



Produced by Judy Boss and David Widger





A SET OF SIX

By Joseph Conrad



_Les petites marionnettes
Font, font, font,
Trois petits tours
Et puis s'en vont_.
--NURSERY RHYME




TO MISS M. H. M. CAPES




AUTHOR'S NOTE


THE six stories in this volume are the result of some three or four
years of occasional work. The dates of their writing are far apart,
their origins are various. None of them are connected directly with
personal experiences. In all of them the facts are inherently true, by
which I mean that they are not only possible but that they have actually
happened. For instance, the last story in the volume, the one I call
Pathetic, whose first title is Il Conde (misspelt by-the-by) is an
almost verbatim transcript of the tale told me by a very charming old
gentleman whom I met in Italy. I don't mean to say it is only that.
Anybody can see that it is something more than a verbatim report,
but where he left off and where I began must be left to the acute
discrimination of the reader who may be interested in the problem.
I don't mean to say that the problem is worth the trouble. What I am
certain of, however, is that it is not to be solved, for I am not at
all clear about it myself by this time. All I can say is that the
personality of the narrator was extremely suggestive quite apart from
the story he was telling me. I heard a few years ago that he had died
far away from his beloved Naples where that "abominable adventure" did
really happen to him.

Thus the genealogy of Il Conde is simple. It is not the case with the
other stories. Various strains contributed to their composition, and the
nature of many of those I have forgotten, not having the habit of making
notes either before or after the fact. I mean the fact of writing a
story. What I remember best about Gaspar Ruiz is that it was written, or
at any rate begun, within a month of finishing Nostromo; but apart
from the locality, and that a pretty wide one (all the South American
Continent), the novel and the story have nothing in common, neither
mood, nor intention and, certainly, not the style. The manner for the
most part is that of General Santierra, and that old warrior, I note
with satisfaction, is very true to himself all through. Looking now
dispassionately at the various ways in which this story could have been
presented I can't honestly think the General superfluous. It is he, an
old man talking of the days of his youth, who characterizes the whole
narrative and gives it an air of actuality which I doubt whether I could
have achieved without his help. In the mere writing his existence
of course was of no help at all, because the whole thing had to be
carefully kept within the frame of his simple mind. But all this is but
a laborious searching of memories. My present feeling is that the story
could not have been told otherwise. The hint for Gaspar Ruiz the man
I found in a book by Captain Basil Hall, R.N., who was for some time,
between the years 1824 and 1828, senior officer of a small British
Squadron on the West Coast of South America. His book published in the
thirties obtained a certain celebrity and I suppose is to be found still
in some libraries. The curious who may be mistrusting my imagination are
referred to that printed document, Vol. II, I forget the page, but it
is somewhere not far from the end. Another document connected with this
story is a letter of a biting and ironic kind from a friend then in
Burma, passing certain strictures upon "the gentleman with the gun on
his back" which I do not intend to make accessible to the public. Yet
the gun episode did really happen, or at least I am bound to believe it
because I remember it, described in an extremely matter-of-fact tone,
in some book I read in my boyhood; and I am not going to discard the
beliefs of my boyhood for anybody on earth.

The Brute, which is the only sea-story in the volume, is, like Il Conde,
associated with a direct narrative and based on a suggestion gathered on
warm human lips. I will not disclose the real name of the criminal ship
but the first I heard of her homicidal habits was from the late Captain
Blake, commanding a London ship in which I served in 1884 as Second
Officer. Captain Blake was, of all my commanders, the one I remember
with the greatest affection. I have sketched in his personality, without
however mentioning his name, in the first paper of The Mirror of the
Sea. In his young days he had had a personal experience of the brute and
it is perhaps for that reason that I have put the story into the mouth
of a young man and made of it what the reader will see. The existence
of the brute was a fact. The end of the brute as related in the story is
also a fact, well-known at the time though it really happened to
another ship, of great beauty of form and of blameless character, which
certainly deserved a better fate. I have unscrupulously adapted it to
the needs of my story thinking that I had there something in the nature
of poetical justice. I hope that little villainy will not cast a shadow
upon the general honesty of my proceedings as a writer of tales.

Of The Informer and An Anarchist I will say next to nothing. The
pedigree of these tales is hopelessly complicated and not worth
disentangling at this distance of time. I found them and here they are.
The discriminating reader will guess that I have found them within my
mind; but how they or their elements came in there I have forgotten for
the most part; and for the rest I really don't see why I should give
myself away more than I have done already.

It remains for me only now to mention The Duel, the longest story in the
book. That story attained the dignity of publication all by itself in a
small illustrated volume, under the title, "The Point of Honour." That
was many years ago. It has been since reinstated in its proper place,
which is the place it occupies in this volume, in all the subsequent
editions of my work. Its pedigree is extremely simple. It springs from a
ten-line paragraph in a small provincial paper published in the South of
France. That paragraph, occasioned by a duel with a fatal ending between
two well-known Parisian personalities, referred for some reason or other
to the "well-known fact" of two officers in Napoleon's Grand Army having
fought a series of duels in the midst of great wars and on some futile
pretext. The pretext was never disclosed. I had therefore to invent it;
and I think that, given the character of the two officers which I had to
invent, too, I have made it sufficiently convincing by the mere force of
its absurdity. The truth is that in my mind the story is nothing but a
serious and even earnest attempt at a bit of historical fiction. I had
heard in my boyhood a good deal of the great Napoleonic legend. I had a
genuine feeling that I would find myself at home in it, and The Duel
is the result of that feeling, or, if the reader prefers, of that
presumption. Personally I have no qualms of conscience about this piece
of work. The story might have been better told of course. All one's work
might have been better done; but this is the sort of reflection a
worker must put aside courageously if he doesn't mean every one of his
conceptions to remain for ever a private vision, an evanescent reverie.
How many of those visions have I seen vanish in my time! This one,
however, has remained, a testimony, if you like, to my courage or a
proof of my rashness. What I care to remember best is the testimony of
some French readers who volunteered the opinion that in those hundred
pages or so I had managed to render "wonderfully" the spirit of the
whole epoch. Exaggeration of kindness no doubt; but even so I hug it
still to my breast, because in truth that is exactly what I was trying
to capture in my small net: the Spirit of the Epoch--never purely
militarist in the long clash of arms, youthful, almost childlike in its
exaltation of sentiment--naively heroic in its faith.


1920. J. C.





CONTENTS


GASPAR RUIZ

THE INFORMER

THE BRUTE

AN ANARCHIST

THE DUEL

IL CONDE





A SET OF SIX




GASPAR RUIZ


I


A revolutionary war raises many strange characters out of the obscurity
which is the common lot of humble lives in an undisturbed state of
society.

Certain individualities grow into fame through their vices and their
virtues, or simply by their actions, which may have a temporary
importance; and then they become forgotten. The names of a few leaders
alone survive the end of armed strife and are further preserved in
history; so that, vanishing from men's active memories, they still exist
in books.

The name of General Santierra attained that cold paper-and-ink
immortality. He was a South American of good family, and the books
published in his lifetime numbered him amongst the liberators of that
continent from the oppressive rule of Spain.

That long contest, waged for independence on one side and for dominion
on the other, developed in the course of years and the vicissitudes of
changing fortune the fierceness and inhumanity of a struggle for
life. All feelings of pity and compassion disappeared in the growth of
political hatred. And, as is usual in war, the mass of the people,
who had the least to gain by the issue, suffered most in their obscure
persons and their humble fortunes.

General Santierra began his service as lieutenant in the patriot army
raised and commanded by the famous San Martin, afterwards conqueror of
Lima and liberator of Peru. A great battle had just been fought on the
banks of the river Bio-Bio. Amongst the prisoners made upon the routed
Royalist troops there was a soldier called Gaspar Ruiz. His powerful
build and his big head rendered him remarkable amongst his
fellow-captives. The personality of the man was unmistakable. Some
months before he had been missed from the ranks of Republican troops
after one of the many skirmishes which preceded the great battle. And
now, having been captured arms in hand amongst Royalists, he could
expect no other fate but to be shot as a deserter.

Gaspar Ruiz, however, was not a deserter; his mind was hardly active
enough to take a discriminating view of the advantages or perils
of treachery. Why should he change sides? He had really been made a
prisoner, had suffered ill-usage and many privations. Neither side
showed tenderness to its adversaries. There came a day when he was
ordered, together with some other captured rebels, to march in the front
rank of the Royal troops. A musket had been thrust into his hands.
He had taken it. He had marched. He did not want to be killed with
circumstances of peculiar atrocity for refusing to march. He did not
understand heroism but it was his intention to throw his musket away at
the first opportunity. Meantime he had gone on loading and firing, from
fear of having his brains blown out at the first sign of unwillingness,
by some non-commissioned officer of the King of Spain. He tried to set
forth these elementary considerations before the sergeant of the
guard set over him and some twenty other such deserters, who had been
condemned summarily to be shot.

It was in the quadrangle of the fort at the back of the batteries which
command the roadstead of Valparaiso. The officer who had identified him
had gone on without listening to his protestations. His doom was sealed;
his hands were tied very tightly together behind his back; his body was
sore all over from the many blows with sticks and butts of muskets which
had hurried him along on the painful road from the place of his capture
to the gate of the fort. This was the only kind of systematic attention
the prisoners had received from their escort during a four days' journey
across a scantily watered tract of country. At the crossings of rare
streams they were permitted to quench their thirst by lapping hurriedly
like dogs. In the evening a few scraps of meat were thrown amongst
them as they dropped down dead-beat upon the stony ground of the
halting-place.

As he stood in the courtyard of the castle in the early morning, after
having been driven hard all night, Gaspar Ruiz's throat was parched, and
his tongue felt very large and dry in his mouth.

And Gaspar Ruiz, besides being very thirsty, was stirred by a feeling
of sluggish anger, which he could not very well express, as though the
vigour of his spirit were by no means equal to the strength of his body.

The other prisoners in the batch of the condemned hung their heads,
looking obstinately on the ground. But Gaspar Ruiz kept on repeating:
"What should I desert for to the Royalists? Why should I desert? Tell
me, Estaban!"

He addressed himself to the sergeant, who happened to belong to the same
part of the country as himself. But the sergeant, after shrugging his
meagre shoulders once, paid no further attention to the deep murmuring
voice at his back. It was indeed strange that Gaspar Ruiz should desert.
His people were in too humble a station to feel much the disadvantages
of any form of government. There was no reason why Gaspar Ruiz should
wish to uphold in his own person the rule of the King of Spain. Neither
had he been anxious to exert himself for its subversion. He had joined
the side of Independence in an extremely reasonable and natural manner.
A band of patriots appeared one morning early, surrounding his father's
ranche, spearing the watch-dogs and ham-stringing a fat cow all in the
twinkling of an eye, to the cries of "Viva la Libertad!" Their officer
discoursed of Liberty with enthusiasm and eloquence after a long and
refreshing sleep. When they left in the evening, taking with them some
of Ruiz, the father's, best horses to replace their own lamed animals,
Gaspar Ruiz went away with them, having been invited pressingly to do so
by the eloquent officer.

Shortly afterwards a detachment of Royalist troops coming to pacify the
district, burnt the ranche, carried off the remaining horses and
cattle, and having thus deprived the old people of all their worldly
possessions, left them sitting under a bush in the enjoyment of the
inestimable boon of life.


II


Gaspar Ruiz, condemned to death as a deserter, was not thinking either
of his native place or of his parents, to whom he had been a good son on
account of the mildness of his character and the great strength of his
limbs. The practical advantage of this last was made still more
valuable to his father by his obedient disposition. Gaspar Ruiz had an
acquiescent soul.

But it was stirred now to a sort of dim revolt by his dislike to die the
death of a traitor. He was not a traitor. He said again to the sergeant:
"You know I did not desert, Estaban. You know I remained behind amongst
the trees with three others to keep the enemy back while the detachment
was running away!"

Lieutenant Santierra, little more than a boy at the time, and unused as
yet to the sanguinary imbecilities of a state of war, had lingered
near by, as if fascinated by the sight of these men who were to be shot
presently--"for an example"--as the Commandante had said.

The sergeant, without deigning to look at the prisoner, addressed
himself to the young officer with a superior smile.

"Ten men would not have been enough to make him a prisoner, mi teniente.
Moreover, the other three rejoined the detachment after dark. Why should
he, unwounded and the strongest of them all, have failed to do so?"

"My strength is as nothing against a mounted man with a lasso," Gaspar
Ruiz protested, eagerly. "He dragged me behind his horse for half a
mile."

At this excellent reason the sergeant only laughed contemptuously. The
young officer hurried away after the Commandante.

Presently the adjutant of the castle came by. He was a truculent,
raw-boned man in a ragged uniform. His spluttering voice issued out of
a flat yellow face. The sergeant learned from him that the condemned men
would not be shot till sunset. He begged then to know what he was to do
with them meantime.

The adjutant looked savagely round the courtyard and, pointing to the
door of a small dungeon-like guardroom, receiving light and air through
one heavily barred window, said: "Drive the scoundrels in there."

The sergeant, tightening his grip upon the stick he carried in virtue
of his rank, executed this order with alacrity and zeal. He hit Gaspar
Ruiz, whose movements were slow, over his head and shoulders. Gaspar
Ruiz stood still for a moment under the shower of blows, biting his
lip thoughtfully as if absorbed by a perplexing mental process--then
followed the others without haste. The door was locked, and the adjutant
carried off the key.

By noon the heat of that vaulted place crammed to suffocation had become
unbearable. The prisoners crowded towards the window, begging their
guards for a drop of water; but the soldiers remained lying in indolent
attitudes wherever there was a little shade under a wall, while the
sentry sat with his back against the door smoking a cigarette, and
raising his eyebrows philosophically from time to time. Gaspar Ruiz
had pushed his way to the window with irresistible force. His capacious
chest needed more air than the others; his big face, resting with its
chin on the ledge, pressed close to the bars, seemed to support the
other faces crowding up for breath. From moaned entreaties they had
passed to desperate cries, and the tumultuous howling of those thirsty
men obliged a young officer who was just then crossing the courtyard to
shout in order to make himself heard.

"Why don't you give some water to these prisoners?"

The sergeant, with an air of surprised innocence, excused himself by the
remark that all those men were condemned to die in a very few hours.

Lieutenant Santierra stamped his foot. "They are condemned to death, not
to torture," he shouted. "Give them some water at once."

Impressed by this appearance of anger, the soldiers bestirred
themselves, and the sentry, snatching up his musket, stood to attention.

But when a couple of buckets were found and filled from the well, it was
discovered that they could not be passed through the bars, which were
set too close. At the prospect of quenching their thirst, the shrieks of
those trampled down in the struggle to get near the opening became very
heartrending. But when the soldiers who had lifted the buckets towards
the window put them to the ground again helplessly, the yell of
disappointment was still more terrible.

The soldiers of the army of Independence were not equipped with
canteens. A small tin cup was found, but its approach to the opening
caused such a commotion, such yells of rage and pain in the vague mass
of limbs behind the straining faces at the window, that Lieutenant
Santierra cried out hurriedly, "No, no--you must open the door,
sergeant."

The sergeant, shrugging his shoulders, explained that he had no right
to open the door even if he had had the key. But he had not the key.
The adjutant of the garrison kept the key. Those men were giving much
unnecessary trouble, since they had to die at sunset in any case.
Why they had not been shot at once early in the morning he could not
understand.

Lieutenant Santierra kept his back studiously to the window. It was
at his earnest solicitations that the Commandante had delayed the
execution. This favour had been granted to him in consideration of
his distinguished family and of his father's high position amongst the
chiefs of the Republican party. Lieutenant Santierra believed that the
General commanding would visit the fort some time in the afternoon,
and he ingenuously hoped that his naive intercession would induce
that severe man to pardon some, at least, of those criminals. In the
revulsion of his feeling his interference stood revealed now as guilty
and futile meddling. It appeared to him obvious that the general would
never even consent to listen to his petition. He could never save those
men, and he had only made himself responsible for the sufferings added
to the cruelty of their fate.

"Then go at once and get the key from the adjutant," said Lieutenant
Santierra.

The sergeant shook his head with a sort of bashful smile, while his eyes
glanced sideways at Gaspar Ruiz's face, motionless and silent, staring
through the bars at the bottom of a heap of other haggard, distorted,
yelling faces.

His worship the adjutant de Plaza, the sergeant murmured, was having his
siesta; and supposing that he, the sergeant, would be allowed access to
him, the only result he expected would be to have his soul flogged out
of his body for presuming to disturb his worship's repose. He made a
deprecatory movement with his hands, and stood stock-still, looking down
modestly upon his brown toes.

Lieutenant Santierra glared with indignation, but hesitated. His
handsome oval face, as smooth as a girl's, flushed with the shame of
his perplexity. Its nature humiliated his spirit. His hairless upper lip
trembled; he seemed on the point of either bursting into a fit of rage
or into tears of dismay.

Fifty years later, General Santierra, the venerable relic of
revolutionary times, was well able to remember the feelings of the
young lieutenant. Since he had given up riding altogether, and found
it difficult to walk beyond the limits of his garden, the general's
greatest delight was to entertain in his house the officers of the
foreign men-of-war visiting the harbour. For Englishmen he had a
preference, as for old companions in arms. English naval men of all
ranks accepted his hospitality with curiosity, because he had known Lord
Cochrane and had taken part, on board the patriot squadron commanded
by that marvellous seaman, in the cutting out and blockading operations
before Callao--an episode of unalloyed glory in the wars of Independence
and of endless honour in the fighting tradition of Englishmen. He was a
fair linguist, this ancient survivor of the Liberating armies. A trick
of smoothing his long white beard whenever he was short of a word in
French or English imparted an air of leisurely dignity to the tone of
his reminiscences.


III


"Yes, my friends," he used to say to his guests, "what would you have?
A youth of seventeen summers, without worldly experience, and owing
my rank only to the glorious patriotism of my father, may God rest his
soul. I suffered immense humiliation, not so much from the disobedience
of that subordinate, who, after all, was responsible for those
prisoners; but I suffered because, like the boy I was, I myself dreaded
going to the adjutant for the key. I had felt, before, his rough and
cutting tongue. Being quite a common fellow, with no merit except his
savage valour, he made me feel his contempt and dislike from the
first day I joined my battalion in garrison at the fort. It was only
a fortnight before! I would have confronted him sword in hand, but I
shrank from the mocking brutality of his sneers.

"I don't remember having been so miserable in my life before or since.
The torment of my sensibility was so great that I wished the sergeant to
fall dead at my feet, and the stupid soldiers who stared at me to
turn into corpses; and even those wretches for whom my entreaties had
procured a reprieve I wished dead also, because I could not face them
without shame. A mephitic heat like a whiff of air from hell came out of
that dark place in which they were confined. Those at the window who had
heard what was going on jeered at me in very desperation: one of these
fellows, gone mad no doubt, kept on urging me volubly to order the
soldiers to fire through the window. His insane loquacity made my heart
turn faint. And my feet were like lead. There was no higher officer to
whom I could appeal. I had not even the firmness of spirit to simply go
away.

"Benumbed by my remorse, I stood with my back to the window. You must
not suppose that all this lasted a long time. How long could it have
been? A minute? If you measured by mental suffering it was like a
hundred years; a longer time than all my life has been since. No,
certainly, it was not so much as a minute. The hoarse screaming of those
miserable wretches died out in their dry throats, and then suddenly a
voice spoke, a deep voice muttering calmly. It called upon me to turn
round.

"That voice, senores, proceeded from the head of Gaspar Ruiz. Of his
body I could see nothing. Some of his fellow-captives had clambered upon
his back. He was holding them up. His eyes blinked without looking at
me. That and the moving of his lips was all he seemed able to manage in
his overloaded state. And when I turned round, this head, that seemed
more than human size resting on its chin under a multitude of other
heads, asked me whether I really desired to quench the thirst of the
captives.

"I said, 'Yes, yes!' eagerly, and came up quite close to the window. I
was like a child, and did not know what would happen. I was anxious to
be comforted in my helplessness and remorse.

"'Have you the authority, Senor teniente, to release my wrists from
their bonds?' Gaspar Ruiz's head asked me.

"His features expressed no anxiety, no hope; his heavy eyelids blinked
upon his eyes that looked past me straight into the courtyard.

"As if in an ugly dream, I spoke, stammering: 'What do you mean? And how
can I reach the bonds on your wrists?'

"'I will try what I can do,' he said; and then that large staring
head moved at last, and all the wild faces piled up in that window
disappeared, tumbling down. He had shaken his load off with one
movement, so strong he was.

"And he had not only shaken it off, but he got free of the crush and
vanished from my sight. For a moment there was no one at all to be seen
at the window. He had swung about, butting and shouldering, clearing
a space for himself in the only way he could do it with his hands tied
behind his back.

"Finally, backing to the opening, he pushed out to me between the bars
his wrists, lashed with many turns of rope. His hands, very swollen,
with knotted veins, looked enormous and unwieldy. I saw his bent back.
It was very broad. His voice was like the muttering of a bull.

"'Cut, Senor teniente. Cut!'

"I drew my sword, my new unblunted sword that had seen no service as
yet, and severed the many turns of the hide rope. I did this without
knowing the why and the wherefore of my action, but as it were compelled
by my faith in that man. The sergeant made as if to cry out, but
astonishment deprived him of his voice, and he remained standing with
his mouth open as if overtaken by sudden imbecility.

"I sheathed my sword and faced the soldiers. An air of awestruck
expectation had replaced their usual listless apathy. I heard the voice
of Gaspar Ruiz shouting inside, but the words I could not make out
plainly. I suppose that to see him with his arms free augmented the
influence of his strength: I mean by this, the spiritual influence that
with ignorant people attaches to an exceptional degree of bodily vigour.
In fact, he was no more to be feared than before, on account of the
numbness of his arms and hands, which lasted for some time.

"The sergeant had recovered his power of speech. 'By all the saints!'
he cried, 'we shall have to get a cavalry man with a lasso to secure him
again, if he is to be led to the place of execution. Nothing less than a
good enlazador on a good horse can subdue him. Your worship was pleased
to perform a very mad thing.'

"I had nothing to say. I was surprised myself, and I felt a childish
curiosity to see what would happen next. But the sergeant was thinking
of the difficulty of controlling Gaspar Ruiz when the time for making an
example would come.

"'Or perhaps,' the sergeant pursued, vexedly, 'we shall be obliged to
shoot him down as he dashes out when the door is opened.' He was going
to give further vent to his anxieties as to the proper carrying out
of the sentence; but he interrupted himself with a sudden exclamation,
snatched a musket from a soldier, and stood watchful with his eyes fixed
on the window."


IV


"Gaspar Ruiz had clambered up on the sill, and sat down there with his
feet against the thickness of the wall and his knees slightly bent.
The window was not quite broad enough for the length of his legs. It
appeared to my crestfallen perception that he meant to keep the window
all to himself. He seemed to be taking up a comfortable position. Nobody
inside dared to approach him now he could strike with his hands.

"'Por Dios!' I heard the sergeant muttering at my elbow, 'I shall shoot
him through the head now, and get rid of that trouble. He is a condemned
man.'

"At that I looked at him angrily. 'The general has not confirmed the
sentence,' I said--though I knew well in my heart that these were but
vain words. The sentence required no confirmation. 'You have no right to
shoot him unless he tries to escape,' I added, firmly.

"'But sangre de Dios!' the sergeant yelled out, bringing his musket up
to the shoulder, 'he is escaping now. Look!'

"But I, as if that Gaspar Ruiz had cast a spell upon me, struck the
musket upward, and the bullet flew over the roofs somewhere. The
sergeant dashed his arm to the ground and stared. He might have
commanded the soldiers to fire, but he did not. And if he had he would
not have been obeyed, I think, just then.

"With his feet against the thickness of the wall and his hairy hands
grasping the iron bar, Gaspar sat still. It was an attitude. Nothing
happened for a time. And suddenly it dawned upon us that he was
straightening his bowed back and contracting his arms. His lips were
twisted into a snarl. Next thing we perceived was that the bar of forged
iron was being bent slowly by the mightiness of his pull. The sun
was beating full upon his cramped, unquivering figure. A shower of
sweat-drops burst out of his forehead. Watching the bar grow crooked, I
saw a little blood ooze from under his finger-nails. Then he let go.
For a moment he remained all huddled up, with a hanging head, looking
drowsily into the upturned palms of his mighty hands. Indeed he seemed
to have dozed off. Suddenly he flung himself backwards on the sill, and
setting the soles of his bare feet against the other middle bar, he bent
that one, too, but in the opposite direction from the first.

"Such was his strength, which in this case relieved my painful feelings.
And the man seemed to have done nothing. Except for the change of
position in order to use his feet, which made us all start by its
swiftness, my recollection is that of immobility. But he had bent the
bars wide apart. And now he could get out if he liked; but he dropped
his legs inwards, and looking over his shoulder beckoned to the
soldiers. 'Hand up the water,' he said. 'I will give them all a drink.'

"He was obeyed. For a moment I expected man and bucket to disappear,
overwhelmed by the rush of eagerness; I thought they would pull him down
with their teeth. There was a rush, but holding the bucket on his lap he
repulsed the assault of those wretches by the mere swinging of his feet.
They flew backwards at every kick, yelling with pain; and the soldiers
laughed, gazing at the window.

"They all laughed, holding their sides, except the sergeant, who was
gloomy and morose. He was afraid the prisoners would rise and break
out--which would have been a bad example. But there was no fear of
that, and I stood myself before the window with my drawn sword. When
sufficiently tamed by the strength of Gaspar Ruiz they came up one by
one, stretching their necks and presenting their lips to the edge of the
bucket which the strong man tilted towards them from his knees with
an extraordinary air of charity, gentleness, and compassion. That
benevolent appearance was of course the effect of his care in not
spilling the water and of his attitude as he sat on the sill; for, if a
man lingered with his lips glued to the rim of the bucket after Gaspar
Ruiz had said 'You have had enough,' there would be no tenderness or
mercy in the shove of the foot which would send him groaning and doubled
up far into the interior of the prison, where he would knock down two
or three others before he fell himself. They came up to him again and
again; it looked as if they meant to drink the well dry before going to
their death; but the soldiers were so amused by Gaspar Ruiz's systematic
proceedings that they carried the water up to the window cheerfully.

"When the adjutant came out after his siesta there was some trouble over
this affair, I can assure you. And the worst of it was that the general
whom we expected never came to the castle that day."

The guests of General Santierra unanimously expressed their regret that
the man of such strength and patience had not been saved.

"He was not saved by my interference," said the General. "The prisoners
were led to execution half an hour before sunset. Gaspar Ruiz, contrary
to the sergeant's apprehensions, gave no trouble. There was no necessity
to get a cavalry man with a lasso in order to subdue him, as if he were
a wild bull of the campo. I believe he marched out with his arms free
amongst the others who were bound. I did not see. I was not there. I had
been put under arrest for interfering with the prisoner's guard. About
dusk, sitting dismally in my quarters, I heard three volleys fired, and
thought that I should never hear of Gaspar Ruiz again. He fell with the
others. But we were to hear of him nevertheless, though the sergeant
boasted that as he lay on his face expiring or dead in the heap of the
slain, he had slashed his neck with a sword. He had done this, he said,
to make sure of ridding the world of a dangerous traitor.

"I confess to you, senores, that I thought of that strong man with a
sort of gratitude, and with some admiration. He had used his strength
honourably. There dwelt, then, in his soul no fierceness corresponding
to the vigour of his body."


V


Gaspar Ruiz, who could with ease bend apart the heavy iron bars of the
prison, was led out with others to summary execution. "Every bullet has
its billet," runs the proverb. All the merit of proverbs consists in
the concise and picturesque expression. In the surprise of our minds is
found their persuasiveness. In other words, we are struck and convinced
by the shock.

What surprises us is the form, not the substance. Proverbs are
art--cheap art. As a general rule they are not true; unless indeed they
happen to be mere platitudes, as for instance the proverb, "Half a
loaf is better than no bread," or "A miss is as good as a mile." Some
proverbs are simply imbecile, others are immoral. That one evolved out
of the naive heart of the great Russian people, "Man discharges the
piece, but God carries the bullet," is piously atrocious, and at bitter
variance with the accepted conception of a compassionate God. It would
indeed be an inconsistent occupation for the Guardian of the poor, the
innocent, and the helpless, to carry the bullet, for instance, into the
heart of a father.

Gaspar Ruiz was childless, he had no wife, he had never been in love.
He had hardly ever spoken to a woman, beyond his mother and the ancient
negress of the household, whose wrinkled skin was the colour of cinders,
and whose lean body was bent double from age. If some bullets from those
muskets fired off at fifteen paces were specifically destined for
the heart of Gaspar Ruiz, they all missed their billet. One, however,
carried away a small piece of his ear, and another a fragment of flesh
from his shoulder.

A red and unclouded sun setting into a purple ocean looked with a fiery
stare upon the enormous wall of the Cordilleras, worthy witnesses of his
glorious extinction. But it is inconceivable that it should have seen
the ant-like men busy with their absurd and insignificant trials of
killing and dying for reasons that, apart from being generally childish,
were also imperfectly understood. It did light up, however, the backs
of the firing party and the faces of the condemned men. Some of them
had fallen on their knees, others remained standing, a few averted their
heads from the levelled barrels of muskets. Gaspar Ruiz, upright, the
burliest of them all, hung his big shock head. The low sun dazzled him a
little, and he counted himself a dead man already.

He fell at the first discharge. He fell because he thought he was a dead
man. He struck the ground heavily. The jar of the fall surprised him.
"I am not dead apparently," he thought to himself, when he heard the
execution platoon reloading its arms at the word of command. It was then
that the hope of escape dawned upon him for the first time. He remained
lying stretched out with rigid limbs under the weight of two bodies
collapsed crosswise upon his back.

By the time the soldiers had fired a third volley into the slightly
stirring heaps of the slain, the sun had gone out of sight, and almost
immediately with the darkening of the ocean dusk fell upon the coasts of
the young Republic. Above the gloom of the lowlands the snowy peaks
of the Cordilleras remained luminous and crimson for a long time. The
soldiers before marching back to the fort sat down to smoke.

The sergeant with a naked sword in his hand strolled away by himself
along the heap of the dead. He was a humane man, and watched for any
stir or twitch of limb in the merciful idea of plunging the point of his
blade into any body giving the slightest sign of life. But none of the
bodies afforded him an opportunity for the display of this charitable
intention. Not a muscle twitched amongst them, not even the powerful
muscles of Gaspar Ruiz, who, deluged with the blood of his neighbours
and shamming death, strove to appear more lifeless than the others.

He was lying face down. The sergeant recognized him by his stature, and
being himself a very small man, looked with envy and contempt at the
prostration of so much strength. He had always disliked that particular
soldier. Moved by an obscure animosity, he inflicted a long gash across
the neck of Gaspar Ruiz, with some vague notion of making sure of that
strong man's death, as if a powerful physique were more able to resist
the bullets. For the sergeant had no doubt that Gaspar Ruiz had been
shot through in many places. Then he passed on, and shortly afterwards
marched off with his men, leaving the bodies to the care of crows and
vultures.

Gaspar Ruiz had restrained a cry, though it had seemed to him that his
head was cut off at a blow; and when darkness came, shaking off the
dead, whose weight had oppressed him, he crawled away over the plain on
his hands and knees. After drinking deeply, like a wounded beast, at
a shallow stream, he assumed an upright posture, and staggered on
light-headed and aimless, as if lost amongst the stars of the clear
night. A small house seemed to rise out of the ground before him. He
stumbled into the porch and struck at the door with his fist. There
was not a gleam of light. Gaspar Ruiz might have thought that the
inhabitants had fled from it, as from many others in the neighbourhood,
had it not been for the shouts of abuse that answered his thumping. In
his feverish and enfeebled state the angry screaming seemed to him part
of a hallucination belonging to the weird, dreamlike feeling of his
unexpected condemnation to death, of the thirst suffered, of the volleys
fired at him within fifteen paces, of his head being cut off at a blow.
"Open the door!" he cried. "Open in the name of God!"

An infuriated voice from within jeered at him: "Come in, come in. This
house belongs to you. All this land belongs to you. Come and take it."

"For the love of God," Gaspar Ruiz murmured.

"Does not all the land belong to you patriots?" the voice on the other
side of the door screamed on. "Are you not a patriot?"

Gaspar Ruiz did not know. "I am a wounded man," he said, apathetically.

All became still inside. Gaspar Ruiz lost the hope of being admitted,
and lay down under the porch just outside the door. He was utterly
careless of what was going to happen to him. All his consciousness
seemed to be concentrated in his neck, where he felt a severe pain. His
indifference as to his fate was genuine. The day was breaking when he
awoke from a feverish doze; the door at which he had knocked in the dark
stood wide open now, and a girl, steadying herself with her outspread
arms, leaned over the threshold. Lying on his back, he stared up at her.
Her face was pale and her eyes were very dark; her hair hung down black
as ebony against her white cheeks; her lips were full and red. Beyond
her he saw another head with long grey hair, and a thin old face with a
pair of anxiously clasped hands under the chin.


VI


"I knew those people by sight," General Santierra would tell his guests
at the dining-table. "I mean the people with whom Gaspar Ruiz found
shelter. The father was an old Spaniard, a man of property ruined by the
revolution. His estates, his house in town, his money, everything he had
in the world had been confiscated by proclamation, for he was a bitter
foe of our independence. From a position of great dignity and influence
on the Viceroy's Council he became of less importance than his own <DW64>
slaves made free by our glorious revolution. He had not even the means
to flee the country, as other Spaniards had managed to do. It may be
that, wandering ruined and houseless, and burdened with nothing but
his life, which was left to him by the clemency of the Provisional
Government, he had simply walked under that broken roof of old tiles. It
was a lonely spot. There did not seem to be even a dog belonging to the
place. But though the roof had holes, as if a cannon-ball or two had
dropped through it, the wooden shutters were thick and tight-closed all
the time.

"My way took me frequently along the path in front of that miserable
rancho. I rode from the fort to the town almost every evening, to sigh
at the window of a lady I was in love with, then. When one is young, you
understand. . . . She was a good patriot, you may believe. Caballeros,
credit me or not, political feeling ran so high in those days that I
do not believe I could have been fascinated by the charms of a woman of
Royalist opinions. . . ."

Murmurs of amused incredulity all round the table interrupted the
General; and while they lasted he stroked his white beard gravely.

"Senores," he protested, "a Royalist was a monster to our overwrought
feelings. I am telling you this in order not to be suspected of the
slightest tenderness towards that old Royalist's daughter. Moreover,
as you know, my affections were engaged elsewhere. But I could not help
noticing her on rare occasions when with the front door open she stood
in the porch.

"You must know that this old Royalist was as crazy as a man can be. His
political misfortunes, his total downfall and ruin, had disordered his
mind. To show his contempt for what we patriots could do, he affected to
laugh at his imprisonment, at the confiscation of his lands, the burning
of his houses, and at the misery to which he and his womenfolk were
reduced. This habit of laughing had grown upon him, so that he would
begin to laugh and shout directly he caught sight of any stranger. That
was the form of his madness.

"I, of course, disregarded the noise of that madman with that feeling of
superiority the success of our cause inspired in us Americans. I suppose
I really despised him because he was an old Castilian, a Spaniard born,
and a Royalist. Those were certainly no reasons to scorn a man; but for
centuries Spaniards born had shown their contempt of us Americans, men
as well descended as themselves, simply because we were what they
called colonists. We had been kept in abasement and made to feel our
inferiority in social intercourse. And now it was our turn. It was safe
for us patriots to display the same sentiments; and I being a young
patriot, son of a patriot, despised that old Spaniard, and despising
him I naturally disregarded his abuse, though it was annoying to my
feelings. Others perhaps would not have been so forbearing.

"He would begin with a great yell--'I see a patriot. Another of them!'
long before I came abreast of the house. The tone of his senseless
revilings, mingled with bursts of laughter, was sometimes piercingly
shrill and sometimes grave. It was all very mad; but I felt it incumbent
upon my dignity to check my horse to a walk without even glancing
towards the house, as if that man's abusive clamour in the porch
were less than the barking of a cur. Always I rode by preserving an
expression of haughty indifference on my face.

"It was no doubt very dignified; but I should have done better if I
had kept my eyes open. A military man in war time should never consider
himself off duty; and especially so if the war is a revolutionary war,
when the enemy is not at the door, but within your very house. At such
times the heat of passionate convictions passing into hatred, removes
the restraints of honour and humanity from many men and of delicacy and
fear from some women. These last, when once they throw off the timidity
and reserve of their sex, become by the vivacity of their intelligence
and the violence of their merciless resentment more dangerous than so
many armed giants."

The General's voice rose, but his big hand stroked his white beard twice
with an effect of venerable calmness. "Si, Senores! Women are ready to
rise to the heights of devotion unattainable by us men, or to sink into
the depths of abasement which amazes our masculine prejudices. I am
speaking now of exceptional women, you understand. . . ."

Here one of the guests observed that he had never met a woman yet who
was not capable of turning out quite exceptional under circumstances
that would engage her feelings strongly. "That sort of superiority in
recklessness they have over us," he concluded, "makes of them the more
interesting half of mankind."

The General, who bore the interruption with gravity, nodded courteous
assent. "Si. Si. Under circumstances. . . . Precisely. They can do an
infinite deal of mischief sometimes in quite unexpected ways. For who
could have imagined that a young girl, daughter of a ruined Royalist
whose life was held only by the contempt of his enemies, would have had
the power to bring death and devastation upon two flourishing provinces
and cause serious anxiety to the leaders of the revolution in the very
hour of its success!" He paused to let the wonder of it penetrate our
minds.

"Death and devastation," somebody murmured in surprise: "how shocking!"

The old General gave a glance in the direction of the murmur and went
on. "Yes. That is, war--calamity. But the means by which she obtained
the power to work this havoc on our southern frontier seem to me, who
have seen her and spoken to her, still more shocking. That particular
thing left on my mind a dreadful amazement which the further experience
of life, of more than fifty years, has done nothing to diminish." He
looked round as if to make sure of our attention, and, in a changed
voice: "I am, as you know, a republican, son of a Liberator," he
declared. "My incomparable mother, God rest her soul, was a Frenchwoman,
the daughter of an ardent republican. As a boy I fought for liberty;
I've always believed in the equality of men; and as to their
brotherhood, that, to my mind, is even more certain. Look at the fierce
animosity they display in their differences. And what in the world do
you know that is more bitterly fierce than brothers' quarrels?"

All absence of cynicism checked an inclination to smile at this view of
human brotherhood. On the contrary, there was in the tone the melancholy
natural to a man profoundly humane at heart who from duty, from
conviction, and from necessity, had played his part in scenes of
ruthless violence.

The General had seen much of fratricidal strife. "Certainly. There is no
doubt of their brotherhood," he insisted. "All men are brothers, and
as such know almost too much of each other. But"--and here in the
old patriarchal head, white as silver, the black eyes humorously
twinkled--"if we are all brothers, all the women are not our sisters."

One of the younger guests was heard murmuring his satisfaction at the
fact. But the General continued, with deliberate earnestness: "They are
so different! The tale of a king who took a beggar-maid for a partner of
his throne may be pretty enough as we men look upon ourselves and upon
love. But that a young girl, famous for her haughty beauty and, only
a short time before, the admired of all at the balls in the Viceroy's
palace, should take by the hand a guasso, a common peasant, is
intolerable to our sentiment of women and their love. It is madness.
Nevertheless it happened. But it must be said that in her case it was
the madness of hate--not of love."

After presenting this excuse in a spirit of chivalrous justice, the
General remained silent for a time. "I rode past the house every day
almost," he began again, "and this was what was going on within. But how
it was going on no mind of man can conceive. Her desperation must
have been extreme, and Gaspar Ruiz was a docile fellow. He had been an
obedient soldier. His strength was like an enormous stone lying on the
ground, ready to be hurled this way or that by the hand that picks it
up.

"It is clear that he would tell his story to the people who gave him
the shelter he needed. And he needed assistance badly. His wound was not
dangerous, but his life was forfeited. The old Royalist being wrapped up
in his laughing madness, the two women arranged a hiding-place for the
wounded man in one of the huts amongst the fruit trees at the back of
the house. That hovel, an abundance of clear water while the fever was
on him, and some words of pity were all they could give. I suppose
he had a share of what food there was. And it would be but little: a
handful of roasted corn, perhaps a dish of beans, or a piece of bread
with a few figs. To such misery were those proud and once wealthy people
reduced."


VII


General Santierra was right in his surmise. Such was the exact nature of
the assistance which Gaspar Ruiz, peasant son of peasants, received
from the Royalist family whose daughter had opened the door of their
miserable refuge to his extreme distress. Her sombre resolution ruled
the madness of her father and the trembling bewilderment of her mother.

She had asked the strange man on the doorstep, "Who wounded you?"

"The soldiers, senora," Gaspar Ruiz had answered, in a faint voice.

"Patriots?"

"Si."

"What for?"

"Deserter," he gasped, leaning against the wall under the scrutiny of
her black eyes. "I was left for dead over there."

She led him through the house out to a small hut of clay and reeds, lost
in the long grass of the overgrown orchard. He sank on a heap of maize
straw in a corner, and sighed profoundly.

"No one will look for you here," she said, looking down at him. "Nobody
comes near us. We, too, have been left for dead--here."

He stirred uneasily on his heap of dirty straw, and the pain in his neck
made him groan deliriously.

"I shall show Estaban some day that I am alive yet," he mumbled.

He accepted her assistance in silence, and the many days of pain went
by. Her appearances in the hut brought him relief and became connected
with the feverish dreams of angels which visited his couch; for Gaspar
Ruiz was instructed in the mysteries of his religion, and had even
been taught to read and write a little by the priest of his village. He
waited for her with impatience, and saw her pass out of the dark hut and
disappear in the brilliant sunshine with poignant regret. He discovered
that, while he lay there feeling so very weak, he could, by closing his
eyes, evoke her face with considerable distinctness. And this discovered
faculty charmed the long, solitary hours of his convalescence. Later on,
when he began to regain his strength, he would creep at dusk from his
hut to the house and sit on the step of the garden door.

In one of the rooms the mad father paced to and fro, muttering to
himself with short, abrupt laughs. In the passage, sitting on a
stool, the mother sighed and moaned. The daughter, in rough threadbare
clothing, and her white haggard face half hidden by a coarse manta,
stood leaning against the side of the door. Gaspar Ruiz, with his elbows
propped on his knees and his head resting in his hands, talked to the
two women in an undertone.

The common misery of destitution would have made a bitter mockery of a
marked insistence on social differences. Gaspar Ruiz understood this in
his simplicity. From his captivity amongst the Royalists he could give
them news of people they knew. He described their appearance; and when
he related the story of the battle in which he was recaptured the two
women lamented the blow to their cause and the ruin of their secret
hopes.

He had no feeling either way. But he felt a great devotion for that
young girl. In his desire to appear worthy of her condescension, he
boasted a little of his bodily strength. He had nothing else to boast
of. Because of that quality his comrades treated him with as great a
deference, he explained, as though he had been a sergeant, both in camp
and in battle.

"I could always get as many as I wanted to follow me anywhere, senorita.
I ought to have been made an officer, because I can read and write."

Behind him the silent old lady fetched a moaning sigh from time to time;
the distracted father muttered to himself, pacing the sala; and Gaspar
Ruiz would raise his eyes now and then to look at the daughter of these
people.

He would look at her with curiosity because she was alive, and also with
that feeling of familiarity and awe with which he had contemplated
in churches the inanimate and powerful statues of the saints, whose
protection is invoked in dangers and difficulties. His difficulty was
very great.

He could not remain hiding in an orchard for ever and ever. He knew also
very well that before he had gone half a day's journey in any direction,
he would be picked up by one of the cavalry patrols scouring the
country, and brought into one or another of the camps where the patriot
army destined for the liberation of Peru was collected. There he
would in the end be recognized as Gaspar Ruiz--the deserter to the
Royalists--and no doubt shot very effectually this time. There did not
seem any place in the world for the innocent Gaspar Ruiz anywhere.
And at this thought his simple soul surrendered itself to gloom and
resentment as black as night.

They had made him a soldier forcibly. He did not mind being a soldier.
And he had been a good soldier as he had been a good son, because of his
docility and his strength. But now there was no use for either. They had
taken him from his parents, and he could no longer be a soldier--not a
good soldier at any rate. Nobody would listen to his explanations. What
injustice it was! What injustice!

And in a mournful murmur he would go over the story of his capture and
recapture for the twentieth time. Then, raising his eyes to the silent
girl in the doorway, "Si, senorita," he would say with a deep sigh,
"injustice has made this poor breath in my body quite worthless to me
and to anybody else. And I do not care who robs me of it."

One evening, as he exhaled thus the plaint of his wounded soul, she
condescended to say that, if she were a man, she would consider no life
worthless which held the possibility of revenge.

She seemed to be speaking to herself. Her voice was low. He drank in the
gentle, as if dreamy sound with a consciousness of peculiar delight of
something warming his breast like a draught of generous wine.

"True, Senorita," he said, raising his face up to hers slowly: "there is
Estaban, who must be shown that I am not dead after all."

The mutterings of the mad father had ceased long before; the sighing
mother had withdrawn somewhere into one of the empty rooms. All was
still within as well as without, in the moonlight bright as day on the
wild orchard full of inky shadows. Gaspar Ruiz saw the dark eyes of Dona
Erminia look down at him.

"Ah! The sergeant," she muttered, disdainfully.

"Why! He has wounded me with his sword," he protested, bewildered by the
contempt that seemed to shine livid on her pale face.

She crushed him with her glance. The power of her will to be understood
was so strong that it kindled in him the intelligence of unexpressed
things.

"What else did you expect me to do?" he cried, as if suddenly driven to
despair. "Have I the power to do more? Am I a general with an army at my
back?--miserable sinner that I am to be despised by you at last."


VIII


"Senores," related the General to his guests, "though my thoughts were
of love then, and therefore enchanting, the sight of that house always
affected me disagreeably, especially in the moonlight, when its close
shutters and its air of lonely neglect appeared sinister. Still I went
on using the bridle-path by the ravine, because it was a short cut.
The mad Royalist howled and laughed at me every evening to his complete
satisfaction; but after a time, as if wearied with my indifference, he
ceased to appear in the porch. How they persuaded him to leave off I do
not know. However, with Gaspar Ruiz in the house there would have been
no difficulty in restraining him by force. It was now part of their
policy in there to avoid anything which could provoke me. At least, so I
suppose.

"Notwithstanding my infatuation with the brightest pair of eyes in
Chile, I noticed the absence of the old man after a week or so. A few
more days passed. I began to think that perhaps these Royalists had gone
away somewhere else. But one evening, as I was hastening towards the
city, I saw again somebody in the porch. It was not the madman; it was
the girl. She stood holding on to one of the wooden columns, tall and
white-faced, her big eyes sunk deep with privation and sorrow. I looked
hard at her, and she met my stare with a strange, inquisitive look.
Then, as I turned my head after riding past, she seemed to gather
courage for the act, and absolutely beckoned me back.

"I obeyed, senores, almost without thinking, so great was my
astonishment. It was greater still when I heard what she had to say. She
began by thanking me for my forbearance of her father's infirmity,
so that I felt ashamed of myself. I had meant to show disdain, not
forbearance! Every word must have burnt her lips, but she never departed
from a gentle and melancholy dignity which filled me with respect
against my will. Senores, we are no match for women. But I could hardly
believe my ears when she began her tale. Providence, she concluded,
seemed to have preserved the life of that wronged soldier, who now
trusted to my honour as a caballero and to my compassion for his
sufferings.

"'Wronged man,' I observed, coldly. 'Well, I think so, too: and you have
been harbouring an enemy of your cause.'

"'He was a poor Christian crying for help at our door in the name of
God, senor,' she answered, simply.

"I began to admire her. 'Where is he now?' I asked, stiffly.

"But she would not answer that question. With extreme cunning, and an
almost fiendish delicacy, she managed to remind me of my failure in
saving the lives of the prisoners in the guardroom, without wounding
my pride. She knew, of course, the whole story. Gaspar Ruiz, she said,
entreated me to procure for him a safe-conduct from General San
Martin himself. He had an important communication to make to the
commander-in-chief.

"Por Dios, senores, she made me swallow all that, pretending to be only
the mouthpiece of that poor man. Overcome by injustice, he expected to
find, she said, as much generosity in me as had been shown to him by the
Royalist family which had given him a refuge.

"Ha! It was well and nobly said to a youngster like me. I thought her
great. Alas! she was only implacable.

"In the end I rode away very enthusiastic about the business, without
demanding even to see Gaspar Ruiz, who I was confident was in the house.

"But on calm reflection I began to see some difficulties which I had not
confidence enough in myself to encounter. It was not easy to approach a
commander-in-chief with such a story. I feared failure. At last I thought
it better to lay the matter before my general-of-division, Robles, a
friend of my family, who had appointed me his aide-de-camp lately.

"He took it out of my hands at once without any ceremony.

