MY FRIEND THE FOREIGNER

Evening Star, Issue 7403, 24 December 1887, Page 1 (Supplement)

MY FRIEND THE FOREIGNER

A SICILIAN INCIDENT.

[B* Owen Graham.]

[SfECiALLY Written for the 'Stak.']

"You have considerable affection," said my strange friend, looking through his eyeglass at the paper I had given him. "Your sloping hand, your l's, your g's, your y's all bear testimony. Your finals have a downward tendency, which is bad if you have any desire to advance in tho world. Little ambition, no (or very slight) selfishness. Your letters have a certain soft roundness with them 5 your t's have light bare little decision, little force of will. No punctuation at all—caution an unknown quantity $ and your vowels have all open mouths, as if about to give forth all they know to the world. Ha! ha ! am I not correct? Have you not confided to me a secret you would fain take back if you could!" And he laughed indolently, and flicked the ash from his cigar. "As you English say, we row in the same boat. I, too, have made confidences, but which I do not regret" ; and he wrung my hand in his effusive foreign way. "We arc well out of it, say I. Henceforth no more political intrigue, no more romantic conspiracies. Secret societies ,are an anachronism, an excrescence on the face of nineteenth century civilisation."

We were sitting on the piazza in front of the Victoria Hotel at Palermo, I and my friend. The broad sweep of one of the most beautiful promenades in all Europe lay beforo us. Bevond was the bay, bine, smooth, unrippled, reflecting a cloudless Sicilian sky, with the view closed up by Mounts Catalfano and Pellegrino. My friend's name was Luigi Bracca, and that comprises absolutely the whole I knew about him. We had met but two days before, and had drifted into friendship, because I suppose there was an affinity between us. Why I had come to Palermo will be sufficiently evident directly. I am so placed that I cannot be as explicit as I could wish the reader. There is a claBS of men who are supposed to be capable of being taught by experience alone, and experience has taught me. I have learned at last, in some degree at any rate, the value of reticence. . Though my friendship with Luigi was of such very recent standing, I had been very unreserved towards him, and what with his artfully put questions and the influence of his sedative cigars which he was eternally smoking and ju?t as frequently offering to me, I had made revelations concerning myself which I hesitate even at this late hour to place before the reader. As he said, when, in answer to my challenge, he proceeded to read my character from half-a-dozen lines of my handwriting, I did regret the confidences I had made; indeed, the words were no sooner out of my mouth (and I assure the reader that what between the cigars and the questions I was so bewildered that even the slight degree of prudence natural to me had for the time being deserted me) than I wondered how 1 could be so consummately foolish as to run my neck into the halter in that gratuitous way. For that was what it amounted to. I was a young man, and had been indiscreet to the verge of madness. It is, I suppose, patent to everyone not absolutely blind to the signs of the times that society in every capital in Europe is literally honeycombed and undermined with secret organisations that have for their end every object under Heaven, from the establishment of Volapuk and universal brotherhood to the assassination of an Emperor or the braining of an;, obnoxious landlord. Men of all grades, with their infinite diversity of temperament, seem as readily drawn into the vortex; and I, ever ready to catch the infection of the moment, was among the number. I do not know why I should have acted as I did. I had no quarrel with society. I had, I am sure, very littlo, if anything at all, in common with those who joined this kind of societies. Bnt it has been my greatest misfortune to be carried away by a momentary enthusiasm into the committal of acts that have had serious consequences. It has been so all through my life. The persuasion of a companion, the voice of pleasure or of curiosity—either of these, as I have found to my cost, has been sufficient to sink all the convictions of my calmer moments and hurry me into extravagances which very slight reflection might have avoided. Thus it was that at the time I refer to I became involved in one of ! the many German complications, than which, I verily believe, there wore few more revolutionary societies in Europe. 1 did not think till after my initiation to what I had committed myself, and then the consideration of my position shocked me. I had in the first place been inveigled into the step I had taken because of my wealth, and I soon found that in the matter of contributions to the common object the fraternity were prepared to strictly exact all the requirements to which I had pledged myself. _ Before this I had no idea what an expensive institution the romantic secret society is. Though I was induced in a variety of ways to disburse considerably more than my share, I could Bee very plainly that I was never recognised as one who had identified himself with the movement for good and all, and I had a shrewd idea that I was suspected of insincerity. This was, I suppose, because I had begun to doubt my own sincerity, for I bad not joined the Booiety a month before I repented of what I had done, and longed to disassociate myself from it. I began to entertain serious thoughts of making my

