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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Second Class Passenger, by Perceval Gibbon
+
+
+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: The Second Class Passenger
+       Fifteen Stories: The Second-Class Passenger -- The Sense of Climax -- The Trader of Last Notch -- The Murderer -- The Victim -- Between the Lights -- The Master -- "Parisienne" -- Lola -- The Poor in Heart -- The Man Who Knew -- The Hidden Way -- The Strange Patient -- The Captain's Arm -- The Widower
+
+
+Author: Perceval Gibbon
+
+
+
+Release Date: March 6, 2006  [eBook #17932]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SECOND CLASS PASSENGER***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Charles Klingman
+
+
+
+THE SECOND CLASS PASSENGER
+
+Fifteen Stories
+
+by
+
+Perceval Gibbon
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+London Chapman & Dodd, Ltd. 25 Denmark Street, W.C. 2
+First Published (Methuen & Co.) 6s.  1913
+First Published in the Abbey Library  1922
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+      I. THE SECOND-CLASS PASSENGER
+     II. THE SENSE OF CLIMAX
+    III. THE TRADER OF LAST NOTCH
+     IV. THE MURDERER
+      V. THE VICTIM
+     VI. BETWEEN THE LIGHTS
+    VII. THE MASTER
+   VIII. "PARISIENNE"
+     IX. LOLA
+      X. THE POOR IN HEART
+     XI. THE MAN WHO KNEW
+    XII. THE HIDDEN WAY
+   XIII. THE STRANGE PATIENT
+    XIV. THE CAPTAIN'S ARM
+     XV. THE WIDOWER
+
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+THE SECOND-CLASS PASSENGER
+
+The party from the big German mail-boat had nearly completed their
+inspection of Mozambique, they had walked up and down the main
+street, admired the palms, lunched at the costly table of Lazarus,
+and purchased "curios"--Indian silks, Javanese; knives, Birmingham
+metal-work, and what not--as mementoes of their explorations. In
+particular, Miss Paterson had invested in a heavy bronze image--
+apparently Japanese--concerning which she entertained the thrilling
+delusion that it was an object of local worship. It was a grotesque
+thing, massive and bulky, weighing not much less than ten or twelve
+pounds. Hence it was confided to the careful porterage of Dawson, an
+assiduous and favored courtier of Miss Paterson; and he, having
+lunched, was fated to leave it behind at Lazarus' Hotel.
+
+Miss Paterson shook her fluffy curls at him. They were drawing
+towards dinner, and the afternoon was wearing stale.
+
+"I did so want that idol," she said plaintively. She had the childish
+quality of voice, the insipidity of intonation, which is best
+appreciated in steamboat saloons. "Oh, Mr. Dawson, don't you think
+you could get it back for me?"
+
+"I'm frightfully sorry," said the contrite Dawson. "I'll go back at
+once. You don't know when the ship goes, do you?"
+
+Another of Miss Paterson's cavaliers assured him that he had some
+hours yet. "The steward told me so," he added authoritatively.
+
+"Then I'll go at once," said Dawson, hating him.
+
+"Mind, don't lose the boat," Miss Paterson called after him.
+
+He went swiftly back up the wide main street in which they had spent
+the day. Lamps were beginning to shine everywhere, and the dull peace
+of the place was broken by a new life. Those that dwell in darkness
+were going abroad now, and the small saloons were filling. Dawson
+noted casually that evening was evidently the lively time of
+Mozambique. He passed men of a type he had missed during the day, men
+of all nationalities, by their faces, and every shade of color. They
+were lounging on the sidewalk in knots of two or three, sitting at
+the little tables outside the saloons, or lurking at the entrances of
+narrow alleys that ran aside from the main street every few paces.
+All were clad in thin white suits, and some wore knives in full
+sight, while there was that about them that would lead even the most
+innocent and conventional second-class passenger to guess at a weapon
+concealed somewhere. Some of them looked keenly at Dawson as he
+passed along; and although he met their eyes impassively, he--even
+he--was conscious of an implied estimate in their glance, as though
+they classified him with a look. Once he stepped aside to let a woman
+pass. She was large, flamboyantly southern and calm. She lounged
+along, a cloak over her left arm, her head thrown back, a cigarette
+between her wide, red lips. She, too, looked at Dawson--looked down
+at him with a superb lazy nonchalance, laughed a little, and walked
+on. The loungers on the sidewalk laughed too, but rather with her
+than at Dawson.
+
+"I seem rather out of it here," he told himself patiently, and was
+glad to enter the wide portals of Lazarus' Hotel. A grand, swarthy
+Greek, magnificent in a scarlet jacket and gold braid, pulled open
+the door for him, and heard his mission smilingly.
+
+"A brass-a image," he repeated. "Sir, you wait-a in the bar, an' I
+tell-a the boy go look."
+
+"You must be quick, then," said Dawson, "'cause I'm in a hurry to get
+back."
+
+"Yais," smiled the Greek. "Bimeby he rain-a bad."
+
+"Rain?" queried Dawson incredulously. The air was like balm.
+
+"You see," the Greek nodded. "This-a way, sir. I go look-a quick."
+
+Dawson waited in the bar, where a dark, sallow bar-man stared him out
+of countenance for twenty minutes. At the end of that time the image
+was forthcoming. The ugly thing had burst the paper in which it was
+wrapped, and its grinning bullet-head projected handily. The paper
+was wisped about its middle like a petticoat. Dawson took it
+thankfully from the Greek, and made suitable remuneration in small
+silver.
+
+"Bimeby rain," repeated the Greek, as he opened a door for him again.
+
+"Well, I'm not made of sugar," replied Dawson, and set off.
+
+It was night now, for in Mozambique evening is but a brief hiatus
+between darkness and day. It lasts only while the sun is dipping;
+once the upper limb is under the horizon it is night, full and
+absolute. As Dawson retraced his steps the sky over him was velvet-
+black, barely punctured by faint stars, and a breeze rustled faintly
+from the sea. He had not gone two hundred yards when a large, warm
+drop of rain splashed on his back. Another pattered on his hat, and
+it was raining, leisurely, ominously.
+
+Dawson pulled up and took thought. At the end of the main street he
+would have to turn to the left to the sea-front, and then to the left
+again to reach the landing-stage. If, now, there were any nearer
+turning to the left--if any of the dark alleys that opened
+continually beside him were passable--he might get aboard the steamer
+to his dinner in the second-class saloon with a less emphatic
+drenching than if he went round by the way he had come. Mozambique,
+he reflected, could not have only one street--it was too big for
+that. From the steamer, as it came to anchor, he had seen acre upon
+acre of flat roofs, and one of the gloomy alleys beside him must
+surely debouch upon the sea-front. He elected to try one, anyhow, and
+accordingly turned aside into the next.
+
+With ten paces he entered such a darkness as he had never known. The
+alley was barely ten feet wide: it lay like a crevasse between high,
+windowless walls of houses. The warm, leisurely rain dropped
+perpendicularly upon him from an invisible sky, and presently,
+hugging the wall, he butted against a corner, and found, or guessed,
+that his way was no longer straight. Underfoot there was mud and
+garbage that once gulfed him to the knee, and nowhere in all those
+terrible, silent walls on each side of him was there a light or a
+door, nor any sight of life near at hand. He might have been in a
+catacomb, companioned by the dead.
+
+The stillness and the loneliness scared and disturbed him. He turned
+on a sudden impulse to make his way back to the lights of the street.
+
+But this was to reckon without the map of Mozambique--which does not
+exist. Ten minutes sufficed to overwhelm him in an intricacy of blind
+ways. He groped by a wall to a turning, fared cautiously to pass it,
+found a blank wall opposite him, and was lost. His sense of direction
+left him, and he had no longer any idea of where the street lay and
+where the sea. He floundered in gross darkness, inept and
+persistent. It took some time, many turnings, and a tumble in the mud
+to convince him that he was lost. And then the rain came down in
+earnest.
+
+It roared, it pelted, it stamped on him. It was not rain, as he knew
+it: it was a cascade, a vehement and malignant assault by all the
+wetness in heaven. It whipped, it stung, it thrashed; he was drenched
+in a moment as though by a trick. He could see nothing, but groped
+blind and frightened under it, feeling along the wall with one hand,
+still carrying the bronze image by the head with the other. Once he
+dropped it, and would have left it, but with an impulse like an
+effort of self-respect, he searched for it, groping elbow-deep in the
+slush and water, found it, and stumbled on. Another corner presented
+itself; he came round it, and almost at once a light showed itself.
+
+It was a slit of brightness below a door, and without a question the
+drenched and bewildered Dawson lifted the image and hammered on the
+door with it. A hum of voices within abated as he knocked, and there
+was silence. He hammered again, and he heard bolts being withdrawn
+inside. The door opened slowly, and a man looked out.
+
+"I've lost my way," flustered Dawson pitifully. "I'm wet through, and
+I don't know where I am." Even as he spoke the rain was cutting
+through his clothes like blades. "Please let me in;" he concluded.
+"Please let me in."
+
+The man was backed by the light, and Dawson could see nothing of him
+save that he was tall and stoutly made. But he laughed, and opened
+the door a foot farther to let him pass in.
+
+"Come in," he bade him. His voice was foreign and high. "Come in. All
+may come in to-night."
+
+Dawson entered, leading a trail of water over a floor of bare boards.
+His face was running wet, and he was newly dazzled with the light.
+But when he had wiped his eyes, he drew a deep breath of relief and
+looked about him. The room was unfurnished save for a littered table
+and some chairs, and a gaudy picture of the Virgin that hung on the
+wall. On each side of it was a sconce, in which a slovenly candle
+guttered. A woman was perched on a corner of the table, a heavy shawl
+over her head. Under it the dark face, propped in the fork of her
+hand, glowed sullenly, and her bare, white arm was like a menacing
+thing. Dawson bowed to her with an instinct of politeness. In a chair
+near her a grossly fat man was huddled, scowling heavily under thick,
+fair brows, while the other man, he who had opened the door, stood
+smiling.
+
+The woman laughed softly as Dawson ducked to her, scanning him with
+an amusement that he felt as ignominy. But she pointed to the image
+dangling in his hand.
+
+"What is that?" she asked.
+
+Dawson laid it on the floor carefully. "It's a curio," he explained.
+"I was fetching it for a lady. An idol, you know."
+
+The fat man burst into a hoarse laugh, and the other man spoke to
+Dawson.
+
+"An' you?" he queried. "What you doing 'ere, so late an' so wet?"
+
+"I was trying to take a short cut to the landing-stage," Dawson
+replied. "Like a silly fool, I thought I could find my way through
+here. But I got lost somehow."
+
+The fat man laughed again.
+
+"You come off the German steamer?" suggested the woman.
+
+Dawson nodded. "I came ashore with some friends," he answered, "from
+the second-class. But I left them to go back and fetch this idol, and
+here I am."
+
+The tall man who had opened the door turned to the woman.
+
+"So we must wait a leetle longer for your frien's," he said.
+
+She tossed her head sharply.
+
+"Friends!" she exclaimed. "Mother of God! Would you walk about with
+your knives for ever? When every day other men are taken, can you ask
+to go free? Am I the wife of the Intendente?"
+
+"No, nod the vife!" barked the stout man violently. "But if you gan't
+tell us noding better than to stop for der police to dake us, vot's
+der good of you?"
+
+The woman shrugged her shoulders, and the shawl slipped, and showed
+them bare and white above her bodice.
+
+"I have done all that one could do," she answered sullenly, with
+defiant eyes. "Seven months you have done as you would, untouched.
+That was through me. Now, fools, you must take your turn--one month,
+three months, six months--who knows?--in prison. One carries a knife
+--one goes to prison! What would you have?"
+
+"Gif der yong man a chair, Tonio," said the fat man, and his
+companion reached Dawson a seat. He sat on it in the middle of the
+floor, while they wrangled around him. He gathered that the two men
+anticipated a visit from the police very shortly, and that they
+blamed it on the woman, who might have averted it. Both the men
+accused her of their misfortune, and she faced them dauntlessly. She
+tried to bring them, it seemed, to accept it as inevitable, as a
+thing properly attendant on them; to show that she, after all, could
+not change the conditions of existence.
+
+"You stabbed the Greek," she argued once, turning sharply on the tall
+man.
+
+"Well," he began, and she flourished her hand as an ergo.
+
+"Life is not spending money," she even philosophized. "One pays for
+living, my friend, with work, with pain, with jail. Here you have to
+pay. I have paid for you, seven months nearly, with smiles and love.
+But the price is risen. It is your turn now."
+
+Dawson gazed at her fascinated. She spoke and gesticulated with a
+captivating spirit. Life brimmed in her. As she spoke, her motions
+were arguments in themselves. She put a case and demolished it with a
+smile; presented the alternative, left a final word unspoken, and the
+thing was irresistible. Dawson, perched lonely on his chair,
+experienced a desire to enter the conversation.
+
+The men were beyond conviction. "Why didn't you"--do this or that?
+the tall man kept asking, and his fat comrade exploded, "Yea, vy?"
+They seemed to demand of her that she should accept blame without
+question; and to her answers, clear and ready, the fat man retorted
+with a gross oath.
+
+"Excuse me, sir," began Dawson, shocked. He was aching to be on the
+woman's side.
+
+"Vott" demanded the fat man.
+
+"That's hardly the way to speak to a lady," said Dawson gravely.
+
+The tall man burst into a clear laugh, and the fat man glared at
+Dawson. He flinched somewhat, but caught the woman's eye and found
+comfort and reinforcement there. She, too, was smiling, but
+gratefully, and she gave him a courteous little nod of thanks.
+
+"I don't like to hear such language used to a lady," he said,
+speaking manfully enough, and giving the fat man eyes as steady as
+his own. "No gentleman would do it, I'm sure."
+
+"Vot der hell you got to do mit it?" demanded the other ferociously,
+while his companion laughed.
+
+The woman held up a hand. "Do not quarrel," she said. "There is
+trouble enough already. Besides, they may be here any moment. Is
+there anything to get ready?"
+
+"But vot der hell," cried the fat man again. She turned on him.
+
+"Fool! fool! Will you shout and curse all night, till the algemas are
+on you?"
+
+"Yes; an' you put dem on us," the tall man interrupted.
+
+She turned swiftly on him, poising her small head over her bare
+breasts with a superb scorn.
+
+"Why do you lie?" she demanded hotly. "Why do you lie? Must you hide
+even from your own blame behind my skirts? Mother of God!"--an
+outstretched hand called the tawdry Virgin on the wall to witness--
+"you are neither man nor good beast--just----"
+
+The tall man interrupted. "Don' go, on!" he said quietly. "Don' go
+on!" His eyes were shining, and he carried one hand beneath his coat.
+"Don' dare to go on!"
+
+"Dare!" The woman lifted her face insolently, brought up her bare arm
+with a slow sweep, and puffed once at an imaginary cigarette. There
+was so much of defiance in the action that Dawson, watching her,
+breathless, started to his feet with something hard and heavy in his
+hand. It was the image.
+
+"Thief!" said the woman slowly, gazing under languorous eyelids at
+the white, venomous face of the tall man. "Thief and----" she leaned
+forward and said the word, the ultimate and supreme insult of the
+coast.
+
+It was barely said when there flashed something in the man's hand. He
+was poised on his toes, leaning forward a little, his arm swinging
+beside him. The woman flung both arms before her face and cried out;
+then leaned rapidly aside as a pointed knife whizzed past her head
+and struck twanging in the wall behind her. The man sprang forward,
+and the next instant the room was chaos, for Dawson, tingling to his
+extremities, stepped in and spread him out with a crashing blow on
+the head. The "idol" was his weapon.
+
+The stout German thundered an oath and heaved to his feet, fumbling
+at his hip and babbling broken profanity.
+
+Dawson swung the image and stepped towards him.
+
+"Keep still," he cried, "or I'll brain you!"
+
+"Der hell!" vociferated the German, and fired swiftly at him. The
+room filled with smoke, and Dawson, staggering unhurt, but with his
+face stung with powder, did not see the man fall. As the German drew
+the revolver clear, the woman knifed him in the neck, and he
+collapsed on his face, belching blood upon the boards of the floor.
+The woman stood over him, the knife still in her hand, looking at
+Dawson with a smile.
+
+"My God!" he said as he glanced about him. The tall man was lying at
+his feet, huddled hideously on the floor. The room stank of violence
+and passion. "My God!" and he stooped to the body.
+
+The woman touched him on the shoulder. "Gome," she said. "It's no
+good. It was a grand blow, a king's blow. 'You cannot help him."
+
+"But--but----" he flustered as he rose. The emergency was beyond him.
+He had only half a strong man's equipment--the mere brawn. "Two men
+killed. I must get back to the ship."
+
+He saw the woman smiling, and caught at his calmness. There was
+comprehension in her eyes, and to be understood is so often to be
+despised. "You must come too," he added, on an impulse, and stopped,
+appalled by the idea.
+
+"To the ship?" she cried and laughed. "Oh, la la! But no! Still, we
+must go from here. The police will be here any minute, and if they
+find you----" She left it unsaid, and the gap was ominous.
+
+The police! To mention them was to touch all that was conventional,
+suburban, and second-class in Dawson. He itched to be gone. A picture
+of Vine Street police court and a curtly aloof magistrate flashed
+across his mind, and a reminiscence of evening paper headlines, and
+his mind fermented hysterically.
+
+The woman put back her knife in some secret recess of her clothes,
+and opened the door cautiously. "Now!" she said, but paused, and came
+back. She went to the picture of the Virgin and turned its face to
+the wall. "One should not forget respect," she observed
+apologetically. "These things are remembered. Now come."
+
+No sooner were they in the gloomy alley outside than the neighborhood
+of others was known to them. There was a sound of many feet ploughing
+in the mud, and a suppressed voice gave a short order. The woman
+stopped and caught Dawson's arm.
+
+"Hush!" she whispered. "It is the police. They have come for the men.
+They will be on both sides of us. Wait and listen."
+
+Dawson stood rigid, his heart thumping. The darkness seemed to surge
+around him with menaces and dangers. The splashing feet were nearer,
+coming up on their right, and once some metal gear clinked as its
+wearer scraped against the wall. He could smell men, as he remembered
+afterwards. The woman beside him retained her hold on his arm, and
+remained motionless till it seemed that the advancing men must run
+into them.
+
+"Come quietly," she whispered at length, putting warm lips to his
+ear. Her hand dropped along his arm till she grasped his fingers. She
+led him swiftly away from the place, having waited till the police
+should be so near that the noise they made would drown their own
+retreat.
+
+On they went, then, as before, swishing through the foulness
+underfoot, and without speaking. Only at times the woman's hold on
+his hand would tighten, and, meeting with no response, would slacken
+again, and she would draw him on ever more quickly.
+
+"Where are we going?" he ventured to ask.
+
+"We are escaping," she answered, with a brief tinkle of laughter. "If
+you knew from what we are escaping, you would not care where. But
+hurry, always!"
+
+Soon, however, she paused, still holding his hand. Again they heard
+footsteps, and this time the woman turned to him desperately.
+
+"There is a door near by," she breathed. "We must find it, or----"
+again the unspoken word. "Feel always along the wall there.
+Farther, go farther. It should be here."
+
+They sprang on, with hands to the rough plaster on the wall, till
+Dawson encountered the door, set level with the wall, for which they
+sought.
+
+"Push," panted the woman, heaving at it with futile hands. Even in
+the darkness he could see the gleam of her naked arms and shoulders.
+"Push it in."
+
+Dawson laid his shoulder to it, his arms folded, and shoved
+desperately till his head buzzed. As he eased up he heard the near
+feet of the menacing police again.
+
+"You must push it in!" cried the woman. "It is the only way. If
+not--"
+
+"Here, catch hold of this," said Dawson, and she found the bronze
+image in her hands. "Let me come," he said, and standing back a
+little, he flung his twelve stone of bone and muscle heavily on the
+door. It creaked, and some fastening within broke and fell to the
+ground.
+
+Once again he assaulted it, and it was open. They passed rapidly
+within, and closed it behind them, and with the woman's hand guiding,
+Dawson stumbled up a long, narrow, sloppy stair that gave on to the
+flat roof of the building. Above them was sky again. The rain had
+passed, and the frosty stars of Mozambique shone faintly. He took a
+deep breath as he received the image from the hands of the woman.
+
+"You hear them?" she said, and he listened with a shudder to the
+passing of the men below.
+
+"But we must go on," she said. "We are not safe yet. Over the wall to
+the next roof. Come!"
+
+They clambered over a low parapet, and dropped six feet to another
+level. Dawson helped the woman up the opposite wall, and she sat
+reconnoitering on the top.
+
+"Come quietly," she warned him, and he clambered up beside her and
+looked down at the roof before them. In a kind of tent persons
+appeared to be sleeping; their breath was plainly to be heard.
+
+"You must walk like a rat," she whispered, smiling, and lowered
+herself. He followed. She was crouching in the shadow of the wall,
+and drew him down beside her. Somebody had ceased to sleep in the
+tent, and was gabbling drowsily, in a monotonous sing-song.
+
+"If they see us," she whispered to him, "they will think you have
+come here after the women."
+
+"But we could say----" he began.
+
+"There will be nothing to say," she interrupted. "Hush! There he
+comes."
+
+Out of the tent crawled a man, lean and black and bearded, with a
+sheet wrapped around him. He stood up and looked around, yawning. The
+woman nestled closer to Dawson, who gripped instinctively on the
+bronze image. The man walked to the parapet on their left and looked
+over, and then walked back to the tent and stood irresolutely,
+muttering to himself. Squatted under the wall, Dawson found room amid
+the race of his disordered thoughts to wonder that he did not
+instantly see them.
+
+He was coming towards them, and Dawson felt the bare shoulder that
+pressed against his arm shrug slightly. The man was ten paces away,
+walking right on to them, and looking to the sky, when, with
+throbbing temples and tense lips, Dawson rose, ran at him, and
+gripped him. He had the throat in the crutch of his right hand, and
+strangled the man's yell as it was conceived. They went down
+together, writhing and clutching, Dawson uppermost, the man under him
+scratching and slapping at him with open hands. He drew up a knee and
+found a lean chest under it, drove it in, and choked his man to
+silence and unconsciousness.
+
+"Take this, take this," urged the woman, bending beside him. She
+pressed her slender-bladed knife on him. "Just a prick, and he is
+quite safe!"
+
+Dawson rose. "No," he said. "He's still enough now. No need to kill
+him." He looked at the body and from it to the woman. "Didn't I get
+him to rights?" he asked exultantly.
+
+She raised her face to his.
+
+"It was splendid," she said. "With only the bare hands to take an
+armed man----"
+
+"Armed!" repeated Dawson.
+
+"Surely," she answered. "That, at least, is always sure. See," she
+pulled the man's sheet wide. Girt into a loin-cloth below was an
+ugly, broad blade. "Yes, it was magnificent. You are a man, my
+friend."
+
+"And you," he said, thrilled by her adulation and, the proximity of
+her bare, gleaming bosom, "are a woman."
+
+"Then----" she began spiritedly; but in a heat of cordial impulse he
+took her to him and kissed her hotly on the lips.
+
+"I was wondering when it would come," she said slowly, as he released
+her. "When you spoke to the German about the bad word, I began to
+wonder. I knew it would come. Kiss me again, my friend, and we will
+go on."
+
+"Are we getting towards the landing-stage?" he asked her, as the next
+roof was crossed. "I mustn't miss my boat, you know."
+
+"Oh, that!" she answered. "You want to go back?"
+
+"Well, of course," he replied, in some surprise. "That's what I was
+trying to do when I knocked at your door. I've missed my dinner as it
+is."
+
+"Missed your dinner!" she repeated, with a bubble of mirth. "Ye-es;
+you have lost that, but,"--she came to him and laid a hand on his
+shoulder, speaking softly--"but you have seen me. Is it nothing,
+friend, that you have saved me?"
+
+He had stopped, and she was looking up to him, half-smiling, half-
+entreating, wholly alluring. He looked down into her dark face, with
+a sudden quickening about the heart.
+
+"And all this fighting," she continued, as though he were to be
+convinced of something. "You conquer men as though you were bred on
+the roofs of Mozambique. You fight like--like a hero. It is a rush, a
+blow, a tumble, and you have them lying at your feet. And when you
+remember all this, will you not be glad, friend--will you not be glad
+that it was for me?"
+
+He nodded, clearing his throat huskily. Her hand on his shoulder was
+a thing to charm him to fire.
+
+"I'd fight--I'd fight for you," he replied uneasily, "as long as--as
+long as there was any one to fight."
+
+He was feeling his way in speech, as best he could, past
+conventionalities. There had dawned on him, duskily and half-seen,
+the unfitness of little proprieties and verbose frills while he went
+to war across the roofs with this woman of passion.
+
+"You would," she said fervently, with half-closed eyes. "I know you
+would."
+
+She dropped her hand, and stood beside him in silence. There was a
+long pause. He guessed she was waiting for the next move from him,
+and he nerved himself to be adequate to her unspoken demand.
+
+"You lead on," he said at last unsteadily.
+
+"Where?" she asked breathlessly.
+
+He did not speak, but waved an open hand that gave her the freedom of
+choice. It was his surrender to the wild spirit of the Coast, and he
+grasped the head of the brass image the tighter when he had done it.
+She and Fate must guide now; it rested with him only to break
+opposing heads.
+
+She smiled and shivered. "Come on, then," she said, and started
+before him.
+
+They traversed perhaps a score of roofs enclosed with high parapets,
+on to each of which he lifted her, hands in her armpits, swinging her
+cleanly to the level of his face and planting her easily and squarely
+on the coping. He welcomed each opportunity to take hold of her and
+put out the strength of his muscles, and she sat where he placed her,
+smiling and silent, while he clambered up and dropped down on the
+other side.
+
+At length a creaking wooden stair that hung precariously on the sheer
+side of a house brought them again to the ground level. It was
+another gloomy alley into which they descended, and the darkness
+about him and the mud underfoot struck Dawson with a sense of being
+again in familiar surroundings. The woman's hand slid into his as
+he stood, and they started along again together.
+
+The alley seemed to be better frequented than that of which he
+already had experience. More than once dark, sheeted figures passed
+them by, noiseless save for the underfoot swish in the mud, and
+presently the alley widened into a little square, at one side of
+which there was a fresh rustle of green things. At the side of it a
+dim light showed through a big open door, from which came a musical
+murmur of voices, and Dawson recognized a church.
+
+"The Little Garden of St. Sebastien," murmured the woman, and led him
+on to cross the square. A figure that had been hidden in the shadow
+now lounged forth; and revealed itself to them as a man in uniform.
+He stood across their way, and accosted the woman briefly in
+Portuguese.
+
+Dawson stood fidgeting while she spoke with him. He seemed to be
+repeating a brief phrase over and over again, harshly and irritably;
+but she was cajoling, remonstrating, arguing, as he had seen her
+argue in that ill-fated room an hour back.
+
+"What's the matter with him?" demanded Dawson impatiently.
+
+"He says he won't let me go," answered the woman, with a tone of
+despair in her voice.
+
+"The devil he won't! What's he got to do with it?"
+
+"Oh, these little policemen, they always arrest me when they can,"
+she replied, with a smile.
+
+"Here, you!" cried Dawson, addressing himself to the man in uniform--
+"you go away. Voetsaak, see! You mind your own business, and get
+out."
