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a Platonic Imitator (see Appendix II) - "Eryxias"

Elizabeth Gaskell - "Mary Barton"

Ayn Rand - "Anthem"

Jonathan Swift - "The Bickerstaff Partridge Papers"

Raffles, Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman

E >> E. W. Hornung >> Raffles, Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman




"He had a little English, and liked to air it upon me, much to
my disgust; if I could not hope to conceal my nationality as yet,
I at least did not want to have it advertised; and the swine had
English friends. When he heard that I was bathing in November,
when the bay is still as warm as new milk, he would shake his
wicked old head and say, 'You are very audashuss--you are very
audashuss!' and put on no end of side before his Italians. By
God, he had pitched upon the right word unawares, and I let him
know it in the end!

"But that bathing, Bunny; it was absolutely the best I ever had
anywhere. I said just now the water was like wine; in my own
mind I used to call it blue champagne, and was rather annoyed
that I had no one to admire the phrase. Otherwise I assure you
that I missed my own particular kind very little indeed, though
I often wished that YOU were there, old chap; particularly when
I went for my lonesome swim; first thing in the morning, when
the Bay was all rose-leaves, and last thing at night, when your
body caught phosphorescent fire! Ah, yes, it was a good enough
life for a change; a perfect paradise to lie low in; another
Eden until . . .

"My poor Eve!"

And he fetched a sigh that took away his words; then his jaws
snapped together, and his eyes spoke terribly while he conquered
his emotion. I pen the last word advisedly. I fancy it is one
which I have never used before in writing of A. J. Raffles, for
I cannot at the moment recall any other occasion upon which its
use would have been justified. On resuming, however, he was not
only calm, but cold; and this flying for safety to the other
extreme is the single instance of self-distrust which the
present Achates can record to the credit of his impious AEneas.

"I called the girl Eve," said he. "Her real name was Faustina,
and she was one of a vast family who hung out in a hovel on the
inland border of the vineyard. And Aphrodite rising from the
sea was less wonderful and not more beautiful than Aphrodite
emerging from that hole!

"It was the most exquisite face I ever saw or shall see in this
life. Absolutely perfect features; a skin that reminded you of
old gold, so delicate was its bronze; magnificent hair, not
black but nearly; and such eyes and teeth as would have made
the fortune of a face without another point. I tell you, Bunny,
London would go mad about a girl like that. But I don't believe
there's such another in the world. And there she was wasting
her sweetness upon that lovely but desolate little corner of it!
Well, she did not waste it upon me. I would have married her,
and lived happily ever after in such a hovel as her people's
--with her. Only to look at her--only to look at her for the
rest of my days--I could have lain low and remained dead even to
you! And that's all I'm going to tell you about that, Bunny;
cursed be he who tells more! Yet don't run away with the idea
that this poor Faustina was the only woman I ever cared about.
I don't believe in all that 'only' rot; nevertheless I tell you
that she was the one being who ever entirely satisfied my sense
of beauty; and I honestly believe I could have chucked the world
and been true to Faustina for that alone.

"We met sometimes in the little temple I told you about,
sometimes among the vines; now by honest accident, now by
flagrant design; and found a ready-made rendezvous, romantic as
one could wish, in the cave down all those subterranean steps.
Then the sea would call us--my blue champagne--my sparkling
cobalt--and there was the dingy ready to our hand. Oh, those
nights! I never knew which I liked best, the moonlit ones when
you sculled through silver and could see for miles, or the dark
nights when the fishermen's torches stood for the sea, and a red
zig-zag in the sky for old Vesuvius. We were happy. I don't
mind owning it. We seemed not to have a care between us. My
mates took no interest in my affairs, and Faustina's family did
not appear to bother about her. The Count was in Naples five
nights of the seven; the other two we sighed apart.

"At first it was the oldest story in literature--Eden plus Eve.
The place had been a heaven on earth before, but now it was
heaven itself. So for a little; then one night, a Monday night,
Faustina burst out crying in the boat; and sobbed her story as
we drifted without mishap by the mercy of the Lord. And that
was almost as old a story as the other.

"She was engaged--what! Had I never heard of it? Did I mean to
upset the boat? What was her engagement beside our love?
'Niente, niente,' crooned Faustina, sighing yet smiling through
her tears. No, but what did matter was that the man had
threatened to stab her to the heart--and would do it as soon as
look at her--that I knew.

