Chapter XX: Antonio Geoletti

So she believed me to be her son and his! The deadlier mystery was none of her sharing. For that, at least, I could breathe one heartfelt prayer of thanksgiving. She was innocent of any but that one deceit, and that one, even, in the relief of my soul, I could have found trivial to insignificance.

The memory of our interview held me sleepless and agitated through most of the bitter night. I had denounced bravely, and promised bravely, and now through what new development of the situation was I purposing to redeem my promise? My course, I felt, would have been an easier if a darker one, had she betrayed her guilty partnership in that secret. Her ignorance there was but a new rock in my path. All doors seemed to open but to shut in my face; all jack-o’-lantern lights to lead me on but to plunge me in confusion. What impulse, interest, frenzy had so driven that mad woman to betray her husband to me? None, perhaps; but some inexplicable craft calculating to mislead me. Yet had I not proved the genuineness of her strange confidence? No, it was impossible not to believe that for some hidden reason he had earned her revengeful hatred. But for what reason? And how was it to be associated with the paramount mystery?

I had promised much, and I meant much--desperately, if cunning would not serve. Yet I doubt my performance might have fallen far short of my intention, had not circumstance, at this crisis, given into my hands the very witness I could most need. That mocking altar still stood to attest my confidence in my tutelary god; yet not of Luck, I think, was this fortuity, but rather of the relentless processes of Fate. There was even hardly a coincidence in it, when one came to examine.

I fell asleep at last, and woke to that sense of wan chill light on the ceiling which is the reflected ghastliness of snow. I rose shivering, and looked out of my window. The wood was all a whirling rush of flakes ground to powder between the teeth of a ravenous wind. It tore and spat them so, that the trees on their north sides were all glued with white foam a foot deep; and here and there ominous drifts were already forming.

It was a strange enough sight to a southerner, inured to winter fogs and dripping skies; and the uncommonness of it--the shriek and sting and the mad dance--awoke a responsive frenzy in my blood. _This_ was the right challenge to my mood--something that I could close and wrestle with and battle through to an end. I rejoiced, as if my formless visions of retribution had actually at last assumed a definite shape and substance.

It was Spartan work, nevertheless, dressing, and washing in a pool of slushy ice, and fetching wood and coal, and preparing the house generally against the siege of frost which threatened it. An advance picket of the enemy already occupied the lower rooms, and had to be driven out under a hot fire from the grate. I must keep an eye to my provisioning too, in case I should come to be cut off from my base--snowed up, and prevented from reaching the house, in short. Of ordinary fare I had always made a point of storing a plentiful supply, in order to avoid the worry of a daily commissariat, and of this supply I found to my relief there was ample remainder. Biscuits; jolly great potatoes for roasting in their winter jackets, and good to be eaten, crumbling hot, with salt and pepper and perhaps a little yellow flake of butter in their middles; rashers from a half-side of bacon, which hung, like an old rusty coat, in the chimney-corner of my tiny kitchen; eggs, when I could get them, and at whose endless manipulations in a chafing dish I had become expert; dates, figs, a canvas bag of chestnuts, and, for drink, coffee and hot whisky grog with sugar and lemon peel--these made the staple of my diet, and, with tobacco, were sufficient to the needs of any proper woodland hermit. But there were perishable goods in addition not to be despised--bread, milk, and butter, to wit; and for my daily supply of these I was accustomed to look to the good offices of my old friend Comely the steward, who had never yet failed me in his service of them. Well, I must, if needs must, come to drink my coffee black, and lard my toasted biscuits with pig’s fat. It would be no such terrible deprivation after all.

I spent the morning putting my fortress in order, for the wildness of the weather precluded any thought of outdoor exercise. But, after lunch, the fury of the storm having abated somewhat, I began to cast about for some means to discipline the restless spirit of adventure which was awake in me. The prospect, in my then state of excitement, of a long afternoon of enforced apathy and inaction in my lonely quarters was intolerable. I decided that I would take the road to Market Grazing, and pay a visit to the steward himself, with whom I would still occasionally foregather of an evening in his little band-box of a villa in the High Street. For Comely had married of late years, and had a house of his own and, incidentally, a smiling baggy little wife, who had sat for so long under Mr Pugsley that she had come to have no particular shape or opinions of her own.

