CHAPTER XI

A MEETING OF THE ORDER

A man in a fur-lined overcoat—thin, shrunken, and worn—stood on the pavement in a little street in Camberwell, looking about him in evident disgust. Before him stretched a long row of six-roomed houses, smoke-begrimed, hideously similar, hideously commonplace. The street was empty save for the four-wheeled cab from which he had just alighted, and which was now vanishing in a slight fog, a milkman and a greengrocer's boy in amicable converse, and a few dirty children playing in the gutter. Nothing could be more depressing, or more calculated to unfavorably impress a stranger from a southern land visiting the great city for the first time. It was a picture of suburban desolation, the home of poverty-stricken philistinism, uncaring and uncared for. In Swinburne's words, though with a different meaning, one saw there, without the necessity of further travel, "a land that was lonelier than ruin."

The little old man who had alighted from the cab, stood for a moment or two looking helplessly around, half surprised at what he saw, half disgusted. Such monotonous and undeviating ugliness was a thing which he had never dreamed of—certainly he had never encountered anything like it. Was it possible that he had made a mistake in the address? He drew a scrap of paper from his pocket and consulted it again. The address was written there plainly enough—85, Eden Street, Camberwell. He was certainly in Eden Street, Camberwell, and the figures on the gate-post opposite him, worn and black with dirt, were unmistakably an eight and a five. With a little shudder he pushed open the gate, and walked through the narrow strip of untidy garden to the front door. The bell he found broken and useless, so he knocked softly at first, and then louder against the worn panels.

It was some time before an answer came. Several of the neighbors appeared upon their doorsteps, and took bold and somewhat ribald stock of the visitor. A young person of eighty-one, who was considered the wit of the neighborhood, made several very audible remarks, which produced a chorus of gigglings, on the subject of his clothes and foreign appearance. But he stood there as though he had been deaf, his hands thrust down into the loose pockets of his overcoat and his deep-sunken eyes fixed wistfully but not impatiently upon the closed door. He was a mute picture of resignation.

At last, after his third summons, the door was slowly and cautiously opened, and the astonished visitor beheld, for the first time in his life, a London maid-of-all-work. The astonishment seemed perfectly mutual. He, with his parchment dried face, white hair and eyebrows, and piercing black eyes only a little dimmed by time, muffled up to the throat in furs, and unmistakably a foreigner, was as strange to her as her appearance was to him. He looked at her black hands, her face besmeared with dirt, and with her uncombed hair hanging loose around it, at the tattered and soiled print gown looped up on one side and held together on the other by pins, and at the white-stockinged feet showing through the holes in her boots. What an object it was! It was fortunate for him that the twilight and fog concealed, partially at any rate, the disgust in his face.

"Is—Mr. Bartlezzi in?" he inquired, as soon as he could find words to speak at all.

"Lawk-a-mussy! I dunno," the girl answered in blank bewilderment. "He don't have no visitors, he don't. You ain't taxes, are you?"

"No!" he answered, somewhat at a venture, for he did not catch her meaning.

"Nor water rate? No, you ain't the water rate," she continued, meditatively. "I knows him. He wears a brown billycock and glasses, 'e does, and I see him walking with Mary Ann Stubbins on a Sunday."

He admitted doubtfully that she was correct He was not the water rate.

It began to dawn upon her that it would be safe to admit him into the house.

"Just yer come hinside, will yer," she said. "I dunno who yer are, but I guess you ain't nothink to be afraid of. Come hinside."

She opened the door and admitted him into a dark, narrow passage. He had to squeeze himself against the wall to allow her to pass him. Then she surveyed him critically again, with her arms akimbo and her head a little on one side.

"I reckon you've got a name," she surmised. "What is it?"

"You can tell Mr. Bartlezzi that a gentleman from abroad desires to speak with him," he answered. "My name is immaterial. Will you accept this?" he added, holding out a half-crown timidly toward her.

