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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of Tales Of Hearsay, by Joseph Conrad
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
-almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
-
-
-Title: Tales Of Hearsay
-
-Author: Joseph Conrad
-
-Release Date: February 9, 2006 [EBook #17732]
-Last Updated: March 2, 2018
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TALES OF HEARSAY ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by David Widger
-
-
-
-
-
-TALES OF HEARSAY
-
-BY JOSEPH CONRAD
-
-
-
-COPYRIGHT, 1911, 1917, 1918, BY THE METROPOLITAN MAGAZINE CO. GARDEN
-CITY, N. Y.
-
-
-
-
-CONTENTS
-
-The Warrior's Soul
-
-Prince Roman
-
-The Tale
-
-The Black Mate
-
-
-
-
-
-THE WARRIOR'S SOUL (1917)
-
-
-The old officer with long white moustaches gave rein to his indignation.
-
-“Is it possible that you youngsters should have no more sense than that!
-Some of you had better wipe the milk off your upper lip before you start
-to pass judgment on the few poor stragglers of a generation which has
-done and suffered not a little in its time.”
-
-His hearers having expressed much compunction the ancient warrior became
-appeased. But he was not silenced.
-
-“I am one of them--one of the stragglers, I mean,” he went on
-patiently. “And what did we do? What have we achieved? He--the great
-Napoleon--started upon us to emulate the Macedonian Alexander, with
-a ruck of nations at his back. We opposed empty spaces to French
-impetuosity, then we offered them an interminable battle so that their
-army went at last to sleep in its positions lying down on the heaps of
-its own dead. Then came the wall of fire in Moscow. It toppled down on
-them.
-
-“Then began the long rout of the Grand Army. I have seen it stream on,
-like the doomed flight of haggard, spectral sinners across the innermost
-frozen circle of Dante's Inferno, ever widening before their despairing
-eyes.
-
-“They who escaped must have had their souls doubly riveted inside their
-bodies to carry them out of Russia through that frost fit to split
-rocks. But to say that it was our fault that a single one of them got
-away is mere ignorance. Why! Our own men suffered nearly to the limit of
-their strength. Their Russian strength!
-
-“Of course our spirit was not broken; and then our cause was good--it
-was holy. But that did not temper the wind much to men and horses.
-
-“The flesh is weak. Good or evil purpose, Humanity has to pay the price.
-Why! In that very fight for that little village of which I have been
-telling you we were fighting for the shelter of those old houses as much
-as victory. And with the French it was the same.
-
-“It wasn't for the sake of glory, or for the sake of strategy. The
-French knew that they would have to retreat before morning and we knew
-perfectly well that they would go. As far as the war was concerned there
-was nothing to fight about. Yet our infantry and theirs fought like wild
-cats, or like heroes if you like that better, amongst the houses--hot
-work enough---while the supports out in the open stood freezing in
-a tempestuous north wind which drove the snow on earth and the great
-masses of clouds in the sky at a terrific pace. The very air was
-inexpressibly sombre by contrast with the white earth. I have never seen
-God's creation look more sinister than on that day.
-
-“We, the cavalry (we were only a handful), had not much to do except
-turn our backs to the wind and receive some stray French round shot.
-This, I may tell you, was the last of the French guns and it was the
-last time they had their artillery in position. Those guns never went
-away from there either. We found them abandoned next morning. But that
-afternoon they were keeping up an infernal fire on our attacking column;
-the furious wind carried away the smoke and even the noise but we could
-see the constant flicker of the tongues of fire along the French front.
-Then a driving flurry of snow would hide everything except the dark red
-flashes in the white swirl.
-
-“At intervals when the line cleared we could see away across the plain
-to the right a sombre column moving endlessly; the great rout of the
-Grand Army creeping on and on all the time while the fight on our left
-went on with a great din and fury. The cruel whirlwind of snow swept
-over that scene of death and desolation. And then the wind fell as
-suddenly as it had arisen in the morning.
-
-“Presently we got orders to charge the retreating column; I don't know
-why unless they wanted to prevent us from getting frozen in our saddles
-by giving us something to do. We changed front half right and got into
-motion at a walk to take that distant dark line in flank. It might have
-been half-past two in the afternoon.
-
-“You must know that so far in this campaign my regiment had never been
-on the main line of Napoleon's advance. All these months since the
-invasion the army we belonged to had been wrestling with Oudinot in
-the north. We had only come down lately, driving him before us to the
-Beresina.
-
-“This was the first occasion, then, that I and my comrades had a close
-view of Napoleon's Grand Army. It was an amazing and terrible sight. I
-had heard of it from others; I had seen the stragglers from it: small
-bands of marauders, parties of prisoners in the distance. But this was
-the very column itself! A crawling, stumbling, starved, half-demented
-mob. It issued from the forest a mile away and its head was lost in the
-murk of the fields. We rode into it at a trot, which was the most we
-could get out of our horses, and we stuck in that human mass as if in a
-moving bog. There was no resistance. I heard a few shots, half a dozen
-perhaps. Their very senses seemed frozen within them. I had time for a
-good look while riding at the head of my squadron. Well, I assure you,
-there were men walking on the outer edge so lost to everything but
-their misery that they never turned their heads to look at our charge.
-Soldiers!
-
-“My horse pushed over one of them with his chest. The poor wretch had a
-dragoon's blue cloak, all torn and scorched, hanging from his shoulders
-and he didn't even put his hand out to snatch at my bridle and save
-himself. He just went down. Our troopers were pointing and slashing;
-well, and of course at first I myself... What would you have! An enemy's
-an enemy. Yet a sort of sickening awe crept into my heart. There was no
-tumult--only a low deep murmur dwelt over them interspersed with louder
-cries and groans while that mob kept on pushing and surging past us,
-sightless and without feeling. A smell of scorched rags and festering
-wounds hung in the air. My horse staggered in the eddies of swaying
-men. But it was like cutting down galvanized corpses that didn't care.
-Invaders! Yes... God was already dealing with them.
-
-“I touched my horse with the spurs to get clear. There was a sudden rush
-and a sort of angry moan when our second squadron got into them on our
-right. My horse plunged and somebody got hold of my leg. As I had no
-mind to get pulled out of the saddle I gave a back-handed slash without
-looking. I heard a cry and my leg was let go suddenly.
-
-“Just then I caught sight of the subaltern of my troop at some little
-distance from me. His name was Tomassov. That multitude of resurrected
-bodies with glassy eyes was seething round his horse as if blind,
-growling crazily. He was sitting erect in his saddle, not looking down
-at them and sheathing his sword deliberately.
-
-“This Tomassov, well, he had a beard. Of course we all had beards then.
-Circumstances, lack of leisure, want of razors, too. No, seriously, we
-were a wild-looking lot in those unforgotten days which so many, so very
-many of us did not survive. You know our losses were awful, too. Yes, we
-looked wild. _Des Russes sauvages_--what!
-
-“So he had a beard--this Tomassov I mean; but he did not look _sauvage_.
-He was the youngest of us all. And that meant real youth. At a distance
-he passed muster fairly well, what with the grime and the particular
-stamp of that campaign on our faces. But directly you were near enough
-to have a good look into his eyes, that was where his lack of age
-showed, though he was not exactly a boy.
-
-“Those same eyes were blue, something like the blue of autumn skies,
-dreamy and gay, too--innocent, believing eyes. A topknot of fair hair
-decorated his brow like a gold diadem in what one would call normal
-times.
-
-“You may think I am talking of him as if he were the hero of a novel.
-Why, that's nothing to what the adjutant discovered about him. He
-discovered that he had a 'lover's lips'--whatever that may be. If the
-adjutant meant a nice mouth, why, it was nice enough, but of course it
-was intended for a sneer. That adjutant of ours was not a very delicate
-fellow. 'Look at those lover's lips,' he would exclaim in a loud tone
-while Tomassov was talking.
-
-“Tomassov didn't quite like that sort of thing. But to a certain extent
-he had laid himself open to banter by the lasting character of his
-impressions which were connected with the passion of love and, perhaps,
-were not of such a rare kind as he seemed to think them. What made
-his comrades tolerant of his rhapsodies was the fact that they were
-connected with France, with Paris!
-
-“You of the present generation, you cannot conceive how much prestige
-there was then in those names for the whole world. Paris was the centre
-of wonder for all human beings gifted with imagination. There we were,
-the majority of us young and well connected, but not long out of our
-hereditary nests in the provinces; simple servants of God; mere rustics,
-if I may say so. So we were only too ready to listen to the tales of
-France from our comrade Tomassov. He had been attached to our mission
-in Paris the year before the war. High protections very likely--or maybe
-sheer luck.
-
-“I don't think he could have been a very useful member of the mission
-because of his youth and complete inexperience. And apparently all his
-time in Paris was his own. The use he made of it was to fall in love, to
-remain in that state, to cultivate it, to exist only for it in a manner
-of speaking.
-
-“Thus it was something more than a mere memory that he had brought with
-him from France. Memory is a fugitive thing. It can be falsified, it
-can be effaced, it can be even doubted. Why! I myself come to doubt
-sometimes that I, too, have been in Paris in my turn. And the long road
-there with battles for its stages would appear still more incredible if
-it were not for a certain musket ball which I have been carrying about
-my person ever since a little cavalry affair which happened in Silesia
-at the very beginning of the Leipsic campaign.
-
-“Passages of love, however, are more impressive perhaps than passages
-of danger. You don't go affronting love in troops as it were. They are
-rarer, more personal and more intimate. And remember that with Tomassov
-all that was very fresh yet. He had not been home from France three
-months when the war began.
-
-“His heart, his mind were full of that experience. He was really awed
-by it, and he was simple enough to let it appear in his speeches. He
-considered himself a sort of privileged person, not because a woman had
-looked at him with favour, but simply because, how shall I say it, he
-had had the wonderful illumination of his worship for her, as if it were
-heaven itself that had done this for him.
-
-“Oh yes, he was very simple. A nice youngster, yet no fool; and with
-that, utterly inexperienced, unsuspicious, and unthinking. You will find
-one like that here and there in the provinces. He had some poetry in him
-too. It could only be natural, something quite his own, not acquired. I
-suppose Father Adam had some poetry in him of that natural sort. For the
-rest _un Russe sauvage_ as the French sometimes call us, but not of that
-kind which, they maintain, eats tallow candle for a delicacy. As to the
-woman, the French woman, well, though I have also been in France with
-a hundred thousand Russians, I have never seen her. Very likely she was
-not in Paris then. And in any case hers were not the doors that would
-fly open before simple fellows of my sort, you understand. Gilded salons
-were never in my way. I could not tell you how she looked, which is
-strange considering that I was, if I may say so, Tomassov's special
-confidant.
-
-“He very soon got shy of talking before the others. I suppose the usual
-camp-fire comments jarred his fine feelings. But I was left to him
-and truly I had to submit. You can't very well expect a youngster in
-Tomassov's state to hold his tongue altogether; and I--I suppose you
-will hardly believe me--I am by nature a rather silent sort of person.
-
-“Very likely my silence appeared to him sympathetic. All the month of
-September our regiment, quartered in villages, had come in for an easy
-time. It was then that I heard most of that--you can't call it a story.
-The story I have in my mind is not in that. Outpourings, let us call
-them.
-
-“I would sit quite content to hold my peace, a whole hour perhaps, while
-Tomassov talked with exaltation. And when he was done I would still hold
-my peace. And then there would be produced a solemn effect of silence
-which, I imagine, pleased Tomassov in a way.
-
-“She was of course not a woman in her first youth. A widow, maybe. At
-any rate I never heard Tomassov mention her husband. She had a salon,
-something very distinguished; a social centre in which she queened it
-with great splendour.
-
-“Somehow, I fancy her court was composed mostly of men. But Tomassov, I
-must say, kept such details out of his discourses wonderfully well. Upon
-my word I don't know whether her hair was dark or fair, her eyes brown
-or blue; what was her stature, her features, or her complexion. His love
-soared above mere physical impressions. He never described her to me in
-set terms; but he was ready to swear that in her presence everybody's
-thoughts and feelings were bound to circle round her. She was that sort
-of woman. Most wonderful conversations on all sorts of subjects went
-on in her salon: but through them all there flowed unheard like a
-mysterious strain of music the assertion, the power, the tyranny of
-sheer beauty. So apparently the woman was beautiful. She detached all
-these talking people from their life interests, and even from their
-vanities. She was a secret delight and a secret trouble. All the men
-when they looked at her fell to brooding as if struck by the thought
-that their lives had been wasted. She was the very joy and shudder of
-felicity and she brought only sadness and torment to the hearts of men.
-
-“In short, she must have been an extraordinary woman, or else Tomassov
-was an extraordinary young fellow to feel in that way and to talk like
-this about her. I told you the fellow had a lot of poetry in him and
-observed that all this sounded true enough. It would be just about the
-sorcery a woman very much out of the common would exercise, you know.
-Poets do get close to truth somehow--there is no denying that.
-
-“There is no poetry in my composition, I know, but I have my share of
-common shrewdness, and I have no doubt that the lady was kind to the
-youngster, once he did find his way inside her salon. His getting in
-is the real marvel. However, he did get in, the innocent, and he found
-himself in distinguished company there, amongst men of considerable
-position. And you know, what that means: thick waists, bald heads, teeth
-that are not--as some satirist puts it. Imagine amongst them a nice
-boy, fresh and simple, like an apple just off the tree; a modest,
-good-looking, impressionable, adoring young barbarian. My word! What a
-change! What a relief for jaded feelings! And with that, having, in his
-nature that, dose; of poetry which saves even a simpleton from being a
-fool.
-
-“He became an artlessly, unconditionally devoted slave. He was rewarded
-by being smiled on and in time admitted to the intimacy of the house.
-It may be that the unsophisticated young barbarian amused the exquisite
-lady. Perhaps--since he didn't feed on tallow candles--he satisfied
-some need of tenderness in the woman. You know, there are many kinds of
-tenderness highly civilized women are capable of. Women with heads and
-imagination, I mean, and no temperament to speak of, you understand. But
-who is going to fathom their needs or their fancies? Most of the time
-they themselves don't know much about their innermost moods, and blunder
-out of one into another, sometimes with catastrophic results. And then
-who is more surprised than they? However, Tomassov's case was in its
-nature quite idyllic. The fashionable world was amused. His devotion
-made for him a kind of social success. But he didn't care. There was his
-one divinity, and there was the shrine where he was permitted to go in
-and out without regard for official reception hours.
-
-“He took advantage of that privilege freely. Well, he had no official
-duties, you know. The Military Mission was supposed to be more
-complimentary than anything else, the head of it being a personal
-friend of our Emperor Alexander; and he, too, was laying himself out for
-successes in fashionable life exclusively--as it seemed. As it seemed.
-
-“One afternoon Tomassov called on the mistress of his thoughts earlier
-than usual. She was not alone. There was a man with her, not one of the
-thick-waisted, bald-headed personages, but a somebody all the same,
-a man over thirty, a French officer who to some extent was also a
-privileged intimate. Tomassov was not jealous of him. Such a sentiment
-would have appeared presumptuous to the simple fellow.
-
-“On the contrary he admired that officer. You have no idea of the French
-military men's prestige in those days, even with us Russian soldiers
-who had managed to face them perhaps better than the rest. Victory had
-marked them on the forehead--it seemed for ever. They would have been
-more than human if they had not been conscious of it; but they were good
-comrades and had a sort of brotherly feeling for all who bore arms, even
-if it was against them.
-
-“And this was quite a superior example, an officer of the
-major-general's staff, and a man of the best society besides. He was
-powerfully built, and thoroughly masculine, though he was as carefully
-groomed as a woman. He had the courteous self-possession of a man of the
-world. His forehead, white as alabaster, contrasted impressively with
-the healthy colour of his face.
-
-“I don't know whether he was jealous of Tomassov, but I suspect that
-he might have been a little annoyed at him as at a sort of walking
-absurdity of the sentimental order. But these men of the world are
-impenetrable, and outwardly he condescended to recognize Tomassov's
-existence even more distinctly than was strictly necessary. Once or
-twice he had offered him some useful worldly advice with perfect tact
-and delicacy. Tomassov was completely conquered by that evidence of
-kindness under the cold polish of the best society.
-
-“Tomassov, introduced into the _petit salon_, found these two exquisite
-people sitting on a sofa together and had the feeling of having
-interrupted some special conversation. They looked at him strangely, he
-thought; but he was not given to understand that he had intruded. After
-a time the lady said to the officer--his name was De Castel--'I wish you
-would take the trouble to ascertain the exact truth as to that rumour.'
-
-“'It's much more than a mere rumour,' remarked the officer. But he got
-up submissively and went out. The lady turned to Tomassov and said: 'You
-may stay with me.'
-
-“This express command made him supremely happy, though as a matter of
-fact he had had no idea of going.
-
-“She regarded him with her kindly glances, which made something glow and
-expand within his chest. It was a delicious feeling, even though it did
-cut one's breath short now and then. Ecstatically he drank in the sound
-of her tranquil, seductive talk full of innocent gaiety and of spiritual
-quietude. His passion appeared to him to flame up and envelop her in
-blue fiery tongues from head to foot and over her head, while her soul
-reposed in the centre like a big white rose....
-
-“H'm, good this. He told me many other things like that. But this is the
-one I remember. He himself remembered everything because these were the
-last memories of that woman. He was seeing her for the last time though
-he did not know it then.
-
-“M. De Castel returned, breaking into that atmosphere of enchantment
-Tomassov had been drinking in even to complete unconsciousness of the
-external world. Tomassov could not help being struck by the distinction
-of his movements, the ease of his manner, his superiority to all the
-other men he knew, and he suffered from it. It occurred to him that
-these two brilliant beings on the sofa were made for each other.
-
-“De Castel sitting down by the side of the lady murmured to her
-discreetly, 'There is not the slightest doubt that it's true,' and
-they both turned their eyes to Tomassov. Roused thoroughly from his
-enchantment he became self-conscious; a feeling of shyness came over
-him. He sat smiling faintly at them.
-
-“The lady without taking her eyes off the blushing Tomassov said with a
-dreamy gravity quite unusual to her:
-
-“'I should like to know that your generosity can be supreme--without a
-flaw. Love at its highest should be the origin of every perfection.'
-
-“Tomassov opened his eyes wide with admiration at this, as though her
-lips had been dropping real pearls. The sentiment, however, was
-not uttered for the primitive Russian youth but for the exquisitely
-accomplished man of the world, De Castel.
-
-“Tomassov could not see the effect it produced because the French
-officer lowered his head and sat there contemplating his admirably
-polished boots. The lady whispered in a sympathetic tone:
-
-“'You have scruples?'
-
-“De Castel, without looking up, murmured: 'It could be turned into a
-nice point of honour.'
-
-“She said vivaciously: 'That surely is artificial. I am all for natural
-feelings. I believe in nothing else. But perhaps your conscience...'
-
-“He interrupted her: 'Not at all. My conscience is not childish. The
-fate of those people is of no military importance to us. What can it
-matter? The fortune of France is invincible.'
-
-“'Well then...' she uttered, meaningly, and rose from the couch. The
-French officer stood up, too. Tomassov hastened to follow their example.
-He was pained by his state of utter mental darkness. While he was
-raising the lady's white hand to his lips he heard the French officer
-say with marked emphasis:
-
-“'If he has the soul of a warrior (at that time, you know, people really
-talked in that way), if he has the soul of a warrior he ought to fall at
-your feet in gratitude.'
-
-“Tomassov felt himself plunged into even denser darkness than before. He
-followed the French officer out of the room and out of the house; for he
-had a notion that this was expected of him.
-
-“It was getting dusk, the weather was very bad, and the street was quite
-deserted. The Frenchman lingered in it strangely. And Tomassov lingered,
-too, without impatience. He was never in a hurry to get away from the
-house in which she lived. And besides, something wonderful had happened
-to him. The hand he had reverently raised by the tips of its fingers had
-been pressed against his lips. He had received a secret favour! He was
-almost frightened. The world had reeled--and it had hardly steadied
-itself yet. De Castel stopped short at the corner of the quiet street.
-
-“'I don't care to be seen too much with you in the lighted
-thoroughfares, M. Tomassov,' he said in a strangely grim tone.
-
-“'Why?' asked the young man, too startled to be offended.
-
-“'From prudence,' answered the other curtly. 'So we will have to part
-here; but before we part I'll disclose to you something of which you
-will see at once the importance.'