"'In the house! of course he is in the house,' he said contemptuously.
'You ought to have gone sword in hand inside and demanded his surrender,
instead of chatting with a Royalist girl in the porch. Those people
should have been hunted out of that long ago. Who knows how many spies
they have harboured right in the very midst of our camps? A safe-conduct
from the Commander-in-Chief! The audacity of the fellow! Ha! ha! Now
we shall catch him to-night, and then we shall find out, without any
safe-conduct, what he has got to say, that is so very important. Ha! ha!
ha!'

"General Robles, peace to his soul, was a short, thick man, with round,
staring eyes, fierce and jovial. Seeing my distress he added:

"'Come, come, chico. I promise you his life if he does not resist. And
that is not likely. We are not going to break up a good soldier if it
can be helped. I tell you what! I am curious to see your strong man.
Nothing but a general will do for the picaro--well, he shall have a
general to talk to. Ha! ha! I shall go myself to the catching, and you
are coming with me, of course.'

"And it was done that same night. Early in the evening the house and the
orchard were surrounded quietly. Later on the General and I left a ball
we were attending in town and rode out at an easy gallop. At some little
distance from the house we pulled up. A mounted orderly held our horses.
A low whistle warned the men watching all along the ravine, and we
walked up to the porch softly. The barricaded house in the moonlight
seemed empty.

"The General knocked at the door. After a time a woman's voice within
asked who was there. My chief nudged me hard. I gasped.

"'It is I, Lieutenant Santierra,' I stammered out, as if choked. 'Open
the door.'

"It came open slowly. The girl, holding a thin taper in her hand, seeing
another man with me, began to back away before us slowly, shading the
light with her hand. Her impassive white face looked ghostly. I followed
behind General Robles. Her eyes were fixed on mine. I made a gesture of
helplessness behind my chief's back, trying at the same time to give a
reassuring expression to my face. None of us three uttered a sound.

"We found ourselves in a room with bare floor and walls. There was a
rough table and a couple of stools in it, nothing else whatever. An old
woman with her grey hair hanging loose wrung her hands when we appeared.
A peal of loud laughter resounded through the empty house, very amazing
and weird. At this the old woman tried to get past us.

"'Nobody to leave the room,' said General Robles to me.

"I swung the door to, heard the latch click, and the laughter became
faint in our ears.

"Before another word could be spoken in that room I was amazed by
hearing the sound of distant thunder.

"I had carried in with me into the house a vivid impression of a
beautiful clear moonlight night, without a speck of cloud in the sky. I
could not believe my ears. Sent early abroad for my education, I was not
familiar with the most dreaded natural phenomenon of my native land.
I saw, with inexpressible astonishment, a look of terror in my chief's
eyes. Suddenly I felt giddy. The General staggered against me heavily;
the girl seemed to reel in the middle of the room, the taper fell out
of her hand and the light went out; a shrill cry of 'Misericordia!'
from the old woman pierced my ears. In the pitchy darkness I heard the
plaster off the walls falling on the floor. It is a mercy there was no
ceiling. Holding on to the latch of the door, I heard the grinding of
the roof-tiles cease above my head. The shock was over.

"'Out of the house! The door! Fly, Santierra, fly!' howled the General.
You know, senores, in our country the bravest are not ashamed of the
fear an earthquake strikes into all the senses of man. One never gets
used to it. Repeated experience only augments the mastery of that
nameless terror.

"It was my first earthquake, and I was the calmest of them all. I
understood that the crash outside was caused by the porch, with its
wooden pillars and tiled roof projection, falling down. The next
shock would destroy the house, maybe. That rumble as of thunder was
approaching again. The General was rushing round the room, to find the
door perhaps. He made a noise as though he were trying to climb the
walls, and I heard him distinctly invoke the names of several saints.
'Out, out, Santierra!' he yelled.

"The girl's voice was the only one I did not hear.

"'General,' I cried, I cannot move the door. We must be locked in.'

"I did not recognize his voice in the shout of malediction and despair
he let out. Senores, I know many men in my country, especially in the
provinces most subject to earthquakes, who will neither eat, sleep,
pray, nor even sit down to cards with closed doors. The danger is not
in the loss of time, but in this--that the movement of the walls may
prevent a door being opened at all. This was what had happened to us. We
were trapped, and we had no help to expect from anybody. There is no man
in my country who will go into a house when the earth trembles. There
never was--except one: Gaspar Ruiz.

"He had come out of whatever hole he had been hiding in outside, and
had clambered over the timbers of the destroyed porch. Above the awful
subterranean groan of coming destruction I heard a mighty voice shouting
the word 'Erminia!' with the lungs of a giant. An earthquake is a great
leveller of distinctions. I collected all my resolution against the
terror of the scene. 'She is here,' I shouted back. A roar as of a
furious wild beast answered me--while my head swam, my heart sank, and
the sweat of anguish streamed like rain off my brow.

"He had the strength to pick up one of the heavy posts of the porch.
Holding it under his armpit like a lance, but with both hands, he
charged madly the rocking house with the force of a battering-ram,
bursting open the door and rushing in, headlong, over our prostrate
bodies. I and the General picking ourselves up, bolted out together,
without looking round once till we got across the road. Then, clinging
to each other, we beheld the house change suddenly into a heap of
formless rubbish behind the back of a man, who staggered towards us
bearing the form of a woman clasped in his arms. Her long black hair
hung nearly to his feet. He laid her down reverently on the heaving
earth, and the moonlight shone on her closed eyes.

"Senores, we mounted with difficulty. Our horses getting up plunged
madly, held by the soldiers who had come running from all sides. Nobody
thought of catching Gaspar Ruiz then. The eyes of men and animals shone
with wild fear. My general approached Gaspar Ruiz, who stood motionless
as a statue above the girl. He let himself be shaken by the shoulder
without detaching his eyes from her face.

"'Que guape!' shouted the General in his ear. 'You are the bravest man
living. You have saved my life. I am General Robles. Come to my quarters
to-morrow if God gives us the grace to see another day.'

"He never stirred--as if deaf, without feeling, insensible.

"We rode away for the town, full of our relations, of our friends, of
whose fate we hardly dared to think. The soldiers ran by the side of
our horses. Everything was forgotten in the immensity of the catastrophe
overtaking a whole country."

. . . . . . .

Gaspar Ruiz saw the girl open her eyes. The raising of her eyelids
seemed to recall him from a trance. They were alone; the cries of terror
and distress from homeless people filled the plains of the coast remote
and immense, coming like a whisper into their loneliness.

She rose swiftly to her feet, darting fearful glances on all sides.
"What is it?" she cried out low, and peering into his face. "Where am
I?"

He bowed his head sadly, without a word.

". . . Who are you?"

He knelt down slowly before her, and touched the hem of her coarse black
baize skirt. "Your slave," he said.

She caught sight then of the heap of rubbish that had been the house,
all misty in the cloud of dust. "Ah!" she cried, pressing her hand to
her forehead.

"I carried you out from there," he whispered at her feet.

"And they?" she asked in a great sob.

He rose, and taking her by the arms, led her gently towards the
shapeless ruin half overwhelmed by a landslide. "Come and listen," he
said.

The serene moon saw them clambering over that heap of stones, joists and
tiles, which was a grave. They pressed their ears to the interstices,
listening for the sound of a groan, for a sigh of pain.

At last he said, "They died swiftly. You are alone."

She sat down on a piece of broken timber and put one arm across her
face. He waited--then approaching his lips to her ear: "Let us go," he
whispered.

"Never--never from here," she cried out, flinging her arms above her
head.

He stooped over her, and her raised arms fell upon his shoulders. He
lifted her up, steadied himself and began to walk, looking straight
before him.

"What are you doing?" she asked, feebly.

"I am escaping from my enemies," he said, never once glancing at his
light burden.

"With me?" she sighed, helplessly.

"Never without you," he said. "You are my strength."

He pressed her close to him. His face was grave and his footsteps
steady. The conflagrations bursting out in the ruins of destroyed
villages dotted the plain with red fires; and the sounds of distant
lamentations, the cries of Misericordia! Misericordia! made a desolate
murmur in his ears. He walked on, solemn and collected, as if carrying
something holy, fragile, and precious.

The earth rocked at times under his feet.


IX


With movements of mechanical care and an air of abstraction old General
Santierra lighted a long and thick cigar.

"It was a good many hours before we could send a party back to the
ravine," he said to his guests. "We had found one-third of the town laid
low, the rest shaken up; and the inhabitants, rich and poor, reduced to
the same state of distraction by the universal disaster. The affected
cheerfulness of some contrasted with the despair of others. In the
general confusion a number of reckless thieves, without fear of God or
man, became a danger to those who from the downfall of their homes had
managed to save some valuables. Crying 'Misericordia' louder than any at
every tremor, and beating their breast with one hand, these scoundrels
robbed the poor victims with the other, not even stopping short of
murder.

"General Robles' division was occupied entirely in guarding the
destroyed quarters of the town from the depredations of these inhuman
monsters. Taken up with my duties of orderly officer, it was only in the
morning that I could assure myself of the safety of my own family. My
mother and my sisters had escaped with their lives from that ballroom,
where I had left them early in the evening. I remember those two
beautiful young women--God rest their souls--as if I saw them this
moment, in the garden of our destroyed house, pale but active, assisting
some of our poor neighbours, in their soiled ball-dresses and with the
dust of fallen walls on their hair. As to my mother, she had a stoical
soul in her frail body. Half-covered by a costly shawl, she was lying
on a rustic seat by the side of an ornamental basin whose fountain had
ceased to play for ever on that night.

"I had hardly had time to embrace them all with transports of joy when
my chief, coming along, dispatched me to the ravine with a few soldiers,
to bring in my strong man, as he called him, and that pale girl.

"But there was no one for us to bring in. A landslide had covered the
ruins of the house; and it was like a large mound of earth with only the
ends of some timbers visible here and there--nothing more.

"Thus were the tribulations of the old Royalist couple ended. An
enormous and unconsecrated grave had swallowed them up alive, in their
unhappy obstinacy against the will of a people to be free. And their
daughter was gone.

"That Gaspar Ruiz had carried her off I understood very well. But as
the case was not foreseen, I had no instructions to pursue them. And
certainly I had no desire to do so. I had grown mistrustful of my
interference. It had never been successful, and had not even appeared
creditable. He was gone. Well, let him go. And he had carried off the
Royalist girl! Nothing better. Vaya con Dios. This was not the time
to bother about a deserter who, justly or unjustly, ought to have been
dead, and a girl for whom it would have been better to have never been
born.

"So I marched my men back to the town.

"After a few days, order having been re-established, all the principal
families, including my own, left for Santiago. We had a fine house
there. At the same time the division of Robles was moved to new
cantonments near the capital. This change suited very well the state of
my domestic and amorous feelings.

"One night, rather late, I was called to my chief. I found General
Robles in his quarters, at ease, with his uniform off, drinking neat
brandy out of a tumbler--as a precaution, he used to say, against the
sleeplessness induced by the bites of mosquitoes. He was a good soldier,
and he taught me the art and practice of war. No doubt God has been
merciful to his soul; for his motives were never other than patriotic,
if his character was irascible. As to the use of mosquito nets, he
considered it effeminate, shameful--unworthy of a soldier. I noticed at
the first glance that his face, already very red, wore an expression of
high good-humour.

"'Aha! Senor teniente,' he cried, loudly, as I saluted at the door.
'Behold! Your strong man has turned up again.'

"He extended to me a folded letter, which I saw was superscribed 'To the
Commander-in-Chief of the Republican Armies.'

"'This,' General Robles went on in his loud voice, 'was thrust by a boy
into the hand of a sentry at the Quartel General, while the fellow stood
there thinking of his girl, no doubt--for before he could gather his
wits together the boy had disappeared amongst the market people, and he
protests he could not recognize him to save his life.'

"'My chief told me further that the soldier had given the letter to the
sergeant of the guard, and that ultimately it had reached the hands of
our generalissimo. His Excellency had deigned to take cognizance of it
with his own eyes. After that he had referred the matter in confidence
to General Robles.

"The letter, senores, I cannot now recollect textually. I saw the
signature of Gaspar Ruiz. He was an audacious fellow. He had snatched a
soul for himself out of a cataclysm, remember. And now it was that
soul which had dictated the terms of his letter. Its tone was very
independent. I remember it struck me at the time as noble--dignified. It
was, no doubt, her letter. Now I shudder at the depth of its duplicity.
Gaspar Ruiz was made to complain of the injustice of which he had been
a victim. He invoked his previous record of fidelity and courage. Having
been saved from death by the miraculous interposition of Providence, he
could think of nothing but of retrieving his character. This, he wrote,
he could not hope to do in the ranks as a discredited soldier still
under suspicion. He had the means to give a striking proof of his
fidelity. He had ended by proposing to the General-in-Chief a meeting at
midnight in the middle of the Plaza before the Moneta. The signal would
be to strike fire with flint and steel three times, which was not too
conspicuous and yet distinctive enough for recognition.

"San Martin, the great Liberator, loved men of audacity and courage.
Besides, he was just and compassionate. I told him as much of the man's
story as I knew, and was ordered to accompany him on the appointed
night. The signals were duly exchanged. It was midnight, and the whole
town was dark and silent. Their two cloaked figures came together in
the centre of the vast Plaza, and, keeping discreetly at a distance,
I listened for an hour or more to the murmur of their voices. Then the
General motioned me to approach; and as I did so I heard San Martin,
who was courteous to gentle and simple alike, offer Gaspar Ruiz the
hospitality of the headquarters for the night. But the soldier refused,
saying that he would be not worthy of that honour till he had done
something.

"'You cannot have a common deserter for your guest, Excellency,' he
protested with a low laugh, and stepping backwards merged slowly into
the night.

"The Commander-in-Chief observed to me, as we turned away: 'He had
somebody with him, our friend Ruiz. I saw two figures for a moment. It
was an unobtrusive companion.'

"I, too, had observed another figure join the vanishing form of Gaspar
Ruiz. It had the appearance of a short fellow in a poncho and a big
hat. And I wondered stupidly who it could be he had dared take into
his confidence. I might have guessed it could be no one but that fatal
girl--alas!

"Where he kept her concealed I do not know. He had--it was known
afterwards--an uncle, his mother's brother, a small shopkeeper in
Santiago. Perhaps it was there that she found a roof and food. Whatever
she found, it was poor enough to exasperate her pride and keep up her
anger and hate. It is certain she did not accompany him on the feat
he undertook to accomplish first of all. It was nothing less than the
destruction of a store of war material collected secretly by the Spanish
authorities in the south, in a town called Linares. Gaspar Ruiz was
entrusted with a small party only, but they proved themselves worthy of
San Martin's confidence. The season was not propitious. They had to swim
swollen rivers. They seemed, however, to have galloped night and day
out-riding the news of their foray, and holding straight for the town,
a hundred miles into the enemy's country, till at break of day they rode
into it sword in hand, surprising the little garrison. It fled without
making a stand, leaving most of its officers in Gaspar Ruiz' hands.

"A great explosion of gunpowder ended the conflagration of the magazines
the raiders had set on fire without loss of time. In less than six
hours they were riding away at the same mad speed, without the loss of a
single man. Good as they were, such an exploit is not performed without
a still better leadership.

"I was dining at the headquarters when Gaspar Ruiz himself brought the
news of his success. And it was a great blow to the Royalist troops. For
a proof he displayed to us the garrison's flag. He took it from under
his poncho and flung it on the table. The man was transfigured; there
was something exulting and menacing in the expression of his face. He
stood behind General San Martin's chair and looked proudly at us all.
He had a round blue cap edged with silver braid on his head, and we all
could see a large white scar on the nape of his sunburnt neck.

"Somebody asked him what he had done with the captured Spanish officers.

"He shrugged his shoulders scornfully. 'What a question to ask! In
a partisan war you do not burden yourself with prisoners. I let them
go--and here are their sword-knots.'

"He flung a bunch of them on the table upon the flag. Then General
Robles, whom I was attending there, spoke up in his loud, thick voice:
'You did! Then, my brave friend, you do not know yet how a war like ours
ought to be conducted. You should have done--this.' And he passed the
edge of his hand across his own throat.

"Alas, senores! It was only too true that on both sides this contest, in
its nature so heroic, was stained by ferocity. The murmurs that arose
at General Robles' words were by no means unanimous in tone. But the
generous and brave San Martin praised the humane action, and pointed
out to Ruiz a place on his right hand. Then rising with a full glass
he proposed a toast: 'Caballeros and comrades-in-arms, let us drink the
health of Captain Gaspar Ruiz.' And when we had emptied our glasses:
'I intend,' the Commander-in-Chief continued, 'to entrust him with the
guardianship of our southern frontier, while we go afar to liberate our
brethren in Peru. He whom the enemy could not stop from striking a blow
at his very heart will know how to protect the peaceful populations we
leave behind us to pursue our sacred task.' And he embraced the silent
Gaspar Ruiz by his side.

"Later on, when we all rose from table, I approached the latest officer
of the army with my congratulations. 'And, Captain Ruiz,' I added,
'perhaps you do not mind telling a man who has always believed in
the uprightness of your character what became of Dona Erminia on that
night?'

"At this friendly question his aspect changed. He looked at me from
under his eyebrows with the heavy, dull glance of a guasso--of a
peasant. 'Senor teniente,' he said, thickly, and as if very much cast
down, 'do not ask me about the senorita, for I prefer not to think about
her at all when I am amongst you."

"He looked, with a frown, all about the room, full of smoking and
talking officers. Of course I did not insist.

"These, senores, were the last words I was to hear him utter for a long,
long time. The very next day we embarked for our arduous expedition to
Peru, and we only heard of Gaspar Ruiz' doings in the midst of battles
of our own. He had been appointed military guardian of our southern
province. He raised a partida. But his leniency to the conquered foe
displeased the Civil Governor, who was a formal, uneasy man, full of
suspicions. He forwarded reports against Gaspar Ruiz to the Supreme
Government; one of them being that he had married publicly, with great
pomp, a woman of Royalist tendencies. Quarrels were sure to arise
between these two men of very different character. At last the Civil
Governor began to complain of his inactivity and to hint at treachery,
which, he wrote, would be not surprising in a man of such antecedents.
Gaspar Ruiz heard of it. His rage flamed up, and the woman ever by his
side knew how to feed it with perfidious words. I do not know
whether really the Supreme Government ever did--as he complained
afterwards--send orders for his arrest. It seems certain that the
Civil Governor began to tamper with his officers, and that Gaspar Ruiz
discovered the fact.

"One evening, when the Governor was giving a tertullia, Gaspar Ruiz,
followed by six men he could trust, appeared riding through the town to
the door of the Government House, and entered the sala armed, his hat on
his head. As the Governor, displeased, advanced to meet him, he seized
the wretched man round the body, carried him off from the midst of the
appalled guests, as though he were a child, and flung him down the outer
steps into the street. An angry hug from Gaspar Ruiz was enough to crush
the life out of a giant; but in addition Gaspar Ruiz' horsemen fired
their pistols at the body of the Governor as it lay motionless at the
bottom of the stairs."


X


"After this--as he called it--act of justice, Ruiz crossed the Rio
Blanco, followed by the greater part of his band, and entrenched himself
upon a hill. A company of regular troops sent out foolishly against him
was surrounded, and destroyed almost to a man. Other expeditions, though
better organized, were equally unsuccessful.

"It was during these sanguinary skirmishes that his wife first began to
appear on horseback at his right hand. Rendered proud and self-confident
by his successes, Ruiz no longer charged at the head of his partida, but
presumptuously, like a general directing the movements of an army,
he remained in the rear, well mounted and motionless on an eminence,
sending out his orders. She was seen repeatedly at his side, and for
a long time was mistaken for a man. There was much talk then of a
mysterious white-faced chief, to whom the defeats of our troops were
ascribed. She rode like an Indian woman, astride, wearing a broad-rimmed
man's hat and a dark poncho. Afterwards, in the day of their greatest
prosperity, this poncho was embroidered in gold, and she wore then,
also, the sword of poor Don Antonio de Leyva. This veteran Chilian
officer, having the misfortune to be surrounded with his small force,
and running short of ammunition, found his death at the hands of the
Arauco Indians, the allies and auxiliaries of Gaspar Ruiz. This was the
fatal affair long remembered afterwards as the 'Massacre of the Island.'
The sword of the unhappy officer was presented to her by Peneleo, the
Araucanian chief; for these Indians, struck by her aspect, the deathly
pallor of her face, which no exposure to the weather seemed to affect,
and her calm indifference under fire, looked upon her as a supernatural
being, or at least as a witch. By this superstition the prestige and
authority of Gaspar Ruiz amongst these ignorant people were greatly
augmented. She must have savoured her vengeance to the full on that day
when she buckled on the sword of Don Antonio de Leyva. It never left her
side, unless she put on her woman's clothes--not that she would or
could ever use it, but she loved to feel it beating upon her thigh as
a perpetual reminder and symbol of the dishonour to the arms of the
Republic. She was insatiable. Moreover, on the path she had led Gaspar
Ruiz upon, there is no stopping. Escaped prisoners--and they were not
many--used to relate how with a few whispered words she could change the
expression of his face and revive his flagging animosity. They told how
after every skirmish, after every raid, after every successful action,
he would ride up to her and look into her face. Its haughty calm was
never relaxed. Her embrace, senores, must have been as cold as the
embrace of a statue. He tried to melt her icy heart in a stream of warm
blood. Some English naval officers who visited him at that time noticed
the strange character of his infatuation."

At the movement of surprise and curiosity in his audience General
Santierra paused for a moment.

"Yes--English naval officers," he repeated. "Ruiz had consented to
receive them to arrange for the liberation of some prisoners of your
nationality. In the territory upon which he ranged, from sea coast to
the Cordillera, there was a bay where the ships of that time, after
rounding Cape Horn, used to resort for wood and water. There, decoying
the crew on shore, he captured first the whaling brig Hersalia, and
afterwards made himself master by surprise of two more ships, one
English and one American.

"It was rumoured at the time that he dreamed of setting up a navy of his
own. But that, of course, was impossible. Still, manning the brig with
part of her own crew, and putting an officer and a good many men of his
own on board, he sent her off to the Spanish Governor of the island of
Chiloe with a report of his exploits, and a demand for assistance in the
war against the rebels. The Governor could not do much for him; but he
sent in return two light field-pieces, a letter of compliments, with a
colonel's commission in the royal forces, and a great Spanish flag. This
standard with much ceremony was hoisted over his house in the heart of
the Arauco country. Surely on that day she may have smiled on her guasso
husband with a less haughty reserve.

"The senior officer of the English squadron on our coast made
representations to our Government as to these captures. But Gaspar Ruiz
refused to treat with us. Then an English frigate proceeded to the bay,
and her captain, doctor, and two lieutenants travelled inland under a
safe-conduct. They were well received, and spent three days as guests of
the partisan chief. A sort of military barbaric state was kept up at the
residence. It was furnished with the loot of frontier towns. When first
admitted to the principal sala, they saw his wife lying down (she was
not in good health then), with Gaspar Ruiz sitting at the foot of the
couch. His hat was lying on the floor, and his hands reposed on the hilt
of his sword.

"During that first conversation he never removed his big hands from
the sword-hilt, except once, to arrange the coverings about her, with
gentle, careful touches. They noticed that whenever she spoke he would
fix his eyes upon her in a kind of expectant, breathless attention, and
seemingly forget the existence of the world and his own existence,
too. In the course of the farewell banquet, at which she was present
reclining on her couch, he burst forth into complaints of the treatment
he had received. After General San Martin's departure he had been
beset by spies, slandered by civil officials, his services ignored, his
liberty and even his life threatened by the Chilian Government. He got
up from the table, thundered execrations pacing the room wildly, then
sat down on the couch at his wife's feet, his breast heaving, his eyes
fixed on the floor. She reclined on her back, her head on the cushions,
her eyes nearly closed.

"'And now I am an honoured Spanish officer,' he added in a calm voice.

"The captain of the English frigate then took the opportunity to inform
him gently that Lima had fallen, and that by the terms of a convention
the Spaniards were withdrawing from the whole continent.

"Gaspar Ruiz raised his head, and without hesitation, speaking with
suppressed vehemence, declared that if not a single Spanish soldier were
left in the whole of South America he would persist in carrying on the
contest against Chile to the last drop of blood. When he finished that
mad tirade his wife's long white hand was raised, and she just caressed
his knee with the tips of her fingers for a fraction of a second.

"For the rest of the officers' stay, which did not extend for more than
half an hour after the banquet, that ferocious chieftain of a desperate
partida overflowed with amiability and kindness. He had been hospitable
before, but now it seemed as though he could not do enough for the
comfort and safety of his visitors' journey back to their ship.

"Nothing, I have been told, could have presented a greater contrast to
his late violence or the habitual taciturn reserve of his manner. Like a
man elated beyond measure by an unexpected happiness, he overflowed with
good-will, amiability, and attentions. He embraced the officers like
brothers, almost with tears in his eyes. The released prisoners were
presented each with a piece of gold. At the last moment, suddenly, he
declared he could do no less than restore to the masters of the merchant
vessels all their private property. This unexpected generosity caused
some delay in the departure of the party, and their first march was very
short.

"Late in the evening Gaspar Ruiz rode up with an escort, to their camp
fires, bringing along with him a mule loaded with cases of wine. He had
come, he said, to drink a stirrup cup with his English friends, whom he
would never see again. He was mellow and joyous in his temper. He told
stories of his own exploits, laughed like a boy, borrowed a guitar
from the Englishmen's chief muleteer, and sitting cross-legged on his
superfine poncho spread before the glow of the embers, sang a guasso
love-song in a tender voice. Then his head dropped on his breast, his
hands fell to the ground; the guitar rolled off his knees--and a great
hush fell over the camp after the love-song of the implacable partisan
who had made so many of our people weep for destroyed homes and for
loves cut short.

"Before anybody could make a sound he sprang up from the ground and
called for his horse.

"'Adios, my friends!' he cried. 'Go with God. I love you. And tell them
well in Santiago that between Gaspar Ruiz, colonel of the King of Spain,
and the republican carrion-crows of Chile there is war to the last
breath--war! war! war!'

"With a great yell of 'War! war! war!' which his escort took up, they
rode away, and the sound of hoofs and of voices died out in the distance
between the <DW72>s of the hills.

"The two young English officers were convinced that Ruiz was mad. How
do you say that?--tile loose--eh? But the doctor, an observant Scotsman
with much shrewdness and philosophy in his character, told me that it
was a very curious case of possession. I met him many years afterwards,
but he remembered the experience very well. He told me, too, that in
his opinion that woman did not lead Gaspar Ruiz into the practice of
sanguinary treachery by direct persuasion, but by the subtle way of
awakening and keeping alive in his simple mind a burning sense of an
irreparable wrong. Maybe, maybe. But I would say that she poured half
of her vengeful soul into the strong clay of that man, as you may pour
intoxication, madness, poison into an empty cup.

"If he wanted war he got it in earnest when our victorious army began to
return from Peru. Systematic operations were planned against this blot
on the honour and prosperity of our hardly won independence. General
Robles commanded, with his well-known ruthless severity. Savage
reprisals were exercised on both sides and no quarter was given in the
field. Having won my promotion in the Peru campaign, I was a captain on
the staff. Gaspar Ruiz found himself hard pressed; at the same time we
heard by means of a fugitive priest who had been carried off from his
village presbytery and galloped eighty miles into the hills to perform
the christening ceremony, that a daughter was born to them. To celebrate
the event, I suppose, Ruiz executed one or two brilliant forays clear
away at the rear of our forces, and defeated the detachments sent out to
cut off his retreat. General Robles nearly had a stroke of apoplexy from
rage. He found another cause of insomnia than the bites of mosquitoes;
but against this one, senores, tumblers of raw brandy had no more effect
than so much water. He took to railing and storming at me about my
strong man. And from our impatience to end this inglorious campaign I am
afraid that all we young officers became reckless and apt to take undue
risks on service.

"Nevertheless, slowly, inch by inch as it were, our columns were closing
upon Gaspar Ruiz, though he had managed to raise all the Araucanian
nation of wild Indians against us. Then a year or more later our
Government became aware through its agents and spies that he had
actually entered into alliance with Carreras, the so-called dictator of
the so-called republic of Mendoza, on the other side of the mountains.
Whether Gaspar Ruiz had a deep political intention, or whether he wished
only to secure a safe retreat for his wife and child while he pursued
remorselessly against us his war of surprises and massacres, I cannot
tell. The alliance, however, was a fact. Defeated in his attempt to
check our advance from the sea, he retreated with his usual swiftness,
and preparing for another hard and hazardous tussle, began by sending
his wife with the little girl across the Pequena range of mountains, on
the frontier of Mendoza."


XI


"Now Carreras, under the guise of politics and liberalism, was a
scoundrel of the deepest dye, and the unhappy state of Mendoza was the
prey of thieves, robbers, traitors, and murderers, who formed his party.
He was under a noble exterior a man without heart, pity, honour, or
conscience. He aspired to nothing but tyranny, and though he would have
made use of Gaspar Ruiz for his nefarious designs, yet he soon became
aware that to propitiate the Chilian Government would answer his purpose
better. I blush to say that he made proposals to our Government to
deliver up on certain conditions the wife and child of the man who had
trusted to his honour, and that this offer was accepted.

"While on her way to Mendoza over the Pequena Pass she was betrayed by
her escort of Carreras' men, and given up to the officer in command of
a Chilian fort on the upland at the foot of the main Cordillera range.
This atrocious transaction might have cost me dear, for as a matter of
fact I was a prisoner in Gaspar Ruiz' camp when he received the news. I
had been captured during a reconnaissance, my escort of a few troopers
being speared by the Indians of his bodyguard. I was saved from the same
fate because he recognized my features just in time. No doubt my friends
thought I was dead, and I would not have given much for my life at any
time. But the strong man treated me very well, because, he said, I had
always believed in his innocence and had tried to serve him when he was
a victim of injustice.

"'And now,' was his speech to me, 'you shall see that I always speak the
truth. You are safe.'

"I did not think I was very safe when I was called up to go to him one
night. He paced up and down like a wild beast, exclaiming, 'Betrayed!
Betrayed!'

"He walked up to me clenching his fists. 'I could cut your throat.'

"'Will that give your wife back to you?' I said as quietly as I could.

"'And the child!' he yelled out, as if mad. He fell into a chair and
laughed in a frightful, boisterous manner. 'Oh, no, you are safe.'

"I assured him that his wife's life was safe, too; but I did not say
what I was convinced of--that he would never see her again. He wanted
war to the death, and the war could only end with his death.

"He gave me a strange, inexplicable look, and sat muttering blankly, 'In
their hands. In their hands.'

"I kept as still as a mouse before a cat.

"Suddenly he jumped up. 'What am I doing here?' he cried; and opening
the door, he yelled out orders to saddle and mount. 'What is it?' he
stammered, coming up to me. 'The Pequena fort; a fort of palisades!
Nothing. I would get her back if she were hidden in the very heart of
the mountain.' He amazed me by adding, with an effort: 'I carried her
off in my two arms while the earth trembled. And the child at least is
mine. She at least is mine!'

"Those were bizarre words; but I had no time for wonder.

"'You shall go with me,' he said, violently. 'I may want to parley, and
any other messenger from Ruiz, the outlaw, would have his throat cut.'

"This was true enough. Between him and the rest of incensed mankind
there could be no communication, according to the customs of honourable
warfare.

"In less than half an hour we were in the saddle, flying wildly through
the night. He had only an escort of twenty men at his quarters, but
would not wait for more. He sent, however, messengers to Peneleo, the
Indian chief then ranging in the foothills, directing him to bring
his warriors to the uplands and meet him at the lake called the Eye of
Water, near whose shores the frontier fort of Pequena was built.

"We crossed the lowlands with that untired rapidity of movement which
had made Gaspar Ruiz' raids so famous. We followed the lower valleys
up to their precipitous heads. The ride was not without its dangers.
A cornice road on a perpendicular wall of basalt wound itself around a
buttressing rock, and at last we emerged from the gloom of a deep gorge
upon the upland of Pequena.

"It was a plain of green wiry grass and thin flowering bushes; but high
above our heads patches of snow hung in the folds and crevices of the
great walls of rock. The little lake was as round as a staring eye. The
garrison of the fort were just driving in their small herd of cattle
when we appeared. Then the great wooden gates swung to, and that
four-square enclosure of broad blackened stakes pointed at the top and
barely hiding the grass roofs of the huts inside seemed deserted, empty,
without a single soul.

"But when summoned to surrender, by a man who at Gaspar Ruiz' order rode
fearlessly forward those inside answered by a volley which rolled him
and his horse over. I heard Ruiz by my side grind his teeth. 'It does
not matter,' he said. 'Now you go.'

"Torn and faded as its rags were, the vestiges of my uniform were
recognized, and I was allowed to approach within speaking distance; and
then I had to wait, because a voice clamouring through a loophole with
joy and astonishment would not allow me to place a word. It was the
voice of Major Pajol, an old friend. He, like my other comrades, had
thought me killed a long time ago.

"'Put spurs to your horse, man!' he yelled, in the greatest excitement;
'we will swing the gate open for you.'

"I let the reins fall out of my hand and shook my head. 'I am on my
honour,' I cried.

"'To him!' he shouted, with infinite disgust.

"'He promises you your life.'

"'Our life is our own. And do you, Santierra, advise us to surrender to
that rastrero?'

"'No!' I shouted. 'But he wants his wife and child, and he can cut you
off from water.'

"'Then she would be the first to suffer. You may tell him that. Look
here--this is all nonsense: we shall dash out and capture you.'

"'You shall not catch me alive,' I said, firmly.

"'Imbecile!'

"'For God's sake,' I continued, hastily, 'do not open the gate.' And I
pointed at the multitude of Peneleo's Indians who covered the shores of
the lake.

"I had never seen so many of these savages together. Their lances
seemed as numerous as stalks of grass. Their hoarse voices made a vast,
inarticulate sound like the murmur of the sea.

"My friend Pajol was swearing to himself. 'Well, then--go to the devil!'
he shouted, exasperated. But as I swung round he repented, for I heard
him say hurriedly, 'Shoot the fool's horse before he gets away.'

"He had good marksmen. Two shots rang out, and in the very act
of turning my horse staggered, fell and lay still as if struck by
lightning. I had my feet out of the stirrups and rolled clear of him;
but I did not attempt to rise. Neither dared they rush out to drag me
in.

"The masses of Indians had begun to move upon the fort. They rode up
in squadrons, trailing their long chusos; then dismounted out of
musket-shot, and, throwing off their fur mantles, advanced naked to the
attack, stamping their feet and shouting in cadence. A sheet of flame
ran three times along the face of the fort without checking their steady
march. They crowded right up to the very stakes, flourishing their broad
knives. But this palisade was not fastened together with hide lashings
in the usual way, but with long iron nails, which they could not cut.
Dismayed at the failure of their usual method of forcing an entrance,
the heathen, who had marched so steadily against the musketry fire,
broke and fled under the volleys of the besieged.

"Directly they had passed me on their advance I got up and rejoined
Gaspar Ruiz on a low ridge which jutted out upon the plain. The musketry
of his own men had covered the attack, but now at a sign from him a
trumpet sounded the 'Cease fire.' Together we looked in silence at the
hopeless rout of the savages.

"'It must be a siege, then,' he muttered. And I detected him wringing
his hands stealthily.

"But what sort of siege could it be? Without any need for me to repeat
my friend Pajol's message, he dared not cut the water off from the
besieged. They had plenty of meat. And, indeed, if they had been short
he would have been too anxious to send food into the stockade had he
been able. But, as a matter of fact, it was we on the plain who were
beginning to feel the pinch of hunger.

"Peneleo, the Indian chief, sat by our fire folded in his ample mantle
of guanaco skins. He was an athletic savage, with an enormous square
shock head of hair resembling a straw beehive in shape and size,
and with grave, surly, much-lined features. In his broken Spanish he
repeated, growling like a bad-tempered wild beast, that if an opening
ever so small were made in the stockade his men would march in and get
the senora--not otherwise.

"Gaspar Ruiz, sitting opposite him, kept his eyes fixed on the fort
night and day as it were, in awful silence and immobility. Meantime, by
runners from the lowlands that arrived nearly every day, we heard of the
defeat of one of his lieutenants in the Maipu valley. Scouts sent afar
brought news of a column of infantry advancing through distant passes to
the relief of the fort. They were slow, but we could trace their toilful
progress up the lower valleys. I wondered why Ruiz did not march to
attack and destroy this threatening force, in some wild gorge fit for an
ambuscade, in accordance with his genius for guerilla warfare. But his
genius seemed to have abandoned him to his despair.

"It was obvious to me that he could not tear himself away from the sight
of the fort. I protest to you, senores, that I was moved almost to
pity by the sight of this powerless strong man sitting on the ridge,
indifferent to sun, to rain, to cold, to wind; with his hands
clasped round his legs and his chin resting on his knees,
gazing--gazing--gazing.

"And the fort he kept his eyes fastened on was as still and silent as
himself. The garrison gave no sign of life. They did not even answer the
desultory fire directed at the loopholes.

"One night, as I strolled past him, he, without changing his attitude,
spoke to me unexpectedly. 'I have sent for a gun,' he said. 'I shall
have time to get her back and retreat before your Robles manages to
crawl up here.'

"He had sent for a gun to the plains.

"It was long in coming, but at last it came. It was a seven-pounder
field gun. Dismounted and lashed crosswise to two long poles, it had
been carried up the narrow paths between two mules with ease. His wild
cry of exultation at daybreak when he saw the gun escort emerge from the
valley rings in my ears now.

"But, senores, I have no words to depict his amazement, his fury, his
despair and distraction, when he heard that the animal loaded with the
gun-carriage had, during the last night march, somehow or other tumbled
down a precipice. He broke into menaces of death and torture against the
escort. I kept out of his way all that day, lying behind some bushes,
and wondering what he would do now. Retreat was left for him, but he
could not retreat.

"I saw below me his artillerist, Jorge, an old Spanish soldier, building
up a sort of structure with heaped-up saddles. The gun, ready loaded,
was lifted on to that, but in the act of firing the whole thing
collapsed and the shot flew high above the stockade.

"Nothing more was attempted. One of the ammunition mules had been lost,
too, and they had no more than six shots to fire; ample enough to batter
down the gate providing the gun was well laid. This was impossible
without it being properly mounted. There was no time nor means to
construct a carriage. Already every moment I expected to hear Robles'
bugle-calls echo amongst the crags.

"Peneleo, wandering about uneasily, draped in his skins, sat down for a
moment near me growling his usual tale.

"'Make an entrada--a hole. If make a hole, bueno. If not make a hole,
then vamos--we must go away.'

"After sunset I observed with surprise the Indians making preparations
as if for another assault. Their lines stood ranged in the shadows of
the mountains. On the plain in front of the fort gate I saw a group of
men swaying about in the same place.

"I walked down the ridge disregarded. The moonlight in the clear air
of the uplands was bright as day, but the intense shadows confused my
sight, and I could not make out what they were doing. I heard the voice
of Jorge, the artillerist, say in a queer, doubtful tone, 'It is loaded,
senor.'

"Then another voice in that group pronounced firmly the words, 'Bring
the riata here.' It was the voice of Gaspar Ruiz.

"A silence fell, in which the popping shots of the besieged garrison
rang out sharply. They, too, had observed the group. But the distance
was too great and in the spatter of spent musket-balls cutting up the
ground, the group opened, closed, swayed, giving me a glimpse of busy
stooping figures in its midst. I drew nearer, doubting whether this was
a weird vision, a suggestive and insensate dream.

"A strangely stifled voice commanded, 'Haul the hitches tighter.'

"'Si, senor,' several other voices answered in tones of awed alacrity.

"Then the stifled voice said: 'Like this. I must be free to breathe.'

"Then there was a concerned noise of many men together. 'Help him up,
hombres. Steady! Under the other arm.'

"That deadened voice ordered: 'Bueno! Stand away from me, men.'

"I pushed my way through the recoiling circle, and heard once more that
same oppressed voice saying earnestly: 'Forget that I am a living man,
Jorge. Forget me altogether, and think of what you have to do.'

"'Be without fear, senor. You are nothing to me but a gun-carriage, and
I shall not waste a shot.'

"I heard the spluttering of a port-fire, and smelt the saltpetre of the
match. I saw suddenly before me a nondescript shape on all fours like
a beast, but with a man's head drooping below a tubular projection over
the nape of the neck, and the gleam of a rounded mass of bronze on its
back.

"In front of a silent semicircle of men it squatted alone, with Jorge
behind it and a trumpeter motionless, his trumpet in his hand, by its
side.

"Jorge, bent double, muttered, port-fire in hand: 'An inch to the left,
senor. Too much. So. Now, if you let yourself down a little by letting
your elbows bend, I will . . .'

"He leaped aside, lowering his port-fire, and a burst of flame darted
out of the muzzle of the gun lashed on the man's back.

"Then Gaspar Ruiz lowered himself slowly. 'Good shot?' he asked.

"'Full on, senor.'

"'Then load again.'

"He lay there before me on his breast under the darkly glittering bronze
of his monstrous burden, such as no love or strength of man had ever
had to bear in the lamentable history of the world. His arms were spread
out, and he resembled a prostrate penitent on the moonlit ground.

"Again I saw him raised to his hands and knees and the men stand away
from him, and old Jorge stoop glancing along the gun.

"'Left a little. Right an inch. Por Dios, senor, stop this trembling.
Where is your strength?'

"The old gunner's voice was cracked with emotion. He stepped aside, and
quick as lightning brought the spark to the touch-hole.

"'Excellent!' he cried, tearfully; but Gaspar Ruiz lay for a long time
silent, flattened on the ground.

"'I am tired,' he murmured at last. 'Will another shot do it?'

"'Without doubt,' said Jorge, bending down to his ear.

"'Then--load,' I heard him utter distinctly. 'Trumpeter!'

"'I am here, senor, ready for your word.'

"'Blow a blast at this word that shall be heard from one end of Chile to
the other,' he said, in an extraordinarily strong voice. 'And you others
stand ready to cut this accursed riata, for then will be the time for me
to lead you in your rush. Now raise me up, and you, Jorge--be quick with
your aim.'

"The rattle of musketry from the fort nearly drowned his voice. The
palisade was wreathed in smoke and flame.

"'Exert your force forward against the recoil, mi amo,' said the old
gunner, shakily. 'Dig your fingers into the ground. So. Now!'

"A cry of exultation escaped him after the shot. The trumpeter raised
his trumpet nearly to his lips and waited. But no word came from the
prostrate man. I fell on one knee, and heard all he had to say then.

"'Something broken,' he whispered, lifting his head a little, and
turning his eyes towards me in his hopelessly crushed attitude.

"'The gate hangs only by the splinters,' yelled Jorge.

"Gaspar Ruiz tried to speak, but his voice died out in his throat, and I
helped to roll the gun off his broken back. He was insensible.

"I kept my lips shut, of course. The signal for the Indians to attack
was never given. Instead, the bugle-calls of the relieving force for
which my ears had thirsted so long, burst out, terrifying like the call
of the Last Day to our surprised enemies.

"A tornado, senores, a real hurricane of stampeded men, wild horses,
mounted Indians, swept over me as I cowered on the ground by the side
of Gaspar Ruiz, still stretched out on his face in the shape of a
cross. Peneleo, galloping for life, jabbed at me with his long chuso in
passing--for the sake of old acquaintance, I suppose. How I escaped the
flying lead is more difficult to explain. Venturing to rise on my knees
too soon some soldiers of the 17th Taltal regiment, in their hurry to
get at something alive, nearly bayoneted me on the spot. They looked
very disappointed, too, when, some officers galloping up drove them away
with the flat of their swords.

"It was General Robles with his staff. He wanted badly to make some
prisoners. He, too, seemed disappointed for a moment. 'What! Is it you?'
he cried. But he dismounted at once to embrace me, for he was an old
friend of my family. I pointed to the body at our feet, and said only
these two words:

"'Gaspar Ruiz.'

"He threw his arms up in astonishment.

"'Aha! Your strong man! Always to the last with your strong man. No
matter. He saved our lives when the earth trembled enough to make the
bravest faint with fear. I was frightened out of my wits. But he--no!
Que guape! Where's the hero who got the best of him? ha! ha! ha! What
killed him, chico?'

"'His own strength, General,' I answered."


XII


"But Gaspar Ruiz breathed yet. I had him carried in his poncho under the
shelter of some bushes on the very ridge from which he had been gazing
so fixedly at the fort while unseen death was hovering already over his
head.

"Our troops had bivouacked round the fort. Towards daybreak I was not
surprised to hear that I was designated to command the escort of a
prisoner who was to be sent down at once to Santiago. Of course the
prisoner was Gaspar Ruiz' wife.

"'I have named you out of regard for your feelings,' General Robles
remarked. 'Though the woman really ought to be shot for all the harm she
has done to the Republic.'

"And as I made a movement of shocked protest, he continued:

"'Now he is as well as dead, she is of no importance. Nobody will know
what to do with her. However, the Government wants her.' He shrugged his
shoulders. 'I suppose he must have buried large quantities of his loot
in places that she alone knows of.'

"At dawn I saw her coming up the ridge, guarded by two soldiers, and
carrying her child on her arm.

"I walked to meet her.

"'Is he living yet?' she asked, confronting me with that white,
impassive face he used to look at in an adoring way.

"I bent my head, and led her round a clump of bushes without a word. His
eyes were open. He breathed with difficulty, and uttered her name with a
great effort.

"'Erminia!'

"She knelt at his head. The little girl, unconscious of him, and with
her big eyes looking about, began to chatter suddenly, in a joyous, thin
voice. She pointed a tiny finger at the rosy glow of sunrise behind the
black shapes of the peaks. And while that child-talk, incomprehensible
and sweet to the ear, lasted, those two, the dying man and the kneeling
woman, remained silent, looking into each other's eyes, listening to the
frail sound. Then the prattle stopped. The child laid its head against
its mother's breast and was still.

"'It was for you,' he began. 'Forgive.' His voice failed him. Presently
I heard a mutter and caught the pitiful words: 'Not strong enough.'

"She looked at him with an extraordinary intensity. He tried to smile,
and in a humble tone, 'Forgive me,' he repeated. 'Leaving you . . .'

"She bent down, dry-eyed and in a steady voice: 'On all the earth I have
loved nothing but you, Gaspar,' she said.

"His head made a movement. His eyes revived. 'At last!' he sighed out.
Then, anxiously, 'But is this true . . . is this true?'

"'As true as that there is no mercy and justice in this world,' she
answered him, passionately. She stooped over his face. He tried to raise
his head, but it fell back, and when she kissed his lips he was already
dead. His glazed eyes stared at the sky, on which pink clouds floated
very high. But I noticed the eyelids of the child, pressed to its
mother's breast, droop and close slowly. She had gone to sleep.

"The widow of Gaspar Ruiz, the strong man, allowed me to lead her away
without shedding a tear.

"For travelling we had arranged for her a sidesaddle very much like a
chair, with a board swung beneath to rest her feet on. And the first day
she rode without uttering a word, and hardly for one moment turning her
eyes away from the little girl, whom she held on her knees. At our first
camp I saw her during the night walking about, rocking the child in
her arms and gazing down at it by the light of the moon. After we had
started on our second day's march she asked me how soon we should come
to the first village of the inhabited country.

"I said we should be there about noon.

"'And will there be women there?' she inquired.

"I told her that it was a large village. 'There will be men and women
there, senora,' I said, 'whose hearts shall be made glad by the news
that all the unrest and war is over now.'

"'Yes, it is all over now,' she repeated. Then, after a time: 'Senor
officer, what will your Government do with me?'

"'I do not know, senora,' I said. 'They will treat you well, no doubt.
We republicans are not savages and take no vengeance on women.'

"She gave me a look at the word 'republicans' which I imagined full of
undying hate. But an hour or so afterwards, as we drew up to let the
baggage mules go first along a narrow path skirting a precipice, she
looked at me with such a white, troubled face that I felt a great pity
for her.

"'Senor officer,' she said, 'I am weak, I tremble. It is an insensate
fear.' And indeed her lips did tremble while she tried to smile,
glancing at the beginning of the narrow path which was not so dangerous
after all. 'I am afraid I shall drop the child. Gaspar saved your life,
you remember. . . . Take her from me.'

"I took the child out of her extended arms. 'Shut your eyes, senora, and
trust to your mule,' I recommended.

"She did so, and with her pallor and her wasted, thin face she looked
deathlike. At a turn of the path where a great crag of purple porphyry
closes the view of the lowlands, I saw her open her eyes. I rode just
behind her holding the little girl with my right arm. 'The child is all
right,' I cried encouragingly.

"'Yes,' she answered, faintly; and then, to my intense terror, I saw her
stand up on the foot-rest, staring horribly, and throw herself forward
into the chasm on our right.

