The Argosy — page 54: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

A Debt of Honour. AI said, was worse than death to him. He appealed to Margherita’s brother for the protection of his wife and child, until such time as they should be able to leave for England, whither he begged her to go without delay, to his aunt. ‘The brother, a weak creature, was too helpless and unnerved to answer. Inchkeith came forward and told Bellamonte that he was resolved to relinquish his commission at once, and that he would — never leave the Contessa and her child till he had brought me to their help, or had handed them over himself to their relations in England. He thanked him, and gave him messages for me. ‘* After this Bellamonte called the boy to him and kissed him, took his wife in his arms for one long minute, and then firmly disengaged _ himself from her clinging hands. She was barely conscious when he handed her over to Inchkeith, and said, ‘Take her away at once.’ Then he walked away with a firm step between his guards, through trailing lines festooned from tree to tree, towards the fatal field. She revived after he had disappeared, and could not be kept back from following him, despite Inchkeith’s desperate endeavours to restrain her. When she reached the open space, her husband was standing about one hundred yards away, the soldiers drawn up in line before him, waiting for the word to fire. She fell on her knees beside an olive tree from sheer inability to stand, and wound one arm round its old gnarled trunk to support herself. *“Inchkeith said that most strange and terrible scene will haunt him to his dying day: it all took place with such extraordinary rapidity. The afternoon’s sunshine flooded the country; the silence was only broken by the distant sounds of peaceful labour and the shouts of children at their play, unconscious of the tragedy that was being enacted a few hundred yards away. The little line of soldiers, with their accoutrements flashing in the sunshine; the solitary figure of the man who was bearing himself so bravely, standing where I ought to have been, his bright and happy life suddenly to be cut off for no fault or crime; beneath the olive tree the pale and wasted beauty, bowed with her great agony, in the gay contadina’s dress, still unconsciously wearing the Ophelia garland with which her husband had crowned her a quarter of an hour before. “When the flash came from eleven rifles, Inchkeith clapped his hand over her eyes, but they were darkened already, and at the sound of the report she fell to all appearance as lifeless as her husband on the grass. No one had any attention to bestow on Luigi, or had noticed when he started running towards his father, crying bitterly. He reached the spot just as Bellamonte fell dead, pierced with eleven bullets. The child threw himself on the body, shrieking aloud, and the soldiers, all unmanned themselves, tried in vain to draw him gently away. At last he fainted, and was carried to the covered cart that was waiting close by. ‘“Inchkeith, gathering up the Contessa as easily as if she were a connicloooks (C(O)