+
+The officer drawled something in his own tongue, which was, of
+course, unintelligible to Dawson, but it had the effect of annoying
+him strangely.
+
+"You little beast!" he said, and knocked the man down with his fist.
+
+"Run," hissed the woman at his elbow--"run before he can get up. No,
+not that way. To the church and out by another way!"
+
+She caught his hand, and together they raced across the square and in
+through the big door.
+
+There were a few people within, most sleeping on the benches and
+along the floor by the walls. In the chancel there were others,
+masked by the lights, busy with some offices. A wave of sudden song
+issued from among them as Dawson and the woman entered, and gave way
+again to the high, nervous voice of a map that stood before the
+altar. All along the sides of the church was shadow, and the woman
+speedily found a little arched door.
+
+"Come through the middle of it," she whispered urgently to Dawson, as
+she packed her loose skirts together in her hand--"cleanly through
+the middle; do not rub the wall as you come."
+
+He obeyed and followed her, and they were once more in the darkness
+of an alley.
+
+"It was the door of the lepers," she explained, as she let her skirts
+swish down again. "See, there is the light by the sea!"
+
+The wind came cleanly up the alley, and soon they were at its mouth,
+where a lamp flickered in the breeze. Dawson drew a deep breath, and
+tucked the image under his arm. His palm was sore with the roughness
+of its head.
+
+"Some one is passing," said the woman in a low tone. "Wait here till
+they are by."
+
+Footsteps were approaching along the front, and very soon Dawson
+heard words and started.
+
+"What is it!" whispered the woman, her breath on his neck.
+
+"Listen!" he answered curtly.
+
+The others came within the circle of the lamp--a girl and two men.
+
+"I do hope he's found my idol," the girl was saying.
+
+Dawson stepped into the light, and they turned and saw him.
+
+"Why, here he is," exclaimed Miss Paterson shrilly.
+
+He raised his hat to the woman who stood at the entrance to the
+alley--raised it as he would have raised it to a waitress in a bun-
+shop, and went over to the people from the second-class saloon.
+
+"I found it," he said, lifting the image forward, and brushing with
+his hand at the foulness of blood and hair upon it. "But I was almost
+thinking I should miss the boat."
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE SENSE OF CLIMAX
+
+It was in the fall of the year that Truda Schottelius on tour came to
+that shabby city of Southern Russia. Nowadays, the world remembers
+little of her besides her end, which stirred it as Truda Schottelius
+could always stir her audience; but in those days hers was a fame
+that had currency from Paris to Belgrade, and the art of drama was
+held her debtor.
+
+It was soon after dawn that she looked from her window in the train,
+weary with twelve hours of traveling, and saw the city set against
+the pale sky, unreal and remote like a scene in a theatre, while
+about it the flat land stretched vacant and featureless. The light
+was behind it, and it stood out in silhouette like a forced effect,
+and Truda, remarking it, frowned, for of late she found herself
+impatient of forced effects. She was a pale, slender, brown-haired
+woman, with a small clear, pliant face, and some manner of languor in
+all her attitudes that lent them a slow grace of their own and did
+not at all impair the startling energy she could command for her
+work. While she looked out at the city there came a tap at the door
+of her compartment, and her maid entered with tea. Behind her, a
+little drawn in that early hour, came Truda's manager, Monsieur
+Vaucher.
+
+"Madame finds herself well?" he asked solicitously, but shivering
+somewhat. "Madame is in the mood for further triumphs?"
+
+Truda gave him a smile. Monsieur Vaucher was a careful engineer of
+her successes, a withered little middle-aged Parisian, who had grown
+up in the mechanical service of great singers and actors. There was
+not a tone in his voice, not a gesture in his repertory, that was not
+an affectation; and, with it all, she knew him for a man of sterling
+loyalty and a certain simplicity of heart.
+
+"We are on the point of arriving," went on Monsieur Vaucher. "I come
+to tell Madame how the ground lies in this city. It is, you see, a
+place vexed with various politics, an arena of trivialities. In other
+words, Madame, the best place in the world for one who is--shall we
+say?--detached."
+
+Truda laughed, sipping her warm tea.
+
+"Politics have never tempted me, my friend," she replied.
+
+Monsieur Vaucher bowed complaisantly.
+
+"Your discretion is frequently perfect," he said. "And if I suggest
+that here is an occasion for a particular discretion, it is only
+because I have Madame's interests at heart. Now, the chief matters of
+dispute here are----"
+
+Truda interrupted him. "Please!" she said. "It does not matter at
+all. And think! Politics before breakfast. I am surprised at you,
+Monsieur Vaucher."
+
+The little man shrugged. "It is as Madame pleases," he said.
+"However, here we are at the station; I will go to make all ready."
+
+Truda had a wide experience of strange towns, and preserved yet some
+interest in making their acquaintance. At that early hour the streets
+were sparsely peopled; the city was still at its toilet. A swift
+carriage, manned by a bulky coachman of that spacious degree of
+fatness which is fashionable in Russia, bore her to her hotel along
+wide monotonous ways, flanked with dull buildings. It was all very
+prosaic, very void of character; it did not at all engage her
+thoughts, and it was in weariness that she gained her rooms and
+disposed herself for a day of rest before the evening's task.
+
+Another woman might have gathered depression and the weakness of
+melancholy from this dullness of arrival, following on the dullness
+of travel; but a great actress is made on other lines. A large
+audience was gathered in the theatre that night to make acquaintance
+with her, for her coming was an event of high importance. Only one
+box was empty--that of the Governor of the city, a Russian Prince
+whom Truda had met before; it was understood that he was away, and
+could not return till the following day.
+
+But for the rest the house was full; its expectancy made itself felt
+like an atmosphere till the curtain went up and the play began to
+shape itself. Audiences, like other assemblies of people, have their
+racial characteristics; it was the task of Truda to get the range, as
+it were--to find the measure of their understanding; and before the
+first act was over she had their sympathy. The rest was but the
+everyday routine of the stage, that grotesque craft wherein delicate
+emotions are handled like crowbars, and only the crude colors of life
+are visible. It was a success--even a great success, and nobody save
+Truda had an inkling that there was yet something to discover in the
+soul of a Russian audience.
+
+At her coming forth, the square was thick with people under the
+lights, and those nearest the stage-door cheered her as she passed to
+her carriage. But Truda was learned in the moods of crowds, and in
+her reception she detected a perfunctory note, as though the people
+who waved and shouted had turned from graver matters to notice her.
+She saw, as the carriage dashed away, that the crowd was strongly
+leavened with uniforms of police; there was not time to see more
+before a corner was turned and the square cut off from view. She sat
+back among her cushions with a shrug directed at those corners in her
+affairs which always shut off the real things of life.
+
+The carriage went briskly towards her hotel, traversing those wide
+characterless streets which are typical of a Russian town. The
+pavements were empty, the houses shuttered and dark; save for the
+broad back of the coachman perched before her, she sat in a solitude.
+Thus it was that the sound which presently she heard moved her to
+quick attention, the noise of a child crying bitterly in the
+darkness. She sat up and leaned aside to look along the bare street,
+and suddenly she called to the coachman to halt. When he did so, the
+carriage was close to the place whence the cry came.
+
+"What is it? What is it?" called Truda, in soft Russian, and stepped
+down to the ground. Only that shrill weeping answered her.
+
+She picked her way to the pavement, where something lay huddled
+against the wall of the house, and the coachman, torpid on his box
+behind the fidgety horses, started at her sharp exclamation.
+
+"Come here!" she called to him. "Bring me one of the lamps. Here is a
+horrible thing. Be quick!"
+
+He was nervous about leaving his horses, but Truda's tone was
+compelling. With gruntings and ponderously he obeyed, and the
+carriage-lamp shed its light over the matter in hand. Under the wall,
+with one clutching hand outspread as though to grip at the stones of
+the pavement, lay the body of a woman, her face upturned and vacant.
+And by it, still crying, crouched a child, whose hands were closed on
+the woman's disordered dress. Truda, startled to stillness, stood for
+a space of moments staring; the unconscious face on the ground seemed
+to look up to her with a manner of challenge, and the child,
+surprised by the light, paused in its weeping and cowered closer to
+the body.
+
+"Murder?" said Truda hoarsely. It was a question, and the coachman
+shuffled uneasily.
+
+"I think," he stammered, while the lamp swayed in his gauntleted hand
+and its light traveled about them in wild curves--"I think, your
+Excellency, it is a Jew."
+
+"A Jew!" Truda stared at him. "Yes." He bent to look closer at the
+dead woman, puffing with the exertion. "Yes," he repeated, "a Jew.
+That is all, your Excellency."
+
+He seemed relieved at the discovery. Truda was still staring at him,
+in a cold passion of horror.
+
+"My God!" she breathed; then turned from him with a shudder and knelt
+beside the child. "Go back to the carriage! Wait!" she bade him, with
+her back turned, and he was fain to obey her with his best speed.
+There, ere his conventional torpor claimed him again, he could hear
+her persuading and comforting the child in a voice of gentle murmurs,
+and at last she returned, carrying the child in her arms, and bade
+him drive on. As he went, the murmuring voice still sounded, gentle
+and very caressing.
+
+Truda paused to make no explanations at all when the hotel was
+reached, but passed through the hall and up to her own rooms with the
+frightened child in her arms. But what the coachman had to say, when
+questioned, presently brought her manager knocking at her door. He
+was hot and nervous, and Truda met him with the splendid hauteur she
+could assume upon occasion to quell interference with her actions.
+Behind her, upon a couch, the child was lying wrapped in a shawl,
+looking on the pair of them and Truda's hovering maid with great
+almond eyes set in a little smooth swarthy face.
+
+"Madame, Madame!" cried M. Vaucher. "What is this I hear? How are we
+to get on in Russia--in Russia of all places--if you go in the face
+of public opinion like this?"
+
+"I do not know," replied Truda very calmly. She took a chair beside
+the child, leaving him standing, and put a long white hand on the
+little tumbled head.
+
+"It is incredible!" he said. "Incredible! And at such a time as this,
+too. What do you propose to do with the child?"
+
+"I do not know," answered Truda again.
+
+"It will be claimed," he said, biting his nails. "These Jews are
+never short of relatives."
+
+"If it is claimed by a relative, that will be the end of the matter,"
+replied Truda. "If not--we shall see."
+
+"Then let us hope it will be claimed," he said quickly. He gazed
+absently at the child, and shook his head. "Ah, Madame," he said, "if
+only one could cut an actress's heart out! The worst of them is, they
+are all woman, even the greatest."
+
+Truda smiled a little. "That is inconvenient, no doubt," she
+suggested.
+
+"Inconvenient!" He hoisted his shoulders in a mighty shrug. "It is
+devastating, Madame. See now! Here is this city--a beastly place, it
+is true, but with much money, and very busy exterminating Jews. Which
+will you, Madame--its money or its Jews? You see the choice! But I
+will weary you no longer; the child will assuredly be claimed."
+
+He bowed and took his departure; it was not well, he knew, for any
+manager to push Truda Schottelius too far. Therefore he went to make
+it known that a Jewish baby of two or thereabouts was to be had for
+the asking, at the hotel; and Truda went to work to make her newly-
+found responsibility comfortable. For that night she experienced what
+a great artist must often miss--something with a flavor more subtle
+than the realization of a strong role, than passion, than success. It
+was when the baby was sleeping in her own bed, its combed head
+dinting one of her own white pillows, that she looked across to her
+deft, tactful maid.
+
+"I believe I have found a new sensation, Marie," she remarked.
+
+The maid smiled. "I had little sisters," she answered
+inconsequently.
+
+"Yes?" said Truda. "I had nothing--not even a little sister."
+
+The new sensation remained with her that night, for the baby
+slumbered peacefully in her arms; and several times she awoke to bend
+above it and wonder, with happiness and longing, over the miracle of
+that little dependent life cast away on the shores of the world. By
+morning its companionship had so wrought in her that she could have
+given the manager a clear answer if he had come again to ask what she
+proposed to do with the child in the event of no one claiming it. But
+he did not come. Instead, there came a big red-haired young Jew,
+asserting that he was the child's uncle.
+
+Truda was at breakfast in her room when he arrived and was shown in;
+opposite to her at the table, the baby was making the most of various
+foods. It greeted him with shouts and open welcome; no further proof
+was needed to establish his claim. Truda, delicate and fragile in a
+morning wrapper, a slender vivid exotic of a woman, shaped as though
+by design to the service of art, looked up to scan him. He stood just
+within the door, his peaked cap in his hand, great of stature, keen-
+faced, rugged, with steady eyes that took her in unwinkingly. The
+pair of them made a contrast not the less grotesque because in each
+there was strength. For some moments neither spoke, while the baby
+gurgled happily.
+
+Truda sighed. "She knows you," she said. "She is a dear little
+thing."
+
+The Jew nodded. "She is dear to us," he said. "And we are very
+grateful to you, Excellency."
+
+He was still watching her with a shrewd scrutiny, as though he made
+an estimate of her worth.
+
+"That was her mother?" asked Truda. "The dead woman in the street, I
+mean?"
+
+"Yes," answered the man. "That was her mother. Her father went the
+same way six months ago, but in another street."
+
+Truda's lips parted, but she said nothing.
+
+"Ah, perhaps your Excellency does not understand?" suggested the man.
+The cynical humor in his face had no resemblance to mirth. "They were
+Jews, you see--Jews."
+
+"Judenhetze?" asked Truda. She had heard of old of that strange fever
+that seizes certain peoples and inflames them with a rabid lust for
+Jewish blood.
+
+"Yes," answered the Jew. "That is what they call it. But a local
+variety. Here it is not sudden passion, but a thing suggested to the
+mob, and guided by police and officers. It is an expedient of
+politics."
+
+He spoke with a restraint that was more than any, emphasis.
+
+"And therefore," he went on, "the kindness of your Excellency is the
+greater, since you saved the child not from law-breakers, but from
+authority itself."
+
+"I have done nothing," said Truda. "The child is a dear little thing.
+I--I wish she were mine."
+
+"She, too, is a Jew," said the other.
+
+"I know," answered Truda. The steadiness of his gaze was an
+embarrassment by now. She flushed a little under it.
+
+"I am wondering," she said, "if nothing can be done. I think--I
+believe--that the world does not know of this persecution. Perhaps I
+could say a word--in some high quarter----"
+
+"Why should you concern yourself?" asked the Jew evenly. "Why should
+you take this trouble?"
+
+"Why?" Truda looked up at him, doubtful of his meaning.
+
+He nodded. "Why?" he repeated. "It cannot be good for Truda
+Schottelius to stand on the side of Jews?"
+
+"What do you mean?" demanded Truda.
+
+He continued to look at her steadily, but made no answer. She rose
+from her chair and took one step towards him; then paused. A tense
+moment of silence passed, and Truda Schottelius sighed.
+
+"How did you know?" she asked, in a matter-of-fact tone.
+
+The big young man smiled. "How did I know that you, too, were a Jew--
+is that what you mean?" Truda nodded. "Ah, Excellency, there is an
+instinct in this thing, and, besides, who but a Jew is a great artist
+nowadays? Believe me, there is not one of us from whom you could hide
+it."
+
+"Is it as plain as that?" asked Truda.
+
+"As plain as that," he replied. She laughed frankly, meeting his eyes
+with unabashed mirth, till he perforce smiled in sympathy.
+
+"Then," she cried, "what, does it matter? Here I am, a Jewess. I
+cannot hide it. The first Jewish baby that cries for me wins me over;
+and there are worse things--yes, many worse things--than being
+knocked on the head by a drunken Christian. You didn't know that, did
+you?"
+
+"I do not doubt what you say," he answered.
+
+"You do not doubt!" repeated Truda, with quick contempt. "I tell you
+it is so, and I know. Yes!" For a moment her face darkened as though
+with memories. "But," she went on, "I have a place. I have a name.
+What I say will be heard."
+
+"Yes," said the Jew simply. "What you say will be heard."
+
+She nodded two or three times slowly. "Wait!" she said. "I know the
+Governor of this place; he is by way of being a friend of mine. And
+beyond him there are greater men all easy of access--to me. And
+beyond them is the sentiment of Europe, the soft hearts of the world,
+easiest and nearest of all. I tell you, something can be done;
+presently there will be a reckoning with these gentle Christians."
+
+She had stirred him at last. "And you will acknowledge that you are a
+Jewess?" he asked.
+
+She laughed. "I will boast of it," she cried. "And now, this is the
+time to take the baby away, while I am nerved for sacrifices. Soon I
+shall have nothing left at all."
+
+The young Jew looked over to the child, who was getting new effects
+out of a spoon and a dish of jam. "The child is in good hands," he
+said. "We shall know she is safe with you."
+
+"Ah!" Truda turned to him with a light in her wonderful eyes. "I
+shall not fail you, if it were only for this."
+
+"I am sure you will not fail your own people," he answered; "you do
+not come of traitors."
+
+He patted the baby's cheek with a couple of big fingers and turned to
+the door.
+
+"You do not come of traitors," he repeated, and then Truda was alone
+again with the child. But she did not go to it at once, to make sure
+of its company. She stood where the Jew had left her, deep in
+thought. And the manner of her thinking was not one of care; for the
+first time she seemed to taste a sense of freedom.
+
+Of the wrath and bewilderment of her manager there is no need to
+speak; a long experience of famous actresses and singers had not
+exhausted that expert's capacity for despair. His pessimism gained
+some color that evening, when Truda had to face a house that was
+plainly willing to be unsympathetic; applause came doubtfully and in
+patches, till she gained a hold of them and made herself their master
+by main force of personality. Monsieur Vaucher, the manager, was
+still a connoisseur of art. Years of feeling the public pulse through
+the box-office had not stripped him of a certain shrewd perception of
+what was fine and what was mean in drama; and he chuckled and wagged
+his head in the wings as minute by minute the spell of Truda's genius
+strengthened, till there came that tenseness of silence in the great
+theatre which few actors live to know, and Truda, vibrant, taut-
+nerved, and superb, plucked at men's hearts as if they had been harp-
+strings. It was not till the curtain was down that the spell broke,
+and then crash upon crash roared the tumultuous applause of the
+audience.
+
+It was Vaucher who rushed forward, as Truda came from the stage, to
+kiss her hand extravagantly.
+
+"Ah! Madame!" he cried, looking up to her with his shrewd face
+working; "it is not for me to guide you. Do as you will by day, but
+be a genius at night. At this rate you could unman an army."
+
+Truda smiled and withdrew her hand.
+
+"That was Prince Sarasin in the great box," she said. "Presently he
+will send his card in."
+
+Vaucher nodded. "That was he," he said. "He is Governor of this town.
+Madame will receive him? Or not?"
+
+"Oh yes; let him in to me," she answered. "He is an old friend of
+mine."
+
+Vaucher bowed. "What a happiness for him, then!" he said gravely, and
+opened the door of her dressing-room for her.
+
+Prince Sarasin lost no time in making Truda's word good. By the time
+she was ready to receive him, he was waiting for admission. He strode
+in, burly in his uniform, and bowed to her effusively, full of
+admiration. He was a great dark Russian, heavy and massive, with a
+big petulant face not without intelligence, and Truda had known him
+of old in Paris. She looked at him now with some anxiety, trying to
+gauge his susceptibility. He had the spacious manners of a man of
+action, smiled readily and with geniality; but Truda realized that
+she had never before made him a request, and the real character of
+the man was still to find.
+
+"Superb! Magnificent!" he was saying. "You have ripened, my friend;
+your power has grown to maturity. It is people like you who make
+epochs."
+
+"Sit down!" she bade him. "I am a little tired, as you may think.
+Your town is hard on one's nerves, Prince."
+
+"Hard!" He laughed as he drew a chair towards her and seated himself.
+"It is death to the intelligence. It is suffocation to one's finer
+nature. It has a dullness that turns men into vegetables. I have been
+here now for three years, and till to-night I have not felt a
+thrill."
+
+"No?" Truda spoke lightly of design. "But you are the Governor, are
+you not? You are aloof, far above thrills. Why, it was only last
+night, while I was driving home, that I found a dead woman in the
+street."
+
+"I know," he said. "And a live baby; I heard all about it. If you had
+been an hour later they would have been cleaned away. I am sorry if
+you were shocked."
+
+"Shocked?" repeated Truda. "I was not thinking of that." She shivered
+a little, and gathered her big cloak more closely about her. "But I
+had not heard--I did not know--what the Judenhetze really was. And I
+think the world does not know, or it would not tolerate it."
+
+"Eh?" The prince stared at her. "But it has upset you," he said
+soothingly. "You must forget it. It is not well to dwell on these
+things."
+
+The big mirror against the wall, bright with lights, reflected the
+pair of them sitting face to face in the attitude of intimacy. The
+Prince, bearded and big, felt protective and paternal, for Truda,
+muffled in her great cloak, looked very small and feminine just then.
+
+His tone, so consoling and smooth, roused her; she sat up.
+
+"Prince," she said, "you could stop it."
+
+"The Judenhetze, you mean?" He made a gesture of resignation. "You
+are wrong, dear lady. I can do nothing. It does not rest with me."
+
+"You mean, there are higher powers who are responsible?" she
+demanded.
+
+"We will not talk politics," suggested the Prince. "But roughly that
+is what I mean."
+
+She scanned him seriously. "Yes," she said; "I thought that was so.
+And you can do nothing? I see."
+
+"But why," asked the Prince--"why let yourself be troubled, dear
+lady? This is a pitiful business, no doubt; it has thrust itself on
+you by an accident; you are moved and disturbed. But, after all, the
+Jews are not our friends."
+
+The courage to deal forthrightly was not lacking to her. As she sat
+up again, the fur cloak slipped, and her bare shoulders gleamed above
+it. Her face was grave with the gravity of a serious child.
+
+"I am a Jewess," she said.
+
+"Eh? What?" The Prince smiled uncertainly.
+
+"I am a Jewess," repeated Truda. "The Jews are my friends. And if you
+can do nothing, there is something I can do."
+
+He smiled still, but now there was amusement in his smile. He was not
+at all disconcerted.
+
+"Do you know," he said, "I had almost guessed it? There is something
+in you--I noticed it again to-night, in your great scene--that
+suggests it. A sort of ardor, a glow, as it were; something burning
+and poignant. Well, if all the Jews were like you there would be no
+Judenhetze."
+
+She put the futile compliment from her with a movement of impatience.
+
+"You can still do nothing?" she asked
+
+"My powers are where they were, Madame," he answered.
+
+"Then," she said slowly, "it rests with me." She gathered her cloak
+about her again. "I am tired, as you see," she said wearily--"tired
+and a little strained. I will beg you to excuse me."
+
+He rose to his feet at once and bowed formally.
+
+"At least," he said, "such a matter is not to interrupt our
+friendship, Madame."
+
+"It is for you to say," she answered, smiling faintly. He laughed,
+pressed her hand, and bade her good-night, leaving her with more
+matter for thought than he could have suspected.
+
+There was real cheering for her that night when she left the theatre.
+Truda had been cheered before in many cities; but that night she took
+note of it, looking with attention at the thrusting crowd collected
+to applaud her. It filled the square, restless as a sea under the
+tall lamps; rank upon rank of shadow-barred faces showed themselves,
+vociferous and unanimous--a crowd in a good temper. She bowed in
+acknowledgment of the shouts, but her face was grave, for she was
+taking account of what it meant to be alone amid an alien multitude,
+sharing none of its motives and emotions. The fat coachman edged his
+horses through the men that blocked the way, till there was space to
+go ahead, and the cheers, steady and unflagging, followed her out of
+sight.
+
+The baby was in bed when she arrived at her hotel; Truda paid a brief
+visit to its side, then ordered that her manager should be summoned,
+and sat down to write a note. It was to the big young Jew, the baby's
+uncle; she had a shrewd notion that Monsieur Vaucher would be able to
+lay hands on him. The note was brief: "I fear there will be more
+persecutions. The Governor can do nothing. When there is another
+attack on our people send to me. Send to me without fail, for I have
+one resource left."
+
+"You can find the man?" she demanded of Vaucher.
+
+The little hardened Frenchman was still under the spell of her
+acting.
+
+"Madame," he said grandly, "I can do anything you desire. He shall
+have the note to-night."
+
+Poor Monsieur Vaucher, the charred remains of a man of sentiment,
+preserving yet a spark or two of the soft fire! Could he have known
+the contents of that note and their significance, with what fervor of
+refusal he would have cast it back at her! But he knew nothing, save
+that Truda's acting restored to him sometimes for an hour or two the
+emotions of his youth, and he was very much her servant. It was in
+the spirit of devotion and service that he called a droshky, and
+fared out to the crooked streets of the Jewish quarter to do his
+errand. It was a fine soft night, with a clear sky of stars, and
+Monsieur Vaucher enjoyed the drive. And as he went, jolting over the
+cobbles of the lesser streets, he suffered himself to recall the
+great scene of that night's play--a long slow situation of a woman at
+bay, opposing increasing odds with increasing spirit--and experienced
+again his thrill.
+
+"Ah," he murmured over his cigar; "the Schottelius, she has the sense
+of climax!"
+
+And so he duly delivered the note and returned to the hotel and bed,
+a man content with the conduct of his own world.
+
+Things went well with Truda and Vaucher and all the company for the
+next two days. Never had she been so amenable to those who charged
+themselves with her interests, never so generally and mildly amiable
+to those who had to live at her orders. But none of those who came in
+contact with her failed to observe a new note in her manner. It was
+not that she was softer or gentler; rather it seemed that she was
+more remote, something absent and thoughtful, with a touch of
+raptness that lent the true air of inspiration to her acting. Her
+spare time she spent with the baby--she and Marie, her maid, playing
+with it, making a plaything of it, ministering to it, and obeying it.
+It had never cried once since Truda had taken it in her arms, but
+adapted itself with the soundest skill to its surroundings and
+companions.
+
+"I found it ten years too late," said Truda once.
+
+Her maid looked at her curiously.
+
+"It is surprising that Madame should not have found one before," she
+said.
+
+Those two days were placid and full of peace, quiet with the lull of
+emptiness. But in them Truda did not forget. She was realizing
+herself, and her capacity to deal with a situation that would not be
+devised to show her talents. She felt that she stood, for the first
+time, on the threshold of brisk, perilous, actual life, of that life
+which was burlesqued, exaggerated, in the plays in which she acted.
+It was expectancy that softened her eyes and lit her face with
+dreams--expectancy and exhilaration.
+
+She was about to be born into the world.
+
+The summons came suddenly on the evening of the second day. Even as
+she drove to the theatre, Truda had noted how the streets were
+uneasy, how men stood about in groups and were in the first stages of
+drunkenness. The play that night was that harrowing thing La Tosca;
+she was dressed for her part when the word came, written on a scrap
+of paper: "It is to-night. I am waiting at the stage door." She
+pondered for a few moments over it, then reached for her cloak and
+drew it on over her brilliant stage dress.
+
+"Find Vaucher," she said to her maid. "Tell him I cannot play to-
+night. He must put on my understudy. Say I am ill."
+
+The maid, startled out of her composure, threw up her hands.
+
+"But, Madame----!" she cried.
+
+Truda waved her aside. "Lose no time," she ordered. "Tell Vaucher I
+am ill. And then go back to the baby."