"I cannot describe to you the sudden and abject fear that came over me
at that dreadful sight. It was a dread of the abyss, the dread of the
crags which seemed to nod upon me. My head swam. I pressed the child to
my side and sat my horse as still as a statue. I was speechless and cold
all over. Her mule staggered, sidling close to the rock, and then went
on. My horse only pricked up his ears with a slight snort. My heart
stood still, and from the depths of the precipice the stones rattling in
the bed of the furious stream made me almost insane with their sound.

"Next moment we were round the turn and on a broad and grassy <DW72>. And
then I yelled. My men came running back to me in great alarm. It seems
that at first I did nothing but shout, 'She has given the child into my
hands! She has given the child into my hands!' The escort thought I had
gone mad."

General Santierra ceased and got up from the table. "And that is all,
senores," he concluded, with a courteous glance at his rising guests.

"But what became of the child. General?" we asked.

"Ah, the child, the child."

He walked to one of the windows opening on his beautiful garden, the
refuge of his old days. Its fame was great in the land. Keeping us back
with a raised arm, he called out, "Erminia, Erminia!" and waited. Then
his cautioning arm dropped, and we crowded to the windows.

From a clump of trees a woman had come upon the broad walk bordered
with flowers. We could hear the rustle of her starched petticoats and
observed the ample spread of her old-fashioned black silk skirt. She
looked up, and seeing all these eyes staring at her stopped, frowned,
smiled, shook her finger at the General, who was laughing boisterously,
and drawing the black lace on her head so as to partly conceal her
haughty profile, passed out of our sight, walking with stiff dignity.

"You have beheld the guardian angel of the old man--and her to whom
you owe all that is seemly and comfortable in my hospitality. Somehow,
senores, though the flame of love has been kindled early in my breast, I
have never married. And because of that perhaps the sparks of the sacred
fire are not yet extinct here." He struck his broad chest. "Still alive,
still alive," he said, with serio-comic emphasis. "But I shall not marry
now. She is General Santierra's adopted daughter and heiress."

One of our fellow-guests, a young naval officer, described her
afterwards as a "short, stout, old girl of forty or thereabouts." We had
all noticed that her hair was turning grey, and that she had very fine
black eyes.

"And," General Santierra continued, "neither would she ever hear of
marrying any one. A real calamity! Good, patient, devoted to the old
man. A simple soul. But I would not advise any of you to ask for her
hand, for if she took yours into hers it would be only to crush your
bones. Ah! she does not jest on that subject. And she is the own
daughter of her father, the strong man who perished through his own
strength: the strength of his body, of his simplicity--of his love!"




AN IRONIC TALE




THE INFORMER


Mr. X came to me, preceded by a letter of introduction from a good
friend of mine in Paris, specifically to see my collection of Chinese
bronzes and porcelain.

"My friend in Paris is a collector, too. He collects neither porcelain,
nor bronzes, nor pictures, nor medals, nor stamps, nor anything that
could be profitably dispersed under an auctioneer's hammer. He would
reject, with genuine surprise, the name of a collector. Nevertheless,
that's what he is by temperament. He collects acquaintances. It
is delicate work. He brings to it the patience, the passion, the
determination of a true collector of curiosities. His collection does
not contain any royal personages. I don't think he considers them
sufficiently rare and interesting; but, with that exception, he has met
with and talked to everyone worth knowing on any conceivable ground. He
observes them, listens to them, penetrates them, measures them, and puts
the memory away in the galleries of his mind. He has schemed, plotted,
and travelled all over Europe in order to add to his collection of
distinguished personal acquaintances.

"As he is wealthy, well connected, and unprejudiced, his collection is
pretty complete, including objects (or should I say subjects?) whose
value is unappreciated by the vulgar, and often unknown to popular fame.
Of trevolte of modern times. The world knows him as a revolutionary
writer whose savage irony has laid bare the rottenness of the most
respectable institutions. He has scalped every venerated head, and
has mangled at the stake of his wit every received opinion and every
recognized principle of conduct and policy. Who does not remember his
flaming red revolutionary pamphlets? Their sudden swarmings used to
overwhelm the powers of every Continental police like a plague of
crimson gadflies. But this extreme writer has been also the active
inspirer of secret societies, the mysterious unknown Number One of
desperate conspiracies suspected and unsuspected, matured or baffled.
And the world at large has never had an inkling of that fact! This
accounts for him going about amongst us to this day, a veteran of many
subterranean campaigns, standing aside now, safe within his reputation
of merely the greatest destructive publicist that ever lived."

Thus wrote my friend, adding that Mr. X was an enlightened connoisseur
of bronzes and china, and asking me to show him my collection.

X turned up in due course. My treasures are disposed in three large
rooms without carpets and curtains. There is no other furniture than the
etagres and the glass cases whose contents shall be worth a fortune to
my heirs. I allow no fires to be lighted, for fear of accidents, and a
fire-proof door separates them from the rest of the house.

It was a bitter cold day. We kept on our overcoats and hats.
Middle-sized and spare, his eyes alert in a long, Roman-nosed
countenance, X walked on his neat little feet, with short steps,
and looked at my collection intelligently. I hope I looked at him
intelligently, too. A snow-white moustache and imperial made his
nutbrown complexion appear darker than it really was. In his fur coat
and shiny tall hat that terrible man looked fashionable. I believe he
belonged to a noble family, and could have called himself Vicomte X de
la Z if he chose. We talked nothing but bronzes and porcelain. He was
remarkably appreciative. We parted on cordial terms.

Where he was staying I don't know. I imagine he must have been a lonely
man. Anarchists, I suppose, have no families--not, at any rate, as we
understand that social relation. Organization into families may answer
to a need of human nature, but in the last instance it is based on law,
and therefore must be something odious and impossible to an anarchist.
But, indeed, I don't understand anarchists. Does a man of that--of
that--persuasion still remain an anarchist when alone, quite alone and
going to bed, for instance? Does he lay his head on the pillow, pull
his bedclothes over him, and go to sleep with the necessity of the
chambardement general, as the French slang has it, of the general
blow-up, always present to his mind? And if so how can he? I am sure
that if such a faith (or such a fanaticism) once mastered my thoughts
I would never be able to compose myself sufficiently to sleep or eat or
perform any of the routine acts of daily life. I would want no wife, no
children; I could have no friends, it seems to me; and as to collecting
bronzes or china, that, I should say, would be quite out of the
question. But I don't know. All I know is that Mr. X took his meals in a
very good restaurant which I frequented also.

With his head uncovered, the silver top-knot of his brushed-up hair
completed the character of his physiognomy, all bony ridges and sunken
hollows, clothed in a perfect impassiveness of expression. His meagre
brown hands emerging from large white cuffs came and went breaking
bread, pouring wine, and so on, with quiet mechanical precision.
His head and body above the tablecloth had a rigid immobility. This
firebrand, this great agitator, exhibited the least possible amount of
warmth and animation. His voice was rasping, cold, and monotonous in a
low key. He could not be called a talkative personality; but with his
detached calm manner he appeared as ready to keep the conversation going
as to drop it at any moment.

And his conversation was by no means commonplace. To me, I own, there
was some excitement in talking quietly across a dinner-table with a
man whose venomous pen-stabs had sapped the vitality of at least one
monarchy. That much was a matter of public knowledge. But I knew more. I
knew of him--from my friend--as a certainty what the guardians of social
order in Europe had at most only suspected, or dimly guessed at.

He had had what I may call his underground life. And as I sat, evening
after evening, facing him at dinner, a curiosity in that direction
would naturally arise in my mind. I am a quiet and peaceable product of
civilization, and know no passion other than the passion for collecting
things which are rare, and must remain exquisite even if approaching to
the monstrous. Some Chinese bronzes are monstrously precious. And here
(out of my friend's collection), here I had before me a kind of rare
monster. It is true that this monster was polished and in a sense even
exquisite. His beautiful unruffled manner was that. But then he was
not of bronze. He was not even Chinese, which would have enabled one
to contemplate him calmly across the gulf of racial difference. He was
alive and European; he had the manner of good society, wore a coat and
hat like mine, and had pretty near the same taste in cooking. It was too
frightful to think of.

One evening he remarked, casually, in the course of conversation,
"There's no amendment to be got out of mankind except by terror and
violence."

You can imagine the effect of such a phrase out of such a man's mouth
upon a person like myself, whose whole scheme of life had been based
upon a suave and delicate discrimination of social and artistic values.
Just imagine! Upon me, to whom all sorts and forms of violence appeared
as unreal as the giants, ogres, and seven-headed hydras whose activities
affect, fantastically, the course of legends and fairy-tales!

I seemed suddenly to hear above the festive bustle and clatter of the
brilliant restaurant the mutter of a hungry and seditious multitude.

I suppose I am impressionable and imaginative. I had a disturbing
vision of darkness, full of lean jaws and wild eyes, amongst the hundred
electric lights of the place. But somehow this vision made me angry,
too. The sight of that man, so calm, breaking bits of white bread,
exasperated me. And I had the audacity to ask him how it was that the
starving proletariat of Europe to whom he had been preaching revolt and
violence had not been made indignant by his openly luxurious life. "At
all this," I said, pointedly, with a glance round the room and at the
bottle of champagne we generally shared between us at dinner.

He remained unmoved.

"Do I feed on their toil and their heart's blood? Am I a speculator or a
capitalist? Did I steal my fortune from a starving people? No! They
know this very well. And they envy me nothing. The miserable mass of the
people is generous to its leaders. What I have acquired has come to
me through my writings; not from the millions of pamphlets distributed
gratis to the hungry and the oppressed, but from the hundreds of
thousands of copies sold to the well-fed bourgeoisie. You know that my
writings were at one time the rage, the fashion--the thing to read with
wonder and horror, to turn your eyes up at my pathos . . . or else, to
laugh in ecstasies at my wit."

"Yes," I admitted. "I remember, of course; and I confess frankly that I
could never understand that infatuation."

"Don't you know yet," he said, "that an idle and selfish class loves to
see mischief being made, even if it is made at its own expense? Its own
life being all a matter of pose and gesture, it is unable to realize the
power and the danger of a real movement and of words that have no sham
meaning. It is all fun and sentiment. It is sufficient, for instance,
to point out the attitude of the old French aristocracy towards the
philosophers whose words were preparing the Great Revolution. Even in
England, where you have some common-sense, a demagogue has only to shout
loud enough and long enough to find some backing in the very class he
is shouting at. You, too, like to see mischief being made. The demagogue
carries the amateurs of emotion with him. Amateurism in this, that, and
the other thing is a delightfully easy way of killing time, and feeding
one's own vanity--the silly vanity of being abreast with the ideas of
the day after to-morrow. Just as good and otherwise harmless people will
join you in ecstasies over your collection without having the slightest
notion in what its marvellousness really consists."

I hung my head. It was a crushing illustration of the sad truth he
advanced. The world is full of such people. And that instance of the
French aristocracy before the Revolution was extremely telling, too.
I could not traverse his statement, though its cynicism--always a
distasteful trait--took off much of its value to my mind. However, I
admit I was impressed. I felt the need to say something which would not
be in the nature of assent and yet would not invite discussion.

"You don't mean to say," I observed, airily, "that extreme
revolutionists have ever been actively assisted by the infatuation of
such people?"

"I did not mean exactly that by what I said just now. I generalized.
But since you ask me, I may tell you that such help has been given
to revolutionary activities, more or less consciously, in various
countries. And even in this country."

"Impossible!" I protested with firmness. "We don't play with fire to
that extent."

"And yet you can better afford it than others, perhaps. But let me
observe that most women, if not always ready to play with fire, are
generally eager to play with a loose spark or so."

"Is this a joke?" I asked, smiling.

"If it is, I am not aware of it," he said, woodenly. "I was thinking of
an instance. Oh! mild enough in a way . . ."

I became all expectation at this. I had tried many times to approach him
on his underground side, so to speak. The very word had been pronounced
between us. But he had always met me with his impenetrable calm.

"And at the same time," Mr. X continued, "it will give you a notion
of the difficulties that may arise in what you are pleased to call
underground work. It is sometimes difficult to deal with them. Of course
there is no hierarchy amongst the affiliated. No rigid system."

My surprise was great, but short-lived. Clearly, amongst extreme
anarchists there could be no hierarchy; nothing in the nature of a
law of precedence. The idea of anarchy ruling among anarchists was
comforting, too. It could not possibly make for efficiency.

Mr. X startled me by asking, abruptly, "You know Hermione Street?"

I nodded doubtful assent. Hermione Street has been, within the last
three years, improved out of any man's knowledge. The name exists still,
but not one brick or stone of the old Hermione Street is left now. It
was the old street he meant, for he said:

"There was a row of two-storied brick houses on the left, with their
backs against the wing of a great public building--you remember. Would
it surprise you very much to hear that one of these houses was for
a time the centre of anarchist propaganda and of what you would call
underground action?"

"Not at all," I declared. Hermione Street had never been particularly
respectable, as I remembered it.

"The house was the property of a distinguished government official," he
added, sipping his champagne.

"Oh, indeed!" I said, this time not believing a word of it.

"Of course he was not living there," Mr. X continued. "But from ten till
four he sat next door to it, the dear man, in his well-appointed private
room in the wing of the public building I've mentioned. To be strictly
accurate, I must explain that the house in Hermione Street did not
really belong to him. It belonged to his grown-up children--a daughter
and a son. The girl, a fine figure, was by no means vulgarly pretty.
To more personal charm than mere youth could account for, she added
the seductive appearance of enthusiasm, of independence, of courageous
thought. I suppose she put on these appearances as she put on her
picturesque dresses and for the same reason: to assert her individuality
at any cost. You know, women would go to any length almost for such
a purpose. She went to a great length. She had acquired all the
appropriate gestures of revolutionary convictions--the gestures of pity,
of anger, of indignation against the anti-humanitarian vices of the
social class to which she belonged herself. All this sat on her striking
personality as well as her slightly original costumes. Very slightly
original; just enough to mark a protest against the philistinism of the
overfed taskmasters of the poor. Just enough, and no more. It would not
have done to go too far in that direction--you understand. But she was
of age, and nothing stood in the way of her offering her house to the
revolutionary workers."

"You don't mean it!" I cried.

"I assure you," he affirmed, "that she made that very practical gesture.
How else could they have got hold of it? The cause is not rich.
And, moreover, there would have been difficulties with any ordinary
house-agent, who would have wanted references and so on. The group she
came in contact with while exploring the poor quarters of the town
(you know the gesture of charity and personal service which was so
fashionable some years ago) accepted with gratitude. The first advantage
was that Hermione Street is, as you know, well away from the suspect
part of the town, specially watched by the police.

"The ground floor consisted of a little Italian restaurant, of the
flyblown sort. There was no difficulty in buying the proprietor out. A
woman and a man belonging to the group took it on. The man had been a
cook. The comrades could get their meals there, unnoticed amongst
the other customers. This was another advantage. The first floor was
occupied by a shabby Variety Artists' Agency--an agency for performers
in inferior music-halls, you know. A fellow called Bomm, I remember. He
was not disturbed. It was rather favourable than otherwise to have a lot
of foreign-looking people, jugglers, acrobats, singers of both sexes,
and so on, going in and out all day long. The police paid no attention
to new faces, you see. The top floor happened, most conveniently, to
stand empty then."

X interrupted himself to attack impassively, with measured movements,
a bombe glacee which the waiter had just set down on the table. He
swallowed carefully a few spoonfuls of the iced sweet, and asked me,
"Did you ever hear of Stone's Dried Soup?"

"Hear of what?"

"It was," X pursued, evenly, "a comestible article once rather
prominently advertised in the dailies, but which never, somehow, gained
the favour of the public. The enterprise fizzled out, as you say here.
Parcels of their stock could be picked up at auctions at considerably
less than a penny a pound. The group bought some of it, and an agency
for Stone's Dried Soup was started on the top floor. A perfectly
respectable business. The stuff, a yellow powder of extremely
unappetizing aspect, was put up in large square tins, of which six went
to a case. If anybody ever came to give an order, it was, of course,
executed. But the advantage of the powder was this, that things could be
concealed in it very conveniently. Now and then a special case got put
on a van and sent off to be exported abroad under the very nose of the
policeman on duty at the corner. You understand?"

"I think I do," I said, with an expressive nod at the remnants of the
bombe melting slowly in the dish.

"Exactly. But the cases were useful in another way, too. In the
basement, or in the cellar at the back, rather, two printing-presses
were established. A lot of revolutionary literature of the most
inflammatory kind was got away from the house in Stone's Dried Soup
cases. The brother of our anarchist young lady found some occupation
there. He wrote articles, helped to set up type and pull off the sheets,
and generally assisted the man in charge, a very able young fellow
called Sevrin.

"The guiding spirit of that group was a fanatic of social revolution. He
is dead now. He was an engraver and etcher of genius. You must have seen
his work. It is much sought after by certain amateurs now. He began by
being revolutionary in his art, and ended by becoming a revolutionist,
after his wife and child had died in want and misery. He used to say
that the bourgeoisie, the smug, overfed lot, had killed them. That was
his real belief. He still worked at his art and led a double life. He
was tall, gaunt, and swarthy, with a long, brown beard and deep-set
eyes. You must have seen him. His name was Horne."

At this I was really startled. Of course years ago I used to meet Horne
about. He looked like a powerful, rough gipsy, in an old top hat, with a
red muffler round his throat and buttoned up in a long, shabby overcoat.
He talked of his art with exaltation, and gave one the impression of
being strung up to the verge of insanity. A small group of connoisseurs
appreciated his work. Who would have thought that this man. . . .
Amazing! And yet it was not, after all, so difficult to believe.

"As you see," X went on, "this group was in a position to pursue
its work of propaganda, and the other kind of work, too, under very
advantageous conditions. They were all resolute, experienced men of
a superior stamp. And yet we became struck at length by the fact that
plans prepared in Hermione Street almost invariably failed."

"Who were 'we'?" I asked, pointedly.

"Some of us in Brussels--at the centre," he said, hastily. "Whatever
vigorous action originated in Hermione Street seemed doomed to failure.
Something always happened to baffle the best planned manifestations in
every part of Europe. It was a time of general activity. You must not
imagine that all our failures are of a loud sort, with arrests and
trials. That is not so. Often the police work quietly, almost secretly,
defeating our combinations by clever counter-plotting. No arrests, no
noise, no alarming of the public mind and inflaming the passions. It
is a wise procedure. But at that time the police were too uniformly
successful from the Mediterranean to the Baltic. It was annoying and
began to look dangerous. At last we came to the conclusion that there
must be some untrustworthy elements amongst the London groups. And I
came over to see what could be done quietly.

"My first step was to call upon our young Lady Amateur of anarchism at
her private house. She received me in a flattering way. I judged that
she knew nothing of the chemical and other operations going on at
the top of the house in Hermione Street. The printing of anarchist
literature was the only 'activity' she seemed to be aware of there. She
was displaying very strikingly the usual signs of severe enthusiasm,
and had already written many sentimental articles with ferocious
conclusions. I could see she was enjoying herself hugely, with all the
gestures and grimaces of deadly earnestness. They suited her big-eyed,
broad-browed face and the good carriage of her shapely head, crowned by
a magnificent lot of brown hair done in an unusual and becoming style.
Her brother was in the room, too, a serious youth, with arched eyebrows
and wearing a red necktie, who struck me as being absolutely in the dark
about everything in the world, including himself. By and by a tall young
man came in. He was clean-shaved with a strong bluish jaw and something
of the air of a taciturn actor or of a fanatical priest: the type with
thick black eyebrows--you know. But he was very presentable indeed. He
shook hands at once vigorously with each of us. The young lady came up
to me and murmured sweetly, 'Comrade Sevrin.'

"I had never seen him before. He had little to say to us, but sat
down by the side of the girl, and they fell at once into earnest
conversation. She leaned forward in her deep armchair, and took her
nicely rounded chin in her beautiful white hand. He looked attentively
into her eyes. It was the attitude of love-making, serious, intense, as
if on the brink of the grave. I suppose she felt it necessary to
round and complete her assumption of advanced ideas, of revolutionary
lawlessness, by making believe to be in love with an anarchist. And this
one, I repeat, was extremely presentable, notwithstanding his fanatical
black-browed aspect. After a few stolen glances in their direction, I
had no doubt that he was in earnest. As to the lady, her gestures
were unapproachable, better than the very thing itself in the blended
suggestion of dignity, sweetness, condescension, fascination, surrender,
and reserve. She interpreted her conception of what that precise sort
of love-making should be with consummate art. And so far, she, too, no
doubt, was in earnest. Gestures--but so perfect!

"After I had been left alone with our Lady Amateur I informed her
guardedly of the object of my visit. I hinted at our suspicions. I
wanted to hear what she would have to say, and half expected some
perhaps unconscious revelation. All she said was, 'That's serious,'
looking delightfully concerned and grave. But there was a sparkle in her
eyes which meant plainly, 'How exciting!' After all, she knew little
of anything except of words. Still, she undertook to put me in
communication with Horne, who was not easy to find unless in Hermione
Street, where I did not wish to show myself just then.

"I met Horne. This was another kind of a fanatic altogether. I exposed
to him the conclusion we in Brussels had arrived at, and pointed out
the significant series of failures. To this he answered with irrelevant
exaltation:

"'I have something in hand that shall strike terror into the heart of
these gorged brutes.'

"And then I learned that, by excavating in one of the cellars of the
house, he and some companions had made their way into the vaults under
the great public building I have mentioned before. The blowing up of a
whole wing was a certainty as soon as the materials were ready.

"I was not so appalled at the stupidity of that move as I might have
been had not the usefulness of our centre in Hermione Street become
already very problematical. In fact, in my opinion it was much more of a
police trap by this time than anything else.

"What was necessary now was to discover what, or rather who, was wrong,
and I managed at last to get that idea into Horne's head. He glared,
perplexed, his nostrils working as if he were sniffing treachery in the
air.

"And here comes a piece of work which will no doubt strike you as a sort
of theatrical expedient. And yet what else could have been done? The
problem was to find out the untrustworthy member of the group. But no
suspicion could be fastened on one more than another. To set a watch
upon them all was not very practicable. Besides, that proceeding often
fails. In any case, it takes time, and the danger was pressing. I felt
certain that the premises in Hermione Street would be ultimately raided,
though the police had evidently such confidence in the informer that the
house, for the time being, was not even watched. Horne was positive
on that point. Under the circumstances it was an unfavourable symptom.
Something had to be done quickly.

"I decided to organize a raid myself upon the group. Do you understand?
A raid of other trusty comrades personating the police. A conspiracy
within a conspiracy. You see the object of it, of course. When
apparently about to be arrested I hoped the informer would betray
himself in some way or other; either by some unguarded act or simply by
his unconcerned demeanour, for instance. Of coarse there was the risk
of complete failure and the no lesser risk of some fatal accident in the
course of resistance, perhaps, or in the efforts at escape. For, as
you will easily see, the Hermione Street group had to be actually and
completely taken unawares, as I was sure they would be by the real
police before very long. The informer was amongst them, and Horne alone
could be let into the secret of my plan.

"I will not enter into the detail of my preparations. It was not very
easy to arrange, but it was done very well, with a really convincing
effect. The sham police invaded the restaurant, whose shutters were
immediately put up. The surprise was perfect. Most of the Hermione
Street party were found in the second cellar, enlarging the hole
communicating with the vaults of the great public building. At the first
alarm, several comrades bolted through impulsively into the aforesaid
vault, where, of course, had this been a genuine raid, they would have
been hopelessly trapped. We did not bother about them for the moment.
They were harmless enough. The top floor caused considerable anxiety
to Horne and myself. There, surrounded by tins of Stone's Dried Soup,
a comrade, nick-named the Professor (he was an ex-science student)
was engaged in perfecting some new detonators. He was an abstracted,
self-confident, sallow little man, armed with large round spectacles,
and we were afraid that under a mistaken impression he would blow
himself up and wreck the house about our ears. I rushed upstairs and
found him already at the door, on the alert, listening, as he said, to
'suspicious noises down below.' Before I had quite finished explaining
to him what was going on he shrugged his shoulders disdainfully and
turned away to his balances and test-tubes. His was the true spirit
of an extreme revolutionist. Explosives were his faith, his hope, his
weapon, and his shield. He perished a couple of years afterwards in a
secret laboratory through the premature explosion of one of his improved
detonators.

"Hurrying down again, I found an impressive scene in the gloom of the
big cellar. The man who personated the inspector (he was no stranger
to the part) was speaking harshly, and giving bogus orders to his
bogus subordinates for the removal of his prisoners. Evidently nothing
enlightening had happened so far. Horne, saturnine and swarthy, waited
with folded arms, and his patient, moody expectation had an air of
stoicism well in keeping with the situation. I detected in the shadows
one of the Hermione Street group surreptitiously chewing up and
swallowing a small piece of paper. Some compromising scrap, I suppose;
perhaps just a note of a few names and addresses. He was a true and
faithful 'companion.' But the fund of secret malice which lurks at the
bottom of our sympathies caused me to feel amused at that perfectly
uncalled-for performance.

"In every other respect the risky experiment, the theatrical coup, if you
like to call it so, seemed to have failed. The deception could not
be kept up much longer; the explanation would bring about a very
embarrassing and even grave situation. The man who had eaten the paper
would be furious. The fellows who had bolted away would be angry, too.

"To add to my vexation, the door communicating with the other cellar,
where the printing-presses were, flew open, and our young lady
revolutionist appeared, a black silhouette in a close-fitting dress and
a large hat, with the blaze of gas flaring in there at her back. Over
her shoulder I perceived the arched eyebrows and the red necktie of her
brother.

"The last people in the world I wanted to see then! They had gone that
evening to some amateur concert for the delectation of the poor people,
you know; but she had insisted on leaving early, on purpose to call in
Hermione Street on the way home, under the pretext of having some work
to do. Her usual task was to correct the proofs of the Italian and
French editions of the Alarm Bell and the Firebrand." . . .

"Heavens!" I murmured. I had been shown once a few copies of these
publications. Nothing, in my opinion, could have been less fit for the
eyes of a young lady. They were the most advanced things of the sort;
advanced, I mean, beyond all bounds of reason and decency. One of them
preached the dissolution of all social and domestic ties; the other
advocated systematic murder. To think of a young girl calmly tracking
printers' errors all along the sort of abominable sentences I remembered
was intolerable to my sentiment of womanhood. Mr. X, after giving me a
glance, pursued steadily.

"I think, however, that she came mostly to exercise her fascinations
upon Sevrin, and to receive his homage in her queenly and condescending
way. She was aware of both--her power and his homage--and enjoyed them
with, I dare say, complete innocence. We have no ground in expediency
or morals to quarrel with her on that account. Charm in woman and
exceptional intelligence in man are a law unto themselves. Is it not
so?"

I refrained from expressing my abhorrence of that licentious doctrine
because of my curiosity.

"But what happened then?" I hastened to ask.

X went on crumbling slowly a small piece of bread with a careless left
hand.

"What happened, in effect," he confessed, "is that she saved the
situation."

"She gave you an opportunity to end your rather sinister farce," I
suggested.

"Yes," he said, preserving his impassive bearing. "The farce was bound
to end soon. And it ended in a very few minutes. And it ended well. Had
she not come in, it might have ended badly. Her brother, of course, did
not count. They had slipped into the house quietly some time before. The
printing-cellar had an entrance of its own. Not finding any one there,
she sat down to her proofs, expecting Sevrin to return to his work at
any moment. He did not do so. She grew impatient, heard through the door
the sounds of a disturbance in the other cellar and naturally came in to
see what was the matter.

"Sevrin had been with us. At first he had seemed to me the most amazed
of the whole raided lot. He appeared for an instant as if paralyzed
with astonishment. He stood rooted to the spot. He never moved a limb. A
solitary gas-jet flared near his head; all the other lights had been put
out at the first alarm. And presently, from my dark corner, I observed
on his shaven actor's face an expression of puzzled, vexed watchfulness.
He knitted his heavy eyebrows. The corners of his mouth dropped
scornfully. He was angry. Most likely he had seen through the game,
and I regretted I had not taken him from the first into my complete
confidence.

"But with the appearance of the girl he became obviously alarmed. It was
plain. I could see it grow. The change of his expression was swift and
startling. And I did not know why. The reason never occurred to me. I
was merely astonished at the extreme alteration of the man's face. Of
course he had not been aware of her presence in the other cellar; but
that did not explain the shock her advent had given him. For a moment he
seemed to have been reduced to imbecility. He opened his mouth as if to
shout, or perhaps only to gasp. At any rate, it was somebody else who
shouted. This somebody else was the heroic comrade whom I had detected
swallowing a piece of paper. With laudable presence of mind he let out a
warning yell.

"'It's the police! Back! Back! Run back, and bolt the door behind you.'

"It was an excellent hint; but instead of retreating the girl continued
to advance, followed by her long-faced brother in his knickerbocker suit,
in which he had been singing comic songs for the entertainment of
a joyless proletariat. She advanced not as if she had failed to
understand--the word 'police' has an unmistakable sound--but rather as
if she could not help herself. She did not advance with the free gait
and expanding presence of a distinguished amateur anarchist amongst
poor, struggling professionals, but with slightly raised shoulders,
and her elbows pressed close to her body, as if trying to shrink within
herself. Her eyes were fixed immovably upon Sevrin. Sevrin the man, I
fancy; not Sevrin the anarchist. But she advanced. And that was natural.
For all their assumption of independence, girls of that class are used
to the feeling of being specially protected, as, in fact, they are. This
feeling accounts for nine tenths of their audacious gestures. Her face
had gone completely colourless. Ghastly. Fancy having it brought home to
her so brutally that she was the sort of person who must run away from
the police! I believe she was pale with indignation, mostly, though
there was, of course, also the concern for her intact personality, a
vague dread of some sort of rudeness. And, naturally, she turned to a
man, to the man on whom she had a claim of fascination and homage--the
man who could not conceivably fail her at any juncture."

"But," I cried, amazed at this analysis, "if it had been serious, real,
I mean--as she thought it was--what could she expect him to do for her?"

X never moved a muscle of his face.

"Goodness knows. I imagine that this charming, generous, and independent
creature had never known in her life a single genuine thought; I mean a
single thought detached from small human vanities, or whose source was
not in some conventional perception. All I know is that after advancing
a few steps she extended her hand towards the motionless Sevrin. And
that at least was no gesture. It was a natural movement. As to what
she expected him to do, who can tell? The impossible. But whatever she
expected, it could not have come up, I am safe to say, to what he had
made up his mind to do, even before that entreating hand had appealed to
him so directly. It had not been necessary. From the moment he had seen
her enter that cellar, he had made up his mind to sacrifice his future
usefulness, to throw off the impenetrable, solidly fastened mask it had
been his pride to wear--"

"What do you mean?" I interrupted, puzzled. "Was it Sevrin, then, who
was--"

"He was. The most persistent, the most dangerous, the craftiest, the
most systematic of informers. A genius amongst betrayers. Fortunately
for us, he was unique. The man was a fanatic, I have told you.
Fortunately, again, for us, he had fallen in love with the accomplished
and innocent gestures of that girl. An actor in desperate earnest
himself, he must have believed in the absolute value of conventional
signs. As to the grossness of the trap into which he fell, the
explanation must be that two sentiments of such absorbing magnitude
cannot exist simultaneously in one heart. The danger of that other and
unconscious comedian robbed him of his vision, of his perspicacity, of
his judgment. Indeed, it did at first rob him of his self-possession.
But he regained that through the necessity--as it appeared to him
imperiously--to do something at once. To do what? Why, to get her out of
the house as quickly as possible. He was desperately anxious to do that.
I have told you he was terrified. It could not be about himself. He had
been surprised and annoyed at a move quite unforeseen and premature. I
may even say he had been furious. He was accustomed to arrange the
last scene of his betrayals with a deep, subtle art which left his
revolutionist reputation untouched. But it seems clear to me that at
the same time he had resolved to make the best of it, to keep his mask
resolutely on. It was only with the discovery of her being in the house
that everything--the forced calm, the restraint of his fanaticism, the
mask--all came off together in a kind of panic. Why panic, do you ask?
The answer is very simple. He remembered--or, I dare say, he had never
forgotten--the Professor alone at the top of the house, pursuing his
researches, surrounded by tins upon tins of Stone's Dried Soup. There
was enough in some few of them to bury us all where we stood under
a heap of bricks. Sevrin, of course, was aware of that. And we must
believe, also, that he knew the exact character of the man. He had
gauged so many such characters! Or perhaps he only gave the Professor
credit for what he himself was capable of. But, in any case, the effect
was produced. And suddenly he raised his voice in authority.

"'Get the lady away at once.'

"It turned out that he was as hoarse as a crow; result, no doubt, of
the intense emotion. It passed off in a moment. But these fateful words
issued forth from his contracted throat in a discordant, ridiculous
croak. They required no answer. The thing was done. However, the man
personating the inspector judged it expedient to say roughly:

"'She shall go soon enough, together with the rest of you.'

"These were the last words belonging to the comedy part of this affair.

"Oblivious of everything and everybody, Sevrin strode towards him and
seized the lapels of his coat. Under his thin bluish cheeks one could
see his jaws working with passion.

"'You have men posted outside. Get the lady taken home at once. Do you
hear? Now. Before you try to get hold of the man upstairs.'

"'Oh! There is a man upstairs,' scoffed the other, openly. 'Well, he
shall be brought down in time to see the end of this.'

"But Sevrin, beside himself, took no heed of the tone.

"'Who's the imbecile meddler who sent you blundering here? Didn't you
understand your instructions? Don't you know anything? It's incredible.
Here--'

"He dropped the lapels of the coat and, plunging his hand into his
breast, jerked feverishly at something under his shirt. At last he
produced a small square pocket of soft leather, which must have been
hanging like a scapulary from his neck by the tape whose broken ends
dangled from his fist.

"'Look inside,' he spluttered, flinging it in the other's face. And
instantly he turned round towards the girl. She stood just behind him,
perfectly still and silent. Her set, white face gave an illusion of
placidity. Only her staring eyes seemed bigger and darker.

"He spoke rapidly, with nervous assurance. I heard him distinctly
promise her to make everything as clear as daylight presently. But that
was all I caught. He stood close to her, never attempting to touch her
even with the tip of his little finger--and she stared at him stupidly.
For a moment, however, her eyelids descended slowly, pathetically,
and then, with the long black eyelashes lying on her white cheeks, she
looked ready to fall down in a swoon. But she never even swayed where
she stood. He urged her loudly to follow him at once, and walked towards
the door at the bottom of the cellar stairs without looking behind him.
And, as a matter of fact, she did move after him a pace or two. But,
of course, he was not allowed to reach the door. There were angry
exclamations, a short, fierce scuffle. Flung away violently, he came
flying backwards upon her, and fell. She threw out her arms in a gesture
of dismay and stepped aside, just clear of his head, which struck the
ground heavily near her shoe.

"He grunted with the shock. By the time he had picked himself up,
slowly, dazedly, he was awake to the reality of things. The man into
whose hands he had thrust the leather case had extracted therefrom a
narrow strip of bluish paper. He held it up above his head, and, as
after the scuffle an expectant uneasy stillness reigned once more, he
threw it down disdainfully with the words, 'I think, comrades, that this
proof was hardly necessary.'

"Quick as thought, the girl stooped after the fluttering slip. Holding
it spread out in both hands, she looked at it; then, without raising her
eyes, opened her fingers slowly and let it fall.

"I examined that curious document afterwards. It was signed by a very
high personage, and stamped and countersigned by other high officials
in various countries of Europe. In his trade--or shall I say, in his
mission?--that sort of talisman might have been necessary, no doubt.
Even to the police itself--all but the heads--he had been known only as
Sevrin the noted anarchist.

"He hung his head, biting his lower lip. A change had come over him,
a sort of thoughtful, absorbed calmness. Nevertheless, he panted. His
sides worked visibly, and his nostrils expanded and collapsed in weird
contrast with his sombre aspect of a fanatical monk in a meditative
attitude, but with something, too, in his face of an actor intent upon
the terrible exigencies of his part. Before him Horne declaimed, haggard
and bearded, like an inspired denunciatory prophet from a wilderness.
Two fanatics. They were made to understand each other. Does this
surprise you? I suppose you think that such people would be foaming at
the mouth and snarling at each other?"

I protested hastily that I was not surprised in the least; that I
thought nothing of the kind; that anarchists in general were simply
inconceivable to me mentally, morally, logically, sentimentally, and
even physically. X received this declaration with his usual woodenness
and went on.

"Horne had burst out into eloquence. While pouring out scornful
invective, he let tears escape from his eyes and roll down his black
beard unheeded. Sevrin panted quicker and quicker. When he opened his
mouth to speak, everyone hung on his words.

"'Don't be a fool, Horne,' he began. 'You know very well that I have
done this for none of the reasons you are throwing at me.' And in a
moment he became outwardly as steady as a rock under the other's lurid
stare. 'I have been thwarting, deceiving, and betraying you--from
conviction.'

"He turned his back on Horne, and addressing the girl, repeated the
words: 'From conviction.'

"It's extraordinary how cold she looked. I suppose she could not think
of any appropriate gesture. There can have been few precedents indeed
for such a situation.

"'Clear as daylight,' he added. 'Do you understand what that means? From
conviction.'

"And still she did not stir. She did not know what to do. But the
luckless wretch was about to give her the opportunity for a beautiful
and correct gesture.

"'I have felt in me the power to make you share this conviction,' he
protested, ardently. He had forgotten himself; he made a step towards
her--perhaps he stumbled. To me he seemed to be stooping low as if to
touch the hem of her garment. And then the appropriate gesture came. She
snatched her skirt away from his polluting contact and averted her
head with an upward tilt. It was magnificently done, this gesture of
conventionally unstained honour, of an unblemished high-minded amateur.

"Nothing could have been better. And he seemed to think so, too, for
once more he turned away. But this time he faced no one. He was again
panting frightfully, while he fumbled hurriedly in his waistcoat pocket,
and then raised his hand to his lips. There was something furtive in
this movement, but directly afterwards his bearing changed. His laboured
breathing gave him a resemblance to a man who had just run a desperate
race; but a curious air of detachment, of sudden and profound
indifference, replaced the strain of the striving effort. The race was
over. I did not want to see what would happen next. I was only too well
aware. I tucked the young lady's arm under mine without a word, and made
my way with her to the stairs.

"Her brother walked behind us. Half-way up the short flight she seemed
unable to lift her feet high enough for the steps, and we had to pull
and push to get her to the top. In the passage she dragged herself
along, hanging on my arm, helplessly bent like an old woman. We issued
into an empty street through a half-open door, staggering like besotted
revellers. At the corner we stopped a four-wheeler, and the ancient
driver looked round from his box with morose scorn at our efforts to get
her in. Twice during the drive I felt her collapse on my shoulder in a
half faint. Facing us, the youth in knickerbockers remained as mute as a
fish, and, till he jumped out with the latch-key, sat more still than I
would have believed it possible.

"At the door of their drawing-room she left my arm and walked in first,
catching at the chairs and tables. She unpinned her hat, then, exhausted
with the effort, her cloak still hanging from her shoulders, flung
herself into a deep armchair, sideways, her face half buried in a
cushion. The good brother appeared silently before her with a glass of
water. She motioned it away. He drank it himself and walked off to a
distant corner--behind the grand piano, somewhere. All was still in this
room where I had seen, for the first time, Sevrin, the anti-anarchist,
captivated and spellbound by the consummate and hereditary grimaces that
in a certain sphere of life take the place of feelings with an excellent
effect. I suppose her thoughts were busy with the same memory. Her
shoulders shook violently. A pure attack of nerves. When it quieted down
she affected firmness, 'What is done to a man of that sort? What will
they do to him?'

"'Nothing. They can do nothing to him,' I assured her, with perfect
truth. I was pretty certain he had died in less than twenty minutes
from the moment his hand had gone to his lips. For if his fanatical
anti-anarchism went even as far as carrying poison in his pocket, only to
rob his adversaries of legitimate vengeance, I knew he would take care
to provide something that would not fail him when required.

"She drew an angry breath. There were red spots on her cheeks and a
feverish brilliance in her eyes.

"'Has ever any one been exposed to such a terrible experience? To think
that he had held my hand! That man!' Her face twitched, she gulped down
a pathetic sob. 'If I ever felt sure of anything, it was of Sevrin's
high-minded motives.'

"Then she began to weep quietly, which was good for her. Then through
her flood of tears, half resentful, 'What was it he said to me?--"From
conviction!" It seemed a vile mockery. What could he mean by it?'

"'That, my dear young lady,' I said, gently, 'is more than I or anybody
else can ever explain to you.'"

Mr. X flicked a crumb off the front of his coat.

"And that was strictly true as to her. Though Horne, for instance,
understood very well; and so did I, especially after we had been to
Sevrin's lodging in a dismal back street of an intensely respectable
quarter. Horne was known there as a friend, and we had no difficulty in
being admitted, the slatternly maid merely remarking, as she let us in,
that 'Mr Sevrin had not been home that night.' We forced open a couple
of drawers in the way of duty, and found a little useful information.
The most interesting part was his diary; for this man, engaged in such
deadly work, had the weakness to keep a record of the most damnatory
kind. There were his acts and also his thoughts laid bare to us. But the
dead don't mind that. They don't mind anything.

"'From conviction.' Yes. A vague but ardent humanitarianism had urged
him in his first youth into the bitterest extremity of negation and
revolt. Afterwards his optimism flinched. He doubted and became lost.
You have heard of converted atheists. These turn often into dangerous
fanatics, but the soul remains the same. After he had got acquainted
with the girl, there are to be met in that diary of his very queer
politico-amorous rhapsodies. He took her sovereign grimaces with deadly
seriousness. He longed to convert her. But all this cannot interest you.
For the rest, I don't know if you remember--it is a good many years ago
now--the journalistic sensation of the 'Hermione Street Mystery'; the
finding of a man's body in the cellar of an empty house; the inquest;
some arrests; many surmises--then silence--the usual end for many
obscure martyrs and confessors. The fact is, he was not enough of an
optimist. You must be a savage, tyrannical, pitiless, thick-and-thin
optimist, like Horne, for instance, to make a good social rebel of the
extreme type.

"He rose from the table. A waiter hurried up with his overcoat; another
held his hat in readiness.

"But what became of the young lady?" I asked.

"Do you really want to know?" he said, buttoning himself in his fur coat
carefully. "I confess to the small malice of sending her Sevrin's diary.
She went into retirement; then she went to Florence; then she went into
retreat in a convent. I can't tell where she will go next. What does it
matter? Gestures! Gestures! Mere gestures of her class."

"He fitted on his glossy high hat with extreme precision, and casting
a rapid glance round the room, full of well-dressed people, innocently
dining, muttered between his teeth:

"And nothing else! That is why their kind is fated to perish."

"I never met Mr. X again after that evening. I took to dining at my club.
On my next visit to Paris I found my friend all impatience to hear of
the effect produced on me by this rare item of his collection. I
told him all the story, and he beamed on me with the pride of his
distinguished specimen.

"'Isn't X well worth knowing?' he bubbled over in great delight. 'He's
unique, amazing, absolutely terrific.'

"His enthusiasm grated upon my finer feelings. I told him curtly that the
man's cynicism was simply abominable.

"'Oh, abominable! abominable!' assented my friend, effusively. 'And then,
you know, he likes to have his little joke sometimes,' he added in a
confidential tone.

"I fail to understand the connection of this last remark. I have been
utterly unable to discover where in all this the joke comes in."




AN INDIGNANT TALE


THE BRUTE


Dodging in from the rain-swept street, I exchanged a smile and a
glance with Miss Blank in the bar of the Three Crows. This exchange was
effected with extreme propriety. It is a shock to think that, if still
alive, Miss Blank must be something over sixty now. How time passes!

Noticing my gaze directed inquiringly at the partition of glass and
varnished wood, Miss Blank was good enough to say, encouragingly:

"Only Mr. Jermyn and Mr. Stonor in the parlour with another gentleman
I've never seen before."

I moved towards the parlour door. A voice discoursing on the other side
(it was but a matchboard partition), rose so loudly that the concluding
words became quite plain in all their atrocity.

"That fellow Wilmot fairly dashed her brains out, and a good job, too!"

This inhuman sentiment, since there was nothing profane or improper
in it, failed to do as much as to check the slight yawn Miss Blank
was achieving behind her hand. And she remained gazing fixedly at the
window-panes, which streamed with rain.

As I opened the parlour door the same voice went on in the same cruel
strain:

"I was glad when I heard she got the knock from somebody at last. Sorry
enough for poor Wilmot, though. That man and I used to be chums at one
time. Of course that was the end of him. A clear case if there ever was
one. No way out of it. None at all."

The voice belonged to the gentleman Miss Blank had never seen before. He
straddled his long legs on the hearthrug. Jermyn, leaning forward,
held his pocket-handkerchief spread out before the grate. He looked back
dismally over his shoulder, and as I slipped behind one of the
little wooden tables, I nodded to him. On the other side of the fire,
imposingly calm and large, sat Mr. Stonor, jammed tight into a capacious
Windsor armchair. There was nothing small about him but his short, white
side-whiskers. Yards and yards of extra superfine blue cloth (made up
into an overcoat) reposed on a chair by his side. And he must just have
brought some liner from sea, because another chair was smothered under
his black waterproof, ample as a pall, and made of three-fold oiled
silk, double-stitched throughout. A man's hand-bag of the usual size
looked like a child's toy on the floor near his feet.

I did not nod to him. He was too big to be nodded to in that parlour.
He was a senior Trinity pilot and condescended to take his turn in the
cutter only during the summer months. He had been many times in charge
of royal yachts in and out of Port Victoria. Besides, it's no use
nodding to a monument. And he was like one. He didn't speak, he didn't
budge. He just sat there, holding his handsome old head up, immovable,
and almost bigger than life. It was extremely fine. Mr. Stonor's
presence reduced poor old Jermyn to a mere shabby wisp of a man, and
made the talkative stranger in tweeds on the hearthrug look absurdly
boyish. The latter must have been a few years over thirty, and was
certainly not the sort of individual that gets abashed at the sound
of his own voice, because gathering me in, as it were, by a friendly
glance, he kept it going without a check.

"I was glad of it," he repeated, emphatically. "You may be surprised at
it, but then you haven't gone through the experience I've had of her.
I can tell you, it was something to remember. Of course, I got off scot
free myself--as you can see. She did her best to break up my pluck for
me tho'. She jolly near drove as fine a fellow as ever lived into a
madhouse. What do you say to that--eh?"

Not an eyelid twitched in Mr. Stonor's enormous face. Monumental! The
speaker looked straight into my eyes.

"It used to make me sick to think of her going about the world murdering
people."

Jermyn approached the handkerchief a little nearer to the grate and
groaned. It was simply a habit he had.

"I've seen her once," he declared, with mournful indifference. "She had
a house--"

The stranger in tweeds turned to stare down at him, surprised.

"She had three houses," he corrected, authoritatively. But Jermyn was
not to be contradicted.

"She had a house, I say," he repeated, with dismal obstinacy. "A great,
big, ugly, white thing. You could see it from miles away--sticking up."

"So you could," assented the other readily. "It was old Colchester's
notion, though he was always threatening to give her up. He couldn't
stand her racket any more, he declared; it was too much of a good
thing for him; he would wash his hands of her, if he never got hold of
another--and so on. I daresay he would have chucked her, only--it may
surprise you--his missus wouldn't hear of it. Funny, eh? But with women,
you never know how they will take a thing, and Mrs. Colchester, with her
moustaches and big eyebrows, set up for being as strong-minded as they
make them. She used to walk about in a brown silk dress, with a great
gold cable flopping about her bosom. You should have heard her snapping
out: 'Rubbish!' or 'Stuff and nonsense!' I daresay she knew when she was
well off. They had no children, and had never set up a home anywhere.
When in England she just made shift to hang out anyhow in some cheap
hotel or boarding-house. I daresay she liked to get back to the comforts
she was used to. She knew very well she couldn't gain by any change.
And, moreover, Colchester, though a first-rate man, was not what you
may call in his first youth, and, perhaps, she may have thought that he
wouldn't be able to get hold of another (as he used to say) so easily.
Anyhow, for one reason or another, it was 'Rubbish' and 'Stuff and
nonsense' for the good lady. I overheard once young Mr. Apse himself say
to her confidentially: 'I assure you, Mrs. Colchester, I am beginning to
feel quite unhappy about the name she's getting for herself.' 'Oh,' says
she, with her deep little hoarse laugh, 'if one took notice of all the
silly talk,' and she showed Apse all her ugly false teeth at once. 'It
would take more than that to make me lose my confidence in her, I assure
you,' says she."

At this point, without any change of facial expression, Mr. Stonor
emitted a short, sardonic laugh. It was very impressive, but I didn't
see the fun. I looked from one to another. The stranger on the hearthrug
had an ugly smile.

"And Mr. Apse shook both Mrs. Colchester's hands, he was so pleased to
hear a good word said for their favourite. All these Apses, young
and old you know, were perfectly infatuated with that abominable,
dangerous--"

"I beg your pardon," I interrupted, for he seemed to be addressing
himself exclusively to me; "but who on earth are you talking about?"

"I am talking of the Apse family," he answered, courteously.