escape, though I knew with what consequences failure in such a case would most probably be followed. I was amazed, too, at the wide dissemination of the principles of the brotherhood throughout society. Wherever I went I found myself in the midst of the initiated—on the street, in church, at the theatre. I peopled the air with spies, and daily cursed the foolhardy rashness that brought mc into such a situation. At last my suspicions became conviction. I believed I was watched as a suspected traitor to the cause, and I knew to what lengths my covfrim would go under such circumstances upon even tho most flimsy evidence—even if they troubled to regard evidence at all. Then a notice in the newspaper roused genuine alarm in my mind. I need not say what the notice was. It is indifferent to this story, and, besides, I may have been mistaken ; but in my then state of nervous dread I regarded it as sufficient to justify myself in taking the promptest measures to preserve myself. This happened at Vienna, and before sundown that day I had fled. I left all my luggage behind me, at the hotel, and took nothing whatever with me which my fears suggested might encumber mo in my flight. For a short time I stayed in Switzerland ; but there my fears were aroused anew, and I came to Palermo, whence I intended on the very first opportunity to make my escape to England.

1 did not consider until it was too late that I hud taken the very course to arouse suspicion among the society I was seeking to escape, and to confirm beyond all further question whatever doubts might have been entertained concerning mc. I had not been sufficiently collected to make my flight in a less hasty and suspicious manner, and I 1 think now with the memory of subsequent events still fresh in my mind that there was some excuse for my action. Whether I had really been followed or not I could not say, but I thought I had, and suspected numbers of entirely innocent people of designs upon my life. However, I determined that tho experience I had gone through should not be thrown away ; and if I once succeeded in disentangling myself, I made a deep mental pledge to henceforth observe the strictest prudence in my conduct. Yet in tho face of all this, on the very second day of my acquaintance with Luigi, a man of whoso character I was entirely ignorant, and with whom I had become acquainted in the most casual way, I had revealed absolutely everything that it most concerned me to keep secret. Contradictory ! My conduct was insane, suicidal, and I can account for it but in one way, and that is that an influence akin to mesmerism was somehow exercised over me. Tho folly of my action was evident as soon as it was committed, and I could have bitten my tongue out in my chagrin. Luigi, who was a very close observer, saw how I was affected, and hastened to assure me that I was not alone in my situation. "I," he said, "have been guilty of the same imprudence. Pooh, what then ? Society is full of renegades such as we are. We hear, for instance, of assassinations in Naples most days. Are these the outcome of private quarrels alone ? Some of them, granted ; but I know that the majority are not. No, my friend, it is the secret society, and it is all very simple. You walk along, the night is dark, the place is lonely ; you are perhaps deep in thought, and from deep thought you go into the deep sleep we call death as quickly as one week runs into another. There is no warning. The blow is sure, rapid, silent, unknown. It may come from the companion at your side; it may spring from a wayside bush; it may fall from the clouds. It is all one. The result is the same. In the morning you are found with your dead eyes staring up at the sky, and one more murder is added to the list of undiscovered crimes. Ha, ha !" he broke off, looking at my face, which perhaps had assumed a somewhat uneasy look, for I did not relish this forecast of the possible conclusion of my career—" do I alarm you ? To me it is the sauce piquant of life." And he threw himself back in his chair, laughing and showing his white teeth. " For myself, I know it all so well I do not expect to die of old age. Perhaps, who knows, I may have been describing my own end if tha secrets of tho future were only known. I havo played the game; well, what then ? I am prepared to take the risk, as any other gambler. I Bleep none the less soundly now. Bah ! I am not one of your lovers of existonce for its own sake. Take away excitement, take away pleasure, take away succoss—and_ what remains? To my thinking, a tiresome mechanism, which, wo are told, in Borne unexplainablo way, and in some unknowable place, conceals a something called a soul, but which I know is subject to disease and discomfort in every one of a million fibres. No, no; what is it your Shakespeare teaches in his 'Hamlet?' Is it not that suicide is not ho unfamiliar to most of us? There are men—fortunately for the peace of humanity, the majority—who take their inheritance of life as it comes, like our friend sleeping down on the bank there ; but your Hamlets anticipate it and find it pall upon them before they cut their eye-teeth, and I—l am like Hamlet. But come, you do not appreciate my wise words. You wave your hands and say, ' No, no; you are one of the French school ?'" I did not reply for the moment. As a general thing I went to sleep when my friend began to air his ethics, but just now I felt my attention powerfully attracted to the man he had mentioned as sleeping upon the bunk below us. As I looked he rose up, stretched himself lazily, and strolled along the promenade, till a turn in the path hid him from sight. He appeared to be one of the