-
-“This, please note, was an evening in late March of the year 1812. For
-a long time already there had been talk of a growing coolness between
-Russia and France. The word war was being whispered in drawing rooms
-louder and louder, and at last was heard in official circles. Thereupon
-the Parisian police discovered that our military envoy had corrupted
-some clerks at the Ministry of War and had obtained from them some very
-important confidential documents. The wretched men (there were two
-of them) had confessed their crime and were to be shot that night.
-To-morrow all the town would be talking of the affair. But the worst was
-that the Emperor Napoleon was furiously angry at the discovery, and had
-made up his mind to have the Russian envoy arrested.
-
-“Such was De Castel's disclosure; and though he had spoken in low tones
-Tomassov was stunned as by a great crash.
-
-“'Arrested,' he murmured, desolately.
-
-“'Yes, and kept as a state prisoner--with everybody belonging to
-him....'
-
-“The French officer seized Tomassov's arm above the elbow and pressed it
-hard.
-
-“'And kept in France,' he repeated into Tomassov's very ear, and then
-letting him go stepped back a space and remained silent.
-
-“'And it's you, you, who are telling me this!' cried Tomassov in an
-extremity of gratitude that was hardly greater than his admiration for
-the generosity of his future foe. Could a brother have done for him
-more! He sought to seize the hand of the French officer, but the latter
-remained wrapped up closely in his cloak. Possibly in the dark he had
-not noticed the attempt. He moved back a bit and in his self-possessed
-voice of a man of the world, as though he were speaking across a card
-table or something of the sort, he called Tomassov's attention to
-the fact that if he meant to make use of the warning the moments were
-precious.
-
-“'Indeed they are,' agreed the awed Tomassov. 'Good-bye then. I have
-no word of thanks to equal your generosity; but if ever I have an
-opportunity, I swear it, you may command my life....'
-
-“But the Frenchman retreated, had already vanished in the dark lonely
-street. Tomassov was alone, and then he did not waste any of the
-precious minutes of that night.
-
-“See how people's mere gossip and idle talk pass into history. In all
-the memoirs of the time if you read them you will find it stated that
-our envoy had a warning from some highly placed woman who was in love
-with him. Of course it's known that he had successes with women, and in
-the highest spheres, too, but the truth is that the person who warned
-him was no other than our simple Tomassov--an altogether different sort
-of lover from himself.
-
-“This then is the secret of our Emperor's representative's escape
-from arrest. He and all his official household got out of France all
-right--as history records.
-
-“And amongst that household there was our Tomassov of course. He had,
-in the words of the French officer, the soul of a warrior. And what more
-desolate prospect for a man with such a soul than to be imprisoned
-on the eve of war; to be cut off from his country in danger, from his
-military family, from his duty, from honour, and--well--from glory, too.
-
-“Tomassov used to shudder at the mere thought of the moral torture he
-had escaped; and he nursed in his heart a boundless gratitude to the two
-people who had saved him from that cruel ordeal. They were wonderful!
-For him love and friendship were but two aspects of exalted perfection.
-He had found these fine examples of it and he vowed them indeed a sort
-of cult. It affected his attitude towards Frenchmen in general, great
-patriot as he was. He was naturally indignant at the invasion of his
-country, but this indignation had no personal animosity in it. His was
-fundamentally a fine nature. He grieved at the appalling amount of human
-suffering he saw around him. Yes, he was full of compassion for all
-forms of mankind's misery in a manly way.
-
-“Less fine natures than his own did not understand this very well. In
-the regiment they had nicknamed him the Humane Tomassov.
-
-“He didn't take offence at it. There is nothing incompatible between
-humanity and a warrior's soul. People without compassion are the
-civilians, government officials, merchants and such like. As to the
-ferocious talk one hears from a lot of decent people in war time--well,
-the tongue is an unruly member at best and when there is some excitement
-going on there is no curbing its furious activity.
-
-“So I had not been very surprised to see our Tomassov sheathe
-deliberately his sword right in the middle of that charge, you may say.
-As we rode away after it he was very silent. He was not a chatterer as
-a rule, but it was evident that this close view of the Grand Army had
-affected him deeply, like some sight not of this earth. I had always
-been a pretty tough individual myself--well, even I... and there was
-that fellow with a lot of poetry in his nature! You may imagine what he
-made of it to himself. We rode side by side without opening our lips. It
-was simply beyond words.
-
-“We established our bivouac along the edge of the forest so as to get
-some shelter for our horses. However, the boisterous north wind had
-dropped as quickly as it had sprung up, and the great winter stillness
-lay on the land from the Baltic to the Black Sea. One could almost feel
-its cold, lifeless immensity reaching up to the stars.
-
-“Our men had lighted several fires for their officers and had cleared
-the snow around them. We had big logs of wood for seats; it was a
-very tolerable bivouac upon the whole, even without the exultation of
-victory. We were to feel that later, but at present we were oppressed by
-our stern and arduous task.
-
-“There were three of us round my fire. The third one was that adjutant.
-He was perhaps a well-meaning chap but not so nice as he might have been
-had he been less rough in manner and less crude in his perceptions. He
-would reason about people's conduct as though a man were as simple a
-figure as, say, two sticks laid across each other; whereas a man is much
-more like the sea whose movements are too complicated to explain, and
-whose depths may bring up God only knows what at any moment.
-
-“We talked a little about that charge. Not much. That sort of thing does
-not lend itself to conversation. Tomassov muttered a few words about a
-mere butchery. I had nothing to say. As I told you I had very soon let
-my sword hang idle at my wrist. That starving mob had not even _tried_
-to defend itself. Just a few shots. We had two men wounded. Two!... and
-we had charged the main column of Napoleon's Grand Army.
-
-“Tomassov muttered wearily: 'What was the good of it?' I did not wish
-to argue, so I only just mumbled: 'Ah, well!' But the adjutant struck in
-unpleasantly:
-
-“'Why, it warmed the men a bit. It has made me warm. That's a good
-enough reason. But our Tomassov is so humane! And besides he has been in
-love with a French woman, and thick as thieves with a lot of Frenchmen,
-so he is sorry for them. Never mind, my boy, we are on the Paris road
-now and you shall soon see her!' This was one of his usual, as we
-believed them, foolish speeches. None of us but believed that the
-getting to Paris would be a matter of years--of years. And lo! less than
-eighteen months afterwards I was rooked of a lot of money in a gambling
-hell in the Palais Royal.
-
-“Truth, being often the most senseless thing in the world, is sometimes
-revealed to fools. I don't think that adjutant of ours believed in his
-own words. He just wanted to tease Tomassov from habit. Purely from
-habit. We of course said nothing, and so he took his head in his hands
-and fell into a doze as he sat on a log in front of the fire.
-
-“Our cavalry was on the extreme right wing of the army, and I must
-confess that we guarded it very badly. We had lost all sense of
-insecurity by this time; but still we did keep up a pretence of doing
-it in a way. Presently a trooper rode up leading a horse and Tomassov
-mounted stiffly and went off on a round of the outposts. Of the
-perfectly useless outposts.
-
-“The night was still, except for the crackling of the fires. The raging
-wind had lifted far above the earth and not the faintest breath of it
-could be heard. Only the full moon swam out with a rush into the sky and
-suddenly hung high and motionless overhead. I remember raising my hairy
-face to it for a moment. Then, I verily believe, I dozed off, too, bent
-double on my log with my head towards the fierce blaze.
-
-“You know what an impermanent thing such slumber is. One moment you
-drop into an abyss and the next you are back in the world that you would
-think too deep for any noise but the trumpet of the Last Judgment.
-And then off you go again. Your very soul seems to slip down into a
-bottomless black pit. Then up once more into a startled consciousness. A
-mere plaything of cruel sleep one is, then. Tormented both ways.
-
-“However, when my orderly appeared before me, repeating: 'Won't your
-Honour be pleased to eat?... Won't your Honour be pleased to eat?...' I
-managed to keep my hold of it--I mean that gaping consciousness. He was
-offering me a sooty pot containing some grain boiled in water with a
-pinch of salt. A wooden spoon was stuck in it.
-
-“At that time these were the only rations we were getting regularly.
-Mere chicken food, confound it! But the Russian soldier is wonderful.
-Well, my fellow waited till I had feasted and then went away carrying
-off the empty pot.
-
-“I was no longer sleepy. Indeed, I had become awake with an exaggerated
-mental consciousness of existence extending beyond my immediate
-surroundings. Those are but exceptional moments with mankind, I am glad
-to say. I had the intimate sensation of the earth in all its enormous
-expanse wrapped in snow, with nothing showing on it but trees with their
-straight stalk-like trunks and their funeral verdure; and in this aspect
-of general mourning I seemed to hear the sighs of mankind falling to die
-in the midst of a nature without life. They were Frenchmen. We didn't
-hate them; they did not hate us; we had existed far apart--and suddenly
-they had come rolling in with arms in their hands, without fear of God,
-carrying with them other nations, and all to perish together in a long,
-long trail of frozen corpses. I had an actual vision of that trail:
-a pathetic multitude of small dark mounds stretching away under the
-moonlight in a clear, still, and pitiless atmosphere--a sort of horrible
-peace.
-
-“But what other peace could there be for them? What else did they
-deserve? I don't know by what connection of emotions there came into my
-head the thought that the earth was a pagan planet and not a fit abode
-for Christian virtues.
-
-“You may be surprised that I should remember all this so well. What is
-a passing emotion or half-formed thought to last in so many years of a
-man's changing, inconsequential life? But what has fixed the emotion
-of that evening in my recollection so that the slightest shadows remain
-indelible was an event of strange finality, an event not likely to be
-forgotten in a life-time--as you shall see.
-
-“I don't suppose I had been entertaining those thoughts more than five
-minutes when something induced me to look over my shoulder. I can't
-think it was a noise; the snow deadened all the sounds. Something it
-must have been, some sort of signal reaching my consciousness. Anyway, I
-turned my head, and there was the event approaching me, not that I knew
-it or had the slightest premonition. All I saw in the distance were two
-figures approaching in the moonlight. One of them was our Tomassov. The
-dark mass behind him which moved across my sight were the horses which
-his orderly was leading away. Tomassov was a very familiar appearance,
-in long boots, a tall figure ending in a pointed hood. But by his side
-advanced another figure. I mistrusted my eyes at first. It was amazing!
-It had a shining crested helmet on its head and was muffled up in a
-white cloak. The cloak was not as white as snow. Nothing in the world
-is. It was white more like mist, with an aspect that was ghostly and
-martial to an extraordinary degree. It was as if Tomassov had got hold
-of the God of War himself. I could see at once that he was leading this
-resplendent vision by the arm. Then I saw that he was holding it
-up. While I stared and stared, they crept on--for indeed they were
-creeping--and at last they crept into the light of our bivouac fire and
-passed beyond the log I was sitting on. The blaze played on the helmet.
-It was extremely battered and the frost-bitten face, full of sores,
-under it was framed in bits of mangy fur. No God of War this, but a
-French officer. The great white cuirassier's cloak was torn, burnt full
-of holes. His feet were wrapped up in old sheepskins over remnants
-of boots. They looked monstrous and he tottered on them, sustained by
-Tomassov who lowered him most carefully on to the log on which I sat.
-
-“My amazement knew no bounds.
-
-“'You have brought in a prisoner,' I said to Tomassov, as if I could not
-believe my eyes.
-
-“You must understand that unless they surrendered in large bodies we
-made no prisoners. What would have been the good? Our Cossacks either
-killed the stragglers or else let them alone, just as it happened. It
-came really to the same thing in the end.
-
-“Tomassov turned to me with a very troubled look.
-
-“'He sprang up from the ground somewhere as I was leaving the outpost,'
-he said. 'I believe he was making for it, for he walked blindly into my
-horse. He got hold of my leg and of course none of our chaps dared touch
-him then.'
-
-“'He had a narrow escape,' I said.
-
-“'He didn't appreciate it,' said Tomassov, looking even more troubled
-than before. 'He came along holding to my stirrup leather. That's what
-made me so late. He told me he was a staff officer; and then talking in
-a voice such, I suppose, as the damned alone use, a croaking of rage
-and pain, he said he had a favour to beg of me. A supreme favour. Did I
-understand him, he asked in a sort of fiendish whisper.
-
-“'Of course I told him that I did. I said: _oui, je vous comprends_.'
-
-“'Then,' said he, 'do it. Now! At once--in the pity of your heart.'
-
-“Tomassov ceased and stared queerly at me above the head of the
-prisoner.
-
-“I said, 'What did he mean?'
-
-“'That's what I asked him,' answered Tomassov in a dazed tone, 'and he
-said that he wanted me to do him the favour to blow his brains out. As a
-fellow soldier he said. 'As a man of feeling--as--as a humane man.'
-
-“The prisoner sat between us like an awful gashed mummy as to the face,
-a martial scarecrow, a grotesque horror of rags and dirt, with awful
-living eyes, full of vitality, full of unquenchable fire, in a body
-of horrible affliction, a skeleton at the feast of glory. And suddenly
-those shining unextinguishable eyes of his became fixed upon Tomassov.
-He, poor fellow, fascinated, returned the ghastly stare of a suffering
-soul in that mere husk of a man. The prisoner croaked at him in French.
-
-“'I recognize, you know. You are her Russian youngster. You were
-very grateful. I call on you to pay the debt. Pay it, I say, with one
-liberating shot. You are a man of honour. I have not even a broken
-sabre. All my being recoils from my own degradation. You know me.'
-
-“Tomassov said nothing.
-
-“'Haven't you got the soul of a warrior?' the Frenchman asked in an
-angry whisper, but with something of a mocking intention in it.
-
-“'I don't know,' said poor Tomassov.
-
-“What a look of contempt that scarecrow gave him out of his unquenchable
-eyes. He seemed to live only by the force of infuriated and impotent
-despair. Suddenly he gave a gasp and fell forward writhing in the
-agony of cramp in all his limbs; a not unusual effect of the heat of a
-camp-fire. It resembled the application of some horrible torture. But
-he tried to fight against the pain at first. He only moaned low while we
-bent over him so as to prevent him rolling into the fire, and muttered
-feverishly at intervals: '_Tuez moi, tuez moi_...' till, vanquished by
-the pain, he screamed in agony, time after time, each cry bursting out
-through his compressed lips.
-
-“The adjutant woke up on the other side of the fire and started swearing
-awfully at the beastly row that Frenchman was making.
-
-“'What's this? More of your infernal humanity, Tomassov,' he yelled
-at us. 'Why don't you have him thrown out of this to the devil on the
-snow?'
-
-“As we paid no attention to his shouts, he got up, cursing shockingly,
-and went away to another fire. Presently the French officer became
-easier. We propped him up against the log and sat silent on each side
-of him till the bugles started their call at the first break of day. The
-big flame, kept up all through the night, paled on the livid sheet
-of snow, while the frozen air all round rang with the brazen notes of
-cavalry trumpets. The Frenchman's eyes, fixed in a glassy stare, which
-for a moment made us hope that he had died quietly sitting there between
-us two, stirred slowly to right and left, looking at each of our faces
-in turn. Tomassov and I exchanged glances of dismay. Then De Castel's
-voice, unexpected in its renewed strength and ghastly self-possession,
-made us shudder inwardly.
-
-“'_Bonjour, Messieurs_.'
-
-“His chin dropped on his breast. Tomassov addressed me in Russian.
-
-“'It is he, the man himself...' I nodded and Tomassov went on in a tone
-of anguish: 'Yes, he! Brilliant, accomplished, envied by men, loved by
-that woman--this horror--this miserable thing that cannot die. Look at
-his eyes. It's terrible.'
-
-“I did not look, but I understood what Tomassov meant. We could do
-nothing for him. This avenging winter of fate held both the fugitives
-and the pursuers in its iron grip. Compassion was but a vain word before
-that unrelenting destiny. I tried to say something about a convoy being
-no doubt collected in the village--but I faltered at the mute glance
-Tomassov gave me. We knew what those convoys were like: appalling mobs
-of hopeless wretches driven on by the butts of Cossacks' lances, back to
-the frozen inferno, with their faces set away from their homes.
-
-“Our two squadrons had been formed along the edge of the forest. The
-minutes of anguish were passing. The Frenchman suddenly struggled to his
-feet. We helped him almost without knowing what we were doing.
-
-“'Come,' he said, in measured tones. 'This is the moment.' He paused
-for a long time, then with the same distinctness went on: 'On my word of
-honour, all faith is dead in me.'
-
-“His voice lost suddenly its self-possession. After waiting a little
-while he added in a murmur: 'And even my courage.... Upon my honour.'
-
-“Another long pause ensued before, with a great effort, he whispered
-hoarsely: 'Isn't this enough to move a heart of stone? Am I to go on my
-knees to you?'
-
-“Again a deep silence fell upon the three of us. Then the French officer
-flung his last word of anger at Tomassov.
-
-“'Milksop!'
-
-“Not a feature of the poor fellow moved. I made up my mind to go and
-fetch a couple of our troopers to lead that miserable prisoner away to
-the village. There was nothing else for it. I had not moved six paces
-towards the group of horses and orderlies in front of our squadron
-when... but you have guessed it. Of course. And I, too, I guessed it,
-for I give you my word that the report of Tomassov's pistol was the most
-insignificant thing imaginable. The snow certainly does absorb sound. It
-was a mere feeble pop. Of the orderlies holding our horses I don't think
-one turned his head round.
-
-“Yes. Tomassov had done it. Destiny had led that De Castel to the man
-who could understand him perfectly. But it was poor Tomassov's lot to be
-the predestined victim. You know what the world's justice and mankind's
-judgment are like. They fell heavily on him with a sort of inverted
-hypocrisy. Why! That brute of an adjutant, himself, was the first to set
-going horrified allusions to the shooting of a prisoner in cold blood!
-Tomassov was not dismissed from the service of course. But after the
-siege of Dantzig he asked for permission to resign from the army, and
-went away to bury himself in the depths of his province, where a vague
-story of some dark deed clung to him for years.
-
-“Yes. He had done it. And what was it? One warrior's soul paying its
-debt a hundredfold to another warrior's soul by releasing it from a fate
-worse than death--the loss of all faith and courage. You may look on
-it in that way. I don't know. And perhaps poor Tomassov did not know
-himself. But I was the first to approach that appalling dark group on
-the snow: the Frenchman extended rigidly on his back, Tomassov kneeling
-on one knee rather nearer to the feet than to the Frenchman's head. He
-had taken his cap off and his hair shone like gold in the light drift
-of flakes that had begun to fall. He was stooping over the dead in a
-tenderly contemplative attitude. And his young, ingenuous face, with
-lowered eyelids, expressed no grief, no sternness, no horror--but was
-set in the repose of a profound, as if endless and endlessly silent,
-meditation.”
-
-
-
-
-
-PRINCE ROMAN (1911)
-
-
-“Events which happened seventy years ago are perhaps rather too far off
-to be dragged aptly into a mere conversation. Of course the year 1831 is
-for us an historical date, one of these fatal years when in the presence
-of the world's passive indignation and eloquent sympathies we had once
-more to murmur '_Vo Victis_' and count the cost in sorrow. Not that
-we were ever very good at calculating, either, in prosperity or
-in adversity. That's a lesson we could never learn, to the great
-exasperation of our enemies who have bestowed upon us the epithet of
-Incorrigible....”
-
-The speaker was of Polish nationality, that nationality not so much
-alive as surviving, which persists in thinking, breathing, speaking,
-hoping, and suffering in its grave, railed in by a million of bayonets
-and triple-sealed with the seals of three great empires.
-
-The conversation was about aristocracy. How did this, nowadays
-discredited, subject come up? It is some years ago now and the precise
-recollection has faded. But I remember that it was not considered
-practically as an ingredient in the social mixture; and I verily
-believed that we arrived at that subject through some exchange of ideas
-about patriotism--a somewhat discredited sentiment, because the delicacy
-of our humanitarians regards it as a relic of barbarism. Yet neither the
-great Florentine painter who closed his eyes in death thinking of his
-city, nor St. Francis blessing with his last breath the town of Assisi,
-were barbarians. It requires a certain greatness of soul to interpret
-patriotism worthily--or else a sincerity of feeling denied to the
-vulgar refinement of modern thought which cannot understand the august
-simplicity of a sentiment proceeding from the very nature of things and
-men.
-
-The aristocracy we were talking about was the very highest, the great
-families of Europe, not impoverished, not converted, not liberalized,
-the most distinctive and specialized class of all classes, for which
-even ambition itself does not exist among the usual incentives to
-activity and regulators of conduct.
