little. They asked the strangers’ names, and Johnstone, at Clare’s request, wrote her name on his card, and the address in Amalfi. One of them knew the carter for a bad character.

  “We will take care of him and his cart,” said the dark man, who was the superior. “The signori may go in quiet.”

  They untied the rope that bound the man. He rose trembling, and stood on his feet, for he knew that he was in their power. But they showed no intention of putting him in handcuffs.

  “Turn the cart round!” said the dark man.

  They helped the carter to do it, and blocked it with stones.

  “Put in the mule!” was the next order, and the carabineers held up the shafts while the man obeyed.

  Then both saluted Johnstone and Clare, and shouldered their short carbines, which had stood against the parapet.

  “Forward!” said the dark man, quietly.

  The carter took the mule by the head and started it gently enough. The creature understood, and was glad to go down hill; the wheels creaked, the cart moved, and the party went off, one of the carabineers marching on either side.

  Clare drew a long breath as she stood looking after them for a moment.

  “Let us go home,” she said at last, and turned up the road.

  For some minutes they walked on in silence.

  “I think you probably saved my life at the risk of yours, Miss Bowring,” said Johnstone, at last, looking up. “Thank you very much.”

  “Nonsense!” exclaimed the young girl, and she tried to laugh.

  “But you were telling me that you were not combative — that you always avoided a fight, you know, and that you were so mild, and all that. For a very mild man, Mr. Johnstone, who hates fighting, you are a good ‘man of your hands,’ as they say in the Morte d’Arthur.”

  “Oh, I don’t call that a fight!” answered Johnstone, contemptuously. “Why, my collar isn’t even crumpled. As for my hands, if I could find a spring I would wash them, after touching that fellow.”

  “That’s the advantage of wearing gloves,” observed Clare, looking at her own.

  They were both very young, and though they knew that they had been in great danger they affected perfect indifference about it to each other, after the manner of true Britons. But each admired the other, and Brook was suddenly conscious that he had never known a woman whom, in some ways, he thought so admirable as Clare Bowring, but both felt a singular constraint as they walked homeward.

  “Do you know?” Clare began, when they were near Amalfi, “I think we had better say nothing about it to my mother — that is, if you don’t mind.”

  “By all means,” answered Brook. “I’m sure I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “No, and my mother is very nervous — you know — about my going off to walk without her. Oh, not about you — with anybody. You see, I’d been very ill before I came here.”

  CHAPTER VIII

  IN OBEDIENCE TO Clare’s expressed wish, Johnstone made no mention that evening of the rather serious adventure on the Salerno road. They had fallen into the habit of shaking hands when they bade each other good-night. When it was time, and the two ladies rose to withdraw, Johnstone suddenly wished that Clare would make some little sign to him — the least thing to show that this particular evening was not precisely what all the other evenings had been, that they were drawn a little closer together, that perhaps she would change her mind and not dislike him any more for that unknown reason at which he could not even guess.

  They joined hands, and his eyes met hers. But there was no unusual pressure — no little acknowledgment of a common danger past. The blue eyes looked at him straight and proudly, without softening, and the fresh lips calmly said good-night. Johnstone remained alone, and in a singularly bad humour for such a good-tempered man. He was angry with Clare for being so cold and indifferent, and he was ashamed of himself for wishing that she would admire him a little for having knocked down a tipsy carter. It was not much of an exploit. What she had done had been very much more remarkable. The man would not have killed him, of course, but he might have given him a very dangerous wound with that ugly clasp-knife. Clare’s frock was cut to pieces on one side, and it was a wonder that she had escaped without a scratch. He had no right to expect any praise for what he had done, when she had done so much more.

  To tell the truth, it was not praise that he wanted, but a sign that she was not indifferent to him, or at least that she no longer disliked him. He was ashamed to own to himself that he was half in love with a young girl who had told him that she did not like him and would never even be his friend. Women had not usually treated him in that way, so far. But the fact remained, that she had got possession of his thoughts, and made him think about his actions when she was present. It took a good deal to disturb Brook Johnstone’s young sleep, but he did not sleep well that night.

  As for Clare, when she was alone, she regretted that she had not just nodded kindly to him, and nothing more, when she had said good-night. She knew perfectly well that he expected something of the sort, and that it would have been natural, and quite harmless, without any possibility of consequence. She consoled herself by repeating that she had done quite right, as the vision of Lady Fan rose distinctly before her in a flood of memory’s moonlight. Then it struck her, as the vision faded, that her position was a very odd one. Personally, she liked the man. Impersona
lly, she hated and despised him. At least she believed that she did, and that she should, for the sake of all women. To her, as she had known him, he was brave, kind, gentle in manner and speech, boyishly frank. As she had seen him that once, she had thought him heartless, cowardly, and cynical. She could not reconcile the two, and therefore, in her thoughts, she unconsciously divided him into two individualities — her Mr. Johnstone and Lady Fan’s Brook. There was very little resemblance between them. Oddly enough, she felt a sort of pang for him, that he could ever have been the other man whom she had first seen. She was getting into a very complicated frame of mind.

  They met in the morning and exchanged greetings with unusual coldness. Brook asked whether she were tired; she said that she had done nothing to tire her, as though she resented the question; he said nothing in answer, and they both looked at the sea and thought it extremely dull. Presently Johnstone went off for a walk alone, and Clare buried herself in a book for the morning. She did not wish to think, because her thoughts were so very contradictory. It was easier to try and follow some one else’s ideas. She found that almost worse than thinking, but, being very tenacious, she stuck to it and tried to read.

  At the midday meal they exchanged commonplaces, and neither looked at the other. Just as they left the dining-room a heavy thunderstorm broke overhead with a deluge of rain. Clare said that the thunder made her head ache, and she disappeared on pretence of lying down. Mrs. Bowring went to write letters, and Johnstone hung about the reading-room, and smoked a pipe in the long corridor, till he was sick of the sound of his own footsteps. Amalfi was all very well in fine weather, he reflected, but when it rained it was as dismal as penny whist, Sunday in London, or a volume of sermons — or all three together, he added viciously, in his thoughts. The German family had fallen back upon the guide book, Mommsen’s History of Rome, and the Gartenlaube. The Russian invalid was presumably in his room, with a teapot, and the two English old maids were reading a violently sensational novel aloud to each other by turns in the hotel drawing-room. They stopped reading and got very red, when Johnstone looked in.