He was fast asleep when a sharp, impatient knock came at his door. "Ah, Teresa!" he thought, turning over lazily. The knock was repeated, and he awoke with a violent start.
"Signorino! signorino!" cried a man's voice in Italian; "get up for the love of God!"
Arthur jumped out of bed.
"What is the matter? Who is it?"
"It's I, Gian Battista. Get up, quick, for Our Lady's sake!"
Arthur hurriedly dressed and opened the door. As he stared in perplexity at the coachman's pale, terrified face, the sound of tramping feet and clanking metal came along the corridor, and he suddenly realized the truth.
"For me?" he asked coolly.
"For you! Oh, signorino, make haste! What have you to hide? See, I can put----"
"I have nothing to hide. Do my brothers know?"
The first uniform appeared at the turn of the passage.
"The signor has been called; all the house is awake. Alas! what a misfortune--what a terrible misfortune! And on Good Friday! Holy Saints, have pity!"
Gian Battista burst into tears. Arthur moved a few steps forward and waited for the gendarmes, who came clattering along, followed by a shivering crowd of servants in various impromptu costumes. As the soldiers surrounded Arthur, the master and mistress of the house brought up the rear of this strange procession; he in dressing gown and slippers, she in a long peignoir, with her hair in curlpapers.
"There is, sure, another flood toward, and these couples are coming to the ark! Here comes a pair of very strange beasts!"
The quotation flashed across Arthur's mind as he looked at the grotesque figures. He checked a laugh with a sense of its jarring incongruity--this was a time for worthier thoughts. "Ave Maria, Regina Coeli!" he whispered, and turned his eyes away, that the bobbing of Julia's curlpapers might not again tempt him to levity.
"Kindly explain to me," said Mr. Burton, approaching the officer of gendarmerie, "what is the meaning of this violent intrusion into a private house? I warn you that, unless you are prepared to furnish me with a satisfactory explanation, I shall feel bound to complain to the English Ambassador."
"I presume," replied the officer stiffly, "that you will recognize this as a sufficient explanation; the English Ambassador certainly will." He pulled out a warrant for the arrest of Arthur Burton, student of philosophy, and, handing it to James, added coldly: "If you wish for any further explanation, you had better apply in person to the chief of police."
Julia snatched the paper from her husband, glanced over it, and flew at Arthur like nothing else in the world but a fashionable lady in a rage.
"So it's you that have disgraced the family!" she screamed; "setting all the rabble in the town gaping and staring as if the thing were a show? So you have turned jail-bird, now, with all your piety! It's what we might have expected from that Popish woman's child----"
"You must not speak to a prisoner in a foreign language, madam," the officer interrupted; but his remonstrance was hardly audible under the torrent of Julia's vociferous English.
"Just what we might have expected! Fasting and prayer and saintly meditation; and this is what was underneath it all! I thought that would be the end of it."
Dr. Warren had once compared Julia to a salad into which the cook had upset the vinegar cruet. The sound of her thin, hard voice set Arthur's teeth on edge, and the simile suddenly popped up in his memory.
"There's no use in this kind of talk," he said. "You need not be afraid of any unpleasantness; everyone will understand that you are all quite innocent. I suppose, gentlemen, you want to search my things. I have nothing to hide."
While the gendarmes ransacked the room, reading his letters, examining his college papers, and turning out drawers and boxes, he sat waiting on the edge of the bed, a little flushed with excitement, but in no way distressed. The search did not disquiet him. He had always burned letters which could possibly compromise anyone, and beyond a few manuscript verses, half revolutionary, half mystical, and two or three numbers of Young Italy, the gendarmes found nothing to repay them for their trouble. Julia, after a long resistance, yielded to the entreaties of her brother-in-law and went back to bed, sweeping past Arthur with magnificent disdain, James meekly following.
When they had left the room, Thomas, who all this while had been tramping up and down, trying to look indifferent, approached the officer and asked permission to speak to the prisoner. Receiving a nod in answer, he went up to Arthur and muttered in a rather husky voice:
"I say; this is an infernally awkward business. I'm very sorry about it."