Yes, Comely, genial and deferential and unsuspicious, would prove an excellent febrifuge in the fever of mind which consumed me.

But I was destined never to reach him--never to get beyond the fall of the bank where the little wicket gave upon the road. For there the wind had heaped the snow in a mighty drift, and in endeavouring to negotiate it, I slipped and plunged up to my neck.

That was little in itself, had not my feet in sinking encountered some body, soft, and of a texture indescribably different from what they had expected. It was elastic, and potentially human. Fighting for my balance, I groped down, and found a buried man.

He was dead, to all appearance--a dark, small, foreign-looking fellow, with closed eyes and a face like wax. His crop of hair and short beard were grey and stark like rime. He was cheaply dressed, but newly, in a suit of coarse tweed, and woollen gloves were on his hands.

I discovered this all when I had prized and tugged him out of his deadly burrow, and laid him on his back, and brushed the snow from his clothes and features. My great strength had served me well; but I thought to no profitable end. I was not to guess for a moment what wonderful fatality had guided my steps to this drifted cache, and set my foot on the key to all the mysteries--and at the fruitful moment, too. Another hour, half hour, perhaps, and it had been too late.

And in the meantime I thought him gone beyond recovery. Listening and feeling, I could detect no pulse in him nor any sign of life. His teeth, white and regular still, for all his grey hairs, showed in a set grin; his lips were pale violet. I believed him dead.

Still, there was no telling; and here at least was material for my superfluous vigour, something external and challenging to my hunger for distraction in action. With a huge effort I lifted the body in my arms, and made with it for the lodge. The wind cut at me; the snow, still flying viciously, beat and stung my face. I joyed in the battle, and won triumphant through it into shelter, and laid my burden down by the fire. Then I fetched brandy, and forced a spoonful of it through the biting teeth, and stroked the hairy throat to irritate it to action, and waited and persisted, and persisted and waited. Sometimes, as the day sank, I thought I could detect a shadowy movement on the face; but it was only the illusion of dancing firelight. Sometimes a sound as of a tiny voice calling from a vast depth would startle me, until I identified it for the thin whine of wind in the keyhole. The stiff body never moved, never responded by one thrill to the persistence of my efforts. And presently I gave it up, and withdrew into the scullery to wash my hands, and ponder my unenviable position as the keeper of a mortuary, with no immediate or definite prospect of release.

It was while I was there, scrubbing, preoccupied and depressed, that the growth of a sound, unnoticed at first, or attributed to familiar causes, began to impress itself on my hearing. It was like a low continuous babbling at the outset; but, even while I listened, it rose all in a moment into a series of strained and gasping screams. Petrified for an instant, the next I had rushed back into the sitting-room. The pseudo-dead man was writhing and rolling on the hearthrug, and it was by him that those cries of suffering were emitted. His congested veins were recovering their circulation, and his torment was unspeakable.

I flung myself on my knees beside him, and caught and chafed his agonised limbs, and poured more brandy down his throat. And by-and-by the devil fled, and his cries sank into moans, and his moans to spasmodic gasps; and when those ceased, I got him by degrees into a chair, where he sat tottery and dribbling, and conning me speechlessly from bloodshot eyes dim with wonder and the spent tragedy of pain.

“Rest quiet now,” I said, “and don’t attempt to speak or move. You needn’t worry your brain either about what brought you here. It’s quite simple. I stumbled on you by chance, sleeping to your death in a snowdrift, and I fished you out of it and carried you to my house here, which happened to be close by. Don’t answer, but if you think you could stand more brandy, move your head, and I will get you a glass, stiff and hot.”

He nodded feebly once or twice. I disposed him to his safety, fetched a kettle, water, and the condiments, and in a little had brewed him a good stinging jorum.

“Now,” I said, “I am going to pull the sofa there to the fire, put you on it, and leave you to sleep.”