+
+She wasted no more words on the woman, but swept forth from the room
+and down the draughty ill-lit passage to the stage-door. Its
+guardian, staggered at her appearance, let her out; on the pavement
+outside, muffled to the eyes like a man that evades observation, was
+the big young Jew. He was gazing out over the square; her fingers on
+his arm made him look round with a start.
+
+"I am here," she said. "Now tell me."
+
+With eyes that glanced about warily while he spoke, he told her
+quickly, in low tones of haste.
+
+"There is a mob gathering again at the market," he said. "Two spirit-
+shops have been broken open. That is how it begins always. Some Jews
+who were found in the street were beaten to death; soon they will
+move down to the Jewish streets, and then"--his breath came harsh
+through set teeth--"then murder and looting--the old programme. Now
+I have told you; can you do anything?"
+
+"Let us find a droshky," said Truda, "and go to the Jewish quarter."
+
+"A droshky!" He stared at her. "Do you think any driver will take us
+there to-night?"
+
+"Then we can walk," said Truda; "show the way. If we stay here any
+longer, I shall be seen and prevented."
+
+He hesitated an instant; then set off sharply, so that now and again
+she had to run a few paces to keep up with him. He took her round by
+the back of the theatre and into a muddle of streets that led thence.
+The quiet of the night closed about them; Truda was embarked upon her
+purpose.
+
+"How can you help?" asked the young man again. "Tell me what you will
+do?"
+
+"Me?" said Truda. "For to-night I can do nothing; I am not an army.
+But I think that after to-night there will be no more Judenhetze in
+this city. That is what I think. For, after all, I am the
+Schottelius; people know me and set a value on me, and if harm comes
+to me there will be a reckoning."
+
+He was looking down sideways on her as she spoke.
+
+"Is that all?" he asked.
+
+"All!" cried Truda, and braced herself to subdue his doubts. "All! It
+is enough, and more than enough. Have I come so far without knowing
+what will rouse my audience?" She slowed her steps, and he slowed to
+keep by her side. She lifted her clear face proudly. "I tell you,"
+she said, "the part I am to play to-night will move Europe to its
+core. Paris! Berlin! Vienna! Even cautious prim London! I have them
+under my hand; even to-morrow they will be asking an account, crying
+for the heads of the wrongdoers on a charger. And you ask me if that
+is all!"
+
+"You do not know," he said. "To-night, it is not a play; it is life
+and death."
+
+"But to-morrow it is life!" she retorted. "Let us go on; we must not
+be late."
+
+They came by roundabout ways at last to that little groups of
+streets, beyond the jail and the markets, where the Jews had their
+homes. Here were tall brick houses overshadowing narrow streets ill-
+lit by infrequent lamps, little shops closely shuttered, courtyards
+with barred gates. Over the roofs there rose against the sky the
+clustered spires and domes of a typical Russian church, flanking the
+quarter on the south. The streets were empty; they met no one; and
+the young man led her to a courtyard in which, perhaps, a couple of
+hundred Jews were gathered, waiting. His knock brought a face to the
+top of the wall, and after a parley the great gate was opened wide
+enough to let them slip through. When they were in, Truda touched her
+companion.
+
+"Would I be here for a fancy?" she whispered. "Believe what I say:
+after this there shall be no Judenhetze."
+
+The courtyard was a large one, penned between a couple of houses, and
+separated from the street by the wall which the great gate pierced.
+From it half a dozen doors led into the houses, each a possible road
+of escape when the hour should come. Truda looked about her calmly.
+
+The people were standing about in large groups--men, women, and
+children--and they spoke in whispers among themselves. But all of
+them were listening; each sound from without stiffened them to scared
+attention. From somewhere distant there traveled a dull noise of
+shouts and singing, a confused blatancy of far voices; and as it
+swelled and sank and swelled again, a tremor ran over that silent
+waiting throng like a wind-ripple on standing crops. Overhead the
+sky shone with pin-point stars; a breath of air stirred about them
+faintly; all seemed keyed to that tense furtive quiet of the doomed
+Jews. Not a child cried, not a woman sobbed; they had learned,
+direfully enough, the piteous art of the oppressed--the knack of
+silence and concealment.
+
+It was by slow degrees that the distant shoutings came nearer; the
+mob had yet to unite in purpose and ferocity. Truda, listening, and
+marking its approach, could almost tell by the violence of its noise
+how it wound through the streets, staggering drunkenly, waving
+bludgeons, working itself to the necessary point of brutal fury. And
+always it grew nearer. Its note changed and deepened, till it sank to
+a long snarling drone; she, wise in the moods of men in the mass, a
+practicer on the minds of multitudes, knew the moment was at hand;
+this was the voice of human beings with the passions of beasts. The
+noise dwindled as the mob poured through an alley, and then broke out
+again, loud and daunting, as it emerged. It was near at hand; now
+there was added to its voice the drum of its footsteps on cobble-
+paved streets, and suddenly, brief and agonizing, a wild outcry of
+shrieks as some wretched creature was found out of hiding and the
+bludgeons beat it out of human semblance. All round Truda there was a
+stir among the Jews; a child wrought beyond endurance whimpered and
+was gagged under an apron; the howl of the mob startled her ears as
+it poured along the street outside the great gate.
+
+Then came confusion, a chaos of voices, of ringing blows upon the
+gate, screams and moans, the shrill sound of the glee that goes with
+open murder, and a sudden light that shot up against the sky from a
+house on fire. The crowd of Jews in the courtyard thinned as some
+slipped swiftly into the dark doorways to be ready for flight,
+startled by a tattoo of blows on the gate that broke out abruptly.
+Truda stood fast where she was, listening with a kind of detachment.
+The blows on the gate increased; she could even hear, among the other
+sounds, the heavy breathing of those who strove to break a way in.
+Men came running to aid them, and the stout gate bent under their
+efforts. It was fastened within by an iron bar lying in sockets
+across it; with an interest that was almost idle she saw how these
+sockets, one by one, were yielding and let the bar go loose. One
+broke off with a sharp crack, and sent the rest of the Jews racing to
+the dark doorways. Truda loosened her cloak and let it fall about her
+feet, and stood up alone, vivid in the dancing light of the burning
+house, in saffron and white. She moved deliberate hands over her hair
+and patted a loose strand into its place. Another rending crash; she
+set her hand on her hip and stood still. The door yielded and sprang
+back. There was a raw yell, and the mob was in.
+
+Prince Sarasin was again in his box when Monsieur Vaucher, broken in
+spirit and looking bleak and old, came before the curtain to announce
+that owing to circumstances--unforeseen circumstances--of a--a
+peculiar nature, Madame Schottelius would be unable to appear that
+night, and her place would be taken, etc. The announcement was not
+well received, and nobody was less pleased than the Prince. He knit
+his heavy brows in a scowl as poor Vaucher sidled back to obscurity,
+and thought rapidly. His thoughts, and what he knew of the night's
+programme in the Jewish quarter of his city, carried him round to the
+stage door, with his surprised aide-de-camp at his heels.
+
+Monsieur Vaucher, tearful and impotent, was at his service.
+
+"Never before has she played me such a trick," he lamented. "Ill!
+Why, I have known her go on and make a success when she was ill
+enough to keep another woman in bed. It is a trick; she is not even
+at the hotel. No one knows where she is."
+
+The Governor, his last interview with Truda fresh in his
+recollection, asked curt questions. He was a man of direct mind. In
+less time than one might have supposed from the condition of poor
+Vaucher, he had elicited some outstanding facts--the note which Truda
+had sent to the Jewish quarter among them. The keeper of the stage-
+door added the little he knew. Prince Sarasin turned to his aide.
+
+"Dragoons," he ordered. "Half a squadron. I shall be at the barracks
+in ten minutes, when they must be ready. Go at once."
+
+The aide-de-camp, who knew the Prince, recognized that this was an
+occasion for speed. When the Prince, mounted, arrived at the
+barracks, the dragoons were drawn up-awaiting him. He moved them off
+towards the Jewish quarter at the trot. The streets echoed their
+hoof-beats, and little time elapsed before they were on the skirts of
+the mob. The Prince spurred alongside a watching police-officer.
+
+"A lady!" repeated the officer, in amazement. "I have seen no lady,
+your Excellency. But the principal--er--disorder is in the street
+behind the church. The Jews are making no resistance at all."
+
+The Prince pushed on, and came with his dragoons at the rear of the
+mob. With a fine Russian callousness he thrust into it, his horses
+clearing a way for themselves and bowling men to right and left. The
+street was in darkness and resounded with violence. Standing in his
+stirrups and peering ahead, the Prince realized that he might ride
+Truda down without ever seeing her.
+
+He leaned back and caught his aide-de-camp by the arm.
+
+"We must have light," he shouted. "Dismount a dozen men and fire a
+house."
+
+At the order, men swung from their saddles, and in a few minutes the
+house was ablaze; its windows, red with fire, cast a dancing glow on
+the tumult of the street. They pressed on, the fire sparkling on
+their accoutrements, and on the housetops cowering Jews broke into
+tremblings at a wild hope that here was salvation. The Prince peered
+anxiously about, unconcerned at all the savagery that was unloosened
+to each side of him. He did not pause to aid a woman dragged
+shrieking from a doorway by the hair, nor look back at that other
+scream when a dragoon, unmanned and overwrought, reined from the
+ranks and cut her assailant down.
+
+At one point the crowd was thick about the gate of a walled
+courtyard, thundering on it with crowbars and axes; here, again, the
+Prince paused to look sharply among them, lest somewhere there might
+be a brown head and a pale clear-cut face that he sought. Even as he
+tightened his bridle, the gate gave rendingly; he turned his head as
+the mob, roaring, poured in. For the space of perhaps a second he sat
+motionless and stricken, but it was long enough to see what he never
+forgot--a woman, composed, serene, bright against her dark background
+in the shifting light of the burning house, gay in saffron and white.
+Then the mob surged before her and hid her, and his voice returned to
+him.
+
+"Charge!" he roared, and tore his sword out.
+
+The dragoons, eager enough, followed him; the courtyard overflowed
+with them as their great horses thundered in at the gate, and the
+long swords got to their work on that packed and cornered throng.
+There were swift bitter passages as the troopers cleared the place--
+episodes such as only Jews knew till then, ghastly killings of men
+who crawled among the horses' feet and were hunted out to be
+slaughtered. And in the middle of it, the Prince was on his knees,
+holding up a brown head in the crook of his arm, seeing nothing of
+the butchery at his elbow.
+
+It was when the killing was done, and the dragoons were clearing the
+street, that there arrived on tiptoe Monsieur Vaucher, searching
+through tears for Madame. When he saw her he ceased to weep, but
+stood looking down, with his hands clasped behind his back.
+
+"Dead?" he asked abruptly.
+
+The Prince glanced up. "Yes," he answered.
+
+"Ah!" Monsieur Vaucher pondered. "Who killed her?" he asked
+presently.
+
+"Look!" said the Prince, and motioned with one hand to the dragoons'
+leavings, the very silent citizens who lay about on the flagstones.
+
+"Ah!" said Vaucher again. "And to-morrow the world will ask for an
+account. It is not wise to destroy a great genius like this, here in
+a corner of your dirty town. That is what you have to learn."
+
+"Yes," said the Prince. "We shall learn something now. She gave her
+life to teach it. There will be no more Judenhetze in this city."
+
+"Her life to teach it," repeated Monsieur Vaucher. "She gave her
+life." His composure failed him suddenly, and he fell on his knees on
+the other side of what had been Truda Schottelius, weeping openly.
+
+"She never failed," he said. "She never failed. A great artist,
+Monsieur, the Schottelius! She--she had the sense of climax!"
+
+From the windows of the houses above them, scared curious Jews looked
+down uncomprehendingly.
+
+
+
+III
+
+THE TRADER OF LAST NOTCH
+
+In Manicaland, summer wears the livery of the tropics. At the foot of
+the hills north of Macequece every yard of earth is vocal with life,
+and the bush is brave with color. Where the earth shows it is red, as
+though a wound bled. The mimosas have not yet come to flower, but
+amid their delicate green--the long thorns, straight or curved like
+claws, gleam with the flash of silver. Palms poise aloft, brilliant
+and delicate, and under foot, flowers are abroad. The flame-blossom
+blazes in scarlet. The sangdieu burns in sullen vermilion. Insects
+fill the world with the noise of their business--spiders,
+butterflies, and centipedes, ants, beetles, and flies, and mysterious
+entities that crawl nameless under foot. A pea-hen shrieks in the
+grass, and a kite whistles aloft. A remote speck in the sky denotes a
+watchful vulture, alert for any mishap to the citizens of the woods,
+and a crash of twigs may mean anything from a buck to a rhinoceros.
+There is a hectic on the face of nature.
+
+The trader of Last Notch went homewards to his store through such a
+maze of urgent life, and panted in the heat. He had been out to shoot
+guinea-fowl, had shot none and expended all his cartridges, and his
+gun, glinting in the strong light as he walked, was heavy to his
+shoulder and hot to his hand. His mood was one of patient protest,
+for the sun found him an easy prey and he had yet some miles to go.
+Where another man would have said: "Damn the heat," and done with it,
+John Mills, the trader, tasted the word on his lips, forbore to slip
+it, and counted it to himself for virtue. He set a large value on
+restraint, which, in view of his strength and resolute daring, was
+perhaps not wholly false. He was a large man, more noticeable for a
+sturdy solidness of proportion than for height, and his strong face
+was won to pleasantness by a brown beard, which he wore "navy fash."
+His store, five big huts above the kloof known as Last Notch, was at
+the heart of a large Kafir population; and the natives,
+agriculturists by convention and warriors between whiles, patronized
+him very liberally. The Englishmen and Portuguese of the country
+held him in favor, and he enjoyed that esteem which a strong quiet
+man, who has proved himself to have reserves of violence, commonly
+wins from turbulent neighbors.
+
+He was trying for a short cut home, and purposed to wade the Revue
+river wherever he should strike it. Over the low bush about him he
+could see his hills yet a couple of hours off, and he sighed for
+thirst and extreme discomfort. No one, he knew, lived thereabouts--no
+one, at least, who was likely to have whisky at hand, though, for the
+matter of that, he would have welcomed a hut and a draught of Kafir
+itywala. His surprise was the greater, then, when there appeared from
+the growth beside his path as white a man as himself, a tall,
+somewhat ragged figure--but rags tell no news at all in Manicaland--
+who wore a large black moustache and smiled affably on him.
+
+He noted that the stranger was a fine figure of a man, tall and slim,
+with clear dark eyes and tanned face, and he saw, too, that he wore a
+heavy Webley on his right hip. The newcomer continued to smile as
+Mills scanned him over, and waited for the trader to speak first.
+
+"Hullo!" said Mills at length.
+
+"'Ullo!" replied the stranger, smiling still. He had a capital
+smile, and Mills was captivated into smiling in sympathy.
+
+"Who may you be?" he asked agreeably; "didn't expect to meet no white
+men about here. Where's your boys?"
+
+The tall man waved his hand vaguely in the direction of the coast, as
+though to imply that he had carriers somewhere in that part of the
+world.
+
+"Yais," he said pleasantly. "An' you are Jone Mills, eh?"
+
+"That's me," said Mills promptly, lowering the butt of his gun to the
+ground and resting both hands on the muzzle. The stranger started
+slightly, but did not cease to smile.
+
+"I don't seem to know you," pondered Mills. "I can't fix you at
+all."
+
+"Ah, but you will. Le' me see. Was it Beira, eh?"
+
+Mills shook his head decidedly. "I never was in Beira," he said.
+
+"Not Beira?" queried the stranger. "Oh, but surelee. No? Well,
+Mandega's, per'aps?"
+
+"Mandega's? Yes, I was there for a bit. I had a block of claims on
+the ditch, next to old Jimmy Ryan's."
+
+"Ah yais," said the tall man eagerly. "I know 'im. An' there you
+shoot the Intendente, not? That was ver' fine. I see you coom down
+all quiet, an' shoot 'im in the 'ead. It was done ver' naice, eh!"
+
+Mills's face darkened. "He was robbin' me, the swine," he answered.
+"He'd been robbin' me for six months. But that's nobody's business
+but mine, and anyhow I didn't shoot him in the head. It was in the
+chest. An' now, who the blazes are you?"
+
+"You do' know me?" smiled the stranger; "but I know you. Oh, ver'
+well. I see you ver' often. You see. My name is Jacques."
+
+"Jack what?" demanded Mills.
+
+"Not Jack--Jacques. Tha's all. All the people call me Frenchy, eh?
+You don' remember?"
+
+"No," said Mills thoughtfully; "but then I seen a good many chaps,
+and I'd be like to forget some o' them. You doin' anything round
+here?"
+
+The man who called himself Jacques held up a finger. "Ah, you wan' to
+know, eh? Well, I don' tell you. I fin' anything, I don' tell all the
+people; I don' blow the gaff. I sit still, eh? I lie low, eh? I keep
+'im all for me, eh? You see?"
+
+"Well, of course," agreed Mills; "struck a pocket, I suppose. I
+shouldn't have thought you'd have found much here. But then, of
+course, you're not going to give your game away. Where's your camp? I
+could do with a drink."
+
+"Back there," said the Frenchman, pointing in the direction whence
+Mills had come. "'Bout five miles. You don' wan' to come, eh? Too
+far, eh?"
+
+"Yes, I reckon it's too far," replied Mills. "I'm not more than four
+miles from my own kia now. You goin' on?"
+
+"Yais," agreed the Frenchman. "I go a leetle bit. Not too far, eh!"
+
+They moved on through the bush. Mills shifted his; gun from shoulder
+to shoulder, and suffered still from heat and sweat. His taller
+companion went more easily, striding along as Mills thought, glancing
+at him, "like a fox." The warmth appeared not to distress him in the
+least.
+
+"By Jove," exclaimed the trader. "You're the build of man for this
+blooming country. You travel as if you was born to it. Don't the heat
+trouble you at all?"
+
+"Oh no," answered the Frenchman carelessly. "You see, I come from a
+'ot country. In France it is ver' often 'ot. But you don' like it,
+eh?"
+
+"No," said the trader, with emphasis. "I was after pea-hen, or you
+wouldn't see me out this time o' the day. English chaps can't stand
+it."
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"English chaps can't stand it, I said," repeated Mills. "They mos'ly
+lie up till it's cooler."
+
+"Ah yais."
+
+They were now nearing the river. A steam rose over the bushes and
+spiraled into the air, and the hum of water going slowly was audible.
+A few minutes of walking brought them to its banks. The stream flowed
+greasily and dark, some forty yards wide, but in the middle it forked
+about a spit of sand not more than ten paces broad. It was a very
+Lethe of a river, running oilily and with a slumberous sound, and its
+reputation for crocodiles was vile.
+
+Mills sat down and began to pull off his boots.
+
+"As well here as anywhere," he said. "I'll try it, anyhow."
+
+"I go back now," said the Frenchman. "Some day I come up an' see
+you, eh? You like that?"
+
+"Come along any time," replied Mills cheerfully as he slung his boots
+across his shoulders. "You don't think that island's a quicksand,
+eh?"
+
+The Frenchman turned and stared at it. "I do' know," he answered.
+"Per'aps. You goin' to try, eh?"
+
+"Yes, I'll have a shot at it. You can mos'ly trust yourself on 'em if
+you walk light an' quick. But we'll see."
+
+The Frenchman watched him as he waded out. The black water reached no
+higher than his knees, but the ground was soft under foot, and he
+floundered anxiously.
+
+"It sucks at you," he called. "It's all greasy."
+
+He moved on, and came to the sand island.
+
+"It's better here," he called. "I'll be all right now."
+
+The Frenchman jumped to his feet.
+
+"Look out!" he shouted, gesticulating violently. "You go down; walk
+off 'im!"
+
+Mills glanced down, and saw that the creeping sand had him knee-deep.
+He dragged his right foot forth and plunged forward, but with the
+action his left leg sank to the crutch, and he only kept his balance
+with a violent effort.
+
+The Frenchman danced on the bank. "Throw you' gun down," he shouted.
+"Throw you' boots down. You' in to the waist now. Push yo'self back
+to the water. Push hard."
+
+He wrung his hands together with excitement.
+
+Mills threw down his gun, and the sand swallowed it at once. He
+turned his head to the man at the bank.
+
+"It's no good, chum," he said quietly. "I reckon you better take a
+shot at me with that revolver."
+
+The sand was in his armpits. The Frenchman ceased to jump and wring
+his hands, and smiled at him oddly. Mills, in the midst of his
+trouble, felt an odd sense of outraged propriety. The smile, he
+reflected, was ill-timed--and he was sinking deeper.
+
+"What you grinning at?" he gasped. "Shoot, can't you?"
+
+"I coom pull you out," said the Frenchman, fumbling at the buckle of
+his belt, and he forthwith stepped into the water.
+
+He waded swiftly to within five feet of the sinking man, and flung
+him the end of the belt. Mills failed to catch it, and the Frenchman
+shifted his feet cautiously and flung again.
+
+"Now," he shouted as the trader gripped it, "catch 'old tight," and
+he started to drag him bodily forwards.
+
+"Careful," cried Mills; "you're sinking!"
+
+The Frenchman stepped free hastily, and strained on the belt again.
+Mills endeavored to kick with his entombed legs, and called a warning
+as his rescuer sunk in the sands. Thus they wrestled, and at length
+Mills found his head in the water and his body free.
+
+He rose, and they waded to the bank.
+
+"Of all the quicksands I ever saw," said the trader slowly, as he sat
+down and gazed at the place that had so nearly been his grave, "that
+one's the worst."
+
+"'Orrid," agreed the Frenchman, smiling amicably. "You was ver' near
+buried, eh?"
+
+"Yes," said the trader thoughtfully. "I suppose anyone 'ud say you
+saved my life, Frenchy."
+
+"Yea," replied the other.
+
+"Exactly," said Mills. "Well there's my hand for you, Frenchy. You
+done me a good turn. I'll do as much for you one of these days."
+
+"Eh?" said the Frenchman as he shook hands.
+
+"You've got a nasty habit of saying 'Eh?'" retorted the trader. "I
+said I'd do as much for you one of these days. Comprenny?"
+
+"Oh yais," smiled the Frenchman. "I think you will. Tha's all right."
+
+"Well," said Mills, "I wish you'd come up and see me at my kia. Sure
+you can't come now?"
+
+"Yais, I coom now," answered the other.
+
+Mills stared. "'Fraid you can't trust me to go alone, are you?" he
+queried. "'Cause, if so----"
+
+"Tha's all right," interrupted the Frenchman. "I coom now."
+
+"Right you are," said Mills heartily. "Come along then!"
+
+They strode off in the direction of the drift, Mills going
+thoughtfully, with an occasional glance at his companion. The
+Frenchman smiled perpetually, and once he laughed out.
+
+"What's the joke?" demanded the trader.
+
+"I think I do a good piece of business to-day," replied the
+Frenchman.
+
+"H'm, yes," continued Mills suspiciously.
+
+It was a longish uphill walk to the trader's store, and the night
+fell while they were yet on the way. With the darkness came a breeze,
+cool and refreshing; the sky filled with sharp points of light, and
+the bush woke with a new life. The crackle of their boots on the
+stiff grass as they walked sent live things scattering to left and
+right, and once a night-adder hissed malevolently at the Frenchman's
+heel. They talked little as they went, but Mills noticed that now and
+again his companion appeared to check a laugh. He experienced a
+feeling of vague indignation against the man who had saved his life;
+he was selfish in not sharing his point of view and the thoughts
+which amused him. At times reserve can be the most selfish thing
+imaginable, and one might as well be reticent on a desert island as
+in Manicaland. Moreover, despite the tolerant manners of the country,
+Mills was conscious of something unexplained in his companion--
+something which engendered a suspicion on general grounds.
+
+The circle of big dome-shaped huts which constituted the store of
+Last Notch came into view against a sky of dull velvet as they
+breasted the last rise. The indescribable homely smell of a wood-fire
+greeted the nostrils with the force of a spoken welcome. They could
+hear the gabble of the Kafirs at their supper and the noise of their
+shrill, empty laughter.
+
+"That's home," said Mills, breaking a long silence.
+
+"Yais," murmured the Frenchman; "'ome, eh? Yais. Ver' naice."
+
+"You may say what you like," continued the trader aggressively. "Home
+is something. Though never so 'umble, ye know, there's no place like
+home."
+
+"Tha's all right," assented the other gaily. "I know a man name'
+Albert Smith, an' 'e sing that in the jail at Beira. Sing all the
+night till I stop 'im with a broom. Yais."
+
+Mills grunted, and they entered the skoff kia--the largest of the
+huts, sacred to the uses of a dining-room. It contained two canvas
+chairs, a camp table, a variety of boxes to sit upon, and some
+picture-paper illustration on the mud wall. A candle in a bottle
+illuminated it, and a bird in the thatch overhead twittered volubly
+at their presence. Some tattered books lay in the corner.
+
+They washed in the open air, sluicing themselves from buckets, and
+dressed again in clean dungarees in another hut.
+
+"Skoff (food) 'll be ready by now," said Mills; "but I think a
+gargle's the first thing. You'll have whisky, or gin?"
+
+The Frenchman pronounced for whisky, and took it neat. Mills stared.
+
+"If I took off a dose like that," he observed, "I should be as drunk
+as an owl. You know how to shift it!"
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"Gimme patience," prayed the trader. "You bleat like a yowe. I said
+you can take it, the drink. Savvy? Wena poosa meningi sterrik. Have
+some more?"
+
+"Oh yais," smiled the guest. "Ver' good w'isky, eh?"
+
+He tossed off another four fingers of the liquor, and they sat down
+to their meal. The food was such as most tables in Manicaland
+offered. Everything was tinned, and the menu ran the gamut of edibles
+from roast capon (cold) to pate de foie gras in a pot. When they had
+finished Mills passed over his tobacco and sat back. He watched the
+other light up and blow a white cloud, and then spoke.
+
+"Look here, Frenchy," he said, looking at him steadily; "I don't
+quite cotton to you, and I think it proper you should say a bit more
+than you have said."
+
+"Eh!" queried the other, smiling.
+
+Mills glowered, but restrained himself. "I want to know who you are,
+and I guess I mean to know too, so out with it!"
+
+"Ah yais," replied the Frenchman, and removed his pipe from his
+mouth. He trimmed the bowl fastidiously with his thumb, smiling the
+while. Of a sudden he looked up, and the smile was gone. He gave
+Mills back a look as purposeful as his own.
+
+"I'm the man that save' you in the river," he said meaningly.
+
+"Well," began the trader hotly, but stopped.
+
+"That's true," he answered thoughtfully, as though speaking to
+himself. "Yes, that's true. You've got me, Frenchy."
+
+"Yais," went on the Frenchman, leaning forward across the table, and
+speaking with an emphasis that was like an insult. "You sink there in
+the sand. I stop and save you. I stop, you see, although the men from
+Macequece coom after me and want to kill me."
+
+"But I don' run away; I don' say to you, 'I can' stop. You go down;
+you die.' I don' say that. I stop. I save you. An' now you say to me,
+'Frenchy, 'oo the 'ell are you?' Yais."
+
+Mills shrugged protestingly. The appeal was to the core of his
+nature; the demand was one he could not dishonor.
