HOLE AND CORNER LONDON.

Tuapeka Times, Volume III, Issue 116, 28 April 1870, Page 7

HOLE AND CORNER LONDON.

CAPTAIN MONTANARI'S STORY. (From the " Sportsman.") "' I totjnd it aL out in time. I even condescended to bribe her own servants. And, by heaven, Montanari, I learned that Lovell had actually morethan once beaten her, because the poor thing would not sit down to table with a painted old Gferman harridan he had picked up at a gambling table abroad, and wished to introduce to his own house in England, Decent people had cut him long ago. His friends now were mostly cashiered officers — he himself had been obliged by his colonel to sell out — and low bill-discounting attorneys. j ', ' Well, I threw myself on my knees before her, Montanari ; reminded her of her saying that she loved me as a -brother the day she nearly broke my heart by telling me so ; implored her I for the sake of all that poor, old happy time now gone' for ever to tell me the simple truth, and let me be indeed a brother to her now. As I knelt down before her, her little thin child-like white hands played with my hair just as they used to do when we were boy and girl together, and her tears were falling fast. "'You are wretched, my darling. I have heard the truth, then, out of doors. Say yes, but that one word, dear, and God help any one who tries to stop me saving you from this hell on earth you are leading here ! "'But the poor little thing only shook her yellow ringlets like one half distracted, and said, "It is too late now. Go, cousin Walter, go, for my sake. Remember." " ' I heard a heavy footstep 'at this moment, and in strode through the half-open door of a conservatory which looked on the gardens, and opened into the room in which we were, Robert Lovell. He had, I suppose, stole in at the far end, and had heard unseen all that had passed. He was halfdrunk as usual, I could see. " ' Aye, remember that you have a husband. Ah ! Walter Etheridge, so it's you, and may I ask is this what you call cousinly to make poisoning a man's wife's mind against him an excuse for a maudlin love-scene ? I beg pardon if I spoilt it." " I sprang to my feet, and looking tim clean in the eyes, said, " Robert Lovell, all this I will explain. We have an account to settle elsewhere. In the meantime, to prevent possibility of mistake, I will truly rep6at all that hass passed, on my honour." " Tour honour ! ' sneered Lovell. ' And now, madam, as for you, leave the room ; come, no words, d'ye hear me?' " ' She shrank from the very voice as from a blow, and hastily walked towards the door, looking fearfully back at him as she went, like some hunted animal. I saw it all now, the whole shameful, cruel story of their two lives, and that Tie saw that I saw it I could read in his face. My blood was up, and I scarcely kuew what I said. But I restrained myself fro?n the disgrace of striking a blow before a woman. " ' Leave the room, I say ; d'ye hear me ? and don't stand there with your white, puling face, getting up a scene to make this precious filibustering cousin of yours think I'm a regular Blucbaard of a husband, and you'ro a perfect picture of injured innocence, instead of the misarablc, deadly-lively, namby-pamby, half-mad woman you are ! J)'ye hear me, go ! ' said Lovell, savagely, and he advanced towards her. " ' She had stood still as a statue after she reached tha door, staring at him with a stony glare of horror. His hand was on her wrist, and he grasped it so hard that she gave a little shriek of pain, ere I could seize him by the throat. Then one pitiful, gurgling moan burst from her white lips, and she fell heavily on the carpet. She had broken a blood-vessel. To hurl Robart Lovell across the room, to throw open the door and summon the servants was the work of a moment. Then I carried "my little lady " — she was another man's wife, but still the word comes so naturally to me- that I can't help using it — Montanari, upstairs, and Robert Lovell dumbly followed, half-cowed and half-sobered, up behind us. And then the doctor came and shook his head, and then Lovell and I went down into the draw-ing-room, and he held out his hand, and said in a broken voice : " After what has happened, Etheridge, we two can quarrel no more, to-day at least. You have heard lies about me, and I am sorry what you saw an hour ago must have made you think they i^ere true. She, to tell the truth, has not been for some time, I'm half afraid, quite in her right mind, and people that way will say odd things, which others repeat, you know.' " ' Oh ! man, man ! ' said I, too sad for any violence now, ' down on your bended knees and ask Gfod to forgive you. Don't ask me to take your hand ; I cannot. I may have been a wild, desperate, filibustering man in my time, as you say rightly. And lay you this to your heart : by the Gfod who made me, but for her sweet sake upstairs I would strangle you as there you: stand to-day ! ' " ' The coward never answered me, but bowed bis head in bis hands, as I went on : c And yet I would ask one favour of you, even of you, Robert Lovell, the first and last. As Mary's husband, I ask you to permit me to stay here till wa know the- best or worst news."