He smiled weakly as I lifted him in my arms, and whispered for the first time, very faintly: “Good, good--ver’ strong and good--grazia, signore!”

The medicine, I will admit, he took down lamblike, in three dutiful gulps. It had its effect on him almost instantly. He closed his eyes and sank back in a blissful stupor. Then I covered him warm with a rug; lit the candles; shut all in snug and dry, and set about making my preparations for a comfortable hot meal against the time when he should awake.

A strange glow was in my blood. I must have felt something, I think, of a mother’s feelings, when her conscious self first realises in the new life beside her the earnest of pains past and present reward--when she wakes from storm to see the rainbow glowing in her sky. Does that sound extravagant? I daresay; but remember the sort of social Crusoe I had been. This was my man Friday--the living salvage of my hands. I was jealous already of my proprietorship in him. He owed his life to me; and I felt a fierce joy in that debt, as in one that elevated me for the first time to the ranks of life’s creditors. All conventional disabilities vanished in that uplifting. What did a name matter to one who had saved a life? I had qualified for the great human brotherhood.

He slept very long and heavily, hardly stirring or seeming to breathe. When I had finished my preparations, I took a chair near him, and sat pondering his face. It was of a curious green-white, like the complexion of a plant starved in a cellar. The lines of emotion on it looked almost grotesquely exaggerated, as if he had been an actor, who had been made up to portray some tragic part, and who had forgotten to wash himself afterwards. The contrast between that anæmic skin and the grey furrows which channelled it was startling.

Who was he? and what could have brought him, a stranger and a foreigner, to wander to his destruction on these remote and wintry roads? I was greedy for his awakening to learn.

It came in the end quite suddenly. I had just made up the fire, and was returning to my post of observation, when I saw his eyes wide open and staring at me.

“Bully, old fellow!” I said. “_Come sta_, isn’t it? How do you find yourself?”

He threw off the rug with a quick movement, and, scrambling to his feet, precipitated himself on his knees before me, and caught and kissed my hands.

“O, come! that’ll do,” I said. “It’s all right, you know.”

He poured out a torrent of gratitude, part English, part Italian--wholly incoherent.

“Now,” I said, “if you don’t stop, I shall put you out in the snow again.”

He was crying, and gesticulating, and embracing me all in one.

“Ah, the snow!” he cried; “and the pain--merciful God, the pain!--and then the immenseness in the sleep. And you have save me--yes, signore, you; like a strong lion you com’ and lift me in your mouse; and I am yours--for ever and more I am yours according.”

He rose to his feet, and stood away, fingering his breast dramatically.

“Very well,” I said. “But what am I to do with the gift?”

I foresaw, on the instant, embarrassments. But, as to that, I did him less than justice. He lifted his head with dignity.

“Call me, and I will com’,” he said; “spik to me, and I will obey. Zat is for my lov’ and duty to you for the eternity of all times. Now I sank you and go. I go again on my way wiz a great heart, rich in the thought of the help which vouchsafe itself to a poor dog wizout one doubt or inquiration.”

I laughed.

“That’s all nonsense,” I said. “You aren’t in a state to take the road again; and anyhow I’m not going to commit you to the risk. Here you stop, you know, till it’s safe for you to move on.”

He came to me at once, and, lifting my hand and kissing it again--but this time with a formal gravity--stood away, and looked at me with glistening eyes.

“There was wonse a good man, signore,” he said, “who find a fellow lying senseless by ze way; and he pour in wine and oil to his wounds; and he ask nozzing--nozzing what the fellow be, or how he deserve what he get, so he may just take the chance to help him. But I say I will not com’ to you, signore, so noble and clementeenious, on the lie which is not to spik. I say you shall know zis fellow, where he leave and what he deserve, lest your goodness presently shall curse the folly of itself. I am from prison--since twent-y year, signore, I have live in prison, and zis is the first long travel I take from it when you save me.”

He stopped, and bowing his head and clasping his hands, stood meekly to receive my denunciation. And I do not deny that I was startled--dumfoundered even for a moment. But the candour and honesty of the confession overcame me.