+
+"I didn't say just that," he urged. "But what are the chaps from
+Macequece after you for?"
+
+"Tha's all right," replied the Frenchman with a wave of his hand.
+"You say, 'Frenchy, I don' like you. Dam' you, Frenchy!' Ver' well.
+The men coom, you give me to them. They shoot me. Tha's all right;
+yais!"
+
+He replaced his pipe and commenced again to smoke with an expression
+of weary indifference.
+
+"I'm not that sort," said Mills. "I'm open to admit I didn't quite
+take to you--at first. I can't say fairer than that. But tell me what
+you done to rile the chaps. Did you kill a bloke, or what?"
+
+"Jone Mills," said the Frenchman "Jone Mills shoot the Intendente at
+Mandega's. Kill 'im dead. Dead as pork. They don' chase Jone Mills.
+They don' wan' to shoot Jone Mills. No. Frenchy--po' ol' Frenchy--'e
+shoot a man in Macequece. Shoot 'im dead. Dead as pork. Then they
+all coom after 'im. Wan' to shoot 'im. An' po' ol' Frenchy, 'e stop
+to pull Jone Mills out of the river. 'E save Jone Mills. Jone squeak
+an' say, 'Shoot me quick befo' I choke.' But Frenchy stop an' pull
+'im out. Yais. An' then they shoot Frenchy. Yais!" He blew a huge
+volume of smoke and lay back serenely.
+
+"Look 'ere, Frenchy," cried Mills, stretching his hand across the
+table, "I'm in this. They won't catch you here, old son. Savvy?
+There's my hand for you."
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"There's my hand, I'm tellin' you. Shake hands, old son. You may be a
+hard case, but you did save my life, and it's up to me to see you
+through. We'll be able to call quits then."
+
+The Frenchman rose with a serious face, and the two shook hands over
+the candle. The Frenchman held Mills's hand a moment longer.
+
+"I know you," he said. "You do' know me. I trust you, Jone. I know
+yo' a good man."
+
+He sat back again, and Mills turned matters over. In that rough
+community no man would own himself devoid of gratitude. "I'll do as
+much for you" was the common acknowledgment of a favor. It appeared
+to Mills that his new acquaintance might be a precious scoundrel, but
+that point was not at present in issue, and there remained a debt to
+be satisfied before he could raise it. The knowledge that Frenchy had
+shot a man did not trouble him in the least, so long as the
+accompanying circumstances and the motive were in accordance with the
+simple standards of Manicaland. Here came in the doubt, engendered by
+nothing more concrete or citable than a trifle of mystery in the
+man's manner, and some undefined quality that disagreed with the
+trader. He glanced over to him; the Frenchman was blowing rings of
+smoke and smiling at them. There was nothing in his face but innocent
+and boyish amusement.
+
+"Gad, you're a cool hand!" exclaimed Mills. "How d'you reckon we
+better work it?"
+
+"I do' know," replied the other indifferently.
+
+"You don't, eh? Well, d'you think they'll follow you all night?"
+
+"I don' think," said the Frenchman, with confidence and a swelling of
+his chest--"I don' think they wan' to meet me in the night. Not ver'
+naice eh? Leetle dangerous."
+
+"H'm. You've got a bit of an opinion of yerself, anyhow. If that's
+all right, it'll be time enough to clear by daylight. Did you bolt
+just as you are--no niggers, no skoff, no anything?"
+
+"No time," was the answer. "So I coom out-with-out everything. Just
+like this."
+
+"I can get you a couple of niggers," mused Mills, "an' you'll want a
+gun. Then, with skoff for a fortnight, you ought to be up at the
+Mazoe before they find your spoor. What do you think?"
+
+"I think i's ver' naice," smiled the other.
+
+"Then we'll hamba lala" (go to sleep), said Mills rising. "I don't
+know how you feel, but I'm just done up."
+
+A bed was soon fixed for the Frenchman, who retired with a light-
+hearted "goo' night." Mills, keeping full in view his guest's awkward
+position, and the necessity for packing him off at daylight,
+determined not to sleep. He went out of the kraal and listened to the
+night. It spoke with a thousand voices; the great factory of days and
+nights was in full swing; but he caught no sound of human approach,
+and returned to the huts to prepare his guest's kit for the
+departure. He found and partially cleaned an old rifle, and unpacked
+a generous donation of cartridges. Meal for the carriers, blankets
+and tinned meats for the Frenchman, were all at hand. Candles, a
+lantern, matches, gin, a pannikin, a pair of pots, and so on, soon
+completed the outfit. Packing is generally an interesting operation,
+and Mills was an expert in it. He forgot most of his perplexity and
+ill-ease as he adjusted the bundles and measured the commodities. He
+had the whole of the gear spread out on the floor of the skoff kia
+when a voice accosted him.
+
+"You needn't bother no more, Jack," it said softly.
+
+A man tiptoed in. He was short and lightly built, and carried a
+sporting rifle in his hand. His reddish moustache was draggled with
+dew and his clothes were soaked in it. He looked at Mills with
+gleeful blue eyes.
+
+"Where's Frenchy?" he asked softly.
+
+Mills labored to express surprise. "What're you talkin' about?" he
+demanded loudly.
+
+"Don't shout, blast yer!" whispered the other vehemently. "We saw yer
+go up 'ere together, Jack, and nobody ain't gone away since. There's
+five of us, Jack, and we want that swine--we want 'im bad."
+
+"What for?" asked Mills desperately, without lowering his voice.
+
+The other made an impatient gesture for silence, but his words were
+arrested by a clamor in the yard. There were shouts and curses and
+the sound of blows.
+
+"We've got him, Charley," shouted some one triumphantly.
+
+The smaller man rushed out, and Mills followed swiftly. There was a
+blackness of moving forms in the open, and some one struck a match.
+The man called Charley stepped forward. Mills saw the face and hand
+of a man standing upright, brilliantly illuminated by the flame of
+the match; and on the ground three men, who knelt on and about a
+prostrate figure. One was busy with some cord. In the background
+stood Mills's Kafirs. The match burned down to the holder's fingers,
+and he dropped it.
+
+"Well, Dave," said Mills, "what's the meanin' o' this game o' yours--
+comin' to a man's kia in the middle o' the night and ropin' his mate
+out o' bed?"
+
+The man who had lit the match laughed. "That you, Jack?" he said.
+"Well, you wouldn't be so ready to call this bloke 'mate' if you knew
+what he'd been up to."
+
+"The--swine!" commented Charley.
+
+"Get a lantern," commanded Mills to the Kafirs. "What d'you mean?" he
+asked of the tall man.
+
+"He shot a woman," said Dave. The tone was eloquent of the speaker's
+rage and disgust.
+
+Mills stared open-mouthed. "A woman!" he gasped.
+
+"A woman," replied Dave. "Shot her, as bold as the devil, on the
+street, in the daytime, and did a bolt for the bush. Every man that
+could put foot to the ground is out after him."
+
+A kafir arrived then with the lantern Mills had designed for the
+Frenchman, and by its light he was able to see the faces of the men.
+They were all known to him. The man who was cording the prisoner's
+arms had seen his daring work at Mandega's. He knelt on the prostrate
+form as he worked, and the Frenchman's face showed like a waxen mask
+on the ground. Blood was running from a deep cut on his cheek.
+
+"I save yo' life, Jone," he gasped.
+
+"Shut up!" snapped one of the men, and struck him on the mouth.
+
+"Here," protested Mills; "go slow, can't you, There's no call to bang
+him about."
+
+They stared at him with astonishment. "Why, man," exclaimed Charley,
+"didn't we tell you he shot a woman?"
+
+"What's that he said about savin' your life?" demanded Dave.
+
+"He did," explained Mills. He told them the story, and they listened
+without sympathy.
+
+"It was a bloomin' plucky thing to do," concluded the trader. "I'd
+ha' bin dead by now but for him, and I owe 'im one for it."
+
+"Oh, nobody's sayin' he isn't plucky," said the man who had 'been
+tying the Frenchman's arms, as he rose to his feet. "He's the dare-
+devillist swine alive, but he's done with it now."
+
+Dave came round and clapped Mills on the shoulder.
+
+"It's worked you a bit soft, old man," he said. "Why, hang it all,
+you wouldn't have us let him go after shooting a woman, would you?"
+
+"Oh! stow it," broke in one of the others. "If it wasn't that 'e's
+got to go back to Macequece to be shot, I'd blow his head off now."
+
+"I'm not asking you to let him go," cried Mills. "But give the bloke
+a chance, give 'im a run for it. Why, I wouldn't kill a dog so; it's
+awful--an'--an'--he saved my life, chaps; he saved my life."
+
+"But he shot a woman," said Charley.
+
+That closed the case--the man had committed the ultimate crime.
+Nothing could avail him now. He had shot a woman--he must suffer.
+
+"Jone," moaned the Frenchman--the cords were eating into his flesh--
+"Jone, I saved yo' life."
+
+"Why couldn't you tell me?" cried Mills passionately; "why couldn't
+you trust me? I could ha' got you away."
+
+"That'll do," interrupted Dave, thrusting Mills aside. "We'll trouble
+you for a drink and a bite, old boy, an' then we'll start back."
+
+Mills led the way to the skoff kia in silence. There was food and
+drink still on the table, and the men sat down to it at once. The
+Frenchman lay in the middle of the kraal, bound; his captors' weapons
+lay at their feet. He was as effectually a prisoner as if their five
+barrels were covering him. Mills stood moodily watching the men eat,
+his brain drumming on the anguished problem of the Frenchman's life
+or death without effort or volition on his part.
+
+"Got any more poosa, old boy?" asked Dave, setting down the whisky-
+bottle empty.
+
+"Yes," said Mills thoughtfully. "Plenty." He shouted for a boy, and
+one came running.
+
+"Go to the store-hut," ordered Mills slowly, "and bring a bottle of
+whisky." He spoke the "kitchen-Kafir" that every one in Manicaland
+understands.
+
+"Yes, bass," said the native.
+
+"But first," said Mills, still speaking slowly and quietly, "take a
+knife and cut loose the man on the ground. Quick!" The last word was
+a shout.
+
+Dave sprang to his feet and stood motionless. The others were
+arrested in the action of rising or reaching their weapons. From the
+wall beside him Mills had reached a revolver and held them covered.
+The barrel moved over them, presenting its black threatful mouth to
+one after the other. It moved in jerks, but not without purpose. It
+held them all subject, and the first movement doomed.
+
+"Jack!" cried Dave.
+
+"Shut up!" commanded Mills. "Don't move now. For God's sake don't
+move. I'll shoot the first one that does."
+
+"He shot a woman," they protested.
+
+"He saved my life," said Mills. "Are you'all right, Frenchy?"
+
+"Yais," came the answer, and with it the ghost of a laugh.
+
+Mills did not look round, and the steady remorseless barrel still
+sailed to and fro across the faces of the men in the hut.
+
+"Clear out, then," he shouted. "I'll only give you five minutes. You
+shot a woman. And, Frenchy----"
+
+"Yais, Jone."
+
+"This makes us quits, see?"
+
+"Ver' good, Jone. Good-bye."
+
+"Good-bye, Frenchy."
+
+Dave ripped out a curse and shifted slightly. The barrel sprang round
+to him, and he froze into stillness.
+
+"Don't do that again, Davy," warned Mills.
+
+"You'll catch it hot for this," snarled one of them.
+
+"Very like," replied the trader.
+
+He counted a liberal five minutes by guess. He dared not look away
+from his men. At last he spoke.
+
+"It was up to me, boys," he said with a sigh. "I couldn't do no less.
+If it 'ad been a man 'e shot I'd ha' kept you here all day. But I've
+done enough, I reckon, seein' it was a woman."
+
+He dropped the revolver to the ground.
+
+"Now!" he said.
+
+They sat round and stared at him. For full a minute no one spoke.
+Mills gave them back their eyes gloomily, leaning with folded arms
+against the wall. Then Dave drew a long breath, a very sigh.
+
+"Well, Jack," he said, shaking his head, "I didn't think it of you--I
+didn't indeed. A skunk like that! a woman-shooter, and a Frenchman!
+You didn't use to be like this."
+
+"We're quits now, him and me," answered Mills. "He saved my life, and
+I'm satisfied. So if you've got anything to say--or do--then get it
+over."
+
+Charley burst out at this in a fuss of anger. "You ought to be shot,"
+he shouted. "That's all you're fit for."
+
+"Charley's right," growled one of the others.
+
+"Oh, cut it off," cried Dave impatiently; "we're not going to shoot
+Jack. But I guess we won't say we've lost the Frenchman yet."
+
+He lowered his brows and turned his eyes on Mills.
+
+"You an' him's quits, Jack," he said. "What do you think about it?"
+
+Mills looked up slowly, like a man newly awaked from a dream.
+
+"You might get a shot at him from the path," he answered musingly.
+"That is, if he's keeping north. I'll show you the place."
+
+"You don't think we'd have a chance of catching him?"
+
+"Not a ghost," replied the trader decisively. "Once you get into the
+kloof, he's lost. All you can do is wait till he breaks cover down
+below, an' try a long shot. By God!" he cried with sudden energy,
+"I'll try a lick at him myself. We're quits now, the--the woman-
+shooter!"
+
+He snatched a rifle and led the way, the others tumbling after him.
+Some hundred yards beyond the kraal the footpath dipped abruptly
+towards the valley, and at an angle of it there was to be gained a
+clear view of the bush beneath, where it surged at the foot of the
+hill and ran down the kloof; at the lower part of the kloof it
+ceased, and the ground was bare red earth for a space of some
+thousand yards. Mills sat down on a stone. Dave squatted beside him,
+and the others grouped themselves on adjacent boulders.
+
+The sun was well into the sky by now--it was about six o'clock in the
+morning. The air was of diamond, and the chill of the night had
+already passed. The men glued their eyes on the bare patch and
+waited.
+
+"Funny game you played up there," whispered Dave to the trader.
+
+Mills nodded without speaking.
+
+"I'm not blaming you," continued the other. "I reckon I understand,
+old boy. But are you goin' to shoot at him?"
+
+"I am that," was the reply.
+
+"Well, I hope you get him," said Dave. "The chaps'll forget the other
+business then. They didn't like it, you know--nobody would."
+
+"It's not because I care for them or what they think----" began
+Mills.
+
+"I know it's not," interrupted Dave. "You know all the ranges, I
+suppose?"
+
+"Nine hundred yards to that black spot," said Mills. "The spot's a
+bit of a hole in the ground. Twelve hundred to the big boulder."
+
+He rose off the stone he was sitting on and lay down on the path,
+belly under, and ran up the back sight of his rifle with care.
+Flinging back the bolt, he blew into the chamber and thrust a
+cartridge in; tested the air with a wet finger, and wriggled the butt
+home into his shoulder. Dave watched him in silence; Mills was, he
+knew, a good shot, and he was now preparing, with all the little
+tricks and graces of the rifle-range, to pull trigger on the man he
+had risked--nay, almost thrown away--his life to save from the
+consequences of an unspeakable crime.
+
+"Ah!" breathed Mills, with an artist's luxurious satisfaction.
+
+Down the valley a figure had broken from the bush, and was plainly to
+be seen against the red ground. The men on the hill flopped down and
+prepared to shoot.
+
+"Don't fire," Dave warned the others. He was watching Mills. The
+trader's face bore no signs of his recent mental struggle. It carried
+no expression whatever, save one of cool interest, just touched with
+a craftsman's confidence. His barrel was steady as his head. The
+little figure below was moving over the rough ground towards the
+black spot. They could see its legs working grotesquely, like a
+mechanical toy.
+
+"So," murmured Mills. "Now just a little farther. So!"
+
+He fired.
+
+There was no leap into the air, no tragic bound and sprawling tumble.
+The little figure in the valley fell where it was, and never moved.
+
+Mills jerked open his breech.
+
+"I'll bet that took him in the spine," he said.
+
+
+
+IV
+
+THE MURDERER
+
+ From the open door of the galley, where the cross, sleepy cook was
+coaxing his stove to burn, a path of light lay across the deck,
+showing a slice of steel bulwark with ropes coiled on the pins, and
+above it the arched foot of the mainsail. In the darkness forward,
+where the port watch of the Villingen was beginning the sea day by
+washing down decks, the brooms swished briskly and the head-pump
+clacked like a great, clumsy clock.
+
+The men worked in silence, though the mate was aft on the poop, and
+nothing prevented them from talking as they passed the buckets to and
+from the tub under the pump and drove their brooms along the planks.
+They labored with the haste of men accustomed to be driven hard, with
+the shuffling, involuntary speed that has nothing in it of free
+strength or good-will. The big German four-master had gathered from
+the boarding-houses of Philadelphia a crew representing all the
+nationalities which breed sailors, and carried officers skilled in
+the crude arts of getting the utmost out of it. And since the lingua
+franca of the sea, the tongue which has meaning for Swedish
+carpenters, Finn sail-makers, and Greek fo'c's'le hands alike, is not
+German, orders aboard the Villingen were given and understood in
+English.
+
+"A hand com' aft here!"
+
+It was the mate's voice from the poop, robust and peremptory. Conroy,
+one of the two Englishmen in the port watch, laid down the bucket he
+was carrying and moved aft in obedience to the summons. As he trod
+into the slip of light by the galley door he was visible as a fair
+youth, long-limbed and slender, clad in a serge shirt, with dungaree
+trousers rolled up to the knees, and girt with a belt which carried
+the usual sheath-knife. His pleasant face had a hint of uncertainty;
+it was conciliatory and amiable; he was an able seaman of the kind
+which is manufactured by a boarding-master short of men out of a
+runaway apprentice. The others, glancing after him while they
+continued their work, saw him suddenly clear by the galley door,
+then dim again as he stepped beyond it. He passed out of sight
+towards the lee poop ladder.
+
+The silent, hurried sailors pressed on with their work, while the big
+barque purred through the water to the drone of wind thrusting in the
+canvas. The brooms were abaft of the galley when the outcry began
+which caused them to look apprehensively towards the poop without
+ceasing their business of washing down. First it was an oath in
+explosive German, the tongue which puts a cutting-edge on profanity;
+then the mate's roar:
+
+"Is dat vat I tell you, you verfluchter fool? Vat? Vat? You don't
+understand ven I speak? I show you vat----"
+
+The men who looked up were on the wrong side of the deck to make out
+what was happening, for the chart-house screened the drama from
+them. But they knew too well the meaning of that instantaneous
+silence which cut the words off. It was the mate biting in his breath
+as he struck. They heard the smack of the fist's impact and Conroy's
+faint, angry cry as he failed to guard it; then the mate again, bull-
+mouthed, lustful for cruelty: "Vat--you lift up your arm to me! You
+dog!" More blows, a rain of them, and then a noise as though Conroy
+had fallen or been knocked down. And after that a thud and a scream.
+
+The men looked at one another, and nods passed among them. "He kicked
+him when he was down on the deck," the whisper went. The other
+Englishman in the watch swore in a low grunt and dropped his broom,
+meeting the wondering eyes of the "Dutchmen" and "Dagoes" with a
+scowl. He was white-haired and red-faced, a veteran among the nomads
+of the sea, the oldest man aboard, and the only one in the port watch
+who had not felt the weight of the mate's fist. Scowling still, as
+though in deep thought, he moved towards the ladder. The forlorn hope
+was going on a desperate enterprise of rescue.
+
+It might have been an ugly business; there was a sense in the minds
+of his fellows of something sickening about to happen; but the mate
+had finished with Conroy. The youth came staggering and crying down
+the ladder, with tears and blood befouling his face, and stumbled as
+his foot touched the deck. The older man, Slade, saved him from
+falling, and held him by the upper arm with one gnarled, toil-
+roughened hand, peering at him through the early morning gloom.
+
+"Kicked you when you was down, didn't he?" he demanded abruptly.
+
+"Yes," blubbered Conroy, shivering and dabbing at his face. "With his
+sea-boots, too, the--the----"
+
+Slade shook him. "Don't make that noise or he might kick you spine
+more," he advised grimly. "You better go now an' swab that blood off
+your face."
+
+"Yes," agreed Conroy tremulously, and Slade let him go.
+
+The elder man watched him move forward on shambling and uncertain
+feet, with one hand pressed to his flank, where the mate's kick was
+still an agony. Slade was frowning heavily, with a tincture of
+thought in his manner, as though he halted on the brink of some
+purpose.
+
+"Conroy," he breathed, and started after the other.
+
+The younger man turned. Slade again put his hand on Conroy's arm.
+
+"Say," he said, breathing short, "is that a knife in your belt?"
+
+Conroy felt behind him, uncomprehending, for the sheath-knife, which
+he wore, sailor fashion, in the middle of his back.
+
+"What d'you mean?" he asked vacantly. "Here's my knife."
+
+He drew it and showed it to Slade, the flat blade displayed in his
+palm.
+
+The white-haired seaman thrust his keen old face toward Conroy's, so
+that the other could see the flash of the white of his eyes.
+
+"And he kicked you, didn't he?" said Slade tensely. "You fool!"
+
+He struck the knife to the deck, where it rattled and slid toward the
+scupper.
+
+"Eh?" Conroy gaped, not understanding. "I don't see what----"
+
+"Pick it up!" said Slade, with a gesture toward the knife. He spoke,
+as though he strangled an impulse to brandish his fists and scream,
+in a nasal whisper. "It's safe to kick you," he said. "A woman
+could do it."
+
+"But----" Conroy flustered vaguely.
+
+Slade drove him off with a wave of his arm and turned away with the
+abruptness of a man disgusted beyond bearing.
+
+Conroy stared after him and saw him pick up his broom where he had
+dropped it and join the others. His intelligence limped; his
+thrashing had stunned him, and he could not think--he could only
+feel, like fire in his mind, the passion of the feeble soul resenting
+injustice and pain which it cannot resist or avenge. He stooped to
+pick up his knife and went forward to the tub under the head-pump, to
+wash his cuts in cold sea-water, the cheap balm for so many wrongs of
+cheap humanity.
+
+It was an accident such as might serve to dedicate the day to the
+service of the owners of the Villingen. It was early and sudden; but,
+save in these respects, it had no character of the unusual. The men
+who plied the brooms and carried the buckets were not shocked or
+startled by it so much as stimulated; it thrust under their noses the
+always imminent danger of failing to satisfy the mate's ideal of
+seaman-like efficiency. They woke to a fresher energy, a more
+desperate haste, under its suggestion.
+
+It was after the coffee interval, which mitigates the sourness of the
+morning watch, when daylight had brought its chill, grey light to the
+wide, wet decks, that the mate came forward to superintend the "pull
+all round," which is the ritual sequel to washing down.
+
+"Lee fore-brace, dere!" his flat, voluminous voice ordered, heavy
+with the man's potent and dreaded personality. They flocked to obey,
+scurrying like scared rats, glancing at him in timid hate. He came
+striding along the weather side of the deck from the remote, august
+poop; he was like a dreadful god making a dreadful visitation upon
+his faithful. Short-legged, tending to bigness in the belly, bearded,
+vibrant with animal force and personal power, his mere presence cowed
+them. His gross face, the happy face of an egoist with a sound
+digestion, sent its lofty and sure regard over them; it had a kind of
+unconsciousness of their sense of humility, of their wrong and
+resentment--the innocence of an aloof and distant tyrant, who has not
+dreamed how hurt flesh quivers and seared minds rankle. He was bland
+and terrible; and they hated him after their several manners, some
+with dull tear, one or two--and Slade among them--with a ferocity
+that moved them like physical nausea.
+
+He had left his coat on the wheel-box to go to his work, and was
+manifestly unarmed. The belief which had currency in the forecastle,
+that he came on watch with a revolver in his coat-pocket, did not
+apply to him now; they could have seized him, smitten him on his
+blaspheming mouth, and hove him over the side without peril. It is a
+thing that has happened to a hated officer more than once or ten
+times, and a lie, solemnly sworn to by every man of the watch on
+deck, has been entered in the log, and closed the matter for all
+hands. He was barer of defense than they, for they had their sheath-
+knives; and he stood by the weather-braces, arrogant, tyrannical,
+overbearing, and commanded them. He seemed invulnerable, a thing too
+great to strike or defy, like the white squalls that swooped from the
+horizon and made of the vast Villingen a victim and a plaything. His
+full, boastful eye traveled over them absently, and they cringed like
+slaves.
+
+"Belay, dere!" came his orders, overloud and galling to men surging
+with cowardly and insufferable haste. "Lower tobsail--haul! Belay!
+Ubber tobsail--haul, you sons of dogs! Haul, dere, blast you! You
+vant me to come over and show you?"
+
+Servilely, desperately, they obeyed him, spending their utmost
+strength to placate him, while the naked spirit of murder moved in
+every heart among them. At the tail of the brace, Conroy, with his
+cuts stanched, pulled with them. His abject eyes, showing the white
+in sidelong glances, watched the great, squat figure of the mate with
+a fearful fascination.
+
+Eight bells came at last, signaling the release of the port watch
+from the deck and the tension of the officer's presence. The
+forecastle received them, the stronghold of their brief and limited
+leisure. The unkempt, weather-stained men, to whom the shifting seas
+were the sole arena of their lives, sat about on chests and on the
+edges of the lower bunks, at their breakfast, while the pale sunlight
+traveled to and fro on the deck as the Villingen lurched in her gait.
+Conroy, haggard and drawn, let the coffee slop over the brim of his
+hook-pot as he found himself a seat.
+
+"Well, an' what did he punch ye for this time?"
+
+It was old Slade who put the question, seated on a chest with his
+back against the bulkhead. His pot was balanced on his knee, and his
+venerable, sardonic face, with the scanty white hair clinging about
+the temples, addressed Conroy with slow mockery.
+
+Conroy hesitated. "It was over coilin' away some gear," he said.
+Slade waited, and he had to go on. He had misunderstood the mate's
+order to coil the ropes on the pins, where they would be out of the
+way of the deck-washing, and he had flemished them down on the poop
+instead. It was the mistake of a fool, and he knew it.
+
+Slade nodded. "Ye-es," he drawled. "You earned a punch an' you got
+it. But he kicked you, too, didn't he?"
+
+"Kicked me!" cried Conroy. "Why, I thought he was goin' to kill me!
+Look here--look at this, will you?"
+
+With fumbling hands he cast loose his belt and flung it on the floor,
+and plucked his shirt up so as to leave his side bare. He stood up,
+with one arm raised above his head, showing his naked flank to the
+slow eyes of his shipmates. His body had still a boyish delicacy and
+slenderness; the labor of his trade had not yet built it and
+thickened it to a full masculinity of proportion. Measured by any of
+the other men in the watch, it was frail, immature, and tender. The
+moving sunlight that flowed around the door touched the fair skin and
+showed the great, puffed bruises that stood on it, swollen and
+horrid, like some vampire fungus growing on the clean flesh.
+
+A great Greek, all black hair and eyeball, clicked softly between his
+teeth.
+
+"It looks like--a hell!" he said softly, in his purring voice.
+
+"Dem is kicks, all right--ja!" said some one else, and yet another
+added the comment of a heavy oath.
+
+Old Slade made no comment, but sat, balancing his hook-pot of coffee
+and watching the scene under his heavy white brows. Conroy lowered
+his arm and let the shirt fall to cover the bruises.
+
+"You see?" he said to Slade.