-
-The undisputed right of leadership having passed away from them, we
-judged that their great fortunes, their cosmopolitanism brought about by
-wide alliances, their elevated station, in which there is so little to
-gain and so much to lose, must make their position difficult in times
-of political commotion or national upheaval. No longer born to
-command--which is the very essence of aristocracy--it becomes difficult
-for them to do aught else but hold aloof from the great movements of
-popular passion.
-
-We had reached that conclusion when the remark about far-off events was
-made and the date of 1831 mentioned. And the speaker continued:
-
-“I don't mean to say that I knew Prince Roman at that remote time. I
-begin to feel pretty ancient, but I am not so ancient as that. In fact
-Prince Roman was married the very year my father was born. It was in
-1828; the 19th Century was young yet and the Prince was even younger
-than the century, but I don't know exactly by how much. In any case
-his was an early marriage. It was an ideal alliance from every point
-of view. The girl was young and beautiful, an orphan heiress of a great
-name and of a great fortune. The Prince, then an officer in the
-Guards and distinguished amongst his fellows by something reserved
-and reflective in his character, had fallen headlong in love with her
-beauty, her charm, and the serious qualities of her mind and heart. He
-was a rather silent young man; but his glances, his bearing, his whole
-person expressed his absolute devotion to the woman of his choice, a
-devotion which she returned in her own frank and fascinating manner.
-
-“The flame of this pure young passion promised to burn for ever; and for
-a season it lit up the dry, cynical atmosphere of the great world of St.
-Petersburg. The Emperor Nicholas himself, the grandfather of the present
-man, the one who died from the Crimean War, the last perhaps of the
-Autocrats with a mystical belief in the Divine character of his mission,
-showed some interest in this pair of married lovers. It is true that
-Nicholas kept a watchful eye on all the doings of the great Polish
-nobles. The young people leading a life appropriate to their station
-were obviously wrapped up in each other; and society, fascinated by the
-sincerity of a feeling moving serenely among the artificialities of
-its anxious and fastidious agitation, watched them with benevolent
-indulgence and an amused tenderness.
-
-“The marriage was the social event of 1828, in the capital. Just forty
-years afterwards I was staying in the country house of my mother's
-brother in our southern provinces.
-
-“It was the dead of winter. The great lawn in front was as pure and
-smooth as an alpine snowfield, a white and feathery level sparkling
-under the sun as if sprinkled with diamond-dust, declining gently to
-the lake--a long, sinuous piece of frozen water looking bluish and
-more solid than the earth. A cold brilliant sun glided low above an
-undulating horizon of great folds of snow in which the villages of
-Ukrainian peasants remained out of sight, like clusters of boats hidden
-in the hollows of a running sea. And everything was very still.
-
-“I don't know now how I had managed to escape at eleven o'clock in the
-morning from the schoolroom. I was a boy of eight, the little girl,
-my cousin, a few months younger than myself, though hereditarily more
-quick-tempered, was less adventurous. So I had escaped alone; and
-presently I found myself in the great stone-paved hall, warmed by a
-monumental stove of white tiles, a much more pleasant locality than the
-schoolroom, which for some reason or other, perhaps hygienic, was always
-kept at a low temperature.
-
-“We children were aware that there was a guest staying in the house. He
-had arrived the night before just as we were being driven off to bed.
-We broke back through the line of beaters to rush and flatten our noses
-against the dark window panes; but we were too late to see him alight.
-We had only watched in a ruddy glare the big travelling carriage on
-sleigh-runners harnessed with six horses, a black mass against the snow,
-going off to the stables, preceded by a horseman carrying a blazing ball
-of tow and resin in an iron basket at the end of a long stick swung from
-his saddle bow. Two stable boys had been sent out early in the afternoon
-along the snow-tracks to meet the expected guest at dusk and light his
-way with these road torches. At that time, you must remember, there
-was not a single mile of railways in our southern provinces. My little
-cousin and I had no knowledge of trains and engines, except from
-picture-books, as of things rather vague, extremely remote, and not
-particularly interesting unless to grownups who travelled abroad.
-
-“Our notion of princes, perhaps a little more precise, was mainly
-literary and had a glamour reflected from the light of fairy tales, in
-which princes always appear young, charming, heroic, and fortunate. Yet,
-as well as any other children, we could draw a firm line between the
-real and the ideal. We knew that princes were historical personages. And
-there was some glamour in that fact, too. But what had driven me to
-roam cautiously over the house like an escaped prisoner was the hope of
-snatching an interview with a special friend of mine, the head forester,
-who generally came to make his report at that time of the day, I yearned
-for news of a certain wolf. You know, in a country where wolves are to
-be found, every winter almost brings forward an individual eminent by
-the audacity of his misdeeds, by his more perfect wolfishness--so to
-speak. I wanted to hear some new thrilling tale of that wolf--perhaps
-the dramatic story of his death....
-
-“But there was no one in the hall.
-
-“Deceived in my hopes, I became suddenly very much depressed. Unable to
-slip back in triumph to my studies I elected to stroll spiritlessly into
-the billiard room where certainly I had no business. There was no one
-there either, and I felt very lost and desolate under its high ceiling,
-all alone with the massive English billiard table which seemed, in
-heavy, rectilinear silence, to disapprove of that small boy's intrusion.
-
-“As I began to think of retreat I heard footsteps in the adjoining
-drawing room; and, before I could turn tail and flee, my uncle and his
-guest appeared in the doorway. To run away after having been seen
-would have been highly improper, so I stood my ground. My uncle looked
-surprised to see me; the guest by his side was a spare man, of average
-stature, buttoned up in a black frock coat and holding himself very
-erect with a stiffly soldier-like carriage. From the folds of a soft
-white cambric neck-cloth peeped the points of a collar close against
-each shaven cheek. A few wisps of thin gray hair were brushed smoothly
-across the top of his bald head. His face, which must have been
-beautiful in its day, had preserved in age the harmonious simplicity
-of its lines. What amazed me was its even, almost deathlike pallor. He
-seemed to me to be prodigiously old. A faint smile, a mere momentary
-alteration in the set of his thin lips acknowledged my blushing
-confusion; and I became greatly interested to see him reach into the
-inside breastpocket of his coat. He extracted therefrom a lead pencil
-and a block of detachable pages, which he handed to my uncle with an
-almost imperceptible bow.
-
-“I was very much astonished, but my uncle received it as a matter
-of course. He wrote something at which the other glanced and nodded
-slightly. A thin wrinkled hand--the hand was older than the face--patted
-my cheek and then rested on my head lightly. An un-ringing voice, a
-voice as colourless as the face itself, issued from his sunken lips,
-while the eyes, dark and still, looked down at me kindly.
-
-“'And how old is this shy little boy?'”
-
-“Before I could answer my uncle wrote down my age on the pad. I was
-deeply impressed. What was this ceremony? Was this personage too great
-to be spoken to? Again he glanced at the pad, and again gave a nod, and
-again that impersonal, mechanical voice was heard: 'He resembles his
-grandfather.'
-
-“I remembered my paternal grandfather. He had died not long before. He,
-too, was prodigiously old. And to me it seemed perfectly natural that
-two such ancient and venerable persons should have known each other in
-the dim ages of creation before my birth. But my uncle obviously had
-not been aware of the fact. So obviously that the mechanical voice
-explained: 'Yes, yes. Comrades in '31. He was one of those who knew.
-Old times, my dear sir, old times....'
-
-“He made a gesture as if to put aside an importunate ghost. And now they
-were both looking down at me. I wondered whether anything was expected
-from me. To my round, questioning eyes my uncle remarked: 'He's
-completely deaf.' And the unrelated, inexpressive voice said: 'Give me
-your hand.'
-
-“Acutely conscious of inky fingers I put it out timidly. I had never
-seen a deaf person before and was rather startled. He pressed it firmly
-and then gave me a final pat on the head.
-
-“My uncle addressed me weightily: 'You have shaken hands with Prince
-Roman S---------. It's something for you to remember when you grow up.'
-
-“I was impressed by his tone. I had enough historical information to
-know vaguely that the Princes S--------- counted amongst the sovereign
-Princes of Ruthenia till the union of all Ruthenian lands to the kingdom
-of Poland, when they became great Polish magnates, sometime at the
-beginning of the 15th Century. But what concerned me most was the
-failure of the fairy-tale glamour. It was shocking to discover a prince
-who was deaf, bald, meagre, and so prodigiously old. It never occurred
-to me that this imposing and disappointing man had been young, rich,
-beautiful; I could not know that he had been happy in the felicity of an
-ideal marriage uniting two young hearts, two great names and two great
-fortunes; happy with a happiness which, as in fairy tales, seemed
-destined to last for ever....
-
-“But it did not last for ever. It was fated not to last very long even
-by the measure of the days allotted to men's passage on this earth where
-enduring happiness is only found in the conclusion of fairy tales. A
-daughter was born to them and shortly afterwards, the health of the
-young princess began to fail. For a time she bore up with smiling
-intrepidity, sustained by the feeling that now her existence was
-necessary for the happiness of two lives. But at last the husband,
-thoroughly alarmed by the rapid changes in her appearance, obtained an
-unlimited leave and took her away from the capital to his parents in the
-country.
-
-“The old prince and princess were extremely frightened at the state
-of their beloved daughter-in-law. Preparations were at once made for a
-journey abroad. But it seemed as if it were already too late; and the
-invalid herself opposed the project with gentle obstinacy. Thin and pale
-in the great armchair, where the insidious and obscure nervous malady
-made her appear smaller and more frail every day without effacing the
-smile of her eyes or the charming grace of her wasted face, she clung to
-her native land and wished to breathe her native air. Nowhere else could
-she expect to get well so quickly, nowhere else would it be so easy for
-her to die.
-
-“She died before her little girl was two years old. The grief of
-the husband was terrible and the more alarming to his parents because
-perfectly silent and dry-eyed. After the funeral, while the immense
-bareheaded crowd of peasants surrounding the private chapel on the
-grounds was dispersing, the Prince, waving away his friends and
-relations, remained alone to watch the masons of the estate closing the
-family vault. When the last stone was in position he uttered a groan,
-the first sound of pain which had escaped from him for days, and walking
-away with lowered head shut himself up again in his apartments.
-
-“His father and mother feared for his reason. His outward tranquillity
-was appalling to them. They had nothing to trust to but that very youth
-which made his despair so self-absorbed and so intense. Old Prince John,
-fretful and anxious, repeated: 'Poor Roman should be roused somehow.
-He's so young.' But they could find nothing to rouse him with. And the
-old princess, wiping her eyes, wished in her heart he were young enough
-to come and cry at her knee.
-
-“In time Prince Roman, making an effort, would join now and again the
-family circle. But it was as if his heart and his mind had been buried
-in the family vault with the wife he had lost. He took to wandering in
-the woods with a gun, watched over secretly by one of the keepers, who
-would report in the evening that 'His Serenity has never fired a shot
-all day.' Sometimes walking to the stables in the morning he would order
-in subdued tones a horse to be saddled, wait switching his boot till it
-was led up to him, then mount without a word and ride out of the gates
-at a walking pace. He would be gone all day. People saw him on the
-roads looking neither to the right nor to the left, white-faced, sitting
-rigidly in the saddle like a horseman of stone on a living mount.
-
-“The peasants working in the fields, the great unhedged fields, looked
-after him from the distance; and sometimes some sympathetic old woman on
-the threshold of a low, thatched hut was moved to make the sign of the
-cross in the air behind his back; as though he were one of themselves, a
-simple village soul struck by a sore affliction.
-
-“He rode looking straight ahead seeing no one as if the earth were empty
-and all mankind buried in that grave which had opened so suddenly in
-his path to swallow up his happiness. What were men to him with their
-sorrows, joys, labours and passions from which she who had been all the
-world to him had been cut off so early?
-
-“They did not exist; and he would have felt as completely lonely and
-abandoned as a man in the toils of a cruel nightmare if it had not been
-for this countryside where he had been born and had spent his happy
-boyish years. He knew it well--every slight rise crowned with trees
-amongst the ploughed fields, every dell concealing a village. The dammed
-streams made a chain of lakes set in the green meadows. Far away to the
-north the great Lithuanian forest faced the sun, no higher than a hedge;
-and to the south, the way to the plains, the vast brown spaces of the
-earth touched the blue sky.
-
-“And this familiar landscape associated with the days without thought
-and without sorrow, this land the charm of which he felt without even
-looking at it soothed his pain, like the presence of an old friend who
-sits silent and disregarded by one in some dark hour of life.
-
-“One afternoon, it happened that the Prince after turning his horse's
-head for home remarked a low dense cloud of dark dust cutting off
-slantwise a part of the view. He reined in on a knoll and peered.
-There were slender gleams of steel here and there in that cloud, and it
-contained moving forms which revealed themselves at last as a long line
-of peasant carts full of soldiers, moving slowly in double file under
-the escort of mounted Cossacks.
-
-“It was like an immense reptile creeping over the fields; its head
-dipped out of sight in a slight hollow and its tail went on writhing and
-growing shorter as though the monster were eating its way slowly into
-the very heart of the land.
-
-“The Prince directed his way through a village lying a little off
-the track. The roadside inn with its stable, byre, and barn under one
-enormous thatched roof resembled a deformed, hunch-backed, ragged giant,
-sprawling amongst the small huts of the peasants. The innkeeper, a
-portly, dignified Jew, clad in a black satin coat reaching down to his
-heels and girt with a red sash, stood at the door stroking his long
-silvery beard.
-
-“He watched the Prince approach and bowed gravely from the waist, not
-expecting to be noticed even, since it was well known that their young
-lord had no eyes for anything or anybody in his grief. It was quite a
-shock for him when the Prince pulled up and asked:
-
-“'What's all this, Yankel?'
-
-“'That is, please your Serenity, that is a convoy of footsoldiers they
-are hurrying down to the south.'
-
-“He glanced right and left cautiously, but as there was no one near but
-some children playing in the dust of the village street, he came up
-close to the stirrup.
-
-“'Doesn't your Serenity know? It has begun already down there. All the
-landowners great and small are out in arms and even the common people
-have risen. Only yesterday the saddler from Grodek (it was a tiny
-market-town near by) went through here with his two apprentices on his
-way to join. He left even his cart with me. I gave him a guide through
-our neighbourhood. You know, your Serenity, our people they travel a lot
-and they see all that's going on, and they know all the roads.'
-
-“He tried to keep down his excitement, for the Jew Yankel, innkeeper and
-tenant of all the mills on the estate, was a Polish patriot. And in a
-still lower voice:
-
-“'I was already a married man when the French and all the other nations
-passed this way with Napoleon. Tse! Tse! That was a great harvest for
-death, _nu!_ Perhaps this time God will help.'
-
-“The Prince nodded. 'Perhaps'--and falling into deep meditation he let
-his horse take him home.
-
-“That night he wrote a letter, and early in the morning sent a mounted
-express to the post town. During the day he came out of his taciturnity,
-to the great joy of the family circle, and conversed with his father
-of recent events--the revolt in Warsaw, the flight of the Grand Duke
-Constantine, the first slight successes of the Polish army (at that time
-there was a Polish army); the risings in the provinces. Old Prince John,
-moved and uneasy, speaking from a purely aristocratic point of view,
-mistrusted the popular origins of the movement, regretted its democratic
-tendencies, and did not believe in the possibility of success. He was
-sad, inwardly agitated.
-
-“'I am judging all this calmly. There are secular principles of
-legitimity and order which have been violated in this reckless
-enterprise for the sake of most subversive illusions. Though of course
-the patriotic impulses of the heart....'
-
-“Prince Roman had listened in a thoughtful attitude. He took advantage
-of the pause to tell his father quietly that he had sent that morning a
-letter to St. Petersburg resigning his commission in the Guards.
-
-“The old prince remained silent. He thought that he ought to have been
-consulted. His son was also ordnance officer to the Emperor and he
-knew that the Tsar would never forget this appearance of defection in a
-Polish noble. In a discontented tone he pointed out to his son that as
-it was he had an unlimited leave. The right thing would have been to
-keep quiet. They had too much tact at Court to recall a man of his
-name. Or at worst some distant mission might have been asked for--to the
-Caucasus for instance--away from this unhappy struggle which was wrong
-in principle and therefore destined to fail.
-
-“'Presently you shall find yourself without any interest in life and
-with no occupation. And you shall need something to occupy you, my poor
-boy. You have acted rashly, I fear.'
-
-“Prince Roman murmured.
-
-“'I thought it better.'
-
-“His father faltered under his steady gaze.
-
-“'Well, well--perhaps! But as ordnance officer to the Emperor and in
-favour with all the Imperial family....'
-
-“'Those people had never been heard of when our house was already
-illustrious,' the young man let fall disdainfully.
-
-“This was the sort of remark to which the old prince was sensible.
-
-“'Well--perhaps it is better,' he conceded at last.
-
-“The father and son parted affectionately for the night. The next
-day Prince Roman seemed to have fallen back into the depths of his
-indifference. He rode out as usual. He remembered that the day before
-he had seen a reptile-like convoy of soldiery, bristling with bayonets,
-crawling over the face of that land which was his. The woman he loved
-had been his, too. Death had robbed him of her. Her loss had been to him
-a moral shock. It had opened his heart to a greater sorrow, his mind
-to a vaster thought, his eyes to all the past and to the existence of
-another love fraught with pain but as mysteriously imperative as that
-lost one to which he had entrusted his happiness.
-
-“That evening he retired earlier than usual and rang for his personal
-servant.
-
-“'Go and see if there is light yet in the quarters of the
-Master-of-the-Horse. If he is still up ask him to come and speak to me.'
-
-“While the servant was absent on this errand the Prince tore up hastily
-some papers, locked the drawers of his desk, and hung a medallion,
-containing the miniature of his wife, round his neck against his breast.
-
-“The man the Prince was expecting belonged to that past which the death
-of his love had called to life. He was of a family of small nobles who
-for generations had been adherents, servants, and friends of the Princes
-S---------. He remembered the times before the last partition and had
-taken part in the struggles of the last hour. He was a typical old Pole
-of that class, with a great capacity for emotion, for blind enthusiasm;
-with martial instincts and simple beliefs; and even with the old-time
-habit of larding his speech with Latin words. And his kindly shrewd
-eyes, his ruddy face, his lofty brow and his thick, gray, pendent
-moustache were also very typical of his kind.
-
-“'Listen, Master Francis,' the Prince said familiarly and without
-preliminaries. 'Listen, old friend. I am going to vanish from here
-quietly. I go where something louder than my grief and yet something
-with a voice very like it calls me. I confide in you alone. You will say
-what's necessary when the time comes.'
-
-“The old man understood. His extended hands trembled exceedingly. But
-as soon as he found his voice he thanked God aloud for letting him
-live long enough to see the descendant of the illustrious family in its
-youngest generation give an example _coram Gentibus_ of the love of his
-country and of valour in the field. He doubted not of his dear Prince
-attaining a place in council and in war worthy of his high birth; he saw
-already that _in fulgore_ of family glory _affulget patride serenitas_.
-At the end of the speech he burst into tears and fell into the Prince's
-arms.
-
-“The Prince quieted the old man and when he had him seated in an
-armchair and comparatively composed he said:
-
-“'Don't misunderstand me, Master Francis. You know how I loved my wife.
-A loss like that opens one's eyes to unsuspected truths. There is no
-question here of leadership and glory. I mean to go alone and to fight
-obscurely in the ranks. I am going to offer my country what is mine to
-offer, that is my life, as simply as the saddler from Grodek who went
-through yesterday with his apprentices.'
-
-“The old man cried out at this. That could never be. He could not allow
-it. But he had to give way before the arguments and the express will
-of the Prince. “'Ha! If you say that it is a matter of feeling and
-conscience--so be it. But you cannot go utterly alone. Alas! that I am
-too old to be of any use. _Cripit verba dolor_, my dear Prince, at the
-thought that I am over seventy and of no more account in the world than
-a cripple in the church porch. It seems that to sit at home and pray to
-God for the nation and for you is all I am fit for. But there is my son,
-my youngest son, Peter. He will make a worthy companion for you. And
-as it happens he's staying with me here. There has not been for ages a
-Prince S--------- hazarding his life without a companion of our name to
-ride by his side. You must have by you somebody who knows who you are if
-only to let your parents and your old servant hear what is happening to
-you. And when does your Princely Mightiness mean to start?'
-
-“'In an hour,' said the Prince; and the old man hurried off to warn his
-son.