I nearly let out a damn at this. But just then the respected Miss Blank
put her head in, and said that the cab was at the door, if Mr. Stonor
wanted to catch the eleven three up.

At once the senior pilot arose in his mighty bulk and began to struggle
into his coat, with awe-inspiring upheavals. The stranger and I hurried
impulsively to his assistance, and directly we laid our hands on him he
became perfectly quiescent. We had to raise our arms very high, and
to make efforts. It was like caparisoning a docile elephant. With a
"Thanks, gentlemen," he dived under and squeezed himself through the
door in a great hurry.

We smiled at each other in a friendly way.

"I wonder how he manages to hoist himself up a ship's side-ladder,"
said the man in tweeds; and poor Jermyn, who was a mere North Sea
pilot, without official status or recognition of any sort, pilot only by
courtesy, groaned.

"He makes eight hundred a year."

"Are you a sailor?" I asked the stranger, who had gone back to his
position on the rug.

"I used to be till a couple of years ago, when I got married," answered
this communicative individual. "I even went to sea first in that very
ship we were speaking of when you came in."

"What ship?" I asked, puzzled. "I never heard you mention a ship."

"I've just told you her name, my dear sir," he replied. "The Apse
Family. Surely you've heard of the great firm of Apse & Sons,
shipowners. They had a pretty big fleet. There was the Lucy Apse, and
the Harold Apse, and Anne, John, Malcolm, Clara, Juliet, and so
on--no end of Apses. Every brother, sister, aunt, cousin, wife--and
grandmother, too, for all I know--of the firm had a ship named after
them. Good, solid, old-fashioned craft they were, too, built to carry
and to last. None of your new-fangled, labour-saving appliances in
them, but plenty of men and plenty of good salt beef and hard tack put
aboard--and off you go to fight your way out and home again."

The miserable Jermyn made a sound of approval, which sounded like a
groan of pain. Those were the ships for him. He pointed out in doleful
tones that you couldn't say to labour-saving appliances: "Jump lively
now, my hearties." No labour-saving appliance would go aloft on a dirty
night with the sands under your lee.

"No," assented the stranger, with a wink at me. "The Apses didn't
believe in them either, apparently. They treated their people well--as
people don't get treated nowadays, and they were awfully proud of their
ships. Nothing ever happened to them. This last one, the Apse Family,
was to be like the others, only she was to be still stronger, still
safer, still more roomy and comfortable. I believe they meant her
to last for ever. They had her built composite--iron, teak-wood, and
greenheart, and her scantling was something fabulous. If ever an order
was given for a ship in a spirit of pride this one was. Everything of
the best. The commodore captain of the employ was to command her, and
they planned the accommodation for him like a house on shore under
a big, tall poop that went nearly to the mainmast. No wonder Mrs.
Colchester wouldn't let the old man give her up. Why, it was the best
home she ever had in all her married days. She had a nerve, that woman.

"The fuss that was made while that ship was building! Let's have this a
little stronger, and that a little heavier; and hadn't that other thing
better be changed for something a little thicker. The builders entered
into the spirit of the game, and there she was, growing into the
clumsiest, heaviest ship of her size right before all their eyes,
without anybody becoming aware of it somehow. She was to be 2,000
tons register, or a little over; no less on any account. But see what
happens. When they came to measure her she turned out 1,999 tons and
a fraction. General consternation! And they say old Mr. Apse was so
annoyed when they told him that he took to his bed and died. The old
gentleman had retired from the firm twenty-five years before, and
was ninety-six years old if a day, so his death wasn't, perhaps, so
surprising. Still Mr. Lucian Apse was convinced that his father would
have lived to a hundred. So we may put him at the head of the list. Next
comes the poor devil of a shipwright that brute caught and squashed as
she went off the ways. They called it the launch of a ship, but I've
heard people say that, from the wailing and yelling and scrambling out
of the way, it was more like letting a devil loose upon the river.
She snapped all her checks like pack-thread, and went for the tugs in
attendance like a fury. Before anybody could see what she was up to she
sent one of them to the bottom, and laid up another for three months'
repairs. One of her cables parted, and then, suddenly--you couldn't tell
why--she let herself be brought up with the other as quiet as a lamb.

"That's how she was. You could never be sure what she would be up to
next. There are ships difficult to handle, but generally you can depend
on them behaving rationally. With that ship, whatever you did with her
you never knew how it would end. She was a wicked beast. Or, perhaps,
she was only just insane."

He uttered this supposition in so earnest a tone that I could not
refrain from smiling. He left off biting his lower lip to apostrophize
me.

"Eh! Why not? Why couldn't there be something in her build, in her lines
corresponding to--What's madness? Only something just a tiny bit wrong
in the make of your brain. Why shouldn't there be a mad ship--I mean mad
in a ship-like way, so that under no circumstances could you be sure she
would do what any other sensible ship would naturally do for you. There
are ships that steer wildly, and ships that can't be quite trusted
always to stay; others want careful watching when running in a gale;
and, again, there may be a ship that will make heavy weather of it in
every little blow. But then you expect her to be always so. You take it
as part of her character, as a ship, just as you take account of a
man's peculiarities of temper when you deal with him. But with her you
couldn't. She was unaccountable. If she wasn't mad, then she was the
most evil-minded, underhand, savage brute that ever went afloat. I've
seen her run in a heavy gale beautifully for two days, and on the third
broach to twice in the same afternoon. The first time she flung the
helmsman clean over the wheel, but as she didn't quite manage to kill
him she had another try about three hours afterwards. She swamped
herself fore and aft, burst all the canvas we had set, scared all hands
into a panic, and even frightened Mrs. Colchester down there in these
beautiful stern cabins that she was so proud of. When we mustered the
crew there was one man missing. Swept overboard, of course, without
being either seen or heard, poor devil! and I only wonder more of us
didn't go.

"Always something like that. Always. I heard an old mate tell Captain
Colchester once that it had come to this with him, that he was afraid to
open his mouth to give any sort of order. She was as much of a terror
in harbour as at sea. You could never be certain what would hold her. On
the slightest provocation she would start snapping ropes, cables, wire
hawsers, like carrots. She was heavy, clumsy, unhandy--but that does not
quite explain that power for mischief she had. You know, somehow, when I
think of her I can't help remembering what we hear of incurable lunatics
breaking loose now and then."

He looked at me inquisitively. But, of course, I couldn't admit that a
ship could be mad.

"In the ports where she was known," he went on,' "they dreaded the sight
of her. She thought nothing of knocking away twenty feet or so of solid
stone facing off a quay or wiping off the end of a wooden wharf. She
must have lost miles of chain and hundreds of tons of anchors in her
time. When she fell aboard some poor unoffending ship it was the
very devil of a job to haul her off again. And she never got hurt
herself--just a few scratches or so, perhaps. They had wanted to have
her strong. And so she was. Strong enough to ram Polar ice with. And as
she began so she went on. From the day she was launched she never let
a year pass without murdering somebody. I think the owners got very
worried about it. But they were a stiff-necked generation all these
Apses; they wouldn't admit there could be anything wrong with the Apse
Family. They wouldn't even change her name. 'Stuff and nonsense,' as
Mrs. Colchester used to say. They ought at least to have shut her up
for life in some dry dock or other, away up the river, and never let her
smell salt water again. I assure you, my dear sir, that she invariably
did kill someone every voyage she made. It was perfectly well-known. She
got a name for it, far and wide."

I expressed my surprise that a ship with such a deadly reputation could
ever get a crew.

"Then, you don't know what sailors are, my dear sir. Let me just show
you by an instance. One day in dock at home, while loafing on the
forecastle head, I noticed two respectable salts come along, one a
middle-aged, competent, steady man, evidently, the other a smart,
youngish chap. They read the name on the bows and stopped to look at
her. Says the elder man: 'Apse Family. That's the sanguinary female dog'
(I'm putting it in that way) 'of a ship, Jack, that kills a man every
voyage. I wouldn't sign in her--not for Joe, I wouldn't.' And the other
says: 'If she were mine, I'd have her towed on the mud and set on fire,
blame if I wouldn't.' Then the first man chimes in: 'Much do they care!
Men are cheap, God knows.' The younger one spat in the water alongside.
'They won't have me--not for double wages.'

"They hung about for some time and then walked up the dock. Half an
hour later I saw them both on our deck looking about for the mate, and
apparently very anxious to be taken on. And they were."

"How do you account for this?" I asked.

"What would you say?" he retorted. "Recklessness! The vanity of
boasting in the evening to all their chums: 'We've just shipped in
that there Apse Family. Blow her. She ain't going to scare us.' Sheer
sailorlike perversity! A sort of curiosity. Well--a little of all that,
no doubt. I put the question to them in the course of the voyage. The
answer of the elderly chap was:

"'A man can die but once.' The younger assured me in a mocking tone that
he wanted to see 'how she would do it this time.' But I tell you what;
there was a sort of fascination about the brute."

Jermyn, who seemed to have seen every ship in the world, broke in
sulkily:

"I saw her once out of this very window towing up the river; a great
black ugly thing, going along like a big hearse."

"Something sinister about her looks, wasn't there?" said the man in
tweeds, looking down at old Jermyn with a friendly eye. "I always had
a sort of horror of her. She gave me a beastly shock when I was no more
than fourteen, the very first day--nay, hour--I joined her. Father came
up to see me off, and was to go down to Gravesend with us. I was his
second boy to go to sea. My big brother was already an officer then. We.
got on board about eleven in the morning, and found the ship ready to
drop out of the basin, stern first. She had not moved three times her
own length when, at a little pluck the tug gave her to enter the dock
gates, she made one of her rampaging starts, and put such a weight on
the check rope--a new six-inch hawser--that forward there they had no
chance to ease it round in time, and it parted. I saw the broken end fly
up high in the air, and the next moment that brute brought her quarter
against the pier-head with a jar that staggered everybody about her
decks. She didn't hurt herself. Not she! But one of the boys the
mate had sent aloft on the mizzen to do something, came down on the
poop-deck--thump--right in front of me. He was not much older than
myself. We had been grinning at each other only a few minutes before. He
must have been handling himself carelessly, not expecting to get such a
jerk. I heard his startled cry--Oh!--in a high treble as he felt himself
going, and looked up in time to see him go limp all over as he fell.
Ough! Poor father was remarkably white about the gills when we shook
hands in Gravesend. 'Are you all right?' he says, looking hard at me.
'Yes, father.' 'Quite sure?' 'Yes, father.' 'Well, then good-bye, my
boy.' He told me afterwards that for half a word he would have carried
me off home with him there and then. I am the baby of the family--you
know," added the man in tweeds, stroking his moustache with an ingenuous
smile.

I acknowledged this interesting communication by a sympathetic murmur.
He waved his hand carelessly.

"This might have utterly spoiled a chap's nerve for going aloft, you
know--utterly. He fell within two feet of me, cracking his head on a
mooring-bitt. Never moved. Stone dead. Nice looking little fellow, he
was. I had just been thinking we would be great chums. However, that
wasn't yet the worst that brute of a ship could do. I served in her
three years of my time, and then I got transferred to the Lucy Apse, for
a year. The sailmaker we had in the Apse Family turned up there, too,
and I remember him saying to me one evening, after we had been a week at
sea: Isn't she a meek little ship?' No wonder we thought the Lucy Apse
a dear, meek, little ship after getting clear of that big, rampaging
savage brute. It was like heaven. Her officers seemed to me the
restfullest lot of men on earth. To me who had known no ship but the
Apse Family, the Lucy was like a sort of magic craft that did what you
wanted her to do of her own accord. One evening we got caught aback
pretty sharply from right ahead. In about ten minutes we had her full
again, sheets aft, tacks down, decks cleared, and the officer of the
watch leaning against the weather rail peacefully. It seemed simply
marvellous to me. The other would have stuck for half-an-hour in irons,
rolling her decks full of water, knocking the men about--spars cracking,
braces snapping, yards taking charge, and a confounded scare going on
aft because of her beastly rudder, which she had a way of flapping about
fit to raise your hair on end. I couldn't get over my wonder for days.

"Well, I finished my last year of apprenticeship in that jolly little
ship--she wasn't so little either, but after that other heavy devil she
seemed but a plaything to handle. I finished my time and passed; and
then just as I was thinking of having three weeks of real good time on
shore I got at breakfast a letter asking me the earliest day I could
be ready to join the Apse Family as third mate. I gave my plate a shove
that shot it into the middle of the table; dad looked up over his paper;
mother raised her hands in astonishment, and I went out bare-headed into
our bit of garden, where I walked round and round for an hour.

"When I came in again mother was out of the dining-room, and dad
had shifted berth into his big armchair. The letter was lying on the
mantelpiece.

"'It's very creditable to you to get the offer, and very kind of them to
make it,' he said. 'And I see also that Charles has been appointed chief
mate of that ship for one voyage.'

"There was, over leaf, a P.S. to that effect in Mr. Apse's own
handwriting, which I had overlooked. Charley was my big brother.

"I don't like very much to have two of my boys together in one ship,'
father goes on, in his deliberate, solemn way. 'And I may tell you that
I would not mind writing Mr. Apse a letter to that effect.'

"Dear old dad! He was a wonderful father. What would you have done? The
mere notion of going back (and as an officer, too), to be worried and
bothered, and kept on the jump night and day by that brute, made me feel
sick. But she wasn't a ship you could afford to fight shy of. Besides,
the most genuine excuse could not be given without mortally offending
Apse & Sons. The firm, and I believe the whole family down to the old
unmarried aunts in Lancashire, had grown desperately touchy about that
accursed ship's character. This was the case for answering 'Ready now'
from your very death-bed if you wished to die in their good graces. And
that's precisely what I did answer--by wire, to have it over and done
with at once.

"The prospect of being shipmates with my big brother cheered me up
considerably, though it made me a bit anxious, too. Ever since I
remember myself as a little chap he had been very good to me, and I
looked upon him as the finest fellow in the world. And so he was. No
better officer ever walked the deck of a merchant ship. And that's a
fact. He was a fine, strong, upstanding, sun-tanned, young fellow, with
his brown hair curling a little, and an eye like a hawk. He was just
splendid. We hadn't seen each other for many years, and even this time,
though he had been in England three weeks already, he hadn't showed up
at home yet, but had spent his spare time in Surrey somewhere making
up to Maggie Colchester, old Captain Colchester's niece. Her father, a
great friend of dad's, was in the sugar-broking business, and Charley
made a sort of second home of their house. I wondered what my big
brother would think of me. There was a sort of sternness about Charley's
face which never left it, not even when he was larking in his rather
wild fashion.

"He received me with a great shout of laughter. He seemed to think
my joining as an officer the greatest joke in the world. There was a
difference of ten years between us, and I suppose he remembered me
best in pinafores. I was a kid of four when he first went to sea. It
surprised me to find how boisterous he could be.

"'Now we shall see what you are made of,' he cried. And he held me off
by the shoulders, and punched my ribs, and hustled me into his berth.
'Sit down, Ned. I am glad of the chance of having you with me. I'll put
the finishing touch to you, my young officer, providing you're worth the
trouble. And, first of all, get it well into your head that we are
not going to let this brute kill anybody this voyage. We'll stop her
racket.'

"I perceived he was in dead earnest about it. He talked grimly of the
ship, and how we must be careful and never allow this ugly beast to
catch us napping with any of her damned tricks.

"He gave me a regular lecture on special seamanship for the use of the
Apse Family; then changing his tone, he began to talk at large, rattling
off the wildest, funniest nonsense, till my sides ached with laughing.
I could see very well he was a bit above himself with high spirits. It
couldn't be because of my coming. Not to that extent. But, of course,
I wouldn't have dreamt of asking what was the matter. I had a proper
respect for my big brother, I can tell you. But it was all made plain
enough a day or two afterwards, when I heard that Miss Maggie Colchester
was coming for the voyage. Uncle was giving her a sea-trip for the
benefit of her health.

"I don't know what could have been wrong with her health. She had a
beautiful colour, and a deuce of a lot of fair hair. She didn't care a
rap for wind, or rain, or spray, or sun, or green seas, or anything.
She was a blue-eyed, jolly girl of the very best sort, but the way she
cheeked my big brother used to frighten me. I always expected it to end
in an awful row. However, nothing decisive happened till after we had
been in Sydney for a week. One day, in the men's dinner hour, Charley
sticks his head into my cabin. I was stretched out on my back on the
settee, smoking in peace.

"'Come ashore with me, Ned,' he says, in his curt way.

"I jumped up, of course, and away after him down the gangway and
up George Street. He strode along like a giant, and I at his elbow,
panting. It was confoundedly hot. 'Where on earth are you rushing me to,
Charley?' I made bold to ask.

"'Here,' he says.

"'Here' was a jeweller's shop. I couldn't imagine what he could want
there. It seemed a sort of mad freak. He thrusts under my nose three
rings, which looked very tiny on his big, brown palm, growling out--

"'For Maggie! Which?'

"I got a kind of scare at this. I couldn't make a sound, but I pointed
at the one that sparkled white and blue. He put it in his waistcoat
pocket, paid for it with a lot of sovereigns, and bolted out. When
we got on board I was quite out of breath. 'Shake hands, old chap,' I
gasped out. He gave me a thump on the back. 'Give what orders you like
to the boatswain when the hands turn-to,' says he; 'I am off duty this
afternoon.'

"Then he vanished from the deck for a while, but presently he came out
of the cabin with Maggie, and these two went over the gangway publicly,
before all hands, going for a walk together on that awful, blazing hot
day, with clouds of dust flying about. They came back after a few hours
looking very staid, but didn't seem to have the slightest idea where
they had been. Anyway, that's the answer they both made to Mrs.
Colchester's question at tea-time.

"And didn't she turn on Charley, with her voice like an old night
cabman's! 'Rubbish. Don't know where you've been! Stuff and nonsense.
You've walked the girl off her legs. Don't do it again.'

"It's surprising how meek Charley could be with that old woman. Only
on one occasion he whispered to me, 'I'm jolly glad she isn't Maggie's
aunt, except by marriage. That's no sort of relationship.' But I think
he let Maggie have too much of her own way. She was hopping all over
that ship in her yachting skirt and a red tam o' shanter like a bright
bird on a dead black tree. The old salts used to grin to themselves when
they saw her coming along, and offered to teach her knots or splices. I
believe she liked the men, for Charley's sake, I suppose.

"As you may imagine, the fiendish propensities of that cursed ship were
never spoken of on board. Not in the cabin, at any rate. Only once
on the homeward passage Charley said, incautiously, something about
bringing all her crew home this time. Captain Colchester began to look
uncomfortable at once, and that silly, hard-bitten old woman flew out at
Charley as though he had said something indecent. I was quite confounded
myself; as to Maggie, she sat completely mystified, opening her blue
eyes very wide. Of course, before she was a day older she wormed it all
out of me. She was a very difficult person to lie to.

"'How awful,' she said, quite solemn. 'So many poor fellows. I am glad
the voyage is nearly over. I won't have a moment's peace about Charley
now.'

"I assured her Charley was all right. It took more than that ship knew
to get over a seaman like Charley. And she agreed with me.

"Next day we got the tug off Dungeness; and when the tow-rope was fast
Charley rubbed his hands and said to me in an undertone--

"'We've baffled her, Ned.'

"'Looks like it,' I said, with a grin at him. It was beautiful weather,
and the sea as smooth as a millpond. We went up the river without a
shadow of trouble except once, when off Hole Haven, the brute took a
sudden sheer and nearly had a barge anchored just clear of the fairway.
But I was aft, looking after the steering, and she did not catch me
napping that time. Charley came up on the poop, looking very concerned.
'Close shave,' says he.

"'Never mind, Charley,' I answered, cheerily. 'You've tamed her.'

"We were to tow right up to the dock. The river pilot boarded us below
Gravesend, and the first words I heard him say were: 'You may just as
well take your port anchor inboard at once, Mr. Mate.'

"This had been done when I went forward. I saw Maggie on the forecastle
head enjoying the bustle and I begged her to go aft, but she took no
notice of me, of course. Then Charley, who was very busy with the head
gear, caught sight of her and shouted in his biggest voice: 'Get off
the forecastle head, Maggie. You're in the way here.' For all answer
she made a funny face at him, and I saw poor Charley turn away, hiding
a smile. She was flushed with the excitement of getting home again, and
her blue eyes seemed to snap electric sparks as she looked at the river.
A collier brig had gone round just ahead of us, and our tug had to stop
her engines in a hurry to avoid running into her.

"In a moment, as is usually the case, all the shipping in the reach
seemed to get into a hopeless tangle. A schooner and a ketch got up a
small collision all to themselves right in the middle of the river.
It was exciting to watch, and, meantime, our tug remained stopped. Any
other ship than that brute could have been coaxed to keep straight for a
couple of minutes--but not she! Her head fell off at once, and she began
to drift down, taking her tug along with her. I noticed a cluster of
coasters at anchor within a quarter of a mile of us, and I thought I
had better speak to the pilot. 'If you let her get amongst that lot,'
I said, quietly, 'she will grind some of them to bits before we get her
out again.'

"'Don't I know her!' cries he, stamping his foot in a perfect fury. And
he out with his whistle to make that bothered tug get the ship's head
up again as quick as possible. He blew like mad, waving his arm to port,
and presently we could see that the tug's engines had been set going
ahead. Her paddles churned the water, but it was as if she had been
trying to tow a rock--she couldn't get an inch out of that ship. Again
the pilot blew his whistle, and waved his arm to port. We could see the
tug's paddles turning faster and faster away, broad on our bow.

"For a moment tug and ship hung motionless in a crowd of moving
shipping, and then the terrific strain that evil, stony-hearted brute
would always put on everything, tore the towing-chock clean out. The
tow-rope surged over, snapping the iron stanchions of the head-rail one
after another as if they had been sticks of sealing-wax. It was only
then I noticed that in order to have a better view over our heads,
Maggie had stepped upon the port anchor as it lay flat on the forecastle
deck.

"It had been lowered properly into its hardwood beds, but there had been
no time to take a turn with it. Anyway, it was quite secure as it was,
for going into dock; but I could see directly that the tow-rope would
sweep under the fluke in another second. My heart flew up right into
my throat, but not before I had time to yell out: 'Jump clear of that
anchor!'

"But I hadn't time to shriek out her name. I don't suppose she heard me
at all. The first touch of the hawser against the fluke threw her down;
she was up on her feet again quick as lightning, but she was up on the
wrong side. I heard a horrid, scraping sound, and then that anchor,
tipping over, rose up like something alive; its great, rough iron arm
caught Maggie round the waist, seemed to clasp her close with a dreadful
hug, and flung itself with her over and down in a terrific clang of
iron, followed by heavy ringing blows that shook the ship from stem to
stern--because the ring stopper held!"

"How horrible!" I exclaimed.

"I used to dream for years afterwards of anchors catching hold of
girls," said the man in tweeds, a little wildly. He shuddered. "With a
most pitiful howl Charley was over after her almost on the instant. But,
Lord! he didn't see as much as a gleam of her red tam o' shanter in the
water. Nothing! nothing whatever! In a moment there were half-a-dozen
boats around us, and he got pulled into one. I, with the boatswain and
the carpenter, let go the other anchor in a hurry and brought the
ship up somehow. The pilot had gone silly. He walked up and down the
forecastle head wringing his hands and muttering to himself: 'Killing
women, now! Killing women, now!' Not another word could you get out of
him.

"Dusk fell, then a night black as pitch; and peering upon the river I
heard a low, mournful hail, 'Ship, ahoy!' Two Gravesend watermen came
alongside. They had a lantern in their wherry, and looked up the ship's
side, holding on to the ladder without a word. I saw in the patch of
light a lot of loose, fair hair down there."

He shuddered again.

"After the tide turned poor Maggie's body had floated clear of one of
them big mooring buoys," he explained. "I crept aft, feeling half-dead,
and managed to send a rocket up--to let the other searchers know, on
the river. And then I slunk away forward like a cur, and spent the night
sitting on the heel of the bowsprit so as to be as far as possible out
of Charley's way."

"Poor fellow!" I murmured.

"Yes. Poor fellow," he repeated, musingly. "That brute wouldn't let
him--not even him--cheat her of her prey. But he made her fast in dock
next morning. He did. We hadn't exchanged a word--not a single look for
that matter. I didn't want to look at him. When the last rope was fast
he put his hands to his head and stood gazing down at his feet as if
trying to remember something. The men waited on the main deck for
the words that end the voyage. Perhaps that is what he was trying to
remember. I spoke for him. 'That'll do, men.'

"I never saw a crew leave a ship so quietly. They sneaked over the rail
one after another, taking care not to bang their sea chests too heavily.
They looked our way, but not one had the stomach to come up and offer to
shake hands with the mate as is usual.

"I followed him all over the empty ship to and fro, here and there, with
no living soul about but the two of us, because the old ship-keeper
had locked himself up in the galley--both doors. Suddenly poor Charley
mutters, in a crazy voice: 'I'm done here,' and strides down the gangway
with me at his heels, up the dock, out at the gate, on towards Tower
Hill. He used to take rooms with a decent old landlady in America
Square, to be near his work.

"All at once he stops short, turns round, and comes back straight at
me. 'Ned,' says he, I am going home.' I had the good luck to sight a
four-wheeler and got him in just in time. His legs were beginning to
give way. In our hall he fell down on a chair, and I'll never forget
father's and mother's amazed, perfectly still faces as they stood over
him. They couldn't understand what had happened to him till I blubbered
out, 'Maggie got drowned, yesterday, in the river.'

"Mother let out a little cry. Father looks from him to me, and from me
to him, as if comparing our faces--for, upon my soul, Charley did not
resemble himself at all. Nobody moved; and the poor fellow raises his
big brown hands slowly to his throat, and with one single tug rips
everything open--collar, shirt, waistcoat--a perfect wreck and ruin of
a man. Father and I got him upstairs somehow, and mother pretty nearly
killed herself nursing him through a brain fever."

The man in tweeds nodded at me significantly.

"Ah! there was nothing that could be done with that brute. She had a
devil in her."

"Where's your brother?" I asked, expecting to hear he was dead. But he
was commanding a smart steamer on the China coast, and never came home
now.

Jermyn fetched a heavy sigh, and the handkerchief being now sufficiently
dry, put it up tenderly to his red and lamentable nose.

"She was a ravening beast," the man in tweeds started again. "Old
Colchester put his foot down and resigned. And would you believe it?
Apse & Sons wrote to ask whether he wouldn't reconsider his decision!
Anything to save the good name of the Apse Family.' Old Colchester went
to the office then and said that he would take charge again but only to
sail her out into the North Sea and scuttle her there. He was nearly off
his chump. He used to be darkish iron-grey, but his hair went snow-white
in a fortnight. And Mr. Lucian Apse (they had known each other as young
men) pretended not to notice it. Eh? Here's infatuation if you like!
Here's pride for you!

"They jumped at the first man they could get to take her, for fear of
the scandal of the Apse Family not being able to find a skipper. He was
a festive soul, I believe, but he stuck to her grim and hard. Wilmot was
his second mate. A harum-scarum fellow, and pretending to a great scorn
for all the girls. The fact is he was really timid. But let only one of
them do as much as lift her little finger in encouragement, and there
was nothing that could hold the beggar. As apprentice, once, he deserted
abroad after a petticoat, and would have gone to the dogs then, if his
skipper hadn't taken the trouble to find him and lug him by the ears out
of some house of perdition or other.

"It was said that one of the firm had been heard once to express a hope
that this brute of a ship would get lost soon. I can hardly credit the
tale, unless it might have been Mr. Alfred Apse, whom the family didn't
think much of. They had him in the office, but he was considered a
bad egg altogether, always flying off to race meetings and coming home
drunk. You would have thought that a ship so full of deadly tricks would
run herself ashore some day out of sheer cussedness. But not she! She
was going to last for ever. She had a nose to keep off the bottom."

Jermyn made a grunt of approval.

"A ship after a pilot's own heart, eh?" jeered the man in tweeds. "Well,
Wilmot managed it. He was the man for it, but even he, perhaps, couldn't
have done the trick without the green-eyed governess, or nurse, or
whatever she was to the children of Mr. and Mrs. Pamphilius.

"Those people were passengers in her from Port Adelaide to the
Cape. Well, the ship went out and anchored outside for the day. The
skipper--hospitable soul--had a lot of guests from town to a farewell
lunch--as usual with him. It was five in the evening before the last
shore boat left the side, and the weather looked ugly and dark in the
gulf. There was no reason for him to get under way. However, as he had
told everybody he was going that day, he imagined it was proper to do so
anyhow. But as he had no mind after all these festivities to tackle the
straits in the dark, with a scant wind, he gave orders to keep the ship
under lower topsails and foresail as close as she would lie, dodging
along the land till the morning. Then he sought his virtuous couch.
The mate was on deck, having his face washed very clean with hard rain
squalls. Wilmot relieved him at midnight.

"The Apse Family had, as you observed, a house on her poop . . ."

"A big, ugly white thing, sticking up," Jermyn murmured, sadly, at the
fire.

"That's it: a companion for the cabin stairs and a sort of chart-room
combined. The rain drove in gusts on the sleepy Wilmot. The ship was
then surging slowly to the southward, close hauled, with the coast
within three miles or so to windward. There was nothing to look out for
in that part of the gulf, and Wilmot went round to dodge the squalls
under the lee of that chart-room, whose door on that side was open. The
night was black, like a barrel of coal-tar. And then he heard a woman's
voice whispering to him.

"That confounded green-eyed girl of the Pamphilius people had put the
kids to bed a long time ago, of course, but it seems couldn't get to
sleep herself. She heard eight bells struck, and the chief mate come
below to turn in. She waited a bit, then got into her dressing-gown and
stole across the empty saloon and up the stairs into the chart-room. She
sat down on the settee near the open door to cool herself, I daresay.

"I suppose when she whispered to Wilmot it was as if somebody had struck
a match in the fellow's brain. I don't know how it was they had got so
very thick. I fancy he had met her ashore a few times before. I couldn't
make it out, because, when telling the story, Wilmot would break off to
swear something awful at every second word. We had met on the quay in
Sydney, and he had an apron of sacking up to his chin, a big whip in his
hand. A wagon-driver. Glad to do anything not to starve. That's what he
had come down to.

"However, there he was, with his head inside the door, on the girl's
shoulder as likely as not--officer of the watch! The helmsman, on giving
his evidence afterwards, said that he shouted several times that the
binnacle lamp had gone out. It didn't matter to him, because his orders
were to 'sail her close.' 'I thought it funny,' he said, 'that the ship
should keep on falling off in squalls, but I luffed her up every time
as close as I was able. It was so dark I couldn't see my hand before my
face, and the rain came in bucketfuls on my head.'

"The truth was that at every squall the wind hauled aft a little, till
gradually the ship came to be heading straight for the coast, without a
single soul in her being aware of it. Wilmot himself confessed that he
had not been near the standard compass for an hour. He might well have
confessed! The first thing he knew was the man on the look-out shouting
blue murder forward there.

"He tore his neck free, he says, and yelled back at him: 'What do you
say?'

"'I think I hear breakers ahead, sir,' howled the man, and came rushing
aft with the rest of the watch, in the 'awfullest blinding deluge that
ever fell from the sky,' Wilmot says. For a second or so he was so
scared and bewildered that he could not remember on which side of the
gulf the ship was. He wasn't a good officer, but he was a seaman all
the same. He pulled himself together in a second, and the right orders
sprang to his lips without thinking. They were to hard up with the helm
and shiver the main and mizzen-topsails.

"It seems that the sails actually fluttered. He couldn't see them, but
he heard them rattling and banging above his head. 'No use! She was too
slow in going off,' he went on, his dirty face twitching, and the damn'd
carter's whip shaking in his hand. 'She seemed to stick fast.' And then
the flutter of the canvas above his head ceased. At this critical moment
the wind hauled aft again with a gust, filling the sails and sending the
ship with a great way upon the rocks on her lee bow. She had overreached
herself in her last little game. Her time had come--the hour, the man,
the black night, the treacherous gust of wind--the right woman to put
an end to her. The brute deserved nothing better. Strange are the
instruments of Providence. There's a sort of poetical justice--"

The man in tweeds looked hard at me.

"The first ledge she went over stripped the false keel off her. Rip! The
skipper, rushing out of his berth, found a crazy woman, in a red flannel
dressing-gown, flying round and round the cuddy, screeching like a
cockatoo.

"The next bump knocked her clean under the cabin table. It also started
the stern-post and carried away the rudder, and then that brute ran up a
shelving, rocky shore, tearing her bottom out, till she stopped short,
and the foremast dropped over the bows like a gangway."

"Anybody lost?" I asked.

"No one, unless that fellow, Wilmot," answered the gentleman, unknown
to Miss Blank, looking round for his cap. "And his case was worse than
drowning for a man. Everybody got ashore all right. Gale didn't come
on till next day, dead from the West, and broke up that brute in a
surprisingly short time. It was as though she had been rotten at heart."
. . . He changed his tone, "Rain left off? I must get my bike and rush
home to dinner. I live in Herne Bay--came out for a spin this morning."

He nodded at me in a friendly way, and went out with a swagger.

"Do you know who he is, Jermyn?" I asked.

The North Sea pilot shook his head, dismally. "Fancy losing a ship in
that silly fashion! Oh, dear! oh dear!" he groaned in lugubrious tones,
spreading his damp handkerchief again like a curtain before the glowing
grate.

On going out I exchanged a glance and a smile (strictly proper) with the
respectable Miss Blank, barmaid of the Three Crows.





A DESPERATE TALE



AN ANARCHIST

That year I spent the best two months of the dry season on one of
the estates--in fact, on the principal cattle estate--of a famous
meat-extract manufacturing company.

B.O.S. Bos. You have seen the three magic letters on the advertisement
pages of magazines and newspapers, in the windows of provision
merchants, and on calendars for next year you receive by post in the
month of November. They scatter pamphlets also, written in a sickly
enthusiastic style and in several languages, giving statistics of
slaughter and bloodshed enough to make a Turk turn faint. The "art"
illustrating that "literature" represents in vivid and shining colours
a large and enraged black bull stamping upon a yellow snake writhing
in emerald-green grass, with a cobalt-blue sky for a background. It
is atrocious and it is an allegory. The snake symbolizes disease,
weakness--perhaps mere hunger, which last is the chronic disease of the
majority of mankind. Of course everybody knows the B. O. S. Ltd., with
its unrivalled products: Vinobos, Jellybos, and the latest unequalled
perfection, Tribos, whose nourishment is offered to you not only highly
concentrated, but already half digested. Such apparently is the love
that Limited Company bears to its fellowmen--even as the love of the
father and mother penguin for their hungry fledglings.

Of course the capital of a country must be productively employed. I
have nothing to say against the company. But being myself animated by
feelings of affection towards my fellow-men, I am saddened by the
modern system of advertising. Whatever evidence it offers of enterprise,
ingenuity, impudence, and resource in certain individuals, it proves to
my mind the wide prevalence of that form of mental degradation which is
called gullibility.

In various parts of the civilized and uncivilized world I have had to
swallow B. O. S. with more or less benefit to myself, though without
great pleasure. Prepared with hot water and abundantly peppered to bring
out the taste, this extract is not really unpalatable. But I have never
swallowed its advertisements. Perhaps they have not gone far enough. As
far as I can remember they make no promise of everlasting youth to the
users of B. O. S., nor yet have they claimed the power of raising the
dead for their estimable products. Why this austere reserve, I wonder?
But I don't think they would have had me even on these terms. Whatever
form of mental degradation I may (being but human) be suffering from, it
is not the popular form. I am not gullible.

I have been at some pains to bring out distinctly this statement about
myself in view of the story which follows. I have checked the facts as
far as possible. I have turned up the files of French newspapers, and I
have also talked with the officer who commands the military guard on
the Ile Royale, when in the course of my travels I reached Cayenne. I
believe the story to be in the main true. It is the sort of story that
no man, I think, would ever invent about himself, for it is neither
grandiose nor flattering, nor yet funny enough to gratify a perverted
vanity.

It concerns the engineer of the steam-launch belonging to the Maranon
cattle estate of the B. O. S. Co., Ltd. This estate is also an
island--an island as big as a small province, lying in the estuary of a
great South American river. It is wild and not beautiful, but the grass
growing on its low plains seems to possess exceptionally nourishing
and flavouring qualities. It resounds with the lowing of innumerable
herds--a deep and distressing sound under the open sky, rising like
a monstrous protest of prisoners condemned to death. On the mainland,
across twenty miles of discoloured muddy water, there stands a city
whose name, let us say, is Horta.

But the most interesting characteristic of this island (which seems like
a sort of penal settlement for condemned cattle) consists in its being
the only known habitat of an extremely rare and gorgeous butterfly.
The species is even more rare than it is beautiful, which is not saying
little. I have already alluded to my travels. I travelled at that time,
but strictly for myself and with a moderation unknown in our days of
round-the-world tickets. I even travelled with a purpose. As a matter of
fact, I am--"Ha, ha, ha!--a desperate butterfly-slayer. Ha, ha, ha!"

This was the tone in which Mr. Harry Gee, the manager of the cattle
station, alluded to my pursuits. He seemed to consider me the greatest
absurdity in the world. On the other hand, the B. O. S. Co., Ltd.,
represented to him the acme of the nineteenth century's achievement. I
believe that he slept in his leggings and spurs. His days he spent in
the saddle flying over the plains, followed by a train of half-wild
horsemen, who called him Don Enrique, and who had no definite idea of
the B. O. S. Co., Ltd., which paid their wages. He was an excellent
manager, but I don't see why, when we met at meals, he should have
thumped me on the back, with loud, derisive inquiries: "How's the deadly
sport to-day? Butterflies going strong? Ha, ha, ha!"--especially as he
charged me two dollars per diem for the hospitality of the B. O. S. Co.,
Ltd., (capital L1,500,000, fully paid up), in whose balance-sheet for
that year those monies are no doubt included. "I don't think I can
make it anything less in justice to my company," he had remarked, with
extreme gravity, when I was arranging with him the terms of my stay on
the island.

His chaff would have been harmless enough if intimacy of intercourse
in the absence of all friendly feeling were not a thing detestable in
itself. Moreover, his facetiousness was not very amusing. It consisted
in the wearisome repetition of descriptive phrases applied to people
with a burst of laughter. "Desperate butterfly-slayer. Ha, ha, ha!" was
one sample of his peculiar wit which he himself enjoyed so much. And in
the same vein of exquisite humour he called my attention to the engineer
of the steam-launch, one day, as we strolled on the path by the side of
the creek.

The man's head and shoulders emerged above the deck, over which were
scattered various tools of his trade and a few pieces of machinery. He
was doing some repairs to the engines. At the sound of our footsteps
he raised anxiously a grimy face with a pointed chin and a tiny fair
moustache. What could be seen of his delicate features under the black
smudges appeared to me wasted and livid in the greenish shade of the
enormous tree spreading its foliage over the launch moored close to the
bank.

To my great surprise, Harry Gee addressed him as "Crocodile," in
that half-jeering, half-bullying tone which is characteristic of
self-satisfaction in his delectable kind:

"How does the work get on, Crocodile?"

I should have said before that the amiable Harry had picked up French
of a sort somewhere--in some colony or other--and that he pronounced
it with a disagreeable forced precision as though he meant to guy the
language. The man in the launch answered him quickly in a pleasant
voice. His eyes had a liquid softness and his teeth flashed dazzlingly
white between his thin, drooping lips. The manager turned to me, very
cheerful and loud, explaining:

"I call him Crocodile because he lives half in, half out of the creek.
Amphibious--see? There's nothing else amphibious living on the island
except crocodiles; so he must belong to the species--eh? But in reality
he's nothing less than un citoyen anarchiste de Barcelone."

"A citizen anarchist from Barcelona?" I repeated, stupidly, looking down
at the man. He had turned to his work in the engine-well of the launch
and presented his bowed back to us. In that attitude I heard him
protest, very audibly:

"I do not even know Spanish."

"Hey? What? You dare to deny you come from over there?" the accomplished
manager was down on him truculently.

At this the man straightened himself up, dropping a spanner he had been
using, and faced us; but he trembled in all his limbs.

"I deny nothing, nothing, nothing!" he said, excitedly.

He picked up the spanner and went to work again without paying any
further attention to us. After looking at him for a minute or so, we
went away.

"Is he really an anarchist?" I asked, when out of ear-shot.

"I don't care a hang what he is," answered the humorous official of the
B. O. S. Co. "I gave him the name because it suited me to label him in
that way, It's good for the company."

"For the company!" I exclaimed, stopping short.

"Aha!" he triumphed, tilting up his hairless pug face and straddling his
thin, long legs. "That surprises you. I am bound to do my best for my
company. They have enormous expenses. Why--our agent in Horta tells me
they spend fifty thousand pounds every year in advertising all over the
world! One can't be too economical in working the show. Well, just you
listen. When I took charge here the estate had no steam-launch. I asked
for one, and kept on asking by every mail till I got it; but the man
they sent out with it chucked his job at the end of two months, leaving
the launch moored at the pontoon in Horta. Got a better screw at a
sawmill up the river--blast him! And ever since it has been the same
thing. Any Scotch or Yankee vagabond that likes to call himself a
mechanic out here gets eighteen pounds a month, and the next you know
he's cleared out, after smashing something as likely as not. I give you
my word that some of the objects I've had for engine-drivers couldn't
tell the boiler from the funnel. But this fellow understands his trade,
and I don't mean him to clear out. See?"

And he struck me lightly on the chest for emphasis. Disregarding his
peculiarities of manner, I wanted to know what all this had to do with
the man being an anarchist.

"Come!" jeered the manager. "If you saw suddenly a barefooted, unkempt
chap slinking amongst the bushes on the sea face of the island, and at
the same time observed less than a mile from the beach, a small schooner
full of <DW65>s hauling off in a hurry, you wouldn't think the man fell
there from the sky, would you? And it could be nothing else but either
that or Cayenne. I've got my wits about me. Directly I sighted this
queer game I said to myself--'Escaped Convict.' I was as certain of
it as I am of seeing you standing here this minute. So I spurred on
straight at him. He stood his ground for a bit on a sand hillock crying
out: 'Monsieur! Monsieur! Arretez!' then at the last moment broke and
ran for life. Says I to myself, 'I'll tame you before I'm done with
you.' So without a single word I kept on, heading him off here and
there. I rounded him up towards the shore, and at last I had him
corralled on a spit, his heels in the water and nothing but sea and sky
at his back, with my horse pawing the sand and shaking his head within a
yard of him.

"He folded his arms on his breast then and stuck his chin up in a
sort of desperate way; but I wasn't to be impressed by the beggar's
posturing.

"Says I, 'You're a runaway convict.'

"When he heard French, his chin went down and his face changed.

"'I deny nothing,' says he, panting yet, for I had kept him skipping
about in front of my horse pretty smartly. I asked him what he was doing
there. He had got his breath by then, and explained that he had meant to
make his way to a farm which he understood (from the schooner's people,
I suppose) was to be found in the neighbourhood. At that I laughed
aloud and he got uneasy. Had he been deceived? Was there no farm within
walking distance?

"I laughed more and more. He was on foot, and of course the first bunch
of cattle he came across would have stamped him to rags under their
hoofs. A dismounted man caught on the feeding-grounds hasn't got the
ghost of a chance.

"'My coming upon you like this has certainly saved your life,' I
said. He remarked that perhaps it was so; but that for his part he had
imagined I had wanted to kill him under the hoofs of my horse. I assured
him that nothing would have been easier had I meant it. And then we came
to a sort of dead stop. For the life of me I didn't know what to do with
this convict, unless I chucked him into the sea. It occurred to me to
ask him what he had been transported for. He hung his head.

"'What is it?' says I. 'Theft, murder, rape, or what?' I wanted to hear
what he would have to say for himself, though of course I expected it
would be some sort of lie. But all he said was--

"'Make it what you like. I deny nothing. It is no good denying
anything.'

"I looked him over carefully and a thought struck me.

"'They've got anarchists there, too,' I said. 'Perhaps you're one of
them.'

"'I deny nothing whatever, monsieur,' he repeats.

"This answer made me think that perhaps he was not an anarchist. I
believe those damned lunatics are rather proud of themselves. If he had
been one, he would have probably confessed straight out.

"'What were you before you became a convict?'

"'Ouvrier,' he says. 'And a good workman, too.'

"At that I began to think he must be an anarchist, after all. That's the
class they come mostly from, isn't it? I hate the cowardly bomb-throwing
brutes. I almost made up my mind to turn my horse short round and leave
him to starve or drown where he was, whichever he liked best. As to
crossing the island to bother me again, the cattle would see to that. I
don't know what induced me to ask--

"'What sort of workman?'

"I didn't care a hang whether he answered me or not. But when he said
at once, 'Mecanicien, monsieur,' I nearly jumped out of the saddle with
excitement. The launch had been lying disabled and idle in the creek for
three weeks. My duty to the company was clear. He noticed my start,
too, and there we were for a minute or so staring at each other as if
bewitched.

"'Get up on my horse behind me,' I told him. 'You shall put my
steam-launch to rights.'"


These are the words in which the worthy manager of the Maranon estate
related to me the coming of the supposed anarchist. He meant to keep
him--out of a sense of duty to the company--and the name he had given
him would prevent the fellow from obtaining employment anywhere in
Horta. The vaqueros of the estate, when they went on leave, spread it
all over the town. They did not know what an anarchist was, nor yet what
Barcelona meant. They called him Anarchisto de Barcelona, as if it were
his Christian name and surname. But the people in town had been reading
in their papers about the anarchists in Europe and were very much
impressed. Over the jocular addition of "de Barcelona" Mr. Harry
Gee chuckled with immense satisfaction. "That breed is particularly
murderous, isn't it? It makes the sawmills crowd still more afraid of
having anything to do with him--see?" he exulted, candidly. "I hold him
by that name better than if I had him chained up by the leg to the deck
of the steam-launch.

"And mark," he added, after a pause, "he does not deny it. I am not
wronging him in any way. He is a convict of some sort, anyhow."

"But I suppose you pay him some wages, don't you?" I asked.

"Wages! What does he want with money here? He gets his food from
my kitchen and his clothing from the store. Of course I'll give him
something at the end of the year, but you don't think I'd employ a
convict and give him the same money I would give an honest man? I am
looking after the interests of my company first and last."

I admitted that, for a company spending fifty thousand pounds every
year in advertising, the strictest economy was obviously necessary. The
manager of the Maranon Estancia grunted approvingly.

"And I'll tell you what," he continued: "if I were certain he's an
anarchist and he had the cheek to ask me for money, I would give him
the toe of my boot. However, let him have the benefit of the doubt. I
am perfectly willing to take it that he has done nothing worse than
to stick a knife into somebody--with extenuating circumstances--French
fashion, don't you know. But that subversive sanguinary rot of doing
away with all law and order in the world makes my blood boil. It's
simply cutting the ground from under the feet of every decent,
respectable, hard-working person. I tell you that the consciences of
people who have them, like you or I, must be protected in some way; or
else the first low scoundrel that came along would in every respect be
just as good as myself. Wouldn't he, now? And that's absurd!"

He glared at me. I nodded slightly and murmured that doubtless there was
much subtle truth in his view.


The principal truth discoverable in the views of Paul the engineer was
that a little thing may bring about the undoing of a man.

"_Il ne faut pas beaucoup pour perdre un homme_," he said to me,
thoughtfully, one evening.

I report this reflection in French, since the man was of Paris, not of
Barcelona at all. At the Maranon he lived apart from the station, in
a small shed with a metal roof and straw walls, which he called
mon atelier. He had a work-bench there. They had given him several
horse-blankets and a saddle--not that he ever had occasion to ride, but
because no other bedding was used by the working-hands, who were all
vaqueros--cattlemen. And on this horseman's gear, like a son of the
plains, he used to sleep amongst the tools of his trade, in a litter
of rusty scrap-iron, with a portable forge at his head, under the
work-bench sustaining his grimy mosquito-net.

Now and then I would bring him a few candle ends saved from the scant
supply of the manager's house. He was very thankful for these. He did
not like to lie awake in the dark, he confessed. He complained that
sleep fled from him. "Le sommeil me fuit," he declared, with his
habitual air of subdued stoicism, which made him sympathetic and
touching. I made it clear to him that I did not attach undue importance
to the fact of his having been a convict.

Thus it came about that one evening he was led to talk about himself.
As one of the bits of candle on the edge of the bench burned down to the
end, he hastened to light another.

He had done his military service in a provincial garrison and returned
to Paris to follow his trade. It was a well-paid one. He told me with
some pride that in a short time he was earning no less than ten francs a
day. He was thinking of setting up for himself by and by and of getting
married.

Here he sighed deeply and paused. Then with a return to his stoical
note:

"It seems I did not know enough about myself."

On his twenty-fifth birthday two of his friends in the repairing shop
where he worked proposed to stand him a dinner. He was immensely touched
by this attention.

"I was a steady man," he remarked, "but I am not less sociable than any
other body."