+
+"I see," answered the other, with a bitter twist of his old,
+malicious lips. Setting down the pot which he held, he stooped and
+lifted the belt which Conroy had thrown down. It seemed to interest
+him, for he looked at it for some moments.
+
+"And here's yer knife," he said, reaching it to the youth, still with
+his manner of mockery. "There's some men it wouldn't be safe to
+kick, with a knife in their belts."
+
+He and Conroy were the only Englishmen there; the rest were of the
+races which do not fight bare-handed. The big Greek flashed a smile
+through the black, shining curls of his beard, and continued to smile
+without speaking. Through the tangle of incomprehensible conventions,
+he had arrived at last at a familiar principle.
+
+Conroy flushed hotly, the blood rising hectic on his bruised and
+broken face.
+
+"If he thinks it's safe with me," he cried, "he'll learn different. I
+didn't have a chance aft there; he came on me too quick, before I was
+expecting him, and it was dark, besides. Or else----"
+
+"It'll be dark again," said Slade, with intent, significant eyes
+fixed on him, "and he needn't be expecting you. But--it don't do to
+talk too much. Talk's easy--talk is."
+
+"I'll do more than talk," responded Conroy. "You'll see!"
+
+Slade nodded. "Right, then; we'll see," he said, and returned to his
+breakfast.
+
+His bunk was an upper one, lighted and aired by a brass-framed port-
+hole. Here, when his meal was at an end, he lay, his pipe in his
+mouth, his hands behind his head, smoking with slow relish, with his
+wry old face upturned, and the leathery, muscular forearms showing
+below the rolled shirt-sleeves. His years had ground him to an edge;
+he had an effect, as he lay, of fineness, of subtlety, of keen and
+fastidious temper. Forty years of subjection to arbitrary masters had
+left him shrewd and secret, a Machiavelli of the forecastle.
+
+Once Conroy, after seeming to sleep for an hour, rose on his elbow
+and stared across at him, craning his neck from his bunk to see the
+still mask of his face.
+
+"Slade?" he said uncertainly.
+
+"What?" demanded the other, unmoving.
+
+Conroy hesitated. The forecastle was hushed; the seamen about them
+slumbered; the only noises were the soothing of the water overside,
+the stress of the sails and gear, and the irregular tap of a hammer
+aft. It was safe to speak, but he did not speak.
+
+"Oh, nothing," he said, and lay down again. Slade smiled slowly,
+almost paternally.
+
+It took less than eight hours for Conroy's rancor to wear dull, and
+he could easily have forgotten his threat against the mate in twelve,
+if only he had been allowed to. He was genuinely shocked when he
+found that his vaporings were taken as the utterance of a serious
+determination. Just before eight bells in the afternoon watch he went
+forward beneath the forecastle head in search of some rope-yarns, and
+was cutting an end off a bit of waste-line when the Greek, he of the
+curly beard and extravagant eyeballs, rose like a demon of pantomime
+from the forepeak. Conroy had his knife in his hand to cut the rope,
+and the Greek's sudden smile seemed to rest on that and nothing else.
+
+"Sharp, eh!" asked the Greek, in a whisper that filled the place with
+dark drama.
+
+Conroy paused, apprehending his meaning with a start.
+
+"Oh, it's all right," he growled, and began to saw at the rope in his
+hand, while the Greek watched him with his fixed, bony smile.
+
+"No," said the latter suddenly. "Dat-a not sharp--no! Look-a 'ere;
+you see dis?"
+
+He drew his own knife, and showed it pointing towards Conroy in a
+damp, swarthy hand, whose knuckles bulged above the haft. His rough,
+spatulate thumb rasped along it, drawing from it the crepitation that
+proves an acute edge.
+
+"Carve him like-a da pork," he said, in his stage-conspirator's
+whisper. "And da point--now, see!"
+
+He glanced over his shoulder to be sure that none overlooked them;
+then, with no more than a jerk of his hand beside his hip, threw the
+keen blade toward the wooden door of the bo'sun's locker. It traveled
+through the air swiftly and stuck, quivering on its thin point, in
+the stout teak. The Greek turned his smile again for a moment on
+Conroy before he strode across and recovered it.
+
+"You take 'im," he whispered. "Better dan your little knife--yais."
+
+By the mere urgency of his proffering it the exchange was made, and
+Conroy found himself with a knife in his hand that fell through the
+strands of the manila line as though they had been butter, an
+instrument made and perfected for a murder.
+
+"Yes, but look here----" he began, in alarm.
+
+The broad, mirthless smile was turned on him.
+
+"Just like-a da pork," purred the Greek, and nodded assuringly before
+he turned to go aft.
+
+The bull-roar of the mate, who was awaiting his return with the rope-
+yarns, roused Conroy from a scared reverie over the knife. He
+started; the mate was bustling furiously forward in search of him,
+full of uproar and anger.
+
+"Dam' lazy schwein, you goin' to schleep dere? You vant me to come
+an' fetch you?? You vant anodder schmack on de maul to keep you
+avake--yes?"
+
+He stamped into view round the forward house, while Conroy stood,
+convicted of idleness by the rope in his hand only half cut through.
+At the same moment a population of faces came into being behind him.
+A man who had been aloft shuffled down to the rail; a couple of
+others came into view on the deck; on top of the house, old Slade
+kneeled to see under the break of the forecastle head. It seemed as
+though a skeptical audience had suddenly been created out of his
+boast of the morning, every face threatening him with that shame
+which vanity will die rather than endure. In a panic of his faculties
+he took one step toward the mate.
+
+"Hey?" The mate halted in his stride, with sheer amazement written on
+his face. "You vant yer head knocked off--yes?"
+
+"No, I don't," said Conroy, out of a dry mouth.
+
+According to the usage of ships, even that was defiance and a
+challenge.
+
+He had forgotten the revolver with which the mate was credited; he
+had forgotten everything but the fact that eyes were on him. Even the
+knife in his hand passed from his mind; he was a mere tingling
+pretence at fortitude, expending every force to maintain his pose.
+
+"Put dat knife avay!" ordered the mate suddenly.
+
+He arrested an automatic movement to obey, fighting down a growing
+fear of his opponent.
+
+"I've not finished with it yet," he answered.
+
+The mate measured him with a practiced eye. Though he had the crazy
+courage of a bulldog, he was too much an expert in warlike
+emergencies to overlook the risk of trying to rush a desperate man
+armed with a knife, the chances of the grapple were too ugly. There
+was something lunatic and strange in the youth's glare also; and it
+will sometimes happen that an oppressed and cowed man in his
+extremity will shrug his meekness from him and become, in a breath, a
+desperado. This had its place in the mate's considerations.
+
+"Finish, den!" he rasped, with no weakening of his tone or manner.
+"You don't t'ink I'm goin' to vait all night for dem rope-yarns--
+hey?"
+
+He turned his back at once lest Conroy should venture another retort,
+and make an immediate fight unavoidable. Before his eye the silent
+audience melted as swiftly as it had appeared, and Conroy was alone
+with his sick sense of having ventured too far, which stood him in
+place of the thrill of victory.
+
+The thrill came later, in the forecastle, where he swelled to the
+adulation of his mates. They, at any rate, had been deceived by his
+attitude; they praised him by word and look; the big Greek infused a
+certain geniality into his smile. Only Slade said the wrong thing.
+
+"I was ready for him as soon as he moved," Conroy was asserting. "And
+he knew it. You should ha' seen how he gaped when I wouldn't put the
+knife away."
+
+The men were listening, crediting him. Old Slade, in the background,
+took his pipe from his lips.
+
+"An' now I suppose you're satisfied," he inquired harshly.
+
+"How d'you mean, satisfied?" demanded Conroy, coloring. "You saw what
+happened, didn't you?"
+
+"You made him gape," said Slade. "That was because he made you howl,
+eh? Well, ain't you calling it quits, then--till the next time he
+kicks you?"
+
+Some one laughed; Conroy raised his voice.
+
+"He'll never kick me again," he cried. "His kicking days are over.
+He's kicked me once too often, he has. Quits--I guess not!"
+
+Slade let a mouthful of smoke trickle between his lips; it swam in
+front of his face in a tenuous film of pale vapor.
+
+"Well, talkin' won't do it, anyhow," he said.
+
+"No," retorted Conroy, and collected all eyes to his gesture. "But
+this will!"
+
+He showed them the thin-bladed knife which the Greek had given him,
+holding it before them by the hilt. He let a dramatic moment elapse.
+
+"Like that!" he said, and stabbed at the air. "Like that--see? Like
+that!"
+
+They came upon bad weather gradually, drawing into a belt of half-
+gales, with squalls that roared up from the horizon and made them for
+the time, into whole gales. The Villingen, designed and built
+primarily for cargo capacity, was a wet ship, and upon any point of
+sailing had a way of scooping in water by the many tons. In nearly
+every watch came the roar, "Stand by yer to'gallant halliards!" Then
+the wait for ten seconds or ten minutes while the wind grew and the
+big four-masted barque lay over and bumped her bluff bows through
+racing seas, till the next order, shriller and more urgent, "Lower
+avay!" and the stiff canvas fought and slatted as the yards came
+down. Sea-boots and oilskins were the wear for every watch; wet decks
+and the crash of water coming inboard over the rail, dull cold and
+the rasp of heavy, sodden canvas on numb fingers, became again
+familiar to the men, and at last there arrived the evening, gravid
+with tempest, on which all hands reefed top-sails.
+
+The mate had the middle watch, from midnight till four o'clock in the
+morning, and for the first two hours it was Conroy's turn on the
+lookout. The rest, in oilskins and sea-boots, were standing by under
+the break of the poop; save for the sleeping men in the shut
+forecastle, he had the fore part of the ship to himself. He leaned
+against the after rail of the fore-castle head, where a ventilator
+somewhat screened him from the bitter wind that blew out of the dark,
+and gazed ahead at the murk. Now and again the big barque slid
+forward with a curtseying motion, and dipped up a sea that flowed aft
+over the anchors and cascaded down the ladders to the main-deck;
+spray that spouted aloft' and drove across on the wind, sparkled red
+and green in the glare of the sidelights like brief fireworks.
+
+The splash and drum of waters, the heavy drone of the wind in the
+sails, the clatter of gear aloft, were in his ears; he did not hear
+one bell strike from the poop, which he should have answered with a
+stroke on the big bell behind him and a shouted report on the lights.
+
+"Hoy! You schleepin' up dere--hey?"
+
+It was the mate, who had come forward in person to see why he had not
+answered. He was by the fore fife-rail, a mere black shape in the
+dark.
+
+"Sleepin'--no, sir!"
+
+"Don't you hear yon bell shtrike?" cried the mate, slithering on the
+wet deck toward the foot of the ladder.
+
+"No, sir," said Conroy, and stooped to strike the bell.
+
+The mate came up the ladder, hauling himself by the hand-rails, for
+he was swollen beyond the ordinary with extra clothes under his long
+oilskin coat. A plume of spray whipped him in the face as he got to
+the top, and he swore shortly, wiping his eyes with his hands. At the
+same moment, Conroy, still stooping to the bell-lanyard, felt the
+Villingen lower her nose and slide down in one of her disconcerting
+curtseys; he caught at the rail to steady himself. The dark water,
+marbled with white foam, rode in over the deck, slid across the
+anchors and about the capstan, and came aft toward the ladder and the
+mate. The ship rolled at the same moment.
+
+Conroy saw what happened as a grotesque trick of circumstance. The
+mate, as the deck slanted, slipped and reached for the hand-rail with
+an ejaculation. The water flowed about his knees; he fell back
+against the hand-rail, which was just high enough for him to sit on.
+lit was what, for one ridiculous moment, he seemed to be doing. The
+next, his booted feet swayed up and he fell over backward, amid the
+confusion of splashing water that leaped down the main-deck. Conroy
+heard him strike something below with a queer, smacking noise.
+
+"Pity he didn't go overboard while he was about it," he said to
+himself, acting out his role. Really, he was rather startled and
+dismayed.
+
+He found the mate coiled in the scupper, very wet and still. He took
+hold of him to draw him under the forecastle head, where he would
+have shelter, and was alarmed at the inertness of the body under his
+hands.
+
+"Sir!" he cried, "sir!-sir!"
+
+He shook the great shoulders, bat quickly desisted; there was
+something horrible, something that touched his nerves, in its
+irresponsiveness. He remembered that he might probably find matches
+in the lamp-locker, and staggered there to search. He had to grope
+in gross darkness about the place, touching brass and the uncanny
+smoothness of glass, before his hand fell on what he sought. At last
+he was on one knee by the mate's side, and a match shed its little
+illumination. The mate's face was odd in its quietude, and the sou'-
+wester of oilskin was still on his head, held there by the string
+under the chin. From under its edge blood flowed steadily, thickly,
+appallingly.
+
+"But----" cried Conroy. The match-flame stung his fingers and he
+dropped it. "Oh Lord!" he said. It occurred to him then, for the
+first time, that the mate was dead.
+
+The men aft, bunched up under the break of the poop, were aware of
+him as a figure that came sliding and tottering toward them and fell
+sprawling at the foot of the poop ladder. He floundered up and
+clutched the nearest of them, the Greek.
+
+"The mate's dead," he broke out, in a kind of breathless squeal.
+"Somebody call the captain; the mate's dead."
+
+There was a moment of silence; then a cackle of words from several of
+them together. The Greek's hands on his shoulders tightened. He heard
+the man's purring voice in his ear.
+
+"How did you do it?"
+
+Conroy thrust himself loose; the skies of his mind were split by a
+frightful lightning flash of understanding. He had been alone with
+the mate; he had seen him die; he was sworn to kill him. He could see
+the livid smile of the Greek bent upon him.
+
+"I didn't do it," he choked passionately, and struck with a wild,
+feeble hand at the smile. "You liar--I didn't do it."
+
+"Hush!" The Greek caught him again and held him.
+
+Some of the men had started forward; others had slipped into the
+alleyway to rouse the second mate and captain. The Greek had him
+clutched to his bosom in a strong embrace and was hushing him as one
+might hush a scared child. Slade was at his side.
+
+"He slipped, I tell you; he slipped at the top of the ladder. She'd
+shipped a dollop of water and then rolled, and over he went. I heard
+his head go smack and went down to him. I never touched him. I swear
+it--I never touched him."
+
+"Hush!" It was Slade this time. "And yer sure he's dead. Well----"
+the old man exchanged nods with the Greek. "All right. Only--don't
+tell the captain that tale; it ain't good enough."
+
+"But----" began Conroy. A hug that crushed his face against the
+Greek's oilskin breast silenced him.
+
+"Vat is all dis?"
+
+It was the captain, tall, august, come full-dressed from his cabin.
+At his back the second mate, with his oilskin coat over his pajamas,
+thrust forward his red, cheerful face.
+
+Slade told the matter briefly. "And it's scared young Conroy all to
+bits, sir," he concluded.
+
+"Come for'ard," bade the captain. "Get a lamp, some vun!"
+
+They followed him along the wet, slippery deck slowly, letting him
+pass ahead out of earshot.
+
+"It was a belayin'-pin, ye'es?" queried the Greek softly of Conroy.
+
+"He might have hit his head against a pin," replied Conroy.
+
+"Eh?" The Greek stopped. "Might 'ave--might 'ave 'it 'is 'ead? Ah,
+dat is fine! 'E might 'ave 'it 'is 'ead, Slade! You 'ear dat?"
+
+"Yes, it ain't bad!" replied Slade, and Conroy, staring in a wild
+attempt to see their faces clearly, realized that they were laughing,
+laughing silently and heartily. With a gesture of despair he left
+them.
+
+A globe-lamp under the forecastle head lighted the captain's
+investigations, gleaming on wet oilskins, shadow-pitted faces, and
+the curious, remote thing that had been the mate of the Villingen.
+Its ampler light revealed much that the match-flame had missed from
+its field--the manner in which the sou'wester and the head it covered
+were caved in at one side, the cut in the sou'wester through which
+clotted hair protruded, the whole ghastliness of death that comes by
+violence. With all that under his eyes, Conroy had to give his
+account of the affair, while the ring of silent, hard-breathing men
+watched him and marvelled at the clumsiness of his story.
+
+"It is strange," said the captain. "Fell over backwards, you said. It
+is very strange! And vere did you find de body?"
+
+The scupper and deck had been washed clean by successive seas; there
+was no trace there of blood, and none on the rail. Even while they
+searched, water spouted down on them. But what Conroy noted was that
+no pin stood in the rail where the mate had fallen, and the hole that
+might have held one was empty.
+
+"Ah, veil!" said the captain at last. "De poor fellow is dead. I do
+not understand, quite, how he should fall like dat, but he is dead.
+Four of you get de body aft."
+
+"Please, sir," accosted Conroy, and the tall captain turned.
+
+"Veil, vat is it?"
+
+"Can I go below, sir? It was me that found him, sir. I feel rather--
+rather bad."
+
+"So!" The tall captain considered him inscrutably, he, the final
+arbiter of fates. "You feel bad--yes? Veil, you can go below!"
+
+The little group that bore the mate's body shuffled aft, with the
+others following like a funeral procession. A man looked shivering
+out of the door of the starboard forecastle, and inquired in loud
+whispers.
+
+"Was ist los? Sag mal--was ist denn los?" He put his inquiry to
+Conroy, who waved him off and passed to the port forecastle on the
+other side of the deckhouse.
+
+The place was somehow strange, with its double row of empty bunks
+like vacant coffin-shelves in a vault, but solitude was what he
+desired. The slush-lamp swung and stank and made the shadows wander.
+From the other side of the bulkhead he could hear stirrings and a
+murmur of voices as the starboard watch grew aware that something had
+happened on deck. Conroy, with his oilskin coat half off, paused to
+listen for comprehensible words. The opening of the door behind him
+startled him, and he spun round to see Slade making a cautious entry.
+He recoiled.
+
+"Leave me alone," he said, in a strangled voice, before the other
+could speak. "What are you following me for? You want to make me out
+a murderer. I tell you I never touched him."
+
+The other stood just within the door, the upper half of his face
+shadowed by his sou'wester, his thin lips curved in a faint smile.
+"No!" he said mockingly. "You didn't touch him? An' I make no doubts
+you'd take yer oath of it. But you shouldn't have put the pin back in
+the rail when you was through with it, all the same."
+
+"There wasn't any pin there," said Conroy quickly. He had backed as
+far from Slade as he could, and was staring at him with horrified
+eyes.
+
+"But there would ha' been if I hadn't took a look round while you
+were spinnin' your yarn to the Old Man," said Slade. "I knew you was
+a fool."
+
+With a manner as of mild glee he passed his hand into the bosom of
+his coat, still keeping his sardonic gaze fixed on Conroy.
+
+"Good thing you've got me to look after you," he went on. "Thinks I,
+'He might easy make a mistake that 'ud cost him dear;' so I took a
+look round. An' I found this." From within his coat he brought forth
+an iron belaying-pin, and held it out to Conroy.
+
+"See?" His finger pointed to it. "That's blood, that is--and that's
+hair. Look for yourself. Now I suppose you'll tell me you never
+touched him!"
+
+"He hit his head against it when he fell," protested the younger man.
+"He did! Oh, God, I can't stand this!"
+
+He sank to a seat on one of the chests and leaned his face against
+the steel plate of the wall.
+
+"Hit his head," snorted old Slade. "Couldn't you ha' fixed up a
+better yarn than that? What are you snivellin' at? D'ye think yer the
+only man 'as ever stove in a mate's head--an' him a murderin'
+mandriver? Keep them tales for the Old Man; he believes 'em
+seemingly; but don't you come them on me."
+
+Conroy was moaning. "I never touched him; I never touched him!"
+
+"Never touched him! Here, take the pin; it's yours!"
+
+He shrank from it. "No, no!"
+
+Slade pitched it to his bunk, where it lay on the blanket. "It's
+yours," he repeated. "If yer don't want it, heave it overboard
+yerself or stick it back in the rail. Never touched him--you make me
+sick with yer never touched him!"
+
+The door slammed on his scornful retreat; Conroy shuddered and sat
+up. The iron belaying-pin lay where it had fallen, on his bed, and
+even in that meager light it carried the traces of its part in the
+mate's death. It had the look of a weapon rather than of a humble
+ship-fitting. It rolled a couple of inches where it lay as the ship
+leaned to a gust, and he saw that it left a mark where it had been, a
+stain.
+
+He seized it in a panic and started for the door to be rid of it at
+once.
+
+As if a malicious fate made him its toy, he ran full into the Greek
+outside.
+
+"Ah!" The man's smile flashed forth, wise and livid. "An' so you 'ad
+it in your pocket all de time, den!"
+
+Conroy answered nothing. It was beyond striving against. He walked to
+the rail and flung the thing forth with hysterical violence to the
+sea.
+
+The watch going below at four o'clock found him apparently asleep,
+with his face turned to the wall. They spoke in undertones, as though
+they feared to disturb him, but none of them mentioned the only
+matter which all had in mind. They climbed heavily to their bunks,
+there to smoke the brief pipe, and then to slumber. Only Slade, who
+slept little, would from time to time lean up on one elbow to look
+down and across to the still figure which hid its face throughout the
+night.
+
+Conroy woke when the watch was called for breakfast by a man who
+thrust his head in and shouted. He had slept at last, and now as he
+sat up it needed an effort of mind to recall his trouble. He looked
+out at his mates, who stood about the place pulling on their clothes,
+with sleep still heavy on them. They seemed as usual. It was his turn
+to fetch the coffee from the galley, he remembered, and he slipped
+out of his bunk to dress and attend to it.
+
+"I won't be a minute," he said to the others, as he dragged on his
+trousers.
+
+A shaggy young Swede near the door was already dressed.
+
+"I vill go," he said. "You don't bother," and forthwith slipped out.
+
+The others were looking at him now, glancing with a queer, sharp
+interest and turning away when they met his eyes. It was as though he
+were a stranger.
+
+"That was a queer thing last night," he said to the nearest.
+
+"Yes," the other agreed, with a kind of haste.
+
+They sat about at their meal, when the coffee had been brought by the
+volunteer, under the same constraint. He could not keep silent; he
+had to speak and make them answer.
+
+"Where is he?" he asked abruptly.
+
+"On de gratings," he was told. And the Swede who fetched the coffee
+added, "Sails is sowin' him up now already."
+
+"We'll see the last of him to-day," said Slade. "He won't kick nobody
+again!"
+
+There was a mutter of agreement, and eyes turned on Conroy again.
+Slade smiled slowly.
+
+"Yes, he keeck once too many times," said the Greek.
+
+The shaggy young Swede wagged his head. "He t'ink it was safe to kick
+Conroy, but it aindt," he observed profoundly. "No, it aindt safe."
+
+"He got vat he asked for. . . . Didn't know vat he go up againdst
+. . . No, it aindt--it aindt safe. . . Maybe vi'sh he aindt so handy
+mit his feet now."
+
+They were all talking; their mixed words came to Conroy in broken
+sentences. He stared at them a little wildly, realizing the fact that
+they were admiring him, praising him, and afraid of him. The blood
+rose in his face hotly.
+
+"You fellers talk," he began, and was disconcerted at the manner in
+which they all fell silent to hear him--"you talk as if I'd killed
+him."
+
+"Well! . . . Ach was!"
+
+He faced their smiles, their conciliatory gestures, with a frown.
+
+"You better stop it," he said. "He fell--see? He fell an' stove his
+head in. An' any feller that says he didn't----"
+
+His regard traveled from face to face, giving force to his challenge.
+
+"Ve aindt goin' to say nodings!" they assured him mildly. "You don't
+need to be scared of us, Conroy."
+
+"I'm not scared," he said, with meaning. "But look out, that's all."
+
+When breakfast was over, it was his turn to sweep up. But there was
+almost a struggle for the broom and the privilege of saving him that
+trouble. It comforted him and restored him; it would have been even
+better but for the presence of Slade, sitting aloft in his bunk,
+smiling over his pipe with malicious understanding.
+
+The Villingen was still under reefed upper topsails, walking into the
+seas on a taut bowline, with water coming aboard freely. There was
+little for the watch to do save those trivial jobs which never fail
+on a ship. Conroy and some of the others were set to scrubbing teak
+on the poop, and he had a view of the sail-maker at his work on the
+gratings under the break of the poop, stitching on his knees to make
+the mate presentable for his last passage. The sailmaker was a
+bearded Finn, with a heavy, darkling face and the secret eyes of a
+faun. He bent over his task, and in his attitude and the slow rhythm
+of his moving hand there was a suggestion of ceremonial, of an act
+mysterious and ritual.
+
+Half-way through the morning, Conroy was sent for to the cabin, there
+to tell his tale anew, to see it taken down, and to sign it. The
+captain even asked him if he felt better.
+
+"Thank you, sir," replied Conroy. "It was a shock, findin' him dead
+like that."
+
+"Yes, yes," agreed the captain. "I can understand--a great shock.
+Yes!"
+
+He was bending over his papers at the table; Conroy smiled over his
+bowed head. Returning on deck, he winked to the man at the wheel, who
+smiled uncomfortably in return. Later he borrowed a knife to scrape
+some spots of paint off the deck; he did not want to spoil the edge
+of his own.
+
+They buried the mate at eight bells; the weather was thickening, and
+it might be well to have the thing done. The hands stood around,
+bareheaded, with the grating in the middle of them, one edge resting
+on the rail, the other supported by two men. There was a dark smudge
+on the sky up to windward, and several times the captain glanced up
+from his book towards it. He read in German slowly, with a dwelling
+upon the sonorous passages, and towards the end he closed the book
+and finished without its aid.
+
+Conroy was at the foot of the ladder; the captain was above him,
+reading mournfully, solemnly, without looking at the men. They were
+rigid, only their eyes moving. Conroy collected their glances
+irresistibly. When the captain had finished his reading he sighed and
+made a sign, lifting his hand like a man who resigns himself. The men
+holding the grating tilted it; the mate of the Villingen, with a
+little jerk, went over the side.
+
+"Shtand by der tobs'l halliards!" roared the second mate.
+
+Conroy, in the flurry, found himself next to a man of his watch. He
+jerked a thumb in the direction of the second mate, who was still
+vociferating orders.
+
+"Hark at him!" he said. "Before we're through I'll teach him manners
+too."
+
+And he patted his knife.
+
+
+
+V
+
+THE VICTIM
+
+Cobb was crossing the boulevard, and was actually evading a taxi-cab
+at the moment when he sighted the little comedy which he made haste
+to interrupt. Upon the further pavement, Savinien, whom he once
+believed in as a poet, had stopped in the shelter of a shop door, an
+unlighted cigarette between his lips, and was prospecting his vast
+person with gentle little slaps for a match. The current of the
+pavement rippled by him; the great expanse of his back was half
+turned to it, so that he and his search were in a kind of privacy,
+and the situation was favorable to the two inconspicuous men who
+approached him from either side. The one, with an air of hurry, ran
+against him at the instant, when he was exploring his upper waistcoat
+pocket, staggered and caught at him with mumbled apologies; the
+other, with the sure and suave movement of an expert, slid an arm
+between the two bodies, withdrew it, and was making off.
+
+"Hi!" shouted Cobb, as the taxi shaved past him, and came across with
+a rush. People stopped to see what he was shouting at, and a group of
+them, momentarily blocking the pavement, made it easy for the lanky
+Cobb to bowl the fleeing pickpocket against the wall and lay secure
+hands on him.