-
-“Prince Roman took up a candlestick and walked quietly along a dark
-corridor in the silent house. The head-nurse said afterwards that waking
-up suddenly she saw the Prince looking at his child, one hand shading
-the light from its eyes. He stood and gazed at her for some time, and
-then putting the candlestick on the floor bent over the cot and kissed
-lightly the little girl who did not wake. He went out noiselessly,
-taking the light away with him. She saw his face perfectly well, but she
-could read nothing of his purpose in it. It was pale but perfectly calm
-and after he turned away from the cot he never looked back at it once.
-
-“The only other trusted person, besides the old man and his son Peter,
-was the Jew Yankel. When he asked the Prince where precisely he wanted
-to be guided the Prince answered: 'To the nearest party.' A grandson
-of the Jew, a lanky youth, conducted the two young men by little-known
-paths across woods and morasses, and led them in sight of the few fires
-of a small detachment camped in a hollow. Some invisible horses neighed,
-a voice in the dark cried: 'Who goes there?'... and the young Jew
-departed hurriedly, explaining that he must make haste home to be in
-time for keeping the Sabbath.
-
-“Thus humbly and in accord with the simplicity of the vision of duty he
-saw when death had removed the brilliant bandage of happiness from his
-eyes, did Prince Roman bring his offering to his country. His companion
-made himself known as the son of the Master of-the-Horse to the Princes
-S--------- and declared him to be a relation, a distant cousin from the
-same parts as himself and, as people presumed, of the same name. In
-truth no one inquired much. Two more young men clearly of the right sort
-had joined. Nothing more natural.
-
-“Prince Roman did not remain long in the south. One day while scouting
-with several others, they were ambushed near the entrance of a village
-by some Russian infantry. The first discharge laid low a good many and
-the rest scattered in all directions. The Russians, too, did not stay,
-being afraid of a return in force. After some time, the peasants coming
-to view the scene extricated Prince Roman from under his dead horse. He
-was unhurt but his faithful companion had been one of the first to fall.
-The Prince helped the peasants to bury him and the other dead.
-
-“Then alone, not certain where to find the body of partizans which was
-constantly moving about in all directions, he resolved to try and join
-the main Polish army facing the Russians on the borders of Lithuania.
-Disguised in peasant clothes, in case of meeting some marauding
-Cossacks, he wandered a couple of weeks before he came upon a village
-occupied by a regiment of Polish cavalry on outpost duty.
-
-“On a bench, before a peasant hut of a better sort, sat an elderly
-officer whom he took for the colonel. The Prince approached
-respectfully, told his story shortly and stated his desire to enlist;
-and when asked his name by the officer, who had been looking him over
-carefully, he gave on the spur of the moment the name of his dead
-companion.
-
-“The elderly officer thought to himself: Here's the son of some peasant
-proprietor of the liberated class. He liked his appearance.
-
-“'And can you read and write, my good fellow?'he asked.
-
-“'Yes, your honour, I can,' said the Prince.
-
-“'Good. Come along inside the hut; the regimental adjutant is there. He
-will enter your name and administer the oath to you.'
-
-“The adjutant stared very hard at the newcomer but said nothing. When
-all the forms had been gone through and the recruit gone out, he turned
-to his superior officer.
-
-“'Do you know who that is?'
-
-“'Who? That Peter? A likely chap.'
-
-“'That's Prince Roman S---------.'
-
-“'Nonsense.'
-
-“But the adjutant was positive. He had seen the Prince several times,
-about two years before, in the Castle in Warsaw. He had even spoken to
-him once at a reception of officers held by the Grand Duke.
-
-“'He's changed. He seems much older, but I am certain of my man. I have
-a good memory for faces.'
-
-“The two officers looked at each other in silence.
-
-“'He's sure to be recognized sooner or later,' murmured the adjutant.
-The colonel shrugged his shoulders.
-
-“'It's no affair of ours--if he has a fancy to serve in the ranks. As to
-being recognized it's not so likely. All our officers and men come from
-the other end of Poland.'
-
-“He meditated gravely for a while, then smiled. 'He told me he could
-read and write. There's nothing to prevent me making him a sergeant at
-the first opportunity. He's sure to shape all right.'
-
-“Prince Roman as a non-commissioned officer surpassed the colonel's
-expectations. Before long Sergeant Peter became famous for his
-resourcefulness and courage. It was not the reckless courage of a
-desperate man; it was a self-possessed, as if conscientious, valour
-which nothing could dismay; a boundless but equable devotion, unaffected
-by time, by reverses, by the discouragement of endless retreats, by the
-bitterness of waning hopes and the horrors of pestilence added to the
-toils and perils of war. It was in this year that the cholera made its
-first appearance in Europe. It devastated the camps of both armies,
-affecting the firmest minds with the terror of a mysterious death
-stalking silently between the piled-up arms and around the bivouac
-fires.
-
-“A sudden shriek would wake up the harassed soldiers and they would see
-in the glow of embers one of themselves writhe on the ground like a worm
-trodden on by an invisible foot. And before the dawn broke he would be
-stiff and cold. Parties so visited have been known to rise like one man,
-abandon the fire and run off into the night in mute panic. Or a comrade
-talking to you on the march would stammer suddenly in the middle of a
-sentence, roll affrighted eyes, and fall down with distorted face and
-blue lips, breaking the ranks with the convulsions of his agony. Men
-were struck in the saddle, on sentry duty, in the firing line, carrying
-orders, serving the guns. I have been told that in a battalion forming
-under fire with perfect steadiness for the assault of a village, three
-cases occurred within five minutes at the head of the column; and the
-attack could not be delivered because the leading companies scattered
-all over the fields like chaff before the wind.
-
-“Sergeant Peter, young as he was, had a great influence over his men.
-It was said that the number of desertions in the squadron in which he
-served was less than in any other in the whole of that cavalry division.
-Such was supposed to be the compelling example of one man's quiet
-intrepidity in facing every form of danger and terror.
-
-“However that may be, he was liked and trusted generally. When the end
-came and the remnants of that army corps, hard pressed on all sides,
-were preparing to cross the Prussian frontier, Sergeant Peter had enough
-influence to rally round him a score of troopers. He managed to escape
-with them at night, from the hemmed-in army. He led this band through
-200 miles of country covered by numerous Russian detachments and ravaged
-by the cholera. But this was not to avoid captivity, to go into hiding
-and try to save themselves. No. He led them into a fortress which was
-still occupied by the Poles, and where the last stand of the vanquished
-revolution was to be made.
-
-“This looks like mere fanaticism. But fanaticism is human. Man has
-adored ferocious divinities. There is ferocity in every passion, even
-in love itself. The religion of undying hope resembles the mad cult of
-despair, of death, of annihilation. The difference lies in the moral
-motive springing from the secret needs and the unexpressed aspiration
-of the believers. It is only to vain men that all is vanity; and all is
-deception only to those who have never been sincere with themselves.
-
-“It was in the fortress that my grandfather found himself together with
-Sergeant Peter. My grandfather was a neighbour of the S--------- family
-in the country but he did not know Prince Roman, who however knew his
-name perfectly well. The Prince introduced himself one night as they
-both sat on the ramparts, leaning against a gun carriage.
-
-“The service he wished to ask for was, in case of his being killed, to
-have the intelligence conveyed to his parents.
-
-“They talked in low tones, the other servants of the piece lying about
-near them. My grandfather gave the required promise, and then asked
-frankly--for he was greatly interested by the disclosure so unexpectedly
-made:
-
-“But tell me, Prince, why this request? Have you any evil forebodings as
-to yourself?'
-
-“Not in the least; I was thinking of my people. They have no idea where
-I am,' answered Prince Roman. 'I'll engage to do as much for you, if you
-like. It's certain that half of us at least shall be killed before the
-end, so there's an even chance of one of us surviving the other.'
-
-“My grandfather told him where, as he supposed, his wife and children
-were then. From that moment till the end of the siege the two were much
-together. On the day of the great assault my grandfather received a
-severe wound. The town was taken. Next day the citadel itself, its
-hospital full of dead and dying, its magazines empty, its defenders
-having burnt their last cartridge, opened its gates.
-
-“During all the campaign the Prince, exposing his person conscientiously
-on every occasion, had not received a scratch. No one had recognized him
-or at any rate had betrayed his identity. Till then, as long as he did
-his duty, it had mattered nothing who he was.
-
-“Now, however, the position was changed. As ex-guardsman and as late
-ordnance officer to the Emperor, this rebel ran a serious risk of being
-given special attention in the shape of a firing squad at ten paces. For
-more than a month he remained lost in the miserable crowd of prisoners
-packed in the casemates of the citadel, with just enough food to
-keep body and soul together but otherwise allowed to die from wounds,
-privation, and disease at the rate of forty or so a day.
-
-“The position of the fortress being central, new parties, captured in
-the open in the course of a thorough pacification, were being sent in
-frequently. Amongst such newcomers there happened to be a young man, a
-personal friend of the Prince from his school days. He recognized him,
-and in the extremity of his dismay cried aloud: 'My God! Roman, you
-here!'
-
-“It is said that years of life embittered by remorse paid for this
-momentary lack of self-control. All this happened in the main quadrangle
-of the citadel. The warning gesture of the Prince came too late.
-An officer of the gendarmes on guard had heard the exclamation. The
-incident appeared to him worth inquiring into. The investigation which
-followed was not very arduous because the Prince, asked categorically
-for his real name, owned up at once.
-
-“The intelligence of the Prince S---------- being found amongst the
-prisoners was sent to St. Petersburg. His parents were already there
-living in sorrow, incertitude, and apprehension. The capital of the
-Empire was the safest place to reside in for a noble whose son had
-disappeared so mysteriously from home in a time of rebellion. The old
-people had not heard from him, or of him, for months. They took care
-not to contradict the rumours of suicide from despair circulating in the
-great world, which remembered the interesting love-match, the charming
-and frank happiness brought to an end by death. But they hoped secretly
-that their son survived, and that he had been able to cross the frontier
-with that part of the army which had surrendered to the Prussians.
-
-“The news of his captivity was a crushing blow. Directly, nothing could
-be done for him. But the greatness of their name, of their position,
-their wide relations and connections in the highest spheres, enabled his
-parents to act indirectly and they moved heaven and earth, as the saying
-is, to save their son from the 'consequences of his madness,' as poor
-Prince John did not hesitate to express himself. Great personages
-were approached by society leaders, high dignitaries were interviewed,
-powerful officials were induced to take an interest in that affair.
-The help of every possible secret influence was enlisted. Some private
-secretaries got heavy bribes. The mistress of a certain senator obtained
-a large sum of money.
-
-“But, as I have said, in such a glaring case no direct appeal could be
-made and no open steps taken. All that could be done was to incline
-by private representation the mind of the President of the Military
-Commission to the side of clemency. He ended by being impressed by the
-hints and suggestions, some of them from very high quarters, which he
-received from St. Petersburg. And, after all, the gratitude of such
-great nobles as the Princes S-------- was something worth having from
-a worldly point of view. He was a good Russian but he was also a
-good-natured man. Moreover, the hate of Poles was not at that time
-a cardinal article of patriotic creed as it became some thirty years
-later. He felt well disposed at first sight towards that young man,
-bronzed, thin-faced, worn out by months of hard campaigning, the
-hardships of the siege and the rigours of captivity.
-
-“The Commission was composed of three officers. It sat in the citadel in
-a bare vaulted room behind a long black table. Some clerks occupied the
-two ends, and besides the gendarmes who brought in the Prince there was
-no one else there.
-
-“Within those four sinister walls shutting out from him all the
-sights and sounds of liberty, all hopes of the future, all consoling
-illusions--alone in the face of his enemies erected for judges, who can
-tell how much love of life there was in Prince Roman? How much remained
-in that sense of duty, revealed to him in sorrow? How much of his
-awakened love for his native country? That country which demands to
-be loved as no other country has ever been loved, with the
-mournful affection one bears to the unforgotten dead and with the
-unextinguishable fire of a hopeless passion which only a living,
-breathing, warm ideal can kindle in our breasts for our pride, for our
-weariness, for our exultation, for our undoing.
-
-“There is something monstrous in the thought of such an exaction till
-it stands before us embodied in the shape of a fidelity without fear
-and without reproach. Nearing the supreme moment of his life the Prince
-could only have had the feeling that it was about to end. He answered
-the questions put to him clearly, concisely--with the most profound
-indifference. After all those tense months of action, to talk was a
-weariness to him. But he concealed it, lest his foes should suspect in
-his manner the apathy of discouragement or the numbness of a crushed
-spirit. The details of his conduct could have no importance one way or
-another; with his thoughts these men had nothing to do. He preserved a
-scrupulously courteous tone. He had refused the permission to sit down.
-
-“What happened at this preliminary examination is only known from the
-presiding officer. Pursuing the only possible course in that glaringly
-bad case he tried from the first to bring to the Prince's mind the line
-of defence he wished him to take. He absolutely framed his questions so
-as to put the right answers in the culprit's mouth, going so far as to
-suggest the very words: how, distracted by excessive grief after his
-young wife's death, rendered irresponsible for his conduct by his
-despair, in a moment of blind recklessness, without realizing the highly
-reprehensible nature of the act, nor yet its danger and its dishonour,
-he went off to join the nearest rebels on a sudden impulse. And that
-now, penitently...
-
-“But Prince Roman was silent. The military judges looked at him
-hopefully. In silence he reached for a pen and wrote on a sheet of paper
-he found under his hand: 'I joined the national rising from conviction.'
-
-“He pushed the paper across the table. The president took it up, showed
-it in turn to his two colleagues sitting to the right and left, then
-looking fixedly at Prince Roman let it fall from his hand. And the
-silence remained unbroken till he spoke to the gendarmes ordering them
-to remove the prisoner.
-
-“Such was the written testimony of Prince Roman in the supreme moment of
-his life. I have heard that the Princes of the S--------- family, in
-all its branches, adopted the last two words: 'From conviction' for the
-device under the armorial bearings of their house. I don't know whether
-the report is true. My uncle could not tell me. He remarked only, that
-naturally, it was not to be seen on Prince Roman's own seal.
-
-“He was condemned for life to Siberian mines. Emperor Nicholas, who
-always took personal cognizance of all sentences on Polish nobility,
-wrote with his own hand in the margin: 'The authorities are severely
-warned to take care that this convict walks in chains like any other
-criminal every step of the way.'
-
-“It was a sentence of deferred death. Very few survived entombment in
-these mines for more than three years. Yet as he was reported as still
-alive at the end of that time he was allowed, on a petition of his
-parents and by way of exceptional grace, to serve as common soldier in
-the Caucasus. All communication with him was forbidden. He had no civil
-rights. For all practical purposes except that of suffering he was a
-dead man. The little child he had been so careful not to wake up when
-he kissed her in her cot, inherited all the fortune after Prince John's
-death. Her existence saved those immense estates from confiscation.
-
-“It was twenty-five years before Prince Roman, stone deaf, his health
-broken, was permitted to return to Poland. His daughter married
-splendidly to a Polish Austrian _grand seigneur_ and, moving in the
-cosmopolitan sphere of the highest European aristocracy, lived mostly
-abroad in Nice and Vienna. He, settling down on one of her estates, not
-the one with the palatial residence but another where there was a modest
-little house, saw very little of her.
-
-“But Prince Roman did not shut himself up as if his work were done.
-There was hardly anything done in the private and public life of the
-neighbourhood, in which Prince Roman's advice and assistance were not
-called upon, and never in vain. It was well said that his days did not
-belong to himself but to his fellow citizens. And especially he was the
-particular friend of all returned exiles, helping them with purse and
-advice, arranging their affairs and finding them means of livelihood.
-
-“I heard from my uncle many tales of his devoted activity, in which he
-was always guided by a simple wisdom, a high sense of honour, and the
-most scrupulous conception of private and public probity. He remains a
-living figure for me because of that meeting in a billiard room, when,
-in my anxiety to hear about a particularly wolfish wolf, I came in
-momentary contact with a man who was preeminently a man amongst all men
-capable of feeling deeply, of believing steadily, of loving ardently.
-
-“I remember to this day the grasp of Prince Roman's bony, wrinkled hand
-closing on my small inky paw, and my uncle's half-serious, half-amused
-way of looking down at his trespassing nephew.
-
-“They moved on and forgot that little boy. But I did not move; I gazed
-after them, not so much disappointed as disconcerted by this prince so
-utterly unlike a prince in a fairy tale. They moved very slowly across
-the room. Before reaching the other door the Prince stopped, and I heard
-him--I seem to hear him now--saying: 'I wish you would write to Vienna
-about filling up that post. He's a most deserving fellow--and your
-recommendation would be decisive.'
-
-“My uncle's face turned to him expressed genuine wonder. It said as
-plainly as any speech could say: What better recommendation than a
-father's can be needed? The Prince was quick at reading expressions.
-Again he spoke with the toneless accent of a man who has not heard his
-own voice for years, for whom the soundless world is like an abode of
-silent shades.
-
-“And to this day I remember the very words: 'I ask you because, you see,
-my daughter and my son-in-law don't believe me to be a good judge
-of men. They think that I let myself be guided too much by mere
-sentiment.'”
-
-
-
-
-
-THE TALE (1917)
-
-
-Outside the large single window the crepuscular light was dying out
-slowly in a great square gleam without colour, framed rigidly in the
-gathering shades of the room.
-
-It was a long room. The irresistible tide of the night ran into the most
-distant part of it, where the whispering of a man's voice, passionately
-interrupted and passionately renewed, seemed to plead against the
-answering murmurs of infinite sadness.
-
-At last no answering murmur came. His movement when he rose slowly from
-his knees by the side of the deep, shadowy couch holding the shadowy
-suggestion of a reclining woman revealed him tall under the low ceiling,
-and sombre all over except for the crude discord of the white collar
-under the shape of his head and the faint, minute spark of a brass
-button here and there on his uniform.
-
-He stood over her a moment, masculine and mysterious in his immobility,
-before he sat down on a chair near by. He could see only the faint oval
-of her upturned face and, extended on her black dress, her pale hands, a
-moment before abandoned to his kisses and now as if too weary to move.
-
-He dared not make a sound, shrinking as a man would do from the prosaic
-necessities of existence. As usual, it was the woman who had the
-courage. Her voice was heard first--almost conventional while her being
-vibrated yet with conflicting emotions.
-
-“Tell me something,” she said.
-
-The darkness hid his surprise and then his smile. Had he not just said
-to her everything worth saying in the world--and that not for the first
-time!
-
-“What am I to tell you?” he asked, in a voice creditably steady. He was
-beginning to feel grateful to her for that something final in her tone
-which had eased the strain.
-
-“Why not tell me a tale?”
-
-“A tale!” He was really amazed.
-
-“Yes. Why not?”
-
-These words came with a slight petulance, the hint of a loved woman's
-capricious will, which is capricious only because it feels itself to to
-be a law, embarrassing sometimes and always difficult to elude.
-
-“Why not?” he repeated, with a slightly mocking accent, as though he had
-been asked to give her the moon. But now he was feeling a little angry
-with her for that feminine mobility that slips out of an emotion as
-easily as out of a splendid gown.
-
-He heard her say, a little unsteadily with a sort of fluttering
-intonation which made him think suddenly of a butterfly's flight:
-
-“You used to tell--your--your simple and--and professional--tales very
-well at one time. Or well enough to interest me. You had a--a sort of
-art--in the days--the days before the war.”
-
-“Really?” he said, with involuntary gloom. “But now, you see, the war
-is going on,” he continued in such a dead, equable tone that she felt a
-slight chill fall over her shoulders. And yet she persisted. For there's
-nothing more unswerving in the world than a woman's caprice.
-
-“It could be a tale not of this world,” she explained.
-
-“You want a tale of the other, the better world?” he asked, with a
-matter-of-fact surprise. “You must evoke for that task those who have
-already gone there.”
-
-“No. I don't mean that. I mean another--some other--world. In the
-universe--not in heaven.”
-
-“I am relieved. But you forget that I have only five days' leave.”
-
-“Yes. And I've also taken a five days' leave from--from my duties.”
-
-“I like that word.”
-
-“What word?”
-
-“Duty.”
-
-“It is horrible--sometimes.”
-
-“Oh, that's because you think it's narrow. But it isn't. It contains
-infinities, and--and so------”
-
-“What is this jargon?”
-
-He disregarded the interjected scorn. “An infinity of absolution, for
-instance,” he continued. “But as to this another world'--who's going to
-look for it and for the tale that is in it?”
-
-“You,” she said, with a strange, almost rough, sweetness of assertion.
-
-He made a shadowy movement of assent in his chair, the irony of which
-not even the gathered darkness could render mysterious.
-
-“As you will. In that world, then, there was once upon a time a
-Commanding Officer and a Northman. Put in the capitals, please, because
-they had no other names. It was a world of seas and continents and
-islands------”
-
-“Like the earth,” she murmured, bitterly.