The entertainment came off in a little cafe on the Boulevard de la
Chapelle. At dinner they drank some special wine. It was excellent.
Everything was excellent; and the world--in his own words--seemed a very
good place to live in. He had good prospects, some little money laid by,
and the affection of two excellent friends. He offered to pay for all
the drinks after dinner, which was only proper on his part.

They drank more wine; they drank liqueurs, cognac, beer, then more
liqueurs and more cognac. Two strangers sitting at the next table looked
at him, he said, with so much friendliness, that he invited them to join
the party.

He had never drunk so much in his life. His elation was extreme, and so
pleasurable that whenever it flagged he hastened to order more drinks.

"It seemed to me," he said, in his quiet tone and looking on the ground
in the gloomy shed full of shadows, "that I was on the point of just
attaining a great and wonderful felicity. Another drink, I felt, would
do it. The others were holding out well with me, glass for glass."

But an extraordinary thing happened. At something the strangers said his
elation fell. Gloomy ideas--des idees noires--rushed into his head. All
the world outside the cafe; appeared to him as a dismal evil place where
a multitude of poor wretches had to work and slave to the sole end
that a few individuals should ride in carriages and live riotously in
palaces. He became ashamed of his happiness. The pity of mankind's cruel
lot wrung his heart. In a voice choked with sorrow he tried to express
these sentiments. He thinks he wept and swore in turns.

The two new acquaintances hastened to applaud his humane indignation.
Yes. The amount of injustice in the world was indeed scandalous. There
was only one way of dealing with the rotten state of society. Demolish
the whole sacree boutique. Blow up the whole iniquitous show.

Their heads hovered over the table. They whispered to him eloquently; I
don't think they quite expected the result. He was extremely drunk--mad
drunk. With a howl of rage he leaped suddenly upon the table. Kicking
over the bottles and glasses, he yelled: "Vive l'anarchie! Death to the
capitalists!" He yelled this again and again. All round him broken glass
was falling, chairs were being swung in the air, people were taking each
other by the throat. The police dashed in. He hit, bit, scratched and
struggled, till something crashed down upon his head. . . .

He came to himself in a police cell, locked up on a charge of assault,
seditious cries, and anarchist propaganda.

He looked at me fixedly with his liquid, shining eyes, that seemed very
big in the dim light.

"That was bad. But even then I might have got off somehow, perhaps," he
said, slowly.

I doubt it. But whatever chance he had was done away with by a young
socialist lawyer who volunteered to undertake his defence. In vain he
assured him that he was no anarchist; that he was a quiet, respectable
mechanic, only too anxious to work ten hours per day at his trade. He
was represented at the trial as the victim of society and his drunken
shoutings as the expression of infinite suffering. The young lawyer had
his way to make, and this case was just what he wanted for a start. The
speech for the defence was pronounced magnificent.

The poor fellow paused, swallowed, and brought out the statement:

"I got the maximum penalty applicable to a first offence."

I made an appropriate murmur. He hung his head and folded his arms.

"When they let me out of prison," he began, gently, "I made tracks, of
course, for my old workshop. My patron had a particular liking for me
before; but when he saw me he turned green with fright and showed me the
door with a shaking hand."

While he stood in the street, uneasy and disconcerted, he was accosted
by a middle-aged man who introduced himself as an engineer's fitter,
too. "I know who you are," he said. "I have attended your trial. You are
a good comrade and your ideas are sound. But the devil of it is that you
won't be able to get work anywhere now. These bourgeois'll conspire to
starve you. That's their way. Expect no mercy from the rich."

To be spoken to so kindly in the street had comforted him very much. His
seemed to be the sort of nature needing support and sympathy. The idea
of not being able to find work had knocked him over completely. If his
patron, who knew him so well for a quiet, orderly, competent workman,
would have nothing to do with him now--then surely nobody else would.
That was clear. The police, keeping their eye on him, would hasten to
warn every employer inclined to give him a chance. He felt suddenly very
helpless, alarmed and idle; and he followed the middle-aged man to the
estaminet round the corner where he met some other good companions. They
assured him that he would not be allowed to starve, work or no work.
They had drinks all round to the discomfiture of all employers of labour
and to the destruction of society.

He sat biting his lower lip.

"That is, monsieur, how I became a compagnon," he said. The hand he
passed over his forehead was trembling. "All the same, there's something
wrong in a world where a man can get lost for a glass more or less."

He never looked up, though I could see he was getting excited under his
dejection. He slapped the bench with his open palm.

"No!" he cried. "It was an impossible existence! Watched by the police,
watched by the comrades, I did not belong to myself any more! Why, I
could not even go to draw a few francs from my savings-bank without a
comrade hanging about the door to see that I didn't bolt! And most of
them were neither more nor less than housebreakers. The intelligent, I
mean. They robbed the rich; they were only getting back their own, they
said. When I had had some drink I believed them. There were also the
fools and the mad. Des exaltes--quoi! When I was drunk I loved them.
When I got more drink I was angry with the world. That was the best
time. I found refuge from misery in rage. But one can't be always
drunk--n'est-ce pas, monsieur? And when I was sober I was afraid to
break away. They would have stuck me like a pig."

He folded his arms again and raised his sharp chin with a bitter smile.

"By and by they told me it was time to go to work. The work was to rob
a bank. Afterwards a bomb would be thrown to wreck the place. My
beginner's part would be to keep watch in a street at the back and to
take care of a black bag with the bomb inside till it was wanted. After
the meeting at which the affair was arranged a trusty comrade did not
leave me an inch. I had not dared to protest; I was afraid of being
done away with quietly in that room; only, as we were walking together I
wondered whether it would not be better for me to throw myself suddenly
into the Seine. But while I was turning it over in my mind we had
crossed the bridge, and afterwards I had not the opportunity."

In the light of the candle end, with his sharp features, fluffy little
moustache, and oval face, he looked at times delicately and gaily young,
and then appeared quite old, decrepit, full of sorrow, pressing his
folded arms to his breast.

As he remained silent I felt bound to ask:

"Well! And how did it end?"

"Deportation to Cayenne," he answered.

He seemed to think that somebody had given the plot away. As he was
keeping watch in the back street, bag in hand, he was set upon by the
police. "These imbeciles," had knocked him down without noticing what he
had in his hand. He wondered how the bomb failed to explode as he fell.
But it didn't explode.

"I tried to tell my story in court," he continued. "The president was
amused. There were in the audience some idiots who laughed."

I expressed the hope that some of his companions had been caught, too.
He shuddered slightly before he told me that there were two--Simon,
called also Biscuit, the middle-aged fitter who spoke to him in the
street, and a fellow of the name of Mafile, one of the sympathetic
strangers who had applauded his sentiments and consoled his humanitarian
sorrows when he got drunk in the cafe.

"Yes," he went on, with an effort, "I had the advantage of their company
over there on St. Joseph's Island, amongst some eighty or ninety other
convicts. We were all classed as dangerous."

St. Joseph's Island is the prettiest of the Iles de Salut. It is
rocky and green, with shallow ravines, bushes, thickets, groves of
mango-trees, and many feathery palms. Six warders armed with revolvers
and carbines are in charge of the convicts kept there.

An eight-oared galley keeps up the communication in the daytime, across
a channel a quarter of a mile wide, with the Ile Royale, where there is
a military post. She makes the first trip at six in the morning. At four
in the afternoon her service is over, and she is then hauled up into
a little dock on the Ile Royale and a sentry put over her and a few
smaller boats. From that time till next morning the island of St. Joseph
remains cut off from the rest of the world, with the warders patrolling
in turn the path from the warders' house to the convict huts, and a
multitude of sharks patrolling the waters all round.

Under these circumstances the convicts planned a mutiny. Such a thing
had never been known in the penitentiary's history before. But their
plan was not without some possibility of success. The warders were to be
taken by surprise and murdered during the night. Their arms would
enable the convicts to shoot down the people in the galley as she came
alongside in the morning. The galley once in their possession, other
boats were to be captured, and the whole company was to row away up the
coast.

At dusk the two warders on duty mustered the convicts as usual. Then
they proceeded to inspect the huts to ascertain that everything was
in order. In the second they entered they were set upon and absolutely
smothered under the numbers of their assailants. The twilight faded
rapidly. It was a new moon; and a heavy black squall gathering over
the coast increased the profound darkness of the night. The convicts
assembled in the open space, deliberating upon the next step to be
taken, argued amongst themselves in low voices.

"You took part in all this?" I asked.

"No. I knew what was going to be done, of course. But why should I
kill these warders? I had nothing against them. But I was afraid of the
others. Whatever happened, I could not escape from them. I sat alone
on the stump of a tree with my head in my hands, sick at heart at the
thought of a freedom that could be nothing but a mockery to me. Suddenly
I was startled to perceive the shape of a man on the path near by. He
stood perfectly still, then his form became effaced in the night. It
must have been the chief warder coming to see what had become of his
two men. No one noticed him. The convicts kept on quarrelling over
their plans. The leaders could not get themselves obeyed. The fierce
whispering of that dark mass of men was very horrible.

"At last they divided into two parties and moved off. When they had
passed me I rose, weary and hopeless. The path to the warders' house was
dark and silent, but on each side the bushes rustled slightly. Presently
I saw a faint thread of light before me. The chief warder, followed by
his three men, was approaching cautiously. But he had failed to close
his dark lantern properly. The convicts had seen that faint gleam, too.
There was an awful savage yell, a turmoil on the dark path, shots fired,
blows, groans: and with the sound of smashed bushes, the shouts of the
pursuers and the screams of the pursued, the man-hunt, the warder-hunt,
passed by me into the interior of the island. I was alone. And I assure
you, monsieur, I was indifferent to everything. After standing still
for a while, I walked on along the path till I kicked something hard. I
stooped and picked up a warder's revolver. I felt with my fingers
that it was loaded in five chambers. In the gusts of wind I heard the
convicts calling to each other far away, and then a roll of thunder
would cover the soughing and rustling of the trees. Suddenly, a big
light ran across my path very low along the ground. And it showed a
woman's skirt with the edge of an apron.

"I knew that the person who carried it must be the wife of the head
warder. They had forgotten all about her, it seems. A shot rang out in
the interior of the island, and she cried out to herself as she ran. She
passed on. I followed, and presently I saw her again. She was pulling
at the cord of the big bell which hangs at the end of the landing-pier,
with one hand, and with the other she was swinging the heavy lantern to
and fro. This is the agreed signal for the Ile Royale should assistance
be required at night. The wind carried the sound away from our island
and the light she swung was hidden on the shore side by the few trees
that grow near the warders' house.

"I came up quite close to her from behind. She went on without stopping,
without looking aside, as though she had been all alone on the island.
A brave woman, monsieur. I put the revolver inside the breast of my blue
blouse and waited. A flash of lightning and a clap of thunder destroyed
both the sound and the light of the signal for an instant, but she never
faltered, pulling at the cord and swinging the lantern as regularly as a
machine. She was a comely woman of thirty--no more. I thought to myself,
'All that's no good on a night like this.' And I made up my mind that
if a body of my fellow-convicts came down to the pier--which was sure to
happen soon--I would shoot her through the head before I shot myself. I
knew the 'comrades' well. This idea of mine gave me quite an interest
in life, monsieur; and at once, instead of remaining stupidly exposed on
the pier, I retreated a little way and crouched behind a bush. I did not
intend to let myself be pounced upon unawares and be prevented perhaps
from rendering a supreme service to at least one human creature before I
died myself.

"But we must believe the signal was seen, for the galley from Ile Royale
came over in an astonishingly short time. The woman kept right on till
the light of her lantern flashed upon the officer in command and the
bayonets of the soldiers in the boat. Then she sat down and began to
cry.

"She didn't need me any more. I did not budge. Some soldiers were only
in their shirt-sleeves, others without boots, just as the call to arms
had found them. They passed by my bush at the double. The galley had
been sent away for more; and the woman sat all alone crying at the end
of the pier, with the lantern standing on the ground near her.

"Then suddenly I saw in the light at the end of the pier the red
pantaloons of two more men. I was overcome with astonishment. They,
too, started off at a run. Their tunics flapped unbuttoned and they were
bare-headed. One of them panted out to the other, 'Straight on, straight
on!'

"Where on earth did they spring from, I wondered. Slowly I walked down
the short pier. I saw the woman's form shaken by sobs and heard her
moaning more and more distinctly, 'Oh, my man! my poor man! my poor
man!' I stole on quietly. She could neither hear nor see anything. She
had thrown her apron over her head and was rocking herself to and fro in
her grief. But I remarked a small boat fastened to the end of the pier.

"Those two men--they looked like sous-officiers--must have come in it,
after being too late, I suppose, for the galley. It is incredible that
they should have thus broken the regulations from a sense of duty. And
it was a stupid thing to do. I could not believe my eyes in the very
moment I was stepping into that boat.

"I pulled along the shore slowly. A black cloud hung over the Iles de
Salut. I heard firing, shouts. Another hunt had begun--the convict-hunt.
The oars were too long to pull comfortably. I managed them with
difficulty, though the boat herself was light. But when I got round to
the other side of the island the squall broke in rain and wind. I was
unable to make head against it. I let the boat drift ashore and secured
her.

"I knew the spot. There was a tumbledown old hovel standing near the
water. Cowering in there I heard through the noises of the wind and the
falling downpour some people tearing through the bushes. They came out
on the strand. Soldiers perhaps. A flash of lightning threw everything
near me into violent relief. Two convicts!

"And directly an amazed voice exclaimed. 'It's a miracle!' It was the
voice of Simon, otherwise Biscuit.

"And another voice growled, 'What's a miracle?'

"'Why, there's a boat lying here!'

"'You must be mad, Simon! But there is, after all. . . . A boat.'

"They seemed awed into complete silence. The other man was Mafile. He
spoke again, cautiously.

"'It is fastened up. There must be somebody here.'

"I spoke to them from within the hovel: 'I am here.'

"They came in then, and soon gave me to understand that the boat was
theirs, not mine. 'There are two of us,' said Mafile, 'against you
alone.'

"I got out into the open to keep clear of them for fear of getting a
treacherous blow on the head. I could have shot them both where they
stood. But I said nothing. I kept down the laughter rising in my throat.
I made myself very humble and begged to be allowed to go. They consulted
in low tones about my fate, while with my hand on the revolver in the
bosom of my blouse I had their lives in my power. I let them live. I
meant them to pull that boat. I represented to them with abject humility
that I understood the management of a boat, and that, being three to
pull, we could get a rest in turns. That decided them at last. It was
time. A little more and I would have gone into screaming fits at the
drollness of it."

At this point his excitement broke out. He jumped off the bench and
gesticulated. The great shadows of his arms darting over roof and walls
made the shed appear too small to contain his agitation.

"I deny nothing," he burst out. "I was elated, monsieur. I tasted a
sort of felicity. But I kept very quiet. I took my turns at pulling
all through the night. We made for the open sea, putting our trust in
a passing ship. It was a foolhardy action. I persuaded them to it. When
the sun rose the immensity of water was calm, and the Iles de Salut
appeared only like dark specks from the top of each swell. I was
steering then. Mafile, who was pulling bow, let out an oath and said,
'We must rest.'

"The time to laugh had come at last. And I took my fill of it, I can
tell you. I held my sides and rolled in my seat, they had such startled
faces. 'What's got into him, the animal?' cries Mafile.

"And Simon, who was nearest to me, says over his shoulder to him, 'Devil
take me if I don't think he's gone mad!'

"Then I produced the revolver. Aha! In a moment they both got the
stoniest eyes you can imagine. Ha, ha! They were frightened. But
they pulled. Oh, yes, they pulled all day, sometimes looking wild and
sometimes looking faint. I lost nothing of it because I had to keep my
eyes on them all the time, or else--crack!--they would have been on top
of me in a second. I rested my revolver hand on my knee all ready and
steered with the other. Their faces began to blister. Sky and sea
seemed on fire round us and the sea steamed in the sun. The boat made a
sizzling sound as she went through the water. Sometimes Mafile foamed
at the mouth and sometimes he groaned. But he pulled. He dared not stop.
His eyes became blood-shot all over, and he had bitten his lower lip to
pieces. Simon was as hoarse as a crow.

"'Comrade--' he begins.

"'There are no comrades here. I am your patron.'

"'Patron, then,' he says, 'in the name of humanity let us rest.'

"I let them. There was a little rainwater washing about the bottom of
the boat. I permitted them to snatch some of it in the hollow of their
palms. But as I gave the command, 'En route!' I caught them exchanging
significant glances. They thought I would have to go to sleep sometime!
Aha! But I did not want to go to sleep. I was more awake than ever. It
is they who went to sleep as they pulled, tumbling off the thwarts head
over heels suddenly, one after another. I let them lie. All the stars
were out. It was a quiet world. The sun rose. Another day. Allez! En
route!

"They pulled badly. Their eyes rolled about and their tongues hung out.
In the middle of the forenoon Mafile croaks out: 'Let us make a rush at
him, Simon. I would just as soon be shot at once as to die of thirst,
hunger, and fatigue at the oar.'

"But while he spoke he pulled; and Simon kept on pulling too. It made
me smile. Ah! They loved their life these two, in this evil world of
theirs, just as I used to love my life, too, before they spoiled it for
me with their phrases. I let them go on to the point of exhaustion, and
only then I pointed at the sails of a ship on the horizon.

"Aha! You should have seen them revive and buckle to their work! For
I kept them at it to pull right across that ship's path. They were
changed. The sort of pity I had felt for them left me. They looked
more like themselves every minute. They looked at me with the glances I
remembered so well. They were happy. They smiled.

"'Well,' says Simon, 'the energy of that youngster has saved our lives.
If he hadn't made us, we could never have pulled so far out into the
track of ships. Comrade, I forgive you. I admire you.'

"And Mafile growls from forward: 'We owe you a famous debt of gratitude,
comrade. You are cut out for a chief.'

"Comrade! Monsieur! Ah, what a good word! And they, such men as these
two, had made it accursed. I looked at them. I remembered their lies,
their promises, their menaces, and all my days of misery. Why could they
not have left me alone after I came out of prison? I looked at them and
thought that while they lived I could never be free. Never. Neither I
nor others like me with warm hearts and weak heads. For I know I have
not a strong head, monsieur. A black rage came upon me--the rage of
extreme intoxication--but not against the injustice of society. Oh, no!

"'I must be free!' I cried, furiously.

"'Vive la liberte!" yells that ruffian Mafile. 'Mort aux bourgeois who
send us to Cayenne! They shall soon know that we are free.'

"The sky, the sea, the whole horizon, seemed to turn red, blood red all
round the boat. My temples were beating so loud that I wondered they
did not hear. How is it that they did not? How is it they did not
understand?

"I heard Simon ask, 'Have we not pulled far enough out now?'

"'Yes. Far enough,' I said. I was sorry for him; it was the other I
hated. He hauled in his oar with a loud sigh, and as he was raising his
hand to wipe his forehead with the air of a man who has done his work,
I pulled the trigger of my revolver and shot him like this off the knee,
right through the heart.

"He tumbled down, with his head hanging over the side of the boat. I did
not give him a second glance. The other cried out piercingly. Only one
shriek of horror. Then all was still.

"He slipped off the thwart on to his knees and raised his clasped hands
before his face in an attitude of supplication. 'Mercy,' he whispered,
faintly. 'Mercy for me!--comrade.'

"'Ah, comrade,' I said, in a low tone. 'Yes, comrade, of course. Well,
then, shout Vive l'anarchie.'

"He flung up his arms, his face up to the sky and his mouth wide open in
a great yell of despair. 'Vive l'anarchie! Vive--'

"He collapsed all in a heap, with a bullet through his head.

"I flung them both overboard. I threw away the revolver, too. Then I sat
down quietly. I was free at last! At last. I did not even look towards
the ship; I did not care; indeed, I think I must have gone to sleep,
because all of a sudden there were shouts and I found the ship almost
on top of me. They hauled me on board and secured the boat astern. They
were all blacks, except the captain, who was a mulatto. He alone knew a
few words of French. I could not find out where they were going nor who
they were. They gave me something to eat every day; but I did not like
the way they used to discuss me in their language. Perhaps they were
deliberating about throwing me overboard in order to keep possession of
the boat. How do I know? As we were passing this island I asked whether
it was inhabited. I understood from the mulatto that there was a house
on it. A farm, I fancied, they meant. So I asked them to put me ashore
on the beach and keep the boat for their trouble. This, I imagine, was
just what they wanted. The rest you know."

After pronouncing these words he lost suddenly all control over himself.
He paced to and fro rapidly, till at last he broke into a run; his arms
went like a windmill and his ejaculations became very much like raving.
The burden of them was that he "denied nothing, nothing!" I could only
let him go on, and sat out of his way, repeating, "Calmez vous, calmez
vous," at intervals, till his agitation exhausted itself.

I must confess, too, that I remained there long after he had crawled
under his mosquito-net. He had entreated me not to leave him; so, as
one sits up with a nervous child, I sat up with him--in the name of
humanity--till he fell asleep.

On the whole, my idea is that he was much more of an anarchist than he
confessed to me or to himself; and that, the special features of his
case apart, he was very much like many other anarchists. Warm heart and
weak head--that is the word of the riddle; and it is a fact that the
bitterest contradictions and the deadliest conflicts of the world are
carried on in every individual breast capable of feeling and passion.

From personal inquiry I can vouch that the story of the convict mutiny
was in every particular as stated by him.

When I got back to Horta from Cayenne and saw the "Anarchist" again, he
did not look well. He was more worn, still more frail, and very livid
indeed under the grimy smudges of his calling. Evidently the meat of the
company's main herd (in its unconcentrated form) did not agree with him
at all.

It was on the pontoon in Horta that we met; and I tried to induce him to
leave the launch moored where she was and follow me to Europe there and
then. It would have been delightful to think of the excellent manager's
surprise and disgust at the poor fellow's escape. But he refused with
unconquerable obstinacy.

"Surely you don't mean to live always here!" I cried. He shook his head.

"I shall die here," he said. Then added moodily, "Away from them."

Sometimes I think of him lying open-eyed on his horseman's gear in the
low shed full of tools and scraps of iron--the anarchist slave of the
Maranon estate, waiting with resignation for that sleep which "fled"
from him, as he used to say, in such an unaccountable manner.




A MILITARY TALE


THE DUEL

I

Napoleon I., whose career had the quality of a duel against the whole
of Europe, disliked duelling between the officers of his army. The great
military emperor was not a swashbuckler, and had little respect for
tradition.

Nevertheless, a story of duelling, which became a legend in the army,
runs through the epic of imperial wars. To the surprise and admiration
of their fellows, two officers, like insane artists trying to gild
refined gold or paint the lily, pursued a private contest through the
years of universal carnage. They were officers of cavalry, and their
connection with the high-spirited but fanciful animal which carries men
into battle seems particularly appropriate. It would be difficult to
imagine for heroes of this legend two officers of infantry of the line,
for example, whose fantasy is tamed by much walking exercise, and whose
valour necessarily must be of a more plodding kind. As to gunners or
engineers, whose heads are kept cool on a diet of mathematics, it is
simply unthinkable.

The names of the two officers were Feraud and D'Hubert, and they were
both lieutenants in a regiment of hussars, but not in the same regiment.

Feraud was doing regimental work, but Lieut. D'Hubert had the good
fortune to be attached to the person of the general commanding the
division, as officier d'ordonnance. It was in Strasbourg, and in this
agreeable and important garrison they were enjoying greatly a short
interval of peace. They were enjoying it, though both intensely warlike,
because it was a sword-sharpening, firelock-cleaning peace, dear to a
military heart and undamaging to military prestige, inasmuch that no one
believed in its sincerity or duration.

Under those historical circumstances, so favourable to the proper
appreciation of military leisure, Lieut. D'Hubert, one fine afternoon,
made his way along a quiet street of a cheerful suburb towards Lieut.
Feraud's quarters, which were in a private house with a garden at the
back, belonging to an old maiden lady.

His knock at the door was answered instantly by a young maid in Alsatian
costume. Her fresh complexion and her long eyelashes, lowered demurely
at the sight of the tall officer, caused Lieut. D'Hubert, who was
accessible to esthetic impressions, to relax the cold, severe gravity of
his face. At the same time he observed that the girl had over her arm a
pair of hussar's breeches, blue with a red stripe.

"Lieut. Feraud in?" he inquired, benevolently.

"Oh, no, sir! He went out at six this morning."

The pretty maid tried to close the door. Lieut. D'Hubert, opposing this
move with gentle firmness, stepped into the ante-room, jingling his
spurs.

"Come, my dear! You don't mean to say he has not been home since six
o'clock this morning?"

Saying these words, Lieut. D'Hubert opened without ceremony the door
of a room so comfortably and neatly ordered that only from internal
evidence in the shape of boots, uniforms, and military accoutrements did
he acquire the conviction that it was Lieut. Feraud's room. And he saw
also that Lieut. Feraud was not at home. The truthful maid had followed
him, and raised her candid eyes to his face.

"H'm!" said Lieut. D'Hubert, greatly disappointed, for he had already
visited all the haunts where a lieutenant of hussars could be found of a
fine afternoon. "So he's out? And do you happen to know, my dear, why he
went out at six this morning?"

"No," she answered, readily. "He came home late last night, and snored.
I heard him when I got up at five. Then he dressed himself in his oldest
uniform and went out. Service, I suppose."

"Service? Not a bit of it!" cried Lieut. D'Hubert. "Learn, my angel,
that he went out thus early to fight a duel with a civilian."

She heard this news without a quiver of her dark eyelashes. It was
very obvious that the actions of Lieut. Feraud were generally above
criticism. She only looked up for a moment in mute surprise, and Lieut.
D'Hubert concluded from this absence of emotion that she must have seen
Lieut. Feraud since the morning. He looked around the room.

"Come!" he insisted, with confidential familiarity. "He's perhaps
somewhere in the house now?"

She shook her head.

"So much the worse for him!" continued Lieut. D'Hubert, in a tone of
anxious conviction. "But he has been home this morning."

This time the pretty maid nodded slightly.

"He has!" cried Lieut. D'Hubert. "And went out again? What for? Couldn't
he keep quietly indoors! What a lunatic! My dear girl--"

Lieut. D'Hubert's natural kindness of disposition and strong sense of
comradeship helped his powers of observation. He changed his tone to a
most insinuating softness, and, gazing at the hussar's breeches hanging
over the arm of the girl, he appealed to the interest she took in Lieut.
Feraud's comfort and happiness. He was pressing and persuasive. He used
his eyes, which were kind and fine, with excellent effect. His anxiety
to get hold at once of Lieut. Feraud, for Lieut. Feraud's own good,
seemed so genuine that at last it overcame the girl's unwillingness to
speak. Unluckily she had not much to tell. Lieut. Feraud had returned
home shortly before ten, had walked straight into his room, and had
thrown himself on his bed to resume his slumbers. She had heard him
snore rather louder than before far into the afternoon. Then he got up,
put on his best uniform, and went out. That was all she knew.

She raised her eyes, and Lieut. D'Hubert stared into them incredulously.

"It's incredible. Gone parading the town in his best uniform! My dear
child, don't you know he ran that civilian through this morning? Clean
through, as you spit a hare."

The pretty maid heard the gruesome intelligence without any signs of
distress. But she pressed her lips together thoughtfully.

"He isn't parading the town," she remarked in a low tone. "Far from it."

"The civilian's family is making an awful row," continued Lieut.
D'Hubert, pursuing his train of thought. "And the general is very angry.
It's one of the best families in the town. Feraud ought to have kept
close at least--"

"What will the general do to him?" inquired the girl, anxiously.

"He won't have his head cut off, to be sure," grumbled Lieut. D'Hubert.
"His conduct is positively indecent. He's making no end of trouble for
himself by this sort of bravado."

"But he isn't parading the town," the maid insisted in a shy murmur.

"Why, yes! Now I think of it, I haven't seen him anywhere about. What on
earth has he done with himself?"

"He's gone to pay a call," suggested the maid, after a moment of
silence.

Lieut. D'Hubert started.

"A call! Do you mean a call on a lady? The cheek of the man! And how do
you know this, my dear?"

Without concealing her woman's scorn for the denseness of the masculine
mind, the pretty maid reminded him that Lieut. Feraud had arrayed
himself in his best uniform before going out. He had also put on his
newest dolman, she added, in a tone as if this conversation were getting
on her nerves, and turned away brusquely.

Lieut. D'Hubert, without questioning the accuracy of the deduction, did
not see that it advanced him much on his official quest. For his quest
after Lieut. Feraud had an official character. He did not know any of
the women this fellow, who had run a man through in the morning, was
likely to visit in the afternoon. The two young men knew each other but
slightly. He bit his gloved finger in perplexity.

"Call!" he exclaimed. "Call on the devil!"

The girl, with her back to him, and folding the hussars breeches on a
chair, protested with a vexed little laugh:

"Oh, dear, no! On Madame de Lionne."

Lieut. D'Hubert whistled softly. Madame de Lionne was the wife of a high
official who had a well-known salon and some pretensions to sensibility
and elegance. The husband was a civilian, and old; but the society of
the salon was young and military. Lieut. D'Hubert had whistled, not
because the idea of pursuing Lieut. Feraud into that very salon was
disagreeable to him, but because, having arrived in Strasbourg only
lately, he had not had the time as yet to get an introduction to
Madame de Lionne. And what was that swashbuckler Feraud doing there, he
wondered. He did not seem the sort of man who--

"Are you certain of what you say?" asked Lieut. D'Hubert.

The girl was perfectly certain. Without turning round to look at him,
she explained that the coachman of their next door neighbours knew the
maitre-d'hotel of Madame de Lionne. In this way she had her information.
And she was perfectly certain. In giving this assurance she sighed.
Lieut. Feraud called there nearly every afternoon, she added.

"Ah, bah!" exclaimed D'Hubert, ironically. His opinion of Madame de
Lionne went down several degrees. Lieut. Feraud did not seem to him
specially worthy of attention on the part of a woman with a reputation
for sensibility and elegance. But there was no saying. At bottom they
were all alike--very practical rather than idealistic. Lieut. D'Hubert,
however, did not allow his mind to dwell on these considerations.

"By thunder!" he reflected aloud. "The general goes there sometimes. If
he happens to find the fellow making eyes at the lady there will be the
devil to pay! Our general is not a very accommodating person, I can tell
you."

"Go quickly, then! Don't stand here now I've told you where he is!"
cried the girl, colouring to the eyes.

"Thanks, my dear! I don't know what I would have done without you."

After manifesting his gratitude in an aggressive way, which at first was
repulsed violently, and then submitted to with a sudden and still more
repellent indifference, Lieut. D'Hubert took his departure.

He clanked and jingled along the streets with a martial swagger. To
run a comrade to earth in a drawing-room where he was not known did
not trouble him in the least. A uniform is a passport. His position as
officier d'ordonnance of the general added to his assurance. Moreover,
now that he knew where to find Lieut. Feraud, he had no option. It was a
service matter.

Madame de Lionne's house had an excellent appearance. A man in livery,
opening the door of a large drawing-room with a waxed floor, shouted his
name and stood aside to let him pass. It was a reception day. The ladies
wore big hats surcharged with a profusion of feathers; their bodies
sheathed in clinging white gowns, from the armpits to the tips of the
low satin shoes, looked sylph-like and cool in a great display of bare
necks and arms. The men who talked with them, on the contrary, were
arrayed heavily in multi- garments with collars up to their ears
and thick sashes round their waists. Lieut. D'Hubert made his unabashed
way across the room and, bowing low before a sylph-like form reclining
on a couch, offered his apologies for this intrusion, which nothing
could excuse but the extreme urgency of the service order he had to
communicate to his comrade Feraud. He proposed to himself to return
presently in a more regular manner and beg forgiveness for interrupting
the interesting conversation . . .

A bare arm was extended towards him with gracious nonchalance even
before he had finished speaking. He pressed the hand respectfully to his
lips, and made the mental remark that it was bony. Madame de Lionne was
a blonde, with too fine a skin and a long face.

"C'est ca!" she said, with an ethereal smile, disclosing a set of large
teeth. "Come this evening to plead for your forgiveness."

"I will not fail, madame."

Meantime, Lieut. Feraud, splendid in his new dolman and the extremely
polished boots of his calling, sat on a chair within a foot of the
couch, one hand resting on his thigh, the other twirling his moustache
to a point. At a significant glance from D'Hubert he rose without
alacrity, and followed him into the recess of a window.

"What is it you want with me?" he asked, with astonishing indifference.
Lieut. D'Hubert could not imagine that in the innocence of his heart and
simplicity of his conscience Lieut. Feraud took a view of his duel in
which neither remorse nor yet a rational apprehension of consequences
had any place. Though he had no clear recollection how the quarrel had
originated (it was begun in an establishment where beer and wine are
drunk late at night), he had not the slightest doubt of being himself
the outraged party. He had had two experienced friends for his seconds.
Everything had been done according to the rules governing that sort of
adventures. And a duel is obviously fought for the purpose of someone
being at least hurt, if not killed outright. The civilian got hurt.
That also was in order. Lieut. Feraud was perfectly tranquil; but Lieut.
D'Hubert took it for affectation, and spoke with a certain vivacity.

"I am directed by the general to give you the order to go at once to
your quarters, and remain there under close arrest."

It was now the turn of Lieut. Feraud to be astonished. "What the devil
are you telling me there?" he murmured, faintly, and fell into such
profound wonder that he could only follow mechanically the motions of
Lieut. D'Hubert. The two officers, one tall, with an interesting face
and a moustache the colour of ripe corn, the other, short and sturdy,
with a hooked nose and a thick crop of black curly hair, approached the
mistress of the house to take their leave. Madame de Lionne, a woman
of eclectic taste, smiled upon these armed young men with impartial
sensibility and an equal share of interest. Madame de Lionne took her
delight in the infinite variety of the human species. All the other eyes
in the drawing-room followed the departing officers; and when they had
gone out one or two men, who had already heard of the duel, imparted the
information to the sylph-like ladies, who received it with faint shrieks
of humane concern.

Meantime, the two hussars walked side by side, Lieut. Feraud trying to
master the hidden reason of things which in this instance eluded the
grasp of his intellect, Lieut. D'Hubert feeling annoyed at the part he
had to play, because the general's instructions were that he should see
personally that Lieut. Feraud carried out his orders to the letter, and
at once.

"The chief seems to know this animal," he thought, eyeing his companion,
whose round face, the round eyes, and even the twisted-up jet black
little moustache seemed animated by a mental exasperation against the
incomprehensible. And aloud he observed rather reproachfully, "The
general is in a devilish fury with you!"

Lieut. Feraud stopped short on the edge of the pavement, and cried in
accents of unmistakable sincerity, "What on earth for?" The innocence of
the fiery Gascon soul was depicted in the manner in which he seized his
head in both hands as if to prevent it bursting with perplexity.

"For the duel," said Lieut. D'Hubert, curtly. He was annoyed greatly by
this sort of perverse fooling.

"The duel! The . . ."


Lieut. Feraud passed from one paroxysm of astonishment into another.
He dropped his hands and walked on slowly, trying to reconcile this
information with the state of his own feelings. It was impossible. He
burst out indignantly, "Was I to let that sauerkraut-eating civilian
wipe his boots on the uniform of the 7th Hussars?"

Lieut. D'Hubert could not remain altogether unmoved by that simple
sentiment. This little fellow was a lunatic, he thought to himself, but
there was something in what he said.

"Of course, I don't know how far you were justified," he began,
soothingly. "And the general himself may not be exactly informed. Those
people have been deafening him with their lamentations."

"Ah! the general is not exactly informed," mumbled Lieut. Feraud,
walking faster and faster as his choler at the injustice of his fate
began to rise. "He is not exactly . . . And he orders me under close
arrest, with God knows what afterwards!"

"Don't excite yourself like this," remonstrated the other. "Your
adversary's people are very influential, you know, and it looks bad
enough on the face of it. The general had to take notice of their
complaint at once. I don't think he means to be over-severe with you.
It's the best thing for you to be kept out of sight for a while."

"I am very much obliged to the general," muttered Lieut. Feraud through
his teeth. "And perhaps you would say I ought to be grateful to you,
too, for the trouble you have taken to hunt me up in the drawing-room of
a lady who--"

"Frankly," interrupted Lieut. D'Hubert, with an innocent laugh, "I think
you ought to be. I had no end of trouble to find out where you were.
It wasn't exactly the place for you to disport yourself in under the
circumstances. If the general had caught you there making eyes at the
goddess of the temple . . . oh, my word! . . . He hates to be bothered
with complaints against his officers, you know. And it looked uncommonly
like sheer bravado."

The two officers had arrived now at the street door of Lieut. Feraud's
lodgings. The latter turned towards his companion. "Lieut. D'Hubert," he
said, "I have something to say to you, which can't be said very well in
the street. You can't refuse to come up."

The pretty maid had opened the door. Lieut. Feraud brushed past her
brusquely, and she raised her scared and questioning eyes to Lieut.
D'Hubert, who could do nothing but shrug his shoulders slightly as he
followed with marked reluctance.

In his room Lieut. Feraud unhooked the clasp, flung his new dolman on
the bed, and, folding his arms across his chest, turned to the other
hussar.

"Do you imagine I am a man to submit tamely to injustice?" he inquired,
in a boisterous voice.

"Oh, do be reasonable!" remonstrated Lieut. D'Hubert.

"I am reasonable! I am perfectly reasonable!" retorted the other
with ominous restraint. "I can't call the general to account for his
behaviour, but you are going to answer me for yours."

"I can't listen to this nonsense," murmured Lieut. D'Hubert, making a
slightly contemptuous grimace.

"You call this nonsense? It seems to me a perfectly plain statement.
Unless you don't understand French."

"What on earth do you mean?"

"I mean," screamed suddenly Lieut. Feraud, "to cut off your ears to
teach you to disturb me with the general's orders when I am talking to a
lady!"

A profound silence followed this mad declaration; and through the open
window Lieut. D'Hubert heard the little birds singing sanely in the
garden. He said, preserving his calm, "Why! If you take that tone,
of course I shall hold myself at your disposition whenever you are at
liberty to attend to this affair; but I don't think you will cut my ears
off."

"I am going to attend to it at once," declared Lieut. Feraud, with
extreme truculence. "If you are thinking of displaying your airs and
graces to-night in Madame de Lionne's salon you are very much mistaken."

"Really!" said Lieut. D'Hubert, who was beginning to feel irritated,
"you are an impracticable sort of fellow. The general's orders to
me were to put you under arrest, not to carve you into small pieces.
Good-morning!" And turning his back on the little Gascon, who, always
sober in his potations, was as though born intoxicated with the sunshine
of his vine-ripening country, the Northman, who could drink hard on
occasion, but was born sober under the watery skies of Picardy, made for
the door. Hearing, however, the unmistakable sound behind his back of a
sword drawn from the scabbard, he had no option but to stop.

"Devil take this mad Southerner!" he thought, spinning round and
surveying with composure the warlike posture of Lieut. Feraud, with a
bare sword in his hand.

"At once!--at once!" stuttered Feraud, beside himself.

"You had my answer," said the other, keeping his temper very well.

At first he had been only vexed, and somewhat amused; but now his face
got clouded. He was asking himself seriously how he could manage to
get away. It was impossible to run from a man with a sword, and as
to fighting him, it seemed completely out of the question. He waited
awhile, then said exactly what was in his heart.

"Drop this! I won't fight with you. I won't be made ridiculous."

"Ah, you won't?" hissed the Gascon. "I suppose you prefer to be made
infamous. Do you hear what I say? . . . Infamous! Infamous! Infamous!"
he shrieked, rising and falling on his toes and getting very red in the
face.

Lieut. D'Hubert, on the contrary, became very pale at the sound of the
unsavoury word for a moment, then flushed pink to the roots of his
fair hair. "But you can't go out to fight; you are under arrest, you
lunatic!" he objected, with angry scorn.

"There's the garden: it's big enough to lay out your long carcass in,"
spluttered the other with such ardour that somehow the anger of the
cooler man subsided.

"This is perfectly absurd," he said, glad enough to think he had found a
way out of it for the moment. "We shall never get any of our comrades to
serve as seconds. It's preposterous."

"Seconds! Damn the seconds! We don't want any seconds. Don't you worry
about any seconds. I shall send word to your friends to come and bury
you when I am done. And if you want any witnesses, I'll send word to the
old girl to put her head out of a window at the back. Stay! There's the
gardener. He'll do. He's as deaf as a post, but he has two eyes in his
head. Come along! I will teach you, my staff officer, that the carrying
about of a general's orders is not always child's play."

While thus discoursing he had unbuckled his empty scabbard. He sent it
flying under the bed, and, lowering the point of the sword, brushed past
the perplexed Lieut. D'Hubert, exclaiming, "Follow me!" Directly he had
flung open the door a faint shriek was heard and the pretty maid, who
had been listening at the keyhole, staggered away, putting the backs
of her hands over her eyes. Feraud did not seem to see her, but she ran
after him and seized his left arm. He shook her off, and then she rushed
towards Lieut. D'Hubert and clawed at the sleeve of his uniform.

"Wretched man!" she sobbed. "Is this what you wanted to find him for?"

"Let me go," entreated Lieut. D'Hubert, trying to disengage
himself gently. "It's like being in a madhouse," he protested, with
exasperation. "Do let me go! I won't do him any harm."

A fiendish laugh from Lieut. Feraud commented that assurance. "Come
along!" he shouted, with a stamp of his foot.

And Lieut. D'Hubert did follow. He could do nothing else. Yet in
vindication of his sanity it must be recorded that as he passed through
the ante-room the notion of opening the street door and bolting out
presented itself to this brave youth, only of course to be instantly
dismissed, for he felt sure that the other would pursue him without
shame or compunction. And the prospect of an officer of hussars being
chased along the street by another officer of hussars with a naked sword
could not be for a moment entertained. Therefore he followed into the
garden. Behind them the girl tottered out, too. With ashy lips and wild,
scared eyes, she surrendered herself to a dreadful curiosity. She had
also the notion of rushing if need be between Lieut. Feraud and death.

The deaf gardener, utterly unconscious of approaching footsteps, went
on watering his flowers till Lieut. Feraud thumped him on the back.
Beholding suddenly an enraged man flourishing a big sabre, the old chap
trembling in all his limbs dropped the watering-pot. At once Lieut.
Feraud kicked it away with great animosity, and, seizing the gardener
by the throat, backed him against a tree. He held him there, shouting in
his ear, "Stay here, and look on! You understand? You've got to look on!
Don't dare budge from the spot!"

Lieut. D'Hubert came slowly down the walk, unclasping his dolman with
unconcealed disgust. Even then, with his hand already on the hilt of his
sword, he hesitated to draw till a roar, "En garde, fichtre! What do you
think you came here for?" and the rush of his adversary forced him to
put himself as quickly as possible in a posture of defence.

The clash of arms filled that prim garden, which hitherto had known no
more warlike sound than the click of clipping shears; and presently the
upper part of an old lady's body was projected out of a window upstairs.
She tossed her arms above her white cap, scolding in a cracked voice.
The gardener remained glued to the tree, his toothless mouth open in
idiotic astonishment, and a little farther up the path the pretty girl,
as if spellbound to a small grass plot, ran a few steps this way and
that, wringing her hands and muttering crazily. She did not rush between
the combatants: the onslaughts of Lieut. Feraud were so fierce that
her heart failed her. Lieut. D'Hubert, his faculties concentrated upon
defence, needed all his skill and science of the sword to stop the
rushes of his adversary. Twice already he had to break ground. It
bothered him to feel his foothold made insecure by the round, dry gravel
of the path rolling under the hard soles of his boots. This was most
unsuitable ground, he thought, keeping a watchful, narrowed gaze, shaded
by long eyelashes, upon the fiery stare of his thick-set adversary. This
absurd affair would ruin his reputation of a sensible, well-behaved,
promising young officer. It would damage, at any rate, his immediate
prospects, and lose him the good-will of his general. These worldly
preoccupations were no doubt misplaced in view of the solemnity of the
moment. A duel, whether regarded as a ceremony in the cult of honour, or
even when reduced in its moral essence to a form of manly sport, demands
a perfect singleness of intention, a homicidal austerity of mood. On
the other hand, this vivid concern for his future had not a bad effect
inasmuch as it began to rouse the anger of Lieut. D'Hubert. Some seventy
seconds had elapsed since they had crossed blades, and Lieut. D'Hubert
had to break ground again in order to avoid impaling his reckless
adversary like a beetle for a cabinet of specimens. The result was that
misapprehending the motive, Lieut. Feraud with a triumphant sort of
snarl pressed his attack.

"This enraged animal will have me against the wall directly," thought
Lieut. D'Hubert. He imagined himself much closer to the house than
he was, and he dared not turn his head; it seemed to him that he was
keeping his adversary off with his eyes rather more than with his point.
Lieut. Feraud crouched and bounded with a fierce tigerish agility fit to
trouble the stoutest heart. But what was more appalling than the fury
of a wild beast, accomplishing in all innocence of heart a natural
function, was the fixity of savage purpose man alone is capable of
displaying. Lieut. D 'Hubert in the midst of his worldly preoccupations
perceived it at last. It was an absurd and damaging affair to be drawn
into, but whatever silly intention the fellow had started with, it was
clear enough that by this time he meant to kill--nothing less. He meant
it with an intensity of will utterly beyond the inferior faculties of a
tiger.

As is the case with constitutionally brave men, the full view of
the danger interested Lieut. D'Hubert. And directly he got properly
interested, the length of his arm and the coolness of his head told
in his favour. It was the turn of Lieut. Feraud to recoil, with a
bloodcurdling grunt of baffled rage. He made a swift feint, and then
rushed straight forward.

"Ah! you would, would you?" Lieut. D'Hubert exclaimed, mentally. The
combat had lasted nearly two minutes, time enough for any man to get
embittered, apart from the merits of the quarrel. And all at once it
was over. Trying to close breast to breast under his adversary's guard
Lieut. Feraud received a slash on his shortened arm. He did not feel
it in the least, but it checked his rush, and his feet slipping on
the gravel he fell backwards with great violence. The shock jarred his
boiling brain into the perfect quietude of insensibility. Simultaneously
with his fall the pretty servant-girl shrieked; but the old maiden lady
at the window ceased her scolding, and began to cross herself piously.

Beholding his adversary stretched out perfectly still, his face to the
sky, Lieut. D'Hubert thought he had killed him outright. The impression
of having slashed hard enough to cut his man clean in two abode with him
for a while in an exaggerated memory of the right good-will he had
put into the blow. He dropped on his knees hastily by the side of the
prostrate body. Discovering that not even the arm was severed, a slight
sense of disappointment mingled with the feeling of relief. The fellow
deserved the worst. But truly he did not want the death of that sinner.
The affair was ugly enough as it stood, and Lieut. D'Hubert addressed
himself at once to the task of stopping the bleeding. In this task it
was his fate to be ridiculously impeded by the pretty maid. Rending the
air with screams of horror, she attacked him from behind and, twining
her fingers in his hair, tugged back at his head. Why she should
choose to hinder him at this precise moment he could not in the least
understand. He did not try. It was all like a very wicked and harassing
dream. Twice to save himself from being pulled over he had to rise and
fling her off. He did this stoically, without a word, kneeling down
again at once to go on with his work. But the third time, his work being
done, he seized her and held her arms pinned to her body. Her cap was
half off, her face was red, her eyes blazed with crazy boldness. He
looked mildly into them while she called him a wretch, a traitor, and a
murderer many times in succession. This did not annoy him so much as the
conviction that she had managed to scratch his face abundantly. Ridicule
would be added to the scandal of the story. He imagined the adorned tale
making its way through the garrison of the town, through the whole army
on the frontier, with every possible distortion of motive and sentiment
and circumstance, spreading a doubt upon the sanity of his conduct and
the distinction of his taste even to the very ears of his honourable
family. It was all very well for that fellow Feraud, who had no
connections, no family to speak of, and no quality but courage, which,
anyhow, was a matter of course, and possessed by every single trooper
in the whole mass of French cavalry. Still holding down the arms of the
girl in a strong grip, Lieut. D'Hubert glanced over his shoulder. Lieut.
Feraud had opened his eyes. He did not move. Like a man just waking from
a deep sleep he stared without any expression at the evening sky.

Lieut. D'Hubert's urgent shouts to the old gardener produced no
effect--not so much as to make him shut his toothless mouth. Then
he remembered that the man was stone deaf. All that time the girl
struggled, not with maidenly coyness, but like a pretty, dumb fury,
kicking his shins now and then. He continued to hold her as if in a
vice, his instinct telling him that were he to let her go she would fly
at his eyes. But he was greatly humiliated by his position. At last she
gave up. She was more exhausted than appeased, he feared. Nevertheless,
he attempted to get out of this wicked dream by way of negotiation.

"Listen to me," he said, as calmly as he could. "Will you promise to run
for a surgeon if I let you go?"

With real affliction he heard her declare that she would do nothing of
the kind. On the contrary, her sobbed out intention was to remain in the
garden, and fight tooth and nail for the protection of the vanquished
man. This was shocking.

"My dear child!" he cried in despair, "is it possible that you think
me capable of murdering a wounded adversary? Is it. . . . Be quiet, you
little wild cat, you!"