"I knew it merely from my knowledge of the Neapolitans, for I
had no idea who the man might be. I knew it, and yet I took
this detail better than the fact of the engagement, though now I
began to laugh at both. As if I was going to let her marry
anybody else! As if a hair of her lovely head should be touched
while I lived to protect her! I had a great mind to row away to
blazes with her that very night, and never go near the vineyard
again, or let her either. But we had not a lira between us at
the time, and only the rags in which we sat barefoot in the
boat. Besides, I had to know the name of the animal who had
threatened a woman, and such a woman as this.

"For a long time she refused to tell me, with splendid obduracy;
but I was as determined as she; so at last she made conditions.
I was not to go and get put in prison for sticking a knife into
him--he wasn't worth it--and I did promise not to stab him in
the back. Faustina seemed quite satisfied, though a little
puzzled by my manner, having herself the racial tolerance for
cold steel; and next moment she had taken away my breath. 'It
is Stefano,' she whispered, and hung her head.

"And well she might, poor thing! Stefano, of all creatures on
God's earth--for her!

"Bunny, he was a miserable little undersized wretch--ill-favored
--servile--surly--and second only to his master in bestial
cunning and hypocrisy. His face was enough for me; that was what
I read in it, and I don't often make mistakes. He was
Corbucci's own confidential body-servant, and that alone was
enough to damn him in decent eyes: always came out first on the
Saturday with the spese, to have all ready for his master and
current mistress, and stayed behind on the Monday to clear and
lock up. Stefano! That worm! I could well understand his
threatening a woman with a knife; what beat me was how any woman
could ever have listened to him; above all, that Faustina should
be the one! It passed my comprehension. But I questioned her as
gently as I could; and her explanation was largely the
thread-bare one you would expect. Her parents were so poor.
They were so many in family. Some of them begged--would I
promise never to tell? Then some of them stole--sometimes--and
all knew the pains of actual want. She looked after the cows,
but there were only two of them, and brought the milk to the
vineyard and elsewhere; but that was not employment for more
than one; and there were countless sisters waiting to take her
place. Then he was so rich, Stefano.

"'Rich!' I echoed. 'Stefano?'

"'Si, Arturo mio.'

"Yes, I played the game on that vineyard, Bunny, even to going
my own first name.

"'And how comes he to be rich?' I asked, suspiciously.

"She did not know; but he had given her such beautiful jewels;
the family had lived on them for months, she pretending an
avocat had taken charge of them for her against her marriage.
But I cared nothing about all that.

"'Jewels! Stefano!' I could only mutter.

"'Perhaps the Count has paid for some of them. He is very
kind.'

"'To you, is he?'

"'Oh, yes, very kind.'

"'And you would live in his house afterwards?'

"'Not now, mia cara--not now!'

"'No, by God you don't!' said I in English. 'But you would have
done so, eh?'

"'Of course. That was arranged. The Count is really very
kind.'

"'Do you see anything of him when he comes here?'

"Yes, he had sometimes brought her little presents, sweetmeats,
ribbons, and the like; but the offering had always been made
through this toad of a Stefano. Knowing the men, I now knew
all. But Faustina, she had the pure and simple heart, and the
white soul, by the God who made it, and for all her kindness to
a tattered scapegrace who made love to her in broken Italian
between the ripples and the stars. She was not to know what I
was, remember; and beside Corbucci and his henchman I was the
Archangel Gabriel come down to earth.

"Well, as I lay awake that night, two more lines of Swinburne
came into my head, and came to stay:

"God said 'Let him who wins her take
And keep Faustine.'

"On that couplet I slept at last, and it was my text and
watchword when I awoke in the morning. I forget how well you
know your Swinburne, Bunny; but don't you run away with the idea
that there was anything else in common between his Faustine and
mine. For the last time let me tell you that poor Faustina was
the whitest and the best I ever knew.

"Well, I was strung up for trouble when the next Saturday came,
and I'll tell you what I had done. I had broken the pledge and
burgled Corbucci's villa in my best manner during his absence
in Naples. Not that it gave me the slightest trouble; but no
human being could have told that I had been in, when I came out.
And I had stolen nothing, mark you, but only borrowed a revolver
from a drawer in the Count's desk, with one or two trifling
accessories; for by this time I had the measure of these damned
Neapolitans. They are spry enough with a knife, but you show
them the business end of a shooting-iron, and they'll streak
like rabbits for the nearest hole. But the revolver wasn't for
my own use. It was for Faustina, and I taught her how to use it
in the cave down there by the sea, shooting at candles stuck
upon the rock. The noise in the cave was something frightful,
but high up above it couldn't be heard at all, as we proved to
each other's satisfaction pretty early in the proceedings. So
now Faustina was armed with munitions of self-defence; and I
knew enough of her character to entertain no doubt as to their
spirited use upon occasion. Between the two of us, in fact, our
friend Stefano seemed tolerably certain of a warm week-end.