Arthur looked up with a face as serene as a summer morning. "You have always been good to me," he said. "There's nothing to be sorry about. I shall be safe enough."
"Look here, Arthur!" Thomas gave his moustache a hard pull and plunged head first into the awkward question. "Is--all this anything to do with--money? Because, if it is, I----"
"With money! Why, no! What could it have to do----"
"Then it's some political tomfoolery? I thought so. Well, don't you get down in the mouth--and never mind all the stuff Julia talks. It's only her spiteful tongue; and if you want help,--cash, or anything,--let me know, will you?"
Arthur held out his hand in silence, and Thomas left the room with a carefully made-up expression of unconcern that rendered his face more stolid than ever.
The gendarmes, meanwhile, had finished their search, and the officer in charge requested Arthur to put on his outdoor clothes. He obeyed at once and turned to leave the room; then stopped with sudden hesitation. It seemed hard to take leave of his mother's oratory in the presence of these officials.
"Have you any objection to leaving the room for a moment?" he asked. "You see that I cannot escape and that there is nothing to conceal."
"I am sorry, but it is forbidden to leave a prisoner alone."
"Very well, it doesn't matter."
He went into the alcove, and, kneeling down, kissed the feet and pedestal of the crucifix, whispering softly: "Lord, keep me faithful unto death."
When he rose, the officer was standing by the table, examining Montanelli's portrait. "Is this a relative of yours?" he asked.
"No; it is my confessor, the new Bishop of Brisighella."
On the staircase the Italian servants were waiting, anxious and sorrowful. They all loved Arthur for his own sake and his mother's, and crowded round him, kissing his hands and dress with passionate grief. Gian Battista stood by, the tears dripping down his gray moustache. None of the Burtons came out to take leave of him. Their coldness accentuated the tenderness and sympathy of the servants, and Arthur was near to breaking down as he pressed the hands held out to him.
"Good-bye, Gian Battista. Kiss the little ones for me. Good-bye, Teresa. Pray for me, all of you; and God keep you! Good-bye, good-bye!"
He ran hastily downstairs to the front door. A moment later only a little group of silent men and sobbing women stood on the doorstep watching the carriage as it drove away.
CHAPTER VI.
ARTHUR was taken to the huge mediaeval fortress at the harbour's mouth. He found prison life fairly endurable. His cell was unpleasantly damp and dark; but he had been brought up in a palace in the Via Borra, and neither close air, rats, nor foul smells were novelties to him. The food, also, was both bad and insufficient; but James soon obtained permission to send him all the necessaries of life from home. He was kept in solitary confinement, and, though the vigilance of the warders was less strict than he had expected, he failed to obtain any explanation of the cause of his arrest. Nevertheless, the tranquil frame of mind in which he had entered the fortress did not change. Not being allowed books, he spent his time in prayer and devout meditation, and waited without impatience or anxiety for the further course of events.
One day a soldier unlocked the door of his cell and called to him: "This way, please!" After two or three questions, to which he got no answer but, "Talking is forbidden," Arthur resigned himself to the inevitable and followed the soldier through a labyrinth of courtyards, corridors, and stairs, all more or less musty-smelling, into a large, light room in which three persons in military uniform sat at a long table covered with green baize and littered with papers, chatting in a languid, desultory way. They put on a stiff, business air as he came in, and the oldest of them, a foppish-looking man with gray whiskers and a colonel's uniform, pointed to a chair on the other side of the table and began the preliminary interrogation.
Arthur had expected to be threatened, abused, and sworn at, and had prepared himself to answer with dignity and patience; but he was pleasantly disappointed. The colonel was stiff, cold and formal, but perfectly courteous. The usual questions as to his name, age, nationality, and social position were put and answered, and the replies written down in monotonous succession. He was beginning to feel bored and impatient, when the colonel asked:
"And now, Mr. Burton, what do you know about Young Italy?"