-
-“Yes. What else could you expect from sending a man made of our common,
-tormented clay on a voyage of discovery? What else could he find? What
-else could you understand or care for, or feel the existence of even?
-There was comedy in it, and slaughter.”
-
-“Always like the earth,” she murmured. “Always. And since I could find
-in the universe only what was deeply rooted in the fibres of my being
-there was love in it, too. But we won't talk of that.”
-
-“No. We won't,” she said, in a neutral tone which concealed perfectly
-her relief--or her disappointment. Then after a pause she added: “It's
-going to be a comic story.”
-
-“Well------” he paused, too. “Yes. In a way. In a very grim way. It will
-be human, and, as you know, comedy is but a matter of the visual angle.
-And it won't be a noisy story. All the long guns in it will be dumb--as
-dumb as so many telescopes.”
-
-“Ah, there are guns in it, then! And may I ask--where?”
-
-“Afloat. You remember that the world of which we speak had its seas. A
-war was going on in it. It was a funny work! and terribly in earnest.
-Its war was being carried on over the land, over the water, under the
-water, up in the air, and even under the ground. And many young men
-in it, mostly in wardrooms and mess-rooms, used to say to each
-other--pardon the unparliamentary word--they used to say, 'It's a damned
-bad war, but it's better than no war at all.' Sounds flippant, doesn't
-it.”
-
-He heard a nervous, impatient sigh in the depths of the couch while he
-went on without a pause.
-
-“And yet there is more in it than meets the eye. I mean more wisdom.
-Flippancy, like comedy, is but a matter of visual first impression. That
-world was not very wise. But there was in it a certain amount of common
-working sagacity. That, however, was mostly worked by the neutrals in
-diverse ways, public and private, which had to be watched; watched by
-acute minds and also by actual sharp eyes. They had to be very sharp
-indeed, too, I assure you.”
-
-“I can imagine,” she murmured, appreciatively.
-
-“What is there that you can't imagine?” he pronounced, soberly. “You
-have the world in you. But let us go back to our commanding officer,
-who, of course, commanded a ship of a sort. My tales if often
-professional (as you remarked just now) have never been technical. So
-I'll just tell you that the ship was of a very ornamental sort once,
-with lots of grace and elegance and luxury about her. Yes, once! She
-was like a pretty woman who had suddenly put on a suit of sackcloth and
-stuck revolvers in her belt. But she floated lightly, she moved nimbly,
-she was quite good enough.”
-
-“That was the opinion of the commanding officer?” said the voice from
-the couch.
-
-“It was. He used to be sent out with her along certain coasts to
-see--what he could see. Just that. And sometimes he had some preliminary
-information to help him, and sometimes he had not. And it was all one,
-really. It was about as useful as information trying to convey the
-locality and intentions of a cloud, of a phantom taking shape here and
-there and impossible to seize, would have been.
-
-“It was in the early days of the war. What at first used to amaze
-the commanding officer was the unchanged face of the waters, with its
-familiar expression, neither more friendly nor more hostile. On fine
-days the sun strikes sparks upon the blue; here and there a peaceful
-smudge of smoke hangs in the distance, and it is impossible to believe
-that the familiar clear horizon traces the limit of one great circular
-ambush.
-
-“Yes, it is impossible to believe, till some day you see a ship not your
-own ship (that isn't so impressive), but some ship in company, blow up
-all of a sudden and plop under almost before you know what has happened
-to her. Then you begin to believe. Henceforth you go out for the work
-to see--what you can see, and you keep on at it with the conviction that
-some day you will die from something you have not seen. One envies the
-soldiers at the end of the day, wiping the sweat and blood from
-their faces, counting the dead fallen to their hands, looking at the
-devastated fields, the torn earth that seems to suffer and bleed
-with them. One does, really. The final brutality of it--the taste of
-primitive passion--the ferocious frankness of the blow struck with one's
-hand--the direct call and the straight response. Well, the sea gave you
-nothing of that, and seemed to pretend that there was nothing the matter
-with the world.”
-
-She interrupted, stirring a little.
-
-“Oh, yes. Sincerity--frankness--passion--three words of your gospel.
-Don't I know them!”
-
-“Think! Isn't it ours--believed in common?” he asked, anxiously,
-yet without expecting an answer, and went on at once: “Such were the
-feelings of the commanding officer. When the night came trailing over
-the sea, hiding what looked like the hypocrisy of an old friend, it was
-a relief. The night blinds you frankly--and there are circumstances when
-the sunlight may grow as odious to one as falsehood itself. Night is all
-right.
-
-“At night the commanding officer could let his thoughts get away--I
-won't tell you where. Somewhere where there was no choice but between
-truth and death. But thick weather, though it blinded one, brought
-no such relief. Mist is deceitful, the dead luminosity of the fog is
-irritating. It seems that you _ought_ to see.
-
-“One gloomy, nasty day the ship was steaming along her beat in sight
-of a rocky, dangerous coast that stood out intensely black like an
-India-ink drawing on gray paper. Presently the second in command spoke
-to his chief. He thought he saw something on the water, to seaward.
-Small wreckage, perhaps.
-
-“'But there shouldn't be any wreckage here, sir,' he remarked.
-
-“'No,' said the commanding officer. 'The last reported submarined ships
-were sunk a long way to the westward. But one never knows. There may
-have been others since then not reported nor seen. Gone with all hands.'
-
-“That was how it began. The ship's course was altered to pass the object
-close; for it was necessary to have a good look at what one could see.
-Close, but without touching; for it was not advisable to come in contact
-with objects of any form whatever floating casually about. Close, but
-without stopping or even diminishing speed; for in those times it was
-not prudent to linger on any particular spot, even for a moment. I may
-tell you at once that the object was not dangerous in itself. No use
-in describing it. It may have been nothing more remarkable than, say, a
-barrel of a certain shape and colour. But it was significant.
-
-“The smooth bow-wave hove it up as if for a closer inspection, and
-then the ship, brought again to her course, turned her back on it with
-indifference, while twenty pairs of eyes on her deck stared in all
-directions trying to see--what they could see.
-
-“The commanding officer and his second in command discussed the object
-with understanding. It appeared to them to be not so much a proof of the
-sagacity as of the activity of certain neutrals. This activity had
-in many cases taken the form of replenishing the stores of certain
-submarines at sea. This was generally believed, if not absolutely known.
-But the very nature of things in those early days pointed that way.
-The object, looked at closely and turned away from with apparent
-indifference, put it beyond doubt that something of the sort had been
-done somewhere in the neighbourhood.
-
-“The object in itself was more than suspect. But the fact of its being
-left in evidence roused other suspicions. Was it the result of some deep
-and devilish purpose? As to that all speculation soon appeared to be a
-vain thing. Finally the two officers came to the conclusion that it
-wras left there most likely by accident, complicated possibly by some
-unforeseen necessity; such, perhaps, as the sudden need to get away
-quickly from the spot, or something of that kind.
-
-“Their discussion had been carried on in curt, weighty phrases,
-separated by long, thoughtful silences. And all the time their eyes
-roamed about the horizon in an everlasting, almost mechanical effort of
-vigilance. The younger man summed up grimly:
-
-“'Well, it's evidence. That's what this is. Evidence of what we were
-pretty certain of before. And plain, too.'
-
-“'And much good it will do to us,' retorted the commanding officer. 'The
-parties are miles away; the submarine, devil only knows where, ready
-to kill; and the noble neutral slipping away to the eastward, ready to
-lie!'
-
-“The second in command laughed a little at the tone. But he guessed
-that the neutral wouldn't even have to lie very much. Fellows like that,
-unless caught in the very act, felt themselves pretty safe. They could
-afford to chuckle. That fellow was probably chuckling to himself. It's
-very possible he had been before at the game and didn't care a rap for
-the bit of evidence left behind. It was a game in which practice made
-one bold and successful, too.
-
-“And again he laughed faintly. But his commanding officer was in
-revolt against the murderous stealthiness of methods and the atrocious
-callousness of complicities that seemed to taint the very source of
-men's deep emotions and noblest activities; to corrupt their
-imagination which builds up the final conceptions of life and death. He
-suffered-------”
-
-The voice from the sofa interrupted the narrator.
-
-“How well I can understand that in him!”
-
-He bent forward slightly.
-
-“Yes. I, too. Everything should be open in love and war. Open as
-the day, since both are the call of an ideal which it is so easy, so
-terribly easy, to degrade in the name of Victory.”
-
-He paused; then went on: I don't know that the commanding officer delved
-so deep as that into his feelings. But he did suffer from them--a sort
-of disenchanted sadness. It is possible, even, that he suspected himself
-of folly. Man is various. But he had no time for much introspection,
-because from the southwest a wall of fog had advanced upon his ship.
-Great convolutions of vapours flew over, swirling about masts and
-funnel, which looked as if they were beginning to melt. Then they
-vanished.
-
-“The ship was stopped, all sounds ceased, and the very fog became
-motionless, growing denser and as if solid in its amazing dumb
-immobility. The men at their stations lost sight of each other.
-Footsteps sounded stealthy; rare voices, impersonal and remote, died out
-without resonance. A blind white stillness took possession of the world.
-
-“It looked, too, as if it would last for days. I don't mean to say that
-the fog did not vary a little in its density. Now and then it would
-thin out mysteriously, revealing to the men a more or less ghostly
-presentment of their ship. Several times the shadow of the coast itself
-swam darkly before their eyes through the fluctuating opaque brightness
-of the great white cloud clinging to the water.
-
-“Taking advantage of these moments, the ship had been moved cautiously
-nearer the shore. It was useless to remain out in such thick weather.
-Her officers knew every nook and cranny of the coast along their beat.
-They thought that she would be much better in a certain cove. It wasn't
-a large place, just ample room for a ship to swing at her anchor. She
-would have an easier time of it till the fog lifted up.
-
-“Slowly, with infinite caution and patience, they crept closer and
-closer, seeing no more of the cliffs than an evanescent dark loom with a
-narrow border of angry foam at its foot. At the moment of anchoring
-the fog was so thick that for all they could see they might have been a
-thousand miles out in the open sea. Yet the shelter of the land could
-be felt. There was a peculiar quality in the stillness of the air. Very
-faint, very elusive, the wash of the ripple against the encircling land
-reached their ears, with mysterious sudden pauses.
-
-“The anchor dropped, the leads were laid in. The commanding officer went
-below into his cabin. But he had not been there very long when a voice
-outside his door requested his presence on deck. He thought to himself:
-'What is it now?' He felt some impatience at being called out again to
-face the wearisome fog.
-
-“He found that it had thinned again a little and had taken on a gloomy
-hue from the dark cliffs which had no form, no outline, but asserted
-themselves as a curtain of shadows all round the ship, except in one
-bright spot, which was the entrance from the open sea. Several officers
-were looking that way from the bridge. The second in command met him
-with the breathlessly whispered information that there was another ship
-in the cove.
-
-“She had been made out by several pairs of eyes only a couple of minutes
-before. She was lying at anchor very near the entrance--a mere vague
-blot on the fog's brightness. And the commanding officer by staring in
-the direction pointed out to him by eager hands ended by distinguishing
-it at last himself. Indubitably a vessel of some sort.
-
-“'It's a wonder we didn't run slap into her when coming in,' observed
-the second in command.
-
-“'Send a boat on board before she vanishes,' said the commanding
-officer. He surmised that this was a coaster. It could hardly be
-anything else. But another thought came into his head suddenly. 'It is
-a wonder,' he said to his second in command, who had rejoined him after
-sending the boat away.
-
-“By that time both of them had been struck by the fact that the ship so
-suddenly discovered had not manifested her presence by ringing her bell.
-
-“'We came in very quietly, that's true,' concluded the younger officer.
-'But they must have heard our leadsmen at least. We couldn't have passed
-her more than fifty yards off. The closest shave! They may even have
-made us out, since they were aware of something coming in. And the
-strange thing is that we never heard a sound from her. The fellows on
-board must have been holding their breath.'
-
-“'Aye,' said the commanding officer, thoughtfully.
-
-“In due course the boarding-boat returned, appearing suddenly
-alongside, as though she had burrowed her way under the fog. The officer
-in charge came up to make his report, but the commanding officer didn't
-give him time to begin. He cried from a distance:
-
-“'Coaster, isn't she?'
-
-“'No, sir. A stranger--a neutral,' was the answer.
-
-“'No. Really! Well, tell us all about it. What is she doing here?'
-
-“The young man stated then that he had been told a long and complicated
-story of engine troubles. But it was plausible enough from a strictly
-professional point of view and it had the usual features: disablement,
-dangerous drifting along the shore, weather more or less thick for days,
-fear of a gale, ultimately a resolve to go in and anchor anywhere on the
-coast, and so on. Fairly plausible.
-
-“'Engines still disabled?' inquired the commanding officer.
-
-“'No, sir. She has steam on them.'
-
-“The commanding officer took his second aside. 'By Jove!' he said, 'you
-were right! They were holding their breaths as we passed them. They
-were.'
-
-“But the second in command had his doubts now.
-
-“'A fog like this does muffle small sounds, sir,' he remarked. 'And what
-could his object be, after all?'
-
-“'To sneak out unnoticed,' answered the commanding officer.
-
-“'Then why didn't he? He might have done it, you know. Not exactly
-unnoticed, perhaps. I don't suppose he could have slipped his cable
-without making some noise. Still, in a minute or so he would have been
-lost to view--clean gone before we had made him out fairly. Yet he
-didn't.'
-
-“They looked at each other. The commanding officer shook his head.
-Such suspicions as the one which had entered his head are not defended
-easily. He did not even state it openly. The boarding officer finished
-his report. The cargo of the ship was of a harmless and useful
-character. She was bound to an English port. Papers and everything in
-perfect order. Nothing suspicious to be detected anywhere.
-
-“Then passing to the men, he reported the crew on deck as the usual lot.
-Engineers of the well-known type, and very full of their achievement in
-repairing the engines. The mate surly. The master rather a fine specimen
-of a Northman, civil enough, but appeared to have been drinking. Seemed
-to be recover-ing from a regular bout of it.
-
-“'I told him I couldn't give him permission to proceed. He said he
-wouldn't dare to move his ship her own length out in such weather as
-this, permission or no permission. I left a man on board, though.'
-
-“'Quite right.'
-
-“The commanding officer, after communing with his suspicions for a time,
-called his second aside.
-
-“'What if she were the very ship which had been feeding some infernal
-submarine or other?' he said in an undertone.
-
-“The other started. Then, with conviction:
-
-“'She would get off scot-free. You couldn't prove it, sir.'
-
-“'I want to look into it myself.'
-
-“'From the report we've heard I am afraid you couldn't even make a case
-for reasonable suspicion, sir.'
-
-“'I'll go on board all the same.'
-
-“He had made up his mind. Curiosity is the great motive power of
-hatred and love. What did he expect to find? He could not have told
-anybody--not even himself.
-
-“What he really expected to find there was the atmosphere, the
-atmosphere of gratuitous treachery, which in his view nothing could
-excuse; for he thought that even a passion of unrighteousness for its
-own sake could not excuse that. But could he detect it? Sniff it?
-Taste it? Receive some mysterious communication which would turn his
-invincible suspicions into a certitude strong enough to provoke action
-with all its risks?
-
-“The master met him on the after-deck, looming up in the fog amongst the
-blurred shapes of the usual snip's fittings. He was a robust Northman,
-bearded, and in the force of his age. A round leather cap fitted his
-head closely. His hands were rammed deep into the pockets of his short
-leather jacket. He kept them there while lie explained that at sea he
-lived in the chart-room, and led the way there, striding carelessly.
-Just before reaching the door under the bridge he staggered a little,
-recovered himself, flung it open, and stood aside, leaning his shoulder
-as if involuntarily against the side of the house, and staring vaguely
-into the fog-filled space. But he followed the commanding officer at
-once, flung the door to, snapped on the electric light, and hastened to
-thrust his hands back into his pockets, as though afraid of being seized
-by them either in friendship or in hostility.
-
-“The place was stuffy and hot. The usual chart-rack overhead was full,
-and the chart on the table was kept unrolled by an empty cup standing on
-a saucer half-full of some spilt dark liquid. A slightly nibbled biscuit
-reposed on the chronometer-case. There were two settees, and one of them
-had been made up into a bed with a pillow and some blankets, which were
-now very much tumbled. The Northman let himself fall on it, his hands
-still in his pockets.
-
-“'Well, here I am,' he said, with a curious air of being surprised at
-the sound of his own voice.
-
-“The commanding officer from the other settee observed the handsome,
-flushed face. Drops of fog hung on the yellow beard and moustaches of
-the Northman. The much darker eyebrows ran together in a puzzled frown,
-and suddenly he jumped up.
-
-“'What I mean is that I don't know where I am. I really don't,' he
-burst out, with extreme earnestness. 'Hang it all! I got turned around
-somehow. The fog has been after me for a week. More than a week. And
-then my engines broke down. I will tell you how it was.'
-
-“He burst out into loquacity. It was not hurried, but it was insistent.
-It was not continuous for all that. It was broken by the most queer,
-thoughtful pauses. Each of these pauses lasted no more than a couple of
-seconds, and each had the profoundity of an endless meditation. When he
-began again nothing betrayed in him the slightest consciousness of
-these intervals. There was the same fixed glance, the same unchanged
-earnestness of tone. He didn't know. Indeed, more than one of these
-pauses occurred in the middle of a sentence.
-
-“The commanding officer listened to the tale. It struck him as more
-plausible than simple truth is in the habit of being. But that, perhaps,
-was prejudice. All the time the Northman was speaking the commanding
-officer had been aware of an inward voice, a grave murmur in the depth
-of his very own self, telling another tale, as if on purpose to keep
-alive in him his indignation and his anger with that baseness of greed
-or of mere outlook which lies often at the root of simple ideas.
-
-“It was the story that had been already told to the boarding officer
-an hour or so before. The commanding officer nodded slightly at the
-Northman from time to time. The latter came to an end and turned his
-eyes away. He added, as an afterthought:
-
-“'Wasn't it enough to drive a man out of his mind with worry? And it's my
-first voyage to this part, too. And the ship's my own. Your officer has
-seen the papers. She isn't much, as you can see for yourself. Just an
-old cargo-boat. Bare living for my family.'
-
-“He raised a big arm to point at a row of photographs plastering the
-bulkhead. The movement was ponderous, as if the arm had been made of
-lead. The commanding officer said, carelessly:
-
-“'You will be making a fortune yet for your family with this old ship.'
-
-“'Yes, if I don't lose her,' said the Northman, gloomily.
-
-“'I mean--out of this war,' added the commanding officer.
-
-“The Northman stared at him in a curiously unseeing and at the same time
-interested manner, as only eyes of a particular blue shade can stare.
-
-“'And you wouldn't be angry at it,' he said, 'would you? You are too
-much of a gentleman. We didn't bring this on you. And suppose we sat
-down and cried. What good would that be? Let those cry who made
-the trouble,' he concluded, with energy. 'Time's money, you say.
-Well--_this_ time _is_ money. Oh! isn't it!'
-
-“The commanding officer tried to keep under the feeling of immense
-disgust. He said to himself that it was unreasonable. Men were like
-that--moral cannibals feeding on each other's misfortunes. He said
-aloud:
-
-“'You have made it perfectly plain how it is that you are here. Your
-log-book confirms you very minutely. Of course, a log-book may be
-cooked. Nothing easier.'
-
-“The Northman never moved a muscle. He was gazing at the floor; he
-seemed not to have heard. He raised his head after a while.
-
-“'But you can't suspect me of anything,' he muttered, negligently.
-
-“The commanding officer thought: 'Why should he say this?'
-
-“Immediately afterwards the man before him added: 'My cargo is for an
-English port.'
-
-“His voice had turned husky for the moment. The commanding officer
-reflected: 'That's true. There can be nothing. I can't suspect him. Yet
-why was he lying with steam up in this fog--and then, hearing us come
-in, why didn't he give some sign of life? Why? Could it be anything else
-but a guilty conscience? He could tell by the leadsmen that this was a
-man-of-war.'
-
-“Yes--why? The commanding officer went on thinking: 'Suppose I ask
-him and then watch his face. He will betray himself in some way. It's
-perfectly plain that the fellow _has_ been drinking. Yes, he has been
-drinking; but he will have a lie ready all the same.' The commanding
-officer was one of those men who are made morally and almost physically
-uncomfortable by the mere thought of having to beat down a lie. He
-shrank from the act in scorn and disgust, which were invincible because
-more temperamental than moral.