+
+"You come along with me," said Cobb, who always forgot his French
+when he was excited.
+
+The thief, helpless under the grip on the nape of his neck, whined
+and stammered. He was a rat of a man, white-faced, pale-eyed, with a
+sagging, uncertain mouth.
+
+"M'sieur!" he whimpered. "But I have got nothing! It is a mistake.
+The other man----"
+
+Cobb thrust him at the end of a long arm to where Savinien stood, the
+cigarette still unlighted. The other man, of course, was gone.
+
+"Hullo, Savinien," said Cobb. "You know you've been robbed, don't
+you? I just caught this fellow as he was bolting. See what you've
+lost, won't you?"
+
+"Lost!" Savinien stared, a little stupidly, Cobb thought, and
+suddenly smiled. He was bulky to the point of grotesqueness, with a
+huge white torpid face and a hypochondriac stoop of the shoulders,
+and the hand that traveled over his waistcoat, from pocket to pocket,
+looked as if it had been shaped out of dough.
+
+"Well!" said Cobb impatiently, stilling the thief's whimpering
+protests with a quick grip of the hand that held him.
+
+"My watch," murmured Savinien, still smiling though he were pleased
+and relieved to be the victim of a theft. "But let him go."
+
+"Let him go! Oh no," said Cobb. "I'll hand him over to the police and
+we'll get the watch out of him."
+
+"The watch is nothing," said Savinien. "Let him go before there
+arrives an agent, or it will be too late."
+
+He came a pace nearer as he spoke, and nodded at Cobb confidentially,
+as though there were reasons for his request which he could not
+explain before the on-lookers.
+
+"But----" began Cobb.
+
+"Let him go," urged Savinien. "It is necessary. Afterwards, I will
+explain to you." He put his shapeless soft hand on Cobb's arm which
+held the thief.
+
+"Let him go."
+
+"You are serious?" demanded Cobb. "He's to go, is he? With your
+watch? All right!"
+
+He let go the scraggy neck which he held in the fork of his hand.
+They were, by this time, ringed about by spectators, but the thief
+was not less expert with crowds than with pockets. He was no sooner
+loose than he seemed to merge into the folk about, to pass through
+and beyond them like a vapor. Heads turned, feet shuffled. Savinien
+came about ponderously like a battleship in narrow waters, but the
+thief was gone.
+
+"Tiens!" ejaculated someone, and there was laughter.
+
+Savinien's arm insinuated itself through Cobb's elbow.
+
+"Let us go where we can sit down," said the poet. "You are puzzled--
+not? But I will explain you all that."
+
+"It wasn't a bet, was it?" asked Cobb.
+
+The poet laughed gently. "That possibility alarms you?" he suggested.
+"But it was not a bet; it is more vital than that. I will tell you
+when we sit down."
+
+At Savinien's slow pace they came at last to small marble-topped
+tables under a striped awning. Savinien, with loud gasps, let himself
+down upon an exiguous chair, rested both fat hands upon the head of
+his stick, and smiled ruefully across the table at Cobb. A tinge of
+blue had come out around his lips.
+
+"Even to walk," he gasped, "that discomposes me, as you see. It is
+terrible."
+
+"Take it easy," counseled Cobb.
+
+An aproned waiter served them, Cobb with beer, Savinien with a
+treacly liqueur in a glass the size of a thimble. When he was a
+little restored from his exertions, he laid his arm on the table,
+with the little glass held between his thumb and forefinger, and
+remained in this attitude.
+
+"Go ahead," said Cobb. "Tell me why you are distributing watches to
+the deserving poor in this manner."
+
+"It is not benevolence," replied Savinien. "It is simply that I have a
+need of some misfortune to balance things."
+
+There was a muffled quality in his voice, as though it were subdued
+by the bulk from which it had to emerge; but his enunciation was as
+clean and dexterous as in the days when he had made a vogue for his
+poems by reading them aloud. It was the voice of a poet issuing from
+the mouth of a glutton.
+
+"To balance things," he repeated. "Fortune, my dear Cobb, is a
+pendulum; the higher it rises on the side of happiness, the further
+it returns on the side of disaster. And with me, who cannot take your
+arm for a promenade along the pavement without a tightness in the
+neck and a flutter of my heart, who may not go upstairs quicker than
+a step a minute, disaster has only one shape. It arrives and I am
+extinguished! It is for that reason that I fear a persistence of good
+luck. Of late, the luck that dogs me has been incredible.
+
+"Listen, now, to this! Three days ago, being in a difficulty, I go in
+search of Rigobert. You know Rigobert, perhaps?"
+
+"Yes," said Cobb. "That is, I have lent him money!"
+
+"Precisely," agreed Savinien. "The sum which he owed me was no more
+than two hundred and fifty francs but I had not much hope of him. I
+went leisurely upon the way towards his studio, and at the corner by
+the Madeleine I entered the post office to obtain a stamp for a
+letter I had to send. The first thing which I perceived as I opened
+the door was the back of Rigobert, as he sprawled against the
+counter, signing his name upon a form while the clerk counted out
+money to him. Hundred franc notes, my friend--noble new notes, ten in
+number, a thousand francs in all, which Rigobert received for his
+untidy autograph upon a blue paper. As for me, I planted myself there
+at his back in an attitude of expectancy and determination to await
+his leisure. He was cramming the money into his trousers pocket as he
+turned round and beheld me. He was embarrassed. He, the universal
+debtor, the bottomless pit of loans and obligations, to be discovered
+thus.
+
+"You!" he exclaimed.
+
+"I!" I replied, and took him very firmly by the arm and mentioned my
+little affair to him. He was not pleased, Rigobert, but for the
+moment he was empty of excuses. When he suggested that we should go
+to a cafe, to change one of the notes, that he might pay me my two
+hundred and fifty, I agreed, for I had him by the arm, but I could
+see that he was gathering his faculties, and I was wary. A bon rat
+bon chat!
+
+"I wasted till his note was changed. 'Now, my friend,' I said. 'The
+hour is come.'"
+
+"He looked at me attentively; he is very naive, in reality. Then,
+very slowly, he put one hand in his pocket and drew out the whole
+bundle of money. It looked opulent, it looked fulsome.
+
+"'Savinien,' he said. 'I will do even more than you ask. Two-fifty,
+is it not? See, now, here is five hundred, and I will toss you
+whether I pay you five hundred or nothing.'"
+
+"He balanced a coin on his thumb-nail, and smiled at me sidelong. I
+drew myself up with dignity to repudiate his proposal, but at that
+instant there came to me--who can say what it was?--a whim, a nudge
+from the thumb of Providence, a momentary lunacy! I relaxed my
+attitude."
+
+"'Very well,' I replied. 'But first permit me to examine the coin.'"
+
+"With Rigobert, that is not an insult. He handed me the coin without
+a word--an honest cart-wheel, a five-franc piece."
+
+"'Toss, then,' I said, returning it to him. 'Face!' I called, as he
+spun it up. It twinkled in the air like a humming-bird, a score of
+francs to each flick of its wings, and his palm intercepted it as it
+fell. I leaned across to see; behind Rigobert's shoulder the waiter
+leaned likewise. The poor fellow had really no chance to practice
+those little tricks in which he is eminent. I had won. I drew the
+money across to me."
+
+"'Peste!' remarked Rigobert, in a tone of dejection, and looked with
+an appearance of horror at what remained to him of his thousand
+francs. The waiter beamed at me and rubbed his hands. I ordered him
+in a strong voice to bring two more consommations."
+
+"'Look here,' said Rigobert. 'Lend me that five hundred, will you?
+Or, at any rate----'"
+
+"He paused, and his eye lit again with hope."
+
+"'Tell you what,' he said. 'I'll toss you once more--five hundred
+against five hundred. This'--he laid his hand on his remaining money
+--'is no use to me. I simply can't do with less than a thousand. Is
+it agreed?"
+
+"I desired to refuse; I am not a gambler; I come of prudent people.
+But again it came, that inspired impulse, that courageous folly."
+
+"'It is agreed,' I replied."
+
+"He meant to win, that time. He sat back to it, he concentrated
+himself. He cast a look at me, the glance of a brigand. I was
+imperturbable. Again the waiter hurried to see the venture. Rigobert
+frowned."
+
+"'You call "face," eh?' he asked, balancing the coin."
+
+"'I call when the coin is in the air,' I replied."
+
+"He grunted, and spun it up. 'Pile!' I called this time. Down it came
+to his hand. Once more the eyes of the waiter and myself rushed to
+it; the result was capable of no adjustment. I felt my heart bump
+painfully. The broad coin lay on his hand, pile uppermost. I drew the
+rest of the money to me."
+
+"'A thousand thanks,' I croaked from a throat constricted with
+surprise. Rigobert swore."
+
+Cobb laughed. "Is that all that is troubling you?" he asked.
+
+"All!" Savinien shrugged his immense shoulders desolately. "All! That
+was merely the commencement," he said. "And even that did not finish
+there."
+
+"I hope Rigobert didn't get any of it back," said Cobb.
+
+"He did his best," replied Savinien. "In a minute or two he collected
+his wits and addressed himself to the situation. It was worth seeing.
+He shook his depression from him like a dog shaking water from its
+coat, and sat up. Enterprise, determination, ruthlessness were
+eloquent in his countenance; I felt like a child before such a
+combination of qualities. Then he began to talk. He has an air, that
+brigand; he can cock his head so as to deceive a bailiff; he can wear
+a certain nobility of countenance; and with it all he can importune
+like a beggar. He has a horrid and plausible fluency; he is deaf to
+denials; he drugs you with words and robs you before you recover
+consciousness. He had got the length of quoting my own verses to me,
+and I felt myself going, when deliverance arrived. A stout man paused
+on the pavement, surveying us both, then came towards us.
+
+"'Monsieur Rigobert,' he said, with that fashion of politeness which
+one dreads, 'I am on my way to your address.'"
+
+"'Do not let me detain you,' replied Rigobert unpleasantly.
+
+"'But,' said the other, 'this was the day you appointed, M'sieur. You
+said, 'Bring your bill to me on the 13th, and I will pay it.' Here is
+the bill.'"
+
+"He plunged his hand into his breast pocket and fumbled with papers.
+Rigobert examined me rapidly. But the spell was broken, and I was
+myself again master of my emotions, and of the thousand francs. He
+saw that it was hopeless--and rose.
+
+"'Monsieur,' he said to the tradesman, 'this is not a time to talk to
+me of business. I have just suffered a painful bereavement.'"
+
+"He made a gesture with his hand, mournful and resigned, and walked
+away, while the tradesman gazed after him. And there was I--rich and
+safe! I felt a warmth that pervaded me. I settled my hat on my head
+and reached for my cane. It was then that the truly significant thing
+occurred--the clue, as it were. My hand, as I took my cane, brushed
+against my liqueur glass upon the table; it fell, rolled to the edge,
+and disappeared. The waiter dived for it, while I waited to pay for
+the breakage. His foolish German face came up over the edge of the
+table, crumpled in a smile.
+
+"'It is all right,' he said. 'The glass is not broken.'"
+
+"It was then, my friend, that I began to perceive how things were
+with me. Dimly at first, but, as the day proceeded, with growing
+clearness. I became aware that I stood in the shadow of some strange
+fate. Small ills, chances of trifling misfortune, stood aloof, and
+let me pass unharmed; I was destined to be the prey of a mightier
+evil. When I light my cigarette, do my matches blow out in the wind?
+No, they burn with the constancy of an altar candle. If I leave my
+gloves in a cab, as happened yesterday, do I lose them? No, the
+cabman comes roaring down the street at my back to catch me and
+restore them. A thousand such providences make up my day. This
+morning, just before I encountered you, the chief and most signal of
+them all occurred."
+
+"Go on," said Cobb.
+
+"It was, in fact, impressive," said Savinien. "There is, not far from
+here, a shop where I am accustomed to buy my cigarettes. A small
+place, you know, a hole in the wall, with a young ugly woman behind
+the counter. One enters, one murmurs 'Maryland,' one receives one's
+yellow packet, one pays, one salutes, one departs. There is nothing
+in the place to invite one to linger; never in my life have I said
+more than those two words--'Maryland' on entering and 'Madame' on
+leaving--to the good creature of the shop. I do not know her name,
+nor she mine. Ordinarily she is reading when I enter; she puts down
+her book to serve me as one might put down a knife and fork; it must
+often happen that she interrupts herself in the middle of a word. She
+gets as far as:
+
+"'Jean ki----' then I enter. 'Maryland,' I murmur, receive my packet,
+and pay. 'Madame!' I raise my hat and depart. Not till then does she
+know the continuation:--'ssed Marie,' or 'cked the Vicomte,'
+whichever it may be. Not a luxurious reader, that one, you see.
+
+"Well, this morning I enter as usual. There she sits, book in hand.
+'Maryland' I murmur. For the first time in my experience of her she
+does not at once lay the book, face downwards, on the counter, and
+turn to the shelf behind her to reach me my cigarettes. No, the good
+creature is absorbed. 'Pardon,' I say, rather louder. She looks up,
+and it is clear she is impatient at being disturbed. 'Maryland,' I
+request. She puts down the book and fumbles for a packet. But I am
+curious to know what book it is that holds her so strongly, what
+genius of a romancer has aimed so surely at her intelligence. I turn
+the book round with a finger. The shop, the shelves, the horse's face
+of Madame the proprietress swim before me. I could dance; I could
+weep; I could embrace the lady in the pure joy of an artist
+appreciated and requited. For of all the books ever printed upon
+paper, that book is mine. My verses! My songs of little lives, they
+grasp at her and will not let go, like importunate children; she is
+not easily nor willingly free of them when affairs claim her. Nunc
+dimittis!"
+
+"What did you do?" inquired Cobb. "Give her a watch, or what?"
+
+"My friend," said Savinien, "I was careful. To do a foolish or a
+graceless thing would have been to dethrone for her a poet. There was
+need of a spacious and becoming gesture. I opened her book at the
+fly-leaf, and reached across to the comptoir for a pen. She turned at
+that and stared, possibly fearful, poor creature, that it was the
+till that attracted me. I took the pen and splashed down on the fly-
+leaf of the book my name in full--a striking signature! Then without
+a further word that might make an anti-climax, I took my cigarettes
+and departed. I was so thrilled, so exalted, that it was five minutes
+before I remembered to be afraid."
+
+"For my fortune was becoming bizarre, you know. It was making me
+ridiculous even to myself. I have told you but the salient incidents
+of it; I do not desire to weary you with the facts of the broken
+braces, the spurious two-franc piece, or the lost door-key. But it is
+becoming sinister; it needed a counter-poise before it became so
+pronounced that nothing but sudden death would suffice. The thief
+steals my watch and I am relieved; he is departing with my best
+wishes for his success; all promises well, till you arrive at the
+charge, with your comb erect, and seize him. It is all of a piece.
+Yes, I know it is funny, but it alarms me. I offer it, therefore, my
+watch--a sacrifice. Perhaps it likes watches. If so, I have got off
+cheaply, for, to tell the truth, it was not much of a watch."
+
+He raised the minute glass and drank, setting it down again with a
+flourish.
+
+"And now I must be going," he said. "It is a strange story--not? But
+I don't like it; I don't like it at all."
+
+"Adieu," said Cobb, rising also. "I don't think I'd worry, if I were
+you. And I won't interfere again."
+
+"On no account," said Savinien, seriously.
+
+Cobb watched him move away, plodding along the pavement heavily, huge
+and portentous. The back of his head bulged above the collar, with no
+show of neck between. He was comical and pathetic; he seemed too vast
+in mere flesh to be the sport of a thing so freakish as luck. To
+think that such a bulk had a weak heart in it--and that deeper still
+in its recesses there moved and suffered the soul of a poet!
+
+"Queer yarn," mused Cobb.
+
+It was on the following morning, while Cobb was dressing, that the
+messenger arrived--a little man in black, with a foot-rule sticking
+out of his coat-pocket. He looked like an elderly man-servant who had
+descended to trade. He had a letter for Cobb, addressed in Savinien's
+pyrotechnic hand, and handed it to him without speaking.
+
+"My dear friend," it said, "I fear the worst. On my return to my
+rooms here, the first thing I saw was my watch, reposing on my
+bedside table. It appears that when I made my toilet in the morning I
+forgot to put it in my pocket. The thief, after all, got nothing. I
+am lost. In despair, Your Cesar Savinien."
+
+"Yes?" said Cobb. "You want an answer?" For the little artisan in
+black was waiting.
+
+"An answer!" The other stared. "But----then monsieur does not know?"
+
+"What?"
+
+"He must have been going down to post that note when he had written
+it," said the little man. "We found it in his hand."
+
+"Eh?" Cobb almost recoiled in the shock of his surprise and horror.
+"D'you mean to tell me that after all, he--he is----"
+
+The little man in black uttered a professional sigh. "The concierge
+found him in the morning," he replied. "It is said that he suffered
+from his heart, that poor Monsieur."
+
+"Good Lord!" said Cobb.
+
+
+
+VI
+
+BETWEEN THE LIGHTS
+
+There was but the one hotel in that somber town of East Africa, and
+Miss Gregory, fronting the proprietor of it squarely, noted that he
+looked at her with something like amusement. She was a short woman
+of fifty, grey-haired and composed, and her pleasant face had a quiet
+and almost masculine strength and assurance. In her grey flannel
+jacket and short skirt and felt hat, with a sun-umbrella carried like
+a walking-stick, she looked adequate and worthy. Hers was a presence
+that earned respect and deference in the highways of travel; she had
+the air of a veteran voyager.
+
+"I have managed to lose the boat," she said evenly; "and my luggage,
+of course, has been carried on to Zanzibar."
+
+The hotel proprietor had not risen from his chair. He shrugged and
+smiled as he looked up at her.
+
+"Vat you vant?" he asked.
+
+Miss Gregory frowned. "I want a room for the night," she answered. "A
+room and dinner, please."
+
+The man smiled again and bit his nails. He was a lean creature,
+unshaven and sidelong, and he had the furtive and self-conscious air
+of one who perpetrates a practical joke. Miss Gregory watched him
+with some impatience; she had yet to learn that a Portugee of the
+Coast will even lose money to inconvenience an English man or woman.
+
+"You got money?" he asked.
+
+Miss Gregory squared her shoulders. "I shall pay in the morning," she
+said. "You need have no fear; the Consul will be back to-morrow; I
+inquired at the Consulate." She paused; he wore still his narrow grin
+of malice. "Man!" she said contemptuously; "do you keep an hotel and
+not know a lady when you see one?"
+
+"No money?" he suggested insinuatingly.
+
+Miss Gregory sank a hand in her big pocket and brought forth her
+purse. There was a slight flush on her healthy broad face, but she
+governed her voice admirably.
+
+"Here are three English shillings," she said, tilting them into her
+hand. "You can take these as a--as a deposit; and the rest will be
+paid in the morning. Now show me to my room."
+
+The landlord uncoiled himself and rose from his chair to look at the
+money. He peered at it in her hand, then straightened up and faced
+her. Suddenly he had become hostile, lividly vicious; he laughed a
+shrill cackle in her face, his nose wrinkled like a dog's.
+
+"No good to me," he said. "T'ree shillin'--poof! For free shillin'
+here you buy-a free drink. For room--an' dinner--you pay-a one pound.
+Take-a your t'ree shillin' away; I don't vant-a you an' your free
+shillin'. You get out--go walk-a in da street."
+
+His eyes traveled swiftly about the place, as though to make sure
+that no one overheard; then he spat a foul epithet at her. His lean,
+unbuttoned body writhed as he babbled; his hands whirled in gestures;
+he seemed to be seeking courage to be violent. Miss Gregory, with a
+little frown of consideration, watched him. She buttoned the flannel
+jacket across her breast and restored her three shillings to her
+pocket. It was all done very deliberately, and through it all her
+formidable gaze held the Portugee at arm's length, till his gabbled
+insults died out and left him armed only with scowls. Miss Gregory
+waited, but he had no more to say.
+
+"I will call on you to-morrow, my man," she said significantly, and
+walked at a leisurely rate through the door to the grave street
+without, where the quick evening was already giving place to night.
+
+The sky overhead was deep blue and clear, powdered with a multitude
+of stars, and over the sea to the east a crescent of moon floated
+low. The night was fresh, but not cold. Miss Gregory, pacing
+tranquilly along the cobbled street, found it agreeable after the
+sterile heat of the afternoon. A faint breeze stirred the acacias
+which were planted along the middle of the way, and they murmured
+secretly. The prospect of a night without shelter did not greatly
+disturb her; she was already conscious that when she came to look
+back on it, it would take a high rank among her experiences.
+
+A turning brought her to the Praca, the little square of the town,
+its heart and centre. Here there were lights, the signal that the
+place had waked up for the evening. Two or three low-browed cafes
+abutted on the pavement, each lively with folk who drank and talked;
+the open doors of a church showed an interior faintly luminous with
+candles; and men and a few women stood about in groups or moved here
+and there at their ease. With her deliberate step, Miss Gregory
+passed among them, looking about her with the ready interest of the
+old traveler who sees without criticizing. There was a flavor in the
+place and its people that struck her like something pungent; they had
+individuality; they belonged to each other. There was a sinister
+character in the faces and bearing of the men, a formidable
+directness in the women; not one but had the air of carrying a hidden
+weapon. It was the commonplace evening population of an East African
+town which has never lived down the traditions of its pirate-
+founders, and Miss Gregory marked its fine picturesqueness with
+appreciation. Every one turned to look at her as she passed; she,
+clean, sane, assured, with her little air of good-breeding, was no
+less novel to them than they to her. A thin dark woman, with arms and
+breasts bare, took a quick step forward to look into her face; Miss
+Gregory paused in her walk to return the scrutiny. The woman's wide
+lips curled in a sudden laughter; Miss Gregory smiled patronizingly,
+nodded to her and passed on.
+
+She made a tour of the square, and even explored the mouth of a dark
+lane that led out of it. But it seemed to lead nowhere; it was a mere
+burrow between high silent houses, twisting abruptly among them with
+no purpose of direction, and she turned back to the lights. She was
+conscious by now that she had been on her feet since early in the
+afternoon, and she crossed to one of the cafes, where a tinkling band
+added its allurements to the yellow lights, and sat down at a small
+table. With one accord the customers at the place turned to look at
+her. A barefoot waiter received her order for coffee; she found
+herself a cigarette, lit it and looked about her. The cafe was a low
+whitewashed room, open to the pavement at one side; it was crowded
+with little tables, and at one end an orchestra of four sallow girls
+smoked and fiddled and strummed. All about her were the hard, keen
+men and women she had seen in the square, more men than women. They
+talked to each other earnestly, in guarded voices, with eyes alert
+for eavesdroppers; nearly every one had an air of secrecy and
+caution. They were of all the racial types she had ever seen. Teuton,
+Latin and Slav, and variants and mixtures of these, murmured and
+whispered among themselves; only one of them was unmistakably
+English.
+
+Miss Gregory had noticed him as soon as she entered, and her table
+was next to the one at which he sat with three others, who watched
+him while he talked, and said little. He was a fair youth, with a
+bland, rather vacant face, and a weak, slack mouth. Miss Gregory knew
+such faces among footmen and hairdressers, creatures fitted by their
+deficiencies to serve their betters. He had evidently been drinking a
+good deal; the table before him was sloppy and foul, and there was
+the glaze of intoxication in his eyes. But what arrested her was a
+touch of exaltation in him, a manner as of triumph. For some reason
+or other he seemed radiant and glad. The cause soon became apparent,
+for he fixed his unsure gaze on her, smiled ingenuously and attempted
+a bow.
+
+"Pardon me," he said, leaning carefully towards her. "Pardon me, but
+the sight of an English lady----"
+
+Miss Gregory nodded. "All right," she said.
+
+He hitched his chair closer to her; his three companions exchanged
+glances, and one of them made as though to nudge him, but hesitated
+and finally forbore.
+
+"In. a general way," said the youth confidentially, "I wouldn't
+venture to speak to you. But "--and he broke into smiles--"I'm on me
+way home myself."
+
+"I see," answered Miss Gregory.
+
+He beamed at her, fatuous and full of pride. "On me way home," he
+repeated. "For good. No more Africa for me. I've 'ad just upon eight
+years of it--eight years of sun an' bugs an' fever, and now I'm going
+home." He paused and looked at her impressively. "I've made my
+pile," he said.
+
+"That's good," said Miss Gregory. She saw the three others exchange
+another glance.
+
+The English youth was rapt; for some moments his eyes were unseeing,
+and his lips moved without sound. It was not difficult to see what
+home meant for him, a goal achieved at hazard, something familiar and
+sympathetic, worth all the rest of the world. He came back to his
+surroundings with a long sigh.
+
+"You don't happen to know Clapham Junction, ma'am?" he suggested.
+"Not the station, I don't mean, but the place? No? Well, that's where
+I'm off to. I 'aven't seen a tramcar for eight years; it'll be queer
+at first, I expect." He looked round him slowly at the low bare room
+and the men in white clothes and the whispering night without. "My
+mother takes lodgers," he added inconsequently.
+
+"She will be glad to see you," said Miss Gregory.
+
+"She will that," he agreed. He dropped his voice to the tones of
+confidence. "I got an idea," he said. "Give her a surprise. I'll go
+along to the house just about dark and say I'm lookin' for a room.
+Eh? And she'll begin about terms. Then I'll begin. 'Never you mind
+about terms,' I'll say. ''Ere's the price of eight years sweatin',
+and God bless you, old lady!'" He blinked rapidly, for his eyes were
+wet. "What do you think of that for a surprise?"
+
+"Capital!" agreed Miss Gregory. "Are you going down the Coast by the
+boat to-morrow?"
+
+"That's it," he cried. "I'm going second-class, like a gentleman.
+Home, by gosh!"
+
+"Then," suggested Miss Gregory, eyeing his sullen companions, "don't
+you think it would be best if you went and got some sleep now? You
+wouldn't care to miss the boat, I suppose?"
+
+He stared at her. "No," he said, as if the contingency had just
+occurred to him. He sat back; his mild, insignificant face wore a
+look of alarm. "No, I shouldn't. It wouldn't do." His voice dropped
+again. "It wouldn't do," he repeated. "I've got it on me, an' this
+ain't what you call a moral place."
+
+Miss Gregory nodded comprehendingly. "I know," she said. "So wouldn't
+it be as well on all accounts to get to bed behind a locked door?"
+
+"You've hit it," he said. "That's what I got to do--and lock the
+door. That's common sense, that is." He stared at her for an instant,
+then rose with care and deliberation to his feet. He had altogether
+forgotten his companions; he did not even see them.
+
+"That is, if it'll lock," he added, and held out his hand to Miss
+Gregory.
+
+"Good-bye," she said, taking it heartily. "I'm glad to hear of your
+good fortune."
+
+He gulped and left her, walking forth through the little tables with
+the uncanny straightness of the man "in liquor." Miss Gregory drank
+up her coffee and sat where she was.