"But the Saturday brought word that the Count was not coming
this week, being in Rome on business, and unable to return in
time; so for a whole Sunday we were promised peace; and made
bold plans accordingly. There was no further merit in hushing
this thing up. 'Let him who wins her take and keep Faustine.'
Yes, but let him win her openly, or lose her and be damned to
him! So on the Sunday I was going to have it out with her
people--with the Count and Stefano as soon as they showed their
noses. I had no inducement, remember, ever to return to
surreptitious life within a cab-fare of Wormwood Scrubbs.
Faustina and the Bay of Naples were quite good enough for me.
And the prehistoric man in me rather exulted in the idea of
fighting for my desire.

"On the Saturday, however, we were able to meet for the last
time as heretofore--just once more in secret--down there in the
cave--as soon as might be after dark. Neither of us minded if
we were kept for hours; each knew in the end that the other
would come; and there was a charm of its own even in waiting
with such knowledge. But that night I did lose patience: not in
the cave, but up above, where first on one pretext and then on
another the direttore kept me going until I smelt a rat. He was
not given to exacting overtime, this direttore, whose only fault
was his servile subjection to our common boss. It seemed pretty
obvious, therefore, that he was acting upon some secret
instructions from Corbucci himself, and, the moment I suspected
this, I asked him to his face if it was not the case. And it
was; he admitted it with many shrugs, being a conveniently weak
person, whom one felt almost ashamed of bullying as the
occasion demanded.

"The fact was, however, that the Count had sent for him on
finding he had to go to Rome, and had said he was very sorry to
go just then, as among other things he intended to speak to me
about Faustina. Stefano had told him all about his row with
her, and moreover that it was on my account, which Faustina had
never told me, though I had guessed as much for myself. Well,
the Count was going to take his jackal's part for all he was
worth, which was just exactly what I had expected him to do. He
intended going for me on his return, but meanwhile I was not to
make hay in his absence, and so this tool of a direttore had
orders to keep me at it night and day. I undertook not to give
the poor beast away, but at the same time told him I had not the
faintest intention of doing another stroke of work that night.

"It was very dark, and I remember knocking my head against the
oranges as I ran up the long, shallow steps which ended the
journey between the direttore's lodge and the villa itself. But
at the back of the villa was the garden I spoke about, and also
a bare chunk of the cliff where it was bored by that
subterranean stair. So I saw the stars close overhead, and the
fishermen's torches far below, the coastwise lights and the
crimson hieroglyph that spelt Vesuvius, before I plunged into
the darkness of the shaft. And that was the last time I
appreciated the unique and peaceful charm of this outlandish
spot.

"The stair was in two long flights, with an air-hole or two at
the top of the upper one, but not another pin-prick till you
came to the iron gate at the bottom of the lower. As you may
read of an infinitely lighter place, in a finer work of fiction
than you are ever likely to write, Bunny, it was 'gloomy at
noon, dark as midnight at dusk, and black as the ninth plague of
Egypt at midnight.' I won't swear to my quotation, but I will to
those stairs. They were as black that night as the inside of
the safest safe in the strongest strong-room in the Chancery
Lane Deposit. Yet I had not got far down them with my bare feet
before I heard somebody else coming up in boots. You may
imagine what a turn that gave me! It could not be Faustina,
who went barefoot three seasons of the four, and yet there was
Faustina waiting for me down below. What a fright she must have
had! And all at once my own blood ran cold: for the man sang
like a kettle as he plodded up and up. It was, it must be, the
short-winded Count himself, whom we all supposed to be in Rome!

"Higher he came and nearer, nearer, slowly yet hurriedly, now
stopping to cough and gasp, now taking a few steps by
elephantine assault. I should have enjoyed the situation if it
had not been for poor Faustina in the cave; as it was I was
filled with nameless fears. But I could not resist giving that
grampus Corbucci one bad moment on account. A crazy hand-rail
ran up one wall, so I carefully flattened myself against the
other, and he passed within six inches of me, puffing and
wheezing like a brass band. I let him go a few steps higher,
and then I let him have it with both lungs.

