The Romance Of Giovanni Calvotti Part 10

'I speak no language but my own,' said the young advocate.

'My dear Calvotti,' said my old patron, in Italian smoother and more choicely worded than his English, one language is pretty much the same to me as another, so long as it _is_ a language, and is spoken in Europe. I have been a mercantile adventurer in Europe for more than thirty years, and have found a knowledge of languages a necessity.'

'Then, sir,' I said in English, 'deal with this gentleman according to your discretion. If you think it wise, let him know all.'

'Trust to me,' he answered, and bade me a cheery adieu.

In another hour the advocate was back, again.

'Signor Calvotti,' he exclaimed, holding out his hand for mine, 'I did not know that I had a hero to defend. But I know it now. You are in no danger. It is weary waiting, but two weeks do not make up eternity; and we shall march out of the court with the drums beating.'

I could not share his joy. The weight which is upon me now oppressed me then; and when the door closed upon the advocate, I could only sit upon my bed and think, with a heart that ached and burned, of the terror which waited on Cecilia.

CHAPTER VI.--THE END.

Whilst I lay waiting for the day of trial, I learned from my counsel that my fellow-prisoner was identified as one Giovanni Fornajo, an old companion of Charles Grammont. This man was known to have rifled his dead friend's clothing, and the popular impression appeared to be that I had either committed the murder from some other motive than cupidity, or had been disturbed, and that this poor scoundrel had striven to profit by my crime. Against us both the popular feeling was intense. It was noted by the crowd that both Fornajo and myself were naturalised British subjects, and that fact alone might have created considerable prejudice against us, because to the ignorant mind it bespoke the repudiation of our native land--a thing from which I am utterly afar in my own mind.

I am proud of Italy, and I am proud of Naples, and I have no idea of pretending to be other than a Neapolitan. One can be cosmopolitan without losing one's patriotism, I venture respectfully to hope. But I would not have cared then to set myself right with the populace of my native city, either on that or any other point, though I could have done it with a word. It was natural and illogical to scorn the people for believing in my guilt, whilst I allowed them to believe it. Yet I felt against them a sort of lofty anger, and felt myself affronted to think that anybody could regard me as being even likely to commit a murder.

Ratuzzi was kind throughout, even when he believed me guilty; and Mr.

Gregory after his first visit never failed me. I asked him news of Clyde, but he had no news to bring me until two days before my trial, when he came into my cell with a grave but not uncheerful countenance.

'Calvotti,' he said, 'can you tell me with any precision the hour at which you saw Arthur on that fatal night?'

'I can only guess the time,' I answered. 'But why do you ask?' I questioned in my turn.

'Because,' he replied, 'I believe it possible that you may have mistaken somebody else for Arthur, and because I have evidence that he could not be near the place at the time at which we know that the murder must have been committed.'

For one moment hope beamed within my heart, but in a second, like a scene beheld by the light of heaven's fire, the sight of that horror-stricken, blood-stained face was with me. I could read again every line and tint of it, and I knew it too well to be mistaken.

'My friend,' I said sorrowfully--'my best friend--do not comfort yourself with any false hope on that matter. I saw him, and there is no hope of a doubt in all my mind.'

'Arthur,' he replied, 'is lying ill of fever at this moment in your house at Posilipo. Your housekeeper tells me that she saw him enter his room. He made her understand that he was unwell, and that he wished to lie down. She gave him a cup of coffee, and he retired to his room. Next morning she found him there raving with fever and lying on the floor.

Only one point in her narrative accords with your belief, and that is, when she raised him she found him badly cut across the forehead, and found that his arms were bruised as if by a fall. The doctor who attends him tells me that the crisis is over, but sternly forbids that any questions should be asked him at present. The patient must see n.o.body for a week to come, but I have hopes that we shall yet clear up a terrible mystery, and shall find that Arthur is as innocent as I believe you to be.'

I told him I would give all in my world to share his hopes. How could I doubt my own eyes? A vision, moreover, does not dash against a man and knock him down and stun him for hours. In all that Mr. Gregory could tell me I found no hope, but only vague suspicions of a plan to divert suspicion. Yet I found some comfort in one belief which would intrude itself upon me. He was yet guilty though this story of the fever were all true, but if it were true he was less base than I had feared, and had not willingly left one who loved him to suffer for his crime. Mr.

Gregory went away sensibly subdued by my fixed refusal to accept the hope he offered.

'There is a mystery in all this, Calvotti,' he said at parting, 'and it must be cleared.'