She grabbed it from him, and turned it over incredulously in the semi-darkness. There was no deception about it; it was indeed a half-crown—the first she had ever been given in her life.

She dropped a rude sort of curtsey, and, opening the door of a room, half ushered, half pushed him in. Then she went to the foot of the stairs, the coin tightly clinched in her hand, and he heard her call out——

"Master! There's a gent here from furrin parts has wants you, which 'is name his immaterial. 'E's in the parlor."

There was a growl in reply, and then silence. The handmaiden, her duty discharged, shuffled off to the lower regions. The visitor was left alone.

He looked around him in deep and increasing disgust. The walls of the little room into which he had been shown were bare, save for a few cheap chromos and glaring oleographs of the sort distributed by grocers and petty tradespeople at Christmas. A cracked looking-glass, with a dirty gilt frame, tottered upon the mantelpiece. The furniture was scanty, and of the public-house pattern, and there was a strong nauseous odor of stale tobacco smoke and beer. A small piano stood in one corner, the cheapest of its kind, and maintaining an upright position only by means of numerous props. One leg tilted in the air was supported by two old and coverless volumes of a novel, and another was casterless. The carpet was worn into shreds, and there was no attempt to conceal or mend the huge ravages which time had made in it. The ceiling was cracked and black with smoke, and the faded paper was hanging down from the top of the wall. There was not a single article or spot in the room on which the eye could rest with pleasure. It was an interior which matched the exterior. Nothing worse could be said about it.

The visitor took it all in, and raising his hand to his head closed his eyes. Ah! what a relief it was to blot it all out of sight, if only for a moment. He had known evil times, but at their worst, such surroundings as these he had never met with. A strange nervousness was creeping slowly over him, the presage of disappointment. He dropped his hands, and walked restlessly up and down, striving to banish his fears. Might not all this be necessary—a form of disguise—a clever mode of concealment? Poverty alone could not have brought things to this strait. Poverty! There had been no poverty in his day. Yet he was full of forebodings. He remembered the wonder, the evasions, almost the pity with which his first inquiries in Rome had been met. He could not expect to find things exactly the same. Twenty years is a long time, and there must be many changes. Why had he not stayed in Rome a little longer, and learned more. He could easily have obtained the knowledge which he desired there. It would have been wiser, surely it would have been wiser.

The door opened in the midst of his meditations, and he looked eagerly up. Again his heart fell. It was not such a man as this that he had expected to see. Ah! what a day of disappointments it was!

The figure which, after a moment's pause in the doorway, now advanced somewhat hesitatingly toward him, was that of a man a little past middle age. He was of medium height, but stout even to corpulency, and his cheeks were fat and puffy. His hair was gray, and his thick, stubbly mustaches, which had evidently once been black, were also changing color. His dark, shiny coat was ridiculously short for him, and his trousers terminated above his ankles. He wore no necktie, and his collar was ragged and soiled. In short, his whole appearance was not only untidy but dirty. His gait, too, was slouching and undignified.

"You wished to speak to me," he said in a thick tone and with a foreign accent. "My name is Bartlezzi—Signor Alfonso Bartlezzi."

"Yes, I wished to speak with you."

Signor Bartlezzi began to feel uncomfortable under his visitor's fixed gaze. Why should he look at him so intently? He had never set eyes upon him before—and what an odd, shrunken little figure it was. He coughed and shifted his position.

"Ah! yes. I am ready, as you see. Is it anything to do with my profession?"

"I do not know what your profession is."

Signor Bartlezzi made an effort to draw himself up, and assumed a military air.

"I am a master of fencing," he announced, "also a professor of Italian—Professor Alfonso Bartlezzi, at your service. I am fairly well-known in this neighborhood. If you have pupils to recommend, sir, or if you are thinking of taking lessons yourself, I should be most happy. My services are sometimes made use of as interpreter, both in the police court and privately. I should be happy to serve you in that capacity, sir."

Signor Bartlezzi, having declared himself, folded his arms and waited. He felt certain that his visitor must now divulge his name and mission. That, however, he seemed in no hurry to do.