"Buona sera, eccellenza, signori!' I roared after him. And a
scream came down in answer--such a scream! A dozen different
terrors were in it; and the wheezing had stopped, with the old
scoundrel's heart.

"'Chi sta la?' he squeaked at last, gibbering and whimpering
like a whipped monkey, so that I could not bear to miss his
face, and got a match all ready to strike.

"'Arturo, signori.'

"He didn't repeat my name, nor did he damn me in heaps. He did
nothing but wheeze for a good minute, and when he spoke it was
with insinuating civility, in his best English.

"'Come nearer, Arturo. You are in the lower regions down there.
I want to speak with you.'

"'No, thanks. I'm in a hurry,' I said, and dropped that match
back into my pocket. He might be armed, and I was not.

"'So you are in a 'urry!' and he wheezed amusement. 'And you
thought I was still in Rome, no doubt; and so I was until this
afternoon, when I caught train at the eleventh moment, and then
another train from Naples to Pozzuoli. I have been rowed here
now by a fisherman of Pozzuoli. I had not time to stop anywhere
in Naples, but only to drive from station to station. So I am
without Stefano, Arturo, I am without Stefano.'

"His sly voice sounded preternaturally sly in the absolute
darkness, but even through that impenetrable veil I knew it for
a sham. I had laid hold of the hand-rail. It shook violently
in my hand; he also was holding it where he stood. And these
suppressed tremors, or rather their detection in this way,
struck a strange chill to my heart, just as I was beginning to
pluck it up.

"'It is lucky for Stefano,' said I, grim as death.

"'Ah, but you must not be too 'ard on 'im,' remonstrated the
Count. 'You have stole his girl, he speak with me about it, and
I wish to speak with you. It is very audashuss, Arturo, very
audashuss! Perhaps you are even going to meet her now, eh?'

I told him straight that I was.

"'Then there is no 'urry, for she is not there.'

"'You didn't see her in the cave?' I cried, too delighted at the
thought to keep it to myself.

"'I had no such fortune,' the old devil said.

"'She is there, all the same.'

"'I only wish I 'ad known.'

"'And I've kept her long enough!'

"In fact I threw this over my shoulder as I turned and went
running down.

"'I 'ope you will find her!' his malicious voice came croaking
after me. 'I 'ope you will-- I 'ope so.'

"And find her I did."

Raffles had been on his feet some time, unable to sit still or
to stand, moving excitedly about the room. But now he stood
still enough, his elbows on the cast-iron mantelpiece, his head
between his hands.

"Dead?" I whispered.

And he nodded to the wall.

"There was not a sound in the cave. There was no answer to my
voice. Then I went in, and my foot touched hers, and it was
colder than the rock . . . Bunny, they had stabbed her to the
heart. She had fought them, and they had stabbed her to the
heart!"

"You say 'they,'" I said gently, as he stood in heavy silence,
his back still turned. "I thought Stefano had been left behind?"

Raffles was round in a flash, his face white-hot, his eyes
dancing death.

"He was in the cave!" he shouted. "I saw him--I spotted him--it
was broad twilight after those stairs--and I went for him with my
bare hands. Not fists, Bunny; not fists for a thing like that; I
meant getting my fingers into his vile little heart and tearing
it out by the roots. I was stark mad. But he had the
revolver--hers. He blazed it at arm's length, and missed. And
that steadied me. I had smashed his funny-bone against the rock
before he could blaze again; the revolver fell with a rattle,
but without going off; in an instant I had it tight, and the
little swine at my mercy at last."

"You didn't show him any?"

"Mercy? With Faustina dead at my feet? I should have deserved
none in the next world if I had shown him any in this! No, I
just stood over him, with the revolver in both hands, feeling
the chambers with my thumb; and as I stood he stabbed at me;
but I stepped back to that one, and brought him down with a
bullet in his guts.

"'And I can spare you two or three more,' I said, for my poor
girl could not have fired a shot. 'Take that one to hell with
you--and that--and that!'