They struggled. A thick, drowsy voice said behind him, "What are you
after with that girl?"

Lieut. Feraud had raised himself on his good arm. He was looking
sleepily at his other arm, at the mess of blood on his uniform, at a
small red pool on the ground, at his sabre lying a foot away on the
path. Then he laid himself down gently again to think it all out, as far
as a thundering headache would permit of mental operations.

Lieut. D'Hubert released the girl who crouched at once by the side of
the other lieutenant. The shades of night were falling on the little
trim garden with this touching group, whence proceeded low murmurs
of sorrow and compassion, with other feeble sounds of a different
character, as if an imperfectly awake invalid were trying to swear.
Lieut. D'Hubert went away.

He passed through the silent house, and congratulated himself upon the
dusk concealing his gory hands and scratched face from the passers-by.
But this story could by no means be concealed. He dreaded the discredit
and ridicule above everything, and was painfully aware of sneaking
through the back streets in the manner of a murderer. Presently the
sounds of a flute coming out of the open window of a lighted upstairs
room in a modest house interrupted his dismal reflections. It was being
played with a persevering virtuosity, and through the fioritures of the
tune one could hear the regular thumping of the foot beating time on the
floor.

Lieut. D'Hubert shouted a name, which was that of an army surgeon whom
he knew fairly well. The sounds of the flute ceased, and the musician
appeared at the window, his instrument still in his hand, peering into
the street.

"Who calls? You, D'Hubert? What brings you this way?"

He did not like to be disturbed at the hour when he was playing the
flute. He was a man whose hair had turned grey already in the thankless
task of tying up wounds on battlefields where others reaped advancement
and glory.

"I want you to go at once and see Feraud. You know Lieut. Feraud? He
lives down the second street. It's but a step from here."

"What's the matter with him?"

"Wounded."

"Are you sure?"

"Sure!" cried D'Hubert. "I come from there."

"That's amusing," said the elderly surgeon. Amusing was his favourite
word; but the expression of his face when he pronounced it never
corresponded. He was a stolid man. "Come in," he added. "I'll get ready
in a moment."

"Thanks! I will. I want to wash my hands in your room."

Lieut. D'Hubert found the surgeon occupied in unscrewing his flute, and
packing the pieces methodically in a case. He turned his head.

"Water there--in the corner. Your hands do want washing."

"I've stopped the bleeding," said Lieut. D'Hubert. "But you had better
make haste. It's rather more than ten minutes ago, you know."

The surgeon did not hurry his movements.

"What's the matter? Dressing came off? That's amusing. I've been at work
in the hospital all day but I've been told this morning by somebody that
he had come off without a scratch."

"Not the same duel probably," growled moodily Lieut. D'Hubert, wiping
his hands on a coarse towel.

"Not the same. . . . What? Another. It would take the very devil to
make me go out twice in one day." The surgeon looked narrowly at Lieut.
D'Hubert. "How did you come by that scratched face? Both sides, too--and
symmetrical. It's amusing."

"Very!" snarled Lieut. D'Hubert. "And you will find his slashed arm
amusing, too. It will keep both of you amused for quite a long time."

The doctor was mystified and impressed by the brusque bitterness of
Lieut. D'Hubert's tone. They left the house together, and in the street
he was still more mystified by his conduct.

"Aren't you coming with me?" he asked.

"No," said Lieut. D'Hubert. "You can find the house by yourself. The
front door will be standing open very likely."

"All right. Where's his room?"

"Ground floor. But you had better go right through and look in the
garden first."

This astonishing piece of information made the surgeon go off without
further parley. Lieut. D'Hubert regained his quarters nursing a hot and
uneasy indignation. He dreaded the chaff of his comrades almost as much
as the anger of his superiors. The truth was confoundedly grotesque and
embarrassing, even putting aside the irregularity of the combat itself,
which made it come abominably near a criminal offence. Like all
men without much imagination, a faculty which helps the process of
reflective thought, Lieut. D'Hubert became frightfully harassed by the
obvious aspects of his predicament. He was certainly glad that he had
not killed Lieut. Feraud outside all rules, and without the regular
witnesses proper to such a transaction. Uncommonly glad. At the same
time he felt as though he would have liked to wring his neck for him
without ceremony.

He was still under the sway of these contradictory sentiments when the
surgeon amateur of the flute came to see him. More than three days had
elapsed. Lieut. D'Hubert was no longer officier d'ordonnance to the
general commanding the division. He had been sent back to his regiment.
And he was resuming his connection with the soldiers' military family by
being shut up in close confinement, not at his own quarters in town, but
in a room in the barracks. Owing to the gravity of the incident, he was
forbidden to see any one. He did not know what had happened, what was
being said, or what was being thought. The arrival of the surgeon was a
most unexpected thing to the worried captive. The amateur of the flute
began by explaining that he was there only by a special favour of the
colonel.

"I represented to him that it would be only fair to let you have some
authentic news of your adversary," he continued. "You'll be glad to hear
he's getting better fast."

Lieut. D'Hubert's face exhibited no conventional signs of gladness. He
continued to walk the floor of the dusty bare room.

"Take this chair, doctor," he mumbled.

The doctor sat down.

"This affair is variously appreciated--in town and in the army. In fact,
the diversity of opinions is amusing."

"Is it!" mumbled Lieut. D'Hubert, tramping steadily from wall to wall.
But within himself he marvelled that there could be two opinions on the
matter. The surgeon continued.

"Of course, as the real facts are not known--"

"I should have thought," interrupted D'Hubert, "that the fellow would
have put you in possession of facts."

"He said something," admitted the other, "the first time I saw him. And,
by the by, I did find him in the garden. The thump on the back of his
head had made him a little incoherent then. Afterwards he was rather
reticent than otherwise."

"Didn't think he would have the grace to be ashamed!" mumbled D'Hubert,
resuming his pacing while the doctor murmured, "It's very amusing.
Ashamed! Shame was not exactly his frame of mind. However, you may look
at the matter otherwise."

"What are you talking about? What matter?" asked D'Hubert, with a
sidelong look at the heavy-faced, grey-haired figure seated on a wooden
chair.

"Whatever it is," said the surgeon a little impatiently, "I don't want
to pronounce any opinion on your conduct--"

"By heavens, you had better not!" burst out D'Hubert.

"There!--there! Don't be so quick in flourishing the sword. It doesn't
pay in the long run. Understand once for all that I would not carve any
of you youngsters except with the tools of my trade. But my advice
is good. If you go on like this you will make for yourself an ugly
reputation."

"Go on like what?" demanded Lieut. D'Hubert, stopping short, quite
startled. "I!--I!--make for myself a reputation. . . . What do you
imagine?"

"I told you I don't wish to judge of the rights and wrongs of this
incident. It's not my business. Nevertheless--"

"What on earth has he been telling you?" interrupted Lieut. D'Hubert, in
a sort of awed scare.

"I told you already, that at first, when I picked him up in the garden,
he was incoherent. Afterwards he was naturally reticent. But I gather at
least that he could not help himself."

"He couldn't?" shouted Lieut. D'Hubert in a great voice. Then, lowering
his tone impressively, "And what about me? Could I help myself?"

The surgeon stood up. His thoughts were running upon the flute, his
constant companion with a consoling voice. In the vicinity of field
ambulances, after twenty-four hours' hard work, he had been known to
trouble with its sweet sounds the horrible stillness of battlefields,
given over to silence and the dead. The solacing hour of his daily life
was approaching, and in peace time he held on to the minutes as a miser
to his hoard.

"Of course!--of course!" he said, perfunctorily. "You would think so.
It's amusing. However, being perfectly neutral and friendly to you both,
I have consented to deliver his message to you. Say that I am humouring
an invalid if you like. He wants you to know that this affair is by
no means at an end. He intends to send you his seconds directly he has
regained his strength--providing, of course, the army is not in the
field at that time."

"He intends, does he? Why, certainly," spluttered Lieut. D'Hubert in a
passion.

The secret of his exasperation was not apparent to the visitor; but this
passion confirmed the surgeon in the belief which was gaining ground
outside that some very serious difference had arisen between these two
young men, something serious enough to wear an air of mystery, some
fact of the utmost gravity. To settle their urgent difference about that
fact, those two young men had risked being broken and disgraced at the
outset almost of their career. The surgeon feared that the forthcoming
inquiry would fail to satisfy the public curiosity. They would not take
the public into their confidence as to that something which had passed
between them of a nature so outrageous as to make them face a charge of
murder--neither more nor less. But what could it be?

The surgeon was not very curious by temperament; but that question
haunting his mind caused him twice that evening to hold the instrument
off his lips and sit silent for a whole minute--right in the middle of a
tune--trying to form a plausible conjecture.


II


He succeeded in this object no better than the rest of the garrison and
the whole of society. The two young officers, of no especial consequence
till then, became distinguished by the universal curiosity as to the
origin of their quarrel. Madame de Lionne's salon was the centre
of ingenious surmises; that lady herself was for a time assailed by
inquiries as being the last person known to have spoken to these unhappy
and reckless young men before they went out together from her house to
a savage encounter with swords, at dusk, in a private garden. She
protested she had not observed anything unusual in their demeanour.
Lieut. Feraud had been visibly annoyed at being called away. That was
natural enough; no man likes to be disturbed in a conversation with a
lady famed for her elegance and sensibility. But in truth the subject
bored Madame de Lionne, since her personality could by no stretch of
reckless gossip be connected with this affair. And it irritated her to
hear it advanced that there might have been some woman in the case. This
irritation arose, not from her elegance or sensibility, but from a more
instinctive side of her nature. It became so great at last that she
peremptorily forbade the subject to be mentioned under her roof. Near
her couch the prohibition was obeyed, but farther off in the salon
the pall of the imposed silence continued to be lifted more or less. A
personage with a long, pale face, resembling the countenance of a
sheep, opined, shaking his head, that it was a quarrel of long standing
envenomed by time. It was objected to him that the men themselves were
too young for such a theory. They belonged also to different and distant
parts of France. There were other physical impossibilities, too. A
sub-commissary of the Intendence, an agreeable and cultivated bachelor
in kerseymere breeches, Hessian boots, and a blue coat embroidered with
silver lace, who affected to believe in the transmigration of souls,
suggested that the two had met perhaps in some previous existence.
The feud was in the forgotten past. It might have been something quite
inconceivable in the present state of their being; but their souls
remembered the animosity, and manifested an instinctive antagonism. He
developed this theme jocularly. Yet the affair was so absurd from the
worldly, the military, the honourable, or the prudential point of view,
that this weird explanation seemed rather more reasonable than any
other.

The two officers had confided nothing definite to any one. Humiliation
at having been worsted arms in hand, and an uneasy feeling of having
been involved in a scrape by the injustice of fate, kept Lieut. Feraud
savagely dumb. He mistrusted the sympathy of mankind. That would, of
course, go to that dandified staff officer. Lying in bed, he raved aloud
to the pretty maid who administered to his needs with devotion, and
listened to his horrible imprecations with alarm. That Lieut. D'Hubert
should be made to "pay for it," seemed to her just and natural. Her
principal care was that Lieut. Feraud should not excite himself. He
appeared so wholly admirable and fascinating to the humility of her
heart that her only concern was to see him get well quickly, even if it
were only to resume his visits to Madame de Lionne's salon.

Lieut. D'Hubert kept silent for the immediate reason that there was no
one, except a stupid young soldier servant, to speak to. Further, he
was aware that the episode, so grave professionally, had its comic
side. When reflecting upon it, he still felt that he would like to wring
Lieut. Feraud's neck for him. But this formula was figurative rather
than precise, and expressed more a state of mind than an actual physical
impulse. At the same time, there was in that young man a feeling of
comradeship and kindness which made him unwilling to make the position
of Lieut. Feraud worse than it was. He did not want to talk at large
about this wretched affair. At the inquiry he would have, of course, to
speak the truth in self-defence. This prospect vexed him.

But no inquiry took place. The army took the field instead. Lieut.
D'Hubert, liberated without remark, took up his regimental duties; and
Lieut. Feraud, his arm just out of the sling, rode unquestioned with his
squadron to complete his convalescence in the smoke of battlefields and
the fresh air of night bivouacs. This bracing treatment suited him so
well, that at the first rumour of an armistice being signed he could
turn without misgivings to the thoughts of his private warfare.

This time it was to be regular warfare. He sent two friends to Lieut.
D'Hubert, whose regiment was stationed only a few miles away. Those
friends had asked no questions of their principal. "I owe him one, that
pretty staff officer," he had said, grimly, and they went away quite
contentedly on their mission. Lieut. D'Hubert had no difficulty in
finding two friends equally discreet and devoted to their principal.
"There's a crazy fellow to whom I must give a lesson," he had declared
curtly; and they asked for no better reasons.

On these grounds an encounter with duelling-swords was arranged one
early morning in a convenient field. At the third set-to Lieut. D'Hubert
found himself lying on his back on the dewy grass with a hole in his
side. A serene sun rising over a landscape of meadows and woods hung on
his left. A surgeon--not the flute player, but another--was bending over
him, feeling around the wound.

"Narrow squeak. But it will be nothing," he pronounced.

Lieut. D'Hubert heard these words with pleasure. One of his seconds,
sitting on the wet grass, and sustaining his head on his lap, said, "The
fortune of war, mon pauvre vieux. What will you have? You had better
make it up like two good fellows. Do!"

"You don't know what you ask," murmured Lieut. D'Hubert, in a feeble
voice. "However, if he . . ."

In another part of the meadow the seconds of Lieut. Feraud were urging
him to go over and shake hands with his adversary.

"You have paid him off now--que diable. It's the proper thing to do.
This D'Hubert is a decent fellow."

"I know the decency of these generals' pets," muttered Lieut. Feraud
through his teeth, and the sombre expression of his face discouraged
further efforts at reconciliation. The seconds, bowing from a distance,
took their men off the field. In the afternoon Lieut. D'Hubert, very
popular as a good comrade uniting great bravery with a frank and equable
temper, had many visitors. It was remarked that Lieut. Feraud did not,
as is customary, show himself much abroad to receive the felicitations
of his friends. They would not have failed him, because he, too, was
liked for the exuberance of his southern nature and the simplicity of
his character. In all the places where officers were in the habit of
assembling at the end of the day the duel of the morning was talked over
from every point of view. Though Lieut. D'Hubert had got worsted this
time, his sword play was commended. No one could deny that it was very
close, very scientific. It was even whispered that if he got touched it
was because he wished to spare his adversary. But by many the vigour and
dash of Lieut. Feraud's attack were pronounced irresistible.

The merits of the two officers as combatants were frankly discussed; but
their attitude to each other after the duel was criticised lightly and
with caution. It was irreconcilable, and that was to be regretted. But
after all they knew best what the care of their honour dictated. It was
not a matter for their comrades to pry into over-much. As to the origin
of the quarrel, the general impression was that it dated from the time
they were holding garrison in Strasbourg. The musical surgeon shook his
head at that. It went much farther back, he thought.

"Why, of course! You must know the whole story," cried several voices,
eager with curiosity. "What was it?"

He raised his eyes from his glass deliberately. "Even if I knew ever so
well, you can't expect me to tell you, since both the principals choose
to say nothing."

He got up and went out, leaving the sense of mystery behind him. He
could not stay any longer, because the witching hour of flute-playing
was drawing near.

After he had gone a very young officer observed solemnly, "Obviously,
his lips are sealed!"

Nobody questioned the high correctness of that remark. Somehow it added
to the impressiveness of the affair. Several older officers of both
regiments, prompted by nothing but sheer kindness and love of harmony,
proposed to form a Court of Honour, to which the two young men would
leave the task of their reconciliation. Unfortunately they began by
approaching Lieut. Feraud, on the assumption that, having just scored
heavily, he would be found placable and disposed to moderation.

The reasoning was sound enough. Nevertheless, the move turned out
unfortunate. In that relaxation of moral fibre, which is brought about
by the ease of soothed vanity, Lieut. Feraud had condescended in the
secret of his heart to review the case, and even had come to doubt not
the justice of his cause, but the absolute sagacity of his conduct. This
being so, he was disinclined to talk about it. The suggestion of the
regimental wise men put him in a difficult position. He was disgusted at
it, and this disgust, by a paradoxical logic, reawakened his animosity
against Lieut. D'Hubert. Was he to be pestered with this fellow for
ever--the fellow who had an infernal knack of getting round people
somehow? And yet it was difficult to refuse point blank that mediation
sanctioned by the code of honour.

He met the difficulty by an attitude of grim reserve. He twisted his
moustache and used vague words. His case was perfectly clear. He was
not ashamed to state it before a proper Court of Honour, neither was he
afraid to defend it on the ground. He did not see any reason to jump at
the suggestion before ascertaining how his adversary was likely to take
it.

Later in the day, his exasperation growing upon him, he was heard in a
public place saying sardonically, "that it would be the very luckiest
thing for Lieut. D'Hubert, because the next time of meeting he need not
hope to get off with the mere trifle of three weeks in bed."

This boastful phrase might have been prompted by the most profound
Machiavellism. Southern natures often hide, under the outward
impulsiveness of action and speech, a certain amount of astuteness.

Lieut. Feraud, mistrusting the justice of men, by no means desired
a Court of Honour; and the above words, according so well with his
temperament, had also the merit of serving his turn. Whether meant so or
not, they found their way in less than four-and-twenty hours into Lieut.
D'Hubert's bedroom. In consequence Lieut. D'Hubert, sitting propped
up with pillows, received the overtures made to him next day by
the statement that the affair was of a nature which could not bear
discussion.

The pale face of the wounded officer, his weak voice which he had yet to
use cautiously, and the courteous dignity of his tone had a great effect
on his hearers. Reported outside all this did more for deepening the
mystery than the vapourings of Lieut. Feraud. This last was greatly
relieved at the issue. He began to enjoy the state of general wonder,
and was pleased to add to it by assuming an attitude of fierce
discretion.

The colonel of Lieut. D'Hubert's regiment was a grey-haired,
weather-beaten warrior, who took a simple view of his responsibilities.
"I can't," he said to himself, "let the best of my subalterns get
damaged like this for nothing. I must get to the bottom of this affair
privately. He must speak out if the devil were in it. The colonel should
be more than a father to these youngsters." And indeed he loved all his
men with as much affection as a father of a large family can feel
for every individual member of it. If human beings by an oversight of
Providence came into the world as mere civilians, they were born again
into a regiment as infants are born into a family, and it was that
military birth alone which counted.

At the sight of Lieut. D'Hubert standing before him very bleached
and hollow-eyed the heart of the old warrior felt a pang of genuine
compassion. All his affection for the regiment--that body of men which
he held in his hand to launch forward and draw back, who ministered to
his pride and commanded all his thoughts--seemed centred for a moment on
the person of the most promising subaltern. He cleared his throat in
a threatening manner, and frowned terribly. "You must understand," he
began, "that I don't care a rap for the life of a single man in the
regiment. I would send the eight hundred and forty-three of you men and
horses galloping into the pit of perdition with no more compunction than
I would kill a fly!"

"Yes, Colonel. You would be riding at our head," said Lieut. D'Hubert
with a wan smile.

The colonel, who felt the need of being very diplomatic, fairly roared
at this. "I want you to know, Lieut. D'Hubert, that I could stand aside
and see you all riding to Hades if need be. I am a man to do even that
if the good of the service and my duty to my country required it from
me. But that's unthinkable, so don't you even hint at such a thing." He
glared awfully, but his tone softened. "There's some milk yet about that
moustache of yours, my boy. You don't know what a man like me is capable
of. I would hide behind a haystack if . . . Don't grin at me, sir! How
dare you? If this were not a private conversation I would . . . Look
here! I am responsible for the proper expenditure of lives under my
command for the glory of our country and the honour of the regiment. Do
you understand that? Well, then, what the devil do you mean by letting
yourself be spitted like this by that fellow of the 7th Hussars? It's
simply disgraceful!"

Lieut. D'Hubert felt vexed beyond measure. His shoulders moved slightly.
He made no other answer. He could not ignore his responsibility.

The colonel veiled his glance and lowered his voice still more. "It's
deplorable!" he murmured. And again he changed his tone. "Come!" he went
on, persuasively, but with that note of authority which dwells in the
throat of a good leader of men, "this affair must be settled. I desire
to be told plainly what it is all about. I demand, as your best friend,
to know."

The compelling power of authority, the persuasive influence of kindness,
affected powerfully a man just risen from a bed of sickness. Lieut.
D'Hubert's hand, which grasped the knob of a stick, trembled
slightly. But his northern temperament, sentimental yet cautious and
clear-sighted, too, in its idealistic way, checked his impulse to make a
clean breast of the whole deadly absurdity. According to the precept
of transcendental wisdom, he turned his tongue seven times in his mouth
before he spoke. He made then only a speech of thanks.

The colonel listened, interested at first, then looked mystified. At
last he frowned. "You hesitate?--mille tonnerres! Haven't I told you
that I will condescend to argue with you--as a friend?"

"Yes, Colonel!" answered Lieut. D'Hubert, gently. "But I am afraid
that after you have heard me out as a friend you will take action as my
superior officer."

The attentive colonel snapped his jaws. "Well, what of that?" he said,
frankly. "Is it so damnably disgraceful?"

"It is not," negatived Lieut. D'Hubert, in a faint but firm voice.

"Of course, I shall act for the good of the service. Nothing can prevent
me doing that. What do you think I want to be told for?"

"I know it is not from idle curiosity," protested Lieut. D'Hubert. "I
know you will act wisely. But what about the good fame of the regiment?"

"It cannot be affected by any youthful folly of a lieutenant," said the
colonel, severely.

"No. It cannot be. But it can be by evil tongues. It will be said that
a lieutenant of the 4th Hussars, afraid of meeting his adversary, is
hiding behind his colonel. And that would be worse than hiding behind
a haystack--for the good of the service. I cannot afford to do that,
Colonel."

"Nobody would dare to say anything of the kind," began the colonel very
fiercely, but ended the phrase on an uncertain note. The bravery of
Lieut. D'Hubert was well known. But the colonel was well aware that
the duelling courage, the single combat courage, is rightly or wrongly
supposed to be courage of a special sort. And it was eminently
necessary that an officer of his regiment should possess every kind of
courage--and prove it, too. The colonel stuck out his lower lip, and
looked far away with a peculiar glazed stare. This was the expression of
his perplexity--an expression practically unknown to his regiment; for
perplexity is a sentiment which is incompatible with the rank of colonel
of cavalry. The colonel himself was overcome by the unpleasant
novelty of the sensation. As he was not accustomed to think except on
professional matters connected with the welfare of men and horses, and
the proper use thereof on the field of glory, his intellectual efforts
degenerated into mere mental repetitions of profane language. "Mille
tonnerres! . . . Sacre nom de nom . . ." he thought.

Lieut. D'Hubert coughed painfully, and added in a weary voice: "There
will be plenty of evil tongues to say that I've been cowed. And I
am sure you will not expect me to pass that over. I may find myself
suddenly with a dozen duels on my hands instead of this one affair."

The direct simplicity of this argument came home to the colonel's
understanding. He looked at his subordinate fixedly. "Sit down,
Lieutenant!" he said, gruffly. "This is the very devil of a . . . Sit
down!"

"Mon Colonel," D'Hubert began again, "I am not afraid of evil tongues.
There's a way of silencing them. But there's my peace of mind, too.
I wouldn't be able to shake off the notion that I've ruined a brother
officer. Whatever action you take, it is bound to go farther. The
inquiry has been dropped--let it rest now. It would have been absolutely
fatal to Feraud."

"Hey! What! Did he behave so badly?"

"Yes. It was pretty bad," muttered Lieut. D'Hubert. Being still very
weak, he felt a disposition to cry.

As the other man did not belong to his own regiment the colonel had no
difficulty in believing this. He began to pace up and down the room. He
was a good chief, a man capable of discreet sympathy. But he was human
in other ways, too, and this became apparent because he was not capable
of artifice.

"The very devil, Lieutenant," he blurted out, in the innocence of his
heart, "is that I have declared my intention to get to the bottom of
this affair. And when a colonel says something . . . you see . . ."

Lieut. D'Hubert broke in earnestly: "Let me entreat you, Colonel, to be
satisfied with taking my word of honour that I was put into a damnable
position where I had no option; I had no choice whatever, consistent
with my dignity as a man and an officer. . . . After all, Colonel, this
fact is the very bottom of this affair. Here you've got it. The rest is
mere detail. . . ."

The colonel stopped short. The reputation of Lieut. D'Hubert for good
sense and good temper weighed in the balance. A cool head, a warm heart,
open as the day. Always correct in his behaviour. One had to trust him.
The colonel repressed manfully an immense curiosity. "H'm! You affirm
that as a man and an officer. . . . No option? Eh?"

"As an officer--an officer of the 4th Hussars, too," insisted Lieut.
D'Hubert, "I had not. And that is the bottom of the affair, Colonel."

"Yes. But still I don't see why, to one's colonel. . . . A colonel is a
father--que diable!"

Lieut. D'Hubert ought not to have been allowed out as yet. He was
becoming aware of his physical insufficiency with humiliation and
despair. But the morbid obstinacy of an invalid possessed him, and at
the same time he felt with dismay his eyes filling with water. This
trouble seemed too big to handle. A tear fell down the thin, pale cheek
of Lieut. D'Hubert.

The colonel turned his back on him hastily. You could have heard a pin
drop. "This is some silly woman story--is it not?"

Saying these words the chief spun round to seize the truth, which is
not a beautiful shape living in a well, but a shy bird best caught by
stratagem. This was the last move of the colonel's diplomacy. He saw the
truth shining unmistakably in the gesture of Lieut. D'Hubert raising his
weak arms and his eyes to heaven in supreme protest.

"Not a woman affair--eh?" growled the colonel, staring hard. "I don't
ask you who or where. All I want to know is whether there is a woman in
it?"

Lieut. D'Hubert's arms dropped, and his weak voice was pathetically
broken.

"Nothing of the kind, mon Colonel."

"On your honour?" insisted the old warrior.

"On my honour."

"Very well," said the colonel, thoughtfully, and bit his lip. The
arguments of Lieut. D'Hubert, helped by his liking for the man, had
convinced him. On the other hand, it was highly improper that his
intervention, of which he had made no secret, should produce no visible
effect. He kept Lieut. D'Hubert a few minutes longer, and dismissed him
kindly.

"Take a few days more in bed. Lieutenant. What the devil does the
surgeon mean by reporting you fit for duty?"

On coming out of the colonel's quarters, Lieut. D'Hubert said nothing to
the friend who was waiting outside to take him home. He said nothing to
anybody. Lieut. D'Hubert made no confidences. But on the evening of that
day the colonel, strolling under the elms growing near his quarters, in
the company of his second in command, opened his lips.

"I've got to the bottom of this affair," he remarked. The
lieut.-colonel, a dry, brown chip of a man with short side-whiskers,
pricked up his ears at that without letting a sign of curiosity escape
him.

"It's no trifle," added the colonel, oracularly. The other waited for a
long while before he murmured:

"Indeed, sir!"

"No trifle," repeated the colonel, looking straight before him. "I've,
however, forbidden D'Hubert either to send to or receive a challenge
from Feraud for the next twelve months."

He had imagined this prohibition to save the prestige a colonel should
have. The result of it was to give an official seal to the mystery
surrounding this deadly quarrel. Lieut. D'Hubert repelled by an
impassive silence all attempts to worm the truth out of him. Lieut.
Feraud, secretly uneasy at first, regained his assurance as time went
on. He disguised his ignorance of the meaning of the imposed truce by
slight sardonic laughs, as though he were amused by what he intended to
keep to himself. "But what will you do?" his chums used to ask him. He
contented himself by replying "Qui vivra verra" with a little truculent
air. And everybody admired his discretion.

Before the end of the truce Lieut. D'Hubert got his troop. The promotion
was well earned, but somehow no one seemed to expect the event. When
Lieut. Feraud heard of it at a gathering of officers, he muttered
through his teeth, "Is that so?" At once he unhooked his sabre from a
peg near the door, buckled it on carefully, and left the company without
another word. He walked home with measured steps, struck a light with
his flint and steel, and lit his tallow candle. Then snatching an
unlucky glass tumbler off the mantelpiece he dashed it violently on the
floor.

Now that D'Hubert was an officer of superior rank there could be no
question of a duel. Neither of them could send or receive a challenge
without rendering himself amenable to a court-martial. It was not to be
thought of. Lieut. Feraud, who for many days now had experienced no
real desire to meet Lieut. D'Hubert arms in hand, chafed again at the
systematic injustice of fate. "Does he think he will escape me in that
way?" he thought, indignantly. He saw in this promotion an intrigue, a
conspiracy, a cowardly manoeuvre. That colonel knew what he was doing.
He had hastened to recommend his favourite for a step. It was outrageous
that a man should be able to avoid the consequences of his acts in such
a dark and tortuous manner.

Of a happy-go-lucky disposition, of a temperament more pugnacious than
military, Lieut. Feraud had been content to give and receive blows for
sheer love of armed strife, and without much thought of advancement; but
now an urgent desire to get on sprang up in his breast. This fighter by
vocation resolved in his mind to seize showy occasions and to court the
favourable opinion of his chiefs like a mere worldling. He knew he was
as brave as any one, and never doubted his personal charm. Nevertheless,
neither the bravery nor the charm seemed to work very swiftly. Lieut.
Feraud's engaging, careless truculence of a beau sabreur underwent a
change. He began to make bitter allusions to "clever fellows who stick
at nothing to get on." The army was full of them, he would say; you had
only to look round. But all the time he had in view one person only, his
adversary, D'Hubert. Once he confided to an appreciative friend: "You
see, I don't know how to fawn on the right sort of people. It isn't in
my character."

He did not get his step till a week after Austerlitz. The Light Cavalry
of the Grand Army had its hands very full of interesting work for a
little while. Directly the pressure of professional occupation had been
eased Captain Feraud took measures to arrange a meeting without loss of
time. "I know my bird," he observed, grimly. "If I don't look sharp he
will take care to get himself promoted over the heads of a dozen better
men than himself. He's got the knack for that sort of thing."

This duel was fought in Silesia. If not fought to a finish, it was, at
any rate, fought to a standstill. The weapon was the cavalry sabre, and
the skill, the science, the vigour, and the determination displayed by
the adversaries compelled the admiration of the beholders. It became
the subject of talk on both shores of the Danube, and as far as the
garrisons of Gratz and Laybach. They crossed blades seven times. Both
had many cuts which bled profusely. Both refused to have the combat
stopped, time after time, with what appeared the most deadly animosity.
This appearance was caused on the part of Captain D'Hubert by a rational
desire to be done once for all with this worry; on the part of Captain
Feraud by a tremendous exaltation of his pugnacious instincts and the
incitement of wounded vanity. At last, dishevelled, their shirts in
rags, covered with gore and hardly able to stand, they were led away
forcibly by their marvelling and horrified seconds. Later on, besieged
by comrades avid of details, these gentlemen declared that they could
not have allowed that sort of hacking to go on indefinitely. Asked
whether the quarrel was settled this time, they gave it out as their
conviction that it was a difference which could only be settled by one
of the parties remaining lifeless on the ground. The sensation spread
from army corps to army corps, and penetrated at last to the smallest
detachments of the troops cantoned between the Rhine and the Save. In
the cafes in Vienna it was generally estimated, from details to hand,
that the adversaries would be able to meet again in three weeks' time
on the outside. Something really transcendent in the way of duelling was
expected.

These expectations were brought to naught by the necessities of the
service which separated the two officers. No official notice had been
taken of their quarrel. It was now the property of the army, and not
to be meddled with lightly. But the story of the duel, or rather their
duelling propensities, must have stood somewhat in the way of their
advancement, because they were still captains when they came together
again during the war with Prussia. Detached north after Jena, with
the army commanded by Marshal Bernadotte, Prince of Ponte Corvo, they
entered Lubeck together.

It was only after the occupation of that town that Captain Feraud found
leisure to consider his future conduct in view of the fact that Captain
D'Hubert had been given the position of third aide-de-camp to the
marshal. He considered it a great part of a night, and in the morning
summoned two sympathetic friends.

"I've been thinking it over calmly," he said, gazing at them with
blood-shot, tired eyes. "I see that I must get rid of that intriguing
personage. Here he's managed to sneak on to the personal staff of the
marshal. It's a direct provocation to me. I can't tolerate a situation
in which I am exposed any day to receive an order through him. And God
knows what order, too! That sort of thing has happened once before--and
that's once too often. He understands this perfectly, never fear. I
can't tell you any more. Now you know what it is you have to do."

This encounter took place outside the town of Lubeck, on very open
ground, selected with special care in deference to the general sentiment
of the cavalry division belonging to the army corps, that this time
the two officers should meet on horseback. After all, this duel was a
cavalry affair, and to persist in fighting on foot would look like a
slight on one's own arm of the service. The seconds, startled by the
unusual nature of the suggestion, hastened to refer to their principals.
Captain Feraud jumped at it with alacrity. For some obscure reason,
depending, no doubt, on his psychology, he imagined himself invincible
on horseback. All alone within the four walls of his room he rubbed his
hands and muttered triumphantly, "Aha! my pretty staff officer, I've got
you now."

Captain D'Hubert on his side, after staring hard for a considerable
time at his friends, shrugged his shoulders slightly. This affair had
hopelessly and unreasonably complicated his existence for him. One
absurdity more or less in the development did not matter--all absurdity
was distasteful to him; but, urbane as ever, he produced a faintly
ironical smile, and said in his calm voice, "It certainly will do away
to some extent with the monotony of the thing."

When left alone, he sat down at a table and took his head into his
hands. He had not spared himself of late and the marshal had been
working all his aides-decamp particularly hard. The last three weeks of
campaigning in horrible weather had affected his health. When over-tired
he suffered from a stitch in his wounded side, and that uncomfortable
sensation always depressed him. "It's that brute's doing, too," he
thought bitterly.

The day before he had received a letter from home, announcing that his
only sister was going to be married. He reflected that from the time she
was nineteen and he twenty-six, when he went away to garrison life in
Strasbourg, he had had but two short glimpses of her. They had been
great friends and confidants; and now she was going to be given away to
a man whom he did not know--a very worthy fellow no doubt, but not half
good enough for her. He would never see his old Leonie again. She had
a capable little head, and plenty of tact; she would know how to manage
the fellow, to be sure. He was easy in his mind about her happiness but
he felt ousted from the first place in her thoughts which had been his
ever since the girl could speak. A melancholy regret of the days of
his childhood settled upon Captain D'Hubert, third aide-de-camp to the
Prince of Ponte Corvo.

He threw aside the letter of congratulation he had begun to write as in
duty bound, but without enthusiasm. He took a fresh piece of paper, and
traced on it the words: "This is my last will and testament." Looking at
these words he gave himself up to unpleasant reflection; a presentiment
that he would never see the scenes of his childhood weighed down the
equable spirits of Captain D'Hubert. He jumped up, pushing his chair
back, yawned elaborately in sign that he didn't care anything for
presentiments, and throwing himself on the bed went to sleep. During the
night he shivered from time to time without waking up. In the morning he
rode out of town between his two seconds, talking of indifferent things,
and looking right and left with apparent detachment into the heavy
morning mists shrouding the flat green fields bordered by hedges. He
leaped a ditch, and saw the forms of many mounted men moving in the fog.
"We are to fight before a gallery, it seems," he muttered to himself,
bitterly.

His seconds were rather concerned at the state of the atmosphere, but
presently a pale, sickly sun struggled out of the low vapours, and
Captain D'Hubert made out, in the distance, three horsemen riding a
little apart from the others. It was Captain Feraud and his seconds. He
drew his sabre, and assured himself that it was properly fastened to his
wrist. And now the seconds, who had been standing in close group with
the heads of their horses together, separated at an easy canter, leaving
a large, clear field between him and his adversary. Captain D'Hubert
looked at the pale sun, at the dismal fields, and the imbecility of the
impending fight filled him with desolation. From a distant part of
the field a stentorian voice shouted commands at proper intervals: Au
pas--Au trot--Charrrgez! . . . Presentiments of death don't come to
a man for nothing, he thought at the very moment he put spurs to his
horse.

And therefore he was more than surprised when, at the very first set-to,
Captain Feraud laid himself open to a cut over the forehead, which
blinding him with blood, ended the combat almost before it had fairly
begun. It was impossible to go on. Captain D'Hubert, leaving his enemy
swearing horribly and reeling in the saddle between his two appalled
friends, leaped the ditch again into the road and trotted home with his
two seconds, who seemed rather awestruck at the speedy issue of that
encounter. In the evening Captain D'Hubert finished the congratulatory
letter on his sister's marriage.

He finished it late. It was a long letter. Captain D'Hubert gave reins
to his fancy. He told his sister that he would feel rather lonely after
this great change in her life; but then the day would come for him, too,
to get married. In fact, he was thinking already of the time when there
would be no one left to fight with in Europe and the epoch of wars would
be over. "I expect then," he wrote, "to be within measurable distance
of a marshal's baton, and you will be an experienced married woman. You
shall look out a wife for me. I will be, probably, bald by then, and a
little blase. I shall require a young girl, pretty of course, and with
a large fortune, which should help me to close my glorious career in the
splendour befitting my exalted rank." He ended with the information
that he had just given a lesson to a worrying, quarrelsome fellow who
imagined he had a grievance against him. "But if you, in the depths of
your province," he continued, "ever hear it said that your brother is of
a quarrelsome disposition, don't you believe it on any account. There
is no saying what gossip from the army may reach your innocent ears.
Whatever you hear you may rest assured that your ever-loving brother is
not a duellist." Then Captain D'Hubert crumpled up the blank sheet of
paper headed with the words "This is my last will and testament," and
threw it in the fire with a great laugh at himself. He didn't care
a snap for what that lunatic could do. He had suddenly acquired the
conviction that his adversary was utterly powerless to affect his life
in any sort of way; except, perhaps, in the way of putting a special
excitement into the delightful, gay intervals between the campaigns.

From this on there were, however, to be no peaceful intervals in the
career of Captain D'Hubert. He saw the fields of Eylau and Friedland,
marched and countermarched in the snow, in the mud, in the dust of
Polish plains, picking up distinction and advancement on all the roads
of North-eastern Europe. Meantime, Captain Feraud, despatched southwards
with his regiment, made unsatisfactory war in Spain. It was only when
the preparations for the Russian campaign began that he was ordered
north again. He left the country of mantillas and oranges without
regret.

The first signs of a not unbecoming baldness added to the lofty aspect
of Colonel D'Hubert's forehead. This feature was no longer white and
smooth as in the days of his youth; the kindly open glance of his blue
eyes had grown a little hard as if from much peering through the smoke
of battles. The ebony crop on Colonel Feraud's head, coarse and crinkly
like a cap of horsehair, showed many silver threads about the temples. A
detestable warfare of ambushes and inglorious surprises had not improved
his temper. The beak-like curve of his nose was unpleasantly set off
by a deep fold on each side of his mouth. The round orbits of his eyes
radiated wrinkles. More than ever he recalled an irritable and staring
bird--something like a cross between a parrot and an owl. He was still
extremely outspoken in his dislike of "intriguing fellows." He seized
every opportunity to state that he did not pick up his rank in the
ante-rooms of marshals. The unlucky persons, civil or military, who,
with an intention of being pleasant, begged Colonel Feraud to tell them
how he came by that very apparent scar on the forehead, were astonished
to find themselves snubbed in various ways, some of which were simply
rude and others mysteriously sardonic. Young officers were warned kindly
by their more experienced comrades not to stare openly at the colonel's
scar. But indeed an officer need have been very young in his profession
not to have heard the legendary tale of that duel originating in a
mysterious, unforgivable offence.


III


The retreat from Moscow submerged all private feelings in a sea of
disaster and misery. Colonels without regiments, D'Hubert and Feraud
carried the musket in the ranks of the so-called sacred battalion--a
battalion recruited from officers of all arms who had no longer any
troops to lead.

In that battalion promoted colonels did duty as sergeants; the generals
captained the companies; a marshal of France, Prince of the Empire,
commanded the whole. All had provided themselves with muskets picked
up on the road, and with cartridges taken from the dead. In the general
destruction of the bonds of discipline and duty holding together the
companies, the battalions, the regiments, the brigades, and divisions
of an armed host, this body of men put its pride in preserving some
semblance of order and formation. The only stragglers were those who
fell out to give up to the frost their exhausted souls. They plodded
on, and their passage did not disturb the mortal silence of the plains,
shining with the livid light of snows under a sky the colour of
ashes. Whirlwinds ran along the fields, broke against the dark column,
enveloped it in a turmoil of flying icicles, and subsided, disclosing it
creeping on its tragic way without the swing and rhythm of the military
pace. It struggled onwards, the men exchanging neither words nor looks;
whole ranks marched touching elbow, day after day and never raising
their eyes from the ground, as if lost in despairing reflections. In the
dumb, black forests of pines the cracking of overloaded branches was the
only sound they heard. Often from daybreak to dusk no one spoke in the
whole column. It was like a macabre march of struggling corpses towards
a distant grave. Only an alarm of Cossacks could restore to their eyes a
semblance of martial resolution. The battalion faced about and deployed,
or formed square under the endless fluttering of snowflakes. A cloud of
horsemen with fur caps on their heads, levelled long lances, and yelled
"Hurrah! Hurrah!" around their menacing immobility whence, with muffled
detonations, hundreds of dark red flames darted through the air thick
with falling snow. In a very few moments the horsemen would disappear,
as if carried off yelling in the gale, and the sacred battalion standing
still, alone in the blizzard, heard only the howling of the wind, whose
blasts searched their very hearts. Then, with a cry or two of "Vive
l'Empereur!" it would resume its march, leaving behind a few lifeless
bodies lying huddled up, tiny black specks on the white immensity of the
snows.

Though often marching in the ranks, or skirmishing in the woods side
by side, the two officers ignored each other; this not so much from
inimical intention as from a very real indifference. All their store of
moral energy was expended in resisting the terrific enmity of nature and
the crushing sense of irretrievable disaster. To the last they counted
among the most active, the least demoralized of the battalion; their
vigorous vitality invested them both with the appearance of an heroic
pair in the eyes of their comrades. And they never exchanged more than
a casual word or two, except one day, when skirmishing in front of the
battalion against a worrying attack of cavalry, they found themselves
cut off in the woods by a small party of Cossacks. A score of
fur-capped, hairy horsemen rode to and fro, brandishing their lances
in ominous silence; but the two officers had no mind to lay down their
arms, and Colonel Feraud suddenly spoke up in a hoarse, growling voice,
bringing his firelock to the shoulder. "You take the nearest brute,
Colonel D'Hubert; I'll settle the next one. I am a better shot than you
are."

Colonel D'Hubert nodded over his levelled musket. Their shoulders were
pressed against the trunk of a large tree; on their front enormous
snowdrifts protected them from a direct charge. Two carefully aimed
shots rang out in the frosty air, two Cossacks reeled in their saddles.
The rest, not thinking the game good enough, closed round their wounded
comrades and galloped away out of range. The two officers managed to
rejoin their battalion halted for the night. During that afternoon they
had leaned upon each other more than once, and towards the end, Colonel
D'Hubert, whose long legs gave him an advantage in walking through
soft snow, peremptorily took the musket of Colonel Feraud from him and
carried it on his shoulder, using his own as a staff.

On the outskirts of a village half buried in the snow an old wooden
barn burned with a clear and an immense flame. The sacred battalion
of skeletons, muffled in rags, crowded greedily the windward side,
stretching hundreds of numbed, bony hands to the blaze. Nobody had
noted their approach. Before entering the circle of light playing on the
sunken, glassy-eyed, starved faces, Colonel D'Hubert spoke in his turn:

"Here's your musket, Colonel Feraud. I can walk better than you."

Colonel Feraud nodded, and pushed on towards the warmth of the fierce
flames. Colonel D'Hubert was more deliberate, but not the less bent on
getting a place in the front rank. Those they shouldered aside tried
to greet with a faint cheer the reappearance of the two indomitable
companions in activity and endurance. Those manly qualities had never
perhaps received a higher tribute than this feeble acclamation.

This is the faithful record of speeches exchanged during the retreat
from Moscow by Colonels Feraud and D'Hubert. Colonel Feraud's
taciturnity was the outcome of concentrated rage. Short, hairy, black
faced, with layers of grime and the thick sprouting of a wiry beard,
a frost-bitten hand wrapped up in filthy rags carried in a sling, he
accused fate of unparalleled perfidy towards the sublime Man of Destiny.
Colonel D'Hubert, his long moustaches pendent in icicles on each side of
his cracked blue lips, his eyelids inflamed with the glare of snows, the
principal part of his costume consisting of a sheepskin coat looted
with difficulty from the frozen corpse of a camp follower found in an
abandoned cart, took a more thoughtful view of events. His regularly
handsome features, now reduced to mere bony lines and fleshless hollows,
looked out of a woman's black velvet hood, over which was rammed
forcibly a cocked hat picked up under the wheels of an empty army
fourgon, which must have contained at one time some general officer's
luggage. The sheepskin coat being short for a man of his inches ended
very high up, and the skin of his legs, blue with the cold, showed
through the tatters of his nether garments. This under the circumstances
provoked neither jeers nor pity. No one cared how the next man felt or
looked. Colonel D'Hubert himself, hardened to exposure, suffered mainly
in his self-respect from the lamentable indecency of his costume. A
thoughtless person may think that with a whole host of inanimate bodies
bestrewing the path of retreat there could not have been much difficulty
in supplying the deficiency. But to loot a pair of breeches from a
frozen corpse is not so easy as it may appear to a mere theorist. It
requires time and labour. You must remain behind while your companions
march on. Colonel D'Hubert had his scruples as to falling out. Once he
had stepped aside he could not be sure of ever rejoining his battalion;
and the ghastly intimacy of a wrestling match with the frozen dead
opposing the unyielding rigidity of iron to your violence was repugnant
to the delicacy of his feelings. Luckily, one day, grubbing in a mound
of snow between the huts of a village in the hope of finding there a
frozen potato or some vegetable garbage he could put between his long
and shaky teeth, Colonel D'Hubert uncovered a couple of mats of the
sort Russian peasants use to line the sides of their carts with. These,
beaten free of frozen snow, bent about his elegant person and fastened
solidly round his waist, made a bell-shaped nether garment, a sort of
stiff petticoat, which rendered Colonel D'Hubert a perfectly decent, but
a much more noticeable figure than before.

Thus accoutred, he continued to retreat, never doubting of his personal
escape, but full of other misgivings. The early buoyancy of his belief
in the future was destroyed. If the road of glory led through such
unforeseen passages, he asked himself--for he was reflective--whether
the guide was altogether trustworthy. It was a patriotic sadness, not
unmingled with some personal concern, and quite unlike the unreasoning
indignation against men and things nursed by Colonel Feraud. Recruiting
his strength in a little German town for three weeks, Colonel D'Hubert
was surprised to discover within himself a love of repose. His returning
vigour was strangely pacific in its aspirations. He meditated silently
upon this bizarre change of mood. No doubt many of his brother officers
of field rank went through the same moral experience. But these were
not the times to talk of it. In one of his letters home Colonel D'Hubert
wrote, "All your plans, my dear Leonie, for marrying me to the charming
girl you have discovered in your neighbourhood, seem farther off than
ever. Peace is not yet. Europe wants another lesson. It will be a hard
task for us, but it shall be done, because the Emperor is invincible."

Thus wrote Colonel D 'Hubert from Pomerania to his married sister
Leonie, settled in the south of France. And so far the sentiments
expressed would not have been disowned by Colonel Feraud, who wrote
no letters to anybody, whose father had been in life an illiterate
blacksmith, who had no sister or brother, and whom no one desired
ardently to pair off for a life of peace with a charming young girl.
But Colonel D 'Hubert's letter contained also some philosophical
generalities upon the uncertainty of all personal hopes, when bound up
entirely with the prestigious fortune of one incomparably great it is
true, yet still remaining but a man in his greatness. This view would
have appeared rank heresy to Colonel Feraud. Some melancholy forebodings
of a military kind, expressed cautiously, would have been pronounced as
nothing short of high treason by Colonel Feraud. But Leonie, the sister
of Colonel D'Hubert, read them with profound satisfaction, and, folding
the letter thoughtfully, remarked to herself that "Armand was likely to
prove eventually a sensible fellow." Since her marriage into a Southern
family she had become a convinced believer in the return of the
legitimate king. Hopeful and anxious she offered prayers night and
morning, and burnt candles in churches for the safety and prosperity of
her brother.

She had every reason to suppose that her prayers were heard. Colonel
D'Hubert passed through Lutzen, Bautzen, and Leipsic losing no limb, and
acquiring additional reputation. Adapting his conduct to the needs of
that desperate time, he had never voiced his misgivings. He concealed
them under a cheerful courtesy of such pleasant character that people
were inclined to ask themselves with wonder whether Colonel D'Hubert
was aware of any disasters. Not only his manners, but even his glances
remained untroubled. The steady amenity of his blue eyes disconcerted
all grumblers, and made despair itself pause.