-
-“So he went out on deck instead and had the crew mustered formally for
-his inspection. He found them very much what the report of the boarding
-officer had led him to expect. And from their answers to his questions
-he could discover no flaw in the log-book story.
-
-“He dismissed them. His impression of them was--a picked lot; have been
-promised a fistful of money each if this came off; all slightly anxious,
-but not frightened. Not a single one of them likely to give the show
-away. They don't feel in danger of their life. They know England and
-English ways too well!
-
-“He felt alarmed at catching himself thinking as if his vaguest
-suspicions were turning into a certitude. For, indeed, there was no
-shadow of reason for his inferences. There was nothing to give away.
-
-“He returned to the chart-room. The Northman had lingered behind there;
-and something subtly different in his bearing, more bold in his blue,
-glassy stare, induced the commanding officer to conclude that the fellow
-had snatched at the opportunity to take another swig at the bottle he
-must have had concealed somewhere.
-
-“He noticed, too, that the Northman on meeting his eyes put on an
-elaborately surprised expression. At least, it seemed elaborated.
-Nothing could be trusted. And the Englishman felt himself with
-astonishing conviction faced by an enormous lie, solid like a wall, with
-no way round to get at the truth, whose ugly murderous face he seemed to
-see peeping over at him with a cynical grin.
-
-“'I dare say,' he began, suddenly, 'you are wondering at my proceedings,
-though I am not detaining you, am I? You wouldn't dare to move in this
-fog?'
-
-“'I don't know where I am,' the Northman ejaculated, earnestly. 'I
-really don't.'
-
-“He looked around as if the very chart-room fittings were strange
-to him. The commanding officer asked him whether he had not seen any
-unusual objects floating about while he was at sea.
-
-“'Objects! What objects? We were groping blind in the fog for days.'
-
-“'We had a few clear intervals' said the commanding officer. 'And I'll
-tell you what we have seen and the conclusion I've come to about it.'
-
-“He told him in a few words. He heard the sound of a sharp breath
-indrawn through closed teeth. The Northman with his hand on the table
-stood absolutely motionless and dumb. He stood as if thunderstruck. Then
-he produced a fatuous smile.
-
-“Or at least so it appeared to the commanding officer. Was this
-significant, or of no meaning whatever? He didn't know, he couldn't
-tell. All the truth had departed out of the world as if drawn in,
-absorbed in this monstrous villainy this man was--or was not--guilty of.
-
-“'Shooting's too good for people that conceive neutrality in this pretty
-way,' remarked the commanding officer, after a silence.
-
-“'Yes, yes, yes,' the Northman assented, hurriedly--then added an
-unexpected and dreamy-voiced 'Perhaps.'
-
-“Was he pretending to be drunk, or only trying to appear sober? His
-glance was straight, but it was somewhat glazed. His lips outlined
-themselves firmly under his yellow moustache. But they twitched. Did
-they twitch? And why was he drooping like this in his attitude?
-
-“'There's no perhaps about it,' pronounced the commanding officer
-sternly.
-
-“The Northman had straightened himself. And unexpectedly he looked
-stern, too.
-
-“'No. But what about the tempters? Better kill that lot off. There's
-about four, five, six million of them,' he said, grimly; but in a moment
-changed into a whining key. 'But I had better hold my tongue. You have
-some suspicions.'
-
-“'No, I've no suspicions,' declared the commanding officer.
-
-“He never faltered. At that moment he had the certitude. The air of the
-chart-room was thick with guilt and falsehood braving the discovery,
-defying simple right, common decency, all humanity of feeling, every
-scruple of conduct.
-
-“The Northman drew a long breath. 'Well, we know that you English are
-gentlemen. But let us speak the truth. Why should we love you so very
-much? You haven't done anything to be loved. We don't love the other
-people, of course. They haven't done anything for that either. A fellow
-comes along with a bag of gold... I haven't been in Rotterdam my last
-voyage for nothing.'
-
-“'You may be able to tell something interesting, then, to our people
-when you come into port,' interjected the officer.
-
-“I might. But you keep some people in your pay at Rotterdam. Let them
-report. I am a neutral--am I not?... Have you ever seen a poor man
-on one side and a bag of gold on the other? Of course, I couldn't be
-tempted. I haven't the nerve for it. Really I haven't. It's nothing to
-me. I am just talking openly for once.'
-
-“'Yes. And I am listening to you,' said the commanding officer, quietly.
-
-“The Northman leaned forward over the table. 'Now that I know you have
-no suspicions, I talk. You don't know what a poor man is. I do. I am
-poor myself. This old ship, she isn't much, and she is mortgaged, too.
-Bare living, no more. Of course, I wouldn't have the nerve. But a man
-who has nerve! See. The stuff he takes aboard looks like any other
-cargo--packages, barrels, tins, copper tubes--what not. He doesn't see
-it work. It isn't real to him. But he sees the gold. That's real. Of
-course, nothing could induce me. I suffer from an internal disease. I
-would either go crazy from anxiety--or--or--take to drink or something.
-The risk is too great. Why--ruin!'
-
-“'It should be death.' The commanding officer got up, after this curt
-declaration, which the other received with a hard stare oddly combined
-with an uncertain smile. The officer's gorge rose at the atmosphere of
-murderous complicity which surrounded him, denser, more impenetrable,
-more acrid than the fog outside.
-
-“'It's nothing to me,' murmured the Northman, swaying visibly.
-
-“'Of course not,' assented the commanding officer, with a great effort
-to keep his voice calm and low. The certitude was strong within him.
-'But I am going to clear all you fellows off this coast at once. And I
-will begin with you. You must leave in half an hour.'
-
-“By that time the officer was walking along the deck with the Northman
-at his elbow.
-
-“'What! In this fog?' the latter cried out, huskily.
-
-“'Yes, you will have to go in this fog.'
-
-“'But I don't know where I am. I really don't.'
-
-“The commanding officer turned round. A sort of fury possessed him.
-The eyes of the two men met. Those of the Northman expressed a profound
-amazement.
-
-“'Oh, you don't know how to get out.' The commanding officer spoke with
-composure, but his heart was beating with anger and dread. 'I will give
-you your course. Steer south-by-east-half-east for about four miles
-and then you will be clear to haul to the eastward for your port. The
-weather will clear up before very long.'
-
-“'Must I? What could induce me? I haven't the nerve.'
-
-“'And yet you must go. Unless you want to------'
-
-“'I don't want to,' panted the Northman. 'I've enough of it.'
-
-“The commanding officer got over the side. The Northman remained
-still as if rooted to the deck. Before his boat reached his ship the
-commanding officer heard the steamer beginning to pick up her anchor.
-Then, shadowy in the fog, she steamed out on the given course.
-
-“'Yes,' he said to his officers, 'I let him go.'”
-
-The narrator bent forward towards the couch, where no movement betrayed
-the presence of a living person.
-
-“Listen,” he said, forcibly. “That course would lead the Northman
-straight on a deadly ledge of rock. And the commanding officer gave it
-to him. He steamed out--ran on it--and went down. So he had spoken the
-truth. He did not know where he was. But it proves nothing. Nothing
-either way. It may have been the only truth in all his story. And yet...
-He seems to have been driven out by a menacing stare--nothing more.”
-
-He abandoned all pretence.
-
-“Yes, I gave that course to him. It seemed to me a supreme test. I
-believe--no, I don't believe. I don't know. At the time I was certain.
-They all went down; and I don't know whether I have done stern
-retribution--or murder; whether I have added to the corpses that litter
-the bed of the unreadable sea the bodies of men completely innocent or
-basely guilty. I don't know. I shall never know.”
-
-He rose. The woman on the couch got up and threw her arms round his
-neck. Her eyes put two gleams in the deep shadow of the room. She knew
-his passion for truth, his horror of deceit, his humanity.
-
-“Oh, my poor, poor------”
-
-“I shall never know,” he repeated, sternly, disengaged himself, pressed
-her hands to his lips, and went out.
-
-
-
-
-
-THE BLACK MATE (1884)
-
-
-A good many years ago there were several ships loading at the Jetty,
-London Dock. I am speaking here of the 'eighties of the last century, of
-the time when London had plenty of fine ships in the docks, though not
-so many fine buildings in its streets.
-
-The ships at the Jetty were fine enough; they lay one behind the other;
-and the __Sapphire__, third from the end, was as good as the rest of
-them, and nothing more. Each ship at the Jetty had, of course, her chief
-officer on board. So had every other ship in dock.
-
-The policeman at the gates knew them all by sight, without being able to
-say at once, without thinking, to what ship any particular man belonged.
-As a matter of fact, the mates of the ships then lying in the London
-Dock were like the majority of officers in the Merchant Service--a
-steady, hard-working, staunch, un-romantic-looking set of men,
-belonging to various classes of society, but with the professional stamp
-obliterating the personal characteristics, which were not very marked
-anyhow.
-
-This last was true of them all, with the exception of the mate of the
-_Sapphire_. Of him the policemen could not be in doubt. This one had a
-presence.
-
-He was noticeable to them in the street from a great distance; and when
-in the morning he strode down the Jetty to his ship, the lumpers and
-the dock labourers rolling the bales and trundling the cases of cargo on
-their hand-trucks would remark to each other:
-
-“Here's the black mate coming along.”
-
-That was the name they gave him, being a gross lot, who could have no
-appreciation of the man's dignified bearing. And to call him black was
-the superficial impressionism of the ignorant.
-
-Of course, Mr. Bunter, the mate of the _Sapphire_, was not black. He was
-no more black than you or I, and certainly as white as any chief mate
-of a ship in the whole of the Port of London. His complexion was of the
-sort that did not take the tan easily; and I happen to know that
-the poor fellow had had a month's illness just before he joined the
-_Sapphire_.
-
-From this you will perceive that I knew Bunter. Of course I knew
-him. And, what's more, I knew his secret at the time, this secret
-which--never mind just now. Returning to Bunter's personal appearance,
-it was nothing but ignorant prejudice on the part of the foreman
-stevedore to say, as he did in my hearing: “I bet he's a furriner of
-some sort.” A man may have black hair without being set down for a Dago.
-I have known a West-country sailor, boatswain of a fine ship, who looked
-more Spanish than any Spaniard afloat I've ever met. He looked like a
-Spaniard in a picture.
-
-Competent authorities tell us that this earth is to be finally the
-inheritance of men with dark hair and brown eyes. It seems that already
-the great majority of mankind is dark-haired in various shades. But
-it is only when you meet one that you notice how men with really black
-hair, black as ebony, are rare. Bunter's hair was absolutely black,
-black as a raven's wing. He wore, too, all his beard (clipped, but a
-good length all the same), and his eyebrows were thick and bushy. Add
-to this steely blue eyes, which in a fair-haired man would have been
-nothing so extraordinary, but in that sombre framing made a startling
-contrast, and you will easily understand that Bunter was noticeable
-enough.
-
-If it had not been for the quietness of his movements, for the general
-soberness of his demeanour, one would have given him credit for a
-fiercely passionate nature.
-
-Of course, he was not in his first youth; but if the expression “in the
-force of his age” has any meaning, he realized it completely. He was
-a tall man, too, though rather spare. Seeing him from his poop
-indefatigably busy with his duties, Captain Ashton, of the clipper
-ship _Elsinore_, lying just ahead of the _Sapphire_, remarked once to a
-friend that “Johns has got somebody there to hustle his ship along for
-him.”
-
-Captain Johns, master of the _Sapphire_, having commanded ships for
-many years, was well known without being much respected or liked. In the
-company of his fellows he was either neglected or chaffed. The chaffing
-was generally undertaken by Captain Ashton, a cynical and teasing sort
-of man. It was Captain Ashton who permitted himself the unpleasant joke
-of proclaiming once in company that “Johns is of the opinion that every
-sailor above forty years of age ought to be poisoned--shipmasters in
-actual command excepted.”
-
-It was in a City restaurant, where several well-known shipmasters were
-having lunch together. There was Captain Ashton, florid and jovial, in a
-large white waistcoat and with a yellow rose in his buttonhole; Captain
-Sellers in a sack-coat, thin and pale-faced, with his iron-gray hair
-tucked behind his ears, and, but for the absence of spectacles, looking
-like an ascetical mild man of books; Captain Hell, a bluff sea-dog with
-hairy fingers, in blue serge and a black felt hat pushed far back off
-his crimson forehead. There was also a very young shipmaster, with
-a little fair moustache and serious eyes, who said nothing, and only
-smiled faintly from time to time.
-
-Captain Johns, very much startled, raised his perplexed and credulous
-glance, which, together with a low and horizontally wrinkled brow, did
-not make a very intellectual _ensemble_. This impression was by no means
-mended by the slightly pointed form of his bald head.
-
-Everybody laughed outright, and, thus guided, Captain Johns ended by
-smiling rather sourly, and attempted to defend himself. It was all very
-well to joke, but nowadays, when ships, to pay anything at all, had to
-be driven hard on the passage and in harbour, the sea was no place for
-elderly men. Only young men and men in their prime were equal to modern
-conditions of push and hurry. Look at the great firms: almost every
-single one of them was getting rid of men showing any signs of age. He,
-for one, didn't want any oldsters on board his ship.
-
-And, indeed, in this opinion Captain Johns was not singular. There was
-at that time a lot of seamen, with nothing against them but that they
-were grizzled, wearing out the soles of their last pair of boots on the
-pavements of the City in the heart-breaking search for a berth.
-
-Captain Johns added with a sort of ill-humoured innocence that from
-holding that opinion to thinking of poisoning people was a very long
-step.
-
-This seemed final but Captain Ashton would not let go his joke.
-
-“Oh, yes. I am sure you would. You said distinctly 'of no use.' What's
-to be done with men who are 'of no use?' You are a kind-hearted fellow,
-Johns. I am sure that if only you thought it over carefully you would
-consent to have them poisoned in some painless manner.”
-
-Captain Sellers twitched his thin, sinuous lips.
-
-“Make ghosts of them,” he suggested, pointedly.
-
-At the mention of ghosts Captain Johns became shy, in his perplexed,
-sly, and unlovely manner.
-
-Captain Ashton winked.
-
-“Yes. And then perhaps you would get a chance to have a communication
-with the world of spirits. Surely the ghosts of seamen should haunt
-ships. Some of them would be sure to call on an old shipmate.”
-
-Captain Sellers remarked drily:
-
-“Don't raise his hopes like this. It's cruel. He won't see anything. You
-know, Johns, that nobody has ever seen a ghost.”
-
-At this intolerable provocation Captain Johns came out of his reserve.
-With no perplexity whatever, but with a positive passion of credulity
-giving momentary lustre to his dull little eyes, he brought up a lot of
-authenticated instances. There were books and books full of instances.
-It was merest ignorance to deny supernatural apparitions. Cases were
-published every month in a special newspaper. Professor Cranks saw
-ghosts daily. And Professor Cranks was no small potatoes either. One
-of the biggest scientific men living. And there was that newspaper
-fellow--what's his name?--who had a girl-ghost visitor. He printed in
-his paper things she said to him. And to say there were no ghosts after
-that!
-
-“Why, they have been photographed! What more proof do you want?”
-
-Captain Johns was indignant. Captain Bell's lips twitched, but Captain
-Ashton protested now.
-
-“For goodness' sake don't keep him going with that. And by the by,
-Johns, who's that hairy pirate you've got for your new mate? Nobody in
-the Dock seems to have seen him before.”
-
-Captain Johns, pacified by the change of subjects, answered simply that
-Willy, the tobacconist at the corner of Fenchurch Street, had sent him
-along.
-
-Willy, his shop, and the very house in Fenchurch Street, I believe, are
-gone now. In his time, wearing a careworn, absent-minded look on his
-pasty face, Willy served with tobacco many southern-going ships out of
-the Port of London. At certain times of the day the shop would be full
-of shipmasters. They sat on casks, they lounged against the counter.
-
-Many a youngster found his first lift in life there; many a man got
-a sorely needed berth by simply dropping in for four pennyworth of
-birds'-eye at an auspicious moment. Even Willy's assistant, a redheaded,
-uninterested, delicate-looking young fellow, would hand you across
-the counter sometimes a bit of valuable intelligence with your box of
-cigarettes, in a whisper, lips hardly moving, thus: “The _Bellona_,
-South Dock. Second officer wanted. You may be in time for it if you
-hurry up.”
-
-And didn't one just fly!
-
-“Oh, Willy sent him,” said Captain Ashton. “He's a very striking man. If
-you were to put a red sash round his waist and a red handkerchief round
-his head he would look exactly like one of them buccaneering chaps that
-made men walk the plank and carried women off into captivity. Look out,
-Johns, he don't cut your throat for you and run off with the _Sapphire_.
-What ship has he come out of last?”
-
-Captain Johns, after looking up credulously as usual, wrinkled his
-brow, and said placidly that the man had seen better days. His name was
-Bunter.
-
-“He's had command of a Liverpool ship, the _Samaria_, some years ago. He
-lost her in the Indian Ocean, and had his certificate suspended for a
-year. Ever since then he has not been able to get another command. He's
-been knocking about in the Western Ocean trade lately.”
-
-“That accounts for him being a stranger to everybody about the Docks,”
- Captain Ashton concluded as they rose from table.
-
-Captain Johns walked down to the Dock after lunch. He was short
-of stature and slightly bandy. His appearance did not inspire the
-generality of mankind with esteem; but it must have been otherwise
-with his employers. He had the reputation of being an uncomfortable
-commander, meticulous in trifles, always nursing a grievance of some
-sort and incessantly nagging. He was not a man to kick up a row with you
-and be done with it, but to say nasty things in a whining voice; a man
-capable of making one's life a perfect misery if he took a dislike to an
-officer.
-
-That very evening I went to see Bunter on board, and sympathized with
-him on his prospects for the voyage. He was subdued. I suppose a man
-with a secret locked up in his breast loses his buoyancy. And there was
-another reason why I could not expect Bunter to show a great
-elasticity of spirits. For one thing he had been very seedy lately, and
-besides--but of that later.
-
-Captain Johns had been on board that afternoon and had loitered and
-dodged about his chief mate in a manner which had annoyed Bunter
-exceedingly.
-
-“What could he mean?” he asked with calm exasperation. “One would think
-he suspected I had stolen something and tried to see in what pocket I
-had stowed it away; or that somebody told him I had a tail and he wanted
-to find out how I managed to conceal it. I don't like to be approached
-from behind several times in one afternoon in that creepy way and then
-to be looked up at suddenly in front from under my elbow. Is it a new
-sort of peep-bo game? It doesn't amuse me. I am no longer a baby.”
-
-I assured him that if anyone were to tell Captain Johns that
-he--Bunter--had a tail, Johns would manage to get himself to believe
-the story in some mysterious manner. He would. He was suspicious and
-credulous to an inconceivable degree. He would believe any silly tale,
-suspect any man of anything, and crawl about with it and ruminate the
-stuff, and turn it over and over in his mind in the most miserable,
-inwardly whining perplexity. He would take the meanest possible view in
-the end, and discover the meanest possible course of action by a sort of
-natural genius for that sort of thing.
-
-Bunter also told me that the mean creature had crept all over the ship
-on his little, bandy legs, taking him along to grumble and whine
-to about a lot of trifles. Crept about the decks like a wretched
-insect--like a cockroach, only not so lively.
-
-Thus did the self-possessed Bunter express himself with great disgust.
-Then, going on with his usual stately deliberation, made sinister by the
-frown of his jet-black eyebrows:
-
-“And the fellow is mad, too. He tried to be sociable for a bit, and
-could find nothing else but to make big eyes at me, and ask me if I
-believed 'in communication beyond the grave.' Communication beyond--I
-didn't know what he meant at first. I didn't know what to say. 'A very
-solemn subject, Mr. Bunter,' says he. I've given a great deal of study
-to it.”
-
-Had Johns lived on shore he would have been the predestined prey of
-fraudulent mediums; or even if he had had any decent opportunities
-between the voyages. Luckily for him, when in England, he lived
-somewhere far away in Leytonstone, with a maiden sister ten years older
-than himself, a fearsome virago twice his size, before whom he trembled.
-It was said she bullied him terribly in general; and in the particular
-instance of his spiritualistic leanings she had her own views.
-
-These leanings were to her simply satanic. She was reported as having
-declared that, “With God's help, she would prevent that fool from
-giving himself up to the Devils.” It was beyond doubt that Johns' secret
-ambition was to get into personal communication with the spirits of the
-dead--if only his sister would let him. But she was adamant. I was told
-that while in London he had to account to her for every penny of the
-money he took with him in the morning, and for every hour of his time.
