“At the next rio, Giovanni,” Columba whispered. “Your own men are coming up by the side of us. I’ll hold the procession until it’s seen that you have gone — as long as I can. In this confusion of lights it won’t be seen at once. Giuseppe must free your wrists. And then to Mestre.”
Julian sang the great farewell as he had never sung. Durante, his old tutor at the Onofrio, would never that night have warned him against the simplicity of his style. He trilled and he shook; he ornamented and improved and decorated; his voice mounted like a bird and diminished on the same pure note in the blue of the heaven and swelled out again in organ-strength as it hovered down to earth. Little muted cries of delight broke from the people. They knew the music so well; they adored the embroideries which a lovely voice could weave on it; and Julian was playing every lesson which he had learned, every natural gift he possessed against the black police boat and twelve years under the leads.
A swish of oars and his own gondola was beside him. Columba whispered to her gondoliers to back water. The water-party was halted as the dark cavern of the small rio opened between two great mansions to the right.
“Ready!” whispered Columba; and Megacles of the Olympiade poured out his last despairing loud appeal. As the applause broke out and the flambeaux drew across the night a quivering screen of flame, Columba whispered again.
“Now! God be with you, my dear!”
Julian dropped his forehead on her lap and kissed her hands. He lifted himself from his seat or began to lift himself. For Giuseppe swooped down and picked him up in his arms as though he had been a child. The cheers were still rising as the gondola swept between the two towering houses. Julian looked back. The flotilla still covered the mouth of the narrow rio, the torches were still blazing. Columba began to sing. In that confusion only the nearest of her audience could have seen that now she was alone.
Giuseppe and Paolo were stripped to their waists. They drove their gondola along this high cleft like slaves on a galley. The music died away; the sky widened to a vast canopy of stars; the houses dwindled; a white causeway of stone glimmered on one bank of the canal. No one walked on it. There was no sound but water dripping back to water from the blades of the sweeps.
“To Mestre, Signor?” said Giuseppe quietly.
“No!”
There was no carriage waiting at Mestre to-night and there was a police boat at this moment perhaps on his heels. There was but one refuge safe for him — if he could reach it.
“The Englishman at San Polo! By the little canals! The police boat will make for the Giudecca and Mestre.”
Giuseppe turned off to the right. The gondola twisted and turned through a labyrinth of tiny waterways. Here and there a group of drunken men, tumbling from a drinking shop, shouted at them. Here and there a man walking stopped in his walk and peered at them over a balustrade. Julian’s heart was in his mouth. Panic was again clutching his heart. But they had passed back beyond the Rezzonico Palace, and suddenly, at a bend, the width of the Grand Canal opened out in front.
“Here are the steps, Signor,” said Giuseppe, bringing the gondola gently against them.
Julian was standing on them the next moment.
“Giuseppe, the Count Onocuto Vigano has money for you. You shall hear from him. Now slip on your coats and go quietly back to the Rezzonico Palace, as if you were still waiting to take me home. You know nothing.”
He heard a word of good wishes and hurried up the stairs. Turn after turn! Would they never end? A heavy door faced him at the top. Julian beat upon it with his chained fists. Not a sound answered him. Had Elliot gone from the Rezzonico Palace to some other party? In despair Julian beat again and again upon the door, bruising hands and wrists and unconscious of the pain. And every other second he was looking over his shoulder, expecting Messer-Grande and his servants to turn the last corner of the stairs. At last, after an eternity, feet approached from within the apartment, a key turned in the lock, the door opened, and as Julian tumbled through the doorway, he saw James Elliot, in a dressing-gown, with a great pistol in his hand.
“You?” cried Elliot.
“Lock the door!” and Julian spoke in English.
Without a word Elliot locked the door and shot the bolts.
When he had done, he turned and saw Julian drawn up at the side, his head thrown back against the panelling of the wall, his face sickly as a dying man’s.
“Yes,” said Julian, “I am Linchcombe. Julian Linchcombe of Grest;” and suddenly, he covered his face with his hands and the tears ran out between his fingers.