"I know that it is a society which publishes a newspaper in Marseilles and circulates it in Italy, with the object of inducing people to revolt and drive the Austrian army out of the country."
"You have read this paper, I think?"
"Yes; I am interested in the subject."
"When you read it you realized that you were committing an illegal action?"
"Certainly."
"Where did you get the copies which were found in your room?"
"That I cannot tell you."
"Mr. Burton, you must not say 'I cannot tell' here; you are bound to answer my questions."
"I will not, then, if you object to 'cannot.'"
"You will regret it if you permit yourself to use such expressions," remarked the colonel. As Arthur made no reply, he went on:
"I may as well tell you that evidence has come into our hands proving your connection with this society to be much more intimate than is implied by the mere reading of forbidden literature. It will be to your advantage to confess frankly. In any case the truth will be sure to come out, and you will find it useless to screen yourself behind evasion and denials."
"I have no desire to screen myself. What is it you want to know?"
"Firstly, how did you, a foreigner, come to be implicated in matters of this kind?"
"I thought about the subject and read everything I could get hold of, and formed my own conclusions."
"Who persuaded you to join this society?"
"No one; I wished to join it."
"You are shilly-shallying with me," said the colonel, sharply; his patience was evidently beginning to give out. "No one can join a society by himself. To whom did you communicate your wish to join it?"
Silence.
"Will you have the kindness to answer me?"
"Not when you ask questions of that kind."
Arthur spoke sullenly; a curious, nervous irritability was taking possession of him. He knew by this time that many arrests had been made in both Leghorn and Pisa; and, though still ignorant of the extent of the calamity, he had already heard enough to put him into a fever of anxiety for the safety of Gemma and his other friends. The studied politeness of the officers, the dull game of fencing and parrying, of insidious questions and evasive answers, worried and annoyed him, and the clumsy tramping backward and forward of the sentinel outside the door jarred detestably upon his ear.
"Oh, by the bye, when did you last meet Giovanni Bolla?" asked the colonel, after a little more bandying of words. "Just before you left Pisa, was it?"
"I know no one of that name."
"What! Giovanni Bolla? Surely you know him --a tall young fellow, closely shaven. Why, he is one of your fellow-students."
"There are many students in the university whom I don't know."
"Oh, but you must know Bolla, surely! Look, this is his handwriting. You see, he knows you well enough."
The colonel carelessly handed him a paper headed: "Protocol," and signed: "Giovanni Bolla." Glancing down it Arthur came upon his own name. He looked up in surprise. "Am I to read it?"
"Yes, you may as well; it concerns you."
He began to read, while the officers sat silently watching his face. The document appeared to consist of depositions in answer to a long string of questions. Evidently Bolla, too, must have been arrested. The first depositions were of the usual stereotyped character; then followed a short account of Bolla's connection with the society, of the dissemination of prohibited literature in Leghorn, and of the students' meetings. Next came "Among those who joined us was a young Englishman, Arthur Burton, who belongs to one of the rich shipowning families."
The blood rushed into Arthur's face. Bolla had betrayed him! Bolla, who had taken upon himself the solemn duties of an initiator--Bolla, who had converted Gemma--who was in love with her! He laid down the paper and stared at the floor.
"I hope that little document has refreshed your memory?" hinted the colonel politely.
Arthur shook his head. "I know no one of that name," he repeated in a dull, hard voice. "There must be some mistake."
"Mistake? Oh, nonsense! Come, Mr. Burton, chivalry and quixotism are very fine things in their way; but there's no use in overdoing them. It's an error all you young people fall into at first. Come, think! What good is it for you to compromise yourself and spoil your prospects in life over a simple formality about a man that has betrayed you? You see yourself, he wasn't so particular as to what he said about you."
A faint shade of something like mockery had crept into the colonel's voice. Arthur looked up with a start; a sudden light flashed upon his mind.
"It's a lie!" he cried out. "It's a forgery! I can see it in your face, you cowardly----You've got some prisoner there you want to compromise, or a trap you want to drag me into. You are a forger, and a liar, and a scoundrel----"