“That’s all one,” I said. “There are many men we have to accept and hobnob with who have a better title than you, I daresay, to the law’s attentions. Well, you are a ticket-of-leave man, I suppose?”

He shook his head.

“No. I serve my term.”

I regarded him curiously. Circumstance was bringing me acquainted which some queer house mates.

“A long one,” I said. “You must have deserved well of the law. Do you mind telling me your name?”

“Ah! my name, signore,” he said. “Yes--Smit, that it is--yes, Smit is my name.”

“Now you see,” I answered, “you make a show of speaking the truth to me, and then you go and tell me that. I don’t believe it, of course. What were you in for? I suppose you’ll say for shop-lifting, or turnip-pulling, or sleeping out of doors, or something equally convincing.”

“I was in for nozzing at all. It was a false charge; it was made by a devil.”

“Of course. That’s even less than I imagined. And you are on your way now to bring that devil to book for it, I suppose?”

“Yes, I am on my way, when the snow take me into its cold pillows, and I die in zat bed but for you.”

The quietness of his manner impressed me in spite of myself.

“Why did you call yourself Smith--come now?” I said.

“I tell you a lie,” he answered at once. “It was just zat he might miss to hear of me--not guess the truce of the vengeance which arrives to him at last.”

“He? Who?” I asked apprehensively. This matter was assuming a more sinister complexion than I quite liked. “I say, my friend, I hope your looks are belying you. You haven’t got a knife in your pocket, have you?”

“Signore,” he said earnestly, almost piteously, “I beg zat you not force of me, your servant, to answer. For myself I will confess the truce that I lie. My name is Antonio Geoletti.”

What chord of memory was suddenly touched in my brain? For a moment I could not identify it--and then, all in a flash, it had leapt upon me out of the dark. Geoletti! the name of the Italian guide mentioned in Charlie Skene’s letter!

I looked at the man stupidly. Some dim association of ideas was already quickening, very little and deep, in my brain. It was the seed of a certain deductive reasoning--the stirring of a green shoot which, like the Indian juggler’s mango-tree, would push through the soil in a little and break into sudden leaf, and take my soul with knowledge.

“Geoletti?” I exclaimed at last, in a voice sharp with astonishment. And then in one leap light came in, and the tree burst into flower.

_It was Mark Dalston whom this avenger was tracking to his doom!_

He bowed sombrely. After a little pause I went nearer to him. Here was, as I have said, no coincidence; but the stupendousness of the destiny quite awed and humbled me. What was I worth, without this directing hand of Fate to guide me?

“Geoletti,” I said, looking at him intensely, but speaking very quietly, “I think--perhaps--it may be--I can tell you something about yourself.”

“Si, signore?” he answered as quietly, almost indifferently, for he can have had no apprehension of what was to come.

“You were a guide, once upon a time, in the Italian Alps, were you not?”

“Si, signore.” His eyelids flicked up swiftly, and were lowered again. His lips gasped a little.

“You knew a Mr Cecil Delane there. He offended you somehow. It is to be revenged on him, under his proper name of Mark Dalston, that you are now come into this part of the country. Is not this all so?”

I thought he would have fallen. He caught himself steady by the sofa end, and stood staring and gulping at me.

“Now, wait,” I said. “You wonder how I can know this. The puzzle of Destiny makes a very simple map when it is put together, Geoletti. Some time ago I happened to come across part of a letter in a book. You were mentioned in it; Mr Dalston was mentioned in it, and one or two others. But leave them out. It was just the association of the two names, yours and his, then and now, that has made me jump to a conclusion. Wait while I show you.”

I went and fetched the letter, and held it out under his eyes.

“Can you read?”

“Si--yes, yes.”

“Read, then.”

Eagerly, gluttonously, triumphantly, his eyes travelled down the sheet, and rested on the name at its foot. He thrust out a rigid finger, and pointed to it.

“Carlo, si! Buono Dio! Challie Skene--yes.”

“What about Charles Skene?”

“Dalston murder him, signore.”