'There is no mystery to my eyes,' I answered, 'and you will find before long that I am right, though I would give the world to know that I am wrong.'

Then came the day. I had little fear of being found guilty, and I had, indeed, but very little care to be acquitted. When I thought of myself, it was as though I reflected on the affairs of some troublesome stranger, of whose interest I was weary. I am not learned in law forms, and I cannot tell you the precise forms of the several indictments against me. These things are managed in Italy pretty much as they are in England, except that here you have no accusatore pubblico. The place of that functionary would, in an English Court, be filled by a temporarily appointed counsel for the Crown. When I was placed in the dock, I looked about with an interest no more vivid than that of any spectator there.

Mr. Gregory sat beside my counsel, and nodded to me gravely. There was no one else whom I knew, although the place was crowded. There was a murmur on my entrance, and I heard many words of hatred and loathing muttered here and there. For a moment no one spoke or moved, and the Court seemed to await something. I saw what that something was when Giovanni Fornajo was placed in the dock by my side, and we were jointly and severally arraigned. The accustore pubblico arose, and, gathering his gown about him, spoke.

Had I been one of the crowd who listened, I should have believed myself guilty. The evidence against me, as he set it forth, seemed a web closely woven enough to hold anything. I had been seen by two or more people engaged in a quarrel with the deceased in the Ba.s.so Porto. I had been seen on the Chiaja with him at a time when he was the worse for drink, and when my conduct and appearance were so suspicious that a perfect stranger was impelled to watch me for two hours lest I should do the man a mischief in his drunken sleep. Two or three hours later, this perfect stranger to us both had found the dead body of Charles Grammont in the road with all the pockets of his garments turned inside out, and had put the body into a cart he was then driving from Posilipo to Naples. A hundred yards nearer the city he found me lying bruised as if in a struggle, and with the marks of a hand wet with blood upon my white s.h.i.+rt-front. The marks of the hand had been found to correspond in size with the hand of the deceased. My companion in the dock was probably, so the accusatore said, an accessory before the fact, and it was probable that, whilst I had committed the crime to gratify my own evil pa.s.sion for revenge, I had engaged this desperate and notorious character to pillage the body in order to give the murder the appearance of having been committed from a purely sordid motive. He set forth all his facts and all his theories about them with great calmness, but when he came to the close of his indictment he burst into an impa.s.sioned protest against certain articles which had appeared in a French journal on the question of Italian Brigandage, citing this case as an argument to show that crimes of violence were committed by born Neapolitans within the city radius, and expressing a sarcastic wonder that the authorities should have troubled themselves to arrest the criminals though the proofs against them both were overwhelming.

'Thus it is,' said the accusatore, speaking with a stern pa.s.sion of emphasis, 'that these traitors to their country first cast off their natal ties in order to lead lives of unrestricted profligacy abroad, and having, in other lands, done all within them to disgrace the land of their birth, return to it to inflict a wound still deeper upon the national reputation; and thus it is that these villains, though they once did their country the honour to repudiate it, return to lay a final disgrace upon it.'

He pressed with a pa.s.sionate insistence for the extremest rigour of the law against us both, and it was plain from the angry murmurs of the court that this appeal to the national sentiment had told heavily against me. Then he called his witnesses. The first three were from the Ba.s.so Porto--fit inhabitants of the place. They told substantially the same story, and all swore that I was engaged in an angry broil with Grammont and another Englishman whom they did not know. They admitted that the conversation was carried on in English, but my advocate's half-contemptuous cross-examination could not set aside the fact that a quarrel, in which I had taken some part, had taken place. After these three, Matthew Hollis was called, and the man whom I had watched upon the quay presented himself. He told, in fair though foreign-sounding Italian, a plain story. He had been an engine-fitter, and had worked in France and Italy. He was settled down in business on his own account in Naples, and on the day to which his story related had work to do at Posilipo. On his way thither he observed Grammont and myself, and suspected me of evil designs and watched me. He told how I tried to get rid of him by sending him upon a message to the Caffe d' Italia, and how he declined to leave the place. He related how, having seen us part, he had gone his way to Posilipo, and how, returning thence in the evening with a workman of his own, he had found the dead body of Grammont on the road, and had found me lying insensible at a little distance from it.

