The Black Mask - E. W. Hornung (10 best books of all time txt) 📗

“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 threadbare 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 weekend.

“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