"You are an Italian?" he asked presently.

"Certainly, sir."

"May I ask, have you still correspondents or friends in that country?"

The Professor was a little uneasy. He looked steadfastly at his visitor for a moment, however, and seemed to regain his composure.

"I have neither," he answered sorrowfully. "The friends of former days are silent; they have forgotten me."

"You have lived in England for long, then?"

"Since I was a boy, sir."

"And you are content?"

The Professor shrugged his shoulders and looked round. The gesture was significant.

"Scarcely so," he answered. "But what would you have? May I now ask you a question, sir?" he continued.

"Yes."

"Your name?"

His visitor looked around him mournfully.

"The day for secrecy is past, I suppose," he said sadly. "I am the Count Leonardo di Marioni."

"What!" shrieked the Professor.

"Count Leonardo di Marioni—that is my name. I am better known as Signor di Cortegi, perhaps, in the history of our society."

"My God!"

If a thunderbolt had burst through the ceiling of the little sitting room, the Professor could not have been more agitated. He had sunk down upon a chair, pale and shaking all over with the effect of the surprise.

"He was a young man?" he faltered.

His visitor sighed.

"It was five-and-twenty years ago," he answered slowly. "Five-and-twenty years rotting in a Roman prison. That has been my fate. I was a young man then. You see me now."

He held up his arms, and let them drop again heavily to his side. It was a gesture full of sad dramatic pathos, but in that little room there was no one to observe it, no one to pity him for those white hairs and deep-drawn lines. But that was nothing. It was not pity that he wanted.

There was silence. Both men were absorbed in their own thoughts. Signor Bartlezzi was thunderstruck and completely unnerved. The perspiration stood out upon his forehead, and he could feel his hands and legs shaking. This was a terrible and altogether unexpected blow to him. It was not the thought of that twenty-five years' lonely captivity which was oppressing him, so much as the fact that it was over—that the day of release had come, and that it was indeed Count Marioni who stood before him, alive and a free man. That was the serious part of it. Had it not been proclaimed that the imprisonment was for life? That had certainly been the sentence. A gleam of hope flashed in upon him. Perhaps he had escaped from prison. If so, the sooner he was back there the better.

"Was not the sentence for life?" he gasped.

The Count assented, shaking his head slowly.

"Yes, for life," he answered bitterly. "That was the sentence, imprisonment for life."

"Then you have escaped?"

The same slow shake of the head. The Professor was bitterly disappointed.

"No. At five-and-twenty years a prisoner with a good-conduct sheet is restored to liberty. My time came at last. It was a weary while."

"What evil fate kept him alive all that time?" the Professor muttered under his breath. "Men are buried deep who pass within the walls of an Italian prison. What had kept this frail old man alive?" Before the night was over, he knew!

The Professor sat on the edge of his chair, limp and dejected. He was quite powerless to frame any speech of welcome or congratulation. Fortunately, it was not expected. His visitor was deep in thought, and some time passed before he appeared even to notice the presence of Signor Bartlezzi. At last, however, he looked up and spoke.

"I fear that all things have not gone well with us!" he said sadly. "On my release, I visited the old home of our society in the Piazza di Spiola at Rome. It was broken up. I met with no one who could tell me anything about it. It was doubtless because I knew not where to go; but I had fancied—I had hoped—that there might have been some one whose memory would not have been altogether dulled by time, who would have come to meet me at the prison gates, and welcome me back into the living world once more. But that is nothing. Doubtless the day of my release was unknown. It was the hot season at Rome, and I wandered wearily about, seeing no familiar face, and unable to hear anything of our friends. I might have had patience and lingered, but it seemed to me that I had been patient so long—it was all exhausted. From there I went to Florence, with the same result. At last I came to London, and by making cautious inquiries through my bank, I discovered your address. So I have come here."

"Ah, yes, yes," answered the Professor, with blinking eyes, and still completely bewildered. "You have come here. Just so. Just so."