-And she kept the bankbook, too.
-
-Bunter (he had been a wild youngster, but he was well connected;
-had ancestors; there was a family tomb somewhere in the home
-counties)--Bunter was indignant, perhaps on account of his own dead.
-Those steely-blue eyes of his flashed with positive ferocity out of that
-black-bearded face. He impressed me--there was so much dark passion in
-his leisurely contempt.
-
-“The cheek of the fellow! Enter into relations with... A mean little cad
-like this! It would be an impudent intrusion. He wants to enter!... What
-is it? A new sort of snobbishness or what?”
-
-I laughed outright at this original view of spiritism--or whatever the
-ghost craze is called. Even Bunter himself condescended to smile. But it
-was an austere, quickly vanished smile. A man in his almost, I may say,
-tragic position couldn't be expected--you understand. He was really
-worried. He was ready eventually to put up with any dirty trick in the
-course of the voyage. A man could not expect much consideration should
-he find himself at the mercy of a fellow like Johns. A misfortune is
-a misfortune, and there's an end of it. But to be bored by mean,
-low-spirited, inane ghost stories in the Johns style, all the way out
-to Calcutta and back again, was an intolerable apprehension to be under.
-Spiritism was indeed a solemn subject to think about in that light.
-Dreadful, even!
-
-Poor fellow! Little we both thought that before very long he himself...
-However, I could give him no comfort. I was rather appalled myself.
-
-Bunter had also another annoyance that day. A confounded berthing master
-came on board on some pretence or other, but in reality, Bunter thought,
-simply impelled by an inconvenient curiosity--inconvenient to Bunter,
-that is. After some beating about the bush, that man suddenly said:
-
-“I can't help thinking. I've seen you before somewhere, Mr. Mate. If I
-heard your name, perhaps Bunter--”
-
-That's the worst of a life with a mystery in it--he was much alarmed. It
-was very likely that the man had seen him before--worse luck to his
-excellent memory. Bunter himself could not be expected to remember every
-casual dock walloper he might have had to do with. Bunter brazened it
-out by turning upon the man, making use of that impressive,
-black-as-night sternness of expression his unusual hair furnished
-him with:
-
-“My name's Bunter, sir. Does that enlighten your inquisitive intellect?
-And I don't ask what your name may be. I don't want to know. I've no
-use for it, sir. An individual who calmly tells me to my face that he is
-_not sure_ if he has seen me before, either means to be impudent or is
-no better than a worm, sir. Yes, I said a worm--a blind worm!”
-
-Brave Bunter. That was the line to take. He fairly drove the beggar out
-of the ship, as if every word had been a blow. But the pertinacity of
-that brass-bound Paul Pry was astonishing. He cleared out of the ship,
-of course, before Bunter's ire, not saying anything, and only trying to
-cover up his retreat by a sickly smile. But once on the Jetty he turned
-deliberately round, and set himself to stare in dead earnest at
-the ship. He remained planted there like a mooring-post, absolutely
-motionless, and with his stupid eyes winking no more than a pair of
-cabin portholes.
-
-What could Bunter do? It was awkward for him, you know. He could not
-go and put his head into the bread-locker. What he did was to take up
-a position abaft the mizzen-rigging, and stare back as unwinking as
-the other. So they remained, and I don't know which of them grew giddy
-first; but the man on the Jetty, not having the advantage of something
-to hold on to, got tired the soonest, flung his arm, giving the contest
-up, as it were, and went away at last.
-
-Bunter told me he was glad the _Sapphire_, “that gem amongst ships” as
-he alluded to her sarcastically, was going to sea next day. He had had
-enough of the Dock. I understood his impatience. He had steeled himself
-against any possible worry the voyage might bring, though it is clear
-enough now that he was not prepared for the extraordinary experience
-that was awaiting him already, and in no other part of the world than
-the Indian Ocean itself; the very part of the world where the poor
-fellow had lost his ship and had broken his luck, as it seemed for good
-and all, at the same time.
-
-As to his remorse in regard to a certain secret action of his life,
-well, I understand that a man of Bunter's fine character would suffer
-not a little. Still, between ourselves, and without the slightest wish
-to be cynical, it cannot be denied that with the noblest of us the fear
-of being found out enters for some considerable part into the composition
-of remorse. I didn't say this in so many words to Bunter, but, as the
-poor fellow harped a bit on it, I told him that there were skeletons in
-a good many honest cupboards, and that, as to his own particular guilt,
-it wasn't writ large on his face for everybody to see--so he needn't
-worry as to that. And besides, he would be gone to sea in about twelve
-hours from now.
-
-He said there was some comfort in that thought, and went off then
-to spend his last evening for many months with his wife. For all his
-wildness, Bunter had made no mistake in his marrying. He had married a
-lady. A perfect lady. She was a dear little woman, too. As to her pluck,
-I, who know what times they had to go through, I cannot admire her
-enough for it. Real, hard-wearing every day and day after day pluck that
-only a woman is capable of when she is of the right sort--the undismayed
-sort I would call it.
-
-The black mate felt this parting with his wife more than any of
-the previous ones in all the years of bad luck. But she was of the
-undismayed kind, and showed less trouble in her gentle face than the
-black-haired, buccaneer-like, but dignified mate of the _Sapphire_. It
-may be that her conscience was less disturbed than her husband's. Of
-course, his life had no secret places for her; but a woman's conscience
-is somewhat more resourceful in finding good and valid excuses. It
-depends greatly on the person that needs them, too.
-
-They had agreed that she should not come down to the Dock to see him
-off. “I wonder you care to look at me at all,” said the sensitive man.
-And she did not laugh.
-
-Bunter was very sensitive; he left her rather brusquely at the last.
-He got on board in good time, and produced the usual impression on the
-mud-pilot in the broken-down straw hat who took the _Sapphire_ out of
-dock. The river-man was very polite to the dignified, striking-looking
-chief mate. “The five-inch manilla for the check-rope, Mr.--Bunter,
-thank you--Mr. Bunter, please.” The sea-pilot who left the “gem of
-ships” heading comfortably down Channel off Dover told some of his
-friends that, this voyage, the _Sapphire_ had for chief mate a man
-who seemed a jolly sight too good for old Johns. “Bunter's his name.
-I wonder where he's sprung from? Never seen him before in any ship
-I piloted in or out all these years. He's the sort of man you don't
-forget. You couldn't. A thorough good sailor, too. And won't old Johns
-just worry his head off! Unless the old fool should take fright at
-him--for he does not seem the sort of man that would let himself be put
-upon without letting you know what he thinks of you. And that's exactly
-what old Johns would be more afraid of than of anything else.”
-
-As this is really meant to be the record of a spiritualistic experience
-which came, if not precisely to Captain Johns himself, at any rate to
-his ship, there is no use in recording the other events of the passage
-out. It was an ordinary passage, the crew was an ordinary crew, the
-weather was of the usual kind. The black mate's quiet, sedate method of
-going to work had given a sober tone to the life of the ship. Even in
-gales of wind everything went on quietly somehow.
-
-There was only one severe blow which made things fairly lively for all
-hands for full four-and-twenty hours. That was off the coast of Africa,
-after passing the Cape of Good Hope. At the very height of it several
-heavy seas were shipped with no serious results, but there was a
-considerable smashing of breakable objects in the pantry and in the
-staterooms. Mr. Bunter, who was so greatly respected on board, found
-himself treated scurvily by the Southern Ocean, which, bursting open the
-door of his room like a ruffianly burglar, carried off several useful
-things, and made all the others extremely wet.
-
-Later, on the same day, the Southern Ocean caused the _Sapphire_ to
-lurch over in such an unrestrained fashion that the two drawers fitted
-under Mr. Bunter's sleeping-berth flew out altogether, spilling all
-their contents. They ought, of course, to have been locked, and Mr.
-Bunter had only to thank himself for what had happened. He ought to have
-turned the key on each before going out on deck.
-
-His consternation was very great. The steward, who was paddling about
-all the time with swabs, trying to dry out the flooded cuddy, heard him
-exclaim “Hallo!” in a startled and dismayed tone. In the midst of his
-work the steward felt a sympathetic concern for the mate's distress.
-
-Captain Johns was secretly glad when he heard of the damage. He was
-indeed afraid of his chief mate, as the sea-pilot had ventured to
-foretell, and afraid of him for the very reason the sea-pilot had put
-forward as likely.
-
-Captain Johns, therefore, would have liked very much to hold that
-black mate of his at his mercy in some way or other. But the man was
-irreproachable, as near absolute perfection as could be. And Captain
-Johns was much annoyed, and at the same time congratulated himself on
-his chief officer's efficiency.
-
-He made a great show of living sociably with him, on the principle that
-the more friendly you are with a man the more easily you may catch him
-tripping; and also for the reason that he wanted to have somebody who
-would listen to his stories of manifestations, apparitions, ghosts, and
-all the rest of the imbecile spook-lore. He had it all at his fingers'
-ends; and he spun those ghostly yarns in a persistent, colourless voice,
-giving them a futile turn peculiarly his own.
-
-“I like to converse with my officers,” he used to say. “There are
-masters that hardly ever open their mouths from beginning to end of a
-passage for fear of losing their dignity. What's that, after all--this
-bit of position a man holds!”
-
-His sociability was most to be dreaded in the second dog-watch, because
-he was one of those men who grow lively towards the evening, and the
-officer on duty was unable then to find excuses for leaving the poop.
-Captain Johns would pop up the companion suddenly, and, sidling up in
-his creeping way to poor Bunter, as he walked up and down, would fire
-into him some spiritualistic proposition, such as:
-
-“Spirits, male and female, show a good deal of refinement in a general
-way, don't they?”
-
-To which Bunter, holding his black-whiskered head high, would mutter:
-
-“I don't know.”
-
-“Ah! that's because you don't want to. You are the most obstinate,
-prejudiced man I've ever met, Mr. Bunter. I told you you may have any
-book out of my bookcase. You may just go into my stateroom and help
-yourself to any volume.”
-
-And if Bunter protested that he was too tired in his watches below to
-spare any time for reading, Captain Johns would smile nastily behind
-his back, and remark that of course some people needed more sleep than
-others to keep themselves fit for their work. If Mr. Bunter was afraid
-of not keeping properly awake when on duty at night, that was another
-matter.
-
-“But I think you borrowed a novel to read from the second mate the other
-day--a trashy pack of lies,” Captain Johns sighed. “I am afraid you are
-not a spiritually minded man, Mr. Bunter. That's what's the matter.”
-
-Sometimes he would appear on deck in the middle of the night, looking
-very grotesque and bandy-legged in his sleeping suit. At that sight the
-persecuted Bunter would wring his hands stealthily, and break out into
-moisture all over his forehead. After standing sleepily by the binnacle,
-scratching himself in an unpleasant manner, Captain Johns was sure to
-start on some aspect or other of his only topic.
-
-He would, for instance, discourse on the improvement of morality to be
-expected from the establishment of general and close intercourse with
-the spirits of the departed. The spirits, Captain Johns thought, would
-consent to associate familiarly with the living if it were not for the
-unbelief of the great mass of mankind. He himself would not care to
-have anything to do with a crowd that would not believe in his--Captain
-Johns'--existence. Then why should a spirit? This was asking too much.
-
-He went on breathing hard by the binnacle and trying to reach round his
-shoulder-blades; then, with a thick, drowsy severity, declared:
-
-“Incredulity, sir, is the evil of the age!”
-
-It rejected the evidence of Professor Cranks and of the journalist chap.
-It resisted the production of photographs.
-
-For Captain Johns believed firmly that certain spirits had been
-photographed. He had read something of it in the papers. And the idea of
-it having been done had got a tremendous hold on him, because his mind
-was not critical. Bunter said afterwards that nothing could be more
-weird than this little man, swathed in a sleeping suit three sizes
-too large for him, shuffling with excitement in the moonlight near the
-wheel, and shaking his fist at the serene sea.
-
-“Photographs! photographs!” he would repeat, in a voice as creaky as a
-rusty hinge.
-
-The very helmsman just behind him got uneasy at that performance, not
-being capable of understanding exactly what the “old man was kicking up
-a row with the mate about.”
-
-Then Johns, after calming down a bit, would begin again.
-
-“The sensitised plate can't lie. No, sir.”
-
-Nothing could be more funny than this ridiculous little man's
-conviction--his dogmatic tone. Bunter would go on swinging up and down
-the poop like a deliberate, dignified pendulum. He said not a word. But
-the poor fellow had not a trifle on his conscience, as you know; and to
-have imbecile ghosts rammed down his throat like this on top of his own
-worry nearly drove him crazy. He knew that on many occasions he was
-on the verge of lunacy, because he could not help indulging in
-half-delirious visions of Captain Johns being picked up by the scruff of
-the neck and dropped over the taffrail into the ship's wake--the sort
-of thing no sane sailorman would think of doing to a cat or any other
-animal, anyhow. He imagined him bobbing up--a tiny black speck left far
-astern on the moonlit ocean.
-
-I don't think that even at the worst moments Bunter really desired to
-drown Captain Johns. I fancy that all his disordered imagination longed
-for was merely to stop the ghostly inanity of the skipper's talk.
-
-But, all the same, it was a dangerous form of self-indulgence. Just
-picture to yourself that ship in the Indian Ocean, on a clear, tropical
-night, with her sails full and still, the watch on deck stowed away out
-of sight; and on her poop, flooded with moonlight, the stately black
-mate walking up and down with measured, dignified steps, preserving
-an awful silence, and that grotesquely mean little figure in striped
-flannelette alternately creaking and droning of “personal intercourse
-beyond the grave.”
-
-It makes me creepy all over to think of. And sometimes the folly of
-Captain Johns would appear clothed in a sort of weird utilitarianism.
-How useful it would be if the spirits of the departed could be induced
-to take a practical interest in the affairs of the living! What a help,
-say, to the police, for instance, in the detection of crime! The number
-of murders, at any rate, would be considerably reduced, he guessed
-with an air of great sagacity. Then he would give way to grotesque
-discouragement.
-
-Where was the use of trying to communicate with people that had no
-faith, and more likely than not would scorn the offered information?
-Spirits had their feelings. They were _all_ feelings in a way. But
-he was surprised at the forbearance shown towards murderers by their
-victims. That was the sort of apparition that no guilty man would dare
-to pooh-pooh. And perhaps the undiscovered murderers--whether believing
-or not--were haunted. They wouldn't be likely to boast about it, would
-they?
-
-“For myself,” he pursued, in a sort of vindictive, malevolent whine, “if
-anybody murdered me I would not let him forget it. I would wither him
-up--I would terrify him to death.”
-
-The idea of his skipper's ghost terrifying anyone was so ludicrous
-that the black mate, little disposed to mirth as he was, could not help
-giving vent to a weary laugh.
-
-And this laugh, the only acknowledgment of a long and earnest discourse,
-offended Captain Johns.
-
-“What's there to laugh at in this conceited manner, Mr. Bunter?” he
-snarled. “Supernatural visitations have terrified better men than you.
-Don't you allow me enough soul to make a ghost of?”
-
-I think it was the nasty tone that caused Bunter to stop short and turn
-about.
-
-“I shouldn't wonder,” went on the angry fanatic of spiritism, “if you
-weren't one of them people that take no more account of a man than if
-he were a beast. You would be capable, I don't doubt, to deny the
-possession of an immortal soul to your own father.”
-
-And then Bunter, being bored beyond endurance, and also exasperated by
-the private worry, lost his self-possession.
-
-He walked up suddenly to Captain Johns, and, stooping a little to look
-close into his face, said, in a low, even tone:
-
-“You don't know what a man like me is capable of.”
-
-Captain Johns threw his head back, but was too astonished to budge.
-Bunter resumed his walk; and for a long time his measured footsteps and
-the low wash of the water alongside were the only sounds which troubled
-the silence brooding over the great waters. Then Captain Johns cleared
-his throat uneasily, and, after sidling away towards the companion for
-greater safety, plucked up enough courage to retreat under an act of
-authority:
-
-“Raise the starboard clew of the mainsail, and lay the yards dead
-square, Mr. Bunter. Don't you see the wind is nearly right aft?”
-
-Bunter at once answered “Ay, ay, sir,” though there was not the
-slightest necessity to touch the yards, and the wind was well out on
-the quarter. While he was executing the order Captain Johns hung on the
-companion-steps, growling to himself: “Walk this poop like an admiral
-and don't even notice when the yards want trimming!”--loud enough for
-the helmsman to overhear. Then he sank slowly backwards out of the man's
-sight; and when he reached the bottom of the stairs he stood still and
-thought.
-
-“He's an awful ruffian, with all his gentlemanly airs. No more gentleman
-mates for me.”
-
-Two nights afterwards he was slumbering peacefully in his berth, when a
-heavy thumping just above his head (a well-understood signal that he was
-wanted on deck) made him leap out of bed, broad awake in a moment.
-
-“What's up?” he muttered, running out barefooted. On passing through the
-cabin he glanced at the clock. It was the middle watch. “What on earth
-can the mate want me for?” he thought.
-
-Bolting out of the companion, he found a clear, dewy moonlit night and a
-strong, steady breeze. He looked around wildly. There was no one on the
-poop except the helmsman, who addressed him at once.
-
-“It was me, sir. I let go the wheel for a second to stamp over your
-head. I am afraid there's something wrong with the mate.”
-
-“Where's he got to?” asked the captain sharply.
-
-The man, who was obviously nervous, said:
-
-“The last I saw of him was as he-fell down the port poop-ladder.”
-
-“Fell down the poop-ladder! What did he do that for? What made him?”
-
-“I don't know, sir. He was walking the port side. Then just as he turned
-towards me to come aft...”
-
-“You saw him?” interrupted the captain.
-
-“I did. I was looking at him. And I heard the crash, too--something
-awful. Like the mainmast going overboard. It was as if something had
-struck him.”
-
-Captain Johns became very uneasy and alarmed. “Come,” he said sharply.
-“Did anybody strike him? What did you see?”
-
-“Nothing, sir, so help me! There was nothing to see. He just gave
-a little sort of hallo! threw his hands before him, and over he
-went--crash. I couldn't hear anything more, so I just let go the wheel
-for a second to call you up.”
-
-“You're scared!” said Captain Johns. “I am, sir, straight!”
-
-Captain Johns stared at him. The silence of his ship driving on her way
-seemed to contain a danger--a mystery. He was reluctant to go and look
-for his mate himself, in the shadows of the main-deck, so quiet, so
-still.
-
-All he did was to advance to the break of the poop, and call for the
-watch. As the sleepy men came trooping aft, he shouted to them fiercely:
-
-“Look at the foot of the port poop-ladder, some of you! See the mate
-lying there?”
-
-Their startled exclamations told him immediately that they did see him.
-Somebody even screeched out emotionally: “He's dead!”
-
-Mr. Bunter was laid in his bunk and when the lamp in his room was lit
-he looked indeed as if he were dead, but it was obvious also that he was
-breathing yet. The steward had been roused out, the second mate called
-and sent on deck to look after the ship, and for an hour or so Captain
-Johns devoted himself silently to the restoring of consciousness. Mr.
-Bunter at last opened his eyes, but he could not speak. He was dazed and
-inert. The steward bandaged a nasty scalp-wound while Captain Johns
-held an additional light. They had to cut away a lot of Mr. Bunter's
-jet-black hair to make a good dressing. This done, and after gazing for
-a while at their patient, the two left the cabin.
-
-“A rum go, this, steward,” said Captain Johns in the passage.
-
-“Yessir.”
-
-“A sober man that's right in his head does not fall down a poop-ladder
-like a sack of potatoes. The ship's as steady as a church.”
-
-“Yessir. Fit of some kind, I shouldn't wonder.”
-
-“Well, I should. He doesn't look as if he were subject to fits and
-giddiness. Why, the man's in the prime of life. I wouldn't have another
-kind of mate--not if I knew it. You don't think he has a private store
-of liquor, do you, eh? He seemed to me a bit strange in his manner
-several times lately. Off his feed, too, a bit, I noticed.”
-
-“Well, sir, if he ever had a bottle or two of grog in his cabin, that
-must have gone a long time ago. I saw him throw some broken glass
-overboard after the last gale we had; but that didn't amount to
-anything. Anyway, sir, you couldn't call Mr. Bunter a drinking man.”
-
-“No,” conceded the captain, reflectively. And the steward, locking
-the pantry door, tried to escape out of the passage, thinking he could
-manage to snatch another hour of sleep before it was time for him to
-turn out for the day.
-
-Captain Johns shook his head.
-
-“There's some mystery there.”