many indolent vagabonds I met every day, nominally a fisherman, really little else than a beggar, or, upon occasion, something worse. When I turned towards Luigi again I saw ho too had been watching the man. His mood was completely ohanged from a moment before ; the expression of good-natured and indolent enjoyment habitual to him was replaced by a look of gloom and despondency. " Do you believe in presentiments ?" he said, as my eyes met his. "Can't say I've ever troubled myself to form an opinion one way or the other upon the matter. I have heard at times of some rather strange things, that, if true, would lead one to Relieve there were more things in Heaven and earth than were dreamed of in Horatio's philosophy. Personally I have never experienced anything to dispose me to belief or disbelief, and I think that most things regarded as supernatural admit of a very prosaic explanation." " What if I should say I knew I should die within the month ?"

"Luigi!" He arose, and began pacing slowly back wards and forwards.

" Yes, within the month ; it may be within the week. Last night I saw two men lying asleep—one was myself ; who the other was I don't know. As they lay, a third man crept towards them, a knife in his hand. He paused on reaching the sleepers, looked at them a moment, and then raised his dagger to strike the man that lay beside me. His arm descended, but was drawn from its line of descent, and the weapon entered my breast. The assassin raised his arm and struck again at my companion ; but again some powerful force drew the blow towards me. A third time he made the attempt, and again I was struck, and 1 awoke."

"And from this dream you conclude you will die within the month," I said, incredulously. " From this I conclude I will dio within the month. Call it superstition, childishness, or what you please. How I shall die I do not know ; but die I feel certain I shall. Well, well; what is to be, will be, dreams or no dreams; but I would have preferred to remain in entire ignorance of what the future may bring rather than have these partial revelations of what the gods have in store for me."

" But, Luigi, this is nonsense. I daresay I have been slaughtered scores of times in dreams, but here I am as healthy as ever to-day " "So have I; but this dream affects me as none before have done. Besides, it does not stand alone. When I was a little child I remember travelling through a strange country (I forgot whero) with my mother. Misfortune had overtaken us, my fathor had died but a short time before, and wo were seeking a new home. We lost our way as night was coming on, and fortunately fell in with a number of gipsy vagrants—fortunately, for they respected our helplessness and gave us shelter for the night, besides such food as they had. In the morning wc left them, and saw them no more. Some time after this, years it was, my mother told me of a strange thing that had occurred. Early in tho morning after our meeting with the gipsies, ono of the women had come to the side of my mother and asked if she wished to have the future of her boy foretold. The old story, I see by your face you are thinking—cross my palm with silver and I prophesy, etc. But wait. My mother, thinking this was but a pretext to extort money From her, refused. 'I do not want your money,' said the gipsy ; 'it is not I who will do this. Have you never heard of the Well of St. Nicholas?' My mother said she had not. 'Then come with me,' said the gipsy, * and I will show it you.' The gipsy took my mother into an old ruin at a little distance, and then showed her in the midst a deep black well. ' That well was built many hundred years ago,' said the gipsy, ' by St. Nicholas, and he imparted to it the power of foretelling at certain appointed times the end of the one nearest and dearest to him or her who looks into it while the words he pronounced in blessing it are repeated.' ' Then,' said my mother, ' I can read my Bon's future but not my own ?' ' Yes,' was the answer, 'if you wish it.' 'I do wishit,' said my mother, curious to see what the end of all this might be ; ' but how am I to know what words to repeat?' 'Kneel down,' said the gipsy, 'and look without once shifting your glance into the water. I will repeat the words.' My mother at once knelt down and gazed intently into the water, while her companion rapidly recited some words in her own language. Whether there was some deception practised upon her, my mother never knew, but as she looked the water began to spin round with great rapidity, forming a deep vortex in the Presently it became smooth and tranquil again, and tho gipsy said * Watch now what will form inthe water, butwhateveryou see, speak no word.' Beginning in the centre of the watery mirrora scene gradually began to take shape before my mother's eyes. She saw me —no longer a young child but a grown man —lying asleep beside another man whose face she could not see. As we lay, a third man crept stealthily towards us with a dagger gleaming in his hand. Having reached my side, he raised the knife and was about to strike. But tho picture was so real, so lifelike, that my mother covered her face with her hands and screamed aloud. When she looked again the scene had faded away, and only the gipsy, frowning in displeasure at her conduct, stood beside her. Kising_ from her knees, she besought her companion to tell her if what she had seen was tho result of some cunning deception or was really what it was said to be. ' There is no deception,' said tho gipsy. _ ' What you have soon to-day your son will see within three weeks of his death.' Now," said Luigi, "you will understand why I attach the importance I do to my dream." My friend sat silent aftor finishing his strange story, then rose and wont inside. I did not see him again till I met him in one of the passages when going to my room. "Goodnight," he said; " to-morrow evening, then," and passed on, the influence of his strange superstition still upon him.