Sir James Elliot saw with a shock of horror the handcuffs shining on Julian’s wrists. But he was a man with great self-possession and great consideration for his friends. He said gently:
“I was hoping that you would come to me; “and placing his arm round the boy’s shoulders, he led him into his sitting-room and set him on a couch.
Thus they met for the first time since an afternoon nearly eight years back at the inn of “The Golden Ox” in Naples.
XVIII. THE REFUGE
BOTH WISDOM AND friendship bade Sir James Elliot to continue to be the imperturbable Englishman. Julian Linchcombe, having reached at last this haven, had reached the end of his valour. He was broken in spirit. He sat on the couch, white and shaking like a man with a palsy.
“You want a posset, Julian. So do I,” said Sir James. “I have taken to my heart the liquors of this country.”
“Lemonade?” Julian asked faintly with the shadow of a smile.
“Come! That’s better,” Sir James reflected; aloud, he cried:
“Lemonade! Faugh! A child’s drink and cold on the stomach. No, Sir. A ratafia. And I have some which has been standing for four months. Meanwhile, the sooner those irons are off, the more conveniently you’ll drink it.”
He spoke as if the visit at half past two in the morning of an unusually exquisite young gentleman, dishevelled and in hand-cuffs, was the sort of humdrum incident anyone might expect.
“I’ll wake up my servant.”
“Your servant?”
“Thomas Biggin. I’m a fumbler with my fingers. Thomas was a sailor before he took to valeting and is handy with any kind of tool. He has been with me for twenty years.”
“He was with you at Grest then?”
“You were a boy.”
For a moment or two Julian was silent. Then, with a touch of eagerness:
“Yes. It will be as well to make sure whether he knows me again,” he said slowly.
“You can trust him to keep your secret if he does.” Again the wan smile glimmered in the boy’s face.
“Thomas Biggin. The name’s comforting, Sir. It sounds like farm hands in smocks sitting outside an ale house with mugs of beer and saying ‘Eh?’ when they didn’t hear you, and ‘Ah!’ when they did.” He broke off suddenly with a cry. “My God, I wish I was one of them!”
He put his elbows on his knees and buried his face in his hands. Sir James patted him on the shoulder.
“I’ll bring Thomas to you.” He went to the door on the inner side of the room which opened upon the service quarters. “You are safe here, Julian.”
Julian nodded his head and looked up with a full smile.
“Yes. You are The Right Honourable, my Lord, Sir James Elliot, Bart. Besides, you went but the once to the Benedetto Theatre and liked the opera so little that you never returned.”
“You guessed why, I hope,” said Elliot gently.
“I remembered you. I thought it out. Oh, Messer-Grande will not come here to search for me.” But when he ended, as if there and then to prove his confidence mere folly, someone knocked upon the outer door.
“At this hour...!” said Elliot, under his breath.
For a little while the two stared at one another in a dreadful silence. Elliot saw panic smoulder and glare red like madness in Linchcombe’s eyes. He rose awkwardly, unsteadily to his feet. Searching the room for an issue? No! Elliot was never to forget that moment. By some
miracle the lad lifted high his head and brought his red heels together with a click.
“If they have come for me,” he said quietly, “you must hand me over to them.”
Sir James thrust out his underlip. A boy with this spirit?
“Not even to the Duke of Venice himself,” he said stubbornly. “Stay here!”
He went out of the room into the lobby. On his left was the strong door locked and bolted. On his right was the inner door opening on to the terrace above the Grand Canal. A lamp swung from the roof above his head. He stood without a movement, his great pistol in his hand.
The knocking was repeated. But it pleaded, it asked, it prayed.
“By Gad,” he said, “no police in any country ever knocked on a door with so much modesty.”
He stepped forward, withdrew the bolts, turned the key in the lock and pulled the door open.
“Who is it?”
“Giuseppe, the Signor’s gondolier.”
He was carrying a portmanteau on his shoulder and he swung it down into the lobby.
“It must not be found on the Signor’s gondola;” and Giuseppe turned and ran down the stairs. Sir James leaned against the wall with his hand to his heart.
“By Gad, I might be the boy himself,” he said angrily. “What nonsense! I won’t have it!”