"Then I started coughing and wheezing like the Count himself,
for the place was full of smoke. When it cleared my man was very
dead, and I tipped him into the sea, to defile that rather than
Faustina's cave. And then--and then--we were alone for the last
time, she and I, in our own pet haunt; and I could scarcely see
her, yet I would not strike a match, for I knew she would not
have me see her as she was. I could say good-by to her without
that. I said it; and I left her like a man, and up the first
open-air steps with my head in the air and the stars all sharp
in the sky; then suddenly they swam, and back I went like a
lunatic, to see if she was really dead, to bring her back to
life . . . Bunny, I can't tell you any more."

"Not of the Count?" I murmured at last.

"Not even of the Count," said Raffles, turning round with a
sigh. "I left him pretty sorry for himself; but what was the
good of that? I had taken blood for blood, and it was not
Corbucci who had killed Faustina. No, the plan was his, but
that was not part of the plan. They had found out about our
meetings in the cave: nothing simpler than to have me kept hard
at it overhead and to carry off Faustina by brute force in the
boat. It was their only chance, for she had said more to Stefano
than she had admitted to me, and more than I am going to repeat
about myself. No persuasion would have induced her to listen to
him again; so they tried force; and she drew Corbucci's revolver
on them, but they had taken her by surprise, and Stefano stabbed
her before she could fire."

"But how do you know all that?" I asked Raffles, for his tale was
going to pieces in the telling, and the tragic end of poor
Faustina was no ending for me.

"Oh," said he, "I had it from Corbucci at his own revolver's
point. He was waiting at his window, and I could have potted
him at my ease where he stood against the light listening hard
enough but not seeing a thing. So he asked whether it was
Stefano, and I whispered, 'Si, signore'; and then whether he had
finished Arturo, and I brought the same shot off again. He had
let me in before he knew who was finished and who was not."

"And did you finish him?"

"No; that was too good for Corbucci. But I bound and gagged him
about as tight as man was ever gagged or bound, and I left him
in his room with the shutters shut and the house locked up. The
shutters of that old place were six inches thick, and the walls
nearly six feet; that was on the Saturday night, and the Count
wasn't expected at the vineyard before the following Saturday.
Meanwhile he was supposed to be in Rome. But the dead would
doubtless be discovered next day, and I am afraid this would
lead to his own discovery with the life still in him. I believe
he figured on that himself, for he sat threatening me gamely
till the last. You never saw such a sight as he was, with his
head split in two by a ruler tied at the back of it, and his
great moustache pushed up into his bulging eyes. But I locked
him up in the dark without a qualm, and I wished and still wish
him every torment of the damned."

"And then?"

"The night was still young, and within ten miles there was the
best of ports in a storm, and hundreds of holds for the humble
stowaway to choose from. But I didn't want to go further than
Genoa, for by this time my Italian would wash, so I chose the
old Norddeutscher Lloyd, and had an excellent voyage in one of
the boats slung in-board over the bridge. That's better than any
hold, Bunny, and I did splendidly on oranges brought from the
vineyard."

"And at Genoa?"

"At Genoa I took to my wits once more, and have been living on
nothing else ever since. But there I had to begin all over
again, and at the very bottom of the ladder. I slept in the
streets. I begged. I did all manner of terrible things, rather
hoping for a bad end, but never coming to one. Then one day I
saw a white-headed old chap looking at me through a shop-window--
a window I had designs upon--and when I stared at him he stared
at me--and we wore the same rags. So I had come to that! But
one reflection makes many. I had not recognized myself; who on
earth would recognize me? London called me--and here I am.
Italy had broken my heart--and there it stays."

Flippant as a schoolboy one moment, playful even in the
bitterness of the next, and now no longer giving way to the
feeling which had spoilt the climax of his tale, Raffles needed
knowing as I alone knew him for a right appreciation of those
last words. That they were no mere words I know full well.
That, but for the tragedy of his Italian life, that life would
have sufficed him for years, if not for ever, I did and do still
believe. But I alone see him as I saw him then, the lines upon
his face, and the pain behind the lines; how they came to
disappear, and what removed them, you will never guess. It was
the one thing you would have expected to have the opposite
effect, the thing indeed that had forced his confidence, the
organ and the voice once more beneath our very windows:

"Margarita de Parete,
era a' sarta d' e' signore;
se pugneva sempe e ddete
pe penzare a Salvatore!
"Mar--ga--ri,
e perzo e Salvatore!
Mar--ga--ri,
Ma l'ommo e cacciatore!
Mar--ga--ri,
Nun ce aje corpa tu!
Chello ch' e fatto, e fatto, un ne parlammo cchieu!"

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