"The numbers have fallen off, I suppose? Yet you still have meetings?"

"Oh, yes; certainly. We still have meetings," the Professor assented spasmodically.

The little old man nodded his head gravely. He had never doubted it.

"When is the next?" he asked, with the first touch of eagerness creeping into his voice.

Signor Bartlezzi felt a cold perspiration on his forehead, and slowly mopped it with a red cotton handkerchief. The calmness of despair was settling down upon him. "He must know," he thought. "Better get it over."

"To-night," he answered, "in an hour—perhaps before. They'll be dropping in directly."

"Ah!" It was a long-drawn and significant monosyllable. The Count rose to his feet, and commenced pacing the room. Already its meanness was forgotten, its narrow walls had expanded. The day of his desire had come. "What are your numbers now?" he asked.

The Professor drew a long breath, and kept his eyes fixed upon his visitor. The thing was narrowing down.

"Four," he answered; "four besides myself."

The Count started and appeared perplexed.

"Four on the acting committee, you mean, I suppose?" he suggested. "Four is the old number."

The Professor shook his head doggedly.

"Four altogether," he repeated.

The old man's eyes flashed, but the angry light died almost immediately away. After all, there might be grave reasons, of which he was ignorant, for restricting the number.

"Four desperate and brave men may be much," he mused, half aloud. "One will do enough for my purpose."

There was a ghastly humor in that speech which was nearly too much for Signor Bartlezzi. He was within an ace of collapsing, but he saved himself by a quick glance at that worn old man. His visitor was living in the light of five-and-twenty years ago. The awakening would come. It was at hand.

"Signor Bartlezzi," the Count said, pausing suddenly in his restless walk, "I have a confession to make."

"So had he," Signor Bartlezzi mused, though his would keep.

"Proceed," he begged, with a wave of his hand and a touch of his old bombast, which had collapsed so suddenly. "Proceed, I am all attention."

The Count stood in the middle of the room, with his left hand thrust into the bosom of his coat, and the right stretched out toward the Professor. It was his old attitude of bygone days into which he had unconsciously fallen, but his expression was no longer threatening, and his voice, though indeed it quivered, was free from the passion and fire of his youth. He was apologetic now, rather than denunciatory. It was a great change.

"You will doubtless imagine, Signor Bartlezzi," he said, "from my presence here, from my seeking you out immediately upon my release, that the old fires burn still in my heart; that my enthusiasm for the cause still survives the chill of five-and-twenty years. Alas! that I should confess it, but it is not so!"

"Then what the mischief does he want here?" mused the Professor. "An account of his money, I suppose. Oh, damn those meddlesome Italians who set him free."

"I am sorry, but it is natural," he remarked aloud, wagging his head sagely. "Five-and-twenty years is a devil of a time!"

"You will not misunderstand me, Professor," he went on almost pleadingly. "You will not imagine for one moment that the 'Order of the White Hyacinth' and everything connected with it, is not still dear to me, very dear. I am an old man, and my time for usefulness is past. Yet there is one demand which I have to make of the association which I have faithfully served and suffered for. Doubtless you know full well what I mean. Will you hear it now, or shall I wait and lay it before the meeting to-night?"

"The latter, by all means," begged the Professor hastily. "They wouldn't like it if you told me first. They'd feel hurt, I'm sure."

The Count bowed his head.

"So be it, then," he said gravely.

There was a short silence. The Professor, with his thumbs in his waistcoat, gazed fixedly down the street.

"I don't see why they shouldn't share the storm," he mused. "He's small, but he looks as though he might be awkward. I would very much rather Martello and the others were here; Martello is a strong man."

There was a knock at the outside door, and Signor Bartlezzi peered through the window.

"There they are!" he exclaimed. "I'll go and let them in myself. It would be better to prepare them for your presence. Excuse me."

His visitor bowed, and resumed his seat.

"I await the pleasure of the Council," he said with dignity.