His words referred to the time we had appointed for an hour or two's ride inland. Certain engagements ho had prevented our meeting till the time was up, when he made his appearance in excellent spirits, and made no reference to the conversation of the evening before. As he vaulted into the saddle he paused and beckoned the landlord to him. " Who is that man'?" he said, pointing with his whip. I looked in the direction he indicated and saw—lounging against the tree and half hidden in its shadow—the man whom I had noticed on the previous evening. He had his back towards us, and appeared to be watching the movements of two of the fishing vessels out at sea. " I don't know, signor," was the answer. "He is a stranger here; I have uot seen him before,"

Luigi nodded and rode off. At the farthest point whence a view of the hotel and the esplanade in front of it could be obtained we looked back. The man had disappeared. I wondered whether this man could be a spy. I had distrusted him instinctively from the first moment I saw him, but I had contracted such a habit of instinctive distrust of late that the man might be very well innocent and still incur my suspicion. " However," I thought, as we turned our horses' heads again, " tomorrow I leave this place, and then heigh for England, where midnight assassinations are unknown, and good-bye to secret societies for ever."

Our ride took us some miles inland, and twilight gathered beforo Luigi showed any disposition to return. He was so silent and abstracted since we had halted to look back that he seemed quite unconscious of his surroundings. Itouchedhisarm. "Luigi," Isaid, " isn't it about time to go back ? Night will be upon us directly, and I don't feel much like passing it among these mountains."

He stared at me for a moment like a man who has been suddenly roused from sleep. " Ah," he said, *' I did not notice it was so late. You say you would not care about passing the night here ? If you are wise, that is just what you will do." "If we don't set out for Palermo at the double," I laughed, "I'm afraid I shall have to, willing or not willing." " You start for England to-morrow, you say. If you wish to see England again, mind my words, and don't (jo to Palermo to-night," he said, slowly, and deliberately fixing his eyes steadily upon mine. " Why, Luigi, you must bo wandering, surely. You're talking in your sleep. Wake up, man, and let us start." I had placed my hand upon his shoulder as I spoke, but he shook it off almost irritably. " Why will you talk so-so foolishly. I tell you lam in deep earnest when I say do not go back to Palermo tonight. Whatever you may have left at the hotel, let it remain there, for just as surely as you return your doom is pealed." "I do not understand you, Luigi? Do you mean that that man " "I do. You have breathed the samo air with that man for twenty-four hours; it will not be his fault if you do so again. I know his tribe of old. He is a ppy of the society you have deserted." " Good heavens, then, what is to be done? Surely it is possible to avoid him till tomorrow morning ? " "If you take my advice you may. You left Palermo with every intention of returning, of which fact he is perfectly awaro from the state of your room. Well, do not roturn. Pass the night here, anywhere. There is shelter in that old ramshackle yonder," and he pointed to where tho crumbling walls of an old stone building of some kind were standing. " But tho horse?"

" I will take that back in the morning."

I hesitated. I had no desire to incur a gratuitous risk by 'going back to Palermo, but at the same time I was not ignorant of tho danger of sleeping out on the mountains exposed to the chilling night dews. The earnestness of Bracca's manner, however, decided me, and I determined to act on his advice.