This bearing was remarked favourably by the Emperor himself; for Colonel
D'Hubert, attached now to the Major-General's staff, came on several
occasions under the imperial eye. But it exasperated the higher strung
nature of Colonel Feraud. Passing through Magdeburg on service,
this last allowed himself, while seated gloomily at dinner with the
Commandant de Place, to say of his life-long adversary: "This man does
not love the Emperor," and his words were received by the other guests
in profound silence. Colonel Feraud, troubled in his conscience at
the atrocity of the aspersion, felt the need to back it up by a good
argument. "I ought to know him," he cried, adding some oaths. "One
studies one's adversary. I have met him on the ground half a dozen
times, as all the army knows. What more do you want? If that isn't
opportunity enough for any fool to size up his man, may the devil take
me if I can tell what is." And he looked around the table, obstinate and
sombre.

Later on in Paris, while extremely busy reorganizing his regiment,
Colonel Feraud learned that Colonel D'Hubert had been made a general. He
glared at his informant incredulously, then folded his arms and turned
away muttering, "Nothing surprises me on the part of that man."

And aloud he added, speaking over his shoulder, "You would oblige me
greatly by telling General D'Hubert at the first opportunity that his
advancement saves him for a time from a pretty hot encounter. I was only
waiting for him to turn up here."

The other officer remonstrated.

"Could you think of it, Colonel Feraud, at this time, when every life
should be consecrated to the glory and safety of France?"

But the strain of unhappiness caused by military reverses had spoiled
Colonel Feraud's character. Like many other men, he was rendered wicked
by misfortune.

"I cannot consider General D'Hubert's existence of any account either
for the glory or safety of France," he snapped viciously. "You don't
pretend, perhaps, to know him better than I do--I who have met him half
a dozen times on the ground--do you?"

His interlocutor, a young man, was silenced. Colonel Feraud walked up
and down the room.

"This is not the time to mince matters," he said. "I can't believe that
that man ever loved the Emperor. He picked up his general's stars under
the boots of Marshal Berthier. Very well. I'll get mine in another
fashion, and then we shall settle this business which has been dragging
on too long."

General D'Hubert, informed indirectly of Colonel Feraud's attitude, made
a gesture as if to put aside an importunate person. His thoughts were
solicited by graver cares. He had had no time to go and see his family.
His sister, whose royalist hopes were rising higher every day, though
proud of her brother, regretted his recent advancement in a measure,
because it put on him a prominent mark of the usurper's favour, which
later on could have an adverse influence upon his career. He wrote
to her that no one but an inveterate enemy could say he had got his
promotion by favour. As to his career, he assured her that he looked no
farther forward into the future than the next battlefield.

Beginning the campaign of France in this dogged spirit, General D'Hubert
was wounded on the second day of the battle under Laon. While being
carried off the field he heard that Colonel Feraud, promoted this moment
to general, had been sent to replace him at the head of his brigade.
He cursed his luck impulsively, not being able at the first glance to
discern all the advantages of a nasty wound. And yet it was by this
heroic method that Providence was shaping his future. Travelling slowly
south to his sister's country home under the care of a trusty old
servant, General D'Hubert was spared the humiliating contacts and the
perplexities of conduct which assailed the men of Napoleonic empire at
the moment of its downfall. Lying in his bed, with the windows of his
room open wide to the sunshine of Provence, he perceived the undisguised
aspect of the blessing conveyed by that jagged fragment of a Prussian
shell, which, killing his horse and ripping open his thigh, saved him
from an active conflict with his conscience. After the last fourteen
years spent sword in hand in the saddle, and with the sense of his duty
done to the very end, General D'Hubert found resignation an easy virtue.
His sister was delighted with his reasonableness. "I leave myself
altogether in your hands, my dear Leonie," he had said to her.

He was still laid up when, the credit of his brother-in-law's family
being exerted on his behalf, he received from the royal government not
only the confirmation of his rank, but the assurance of being retained
on the active list. To this was added an unlimited convalescent leave.
The unfavourable opinion entertained of him in Bonapartist circles,
though it rested on nothing more solid than the unsupported
pronouncement of General Feraud, was directly responsible for General
D'Hubert's retention on the active list. As to General Feraud, his rank
was confirmed, too. It was more than he dared to expect; but Marshal
Soult, then Minister of War to the restored king, was partial to
officers who had served in Spain. Only not even the marshal's protection
could secure for him active employment. He remained irreconcilable,
idle, and sinister. He sought in obscure restaurants the company of
other half-pay officers who cherished dingy but glorious old tricolour
cockades in their breast-pockets, and buttoned with the forbidden eagle
buttons their shabby uniforms, declaring themselves too poor to afford
the expense of the prescribed change.

The triumphant return from Elba, an historical fact as marvellous and
incredible as the exploits of some mythological demi-god, found General
D'Hubert still quite unable to sit a horse. Neither could he walk very
well. These disabilities, which Madame Leonie accounted most lucky,
helped to keep her brother out of all possible mischief. His frame
of mind at that time, she noted with dismay, became very far from
reasonable. This general officer, still menaced by the loss of a limb,
was discovered one night in the stables of the chateau by a groom,
who, seeing a light, raised an alarm of thieves. His crutch was lying
half-buried in the straw of the litter, and the general was hopping on
one leg in a loose box around a snorting horse he was trying to saddle.
Such were the effects of imperial magic upon a calm temperament and
a pondered mind. Beset in the light of stable lanterns, by the tears,
entreaties, indignation, remonstrances and reproaches of his family, he
got out of the difficult situation by fainting away there and then in
the arms of his nearest relatives, and was carried off to bed. Before he
got out of it again, the second reign of Napoleon, the Hundred Days of
feverish agitation and supreme effort, passed away like a terrifying
dream. The tragic year 1815, begun in the trouble and unrest of
consciences, was ending in vengeful proscriptions.

How General Feraud escaped the clutches of the Special Commission and
the last offices of a firing squad he never knew himself. It was partly
due to the subordinate position he was assigned during the Hundred Days.
The Emperor had never given him active command, but had kept him busy
at the cavalry depot in Paris, mounting and despatching hastily drilled
troopers into the field. Considering this task as unworthy of his
abilities, he had discharged it with no offensively noticeable zeal; but
for the greater part he was saved from the excesses of Royalist reaction
by the interference of General D'Hubert.

This last, still on convalescent leave, but able now to travel, had been
despatched by his sister to Paris to present himself to his legitimate
sovereign. As no one in the capital could possibly know anything of the
episode in the stable he was received there with distinction. Military
to the very bottom of his soul, the prospect of rising in his profession
consoled him from finding himself the butt of Bonapartist malevolence,
which pursued him with a persistence he could not account for. All the
rancour of that embittered and persecuted party pointed to him as the
man who had never loved the Emperor--a sort of monster essentially worse
than a mere betrayer.

General D'Hubert shrugged his shoulders without anger at this ferocious
prejudice. Rejected by his old friends, and mistrusting profoundly the
advances of Royalist society, the young and handsome general (he was
barely forty) adopted a manner of cold, punctilious courtesy, which
at the merest shadow of an intended slight passed easily into harsh
haughtiness. Thus prepared, General D'Hubert went about his affairs in
Paris feeling inwardly very happy with the peculiar uplifting happiness
of a man very much in love. The charming girl looked out by his sister
had come upon the scene, and had conquered him in the thorough manner
in which a young girl by merely existing in his sight can make a man of
forty her own. They were going to be married as soon as General D'Hubert
had obtained his official nomination to a promised command.

One afternoon, sitting on the terrasse of the Cafe Tortoni, General
D'Hubert learned from the conversation of two strangers occupying
a table near his own, that General Feraud, included in the batch of
superior officers arrested after the second return of the king, was in
danger of passing before the Special Commission. Living all his spare
moments, as is frequently the case with expectant lovers, a day in
advance of reality, and in a state of bestarred hallucination, it
required nothing less than the name of his perpetual antagonist
pronounced in a loud voice to call the youngest of Napoleon's generals
away from the mental contemplation of his betrothed. He looked round.
The strangers wore civilian clothes. Lean and weather-beaten, lolling
back in their chairs, they scowled at people with moody and defiant
abstraction from under their hats pulled low over their eyes. It was not
difficult to recognize them for two of the compulsorily retired officers
of the Old Guard. As from bravado or carelessness they chose to speak in
loud tones, General D'Hubert, who saw no reason why he should change his
seat, heard every word. They did not seem to be the personal friends of
General Feraud. His name came up amongst others. Hearing it repeated,
General D'Hubert's tender anticipations of a domestic future adorned
with a woman's grace were traversed by the harsh regret of his warlike
past, of that one long, intoxicating clash of arms, unique in the
magnitude of its glory and disaster--the marvellous work and the special
possession of his own generation. He felt an irrational tenderness
towards his old adversary and appreciated emotionally the murderous
absurdity their encounter had introduced into his life. It was like an
additional pinch of spice in a hot dish. He remembered the flavour with
sudden melancholy. He would never taste it again. It was all over. "I
fancy it was being left lying in the garden that had exasperated him so
against me from the first," he thought, indulgently.


The two strangers at the next table had fallen silent after the third
mention of General Feraud's name. Presently the elder of the two,
speaking again in a bitter tone, affirmed that General Feraud's account
was settled. And why? Simply because he was not like some bigwigs who
loved only themselves. The Royalists knew they could never make anything
of him. He loved The Other too well.

The Other was the Man of St. Helena. The two officers nodded and touched
glasses before they drank to an impossible return. Then the same who
had spoken before, remarked with a sardonic laugh, "His adversary showed
more cleverness."

"What adversary?" asked the younger, as if puzzled.

"Don't you know? They were two hussars. At each promotion they fought a
duel. Haven't you heard of the duel going on ever since 1801?"

The other had heard of the duel, of course. Now he understood the
allusion. General Baron D'Hubert would be able now to enjoy his fat
king's favour in peace.

"Much good may it do to him," mumbled the elder. "They were both brave
men. I never saw this D'Hubert--a sort of intriguing dandy, I am told.
But I can well believe what I've heard Feraud say of him--that he never
loved the Emperor."

They rose and went away.

General D'Hubert experienced the horror of a somnambulist who wakes
up from a complacent dream of activity to find himself walking on a
quagmire. A profound disgust of the ground on which he was making his
way overcame him. Even the image of the charming girl was swept from
his view in the flood of moral distress. Everything he had ever been
or hoped to be would taste of bitter ignominy unless he could manage to
save General Feraud from the fate which threatened so many braves. Under
the impulse of this almost morbid need to attend to the safety of his
adversary, General D'Hubert worked so well with hands and feet (as the
French saying is), that in less than twenty-four hours he found means of
obtaining an extraordinary private audience from the Minister of Police.

General Baron D'Hubert was shown in suddenly without preliminaries. In
the dusk of the Minister's cabinet, behind the forms of writing-desk,
chairs, and tables, between two bunches of wax candles blazing in
sconces, he beheld a figure in a gorgeous coat posturing before a tall
mirror. The old conventionnel Fouche, Senator of the Empire, traitor
to every man, to every principle and motive of human conduct. Duke of
Otranto, and the wily artizan of the second Restoration, was trying
the fit of a court suit in which his young and accomplished fiancee had
declared her intention to have his portrait painted on porcelain. It was
a caprice, a charming fancy which the first Minister of Police of the
second Restoration was anxious to gratify. For that man, often compared
in wiliness of conduct to a fox, but whose ethical side could be
worthily symbolized by nothing less emphatic than a skunk, was as much
possessed by his love as General D'Hubert himself.

Startled to be discovered thus by the blunder of a servant, he met this
little vexation with the characteristic impudence which had served
his turn so well in the endless intrigues of his self-seeking career.
Without altering his attitude a hair's-breadth, one leg in a silk
stocking advanced, his head twisted over his left shoulder, he
called out calmly, "This way, General. Pray approach. Well? I am all
attention."

While General D'Hubert, ill at ease as if one of his own little
weaknesses had been exposed, presented his request as shortly as
possible, the Duke of Otranto went on feeling the fit of his collar,
settling the lapels before the glass, and buckling his back in an effort
to behold the set of the gold embroidered coat-skirts behind. His still
face, his attentive eyes, could not have expressed a more complete
interest in those matters if he had been alone.

"Exclude from the operations of the Special Court a certain Feraud,
Gabriel Florian, General of brigade of the promotion of 1814?" he
repeated, in a slightly wondering tone, and then turned away from the
glass. "Why exclude him precisely?"


"I am surprised that your Excellency, so competent in the evaluation of
men of his time, should have thought worth while to have that name put
down on the list."

"A rabid Bonapartist!"

"So is every grenadier and every trooper of the army, as your Excellency
well knows. And the individuality of General Feraud can have no more
weight than that of any casual grenadier. He is a man of no mental
grasp, of no capacity whatever. It is inconceivable that he should ever
have any influence."

"He has a well-hung tongue, though," interjected Fouche.

"Noisy, I admit, but not dangerous."

"I will not dispute with you. I know next to nothing of him. Hardly his
name, in fact."

"And yet your Excellency has the presidency of the Commission charged
by the king to point out those who were to be tried," said General
D'Hubert, with an emphasis which did not miss the minister's ear.

"Yes, General," he said, walking away into the dark part of the vast
room, and throwing himself into a deep armchair that swallowed him up,
all but the soft gleam of gold embroideries and the pallid patch of the
face--"yes, General. Take this chair there."

General D'Hubert sat down.

"Yes, General," continued the arch-master in the arts of intrigue
and betrayals, whose duplicity, as if at times intolerable to his
self-knowledge, found relief in bursts of cynical openness. "I did
hurry on the formation of the proscribing Commission, and I took its
presidency. And do you know why? Simply from fear that if I did not
take it quickly into my hands my own name would head the list of the
proscribed. Such are the times in which we live. But I am minister of
the king yet, and I ask you plainly why I should take the name of this
obscure Feraud off the list? You wonder how his name got there! Is it
possible that you should know men so little? My dear General, at the
very first sitting of the Commission names poured on us like rain off
the roof of the Tuileries. Names! We had our choice of thousands. How do
you know that the name of this Feraud, whose life or death don't matter
to France, does not keep out some other name?"

The voice out of the armchair stopped. Opposite General D'Hubert sat
still, shadowy and silent. Only his sabre clinked slightly. The voice in
the armchair began again. "And we must try to satisfy the exigencies
of the Allied Sovereigns, too. The Prince de Talleyrand told me only
yesterday that Nesselrode had informed him officially of His Majesty the
Emperor Alexander's dissatisfaction at the small number of examples the
Government of the king intends to make--especially amongst military men.
I tell you this confidentially."

"Upon my word!" broke out General D'Hubert, speaking through his teeth,
"if your Excellency deigns to favour me with any more confidential
information I don't know what I will do. It's enough to break one's
sword over one's knee, and fling the pieces. . . ."

"What government you imagined yourself to be serving?" interrupted the
minister, sharply.

After a short pause the crestfallen voice of General D'Hubert answered,
"The Government of France."

"That's paying your conscience off with mere words, General. The truth
is that you are serving a government of returned exiles, of men who have
been without country for twenty years. Of men also who have just got
over a very bad and humiliating fright. . . . Have no illusions on that
score."

The Duke of Otranto ceased. He had relieved himself, and had attained
his object of stripping some self-respect off that man who had
inconveniently discovered him posturing in a gold-embroidered court
costume before a mirror. But they were a hot-headed lot in the army; it
occurred to him that it would be inconvenient if a well-disposed general
officer, received in audience on the recommendation of one of the
Princes, were to do something rashly scandalous directly after a private
interview with the minister. In a changed tone he put a question to the
point: "Your relation--this Feraud?"

"No. No relation at all."

"Intimate friend?"

"Intimate . . . yes. There is between us an intimate connection of a
nature which makes it a point of honour with me to try . . ."

The minister rang a bell without waiting for the end of the phrase.
When the servant had gone out, after bringing in a pair of heavy silver
candelabra for the writing-desk, the Duke of Otranto rose, his breast
glistening all over with gold in the strong light, and taking a piece of
paper out of a drawer, held it in his hand ostentatiously while he said
with persuasive gentleness: "You must not speak of breaking your sword
across your knee, General. Perhaps you would never get another. The
Emperor will not return this time. . . . Diable d'homme! There was just
a moment, here in Paris, soon after Waterloo, when he frightened me.
It looked as though he were ready to begin all over again. Luckily one
never does begin all over again, really. You must not think of breaking
your sword, General."

General D'Hubert, looking on the ground, moved slightly his hand in a
hopeless gesture of renunciation. The Minister of Police turned his eyes
away from him, and scanned deliberately the paper he had been holding up
all the time.

"There are only twenty general officers selected to be made an example
of. Twenty. A round number. And let's see, Feraud. . . . Ah, he's there.
Gabriel Florian. Parfaitement. That's your man. Well, there will be only
nineteen examples made now."

General D'Hubert stood up feeling as though he had gone through an
infectious illness. "I must beg your Excellency to keep my interference
a profound secret. I attach the greatest importance to his never
learning . . ."

"Who is going to inform him, I should like to know?" said Fouche,
raising his eyes curiously to General D'Hubert's tense, set face. "Take
one of these pens, and run it through the name yourself. This is the
only list in existence. If you are careful to take up enough ink no one
will be able to tell what was the name struck out. But, par exemple, I
am not responsible for what Clarke will do with him afterwards. If he
persists in being rabid he will be ordered by the Minister of War to
reside in some provincial town under the supervision of the police."

A few days later General D'Hubert was saying to his sister, after the
first greetings had been got over: "Ah, my dear Leonie! it seemed to me
I couldn't get away from Paris quick enough."

"Effect of love," she suggested, with a malicious smile.

"And horror," added General D'Hubert, with profound seriousness. "I have
nearly died there of . . . of nausea."

His face was contracted with disgust. And as his sister looked at him
attentively he continued, "I have had to see Fouche. I have had an
audience. I have been in his cabinet. There remains with one, who had
the misfortune to breathe the air of the same room with that man, a
sense of diminished dignity, an uneasy feeling of being not so clean,
after all, as one hoped one was. . . . But you can't understand."

She nodded quickly several times. She understood very well, on the
contrary. She knew her brother thoroughly, and liked him as he was.
Moreover, the scorn and loathing of mankind were the lot of the Jacobin
Fouche, who, exploiting for his own advantage every weakness, every
virtue, every generous illusion of mankind, made dupes of his whole
generation, and died obscurely as Duke of Otranto.

"My dear Armand," she said, compassionately, "what could you want from
that man?"

"Nothing less than a life," answered General D'Hubert. "And I've got
it. It had to be done. But I feel yet as if I could never forgive the
necessity to the man I had to save."

General Feraud, totally unable (as is the case with most of us) to
comprehend what was happening to him, received the Minister of War's
order to proceed at once to a small town of Central France with feelings
whose natural expression consisted in a fierce rolling of the eye and
savage grinding of the teeth. The passing away of the state of war,
the only condition of society he had ever known, the horrible view of a
world at peace, frightened him. He went away to his little town firmly
convinced that this could not last. There he was informed of his
retirement from the army, and that his pension (calculated on the
scale of a colonel's rank) was made dependent on the correctness of his
conduct, and on the good reports of the police. No longer in the army!
He felt suddenly strange to the earth, like a disembodied spirit. It
was impossible to exist. But at first he reacted from sheer incredulity.
This could not be. He waited for thunder, earthquakes, natural
cataclysms; but nothing happened. The leaden weight of an irremediable
idleness descended upon General Feraud, who having no resources within
himself sank into a state of awe-inspiring hebetude. He haunted the
streets of the little town, gazing before him with lacklustre eyes,
disregarding the hats raised on his passage; and people, nudging each
other as he went by, whispered, "That's poor General Feraud. His heart
is broken. Behold how he loved the Emperor."

The other living wreckage of Napoleonic tempest clustered round General
Feraud with infinite respect. He, himself, imagined his soul to be
crushed by grief. He suffered from quickly succeeding impulses to weep,
to howl, to bite his fists till blood came, to spend days on his bed
with his head thrust under the pillow; but these arose from sheer ennui,
from the anguish of an immense, indescribable, inconceivable boredom.
His mental inability to grasp the hopeless nature of his case as a whole
saved him from suicide. He never even thought of it once. He thought
of nothing. But his appetite abandoned him, and the difficulty he
experienced to express the overwhelming nature of his feelings (the most
furious swearing could do no justice to it) induced gradually a habit of
silence--a sort of death to a southern temperament.

Great, therefore, was the sensation amongst the anciens militaires
frequenting a certain little cafe; full of flies when one stuffy
afternoon "that poor General Feraud" let out suddenly a volley of
formidable curses.

He had been sitting quietly in his own privileged corner looking through
the Paris gazettes with just as much interest as a condemned man on the
eve of execution could be expected to show in the news of the day. "I'll
find out presently that I am alive yet," he declared, in a dogmatic
tone. "However, this is a private affair. An old affair of honour. Bah!
Our honour does not matter. Here we are driven off with a split ear like
a lot of cast troop horses--good only for a knacker's yard. But it
would be like striking a blow for the Emperor. . . . Messieurs, I shall
require the assistance of two of you."

Every man moved forward. General Feraud, deeply touched by this
demonstration, called with visible emotion upon the one-eyed veteran
cuirassier and the officer of the Chasseurs a Cheval who had left the
tip of his nose in Russia. He excused his choice to the others.

"A cavalry affair this--you know."

He was answered with a varied chorus of "Parfaitement, mon General
. . . . C'est juste. . . . Parbleu, c'est connu. . . ." Everybody was
satisfied. The three left the cafe together, followed by cries of "Bonne
chance."

Outside they linked arms, the general in the middle. The three rusty
cocked hats worn en bataille with a sinister forward slant barred the
narrow street nearly right across. The overheated little town of grey
stones and red tiles was drowsing away its provincial afternoon under
a blue sky. The loud blows of a cooper hooping a cask reverberated
regularly between the houses. The general dragged his left foot a little
in the shade of the walls.

"This damned winter of 1813 has got into my bones for good. Never
mind. We must take pistols, that's all. A little lumbago. We must have
pistols. He's game for my bag. My eyes are as keen as ever. You should
have seen me in Russia picking off the dodging Cossacks with a beastly
old infantry musket. I have a natural gift for firearms."

In this strain General Feraud ran on, holding up his head, with owlish
eyes and rapacious beak. A mere fighter all his life, a cavalry man, a
sabreur, he conceived war with the utmost simplicity, as, in the main, a
massed lot of personal contests, a sort of gregarious duelling. And here
he had in hand a war of his own. He revived. The shadow of peace
passed away from him like the shadow of death. It was the marvellous
resurrection of the named Feraud, Gabriel Florian, engage volontaire
of 1793, General of 1814, buried without ceremony by means of a service
order signed by the War Minister of the Second Restoration.


IV


No man succeeds in everything he undertakes. In that sense we are all
failures. The great point is not to fail in ordering and sustaining the
effort of our life. In this matter vanity is what leads us astray. It
hurries us into situations from which we must come out damaged; whereas
pride is our safeguard, by the reserve it imposes on the choice of our
endeavour as much as by the virtue of its sustaining power.

General D'Hubert was proud and reserved. He had not been damaged by his
casual love affairs, successful or otherwise. In his war-scarred body
his heart at forty remained unscratched. Entering with reserve into his
sister's matrimonial plans, he had felt himself falling irremediably in
love as one falls off a roof. He was too proud to be frightened. Indeed,
the sensation was too delightful to be alarming.

The inexperience of a man of forty is a much more serious thing than
the inexperience of a youth of twenty, for it is not helped out by the
rashness of hot blood. The girl was mysterious, as young girls are
by the mere effect of their guarded ingenuity; and to him the
mysteriousness of that young girl appeared exceptional and fascinating.
But there was nothing mysterious about the arrangements of the match
which Madame Leonie had promoted. There was nothing peculiar, either. It
was a very appropriate match, commending itself extremely to the young
lady's mother (the father was dead) and tolerable to the young lady's
uncle--an old emigre lately returned from Germany, and pervading, cane
in hand, a lean ghost of the ancien regime, the garden walks of the
young lady's ancestral home.

General D'Hubert was not the man to be satisfied merely with the woman
and the fortune--when it came to the point. His pride (and pride aims
always at true success) would be satisfied with nothing short of love.
But as true pride excludes vanity, he could not imagine any reason why
this mysterious creature with deep and brilliant eyes of a violet colour
should have any feeling for him warmer than indifference. The young lady
(her name was Adele) baffled every attempt at a clear understanding on
that point. It is true that the attempts were clumsy and made timidly,
because by then General D'Hubert had become acutely aware of the number
of his years, of his wounds, of his many moral imperfections, of his
secret unworthiness--and had incidentally learned by experience the
meaning of the word funk. As far as he could make out she seemed to
imply that, with an unbounded confidence in her mother's affection and
sagacity, she felt no unsurmountable dislike for the person of General
D'Hubert; and that this was quite sufficient for a well-brought-up young
lady to begin married life upon. This view hurt and tormented the pride
of General D'Hubert. And yet he asked himself, with a sort of sweet
despair, what more could he expect? She had a quiet and luminous
forehead. Her violet eyes laughed while the lines of her lips and chin
remained composed in admirable gravity. All this was set off by such
a glorious mass of fair hair, by a complexion so marvellous, by such
a grace of expression, that General D'Hubert really never found the
opportunity to examine with sufficient detachment the lofty exigencies
of his pride. In fact, he became shy of that line of inquiry since it
had led once or twice to a crisis of solitary passion in which it was
borne upon him that he loved her enough to kill her rather than lose
her. From such passages, not unknown to men of forty, he would come out
broken, exhausted, remorseful, a little dismayed. He derived, however,
considerable comfort from the quietist practice of sitting now and then
half the night by an open window and meditating upon the wonder of
her existence, like a believer lost in the mystic contemplation of his
faith.

It must not be supposed that all these variations of his inward state
were made manifest to the world. General D 'Hubert found no difficulty
in appearing wreathed in smiles. Because, in fact, he was very happy.
He followed the established rules of his condition, sending over flowers
(from his sister's garden and hot-houses) early every morning, and a
little later following himself to lunch with his intended, her mother,
and her emigre uncle. The middle of the day was spent in strolling or
sitting in the shade. A watchful deference, trembling on the verge of
tenderness was the note of their intercourse on his side--with a playful
turn of the phrase concealing the profound trouble of his whole being
caused by her inaccessible nearness. Late in the afternoon General D
'Hubert walked home between the fields of vines, sometimes intensely
miserable, sometimes supremely happy, sometimes pensively sad; but
always feeling a special intensity of existence, that elation common to
artists, poets, and lovers--to men haunted by a great passion, a noble
thought, or a new vision of plastic beauty.

The outward world at that time did not exist with any special
distinctness for General D'Hubert. One evening, however, crossing a
ridge from which he could see both houses, General D'Hubert became aware
of two figures far down the road. The day had been divine. The festal
decoration of the inflamed sky lent a gentle glow to the sober tints
of the southern land. The grey rocks, the brown fields, the purple,
undulating distances harmonized in luminous accord, exhaled already
the scents of the evening. The two figures down the road presented
themselves like two rigid and wooden silhouettes all black on the ribbon
of white dust. General D'Hubert made out the long, straight, military
capotes buttoned closely right up to the black stocks, the cocked hats,
the lean, carven, brown countenances--old soldiers--vieilles moustaches!
The taller of the two had a black patch over one eye; the other's hard,
dry countenance presented some bizarre, disquieting peculiarity, which
on nearer approach proved to be the absence of the tip of the nose.
Lifting their hands with one movement to salute the slightly lame
civilian walking with a thick stick, they inquired for the house where
the General Baron D'Hubert lived, and what was the best way to get
speech with him quietly.

"If you think this quiet enough," said General D'Hubert, looking round
at the vine-fields, framed in purple lines, and dominated by the nest of
grey and drab walls of a village clustering around the top of a conical
hill, so that the blunt church tower seemed but the shape of a crowning
rock--"if you think this spot quiet enough, you can speak to him
at once. And I beg you, comrades, to speak openly, with perfect
confidence."

They stepped back at this, and raised again their hands to their
hats with marked ceremoniousness. Then the one with the chipped nose,
speaking for both, remarked that the matter was confidential enough, and
to be arranged discreetly. Their general quarters were established in
that village over there, where the infernal clodhoppers--damn their
false, Royalist hearts!--looked remarkably cross-eyed at three
unassuming military men. For the present he should only ask for the name
of General D'Hubert's friends.

"What friends?" said the astonished General D'Hubert, completely off the
track. "I am staying with my brother-in-law over there."

"Well, he will do for one," said the chipped veteran.

"We're the friends of General Feraud," interjected the other, who had
kept silent till then, only glowering with his one eye at the man who
had never loved the Emperor. That was something to look at. For even
the gold-laced Judases who had sold him to the English, the marshals
and princes, had loved him at some time or other. But this man had never
loved the Emperor. General Feraud had said so distinctly.

General D'Hubert felt an inward blow in his chest. For an infinitesimal
fraction of a second it was as if the spinning of the earth had become
perceptible with an awful, slight rustle in the eternal stillness
of space. But this noise of blood in his ears passed off at once.
Involuntarily he murmured, "Feraud! I had forgotten his existence."

"He's existing at present, very uncomfortably, it is true, in the
infamous inn of that nest of savages up there," said the one-eyed
cuirassier, drily. "We arrived in your parts an hour ago on post horses.
He's awaiting our return with impatience. There is hurry, you know.
The General has broken the ministerial order to obtain from you the
satisfaction he's entitled to by the laws of honour, and naturally he's
anxious to have it all over before the gendarmerie gets on his scent."

The other elucidated the idea a little further. "Get back on the
quiet--you understand? Phitt! No one the wiser. We have broken out, too.
Your friend the king would be glad to cut off our scurvy pittances at
the first chance. It's a risk. But honour before everything."

General D'Hubert had recovered his powers of speech. "So you come here
like this along the road to invite me to a throat-cutting match with
that--that . . ." A laughing sort of rage took possession of him. "Ha!
ha! ha! ha!"

His fists on his hips, he roared without restraint, while they stood
before him lank and straight, as though they had been shot up with a
snap through a trap door in the ground. Only four-and-twenty months ago
the masters of Europe, they had already the air of antique ghosts,
they seemed less substantial in their faded coats than their own
narrow shadows falling so black across the white road: the military
and grotesque shadows of twenty years of war and conquests. They had an
outlandish appearance of two imperturbable bonzes of the religion of
the sword. And General D'Hubert, also one of the ex-masters of Europe,
laughed at these serious phantoms standing in his way.

Said one, indicating the laughing General with a jerk of the head: "A
merry companion, that."

"There are some of us that haven't smiled from the day The Other went
away," remarked his comrade.

A violent impulse to set upon and beat those unsubstantial wraiths to
the ground frightened General D'Hubert. He ceased laughing suddenly.
His desire now was to get rid of them, to get them away from his sight
quickly before he lost control of himself. He wondered at the fury
he felt rising in his breast. But he had no time to look into that
peculiarity just then.

"I understand your wish to be done with me as quickly as possible. Don't
let us waste time in empty ceremonies. Do you see that wood there at the
foot of that <DW72>? Yes, the wood of pines. Let us meet there to-morrow
at sunrise. I will bring with me my sword or my pistols, or both if you
like."

The seconds of General Feraud looked at each other.

"Pistols, General," said the cuirassier.

"So be it. Au revoir--to-morrow morning. Till then let me advise you to
keep close if you don't want the gendarmerie making inquiries about you
before it gets dark. Strangers are rare in this part of the country."

They saluted in silence. General D'Hubert, turning his back on their
retreating forms, stood still in the middle of the road for a long time,
biting his lower lip and looking on the ground. Then he began to walk
straight before him, thus retracing his steps till he found himself
before the park gate of his intended's house. Dusk had fallen.
Motionless he stared through the bars at the front of the house,
gleaming clear beyond the thickets and trees. Footsteps scrunched on
the gravel, and presently a tall stooping shape emerged from the lateral
alley following the inner side of the park wall.

Le Chevalier de Valmassigue, uncle of the adorable Adele, ex-brigadier
in the army of the Princes, bookbinder in Altona, afterwards shoemaker
(with a great reputation for elegance in the fit of ladies' shoes) in
another small German town, wore silk stockings on his lean shanks, low
shoes with silver buckles, a brocaded waistcoat. A long-skirted coat,
a la francaise, covered loosely his thin, bowed back. A small
three-cornered hat rested on a lot of powdered hair, tied in a queue.

"Monsieur le Chevalier," called General D'Hubert, softly.

"What? You here again, mon ami? Have you forgotten something?"

"By heavens! that's just it. I have forgotten something. I am come to
tell you of it. No--outside. Behind this wall. It's too ghastly a thing
to be let in at all where she lives."

The Chevalier came out at once with that benevolent resignation some
old people display towards the fugue of youth. Older by a quarter of a
century than General D'Hubert, he looked upon him in the secret of
his heart as a rather troublesome youngster in love. He had heard his
enigmatical words very well, but attached no undue importance to what a
mere man of forty so hard hit was likely to do or say. The turn of mind
of the generation of Frenchmen grown up during the years of his exile
was almost unintelligible to him. Their sentiments appeared to him
unduly violent, lacking fineness and measure, their language needlessly
exaggerated. He joined calmly the General on the road, and they made a
few steps in silence, the General trying to master his agitation, and
get proper control of his voice.

"It is perfectly true; I forgot something. I forgot till half an hour
ago that I had an urgent affair of honour on my hands. It's incredible,
but it is so!"

All was still for a moment. Then in the profound evening silence of the
countryside the clear, aged voice of the Chevalier was heard trembling
slightly: "Monsieur! That's an indignity."

It was his first thought. The girl born during his exile, the posthumous
daughter of his poor brother murdered by a band of Jacobins, had grown
since his return very dear to his old heart, which had been starving on
mere memories of affection for so many years. "It is an inconceivable
thing, I say! A man settles such affairs before he thinks of asking for
a young girl's hand. Why! If you had forgotten for ten days longer, you
would have been married before your memory returned to you. In my time
men did not forget such things--nor yet what is due to the feelings
of an innocent young woman. If I did not respect them myself, I would
qualify your conduct in a way which you would not like."

General D'Hubert relieved himself frankly by a groan. "Don't let that
consideration prevent you. You run no risk of offending her mortally."

But the old man paid no attention to this lover's nonsense. It's
doubtful whether he even heard. "What is it?" he asked. "What's the
nature of . . . ?" "Call it a youthful folly, Monsieur le Chevalier. An
inconceivable, incredible result of . . ." He stopped short. "He will
never believe the story," he thought. "He will only think I am taking
him for a fool, and get offended." General D'Hubert spoke up again:
"Yes, originating in youthful folly, it has become . . ."

The Chevalier interrupted: "Well, then it must be arranged."

"Arranged?"

"Yes, no matter at what cost to your amour propre. You should have
remembered you were engaged. You forgot that, too, I suppose. And then
you go and forget your quarrel. It's the most hopeless exhibition of
levity I ever heard of."

"Good heavens, Monsieur! You don't imagine I have been picking up this
quarrel last time I was in Paris, or anything of the sort, do you?"

"Eh! What matters the precise date of your insane conduct," exclaimed
the Chevalier, testily. "The principal thing is to arrange it."

Noticing General D'Hubert getting restive and trying to place a word,
the old emigre raised his hand, and added with dignity, "I've been a
soldier, too. I would never dare suggest a doubtful step to the man
whose name my niece is to bear. I tell you that entre galants hommes an
affair can always be arranged."

"But saperiotte, Monsieur le Chevalier, it's fifteen or sixteen years
ago. I was a lieutenant of hussars then."

The old Chevalier seemed confounded by the vehemently despairing tone of
this information. "You were a lieutenant of hussars sixteen years ago,"
he mumbled in a dazed manner.

"Why, yes! You did not suppose I was made a general in my cradle like a
royal prince."

In the deepening purple twilight of the fields spread with vine leaves,
backed by a low band of sombre crimson in the west, the voice of the old
ex-officer in the army of the Princes sounded collected, punctiliously
civil.

"Do I dream? Is this a pleasantry? Or am I to understand that you have
been hatching an affair of honour for sixteen years?"

"It has clung to me for that length of time. That is my precise meaning.
The quarrel itself is not to be explained easily. We met on the ground
several times during that time, of course."

"What manners! What horrible perversion of manliness! Nothing can
account for such inhumanity but the sanguinary madness of the Revolution
which has tainted a whole generation," mused the returned emigre in a
low tone. "Who's your adversary?" he asked a little louder.

"My adversary? His name is Feraud."

Shadowy in his tricorne and old-fashioned clothes, like a bowed, thin
ghost of the ancien regime, the Chevalier voiced a ghostly memory. "I
can remember the feud about little Sophie Derval, between Monsieur de
Brissac, Captain in the Bodyguards, and d'Anjorrant (not the pock-marked
one, the other--the Beau d'Anjorrant, as they called him). They met
three times in eighteen months in a most gallant manner. It was the
fault of that little Sophie, too, who would keep on playing . . ."

"This is nothing of the kind," interrupted General D'Hubert. He laughed
a little sardonically. "Not at all so simple," he added. "Nor yet half
so reasonable," he finished, inaudibly, between his teeth, and ground
them with rage.

After this sound nothing troubled the silence for a long time, till the
Chevalier asked, without animation: "What is he--this Feraud?"

"Lieutenant of hussars, too--I mean, he's a general. A Gascon. Son of a
blacksmith, I believe."

"There! I thought so. That Bonaparte had a special predilection for the
canaille. I don't mean this for you, D'Hubert. You are one of us, though
you have served this usurper, who . . ."

"Let's leave him out of this," broke in General D'Hubert.

The Chevalier shrugged his peaked shoulders. "Feraud of sorts. Offspring
of a blacksmith and some village troll. See what comes of mixing
yourself up with that sort of people."

"You have made shoes yourself, Chevalier."

"Yes. But I am not the son of a shoemaker. Neither are you, Monsieur
D'Hubert. You and I have something that your Bonaparte's princes, dukes,
and marshals have not, because there's no power on earth that could give
it to them," retorted the emigre, with the rising animation of a man who
has got hold of a hopeful argument. "Those people don't exist--all these
Ferauds. Feraud! What is Feraud? A va-nu-pieds disguised into a general
by a Corsican adventurer masquerading as an emperor. There is no earthly
reason for a D'Hubert to s'encanailler by a duel with a person of that
sort. You can make your excuses to him perfectly well. And if the manant
takes into his head to decline them, you may simply refuse to meet him."

"You say I may do that?"

"I do. With the clearest conscience."

"Monsieur le Chevalier! To what do you think you have returned from your
emigration?"

This was said in such a startling tone that the old man raised sharply
his bowed head, glimmering silvery white under the points of the little
tricorne. For a time he made no sound.

"God knows!" he said at last, pointing with a slow and grave gesture at
a tall roadside cross mounted on a block of stone, and stretching its
arms of forged iron all black against the darkening red band in the
sky--"God knows! If it were not for this emblem, which I remember seeing
on this spot as a child, I would wonder to what we who remained faithful
to God and our king have returned. The very voices of the people have
changed."

"Yes, it is a changed France," said General D'Hubert. He seemed to have
regained his calm. His tone was slightly ironic. "Therefore I cannot
take your advice. Besides, how is one to refuse to be bitten by a dog
that means to bite? It's impracticable. Take my word for it--Feraud
isn't a man to be stayed by apologies or refusals. But there are
other ways. I could, for instance, send a messenger with a word to
the brigadier of the gendarmerie in Senlac. He and his two friends are
liable to arrest on my simple order. It would make some talk in the
army, both the organized and the disbanded--especially the disbanded.
All canaille! All once upon a time the companions in arms of Armand
D'Hubert. But what need a D'Hubert care what people that don't exist may
think? Or, better still, I might get my brother-in-law to send for the
mayor of the village and give him a hint. No more would be needed to get
the three 'brigands' set upon with flails and pitchforks and hunted into
some nice, deep, wet ditch--and nobody the wiser! It has been done only
ten miles from here to three poor devils of the disbanded Red Lancers
of the Guard going to their homes. What says your conscience, Chevalier?
Can a D'Hubert do that thing to three men who do not exist?"

A few stars had come out on the blue obscurity, clear as crystal, of the
sky. The dry, thin voice of the Chevalier spoke harshly: "Why are you
telling me all this?"

The General seized the withered old hand with a strong grip. "Because
I owe you my fullest confidence. Who could tell Adele but you? You
understand why I dare not trust my brother-in-law nor yet my own sister.
Chevalier! I have been so near doing these things that I tremble yet.
You don't know how terrible this duel appears to me. And there's no
escape from it."

He murmured after a pause, "It's a fatality," dropped the Chevalier's
passive hand, and said in his ordinary conversational voice, "I shall
have to go without seconds. If it is my lot to remain on the ground, you
at least will know all that can be made known of this affair."

The shadowy ghost of the ancien regime seemed to have become more bowed
during the conversation. "How am I to keep an indifferent face this
evening before these two women?" he groaned. "General! I find it very
difficult to forgive you."

General D 'Hubert made no answer.

"Is your cause good, at least?"

"I am innocent."

This time he seized the Chevalier's ghostly arm above the elbow, and
gave it a mighty squeeze. "I must kill him!" he hissed, and opening his
hand strode away down the road.

The delicate attentions of his adoring sister had secured for the
General perfect liberty of movement in the house where he was a guest.
He had even his own entrance through a small door in one corner of
the orangery. Thus he was not exposed that evening to the necessity
of dissembling his agitation before the calm ignorance of the other
inmates. He was glad of it. It seemed to him that if he had to open his
lips he would break out into horrible and aimless imprecations, start
breaking furniture, smashing china and glass. From the moment he opened
the private door and while ascending the twenty-eight steps of a winding
staircase, giving access to the corridor on which his room opened, he
went through a horrible and humiliating scene in which an infuriated
madman with blood-shot eyes and a foaming mouth played inconceivable
havoc with everything inanimate that may be found in a well-appointed
dining-room. When he opened the door of his apartment the fit was over,
and his bodily fatigue was so great that he had to catch at the backs
of the chairs while crossing the room to reach a low and broad divan
on which he let himself fall heavily. His moral prostration was still
greater. That brutality of feeling which he had known only when
charging the enemy, sabre in hand, amazed this man of forty, who did not
recognize in it the instinctive fury of his menaced passion. But in
his mental and bodily exhaustion this passion got cleared, distilled,
refined into a sentiment of melancholy despair at having, perhaps, to
die before he had taught this beautiful girl to love him.

That night, General D'Hubert stretched out on his back with his hands
over his eyes, or lying on his breast with his face buried in a
cushion, made the full pilgrimage of emotions. Nauseating disgust at
the absurdity of the situation, doubt of his own fitness to conduct his
existence, and mistrust of his best sentiments (for what the devil did
he want to go to Fouche for?)--he knew them all in turn. "I am an
idiot, neither more nor less," he thought--"A sensitive idiot. Because
I overheard two men talking in a cafe. . . . I am an idiot afraid of
lies--whereas in life it is only truth that matters."

Several times he got up and, walking in his socks in order not to be
heard by anybody downstairs, drank all the water he could find in the
dark. And he tasted the torments of jealousy, too. She would marry
somebody else. His very soul writhed. The tenacity of that Feraud,
the awful persistence of that imbecile brute, came to him with the
tremendous force of a relentless destiny. General D'Hubert trembled as
he put down the empty water ewer. "He will have me," he thought. General
D'Hubert was tasting every emotion that life has to give. He had in
his dry mouth the faint sickly flavour of fear, not the excusable fear
before a young girl's candid and amused glance, but the fear of death
and the honourable man's fear of cowardice.

But if true courage consists in going out to meet an odious danger from
which our body, soul, and heart recoil together, General D'Hubert had
the opportunity to practise it for the first time in his life. He had
charged exultingly at batteries and at infantry squares, and ridden with
messages through a hail of bullets without thinking anything about
it. His business now was to sneak out unheard, at break of day, to
an obscure and revolting death. General D'Hubert never hesitated. He
carried two pistols in a leather bag which he slung over his shoulder.
Before he had crossed the garden his mouth was dry again. He picked two
oranges. It was only after shutting the gate after him that he felt a
slight faintness.

He staggered on, disregarding it, and after going a few yards regained
the command of his legs. In the colourless and pellucid dawn the wood
of pines detached its columns of trunks and its dark green canopy very
clearly against the rocks of the grey hillside. He kept his eyes fixed
on it steadily, and sucked at an orange as he walked. That temperamental
good-humoured coolness in the face of danger which had made him an
officer liked by his men and appreciated by his superiors was gradually
asserting itself. It was like going into battle. Arriving at the edge of
the wood he sat down on a boulder, holding the other orange in his hand,
and reproached himself for coming so ridiculously early on the ground.
Before very long, however, he heard the swishing of bushes, footsteps
on the hard ground, and the sounds of a disjointed, loud conversation. A
voice somewhere behind him said boastfully, "He's game for my bag."

He thought to himself, "Here they are. What's this about game? Are they
talking of me?" And becoming aware of the other orange in his hand, he
thought further, "These are very good oranges. Leonie's own tree. I may
just as well eat this orange now instead of flinging it away."

Emerging from a wilderness of rocks and bushes, General Feraud and his
seconds discovered General D'Hubert engaged in peeling the orange. They
stood still, waiting till he looked up. Then the seconds raised their
hats, while General Feraud, putting his hands behind his back, walked
aside a little way.

"I am compelled to ask one of you, messieurs, to act for me. I have
brought no friends. Will you?"

The one-eyed cuirassier said judicially, "That cannot be refused."

The other veteran remarked, "It's awkward all the same."

"Owing to the state of the people's minds in this part of the country
there was no one I could trust safely with the object of your presence
here," explained General D'Hubert, urbanely.

They saluted, looked round, and remarked both together:

"Poor ground."

"It's unfit."

"Why bother about ground, measurements, and so on? Let us simplify
matters. Load the two pairs of pistols. I will take those of General
Feraud, and let him take mine. Or, better still, let us take a mixed
pair. One of each pair. Then let us go into the wood and shoot at sight,
while you remain outside. We did not come here for ceremonies, but for
war--war to the death. Any ground is good enough for that. If I fall,
you must leave me where I lie and clear out. It wouldn't be healthy for
you to be found hanging about here after that."

It appeared after a short parley that General Feraud was willing to
accept these conditions. While the seconds were loading the pistols,
he could be heard whistling, and was seen to rub his hands with perfect
contentment. He flung off his coat briskly, and General D 'Hubert took
off his own and folded it carefully on a stone.

"Suppose you take your principal to the other side of the wood and let
him enter exactly in ten minutes from now," suggested General D'Hubert,
calmly, but feeling as if he were giving directions for his own
execution. This, however, was his last moment of weakness. "Wait. Let us
compare watches first."

He pulled out his own. The officer with the chipped nose went over to
borrow the watch of General Feraud. They bent their heads over them for
a time.

"That's it. At four minutes to six by yours. Seven to by mine."

It was the cuirassier who remained by the side of General D'Hubert,
keeping his one eye fixed immovably on the white face of the watch he
held in the palm of his hand. He opened his mouth, waiting for the beat
of the last second long before he snapped out the word, "Avancez."

General D'Hubert moved on, passing from the glaring sunshine of the
Provencal morning into the cool and aromatic shade of the pines. The
ground was clear between the reddish trunks, whose multitude, leaning at
slightly different angles, confused his eye at first. It was like going
into battle. The commanding quality of confidence in himself woke up in
his breast. He was all to his affair. The problem was how to kill the
adversary. Nothing short of that would free him from this imbecile
nightmare. "It's no use wounding that brute," thought General D'Hubert.
He was known as a resourceful officer. His comrades years ago used also
to call him The Strategist. And it was a fact that he could think in
the presence of the enemy. Whereas Feraud had been always a mere
fighter--but a dead shot, unluckily.

"I must draw his fire at the greatest possible range," said General
D'Hubert to himself.

At that moment he saw something white moving far off between the
trees--the shirt of his adversary. He stepped out at once between the
trunks, exposing himself freely; then, quick as lightning, leaped
back. It had been a risky move but it succeeded in its object. Almost
simultaneously with the pop of a shot a small piece of bark chipped off
by the bullet stung his ear painfully.

General Feraud, with one shot expended, was getting cautious. Peeping
round the tree, General D'Hubert could not see him at all. This
ignorance of the foe's whereabouts carried with it a sense of
insecurity. General D'Hubert felt himself abominably exposed on his
flank and rear. Again something white fluttered in his sight. Ha! The
enemy was still on his front, then. He had feared a turning movement.
But apparently General Feraud was not thinking of it. General D'Hubert
saw him pass without special haste from one tree to another in the
straight line of approach. With great firmness of mind General D'Hubert
stayed his hand. Too far yet. He knew he was no marksman. His must be a
waiting game--to kill.