He thumped his heart. It must behave itself in a more orderly manner if they were to remain friends. He locked and bolted the door again. Then he went back into the parlour where Julian was still standing as he had left him. He said roughly, being still angry with himself:
“It was your damned gondolier with your baggage. If I may say so, a deuced inconvenient time...” but he never finished the acrimonious sentence. For now Julian’s day was full and this reprieve surcharged it. He dropped on to the couch as though he had been felled and slid off it on to the ground.
Elliot was stricken with remorse. He started forward.
“Julian! It was a false alarm. Don’t you hear me?”
Julian didn’t. His eyes were closed. He heard nothing whatever. Elliot lifted him back on to the couch. With a sudden, sharp fear he unbuttoned his waistcoat and thrust his hand in over his shirt. But Julian’s heart was beating.
“He has got the vapours now!” cried Sir James.
It was really a most agitating night. What did one do? One burned a feather under the nose of people who swooned. But there was not a feather in the room. Nonsense! Whenever people swooned there was always a plethora of feathers. He had read it, he had seen it. Amelia faints and you light a feather and there she is languidly smiling her’ gratitude. But this boy oughtn’t to want a feather.
“As if I would have handed him over!” exclaimed Sir James.
A bright idea flashed upon him. He would get the handcuffs off before the lad recovered consciousness. He hurried off by the door to the service quarters, thanking Heaven that the women slept in their own homes. Thomas Biggin, aroused by the noise, was already drawing on his breeches in the light of his candle.
“Thomas, there’s a young gentleman in the parlour in an unusual predicament.”
“Now, what might that be, Sir James?” asked Thomas, scratching his head.
Sir James explained in words of one syllable, and, pulling on a linen jacket, Thomas, with no more surprise than if he had been asked to prepare a cup of chocolate, laid his hands on a file, a length of wire and a spike, and followed Sir James into the parlour.
“Now, not a word, Thomas, to a living soul! And keep your head!”
Julian was still deep in his swoon. Elliot turned back his ruffles. Under the handcuffs the wrists were black with bruises and the skin torn.
“Get those pesky things off, Thomas! Gently now! Keep your head!”
Thomas Biggin knelt down by the couch, and Sir James, hovering over him like a mother-rook over her nest, was amazed at the delicacy with which his servant’s great hands did their work. He felt the spring of the lock with the wire, then bent the wire and inserted it again, and got a pressure on the end of the spring with his spike.
“Don’t let that slip! Keep your head, Thomas!” implored Sir James, and it was only when he realized that each time he urged Thomas to keep his head, Thomas stopped his work to turn a wondering wooden face upon his master, that he desisted from his advice.
“She’s a-coming now,” said Thomas.
Elliot heard a tiny click and the iron ring opened.
“Excellent, Thomas!”
“T’other’ll be easier to handle,” said Thomas, and Sir James saw Julian’s eyelids flutter on his cheeks.
“He oughtn’t to have those long eyelashes with the curve up at the end of them,” said Sir James. “They give him a melting look and he doesn’t melt, Thomas. Don’t you think that, Thomas, or we shall quarrel!” he added fiercely.
Thomas was thinking of nothing but freeing the second wrist from its manacle, but Elliot had got it into his head that Thomas was despising the boy as a weakling.
“Just because he’s handsomer and better-dressed than most of us, you mustn’t run away with the notion that he’s breakable. He’s neither glass nor china. He’s steel, Thomas, though you mightn’t understand it from the look of him. But I am forgetting the ratafia.”
When he came back with the jug and glasses, he saw Julian sitting up pale and worn, and his wrists free.
“I behaved like a baby, Sir,” he said.
“You wanted your bottle,” Sir James agreed. “It’s ready now. Try it!”
He filled a glass to the brim and handed it to Julian.
“Whilst you are drinking that, Thomas and I will get a room ready.”
Julian began to protest, but Elliot would not listen.
He took the handcuffs out on to the terrace and swinging back his arm flung them far into the air.
“Listen, Thomas!”