A close cross-examination only served to prove the absolute solidity of this man's story. Then an officer produced a bundle, and, untying it, displayed the s.h.i.+rt I had worn, with the rust-coloured mark of a hand distinct upon the front. 'Did that mark correspond with the size of the hand of the murdered man?' So asked the accusatore pubblico. 'Yes,'

answered the official, 'accurately.' 'Did it correspond with the hand of the prisoner Giovanni Calvotti?' 'No,' he responded, and stated truly that I was a man of much larger build than Grammont, and my hand at least an inch longer. So far as I was-concerned the case closed with his evidence, and the case against Fornajo was then gone into. There is no need to go over that ground: again. All that was proved against him was; the possession of Grammont's money. He failed totally to establish an alibi, and so far as partic.i.p.ation in the crime went the evidence; seemed clear enough against him.

Then arose my advocate, with pale face and coal-black eyes.

'This world,' he said, 'is full of strange and curious contrasts, but I do not think that any contrast so strange as this has been seen by any man who now hears my voice. Side by side, companions in your thoughts of them, stand two men so utterly unlike each other in; appearance and character, that to see them thus commonly arraigned is in itself an amazement. The one a gentleman and descended from gentlemen, the other a person of the lowest cla.s.s--the one famous in the annals of contemporary art, the other known for nothing but his love for vulgar dissipation. As they stand there before you they present a spectacle tragic and unique.

As I know them--and as you will see them when I have called the one witness I have to call--they present a spectacle yet more amazing. One man stands there a monument of honour, a glory to his country, and a lesson to mankind. The other stands there a murderer in fact already, and in his heart a murderer again; since, knowing the innocence of the man beside him, he seeks at the expense of innocence to s.h.i.+eld his own guilt from the sword of justice. It is my pride and my delight to-day to heal one broken and heroic heart, and it is my duty to bring one miserable criminal to justice.'

Whilst the young advocate spoke thus, I stood in amazed agony. Was he about to denounce Clyde in order to free me? It would be a professional tour de force, and the melodramatic power of the situation would have made him notorious for life. He looked round upon me slowly when he had ceased to speak, and I saw that his dark eyes were burning with triumphant fire. He sat down, and for a moment there was a dead hush in the crowded place, and then a buzz of excited speech, and then a clamour. In the midst of it an officer placed a chair before the judge, immediately between the judicial seat and the railed s.p.a.ce in which I stood. If I had been amazed at the speech of the young advocate, you may guess how I felt when Arthur Clyde came forward and took the seat. His eyes met mine once, and I saw that they were brimmed with tears, and there was such a smile upon his face as I never saw before. Was I mad, or lost in some fantastic dream? This man voluntarily here, of all men--and smiling upon _me!_ It was at once incredible and true. I waited, dizzy and breathless, to hear and see the end.

The customary oath administered, my advocate arose, and, in the midst of a deathlike silence, questioned Arthur Clyde. He first drew from him the story of the Ba.s.so Porto, and at its close begged to recall the three witnesses who had deposed to my partic.i.p.ation in the quarrel. They came, and each identified Arthur as the third party in the fracas. Arthur gave his evidence in English, through the sworn interpreter of the court, and Mr. Gregory once or twice gave hints to the advocate when question or answer missed precise translation. He told of our second meeting with Grammont, and of his own departure. Then came a story which amazed me, and riveted the ears of every creature there. That story I reproduce from the columns of the 'Giorno.'

Advocate: Where did you go next?

Witness: To the Caffe d' Italia to await my friend.

Advocate: How long did you stay?

Witness: Only half-an-hour. I felt suddenly unwell, and walked again on the Chiaja.

Advocate: Did you see your friend again?

Witness: Yes. He was still engaged in talk with Mr. Grammont; and since I had no wish to meet him then, I walked along the road to Posilipo.

Advocate: Did anything happen upon the road?

Witness: I was violently sick, and, feeling very faint afterwards, lay down upon a slope at the side of the road under the shade of a tree, and rested there.

Advocate: What happened next?

Witness: I heard voices in the lane below me.

Advocate: Relate now what happened.

Witness: I saw two men--Mr. Grammont and another--talking together. They spoke in English. The man asked for money, and said he knew perfectly well that Mr. Grammont had more than four thousand pounds in English notes about him at that moment.

The Judge: What was Grammont's condition at this time?

Witness: He was partially sobered, as I should judge, but not altogether.

Advocate: Pray proceed with your story.

Witness: There was a good deal of angry talk between the two and Grammont's companion threatened that, if he were not allowed a part of the money, he would try to take all.

Advocate: Did Grammont take any notice of that threat?

Witness: He laughed, and the two walked on together.