Wishing to take advantage of the greater thickness of the trunk, he sank
down to the ground. Extended at full length, head on to his enemy, he
had his person completely protected. Exposing himself would not do now,
because the other was too near by this time. A conviction that Feraud
would presently do something rash was like balm to General D'Hubert's
soul. But to keep his chin raised off the ground was irksome, and not
much use either. He peeped round, exposing a fraction of his head with
dread, but really with little risk. His enemy, as a matter of fact, did
not expect to see anything of him so far down as that. General D'Hubert
caught a fleeting view of General Feraud shifting trees again with
deliberate caution. "He despises my shooting," he thought, displaying
that insight into the mind of his antagonist which is of such great help
in winning battles. He was confirmed in his tactics of immobility. "If
I could only watch my rear as well as my front!" he thought anxiously,
longing for the impossible.

It required some force of character to lay his pistols down; but, on a
sudden impulse, General D'Hubert did this very gently--one on each side
of him. In the army he had been looked upon as a bit of a dandy because
he used to shave and put on a clean shirt on the days of battle. As
a matter of fact, he had always been very careful of his personal
appearance. In a man of nearly forty, in love with a young and charming
girl, this praiseworthy self-respect may run to such little weaknesses
as, for instance, being provided with an elegant little leather
folding-case containing a small ivory comb, and fitted with a piece of
looking-glass on the outside. General D'Hubert, his hands being free,
felt in his breeches' pockets for that implement of innocent vanity
excusable in the possessor of long, silky moustaches. He drew it out,
and then with the utmost coolness and promptitude turned himself over
on his back. In this new attitude, his head a little raised, holding the
little looking-glass just clear of his tree, he squinted into it with
his left eye, while the right kept a direct watch on the rear of his
position. Thus was proved Napoleon's saying, that "for a French soldier,
the word impossible does not exist." He had the right tree nearly
filling the field of his little mirror.

"If he moves from behind it," he reflected with satisfaction, "I am
bound to see his legs. But in any case he can't come upon me unawares."

And sure enough he saw the boots of General Feraud flash in and out,
eclipsing for an instant everything else reflected in the little mirror.
He shifted its position accordingly. But having to form his judgment of
the change from that indirect view he did not realize that now his feet
and a portion of his legs were in plain sight of General Feraud.

General Feraud had been getting gradually impressed by the amazing
cleverness with which his enemy was keeping cover. He had spotted the
right tree with bloodthirsty precision. He was absolutely certain of it.
And yet he had not been able to glimpse as much as the tip of an ear. As
he had been looking for it at the height of about five feet ten inches
from the ground it was no great wonder--but it seemed very wonderful to
General Feraud.

The first view of these feet and legs determined a rush of blood to his
head. He literally staggered behind his tree, and had to steady himself
against it with his hand. The other was lying on the ground, then! On
the ground! Perfectly still, too! Exposed! What could it mean? . . . The
notion that he had knocked over his adversary at the first shot entered
then General Feraud's head. Once there it grew with every second of
attentive gazing, overshadowing every other supposition--irresistible,
triumphant, ferocious.

"What an ass I was to think I could have missed him," he muttered to
himself. "He was exposed en plein--the fool!--for quite a couple of
seconds."

General Feraud gazed at the motionless limbs, the last vestiges of
surprise fading before an unbounded admiration of his own deadly skill
with the pistol.

"Turned up his toes! By the god of war, that was a shot!" he exulted
mentally. "Got it through the head, no doubt, just where I aimed,
staggered behind that tree, rolled over on his back, and died."

And he stared! He stared, forgetting to move, almost awed, almost
sorry. But for nothing in the world would he have had it undone. Such a
shot!--such a shot! Rolled over on his back and died!

For it was this helpless position, lying on the back, that shouted its
direct evidence at General Feraud! It never occurred to him that
it might have been deliberately assumed by a living man. It was
inconceivable. It was beyond the range of sane supposition. There was no
possibility to guess the reason for it. And it must be said, too, that
General D'Hubert's turned-up feet looked thoroughly dead. General Feraud
expanded his lungs for a stentorian shout to his seconds, but, from what
he felt to be an excessive scrupulousness, refrained for a while.

"I will just go and see first whether he breathes yet," he mumbled
to himself, leaving carelessly the shelter of his tree. This move was
immediately perceived by the resourceful General D'Hubert. He concluded
it to be another shift, but when he lost the boots out of the field of
the mirror he became uneasy. General Feraud had only stepped a little
out of the line, but his adversary could not possibly have supposed him
walking up with perfect unconcern. General D'Hubert, beginning to wonder
at what had become of the other, was taken unawares so completely that
the first warning of danger consisted in the long, early-morning shadow
of his enemy falling aslant on his outstretched legs. He had not even
heard a footfall on the soft ground between the trees!

It was too much even for his coolness. He jumped up thoughtlessly,
leaving the pistols on the ground. The irresistible instinct of an
average man (unless totally paralyzed by discomfiture) would have been
to stoop for his weapons, exposing himself to the risk of being shot
down in that position. Instinct, of course, is irreflective. It is its
very definition. But it may be an inquiry worth pursuing whether
in reflective mankind the mechanical promptings of instinct are not
affected by the customary mode of thought. In his young days, Armand
D'Hubert, the reflective, promising officer, had emitted the opinion
that in warfare one should "never cast back on the lines of a mistake."
This idea, defended and developed in many discussions, had settled into
one of the stock notions of his brain, had become a part of his mental
individuality. Whether it had gone so inconceivably deep as to affect
the dictates of his instinct, or simply because, as he himself declared
afterwards, he was "too scared to remember the confounded pistols," the
fact is that General D'Hubert never attempted to stoop for them. Instead
of going back on his mistake, he seized the rough trunk with both hands,
and swung himself behind it with such impetuosity that, going right
round in the very flash and report of the pistol-shot, he reappeared on
the other side of the tree face to face with General Feraud. This last,
completely unstrung by such a show of agility on the part of a dead man,
was trembling yet. A very faint mist of smoke hung before his face which
had an extraordinary aspect, as if the lower jaw had come unhinged.

"Not missed!" he croaked, hoarsely, from the depths of a dry throat.

This sinister sound loosened the spell that had fallen on General
D'Hubert's senses. "Yes, missed--a bout portant," he heard himself
saying, almost before he had recovered the full command of his
faculties. The revulsion of feeling was accompanied by a gust of
homicidal fury, resuming in its violence the accumulated resentment of
a lifetime. For years General D 'Hubert had been exasperated and
humiliated by an atrocious absurdity imposed upon him by this man's
savage caprice. Besides, General D'Hubert had been in this last instance
too unwilling to confront death for the reaction of his anguish not to
take the shape of a desire to kill. "And I have my two shots to fire
yet," he added, pitilessly.

General Feraud snapped-to his teeth, and his face assumed an irate,
undaunted expression. "Go on!" he said, grimly.

These would have been his last words if General D'Hubert had been
holding the pistols in his hands. But the pistols were lying on the
ground at the foot of a pine. General D'Hubert had the second of leisure
necessary to remember that he had dreaded death not as a man, but as a
lover; not as a danger, but as a rival; not as a foe to life, but as an
obstacle to marriage. And behold! there was the rival defeated!--utterly
defeated, crushed, done for!

He picked up the weapons mechanically, and, instead of firing them into
General Feraud's breast, he gave expression to the thoughts uppermost in
his mind, "You will fight no more duels now."

His tone of leisurely, ineffable satisfaction was too much for General
Feraud's stoicism. "Don't dawdle, then, damn you for a cold-blooded
staff-coxcomb!" he roared out, suddenly, out of an impassive face held
erect on a rigidly still body.

General D'Hubert uncocked the pistols carefully. This proceeding was
observed with mixed feelings by the other general. "You missed me
twice," the victor said, coolly, shifting both pistols to one hand; "the
last time within a foot or so. By every rule of single combat your life
belongs to me. That does not mean that I want to take it now."

"I have no use for your forbearance," muttered General Feraud, gloomily.

"Allow me to point out that this is no concern of mine," said General
D'Hubert, whose every word was dictated by a consummate delicacy of
feeling. In anger he could have killed that man, but in cold blood he
recoiled from humiliating by a show of generosity this unreasonable
being--a fellow-soldier of the Grande Armee, a companion in the wonders
and terrors of the great military epic. "You don't set up the pretension
of dictating to me what I am to do with what's my own."

General Feraud looked startled, and the other continued, "You've forced
me on a point of honour to keep my life at your disposal, as it were,
for fifteen years. Very well. Now that the matter is decided to my
advantage, I am going to do what I like with your life on the same
principle. You shall keep it at my disposal as long as I choose. Neither
more nor less. You are on your honour till I say the word."

"I am! But, sacrebleu! This is an absurd position for a General of the
Empire to be placed in!" cried General Feraud, in accents of profound
and dismayed conviction. "It amounts to sitting all the rest of my
life with a loaded pistol in a drawer waiting for your word. It's--it's
idiotic; I shall be an object of--of--derision."

"Absurd?--idiotic? Do you think so?" queried General D'Hubert with sly
gravity. "Perhaps. But I don't see how that can be helped. However, I
am not likely to talk at large of this adventure. Nobody need ever know
anything about it. Just as no one to this day, I believe, knows the
origin of our quarrel. . . . Not a word more," he added, hastily.
"I can't really discuss this question with a man who, as far as I am
concerned, does not exist."

When the two duellists came out into the open, General Feraud walking a
little behind, and rather with the air of walking in a trance, the two
seconds hurried towards them, each from his station at the edge of the
wood. General D'Hubert addressed them, speaking loud and distinctly,
"Messieurs, I make it a point of declaring to you solemnly, in the
presence of General Feraud, that our difference is at last settled for
good. You may inform all the world of that fact."

"A reconciliation, after all!" they exclaimed together.

"Reconciliation? Not that exactly. It is something much more binding. Is
it not so, General?"

General Feraud only lowered his head in sign of assent. The two veterans
looked at each other. Later in the day, when they found themselves alone
out of their moody friend's earshot, the cuirassier remarked suddenly,
"Generally speaking, I can see with my one eye as far as most people;
but this beats me. He won't say anything."

"In this affair of honour I understand there has been from first to last
always something that no one in the army could quite make out," declared
the chasseur with the imperfect nose. "In mystery it began, in mystery
it went on, in mystery it is to end, apparently."

General D'Hubert walked home with long, hasty strides, by no means
uplifted by a sense of triumph. He had conquered, yet it did not seem
to him that he had gained very much by his conquest. The night before
he had grudged the risk of his life which appeared to him magnificent,
worthy of preservation as an opportunity to win a girl's love. He had
known moments when, by a marvellous illusion, this love seemed to
be already his, and his threatened life a still more magnificent
opportunity of devotion. Now that his life was safe it had suddenly lost
its special magnificence. It had acquired instead a specially alarming
aspect as a snare for the exposure of unworthiness. As to the marvellous
illusion of conquered love that had visited him for a moment in the
agitated watches of the night, which might have been his last on earth,
he comprehended now its true nature. It had been merely a paroxysm of
delirious conceit. Thus to this man, sobered by the victorious issue
of a duel, life appeared robbed of its charm, simply because it was no
longer menaced.

Approaching the house from the back, through the orchard and the kitchen
garden, he could not notice the agitation which reigned in front. He
never met a single soul. Only while walking softly along the corridor,
he became aware that the house was awake and more noisy than usual.
Names of servants were being called out down below in a confused noise
of coming and going. With some concern he noticed that the door of his
own room stood ajar, though the shutters had not been opened yet. He
had hoped that his early excursion would have passed unperceived. He
expected to find some servant just gone in; but the sunshine filtering
through the usual cracks enabled him to see lying on the low divan
something bulky, which had the appearance of two women clasped in each
other's arms. Tearful and desolate murmurs issued mysteriously from that
appearance. General D'Hubert pulled open the nearest pair of shutters
violently. One of the women then jumped up. It was his sister. She stood
for a moment with her hair hanging down and her arms raised straight up
above her head, and then flung herself with a stifled cry into his arms.
He returned her embrace, trying at the same time to disengage himself
from it. The other woman had not risen. She seemed, on the contrary, to
cling closer to the divan, hiding her face in the cushions. Her hair was
also loose; it was admirably fair. General D'Hubert recognized it with
staggering emotion. Mademoiselle de Valmassigue! Adele! In distress!

He became greatly alarmed, and got rid of his sister's hug definitely.
Madame Leonie then extended her shapely bare arm out of her peignoir,
pointing dramatically at the divan. "This poor, terrified child has
rushed here from home, on foot, two miles--running all the way."

"What on earth has happened?" asked General D'Hubert in a low, agitated
voice.

But Madame Leonie was speaking loudly. "She rang the great bell at
the gate and roused all the household--we were all asleep yet. You may
imagine what a terrible shock. . . . Adele, my dear child, sit up."

General D'Hubert's expression was not that of a man who "imagines" with
facility. He did, however, fish out of the chaos of surmises the notion
that his prospective mother-in-law had died suddenly, but only to
dismiss it at once. He could not conceive the nature of the event or the
catastrophe which would induce Mademoiselle de Valmassigue, living in a
house full of servants, to bring the news over the fields herself, two
miles, running all the way.

"But why are you in this room?" he whispered, full of awe.

"Of course, I ran up to see, and this child . . . I did not notice it
. . . she followed me. It's that absurd Chevalier," went on Madame
Leonie, looking towards the divan. . . . "Her hair is all come down. You
may imagine she did not stop to call her maid to dress it before she
started. . . Adele, my dear, sit up. . . . He blurted it all out to her
at half-past five in the morning. She woke up early and opened her
shutters to breathe the fresh air, and saw him sitting collapsed on a
garden bench at the end of the great alley. At that hour--you may
imagine! And the evening before he had declared himself indisposed. She
hurried on some clothes and flew down to him. One would be anxious for
less. He loves her, but not very intelligently. He had been up all
night, fully dressed, the poor old man, perfectly exhausted. He wasn't
in a state to invent a plausible story. . . . What a confidant you chose
there! My husband was furious. He said, 'We can't interfere now.' So we
sat down to wait. It was awful. And this poor child running with her
hair loose over here publicly! She has been seen by some people in the
fields. She has roused the whole household, too. It's awkward for her.
Luckily you are to be married next week. . . . Adele, sit up. He has
come home on his own legs. . . . We expected to see you coming on a
stretcher, perhaps--what do I know? Go and see if the carriage is ready.
I must take this child home at once. It isn't proper for her to stay
here a minute longer."

General D'Hubert did not move. It was as though he had heard nothing.
Madame Leonie changed her mind. "I will go and see myself," she cried.
"I want also my cloak.--Adele--" she began, but did not add "sit up."
She went out saying, in a very loud and cheerful tone: "I leave the door
open."

General D'Hubert made a movement towards the divan, but then Adele
sat up, and that checked him dead. He thought, "I haven't washed this
morning. I must look like an old tramp. There's earth on the back of my
coat and pine-needles in my hair." It occurred to him that the situation
required a good deal of circumspection on his part.

"I am greatly concerned, mademoiselle," he began, vaguely, and abandoned
that line. She was sitting up on the divan with her cheeks
unusually pink and her hair, brilliantly fair, falling all over her
shoulders--which was a very novel sight to the general. He walked away
up the room, and looking out of the window for safety said, "I fear you
must think I behaved like a madman," in accents of sincere despair. Then
he spun round, and noticed that she had followed him with her eyes. They
were not cast down on meeting his glance. And the expression of her face
was novel to him also. It was, one might have said, reversed. Those eyes
looked at him with grave thoughtfulness, while the exquisite lines of
her mouth seemed to suggest a restrained smile. This change made her
transcendental beauty much less mysterious, much more accessible to a
man's comprehension. An amazing ease of mind came to the general--and
even some ease of manner. He walked down the room with as much
pleasurable excitement as he would have found in walking up to a battery
vomiting death, fire, and smoke; then stood looking down with smiling
eyes at the girl whose marriage with him (next week) had been so
carefully arranged by the wise, the good, the admirable Leonie.

"Ah! mademoiselle," he said, in a tone of courtly regret, "if only I
could be certain that you did not come here this morning, two miles,
running all the way, merely from affection for your mother!"

He waited for an answer imperturbable but inwardly elated. It came in a
demure murmur, eyelashes lowered with fascinating effect. "You must not
be mechant as well as mad."

And then General D'Hubert made an aggressive movement towards the divan
which nothing could check. That piece of furniture was not exactly in
the line of the open door. But Madame Leonie, coming back wrapped up in
a light cloak and carrying a lace shawl on her arm for Adele to hide her
incriminating hair under, had a swift impression of her brother getting
up from his knees.

"Come along, my dear child," she cried from the doorway.

The general, now himself again in the fullest sense, showed the
readiness of a resourceful cavalry officer and the peremptoriness of a
leader of men. "You don't expect her to walk to the carriage," he said,
indignantly. "She isn't fit. I shall carry her downstairs."

This he did slowly, followed by his awed and respectful sister; but he
rushed back like a whirlwind to wash off all the signs of the night of
anguish and the morning of war, and to put on the festive garments of a
conqueror before hurrying over to the other house. Had it not been for
that, General D 'Hubert felt capable of mounting a horse and pursuing
his late adversary in order simply to embrace him from excess of
happiness. "I owe it all to this stupid brute," he thought. "He has made
plain in a morning what might have taken me years to find out--for I
am a timid fool. No self-confidence whatever. Perfect coward. And the
Chevalier! Delightful old man!" General D'Hubert longed to embrace him
also.

The Chevalier was in bed. For several days he was very unwell. The men
of the Empire and the post-revolution young ladies were too much for
him. He got up the day before the wedding, and, being curious by nature,
took his niece aside for a quiet talk. He advised her to find out from
her husband the true story of the affair of honour, whose claim, so
imperative and so persistent, had led her to within an ace of tragedy.
"It is right that his wife should be told. And next month or so will be
your time to learn from him anything you want to know, my dear child."

Later on, when the married couple came on a visit to the mother of the
bride, Madame la Generale D'Hubert communicated to her beloved old uncle
the true story she had obtained without any difficulty from her husband.

The Chevalier listened with deep attention to the end, took a pinch
of snuff, flicked the grains of tobacco from the frilled front of his
shirt, and asked, calmly, "And that's all it was?"

"Yes, uncle," replied Madame la Generale, opening her pretty eyes very
wide. "Isn't it funny? C'est insense--to think what men are capable of!"

"H'm!" commented the old emigre. "It depends what sort of men. That
Bonaparte's soldiers were savages. It is insense. As a wife, my dear,
you must believe implicitly what your husband says."

But to Leonie's husband the Chevalier confided his true opinion.
"If that's the tale the fellow made up for his wife, and during the
honeymoon, too, you may depend on it that no one will ever know now the
secret of this affair."

Considerably later still, General D'Hubert judged the time come, and the
opportunity propitious to write a letter to General Feraud. This letter
began by disclaiming all animosity. "I've never," wrote the General
Baron D'Hubert, "wished for your death during all the time of our
deplorable quarrel. Allow me," he continued, "to give you back in
all form your forfeited life. It is proper that we two, who have been
partners in so much military glory, should be friendly to each other
publicly."

The same letter contained also an item of domestic information. It was
in reference to this last that General Feraud answered from a little
village on the banks of the Garonne, in the following words:

"If one of your boy's names had been Napoleon--or Joseph--or even
Joachim, I could congratulate you on the event with a better heart. As
you have thought proper to give him the names of Charles Henri Armand,
I am confirmed in my conviction that you never loved the Emperor. The
thought of that sublime hero chained to a rock in the middle of a savage
ocean makes life of so little value that I would receive with positive
joy your instructions to blow my brains out. From suicide I consider
myself in honour debarred. But I keep a loaded pistol in my drawer."

Madame la Generale D'Hubert lifted up her hands in despair after
perusing that answer.

"You see? He won't be reconciled," said her husband. "He must never, by
any chance, be allowed to guess where the money comes from. It wouldn't
do. He couldn't bear it."

"You are a brave homme, Armand," said Madame la Generale, appreciatively.

"My dear, I had the right to blow his brains out; but as I didn't,
we can't let him starve. He has lost his pension and he is utterly
incapable of doing anything in the world for himself. We must take
care of him, secretly, to the end of his days. Don't I owe him the
most ecstatic moment of my life? . . . Ha! ha! ha! Over the fields, two
miles, running all the way! I couldn't believe my ears! . . . But for
his stupid ferocity, it would have taken me years to find you out. It's
extraordinary how in one way or another this man has managed to fasten
himself on my deeper feelings."




A PATHETIC TALE


IL CONDE

"Vedi Napoli e poi mori."


The first time we got into conversation was in the National Museum
in Naples, in the rooms on the ground floor containing the famous
collection of bronzes from Herculaneum and Pompeii: that marvellous
legacy of antique art whose delicate perfection has been preserved for
us by the catastrophic fury of a volcano.

He addressed me first, over the celebrated Resting Hermes which we had
been looking at side by side. He said the right things about that wholly
admirable piece. Nothing profound. His taste was natural rather than
cultivated. He had obviously seen many fine things in his life
and appreciated them: but he had no jargon of a dilettante or the
connoisseur. A hateful tribe. He spoke like a fairly intelligent man of
the world, a perfectly unaffected gentleman.

We had known each other by sight for some few days past. Staying in the
same hotel--good, but not extravagantly up to date--I had noticed him
in the vestibule going in and out. I judged he was an old and valued
client. The bow of the hotel-keeper was cordial in its deference, and
he acknowledged it with familiar courtesy. For the servants he was Il
Conde. There was some squabble over a man's parasol--yellow silk with
white lining sort of thing--the waiters had discovered abandoned outside
the dining-room door. Our gold-laced door-keeper recognized it and I
heard him directing one of the lift boys to run after Il Conde with it.
Perhaps he was the only Count staying in the hotel, or perhaps he had
the distinction of being the Count par excellence, conferred upon him
because of his tried fidelity to the house.

Having conversed at the Museo--(and by the by he had expressed his
dislike of the busts and statues of Roman emperors in the gallery of
marbles: their faces were too vigorous, too pronounced for him)--having
conversed already in the morning I did not think I was intruding when in
the evening, finding the dining-room very full, I proposed to share his
little table. Judging by the quiet urbanity of his consent he did not
think so either. His smile was very attractive.

He dined in an evening waistcoat and a "smoking" (he called it so) with
a black tie. All this of very good cut, not new--just as these things
should be. He was, morning or evening, very correct in his dress. I have
no doubt that his whole existence had been correct, well ordered and
conventional, undisturbed by startling events. His white hair brushed
upwards off a lofty forehead gave him the air of an idealist, of an
imaginative man. His white moustache, heavy but carefully trimmed and
arranged, was not unpleasantly tinted a golden yellow in the middle. The
faint scent of some very good perfume, and of good cigars (that last
an odour quite remarkable to come upon in Italy) reached me across the
table. It was in his eyes that his age showed most. They were a little
weary with creased eyelids. He must have been sixty or a couple of years
more. And he was communicative. I would not go so far as to call it
garrulous--but distinctly communicative.

He had tried various climates, of Abbazia, of the Riviera, of other
places, too, he told me, but the only one which suited him was the
climate of the Gulf of Naples. The ancient Romans, who, he pointed out
to me, were men expert in the art of living, knew very well what they
were doing when they built their villas on these shores, in Baiae, in
Vico, in Capri. They came down to this seaside in search of health,
bringing with them their trains of mimes and flute-players to amuse
their leisure. He thought it extremely probable that the Romans of
the higher classes were specially predisposed to painful rheumatic
affections.

This was the only personal opinion I heard him express. It was based
on no special erudition. He knew no more of the Romans than an average
informed man of the world is expected to know. He argued from personal
experience. He had suffered himself from a painful and dangerous
rheumatic affection till he found relief in this particular spot of
Southern Europe.

This was three years ago, and ever since he had taken up his quarters
on the shores of the gulf, either in one of the hotels in Sorrento or
hiring a small villa in Capri. He had a piano, a few books: picked
up transient acquaintances of a day, week, or month in the stream of
travellers from all Europe. One can imagine him going out for his
walks in the streets and lanes, becoming known to beggars, shopkeepers,
children, country people; talking amiably over the walls to the
contadini--and coming back to his rooms or his villa to sit before the
piano, with his white hair brushed up and his thick orderly moustache,
"to make a little music for myself." And, of course, for a change
there was Naples near by--life, movement, animation, opera. A little
amusement, as he said, is necessary for health. Mimes and flute-players,
in fact. Only unlike the magnates of ancient Rome, he had no affairs
of the city to call him away from these moderate delights. He had no
affairs at all. Probably he had never had any grave affairs to attend
to in his life. It was a kindly existence, with its joys and sorrows
regulated by the course of Nature--marriages, births, deaths--ruled by
the prescribed usages of good society and protected by the State.

He was a widower; but in the months of July and August he ventured to
cross the Alps for six weeks on a visit to his married daughter. He
told me her name. It was that of a very aristocratic family. She had
a castle--in Bohemia, I think. This is as near as I ever came to
ascertaining his nationality. His own name, strangely enough, he never
mentioned. Perhaps he thought I had seen it on the published list. Truth
to say, I never looked. At any rate, he was a good European--he spoke
four languages to my certain knowledge--and a man of fortune. Not
of great fortune evidently and appropriately. I imagine that to be
extremely rich would have appeared to him improper, outre--too blatant
altogether. And obviously, too, the fortune was not of his making. The
making of a fortune cannot be achieved without some roughness. It is
a matter of temperament. His nature was too kindly for strife. In the
course of conversation he mentioned his estate quite by the way, in
reference to that painful and alarming rheumatic affection. One year,
staying incautiously beyond the Alps as late as the middle of September,
he had been laid up for three months in that lonely country house
with no one but his valet and the caretaking couple to attend to him.
Because, as he expressed it, he "kept no establishment there." He
had only gone for a couple of days to confer with his land agent. He
promised himself never to be so imprudent in the future. The first weeks
of September would find him on the shores of his beloved gulf.

Sometimes in travelling one comes upon such lonely men, whose only
business is to wait for the unavoidable. Deaths and marriages have made
a solitude round them, and one really cannot blame their endeavours to
make the waiting as easy as possible. As he remarked to me, "At my time
of life freedom from physical pain is a very important matter."

It must not be imagined that he was a wearisome hypochondriac. He was
really much too well-bred to be a nuisance. He had an eye for the
small weaknesses of humanity. But it was a good-natured eye. He made
a restful, easy, pleasant companion for the hours between dinner and
bedtime. We spent three evenings together, and then I had to leave
Naples in a hurry to look after a friend who had fallen seriously ill
in Taormina. Having nothing to do, Il Conde came to see me off at the
station. I was somewhat upset, and his idleness was always ready to take
a kindly form. He was by no means an indolent man.

He went along the train peering into the carriages for a good seat for
me, and then remained talking cheerily from below. He declared he would
miss me that evening very much and announced his intention of going
after dinner to listen to the band in the public garden, the Villa
Nazionale. He would amuse himself by hearing excellent music and looking
at the best society. There would be a lot of people, as usual.

I seem to see him yet--his raised face with a friendly smile under the
thick moustaches, and his kind, fatigued eyes. As the train began to
move, he addressed me in two languages: first in French, saying,
"Bon voyage"; then, in his very good, somewhat emphatic
English, encouragingly, because he could see my concern: "All
will--be--well--yet!"

My friend's illness having taken a decidedly favourable turn, I returned
to Naples on the tenth day. I cannot say I had given much thought to Il
Conde during my absence, but entering the dining-room I looked for him
in his habitual place. I had an idea he might have gone back to Sorrento
to his piano and his books and his fishing. He was great friends with
all the boatmen, and fished a good deal with lines from a boat. But I
made out his white head in the crowd of heads, and even from a distance
noticed something unusual in his attitude. Instead of sitting erect,
gazing all round with alert urbanity, he drooped over his plate. I stood
opposite him for some time before he looked up, a little wildly, if such
a strong word can be used in connection with his correct appearance.

"Ah, my dear sir! Is it you?" he greeted me. "I hope all is well."

He was very nice about my friend. Indeed, he was always nice, with the
niceness of people whose hearts are genuinely humane. But this time it
cost him an effort. His attempts at general conversation broke down into
dullness. It occurred to me he might have been indisposed. But before I
could frame the inquiry he muttered:

"You find me here very sad."

"I am sorry for that," I said. "You haven't had bad news, I hope?"

It was very kind of me to take an interest. No. It was not that. No
bad news, thank God. And he became very still as if holding his
breath. Then, leaning forward a little, and in an odd tone of awed
embarrassment, he took me into his confidence.

"The truth is that I have had a very--a very--how shall I
say?--abominable adventure happen to me."

The energy of the epithet was sufficiently startling in that man of
moderate feelings and toned-down vocabulary. The word unpleasant I
should have thought would have fitted amply the worst experience likely
to befall a man of his stamp. And an adventure, too. Incredible! But
it is in human nature to believe the worst; and I confess I eyed him
stealthily, wondering what he had been up to. In a moment, however,
my unworthy suspicions vanished. There was a fundamental refinement of
nature about the man which made me dismiss all idea of some more or less
disreputable scrape.

"It is very serious. Very serious." He went on, nervously. "I will tell
you after dinner, if you will allow me."

I expressed my perfect acquiescence by a little bow, nothing more.
I wished him to understand that I was not likely to hold him to that
offer, if he thought better of it later on. We talked of indifferent
things, but with a sense of difficulty quite unlike our former easy,
gossipy intercourse. The hand raising a piece of bread to his lips, I
noticed, trembled slightly. This symptom, in regard to my reading of the
man, was no less than startling.

In the smoking-room he did not hang back at all. Directly we had taken
our usual seats he leaned sideways over the arm of his chair and looked
straight into my eyes earnestly.

"You remember," he began, "that day you went away? I told you then I
would go to the Villa Nazionale to hear some music in the evening."

I remembered. His handsome old face, so fresh for his age, unmarked by
any trying experience, appeared haggard for an instant. It was like the
passing of a shadow. Returning his steadfast gaze, I took a sip of my
black coffee. He was systematically minute in his narrative, simply in
order, I think, not to let his excitement get the better of him.

After leaving the railway station, he had an ice, and read the paper in
a cafe. Then he went back to the hotel, dressed for dinner, and dined
with a good appetite. After dinner he lingered in the hall (there were
chairs and tables there) smoking his cigar; talked to the little girl
of the Primo Tenore of the San Carlo theatre, and exchanged a few words
with that "amiable lady," the wife of the Primo Tenore. There was no
performance that evening, and these people were going to the Villa also.
They went out of the hotel. Very well.

At the moment of following their example--it was half-past nine
already--he remembered he had a rather large sum of money in his
pocket-book. He entered, therefore, the office and deposited the greater
part of it with the book-keeper of the hotel. This done, he took a
carozella and drove to the seashore. He got out of the cab and entered
the Villa on foot from the Largo di Vittoria end.

He stared at me very hard. And I understood then how really
impressionable he was. Every small fact and event of that evening stood
out in his memory as if endowed with mystic significance. If he did not
mention to me the colour of the pony which drew the carozella, and the
aspect of the man who drove, it was a mere oversight arising from his
agitation, which he repressed manfully.

He had then entered the Villa Nazionale from the Largo di Vittoria end.
The Villa Nazionale is a public pleasure-ground laid out in grass plots,
bushes, and flower-beds between the houses of the Riviera di Chiaja and
the waters of the bay. Alleys of trees, more or less parallel, stretch
its whole length--which is considerable. On the Riviera di Chiaja side
the electric tramcars run close to the railings. Between the garden and
the sea is the fashionable drive, a broad road bordered by a low wall,
beyond which the Mediterranean splashes with gentle murmurs when the
weather is fine.

As life goes on late at night in Naples, the broad drive was all astir
with a brilliant swarm of carriage lamps moving in pairs, some creeping
slowly, others running rapidly under the thin, motionless line of
electric lamps defining the shore. And a brilliant swarm of stars hung
above the land humming with voices, piled up with houses, glittering
with lights--and over the silent flat shadows of the sea.

The gardens themselves are not very well lit. Our friend went forward in
the warm gloom, his eyes fixed upon a distant luminous region extending
nearly across the whole width of the Villa, as if the air had glowed
there with its own cold, bluish, and dazzling light. This magic spot,
behind the black trunks of trees and masses of inky foliage, breathed
out sweet sounds mingled with bursts of brassy roar, sudden clashes of
metal, and grave, vibrating thuds.

As he walked on, all these noises combined together into a piece of
elaborate music whose harmonious phrases came persuasively through a
great disorderly murmur of voices and shuffling of feet on the gravel of
that open space. An enormous crowd immersed in the electric light, as
if in a bath of some radiant and tenuous fluid shed upon their heads by
luminous globes, drifted in its hundreds round the band. Hundreds
more sat on chairs in more or less concentric circles, receiving
unflinchingly the great waves of sonority that ebbed out into the
darkness. The Count penetrated the throng, drifted with it in tranquil
enjoyment, listening and looking at the faces. All people of good
society: mothers with their daughters, parents and children, young men
and young women all talking, smiling, nodding to each other. Very many
pretty faces, and very many pretty toilettes. There was, of course, a
quantity of diverse types: showy old fellows with white moustaches, fat
men, thin men, officers in uniform; but what predominated, he told
me, was the South Italian type of young man, with a colourless, clear
complexion, red lips, jet-black little moustache and liquid black eyes
so wonderfully effective in leering or scowling.

Withdrawing from the throng, the Count shared a little table in front
of the cafe with a young man of just such a type. Our friend had some
lemonade. The young man was sitting moodily before an empty glass.
He looked up once, and then looked down again. He also tilted his hat
forward. Like this--

The Count made the gesture of a man pulling his hat down over his brow,
and went on:

"I think to myself: he is sad; something is wrong with him; young men
have their troubles. I take no notice of him, of course. I pay for my
lemonade, and go away."

Strolling about in the neighbourhood of the band, the Count thinks he
saw twice that young man wandering alone in the crowd. Once their eyes
met. It must have been the same young man, but there were so many there
of that type that he could not be certain. Moreover, he was not very
much concerned except in so far that he had been struck by the marked,
peevish discontent of that face.

Presently, tired of the feeling of confinement one experiences in a
crowd, the Count edged away from the band. An alley, very sombre by
contrast, presented itself invitingly with its promise of solitude
and coolness. He entered it, walking slowly on till the sound of the
orchestra became distinctly deadened. Then he walked back and turned
about once more. He did this several times before he noticed that there
was somebody occupying one of the benches.

The spot being midway between two lamp-posts the light was faint.

The man lolled back in the corner of the seat, his legs stretched out,
his arms folded and his head drooping on his breast. He never stirred,
as though he had fallen asleep there, but when the Count passed by next
time he had changed his attitude. He sat leaning forward. His elbows
were propped on his knees, and his hands were rolling a cigarette. He
never looked up from that occupation.

The Count continued his stroll away from the band. He returned slowly,
he said. I can imagine him enjoying to the full, but with his usual
tranquillity, the balminess of this southern night and the sounds of
music softened delightfully by the distance.

Presently, he approached for the third time the man on the garden seat,
still leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. It was a dejected
pose. In the semi-obscurity of the alley his high shirt collar and his
cuffs made small patches of vivid whiteness. The Count said that he had
noticed him getting up brusquely as if to walk away, but almost before
he was aware of it the man stood before him asking in a low, gentle tone
whether the signore would have the kindness to oblige him with a light.

The Count answered this request by a polite "Certainly," and dropped his
hands with the intention of exploring both pockets of his trousers for
the matches.

"I dropped my hands," he said, "but I never put them in my pockets. I
felt a pressure there--"

He put the tip of his finger on a spot close under his breastbone,
the very spot of the human body where a Japanese gentleman begins the
operations of the Harakiri, which is a form of suicide following
upon dishonour, upon an intolerable outrage to the delicacy of one's
feelings.

"I glance down," the Count continued in an awestruck voice, "and what do
I see? A knife! A long knife--"

"You don't mean to say," I exclaimed, amazed, "that you have been held
up like this in the Villa at half-past ten o'clock, within a stone's
throw of a thousand people!"

He nodded several times, staring at me with all his might.

"The clarionet," he declared, solemnly, "was finishing his solo, and I
assure you I could hear every note. Then the band crashed fortissimo,
and that creature rolled its eyes and gnashed its teeth hissing at me
with the greatest ferocity, 'Be silent! No noise or--'"

I could not get over my astonishment.

"What sort of knife was it?" I asked, stupidly.

"A long blade. A stiletto--perhaps a kitchen knife. A long narrow blade.
It gleamed. And his eyes gleamed. His white teeth, too. I could see
them. He was very ferocious. I thought to myself: 'If I hit him he
will kill me.' How could I fight with him? He had the knife and I had
nothing. I am nearly seventy, you know, and that was a young man. I
seemed even to recognize him. The moody young man of the cafe. The young
man I met in the crowd. But I could not tell. There are so many like him
in this country."

The distress of that moment was reflected in his face. I should think
that physically he must have been paralyzed by surprise. His thoughts,
however, remained extremely active. They ranged over every alarming
possibility. The idea of setting up a vigorous shouting for help
occurred to him, too. But he did nothing of the kind, and the reason why
he refrained gave me a good opinion of his mental self-possession. He
saw in a flash that nothing prevented the other from shouting, too.

"That young man might in an instant have thrown away his knife and
pretended I was the aggressor. Why not? He might have said I attacked
him. Why not? It was one incredible story against another! He might
have said anything--bring some dishonouring charge against me--what do
I know? By his dress he was no common robber. He seemed to belong to the
better classes. What could I say? He was an Italian--I am a foreigner.
Of course, I have my passport, and there is our consul--but to be
arrested, dragged at night to the police office like a criminal!"

He shuddered. It was in his character to shrink from scandal, much more
than from mere death. And certainly for many people this would have
always remained--considering certain peculiarities of Neapolitan
manners--a deucedly queer story. The Count was no fool. His belief in
the respectable placidity of life having received this rude shock, he
thought that now anything might happen. But also a notion came into his
head that this young man was perhaps merely an infuriated lunatic.

This was for me the first hint of his attitude towards this adventure.
In his exaggerated delicacy of sentiment he felt that nobody's
self-esteem need be affected by what a madman may choose to do to
one. It became apparent, however, that the Count was to be denied that
consolation. He enlarged upon the abominably savage way in which that
young man rolled his glistening eyes and gnashed his white teeth. The
band was going now through a slow movement of solemn braying by all the
trombones, with deliberately repeated bangs of the big drum.

"But what did you do?" I asked, greatly excited.

"Nothing," answered the Count. "I let my hands hang down very still. I
told him quietly I did not intend making a noise. He snarled like a dog,
then said in an ordinary voice:

"'Vostro portofolio.'"

"So I naturally," continued the Count--and from this point acted the
whole thing in pantomime. Holding me with his eyes, he went through
all the motions of reaching into his inside breast pocket, taking out
a pocket-book, and handing it over. But that young man, still bearing
steadily on the knife, refused to touch it.

He directed the Count to take the money out himself, received it into
his left hand, motioned the pocketbook to be returned to the pocket,
all this being done to the sweet thrilling of flutes and clarionets
sustained by the emotional drone of the hautboys. And the "young man,"
as the Count called him, said: "This seems very little."

"It was, indeed, only 340 or 360 lire," the Count pursued. "I had left
my money in the hotel, as you know. I told him this was all I had on me.
He shook his head impatiently and said:

"'Vostro orologio.'"

The Count gave me the dumb show of pulling out his watch, detaching it.
But, as it happened, the valuable gold half-chronometer he possessed had
been left at a watch-maker's for cleaning. He wore that evening (on a
leather guard) the Waterbury fifty-franc thing he used to take with him
on his fishing expeditions. Perceiving the nature of this booty, the
well-dressed robber made a contemptuous clicking sound with his tongue
like this, "Tse-Ah!" and waved it away hastily. Then, as the Count
was returning the disdained object to his pocket, he demanded with a
threateningly increased pressure of the knife on the epigastrium, by way
of reminder:

"'Vostri anelli.'"

"One of the rings," went on the Count, "was given me many years ago by
my wife; the other is the signet ring of my father. I said, 'No. That
you shall not have!'"

Here the Count reproduced the gesture corresponding to that declaration
by clapping one hand upon the other, and pressing both thus against his
chest. It was touching in its resignation. "That you shall not have,"
he repeated, firmly, and closed his eyes, fully expecting--I don't know
whether I am right in recording that such an unpleasant word had passed
his lips--fully expecting to feel himself being--I really hesitate to
say--being disembowelled by the push of the long, sharp blade resting
murderously against the pit of his stomach--the very seat, in all human
beings, of anguishing sensations.

Great waves of harmony went on flowing from the band.

Suddenly the Count felt the nightmarish pressure removed from the
sensitive spot. He opened his eyes. He was alone. He had heard nothing.
It is probable that "the young man" had departed, with light steps,
some time before, but the sense of the horrid pressure had lingered even
after the knife had gone. A feeling of weakness came over him. He had
just time to stagger to the garden seat. He felt as though he had held
his breath for a long time. He sat all in a heap, panting with the shock
of the reaction.

The band was executing, with immense bravura, the complicated finale. It
ended with a tremendous crash. He heard it unreal and remote, as if his
ears had been stopped, and then the hard clapping of a thousand, more
or less, pairs of hands, like a sudden hail-shower passing away. The
profound silence which succeeded recalled him to himself.

A tramcar resembling a long glass box wherein people sat with their
heads strongly lighted, ran along swiftly within sixty yards of the spot
where he had been robbed. Then another rustled by, and yet another
going the other way. The audience about the band had broken up, and were
entering the alley in small conversing groups. The Count sat up straight
and tried to think calmly of what had happened to him. The vileness
of it took his breath away again. As far as I can make it out he was
disgusted with himself. I do not mean to say with his behaviour. Indeed,
if his pantomimic rendering of it for my information was to be trusted,
it was simply perfect. No, it was not that. He was not ashamed. He
was shocked at being the selected victim, not of robbery so much as of
contempt. His tranquillity had been wantonly desecrated. His lifelong,
kindly nicety of outlook had been defaced.

Nevertheless, at that stage, before the iron had time to sink deep, he
was able to argue himself into comparative equanimity. As his agitation
calmed down somewhat, he became aware that he was frightfully hungry.
Yes, hungry. The sheer emotion had made him simply ravenous. He left the
seat and, after walking for some time, found himself outside the gardens
and before an arrested tramcar, without knowing very well how he came
there. He got in as if in a dream, by a sort of instinct. Fortunately he
found in his trouser pocket a copper to satisfy the conductor. Then
the car stopped, and as everybody was getting out he got out, too. He
recognized the Piazza San Ferdinando, but apparently it did not occur to
him to take a cab and drive to the hotel. He remained in distress on
the Piazza like a lost dog, thinking vaguely of the best way of getting
something to eat at once.

Suddenly he remembered his twenty-franc piece. He explained to me that
he had that piece of French gold for something like three years. He used
to carry it about with him as a sort of reserve in case of accident.
Anybody is liable to have his pocket picked--a quite different thing
from a brazen and insulting robbery.

The monumental arch of the Galleria Umberto faced him at the top of
a noble flight of stairs. He climbed these without loss of time, and
directed his steps towards the Cafe Umberto. All the tables outside
were occupied by a lot of people who were drinking. But as he wanted
something to eat, he went inside into the cafe, which is divided into
aisles by square pillars set all round with long looking-glasses.
The Count sat down on a red plush bench against one of these pillars,
waiting for his risotto. And his mind reverted to his abominable
adventure.

He thought of the moody, well-dressed young man, with whom he had
exchanged glances in the crowd around the bandstand, and who, he felt
confident, was the robber. Would he recognize him again? Doubtless. But
he did not want ever to see him again. The best thing was to forget this
humiliating episode.

The Count looked round anxiously for the coming of his risotto, and,
behold! to the left against the wall--there sat the young man. He was
alone at a table, with a bottle of some sort of wine or syrup and a
carafe of iced water before him. The smooth olive cheeks, the red lips,
the little jet-black moustache turned up gallantly, the fine black eyes
a little heavy and shaded by long eyelashes, that peculiar expression of
cruel discontent to be seen only in the busts of some Roman emperors--it
was he, no doubt at all. But that was a type. The Count looked away
hastily. The young officer over there reading a paper was like that,
too. Same type. Two young men farther away playing draughts also
resembled--

The Count lowered his head with the fear in his heart of being
everlastingly haunted by the vision of that young man. He began to
eat his risotto. Presently he heard the young man on his left call the
waiter in a bad-tempered tone.

At the call, not only his own waiter, but two other idle waiters
belonging to a quite different row of tables, rushed towards him with
obsequious alacrity, which is not the general characteristic of the
waiters in the Cafe Umberto. The young man muttered something and one
of the waiters walking rapidly to the nearest door called out into the
Galleria: "Pasquale! O! Pasquale!"

Everybody knows Pasquale, the shabby old fellow who, shuffling between
the tables, offers for sale cigars, cigarettes, picture postcards, and
matches to the clients of the cafe. He is in many respects an engaging
scoundrel. The Count saw the grey-haired, unshaven ruffian enter the
cafe, the glass case hanging from his neck by a leather strap, and, at a
word from the waiter, make his shuffling way with a sudden spurt to
the young man's table. The young man was in need of a cigar with which
Pasquale served him fawningly. The old pedlar was going out, when the
Count, on a sudden impulse, beckoned to him.

Pasquale approached, the smile of deferential recognition combining
oddly with the cynical searching expression of his eyes. Leaning his
case on the table, he lifted the glass lid without a word. The Count
took a box of cigarettes and urged by a fearful curiosity, asked as
casually as he could--

"Tell me, Pasquale, who is that young signore sitting over there?"

The other bent over his box confidentially.

"That, Signor Conde," he said, beginning to rearrange his wares busily
and without looking up, "that is a young Cavaliere of a very good family
from Bari. He studies in the University here, and is the chief, capo, of
an association of young men--of very nice young men."

He paused, and then, with mingled discretion and pride of knowledge,
murmured the explanatory word "Camorra" and shut down the lid. "A very
powerful Camorra," he breathed out. "The professors themselves respect
it greatly . . . una lira e cinquanti centesimi, Signor Conde."

Our friend paid with the gold piece. While Pasquale was making up the
change, he observed that the young man, of whom he had heard so much
in a few words, was watching the transaction covertly. After the old
vagabond had withdrawn with a bow, the Count settled with the waiter and
sat still. A numbness, he told me, had come over him.

The young man paid, too, got up, and crossed over, apparently for the
purpose of looking at himself in the mirror set in the pillar nearest to
the Count's seat. He was dressed all in black with a dark green bow tie.
The Count looked round, and was startled by meeting a vicious glance
out of the corners of the other's eyes. The young Cavaliere from Bari
(according to Pasquale; but Pasquale is, of course, an accomplished
liar) went on arranging his tie, settling his hat before the glass, and
meantime he spoke just loud enough to be heard by the Count. He spoke
through his teeth with the most insulting venom of contempt and gazing
straight into the mirror.

"Ah! So you had some gold on you--you old liar--you old birba--you
furfante! But you are not done with me yet."

The fiendishness of his expression vanished like lightning, and he
lounged out of the cafe with a moody, impassive face.

The poor Count, after telling me this last episode, fell back trembling
in his chair. His forehead broke into perspiration. There was a wanton
insolence in the spirit of this outrage which appalled even me. What it
was to the Count's delicacy I won't attempt to guess. I am sure that if
he had been not too refined to do such a blatantly vulgar thing as dying
from apoplexy in a cafe, he would have had a fatal stroke there and
then. All irony apart, my difficulty was to keep him from seeing
the full extent of my commiseration. He shrank from every excessive
sentiment, and my commiseration was practically unbounded. It did not
surprise me to hear that he had been in bed a week. He had got up to
make his arrangements for leaving Southern Italy for good and all.

And the man was convinced that he could not live through a whole year in
any other climate!

No argument of mine had any effect. It was not timidity, though he did
say to me once: "You do not know what a Camorra is, my dear sir. I am
a marked man." He was not afraid of what could be done to him.
His delicate conception of his dignity was defiled by a degrading
experience. He couldn't stand that. No Japanese gentleman, outraged in
his exaggerated sense of honour, could have gone about his preparations
for Hara-kiri with greater resolution. To go home really amounted to
suicide for the poor Count.

There is a saying of Neapolitan patriotism, intended for the information
of foreigners, I presume: "See Naples and then die." Vedi Napoli e poi
mori. It is a saying of excessive vanity, and everything excessive was
abhorrent to the nice moderation of the poor Count. Yet, as I was seeing
him off at the railway station, I thought he was behaving with singular
fidelity to its conceited spirit. Vedi Napoli! . . . He had seen it!
He had seen it with startling thoroughness--and now he was going to
his grave. He was going to it by the train de luxe of the International
Sleeping Car Company, via Trieste and Vienna. As the four long, sombre
coaches pulled out of the station I raised my hat with the solemn
feeling of paying the last tribute of respect to a funeral cortege.
Il Conde's profile, much aged already, glided away from me in stony
immobility, behind the lighted pane of glass--Vedi Napoli e poi mori!





End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Set of Six, by Joseph Conrad

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