"'Poor Mrs. Lovell never rallied. She died that night, and lny heart lies buried in her grave. "My old friend's voice failed him now, and he sat in silence, moodily gazing on the ground. When he looked up again, a tear rolled down his cheek, and as he dashed it aside I laid one hand on his shoulder gently, and with the other pointed upwards, said, ' You will meet her again in Heaven.' " And as the birds sang high up in among the grey, time-worn arches above us, Walter Etheridge's face gi'ew very solemn, and his lips murmured softly, ' Amen!'

" This was the story," said Captain Montanari, "which the bullet-proof Englishman told me. I have but little more to say myself now. "On the morning of the 3rd of June, 1849, there was desperate work going on in Rome. The Eepublicans had possession of it, the Pope had bolted, and on the 28th of April Graribaldi, in his red shirt and white American poncho, lined with red, followed by a motley brigade, some of whom were old Montevidean campaigners like myself, marched into the Eternal City. On the morning of the 3rd of June the Trench, under G-eneral Oudinot, surprised some of our outposts, and then the tug of war began in awful earnest. The Villa Corsini with its gardens was an important point. G-aribaldi's orders were that it should be taken at any cost. Ragged boys, , volunteers of the Roman Republic, that day fought like very veterans. Ever and anon, as the French cheered and poured into the half-dis-ciplined red shirts a deadly hail of bullets, rose up to heaven a counter cheer of ' Viva Republica Romana ! Avanti ! ' Live or die, said they, the French must be dislodged from the Villa Corsini. Hour after hour passed, and boys, grey-bearded men, nobles, artisans, shoulder to shoulder formed up to fight as volunteers for Italian liberty, and as fast as some went down, others, like the fabled men of Cadmus — too few indeed were they for our need — rose as it were from the ground and took their places. All in vain ! In vain did Graribaldi with the light of battle on his face, begrimed with powder-smoke, and his white poncho riddled with bullets, expose himself to apparently certain death, here, there, everywhere, shouting, cutting, and slashing away like a devil incarnate. In vain did his gallant red-shirts charge, again and yet again. Thoy were out-numbered, out-geueralled, and undisciplined. It was a furious scramble, a reckless rushing into the jaws of death, that day more than ought else Garibaldi lost his head with excitement. Yet what cared they, as they came on and on with ringing cheers to shed their blood like water for ' Graribaldi and Liberty ! ' " Walter Etheridge and I fought side by side that day. He was in wonderfully high spirits for him of late ; and one or two of the few old Montevidean comrades of ours, as they passed by once or twice recognised with a hearty cheer, ' the bullet-proof mad Englishman.' As the cannon boomed, and the bullets whistled from the walls of the Villa Corsini, Etheridge, in the confusion, got a little ahead of us, and our advancing party rushed, or crept under the vines up to the walls as the ground suited. He got a bad graze on the head, but came back, and in less than half an hour had it bound up, and was blazing away with his rifle at any French kepi that popped out of cover, with the old coolness and skill. His voice was hoarse with yelling 'Avante' (forward), but his step was as light as ever. At last he and I and some score more stragglers got a little temporary cover under some brushwood, from which we could make fair rifle practice. " ' This is hotter work than Monte Video,' cooly muttered he to me. ' Tomorrow is my birthday, and I'm thirtyseven then. The French have given me ono birthday present in advance, you see.' " That night I and some old friends who had served in G-arabaldi's Italian legion in South America, stood beside a dying man who was lying in a house taken from the French covered with an old blanket. It was Etheridge, ' the mad Englishman,' alas-! no longer ' bullet-proof.' " " ' Montanari/ as I bent down I heard him feebly mnrmur, ' remember what you said in the Coliseum a few ! weeks ago : " You will meet her in heaven !" To-morrow would be my 37th birthday. I'll never see it. I don't wish to see it, old fellow. I don't suppose there are auy birthdays ! kept where I'm going, or perhaps I'd keep mine with my "little lady." It's worth dying in a good cause to get the sooner to her that way, I think.' " I went out, aud on my return to my dear friend, I saw his sands of life j were running very low. He was wandering a little in his talk, picking j at the old ragged soldier's blanket which covered him, and murmuring about the river side at home, forget-me-nots, and Mary Leigh, as though they were children still. I stooped i down kissed his forehead. As I did so, his dark eyes opened, • and he smiled, and then his lips moved, and he said, ' God bless you, old friend, and so he died ! That is all my story." Captain Montanari ceased, and ere he did so, I thought his mellow voice, broken English aud all — and he speaks with the slightest possible foreign accent — was just the least thing

tremulous. "He had a very bad cold," said he, "this Christmas." If be had it must have somehow got into his fierce, black eyes, for as I caught the reflection of them in his quaintly- 1 carved Venetian looking-glass, they seemed to me somewhat dim, as though with half-shed tears. Should this imperfect record of his broken memories meet his eye, I wish my old friend better luck the nest time he is off "Roma con Garibaldi /" aud also the happiest of New Years.