LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume VII, Issue 794, 8 January 1877, Page 3

LITERATURE.

M Z MUKDEK. [A Confession,] Chapter 11. { Concluded .) Argue, reason, justify, talk about selfdefence, and, if I hadn’t done this, he would have done so-and-so and so-and-so, as much as you please, you can never quite philosophise away the very disagreeable sensation which will arise occasionally if you have ever had the misfortune, however unintentionally, to kill a man. My hot temper has often given me cause for regret, not to say remorse ; but since the night when I flung the robber into the Rhine, I hope I can safely say I have curbed it. Whenever it comes bubbling .up, there also comes with it the vivid recollection of that brief struggle on the balcony, and lo ! it is subdued on the instant; but the recollection, alas, is not so speedily dismissed : it still hovers painfully in my memory at times, though twelve years have passed since the deed was done—twelve years ! during which no mention that I have ever seen has been made in the papers of any one having been missed from the hotel. Of course I have been often to Switzerland since, but somehow I have always avoided the town where stands the hostelry of Les Trois Sages, and I certainly should never think of going up the Rhine again. I strike the Alps now by other routes, and have a tendency to get well to the Italian side of them. Indeed I have but lately returned from a saunter amongst the hills in the neighbourhood of Como, What capricious fate led me there to the spot where I was to find the sequel to “ My Murder ” need not be speculated upon; it was one of those strange coincidences, J suppose, which when met with in fiction excite little surprise, but which when stated as facts are generally doubted. Here it is, however, and if it had not been a fact there would never have been any record on paper of “My Murder.” Well, I pulled up one day at an unpretentious little albergo on the side of a steep declivity overlooking the “lazy” lake. The light refreshment which I ordered was brought to me as I sat at a little table in the garden, sheltered by vines, olive, and fig trees, by the padrone himself, a venerable grey bearded man. Only as he set the fruit and bread down before me did I observe that he was blind, He had walked so, steadily

and direct from the house to where I sat thail no one could have guessed at his affliction. The sudden discovery of it, together with a sorrowful expression which his face wore, touched me, and I began talking to him wifi what Italian I could muster. His speech showed him to be above the common herd, and such ordinary topics, I ventured to touch >n his blindness. ‘ Oh,’ said he, * that is very little, signor ; nen can be more severely tried than by having to live in the dark. There are worse afflictions than that.’ ‘lndeed,’ I answered; ‘do you speak from experience ? ’ ‘ Truly, signor, I do. ’ ‘ You surprise me ; I should have thought nothing could be worse. Do you mind telling me what you have found so 1 ’ * No,’ he said, slowly sitting down opposite to me ; * but it is a sad tale; I doubt if it can amuse the signor; but if he is willing to listen, lam willing to tell. It sometimes eases the heart to pour out its troubles even into the ear of the stranger. But stay, let us know how the time goes, for I have some affairs to attend to by and by.’ Whilst speaking, he thrust a hand into th* pocket of his vest, and drawing out a watoli without a chain, held it towards me adding: ‘ What is the hour, signor ? we blind folic are a little helpless in these matters.’ I looked into his large brown palm, ami was about to answer, but the words stuck in my throat, for surely it was not the first time I had seen that dial! ‘ Permit me,’ I said after a pause, as, pretending not to be quite able to see it, I endeavoured to turn the watch over in his hand that I might by a glance at the back of it verify the idea which had crossed my mind. He felt what I was doing, and said—- * The signor will find the time by the front and not the back. ’ ‘ Surely,’ I answered ; ‘it is three o’clock. But that is an English watch you have, is it not ? ’ ‘ The signor is curious : can it signify to him of what manufacture it is?’ replied the padrone, in rather an altered tone, bc.t not rudely. ‘ O, no,’ I answered carelessly, not wishing to arouse any suspicions in him ; it only struck me as strange to find an English watch in these parts. Pray let me look at it. ’ With a return of his former sorrowful manner, and with an air of resignation, he reluctantly handed me the watch, saving— ‘ Certainly, if I tell you one thing, I may as well tell you all.’ A glimpse of the back revealed my own crest and initials ; but I restrained the expression rising to my lips, and went on—‘Ah, a good watch; may I ask how you came by it ? ’ ‘ Yes, it will appear in what I have to say; it is all sad, and is only one of the many troubles which have made me an old man before my time. Very sad indeed is all that hangs about that watch; it belonged to my son, my only son; at least it was found upon him when he was dead.’ Needless to say how I winced under the old man’s words. He continued, as he passed a hand across his sightless eyes ‘ Yes, signor, he is dead these many years past, and perhaps it is as well. But, ah me ! the way of it, the way of it—there is my grief. Could it have been that I had been by, and have known that there was ever so little repentance in his heart, there would have been some little comfort for me, perhaps; but, as it was, it is too probable that he went unshriven, unrepentant, suddenly to his account.’ ‘ Tell me, tell me,’ I said quickly, ‘ the way of his death 1’ But the padrone was not to be hurried. He seemed to like to linger on the pain his slowly-uttered words brought with them, little guessing how they were paining me also. He went on— ‘ Ever a prodigal from bis youth upwards, my boy grew worse and worse as he reached manhood. I had looked that he should inherit my business and good name, for they were both worth inheriting at one time. I kept an hotel at Bergamo, and for a while he was my chief waiter, but his vicious courses brought ruin on us both. He contracted debts which I had to pay ; ran away in evil company, and I heard, I nothing of him for years. ‘ When I did it was, as usual, with a demand for money. He was then in Switzer- ; land as a waiter, I believe, at the hotel of ; Les Trois Sages—the signor knows it of ; course, all the English know it; and there, II afterwards heard, it was that he, in the act probably of attempting some desperate crime, fell one night into the Rhine, and was picked up dead as appeared. Only by a miracle could it have been that his body was not carried straight away down over the falls at Schaffhausen ; but it seems that he got entangled with the .chain of the ferry which crosses the Rhine, as you know, a little below the hotel. Here again, by a miracle, it chanced that he was seen by some men who were early working at some timber rafts, and was by them carried ashore, as I Lave said, for dead !’ ‘ But was he ? ’ I inquired, with an anxiety I could ill disguise, as the old man paused. ‘ No, signor ; it was not his destiny to be drowned—would that it had been, for then he would have been saved from the commission of his greatest crime ! No; he was restored, to return to me and pile upon me further anguish. He came back to Bergamo a year or two after to a smaller inn, which I was then keeping, and in a drunken brawl with some of his loose companions he used his knife with a fatal result upon an unarmed man, whose friend on the instant stabbed my son so the heart! That is all, signor ; but the remembrance of his career has been far worse for me than the darkness.’ ‘And the watch,’ I suggested, with a sense of relief quite inexpressible, ‘was found in his possession 1 ’ ‘ Yes, signor; but I doubt if he had come by it honestly, for they tell me there are a device and letters on the back in no way belonging to him. But still I treasure it for his sake, or rather for his mother’s, for he was all that remained to me of her, and she idolised him for the live years that she was spared after his birth; and,’ added the old man, in a somewhat more cheery tone, as if the recital of his troubles had relieved him, ■ a good English watch is useful even to a blind man.’ Most assuredly the last thing in my “houghts was to deprive him of his treasure. I was only too well repaid for my loss by what I had just heard ; only too grateful for being able, after all, even to look back with complacency upon what I nevertheless still call ‘ My Murder ! ’ W. W. Fen*,