VVc entered tho old ruin together after tethering our horses, and sought for the moat suitable nook in which to pass tho night, but the place was so old and decayed that there was no part of it that was not more or less exposed. An angle in the north wall which afforded a certain shelter from the most prevalent wind was about the best situation, and we selected it. Luigi had brought a thick, heavy riding cloak with him, and this formed our only covering. " My friend," said Luigi, when we had finished our preparations for passing the night, " forgive me, I have deceived you." His words startled me. He had been so silent, so unlike himself, during our ride that I was beginning to think there must be a deeper cause for his disquietude than mere solicitude for my Bafety. He stood before me drawn up to his full height; his face, I could see by the light of the moon that had arisen, was of a deadly paleness; his fingers worked nervously; his eyes were averted. " I have deceived yon, but it was for your own good. See," he said, with a certain dramatic air that was natural to him, and he turned and rolled up the sleeve of his left arm. I saw the figure of a heart burnt into the flesh. A symbol I was only too familiar with, for I bore the same brand, and do to thiß day. " Now you know that I am an accredited agent of the society you seek to escape," he went on excitedly. " I told you I had been unfaithful to the society. I have not, but am about to become so. Were I prepared to carry out all that is required of me, I should either have to inform upon you, my friend—or take your life. You need not start, you need not fear," he continued, pacing to and fro, his words pouring volubly forth. " Either of these I might have already done, as you know. But no ; lam sick of the work, I have seen bo much of it. That is why I warned you to-night; that is why I make a new proposal." His back was turned to me as he uttered the last words-, and when he turned suddenly round and faced me again I did not know him. He had worn a full, flowing black beard; now there was not a vestige of hair on his face. He stood for a moment looking keenly at me, and I thought I heard him exclaim the single word " Good [" under his breath, Then he laughed and showed mo the beard which he had held behind him in his hand. "We must take as many shapes as Proteus in our trade," he said, coming towards me. " Now, listen. I saw by your face just now, when I unmasked myself, you would not have known me in a crowd. Good. Put on this, and you also will not be known. Take my word, you now need everything to hide you from—not only that man," and his eyes looked restlessly on every sido, as if he expected to seo him spring forth from among the bushes around us—" but others of his kind. Once they are on your track you are never safe till you put the oceans between you." "But what about yourself? May the danger you fear for me not be hanging over your own head?" He gazed keenly at me for several seconds before replying; then he said: "My case is different from yours. You are young, inexperienced, a stranger among strange people; while as for me, to whom every hole aud corner on the Continent is known—ha, ha," he broke off. " Have no fear of me. Come, I will fix your mask." I made no objection, but while he was adjusting the false whiskers to my face I remember the thought did cross my mind whether in abandoning my own identity, as it were, I might not be incurring greater danger by adopting that of my friend. The laugh that greeted the conclusion of bis task interrupted me. " The transfiguration is complete, laughed Luigi. " Your own mother would not know you now; and even our friend the spy might hesitate before Btioking bis knife under your fifth rib."

We made a scanty meal on some tinned fish that Luigi (who had apparently prepared for the emergency) had brought with him; and after a while the chilling night wind began to blow coldly over the mountains, and wo lay down in the shelter of the wall and drew over us Luigi's riding-cloak. It may have been because of the disguise I had put on, or that my waking fears followed me in my dreams, but all night long I was haunted by visions of midnight assassins; of hiding from pursuers hungering for my life 5 and once I saw so plainly a man creeping stealthily towards us that I cried out and started up in my sleep. But all was dark and silent. The wind whistled dismally ocer the old ruin, and I lay down again. The moon shone forth at fitful intervals from between black banks of clouds that were now scurrying across the sky. Luigi lay asleep, and was murmuring uneasily. l?rom chance words he uttered I perceived he thought he was wandering among the gipsies again, and seeing bis fortune foretold in the mystic depths of the Well of St. Nicholas.

I awoke at daylight with a strange feeling of dread upon me. Luigi still lay motionless. I started when I first looked upon his altced appearance, forgetting for the moment the change of the night before; and yet how strange his face appeared. Could that be sleep ? And—oh, my God! what was this ? I sprang up in silent, overwhelming horror. Partly concealed by the covering, there was a stain of thick clotted blood across his breast. I looked again, and there was a knife still protruding from the wound. The blow had been struck in the night while we slept, but by whom and for whom intended ? The strange man whom we had both suspected—it must have been he. And then the disguise I had adopted. It all burst upon me in an instant. Luigi had been murdered instead of me, and his presentiment had come true, *****

Some weeks afterwards in England I saw the following paragraph in one of the newspapers:—"A strange sensation has been caused in Palermo by the discovery of the body of a certain Miguel Cartas upon the mountains outside the city. Cartas has been long known in connection with certain political complications, and had the reputation of being one of the most consummate intriguers over begotten of that curse of the century—the secret society. How ho came by his death, except that he was murdered, is a mystery. But he had for some time before been uuspected «f pW J -a • game ; and even upon his dead body letters were found confirming the worst suspicions as to his insincerity. A young Englishman, who has succeeded in making himself scarce, was last seen in his company—indeed, upon the very day of his death accompanied him from tho city of Palermo—but whether he is the guilty party or not is unknown. It is even said that the latter, and not Cartas, was tho intended victim ; but that Cartas, who has for months been in a state of chronic fear of assassination, and, suspecting he was being followed, had prevailed upon his companion to change clothes with him, and in the doubtful light was killed by mistake for him. Whether this is true—and our information upon such a topic is necessarily not as authoritative as wo could wish—is impossible to say; but, if it is, one would be almost justified in thinking that Providence at times even guided tho knifo of tho assassin."