+
+She could see the men at the next table out of the corner of her eye;
+their heads were together, and they were whispering excitedly. The
+whole affair was plain enough to a veteran of the world's byways like
+Miss Gregory; the plan had been to make the youth drunk, help him
+forth, and rob him easily in some convenient corner. He was the kind
+of man who lends himself to being robbed; the real wonder was that it
+had not been done already. But, mingled with her contempt for his
+helplessness, Miss Gregory felt a certain softening. His homing
+instinct, as blind as that of a domestic animal, his rejoicing in his
+return, his childish plan for taking his mother by surprise, even his
+loyalty to the tramcars and all the busy littleness of Clapham
+Junction--these touched something in her akin to the goodness of
+motherhood. It occurred to her that perhaps he had been better off
+under the lights of the cafe than alone on his way to his bed; and at
+that moment the three men at the next table, their conference over,
+rose and went out. She sat still till they were clear; then, on an
+impulse of officiousness, got up and went out after them.
+
+Their white clothes shone in the darkness to guide her; they cut
+across the square and vanished in one of those dark alleys she had
+already remarked. Miss Gregory straightened her felt hat, took a
+fresh grip of the stout umbrella, and followed determinedly. The
+corner of the alley shut out the lights behind her; tall walls with
+scarce windows fast shuttered hemmed her in; the vast night of the
+tropics drooped its shadow over her. Through it all she plodded at
+the gait familiar to many varieties of men from Poughkeepsie to
+Pekin, a squat, resolute figure, reckless alike of risk and ridicule,
+an unheroic heroine. There reached her from time to time the noises
+that prevail in those places--noises filtering thinly through
+shutters, the pad of footsteps, and once--it seemed to come from some
+roof invisible above her--the sound of sobbing, abandoned, strangled,
+heart-shaking sobs. She frowned and went on.
+
+A spot where the way forked made her hesitate; the men she was
+following were no longer in sight. But as she pondered there came to
+guide her a sudden cry, clear and poignant, the shout of a startled
+man. It was from the right-hand path, and promptly, as though on a
+summons, she bent her grey head and broke into a run in the direction
+of it. As she ran, pounding valiantly, she groped in her pocket for a
+dog-whistle she had with her; she took it in her lips, and, never
+ceasing to run, blew shrill call upon call. Her umbrella was poised
+for war, but, rounding a corner, she saw that her whistling had done
+its work; three white jackets were making off at top-speed. It takes
+little to alarm a thief; Miss Gregory had counted on that.
+
+It was not till she fell over him that she was aware of the man on
+the ground, who rolled over and cried out at the movement. She put a
+steady hand on him.
+
+"Are you hurt?" she asked eagerly.
+
+He groaned; his face was a pale blur against the earth.
+
+"They've got me," he said. "They stuck a knife in my back. I'm
+bleeding; I'm bleeding."
+
+"Get up," bade Miss Gregory. "Bleeding or not, we must get away from
+here. Up you get."
+
+She pulled him to a sitting position, and he screamed and resisted,
+but Miss Gregory was his master. By voice and force she brought him
+upright; he could stand alone, and seemed surprised to find it out.
+
+"Take my arm," she ordered him. "Lean on it; don t be afraid. Now,
+where are your rooms?"
+
+"On this way," he sobbed.
+
+Evidently he had an ugly wound, for at each few steps he had to stop
+and rest, and sometimes he swayed, and Miss Gregory had to hold him
+up. His breath came hastily; he was soft with terror. "They'll come
+back! they'll come back!" he gabbled, tottering on his feet.
+
+"They're coming now; I can hear them," replied Miss Gregory grimly.
+"Here, lean in this doorway behind me, man. Stop that whimpering,
+will you! Now, keep close."
+
+She propped him against the nail-studded door, and placed herself
+before, him, and the three robbers, bunched together in a group,
+stealing along the middle of the way, might almost have gone past
+without seeing them. But it was not a chance to trust to. Miss
+Gregory let them come abreast of her; her whole honest body was tense
+to the occasion; on the due moment she flung herself forward and the
+brandished umbrella rained loud blows on aghast heads; and at the
+same time she summoned to her aid her one accomplishment--she
+shrieked. She was a strong woman, deep-chested, full-lunged; her raw
+yell shattered the stillness of the night like some crazy trumpet; it
+broke from her with the suddenness of a catastrophe, nerve-sapping,
+ear-scaring, heart-striking. Before it and the assault of the stout
+umbrella the robbers broke; a panic captured them; they squealed,
+clasped at each other, and ran in mere senseless amaze. The Latin
+blood, when diluted with Coast mixtures, is never remarkable for
+courage; but braver men might have scattered at the alarm of that
+mighty discordancy attacking from behind.
+
+Fortunately the door they sought was not far off; through it they
+entered a big untidy room, stone-floored as the custom is, and
+littered with all the various trifles a man gathers about him on the
+Coast. Miss Gregory put her patient on the narrow bed and turned to
+the door; true to his fears, it would not lock. The youth was very
+pale and in much fear; blood stained the back of his clothes, and his
+eyes followed her about in appeal.
+
+"You must wait a little," Miss Gregory told him. "I'll look at that
+wound of yours when I've seen to the door. No lock, of course." She
+pondered frowningly. "It's a childish thing at the best," she added
+thoughtfully; "but it may be a novelty in these parts. Have you ever
+arranged a booby trap, my boy?"
+
+"No," he answered, wonderingly.
+
+Miss Gregory shook her head. "The lower classes are getting worse and
+worse," she observed. She put a chair by the door, which stood a
+little ajar, and looked about her.
+
+"As you are going away you won't want this china." It was his ewer
+and wash-hand basin. "I don't see anything better, and it'll make a
+smash, at any rate."
+
+"What you goin' to do, ma'am?" asked the man on the bed.
+
+"Watch," she bade him. It was not easy, but with care she managed to
+poise the basin and the ewer in it on top of the door, so that it
+leaned on the lintel and must fall as soon as the door was pushed
+wider.
+
+"Now," she said, when it was done, "let's have a look at that cut."
+
+It was an ugly gash high in the back, to the left of the spine--a
+bungler's or a coward's attempt at the terrible heart-stab. Miss
+Gregory, examining it carefully, was of opinion that she could have
+done it better; it had bled copiously, but she judged it not to be
+dangerous. She washed it and made a bandage for it out of a couple of
+the patient's shirts, and he found himself a good deal more
+comfortable. He lay back on his bed with some of the color restored
+to his face, and watched her as she moved here and there about the
+room with eyes that were trustful and slavish.
+
+"Well," said Miss Gregory, when she had completed an examination of
+the apartment, "there doesn't seem to be much more one can do.
+They'll come back, I suppose? But of course they will. How much money
+have you got about you?"
+
+"About two thousand pounds, ma'am," he said, meekly.
+
+"H'm!" Miss Gregory thought a moment. "And they know it? Of course."
+She added her little sharp nod of certainty. "Well, when they come
+we'll attend to them."
+
+There was a tiny mirror hanging from a nail, and she went to it,
+patted her grey hair to neatness, and re-established her felt hat on
+top of it. The place was as still as the grave; no noise reached it
+from without. The one candle at the bedside threw her shadow
+monstrously up the wall; while she fumbled with her hatpins it
+pictured a looming giantess brandishing weapons.
+
+She was still at the mirror, with hatpins held in her mouth, when the
+steps of the robbers made themselves heard. The man on the bed
+started up on his elbow, with wide eyes and a sagging mouth. Miss
+Gregory quelled him with a glance, then crossed the floor and blew
+the candle out. In the darkness she laid her hat down that it might
+not come to harm, and put a reassuring hand on the youth's shoulder,
+it was quaking, and she murmured him a caution to keep quiet.
+Together, with breath withheld, they heard the men in the entry of
+the house, three of them, coming guardedly. Miss Gregory realized
+that this was the real onslaught; they would be nerved for shrieks
+this time. She took her hand from the youth's shoulder with another
+whispered word, and stepped to the middle of the room and stood
+motionless. The noise of breathing reached her, then a foot shuffled,
+and on the instant somebody sprang forward and shoved the door wide.
+
+The jug and basin smashed splendidly; whoever it fell on uttered a
+little shrill yell and paused, confounded by the darkness. Miss
+Gregory, her eyes more tuned to it, could make out the blur of white
+clothes; with noiseless feet she moved towards them. She was all
+purpose and directness; no tremor disturbed her. As calmly as she
+would have shaken hands with the Consul she reached forward, felt her
+enemy, and delivered a cool and well-directed thrust. An appalling
+yell answered her, and she stepped back a space, the hatpin held
+ready for another attack. There was a tense instant of inaction, and
+then the three rushed, and one bowled her over on the floor and fell
+with her.
+
+Miss Gregory fell on her side, and before she was well down the steel
+hatpin, eight inches long of good Paris metal, plunged and found its
+prey. The man roared and wallowed clear, and she rose. The big room
+was wild with stamping feet and throaty noises such as dogs make. The
+bedside chair, kicked aside struck her ankles; she picked it up and
+threw it at the sounds. It seemed to complicate matters. The place
+was as dark as a well, and she moved groping with her hands towards
+the bed. Some one backed into her--another yell and a jump, and, as
+she stepped back, the swish of a blow aimed towards her that barely
+missed her. Then she was by the bed, feeling over it; it was empty.
+
+She had some moments of rest; every one was still, save for harsh
+breathing. But she dared not stand long, lest their eyes too should
+adapt themselves to the dark. It was evident that nobody had
+firearms; there was that much to be thankful for. She gathered
+herself for an attack, a rush at the enemy with an active hatpin,
+when something touched her foot. She bent, swiftly alert for war, but
+arrested the pin on its way. It was a hand from under the bed; her
+protege had taken refuge there. She took his wrist and pulled; he
+whimpered, and there was a grunt from the middle of the room at the
+sound, but he came crawling. She dared not whisper, for those others
+were moving already, but with her cool, firm hand on his wrist, she
+sank down on all-fours and drew him on towards the door. It was
+impossible to make no noise, but at any rate their noise was
+disconcerting; the robbers could not guess what it betokened. Each of
+them had his stab, a tingling, unaccountable wound, a hurt to daunt a
+man, and they were separately standing guard each over his own life.
+
+They encountered one half way across the room. He felt them near him,
+and sent a smashing blow with a knife into the empty air. Miss
+Gregory, always with that considered and careful swiftness that was
+so like deliberation, reared to her knees, her left hand still
+holding the youth's wrist, and lunged. Another yell, and the man,
+leaping back, fouled a comrade, who stabbed and sprang away. They
+heard the man fall and move upon the floor like a dying fish, with
+sounds of choking. Then the door was before them, and, crawling
+still, with infinite pains to be noiseless, they passed through it.
+From within the room the choking noises followed them till they
+gained the open air.
+
+The tortuous alley received them like a refuge; they fled along it
+with lightened hearts, taking all turnings that might baffle a chase,
+till at last Miss Gregory smelt acacias and they issued again into
+the little square. To Miss Gregory it was almost amazing that the
+cafes should still be lighted, their tables thronged, the music
+insistent. While history had paced for her the world had stood still.
+She stood and looked across at the lights thoughtfully.
+
+The youth at her side coughed. "The least I can do," he suggested
+inanely, "is ask you to 'ave a cup of coffee, ma'am."
+
+Miss Gregory turned on him sharply.
+
+"And then?" she asked. "After the coffee, what then?"
+
+He shuffled his feet uneasily. "Well, ma'am," he said; "this hole in
+my back is more'n a bit painful. So I thought I'd get along to the
+hotel an' have a lie down."
+
+She looked at him thoughtfully. Her head was bare, and the night
+breeze from the sea whipped a strand of grey hair across her brow.
+She brushed it away a little wearily.
+
+"Unless there's anything more I can do for you," suggested the young
+man smoothly.
+
+Anything more he could do for her! She smiled, considering him. The
+events of the night had not ruffled him; his blonde face was still
+mild, insignificant, plebeian. Of such men slaves are made; their
+part is to obey orders, to be without responsibility, to be guided,
+governed, and protected by their betters. Miss Gregory, sister of a
+Major-General, friend of Colonial Governors, aunt of a Member of
+Parliament, author of "The Saharan Solitudes," and woman of the
+world, saw that she had served her purpose, her work was done.
+
+"Thank you," she said; "there is nothing more. You had better go to
+bed at once."
+
+There was a broken fountain in the middle of the square, overgrown
+with sickly lichen, and round it ran a stone bench. The acacias
+sheltered it, and a dribble of water from the conduit sounded always,
+fitting itself to one's thoughts in a murmuring cadence. Here Miss
+Gregory disposed herself, and here the dawn found her, a little
+disheveled, and looking rather old with the chill of that bleak hour
+before the sun rises. But her grey head was erect, her broad back
+straight, and the regard of her eyes serene and untroubled always.
+She was waiting for the hour when the Consul would be accessible; he
+was the son of her dearest friend.
+
+"And I must not forget," she told herself--"I really must not forget
+to attend to that hotel man."
+
+
+
+VII
+
+THE MASTER
+
+Papa Musard, whenever he felt that he was about to die, which
+happened three times a year at least, would beckon as with a finger
+from the grimy Montmartre tenement in which he abode and call Rufin
+to come and bid him farewell. The great artist always came; he never
+failed to show himself humble to humble people, and, besides, Papa
+Musard had known Corot--or said that he had--and in his capacity of a
+model had impressed his giant shoulders and its beard on the work of
+three generations of painters.
+
+The boy who carried the summons sat confidently on the kerb outside
+the restaurant at which Rufin was used to lunch, and rose to his feet
+as the tall, cloaked figure turned the corner of the street and
+approached along the sunlit pavement.
+
+"Monsieur Musard said you would be here at one o'clock," he
+explained, presenting the note.
+
+"Then it is very fortunate that I am not late," said Rufin politely,
+accepting it. "But how did you know me?"
+
+The boy--he was aged perhaps twelve--gave a sophisticated shrug.
+
+"Monsieur Musard said: 'At one o'clock there will approach an artist
+with the airs of a gentleman. That is he.'"
+
+Rufin laughed and opened the note. While he read it the boy watched
+him with the admiration which, in Paris, even the rat-like gamin of
+the streets pays to distinction such as his. He was a tall man
+splendidly blonde, and he affected the cloak, the slouch hat, the
+picturesque amplitude of hair which were once the uniform of the
+artist. But these, in his final effect, were subordinate to 'a
+certain breadth and majesty of brow, a cast of countenance at once
+benign and austere, as though the art he practiced so supremely both
+exacted much and conferred much. He made a fine and potent figure as
+he stood, with his back to the bright street and the gutter-child
+standing beside him like a familiar companion, and read the smudged
+scrawl of Papa Musard.
+
+"So Musard is very ill again, is he?" he asked of the boy. "Have you
+seen him yourself?"
+
+"Oh yes," replied the boy; "I have seen him. He lies in bed and his
+temper is frightful."
+
+"He is a very old man, you see," said Rufin. "Old men have much to
+suffer. Well, tell him I will come this afternoon to visit him. And
+this"--producing a coin from his pocket--"this is for you."
+
+The gamin managed, in some fashion of his own, to combine, in a
+single movement, a snatch at the money with a gesture of polite
+deprecation. They parted with mutual salutations, two gentlemen who
+had carried an honorable transaction to a worthy close. A white-
+aproned waiter smiled upon them tolerantly and held open the door
+that Rufin might enter to his lunch.
+
+It was in this manner that the strings were pulled which sent Rufin
+on foot to Montmartre, with the sun at his back and the streets
+chirping about him. Two young men, passing near the Opera, saluted
+him with the title of "maitre;" and then the Paris of sleek
+magnificence lay behind him and the street sloped uphill to the Place
+Pigalle and all that region where sober, industrious Parisians work
+like beavers to furnish vice for inquiring foreigners. Yet steeper
+slopes ascended between high houses toward his destination, and he
+came at last to the cobbled courtyard, overlooked by window-dotted
+cliffs of building, above which Papa Musard had his habitation.
+
+A fat concierge, whose bulged and gaping clothes gave her the aspect
+of an over-ripe fruit, slept stonily in a chair at the doorway. Rufin
+was not certain whether Musard lived on the fourth floor or the
+fifth, and would have been glad to inquire, but he had not the
+courage to prod that slumbering bulk, and was careful to edge past
+without touching it. The grimy stair led him upward to find out for
+himself.
+
+On the third floor, according to his count, a door looked like what
+he remembered of Musard's, but it yielded no answer to his knocking.
+A flight higher there was another which stood an inch or so ajar, and
+this he ventured to push open that he might look in. It yielded him a
+room empty of life, but he remained in the doorway looking.
+
+It was a commonplace, square, ugly room, the counterpart of a hundred
+others in that melancholy building; but its window, framing a saw-
+edged horizon of roofs and chimneys, faced to the north, and some
+one, it was plain, had promoted it to the uses of a studio. An easel
+stood in the middle of the floor with a canvas upon it; the walls
+were covered with gross caricatures drawn upon the bare plaster with
+charcoal. A mattress and some tumbled bedclothes lay in one corner,
+and a few humble utensils also testified that the place was a
+dwelling as well as a workshop.
+
+Rufin looked back to be sure that no one was coming up the stairs,
+and then tiptoed into the room to see what hung on the easel.
+
+"After all," he murmured, "an artist has the right."
+
+The picture on the easel was all but completed; it was a quarter-
+length painting of a girl. Stepping cautiously around the easel, he
+came upon a full view of it suddenly, and forthwith forgot all his
+precautions to be unheard. Here was a thing no man could keep quiet!
+With his first glance he saw--he, himself a painter, a creator, a
+judge--that he stood in the presence of a great work of art, a
+vision, a power.
+
+"But here!" he exclaimed amazedly. "Of all places--here!"
+
+The painted face looked out at him with all the sorrowful wisdom that
+is comprised in a life sharpened on the grindstone of a remorseless
+civilization. It was a girl such as one might find anywhere in that
+neighborhood, she had the hardy prettiness, the alertness, the
+predatory quality which belong to wild creatures civilized by force.
+It was set on the canvas with a skill that made Rufin smile with
+frank pleasure; but the skill, the artifice of the thing, were the
+least part of it. What was wonderful was the imagination, the living
+insight, that represented not only the shaped product of a harsh
+existence, but the womanhood at the root of it. It was miraculous; it
+was convincing as life is convincing; it was great.
+
+Rufin, the painter whose fame was secure, upon whom Art had showered
+gifts, gazed at it, absorbed and reverent. He realized that in this
+picture his age had achieved a masterpiece; he was at least the
+contemporary of an immortal.
+
+"Ah!" he said, with an impulse of high indignation. "And while he
+paints here and sleeps on the floor, they buy my pictures!"
+
+He stepped back from the easel. He was equal to a great gesture, as
+to a great thought. As though he had greeted a living princess, he
+swept his hat off in a bow to the work of this unknown fellow.
+
+Papa Musard in his bed, with his comforts--mostly in bottles--
+arranged within his reach, found it rather shocking that a
+distinguished artist should enter the presence of a dying man like--
+as he remarked during his convalescence--a dog going into a pond. He
+sat up in astonishment.
+
+"Musard," demanded Rufin abruptly, "who is the artist who lives in
+the room below this?"
+
+"Oh, him!" replied Papa Musard, sinking back on his pillow. "M'sieur
+Rufin, this is the last time I shall appeal to you. Before long I
+shall again be in the presence of the great master, of Corot, of him
+who----"
+
+Rufin, it seemed, had lost all respect both for Corot and death. He
+waved an imperious arm, over which his cloak flapped like a black
+wing.
+
+"Who is the artist in the room below?" repeated Rufin urgently. "Do
+you know him?"
+
+"No," replied Papa Musard, with emphasis. "Know him--an Italian, a
+ruffian, an apache, a man with hair on his arms like a baboon! I do
+not know him. There!"
+
+He was offended; a dying man has his privileges, at least. The face,
+gnarled and tempestuously bearded, which had been perpetuated by a
+hundred laborious painters, glared from the pillow at Rufin with
+indignation and protest.
+
+Rufin suppressed an impulse to speak forcibly, for one has no more
+right to strip a man of his pose than of his shirt. He smiled at the
+angry invalid conciliatingly.
+
+"See how I forget myself!" he said apologetically. "We artists are
+all alike. Show us a picture and our manners go by the board. With
+you, Musard, need I say more?"
+
+"You have said a lot," grumbled the ancient of days. "Coming in
+roaring like a bull! What picture has upset you?"
+
+"A picture you have not seen," said Rufin, "or you would be grasping
+my hand and weeping for joy--you who know pictures better than us
+all!" He surveyed the invalid, who was softening. Musard knew no more
+of pictures than a frame-maker; but that was a fact one did not
+mention in his presence.
+
+"Since Corot," sighed Musard, "I have seen few pictures which were--
+en effet--pictures."
+
+"You have great memories," agreed Rufin hastily. "But I have just
+seen a picture--ah, but a picture, my friend!"
+
+The old cunning face on the pillow resisted the charm of his manner,
+the gentleness of his appeal.
+
+"Not his?" demanded Papa Musard. "Not in the room underneath? Not one
+of the daubs of that assassin, that cut-throat, that Italian?"
+
+Rufin nodded, as though confirming a pleasant surprise. "Is it not
+strange," he said, "how genius will roost on any perch? It is true,
+then, that he is a person who offends your taste? That is bad. Tell
+me about him, Musard."
+
+He reached himself a chair and sat down near the foot of the bed.
+
+"You are always making a fuss of some worthless creature," grumbled
+Musard. "I do not even know the man's name. They speak of him as
+Peter the Lucky--it is a nickname he has on the streets, an apache
+name. He has been in prison, too, and he bellows insults at his
+elders and betters when they pass him on the stairs. He is a man of
+no soul!"
+
+"Yes," said Rufin. "But did you say he had been in prison?"
+
+"I did," affirmed Musard. "Ask anyone. It is not that I abuse him; he
+is, in fact, a criminal. Once he threw an egg at a gendarme. And yet
+you come to me--a dying man--and declare that such a creature can
+paint! Bah!"
+
+"Yes," said Rufin, "it is strange."
+
+It was clearly hopeless to try to extract any real information from
+Papa Musard; that veteran was fortified with prejudices. Rufin
+resigned himself to the inevitable; and, although he was burning with
+eagerness to find the painter of the picture he had recently seen, to
+welcome him into the sunlight of fame and success, he bent his mind
+to the interview with Papa Musard.
+
+"I have had my part in the development of Art," the invalid was
+saying at the end of three-quarters of an hour. "Perhaps I have not
+had my full share of recognition. Since Corot, no artist has been
+magnanimous; they have become tradesmen, shopkeepers."
+
+"You are hard on us, Musard," said Rufin. "We're a bad lot, but we do
+our best. Here is a small matter of money that may help to make you
+comfortable. I'm sorry you have such an unpleasant neighbor."
+
+"You are going?" demanded Musard.
+
+"I must," said Rufin. "To-morrow I go into the country for some
+weeks, and nothing is packed yet."
+
+"Corot would not have left an old man to die in solitude," remarked
+Musard thoughtfully.
+
+Rufin smiled regretfully and got away while he could. Papa Musard in
+an hour could wear down even his patience.
+
+The painter's room was still unlocked and unoccupied as he descended
+the stairs; he entered it for another look at the picture. He needed
+to confirm his memory, to be assured that he had not endowed the work
+with virtue not its own. The trivial, cheaply pretty face fronted him
+again, with its little artificial graces only half-masking the sore,
+tormented femininity behind it. Yes, it was the true art, the
+poignant vision, a thing belonging to all time.
+
+In the courtyard the fat concierge was awake, in a torpid fashion,
+and knitting. She lifted her greedy and tyrannical eyes at the tall
+figure of Rufin, with its suggestion of splendors and dignities. But
+she was not much more informative than Papa Musard had been.
+
+"Oh, the painter!" she exclaimed, when she understood who was in
+question. "Ah, M'sieur, it is two days since I have seen him. He is
+not of a punctual habit--no! How often have I waked in the blackness
+of night, upon a frightful uproar of the bell, to admit him, and he
+making observations at the top of his voice that would cause a fish
+to blush! An Italian, M'sieur--yes! But all the same it astonishes no
+one when he is away for two days."
+
+"The Italians are like that," generalized Rufin unscrupulously. "His
+door is unlocked, Madame, and there is a picture in his room which
+is--well, valuable."
+
+"He sold the key," lamented Madame, "and the catches of the window,
+and the bell-push, and a bucket of mine which I had neglected to
+watch. And he called me a she-camel when I remonstrated."
+
+"In Italian it is a mere jest," Rufin assured her. "See, Madame, this
+is my card, which I beg you to give him. I am obliged to leave Paris
+to-morrow, but on my return I shall have the honor to call on him.
+And this is a five-franc piece!"
+
+The big coin seemed to work on the concierge like a powerful drug.
+She choked noisily and was for the while almost enthusiastic.
+
+"He shall have the card," she promised. "I swear it! After all,
+artists must have their experiences. Doubtless the monsieur who
+resides above is a great painter?"
+
+"A very great painter," replied Rufin.
+
+His work, during the next three weeks, exiled him to a green solitude
+of flat land whose horizons were ridged by poplars growing beside
+roads laid down as though with a ruler, so straight they were as they
+sliced across the rich levels. It was there he effected the vital
+work on his great picture, "Promesse," a revelation of earth gravid
+with life, of the opulent promise and purpose of spring. It is the
+greater for what lodged in his mind of the picture he had seen in the
+Montmartre tenement. It was constant in his thought, the while he
+noted on his canvas the very texture of the year's early light; it
+aided his brush. In honesty and humbleness of heart, as he worked, he
+acknowledged a debt to the unknown Italian who stole the key of the
+room to sell, and called his concierge a she-camel.
+
+It was a debt he knew he could pay. He, Rufin, whose work was in the
+Luxembourg, in galleries in America, in Russia, in the palaces of
+kings, could assure the painter of Montmartre of fame. He went to
+seek him on the evening of his return to the city.
+
+The fat concierge preserved still her burst and overripe appearance,
+and at the sight of him she was so moved that she rose from her chair
+and stood upright to voice her lamentations.
+
+"Monsieur, what can I say? He is gone! It was a nightmare. It is true
+that he omitted to pay his rent--a defect of his temperament, without
+doubt. But the proprietor does not make these distinctions. After
+three weeks he would expel Michelangelo himself. The monsieur who was
+driven out--he resisted. He employed blasphemies, maledictions; he
+smote my poor husband on the nose and in the stomach--all to no
+purpose, for he is gone. I was overcome with grief, but what could I
+do?"
+
+"At least you know whither he went?" suggested Rufin.
+
+"But, M'sieur, how should I know? His furniture--it was not much--was
+impounded for the rent, else one might have followed it. He took away
+with him only one picture, and that by force of threats and
+assaults."
+
+"Oh yes, of course he would take that," agreed the artist.
+
+"He retired down the street with it, walking backward in the middle
+of the road and not ceasing to make outcries at us," said the
+concierge. "He uttered menaces; he was dangerous. Could I leave my
+poor husband to imperil myself by following such a one? I ask M'sieur
+could I?"
+
+"I suppose not," said Rufin, staring at her absently. He was
+thinking, by an odd momentary turn of fancy, how well he could have
+spared this gruesome woman for another look at the picture.
+
+"Who are his friends?" he inquired.
+
+But the concierge could tell him nothing useful.
+
+"He had no friends in the house," she said. "Our poor honest people--
+he treated them with contumely. I do not know his friends, M'sieur."