And standing in the darkness they heard the plop as those implements of Messer-Grande struck the water. Julian, within the room, heard it too.
Thomas Biggin carried the portmanteau into the guest room at the end of the terrace.
“We’ll keep the lobby door on to the terrace and the inner door of the bedroom locked,” said Elliot. “Then the only approach to my friend will be by the glass doors of the parlour. We’ll see that the women don’t use that for a day or two. You must warn them, Thomas, very discreetly. There mustn’t be a whisper that there’s a guest in the house.”
Thomas scratched his head doubtfully.
“Women!” he said.
“I know. But it’s only for a day or two.”
“Clack-clack! If it isn’t their tongues it’s their clogs,” said Thomas.
“Their clogs will be a warning.”
Thomas ruminated and at last a smile spread slowly over his face.
“I can manage it, Sir James.”
Elliot went back into the parlour and saw Julian with the glass empty at his elbow, colour in his cheeks and a light in his eyes.
“That’s better! Off you go to bed, my lad. We’ll talk to-morrow — no, by Gad, to-day. I am next door to you if you want any help.”
Julian murmured a few words.
“I shall thank you better in the morning. I don’t suppose anyone living has such a friend as I have in you.”
He was hardly aware that he undressed, brushed the powder from his hair and washed the blood from his wrists. For a few seconds he was conscious of the cool, clean luxury of lavender-scented sheets and waked to see the afternoon sun chasing the shadows on the terrace.
XIX. OLD CONSPIRATORS CONSPIRE AGAIN
JULIAN LINCHCOMBE AND Sir James Elliot supped together in the parlour that evening. The two women had gone to their homes and Thomas Biggin dished and served the meal. They drank soup, ate a magnificent turbot with lobster sauce and big peppers, a leg of veal garnished with rice, an apricot cream and macaroons, and for dessert, figs and grapes and pistachio nuts. They drank Lachryma Christi of a beautiful orange colour, Elliot gorgeous in maroon velvet and g
old, Julian spruce in a plain suit of fine green cloth with a modest lacing of silver. There was an air of profusion habitual nowadays in the dress of Sir James, which he was never quite able to control, and he looked across the table with a touch of envy at the trim elegance of his guest.
“I wish you could teach me to tie a cravat like yours,” he said, gazing with despair at the big bow of snow-white muslin at the youth’s throat and at the unruffled fall of lace which hung below it. “But you never could. Whatever I put on, I manage to look a sloven at the end of it.” He sighed deeply. “It’s a tragedy.”
Julian laughed.
“A trifle of carelessness, Sir, which would be unbecoming in me, is quite appropriate to the Right Honourable, my Lord, Sir....”
Elliot interrupted with a grin.
“That’ll be enough. I regret to notice that you are just as impudent as you were when you expected me to join you in deceiving that unfortunate old short-winded tutor of yours on the stairs at Grest.”
“Which, by the way, Sir, I think you did.”
Elliot laughed.
“Well, it’s good to play truant if only by deputy.” He had to come soon to Julian’s tragic state and history, but he was keeping it as far away from his consciousness as he could, for as long as he could; and Julian’s boyish impudence and humour helped him. Moreover, though he had recovered much of his old spirit, Julian’s face was pale and his eyes were tired. Elliot made the conversation light, whilst he insisted that the lad should eat his fair share of supper and drink glass for glass of the Lachryma Christi. But the supper had to come to an end.
“We’ll take our coffee on the terrace, Thomas. Set out two chairs and bring out my tobacco pipe.” Sir James Elliot rose reluctantly and they went through the glass doors. It was quite dark, and Elliot welcomed the darkness for the youth’s sake. “He will talk more easily if his face can’t be seen.” It was only when standing up that the lit windows of Venice and the bright loom over the Piazza could be seen. Seated behind the parapet one had only the vast embroidered hood of the sky overhead, the caress of the warm air, a scent now and again of the sea, and a distant murmur from far below to make a floor of sound. Here Sir James Elliot filled the bowl of his long pipe and lit it. He puffed for a little while under the pretence that the pipe did not draw well. Then he reached out a hand and laid it on Julian’s sleeve.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 742