-
-“There's special Providence that he didn't crack his head like an
-eggshell on the quarter-deck mooring-bits, sir. The men tell me he
-couldn't have missed them by more than an inch.”
-
-And the steward vanished skilfully.
-
-Captain Johns spent the rest of the night and the whole of the ensuing
-day between his own room and that of the mate.
-
-In his own room he sat with his open hands reposing on his knees, his
-lips pursed up, and the horizontal furrows on his forehead marked
-very heavily. Now and then raising his arm by a slow, as if cautious
-movement, he scratched lightly the top of his bald head. In the mate's
-room he stood for long periods of time with his hand to his lips, gazing
-at the half-conscious man.
-
-For three days Mr. Bunter did not say a single word. He looked at people
-sensibly enough but did not seem to be able to hear any questions put
-to him. They cut off some more of his hair and swathed his head in
-wet cloths. He took some nourishment, and was made as comfortable as
-possible. At dinner on the third day the second mate remarked to the
-captain, in connection with the affair:
-
-“These half-round brass plates on the steps of the poop-ladders are
-beastly dangerous things!”
-
-“Are they?” retorted Captain Johns, sourly. “It takes more than a brass
-plate to account for an able-bodied man crashing down in this fashion
-like a felled ox.”
-
-The second mate was impressed by that view. There was something in that,
-he thought.
-
-“And the weather fine, everything dry, and the ship going along as
-steady as a church!” pursued Captain Johns, gruffly.
-
-As Captain Johns continued to look extremely sour, the second mate did
-not open his lips any more during the dinner. Captain Johns was annoyed
-and hurt by an innocent remark, because the fitting of the aforesaid
-brass plates had been done at his suggestion only the voyage before, in
-order to smarten up the appearance of the poop-ladders.
-
-On the fourth day Mr. Bunter looked decidedly better; very languid yet,
-of course, but he heard and understood what was said to him, and even
-could say a few words in a feeble voice.
-
-Captain Johns, coming in, contemplated him attentively, without much
-visible sympathy.
-
-“Well, can you give us your account of this accident, Mr. Bunter?”
-
-Bunter moved slightly his bandaged head, and fixed his cold blue stare
-on Captain Johns' face, as if taking stock and appraising the value of
-every feature; the perplexed forehead, the credulous eyes, the inane
-droop of the mouth. And he gazed so long that Captain Johns grew
-restive, and looked over his shoulder at the door.
-
-“No accident,” breathed out Bunter, in a peculiar tone.
-
-“You don't mean to say you've got the falling sickness,” said Captain
-Johns. “How would you call it signing as chief mate of a clipper ship
-with a thing like that on you?”
-
-Bunter answered him only by a sinister look. The skipper shuffled his
-feet a little.
-
-“Well, what made you have that tumble, then?”
-
-Bunter raised himself a little, and, looking straight into Captain
-Johns' eyes said, in a very distinct whisper:
-
-“You--were--right!”
-
-He fell back and closed his eyes. Not a word more could Captain Johns
-get out of him; and, the steward coming into the cabin, the skipper
-withdrew.
-
-But that very night, unobserved, Captain Johns, opening the door
-cautiously, entered again the mate's cabin. He could wait no longer. The
-suppressed eagerness, the excitement expressed in all his mean, creeping
-little person, did not escape the chief mate, who was lying awake,
-looking frightfully pulled down and perfectly impassive.
-
-“You are coming to gloat over me, I suppose,” said Bunter without
-moving, and yet making a palpable hit.
-
-“Bless my soul!” exclaimed Captain Johns with a start, and assuming a
-sobered demeanour. “There's a thing to say!”
-
-“Well, gloat, then! You and your ghosts, you've managed to get over a
-live man.”
-
-This was said by Bunter without stirring, in a low voice, and with not
-much expression.
-
-“Do you mean to say,” inquired Captain Johns, in awe-struck whisper,
-“that you had a supernatural experience that night? You saw an
-apparition, then, on board my ship?”
-
-Reluctance, shame, disgust, would have been visible on poor Bunter's
-countenance if the great part of it had not been swathed up in
-cotton-wool and bandages. His ebony eyebrows, more sinister than ever
-amongst all that lot of white linen, came together in a frown as he made
-a mighty effort to say:
-
-“Yes, I have seen.”
-
-The wretchedness in his eyes would have awakened the compassion of
-any other man than Captain Johns. But Captain Johns was all agog with
-triumphant excitement. He was just a little bit frightened, too. He
-looked at that unbelieving scoffer laid low, and did not even dimly
-guess at his profound, humiliating distress. He was not generally
-capable of taking much part in the anguish of his fellow-creatures. This
-time, moreover, he was excessively anxious to know what had happened.
-Fixing his credulous eyes on the bandaged head, he asked, trembling
-slightly:
-
-“And did it--did it knock you down?”
-
-“Come! am I the sort of man to be knocked down by a ghost?” protested
-Bunter in a little stronger tone. “Don't you remember what you said
-yourself the other night? Better men than me------Ha! you'll have to
-look a long time before you find a better man for a mate of your ship.”
-
-Captain Johns pointed a solemn finger at Bunter's bedplace.
-
-“You've been terrified,” he said. “That's what's the matter. You've been
-terrified. Why, even the man at the wheel was scared, though he couldn't
-see anything. He _felt_ the supernatural. You are punished for your
-incredulity, Mr. Bunter. You were terrified.”
-
-“And suppose I was,” said Bunter. “Do you know what I had seen? Can you
-conceive the sort of ghost that would haunt a man like me? Do you think
-it was a ladyish, afternoon call, another-cup-of-tea-please apparition
-that visits your Professor Cranks and that journalist chap you are
-always talking about? No; I can't tell you what it was like. Every man
-has his own ghosts. You couldn't conceive...”
-
-Bunter stopped, out of breath; and Captain Johns remarked, with the glow
-of inward satisfaction reflected in his tone:
-
-“I've always thought you were the sort of man that was ready for
-anything; from pitch-and-toss to wilful murder, as the saying goes.
-Well, well! So you were terrified.”
-
-“I stepped back,” said Bunter, curtly. “I don't remember anything else.”
-
-“The man at the wheel told me you went backwards as if something had hit
-you.”
-
-“It was a sort of inward blow,” explained Bunter. “Something too deep
-for you, Captain Johns, to understand. Your life and mine haven't been
-the same. Aren't you satisfied to see me converted?”
-
-“And you can't tell me any more?” asked Captain Johns, anxiously.
-
-“No, I can't. I wouldn't. It would be no use if I did. That sort of
-experience must be gone through. Say I am being punished. Well, I take
-my punishment, but talk of it I won't.”
-
-“Very well,” said Captain Johns; “you won't. But, mind, I can draw my
-own conclusions from that.”
-
-“Draw what you like; but be careful what you say, sir. You don't terrify
-me. _You_ aren't a ghost.”
-
-“One word. Has it any connection with what you said to me on that last
-night, when we had a talk together on spiritualism?”
-
-Bunter looked weary and puzzled.
-
-“What did I say?”
-
-“You told me that I couldn't know what a man like you was capable of.”
-
-“Yes, yes. Enough!”
-
-“Very good. I am fixed, then,” remarked Captain Johns. “All I say is
-that I am jolly glad not to be you, though I would have given almost
-anything for the privilege of personal communication with the world of
-spirits. Yes, sir, but not in that way.”
-
-Poor Bunter moaned pitifully.
-
-“It has made me feel twenty years older.”
-
-Captain Johns retired quietly. He was delighted to observe this
-overbearing ruffian humbled to the dust by the moralizing agency of the
-spirits. The whole occurrence was a source of pride and gratification;
-and he began to feel a sort of regard for his chief mate.
-
-It is true that in further interviews Bunter showed himself very
-mild and deferential. He seemed to cling to his captain for spiritual
-protection. He used to send for him, and say, “I feel so nervous,” and
-Captain Johns would stay patiently for hours in the hot little cabin,
-and feel proud of the call.
-
-For Mr. Bunter was ill, and could not leave his berth for a good many
-days. He became a convinced spiritualist, not enthusiastically--that
-could hardly have been expected from him--but in a grim, unshakable way.
-He could not be called exactly friendly to the disembodied inhabitants
-of our globe, as Captain Johns was. But he was now a firm, if gloomy,
-recruit of spiritualism.
-
-One afternoon, as the ship was already well to the north in the Gulf
-of Bengal, the steward knocked at the door of the captain's cabin, and
-said, without opening it:
-
-“The mate asks if you could spare him a moment, sir. He seems to be in a
-state in there.”
-
-Captain Johns jumped up from the couch at once.
-
-“Yes. Tell him I am coming.”
-
-He thought: Could it be possible there had been another spiritual
-manifestation--in the daytime, too!
-
-He revelled in the hope. It was not exactly that, however. Still,
-Bunter, whom he saw sitting collapsed in a chair--he had been up
-for several days, but not on deck as yet--poor Bunter had something
-startling enough to communicate. His hands covered his face. His legs
-were stretched straight out, dismally.
-
-“What's the news now?” croaked Captain Johns, not unkindly, because in
-truth it always pleased him to see Bunter--as he expressed it--tamed.
-
-“News!” exclaimed the crushed sceptic through his hands. “Ay, news
-enough, Captain Johns. Who will be able to deny the awfulness, the
-genuineness? Another man would have dropped dead. You want to know what
-I had seen. All I can tell you is that since I've seen it my hair is
-turning white.”
-
-Bunter detached his hands from his face, and they hung on each side of
-his chair as if dead. He looked broken in the dusky cabin.
-
-“You don't say!” stammered out Captain Johns. “Turned white! Hold on a
-bit! I'll light the lamp!”
-
-When the lamp was lit, the startling phenomenon could be seen plainly
-enough. As if the dread, the horror, the anguish of the supernatural
-were being exhaled through the pores of his skin, a sort of silvery mist
-seemed to cling to the cheeks and the head of the mate. His short beard,
-his cropped hair, were growing, not black, but gray--almost white.
-
-When Mr. Bunter, thin-faced and shaky, came on deck for duty, he
-was clean-shaven, and his head was white. The hands were awe-struck.
-“Another man,” they whispered to each other. It was generally and
-mysteriously agreed that the mate had “seen something,” with the
-exception of the man at the wheel at the time, who maintained that the
-mate was “struck by something.”
-
-This distinction hardly amounted to a difference. On the other hand,
-everybody admitted that, after he picked up his strength a bit, he
-seemed even smarter in his movements than before.
-
-One day in Calcutta, Captain Johns, pointing out to a visitor his
-white-headed chief mate standing by the main-hatch, was heard to say
-oracularly:
-
-“That man's in the prime of life.”
-
-Of course, while Bunter was away, I called regularly on Mrs. Bunter
-every Saturday, just to see whether she had any use for my services. It
-was understood I would do that. She had just his half-pay to live on--it
-amounted to about a pound a week. She had taken one room in a quiet
-little square in the East End.
-
-And this was affluence to what I had heard that the couple were reduced
-to for a time after Bunter had to give up the Western Ocean trade--he
-used to go as mate of all sorts of hard packets after he lost his ship
-and his luck together--it was affluence to that time when Bunter would
-start at seven o'clock in the morning with but a glass of hot water
-and a crust of dry bread. It won't stand thinking about, especially for
-those who know Mrs. Bunter. I had seen something of them, too, at that
-time; and it just makes me shudder to remember what that born lady had
-to put up with. Enough!
-
-Dear Mrs. Bunter used to worry a good deal after the _Sapphire_ left
-for Calcutta. She would say to me: “It must be so awful for poor
-Winston”--Winston is Bunter's name--and I tried to comfort her the best
-I could. Afterwards, she got some small children to teach in a family,
-and was half the day with them, and the occupation was good for her.
-
-In the very first letter she had from Calcutta, Bunter told her he had
-had a fall down the poop-ladder, and cut his head, but no bones broken,
-thank God. That was all. Of course, she had other letters from him, but
-that vagabond Bunter never gave me a scratch of the pen the solid eleven
-months. I supposed, naturally, that everything was going on all right.
-Who could imagine what was happening?
-
-Then one day dear Mrs. Bunter got a letter from a legal firm in the
-City, advising her that her uncle was dead--her old curmudgeon of an
-uncle--a retired stockbroker, a heartless, petrified antiquity that had
-lasted on and on. He was nearly ninety, I believe; and if I were to meet
-his venerable ghost this minute, I would try to take him by the throat
-and strangle him.
-
-The old beast would never forgive his niece for marrying Bunter; and
-years afterwards, when people made a point of letting him know that she
-was in London, pretty nearly starving at forty years of age, he only
-said: “Serve the little fool right!” I believe he meant her to starve.
-And, lo and behold, the old cannibal died intestate, with no other
-relatives but that very identical little fool. The Bunters were wealthy
-people now.
-
-Of course, Mrs. Bunter wept as if her heart would break. In any other
-woman it would have been mere hypocrisy. Naturally, too, she wanted to
-cable the news to her Winston in Calcutta, but I showed her, _Gazette_
-in hand, that the ship was on the homeward-bound list for more than a
-week already. So we sat down to wait, and talked meantime of dear old
-Winston every day. There were just one hundred such days before the
-_Sapphire_ got reported “All well” in the chops of the Channel by an
-incoming mailboat.
-
-“I am going to Dunkirk to meet him,” says she. The _Sapphire_ had a
-cargo of jute for Dunkirk. Of course, I had to escort the dear lady
-in the quality of her “ingenious friend.” She calls me “our ingenious
-friend” to this day; and I've observed some people--strangers--looking
-hard at me, for the signs of the ingenuity, I suppose.
-
-After settling Mrs. Bunter in a good hotel in Dunkirk, I walked down to
-the docks--late afternoon it was--and what was my surprise to see the
-ship actually fast alongside. Either Johns or Bunter, or both, must have
-been driving her hard up Channel. Anyway, she had been in since the
-day before last, and her crew was already paid off. I met two of
-her apprenticed boys going off home on leave with their dunnage on a
-Frenchman's barrow, as happy as larks, and I asked them if the mate was
-on board.
-
-“There he is, on the quay, looking at the moorings,” says one of the
-youngsters as he skipped past me.
-
-You may imagine the shock to my feelings when I beheld his white head. I
-could only manage to tell him that his wife was at an hotel in town.
-He left me at once, to go and get his hat on board. I was mightily
-surprised by the smartness of his movements as he hurried up the
-gangway.
-
-Whereas the black mate struck people as deliberate, and strangely
-stately in his gait for a man in the prime of life, this white-headed
-chap seemed the most wonderfully alert of old men. I don't suppose
-Bunter was any quicker on his pins than before. It was the colour of the
-hair that made all the difference in one's judgment.
-
-The same with his eyes. Those eyes, that looked at you so steely, so
-fierce, and so fascinating out of a bush of a buccaneer's black hair,
-now had an innocent almost boyish expression in their good-humoured
-brightness under those white eyebrows.
-
-I led him without any delay into Mrs. Bunter's private sitting-room.
-After she had dropped a tear over the late cannibal, given a hug to her
-Winston, and told him that he must grow his moustache again, the dear
-lady tucked her feet upon the sofa, and I got out of Bunter's way.
-
-He started at once to pace the room, waving his long arms. He worked
-himself into a regular frenzy, and tore Johns limb from limb many times
-over that evening.
-
-“Fell down? Of course I fell down, by slipping backwards on that fool's
-patent brass plates. 'Pon my word, I had been walking that poop in
-charge of the ship, and I didn't know whether I was in the Indian Ocean
-or in the moon. I was crazy. My head spun round and round with sheer
-worry. I had made my last application of your chemist's wonderful
-stuff.” (This to me.) “All the store of bottles you gave me got smashed
-when those drawers fell out in the last gale. I had been getting some
-dry things to change, when I heard the cry: 'All hands on deck!' and
-made one jump of it, without even pushing them in properly. Ass! When I
-came back and saw the broken glass and the mess, I felt ready to faint.
-
-“No; look here--deception is bad; but not to be able to keep it up after
-one has been forced into it. You know that since I've been squeezed
-out of the Western Ocean packets by younger men, just on account of my
-grizzled muzzle--you know how much chance I had to ever get a ship. And
-not a soul to turn to. We have been a lonely couple, we two--she threw
-away everything for me--and to see her want a piece of dry bread------”
-
-He banged with his fist fit to split the Frenchman's table in two.
-
-“I would have turned a sanguinary pirate for her, let alone cheating
-my way into a berth by dyeing my hair. So when you came to me with your
-chemist's wonderful stuff------”
-
-He checked himself.
-
-“By the way, that fellow's got a fortune when he likes to pick it up. It
-is a wonderful stuff--you tell him salt water can do nothing to it. It
-stays on as long as your hair will.”
-
-“All right,” I said. “Go on.”
-
-Thereupon he went for Johns again with a fury that frightened his wife,
-and made me laugh till I cried.
-
-“Just you try to think what it would have meant to be at the mercy of
-the meanest creature that ever commanded a ship! Just fancy what a life
-that crawling Johns would have led me! And I knew that in a week or so
-the white hair would begin to show. And the crew. Did you ever think of
-that? To be shown up as a low fraud before all hands. What a life for me
-till we got to Calcutta! And once there--kicked out, of course. Half-pay
-stopped. Annie here alone without a penny--starving; and I on the other
-side of the earth, ditto. You see?
-
-“I thought of shaving twice a day. But could I shave my head, too?
-No way--no way at all. Unless I dropped Johns overboard; and even
-then------
-
-“Do you wonder now that with all these things boiling in my head I didn't
-know where I was putting down my foot that night? I just felt myself
-falling--then crash, and all dark.
-
-“When I came to myself that bang on the head seemed to have steadied my
-wits somehow. I was so sick of everything that for two days I wouldn't
-speak to anyone. They thought it was a slight concussion of the brain.
-Then the idea dawned upon me as I was looking at that ghost-ridden,
-wretched fool. 'Ah, you love ghosts,' I thought. 'Well, you shall have
-something from beyond the grave.'
-
-“I didn't even trouble to invent a story. I couldn't imagine a ghost
-if I wanted to. I wasn't fit to lie connectedly if I had tried. I just
-bulled him on to it. Do you know, he got, quite by himself, a notion
-that at some time or other I had done somebody to death in some way, and
-that------”
-
-“Oh, the horrible man!” cried Mrs. Bunter from the sofa. There was a
-silence.
-
-“And didn't he bore my head off on the home passage!” began Bunter again
-in a weary voice. “He loved me. He was proud of me. I was converted. I
-had had a manifestation. Do you know what he was after? He wanted me and
-him 'to make a _seance_,' in his own words, and to try to call up that
-ghost (the one that had turned my hair white--the ghost of my supposed
-victim), and, as he said, talk it over with him--the ghost--in a
-friendly way.
-
-“'Or else, Bunter,' he says, 'you may get another manifestation when you
-least expect it, and tumble overboard perhaps, or something. You ain't
-really safe till we pacify the spirit-world in some way.'
-
-“Can you conceive a lunatic like that? No--say?”
-
-I said nothing. But Mrs. Bunter did, in a very decided tone.
-
-“Winston, I don't want you to go on board that ship again any more.”
-
-“My dear,” says he, “I have all my things on board yet.”
-
-“You don't want the things. Don't go near that ship at all.”
-
-He stood still; then, dropping his eyes with a faint smile, said slowly,
-in a dreamy voice:
-
-“The haunted ship.”
-
-“And your last,” I added.
-
-We carried him off, as he stood, by the night train. He was very quiet;
-but crossing the Channel, as we two had a smoke on deck, he turned to me
-suddenly, and, grinding his teeth, whispered:
-
-“He'll never know how near he was being dropped overboard!”
-
-He meant Captain Johns. I said nothing.
-
-But Captain Johns, I understand, made a great to-do about the
-disappearance of his chief mate. He set the French police scouring the
-country for the body. In the end, I fancy he got word from his owners'
-office to drop all this fuss--that it was all right. I don't suppose he
-ever understood anything of that mysterious occurrence.
-
-To this day he tries at times (he's retired now, and his conversation is
-not very coherent)--he tries to tell the story of a black mate he once
-had, “a murderous, gentlemanly ruffian, with raven-black hair which
-turned white all at once in consequence of a manifestation from beyond
-the grave.” An avenging apparition. What with reference to black and
-white hair, to poop-ladders, and to his own feelings and views, it is
-difficult to make head or tail of it. If his sister (she's very vigorous
-still) should be present she cuts all this short--peremptorily:
-
-“Don't you mind what he says. He's got devils on the brain.”
-
-THE END
-
-
-
-
-
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