+
+"Ah, well," said Rufin, "I shall come across him somehow."
+
+He saluted her perfunctorily and was about to turn away, but the
+avidity of her face reminded him that he had a standard to live up
+to. He produced another five-franc piece and was pursued to the gate
+by the stridency of her gratitude.
+
+A man--even a man of notable attributes and shocking manners--is as
+easily lost in Paris as anywhere; it is a city of many shadows. At
+the end of some weeks, during which his work had suffered from his
+new preoccupation, Rufin saw himself baffled. His man had vanished
+effectually, carrying with him to his obscurity the great picture. It
+was the memory of that consummate thing that held Rufin to his task
+of finding the author; he pictured it to himself, housed in some
+garret, making the mean place wonderful. He obtained the unofficial
+aid of the police and of many other people whose business in life is
+with the underworld. He even caused a guarded paragraph to appear in
+certain papers, which spoke temperately of a genius in hiding, for
+whom fame was ripe whenever he should choose to claim it. But Paris
+at that moment was thrilled by a series of murders by apaches, and
+the notice passed unremarked.
+
+In the end, therefore, Rufin restored himself to his work, richer by
+a memory, poorer by a failure. Not till then came the last accident
+in the chain of accidents by which the matter had presented itself to
+him.
+
+Some detail of quite trivial business took him to see an official at
+the Palais de Justice, In the great Salle des Pas Perdus there was,
+as always, a crowd of folk, jostling, fidgeting, making a clamor of
+mixed voices. He did not visit it often enough to know that the crowd
+was larger than usual and strongly leavened with an element of
+furtive shabby men and desperate calm women. He found his official
+and disposed of his affair, and the official, who was willing enough
+to be seen in the company of a man of Rufin's position, rose politely
+to see him forth, and walked with him into the noisy hall.
+
+"You are not often here, Monsieur Rufin?" he suggested. "And yet, as
+you see, here is much matter for an artist. These faces, eh? All the
+brigands of Paris are here to-day. In there"--and he pointed to one
+of the many doors--"the trial is proceeding of those apaches."
+
+"A great occasion, no doubt," said Rufin. He looked casually towards
+the door which his companion indicated. "Of course I have read of the
+matter in the newspapers, but----"
+
+He ceased speaking abruptly. A movement in the crowd between him and
+the door had let him see, for a space of seconds, a girl who leaned
+against the wall, strained and pale, as though waiting in a patient
+agony for news, for tidings of the fates that were being decided
+within. From the moment his eyes rested on her he was sure; there was
+no possibility of a mistake; it was the girl whose face, reproduced,
+interpreted, and immortalized, looked forth from the canvas he had
+seen in the Montmartre tenement.
+
+"Two of them held the gendarme, while the third cut his throat with
+his own sword. A grotesque touch, that--vous ne trouvez pas? tres
+fort!"--the official was remarking when Rufin took him by the arm.
+
+"That girl," he said. "You see her?--against the wall there. I cannot
+talk with her in this crowd, and I must talk to her at once. Where is
+there some quiet Place?"
+
+"Eh?" The little babbling official had a moment of doubt. But he
+reflected that one is not a great artist without being eccentric; and
+his amiable brow cleared.
+
+"She is certainly a type," he said, peering on tiptoe. "Wonderful!
+You cast your eye upon all this crowd and at once, in a single
+glance, you pluck forth the type--wonderful! As to a place, that is
+easy. My office is at your service."
+
+The girl lifted hunted and miserable eyes to the tall, grave man who
+looked down upon her and raised his hat.
+
+"I have something to say to you," he said. "Come with me."
+
+A momentary frantic hope flamed in her thin countenance. It sank, and
+she hesitated. Girls of her world are practiced in discounting such
+requests. But Rufin's courteous and fastidious face was above
+suspicion; without a word she followed him.
+
+The office to which he led her was an arid, neat room, an economical
+legal factory for making molehills into mountains. A desk and certain
+chairs stood like chill islands about its floor; it had the forlorn
+atmosphere of a waiting-room. The little official whose workshop it
+was held open the door for them, followed them in, and closed it
+again. "Do not be alarmed, my child," he said to the tragic girl.
+"This gentleman is a great artist. You will be honored in serving
+him."
+
+Rufin stilled him with an upraised hand and fetched a chair for the
+girl. She rested an arm on the back of it, but did not sit down. She
+did not understand why she had been brought to this room, and stared
+with hard, preoccupied eyes at the tall man with the mild, still
+face.
+
+"I recognized you by a picture I saw some months ago in a room in
+Montmartre," said Rufin.
+
+"It was a great picture, the work of a great man."
+
+"Ah!" The girl let her breath go in a long sigh. "Monsieur knows him,
+then? And knows that he is a great man? For he is--he is a great
+man!"
+
+She spoke with passion, with a living fervor of conviction, but her
+eyes still appealed.
+
+"You and I both know it quite certainly, Mademoiselle," replied
+Rufin. "Everybody will know it very soon. It is a truth that cannot
+be hidden. But where is the picture?!"
+
+"I have it," she answered.
+
+"Take care of it, then," said Rufin. "You have a great trust. And the
+painter--have you got him, too?"
+
+She stared at him, bewildered. "The painter? The painter of the
+picture?"
+
+"Of course," said Rufin. "Who else?"
+
+"But----" she looked from him to the benign official, who had the air
+of presiding at a ceremony. "Then you don't know? You haven't heard?"
+
+Comprehension lit in her face; she uttered a wretched little laugh.
+
+"Ah, v'la de la comedie!" she cried. "No, I haven't got him. They
+have taken him from me. They have taken him, and in there"--her
+forefinger shot out and pointed to the wall and beyond it--"in there,
+in a room full of people who stare and listen, they are making him
+into a murderer."
+
+"Then--parbleu!" The little official was seized by comprehension as
+by a fit. "Then there is an artist--the artist of whom you talk--who
+is one of the apaches! It is unbelievable!"
+
+At the word apaches the girl turned on him with teeth bared as though
+in a snarl. But at the sound of Rufin's voice she subsided.
+
+"What is his name--quickly?" he demanded.
+
+"Giaconi," she answered.
+
+Rufin looked his question at the little official, who turned to the
+girl.
+
+"Peter the Lucky?" he queried.
+
+She nodded dejectedly.
+
+The little official made a grimace. "It was he," he said, "who did
+the throat-cutting. Tiens! this begins to be a drama."
+
+The girl, with drooping head, made a faint moan of protest and
+misery. Rufin signed the little man to be silent. The truth, if he
+had but given it entertainment, had offered itself to him from the
+first. All he had heard of the man, Papa Musard's slanderous-sounding
+complaints of him, the fat concierge's reports of his violence, had
+gathered towards this culmination. He had insisted upon thinking of
+him as a full-blooded man of genius, riotously making little of
+conventions, a creature abounding in life, tinctured a little,
+perhaps, with the madness that may spice the mind of a visionary and
+enrage his appetites. It was a figure ha had created to satisfy
+himself.
+
+"It was false art," he reflected. "That is me--false art!"
+
+Still, whatever he had seen wrongly, there was still the picture.
+Apache, murderer, and all the rest--the fellow had painted the
+picture. No one verdict can account for both art and morals, and
+there was reason to fear, it seemed, that the law which executed a
+murderer would murder a painter at the same time--and such a painter!
+
+"No," said Rufin, unconsciously speaking aloud--"no; they must not
+kill him."
+
+"Ah, M'sieur!" It was a cry from the girl, whose composure had
+broken utterly at his words. "You are also an artist--you know!"
+
+In a hysteria of supplication she flung herself forward and was on
+her knees at his feet. She lifted clasped hands and blinded eyes; she
+was like a child saying its prayers but for the writhen torture of
+her face, where wild hopes and lunatic terrors played alternately.
+
+"M'sieur, you can save him! You have the grand air, M'sieur; there is
+God in your face; you make men hear you! For mercy--for blessed
+charity--ah, M'sieur, M'sieur, I will carry your sins for you; I will
+go to hell in your place! You are great--one sees it; and he is
+great, too! M'sieur, I am your chattel, your beast--only save him,
+save him!"
+
+It tore the barren atmosphere of the office to rags; it made the
+place august and awful. Rufin bent to her and took her clasped hands
+in one of his to raise her.
+
+"I will do all that I can," he said earnestly. "All! I dare not do
+less, my child."
+
+She gulped and shivered; she had poured her soul and her force forth,
+and she was weak and empty. She strained to find further expression,
+but could not. Rufin supported her to the chair.
+
+"We must see what is happening in this trial," he said to the little
+official. "We have lost time as it is."
+
+"I will guide you," replied the other happily. "It!-is a situation,
+is it not? Ah, the crevasses, the abysses of life! Come, my friend."
+
+From the Salle des Pas Perdus a murmur reached them. They entered it
+to find the crowd sundered, leaving empty a broad alley.
+
+"Qu'est ce qu'y a?" The little official was jumping on tiptoe to see
+over the heads in front of him. "Is it possible that the case is
+finished?"
+
+A huissier came at his gesture and found means to get them through to
+the front of the crowd, which waited with a hungry expectation.
+
+"The case is certainly finished," murmured the little man.
+
+A double door opened at the head of the alley of people, and half a
+dozen men in uniform came out quickly. Others followed, and they came
+down toward the entrance. In the midst of them, their shabby civilian
+clothes contrasting abruptly with the uniforms of their guards,
+slouched four men, handcuffed and bareheaded.
+
+"It is they," whispered the official to Rufin, and half turned his
+head to ask a question of the huissier behind them.
+
+Three of them were lean young men, with hardy, debased, animal
+countenances. They were referable at a glance to the dregs of
+civilization. They had the stooped shoulders, the dragging gait, the
+half-servile, half-threatening expression that hallmarks the apache.
+It was to the fourth that Rufin turned with an overdue thrill of
+excitement. A young man--not more than twenty-five--built like a bull
+for force and wrath. His was that colossal physique that develops in
+the South; his shoulders were mighty under his mean coat, and his
+chained wrists were square and knotty. He held his head up with a
+sort of truculence in its poise; it was the head, massive, sensuous-
+lipped, slow-eyed, of a whimsical Nero. It was weariness, perhaps,
+that give him his look of satiety, of appetites full fed and dormant,
+of lusts grossly slaked. A murmur ran through the hall as he passed;
+it was as though the wretched men and women who knew him uttered an
+involuntary applause.
+
+"There is Peter," said some one near Rufin. "Lucky Peter; Quel
+homme!"
+
+The Huissier was memorizing for the little official the closing scene
+of the trial. Rufin heard words here and there in his narrative.
+"Called the judges a set of old . . . Laughed aloud when they asked
+him if . . . Yes, roared with laughter--roared." And then for the
+final phrase: "Condamnes a la mort!"
+
+"You hear?" inquired the little official, nudging him. "It is too
+late. They are condemned to death, all of them. They have their
+affair!"
+
+Rufin shrugged and led the way back to the office. But it was empty;
+the girl had gone.
+
+"Tiens!" said the official. "No doubt she heard of the sentence and
+knew that there was no more to be done."
+
+"Or else," said Rufin thoughtfully, frowning at the floor--"or else
+she reposes her trust in me."
+
+"Ah, doubtless," agreed the little man. "But say, then! It has been
+an experience, hein? Piquant, picturesque, moving, too. For I am not
+like you; I do not see these dramas every day."
+
+"And you fancy I do?" cried Rufin. "Man, I am terrified to find what
+goes on in the world. And I thought I knew life!" With a gesture of
+hopelessness and impotence he turned on his heel and went forth.
+
+The business preserved its character of a series of accidents to the
+end; accidents are the forced effects of truth. Rufin, having
+organized supports of a kind not to be ignored in a republican state,
+even by blind Justice herself, threw his case at the wise grey head
+of the Minister of Justice--a wily politician who knew the uses of
+advertisement. The apaches are distinctively a Parisian produce, and
+if only Paris could be won over, intrigued by the romance and
+strangeness of the genius that had flowered in the gutter, and given
+to the world a star of art, all would be arranged and the guillotine
+would have but three necks to subdue. France at large would only
+shrug, for France is the husband of Paris and permits her her
+caprices. It rested with Paris, then.
+
+But, as though they insisted upon a martyr, the apaches themselves
+intervened with a brisk series of murders and outrages, the last of
+which they effected on the very fringe of the show-Paris. It was not
+a sergent de ville this time, but a shopkeeper, and the city frothed
+at the mouth and shrieked for revenge.
+
+"After that," said the Minister, "there is nothing to do. See for
+yourself--here are the papers! We shall be fortunate if four
+executions suffice."
+
+Rufin was seated facing him across a great desk littered with
+documents.
+
+"Why not try if three will serve?" he suggested.
+
+The minister smiled and shook his head. He looked at Rufin half
+humorously.
+
+"These Parisians," he said, "have the guillotine habit. If they take
+to crying for more, what old man can be sure of dying in his bed? My
+grandfather was an old man, and his head fell in the Revolution."
+
+"But this," said Rufin, rustling the newspapers before him--"this is
+clamor. It is panic. It is not serious."
+
+"That is why I am afraid of it," replied the Minister. "I am always
+afraid of a frightened Frenchman. But, sans blague, my friend, I
+cannot do what you wish."
+
+Rufin put the piled newspapers from him and leaned forward to plead.
+
+It was useless. The old man opposite him had a manner as deft and
+unassuming as his own; it masked a cynical inflexibility of purpose
+proof against any appeal.
+
+"I cannot do it," was his single answer.
+
+Rufin sighed. "Then it remains to see the President," he suggested.
+
+"There is that," smiled the Minister. "See him by all means. If you
+are interested in gardening, you will find him charming. Otherwise,
+perhaps--but an honest man, I assure you."
+
+"At least," said Rufin, "if everything fails, if the great painter is
+to be sacrificed to the newspapers and your epigrams--at least you
+will allow me to visit him before--before the----"
+
+"But certainly!" the Minister bowed. "I am eager to serve you,
+Monsieur Rufin. When the date is fixed I will write you a permission.
+You three shall have an interview; it should be a memorable one."
+
+"We three?" Rufin waited for an explanation.
+
+"Exactly. You two great artists, Monsieur Rufin and Monsieur Giaconi,
+and also the murderer, Peter the Lucky."
+
+The old man smiled charmingly; he had brought the negotiations to a
+point with a mot.
+
+"Adieu, cher maitre," he said, rising to shake his visitor's hand
+across the wide desk.
+
+Rufin seemed to have trodden into a groove of unsuccess. All his
+efforts were futile; he saw himself wasting time and energy while
+fate wasted none. The picture came to hang in his studio till the
+Luxembourg should demand it; daily its tragic wisdom and tenacious
+femininity goaded him to new endeavors, and daily he knew that he
+spent himself in vain.
+
+He did not even realize how much of himself he had expended till that
+raw morning before the dawn when he drove across Paris in a damp and
+mournful cab, with the silent girl at his side, to a little square
+like a well shut in by high houses whose every window was lighted.
+There was already a crowd waiting massed under the care of mounted
+soldiers, and the cab slowed to a walk to pass through them. From the
+window at his side he saw, with unconscious appreciation, the picture
+it made, an arrangement of somber masses with yellow windows shining,
+and in the middle the gaunt uprights, the severe simplicity of the
+guillotine.
+
+Faces looked in at him, strange and sudden, lit abruptly by the
+carriage-lamps. Somebody--doubtless a student--peered and recognized
+him. "Good morning, maitre," he said, and was gone. Maitre--master!
+Men did him honor in so naming him, gave him rank, deferred to him.
+But he acknowledged life for his master, himself for its pupil and
+servant.
+
+The girl had not spoken since they started; she remained sitting
+still in her place when the cab halted at a door, and it needed his
+hand on her arm to rouse her to dismount. She followed him obediently
+between more men in uniform, and they found themselves in a corridor,
+where an officer, obviously waiting there for the purpose, greeted
+Rufin with marked deference.
+
+"There is no need," he said, as Rufin groped in his pockets for the
+permit with which he had been provided. "I have been warned to expect
+Monsieur Rufin and the lady, and I congratulate myself on the honor
+of receiving them."
+
+"He knows we are coming?" asked Rufin.
+
+"Yes, he knows," replied the other. "At this moment his toilet is
+being made." He sank his voice so that the mute, abstracted girl
+should not overhear. "The hair above the neck, you know--they always
+shave that off. It might be better that mademoiselle should not see."
+
+"Possibly," agreed Rufin, looking absently at his comely,
+insignificant face, which the lamps illuminated mercilessly.
+
+The girl stood with her hands loosely joined before her, and her thin
+face vacant, staring, as though in a mood of deep thought, along the
+bare passage. Suddenly she addressed the officer.
+
+"How long shall I be with him," she inquired, in tones of an almost
+arrogant composure, "before they cut his head off?"
+
+The words, in their matter-of-fact directness, no less than the tone,
+seemed to startle the officer.
+
+"Ah, Mademoiselle!" he protested, as though at an indelicacy or an
+accusation.
+
+"How long?" repeated the girl.
+
+"Kindly tell mademoiselle what she wishes to know," directed Rufin.
+
+The officer hesitated. "It does not rest with me," he said
+uncomfortably. "You see, there is a regular course in these matters,
+a routine. I hope mademoiselle will have not less than ten minutes."
+
+The girl looked at Rufin and made a face. It was as though she had
+been overcharged in a shop; she invited him, it seemed, to take note
+of a trivial imposture. Her manner and gesture had the repressed
+power of under-expression. He nodded to her in entire comprehension.
+
+"But," began the officer excitedly, "how can I----" Rufin turned on
+him gravely, a somber, august figure of reproof.
+
+"Sir," he said, "you are in the presence of a tragedy. I beg you to
+be silent."
+
+The officer made a hopeless gesture; the shadow of it fled
+grotesquely up the walls.
+
+A few moments later the summons came that took them along the passage
+to an open door, giving on to a room brilliant with lights and
+containing a number of people. At the farther end of it a table
+against the wall had been converted into a sort of altar, with wan
+candles alight upon it, and there was a robed priest among the
+uniformed men. Those by the door parted to make way for them. Rufin
+saw them salute him, and removed his hat.
+
+Somebody was speaking. "Regret we cannot leave you alone, but----"
+
+"It does not matter," said Rufin. The room was raw and aching with
+light; the big electrics were pitiless. In the middle of it a man sat
+on a chair and raised expectant eyes at his arrival. It was Giaconi,
+the painter, the murderer. There was some disorder of his dress which
+Rufin noted automatically, but it was not for some minutes that he
+perceived its cause--the collar of his coat had been shorn away. The
+man sat under all those fascinated eyes impatiently; his tired and
+whimsical face was tense and drawn; he was plainly putting a strong
+constraint upon himself. The great shoulders, the huge arms, all the
+compressed strength of the body, made the effect of some strong
+animal fettered and compelled to tameness.
+
+"Rufin?" he said hesitatingly.
+
+The painter nodded. "Yes, it is Rufin."
+
+The girl glided past him toward the seated man. "And I, Pietro," she
+said.
+
+He made a gesture with his hand as though to move her aside, for she
+stood between him and Rufin.
+
+"Ah," she cried, "do you not need me at all--even now?"
+
+"Oh, what is it?" said the condemned man, with a quick irritation.
+"Is this a time! There is not a moment to spare. I must speak to
+Rufin--I must. Yes, kneel down; that's right!"
+
+She had sunk at his knee and laid her brown head upon it. As though
+to acknowledge the caress of a dog, he let one hand fall on her bowed
+shoulders. His eyes traveled across her to Rufin.
+
+"They told me you would come. Say--is it because of my picture?"
+
+"Yes," said Rufin. "I have done all that I could to save you because
+of that. But----"
+
+"I know," said the other. "They have told me. You like it, then--my
+poor 'Mona Lisa' of Montmartre?"
+
+Rufin stepped closer. It was not easy to utter all he desired to say
+under the eyes of those uniformed men, with the sad, attentive priest
+in the background.
+
+"Monsieur," he said, "your picture is in my studio. Nothing shall
+ever hang in its place, for nothing will be worthy."
+
+The seated man heard him hungrily. For the moment he seemed to have
+forgotten where he was and what was to happen to him ere he drew many
+more breaths.
+
+"I knew," he said, "I knew. I can paint. So can you, Monsieur--
+sometimes. We two---we know!"
+
+He frowned heavily as realization returned to him. "And now I never
+shall," he said. "I never shall! Ah, it is horrible! A man is two
+people, and both die like a single soul. You know, for you are an
+artist."
+
+"I--I have done my best," said Rufin despairingly. "If I could go
+instead and leave you to paint--oh, believe me, I would go now
+gladly, proudly, for I should have given the world pictures--great
+pictures."
+
+A spasm of emotion filled his eyes with tears, and some one touched
+his arm and drew him aside. He strove with himself fiercely and
+looked up again to see that three men had entered the room and were
+going toward the prisoner. The priest had come forward and was
+raising the kneeling girl.
+
+"A moment," cried the prisoner, as the three laid hands upon him.
+"Just a moment." They took no notice. "Monsieur Rufin," he cried, "it
+is my hand I offer you--only that."
+
+Somebody near Rufin spoke a brief order and the three were still. He
+saw Giaconi's intent face across their shoulders, his open hand
+reaching forward between them. He clasped it silently.
+
+The priest had set the girl on her knees before the improvised altar
+and stood beside her in silence. The three, with no word spoken,
+proceeded with their business. With deft speed they lashed their
+man's hands behind his back, forcing them back with rough skill. The
+chief of them motioned his subordinates to take him by the elbows and
+signed to the priest with his hand. The priest came forward, holding
+the crucifix, and took his place close to the prisoner. For a final
+touch of the grotesque the executioner produced and put on a tall
+silk hat.
+
+"March!" he said, and they took the condemned man toward the door. He
+twisted his head round for a last glance at the room.
+
+"Good-bye, little one!" he cried loudly. The kneeling girl only
+moaned.
+
+"Good-bye, M'sieur Rufin."
+
+Rufin stepped forward and bowed mechanically.
+
+"Adieu, Maitre," he answered.
+
+He saw that the condemned man's eyes lightened, a flush rose in his
+face; he smiled as if in triumph. Then they passed out, and Rufin,
+after standing for a moment in uncertainty, crossed the room and
+knelt beside the girl, with his hands pressed to his ears.
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+"PARISIENNE"
+
+"At least," said the Comtesse, still staring at the brisk fire in the
+steel grate--"at least he saw them with his own eyes."
+
+She was thinking aloud, and Elsie Gray, her distant relative and
+close companion, only looked up without reply. The Comtesse's face
+stood in profile against the bright appointments of the fireplace,
+delicate and serene; the tall salon, with its white panels gleaming
+discreetly in the light of the candles, made a chaste frame for her
+fragile presence. The window-curtains had been drawn to shut out the
+evening which shed its damp melancholy over the Faubourg, and to the
+girl the great, still room seemed like a stage set for a drama. She
+sat on a stool beside the Comtesse's chair, her fingers busy with
+many-colored skeins of silk, and the soft stir of the fire and the
+tick of a little clock worked themselves into her patient thoughts.
+
+"He was to come at nine, I think," said the Comtesse at last, without
+turning her head.
+
+"Yes," said Elsie, leaning forward to look at the little clock. "It
+still wants twenty minutes."
+
+The Comtesse nodded slowly; all her gestures had the gentle
+deliberation of things done ceremonially.
+
+"It is not much longer to wait, is it?" she said. "After twenty
+years, one should be patient. But to think! To-night, for the first
+time I hear of Jeanne from one who saw her at the end. Not a lawyer
+who has sought out the tale and rearranged it, but one who knew. You
+see, Elsie?"
+
+Elsie put a hand on her arm, and her little thrill of excitement died
+out at once.
+
+"Yes," said the girl; "I see, but you must be tranquil."
+
+"I will be tranquil," promised the Comtesse. "I will have
+consideration for my heart. It is only the waiting which tries me."
+
+"And that is nearly at an end." Elsie released her arm, and the
+Comtesse turned again to the fire. The tick of the clock renewed its
+tiny insistence; the great room again enveloped them in the austerity
+of its silence. The girl returned to the silk strings in her lap. She
+knew the occasion of the Comtesse's sudden emotion; it was a familiar
+tale, and not the loss familiar for being told in whispers. She had
+heard it first when she came from her English home to be the
+Comtesse's companion. It had been told to her officially, as it were,
+to guide her in her dealings with the Comtesse. A florid French
+uncle, with a manner of confidential discretion that made her blush,
+had been the mouthpiece of the family, and from him she had learned
+how Jeanne, the Comtesse's half-sister, had run away with a rogue, a
+man who got his deserts, an officer in a regiment stationed in
+Algeria.
+
+"Eventually he committed suicide, but before that there were
+passages," the French uncle had said. The dreadful word "passages"
+seemed to contain the story, and he gave it an accent of unspeakable
+significance. "The Comtesse has suffered," he told her further. "It
+was a sad affair, and she had much tenderness for Jeanne." And that,
+at first, seemed to be the whole of it, though once or twice the
+uncle checked himself on the brink of details. But on this evening
+the tale was to be told afresh. There had arrived from Africa one
+Colonel Saval, who had served with the sorry hero of poor Jeanne's
+romance; he had known him and dealt with him; and he was appointed to
+come to the Comtesse in the quality of eye-witness.
+
+He was punctual, at all events; the little clock was yet striking
+when the gaunt footman opened the door and spoke his name. The
+Comtesse looked up, and Elsie Gray rose to receive him; he advanced
+and made his bow.
+
+"Madame la Comtesse?" he said, with a faint note of inquiry. The
+Comtesse's inclination answered him. "Madame la Comtesse honors me. I
+am happy to be of service."
+
+He bowed to Elsie, who gave him "Good evening;" the footman set
+forward a chair for him and withdrew. His white hair stood about his
+head like a delicate haze; under it, the narrow wise face was brick-
+red, giving news of his long service under the sun of North Africa.
+He was short and slight, a tiny vivacious man, full of charming
+formalities, and there was about him something gentle and suave, that
+did not quite hide a trenchant quality of spirit. He stood before
+them, smiling in a moment of hesitation, half paternal, wholly
+gallant.
+
+"Madame la Comtesse is suffering," said Elsie, in the spacious French
+idiom. "There is little that she can say. But she thanks Monsieur
+most sincerely for giving himself this trouble. But please be
+seated."
+
+He was active in condolences at once. "I am most sympathetic," he
+said seriously. "And for the trouble"--he nicked it from him--"there
+is no trouble. I am honored."
+
+The Comtesse bowed to him. "Monsieur is very amiable," she murmured.
+
+He hitched up his chair and sat down, facing the pair of them. His
+shrewd eye took the measure of the Comtesse and her infirmity,
+without relinquishing a suggestion of admiration. He was a man
+panoplied with the civil arts; his long career in camps and garrisons
+had subtracted nothing of social dexterity. There was even a kind of
+grace in his attitude as he sat, his cane and hat in one hand, with
+one knee crossed upon the other. He spent a moment in consideration.
+
+"It is of the Capitaine Bertin that I am to speak? Yes?" he asked
+suddenly.
+
+The Comtesse stirred a little in her chair. "Yes," she answered, in a
+voice like a sigh--a sigh of relief, perhaps.
+
+"Ah!" He made a little gesture of acknowledgment. "Le Capitaine
+Bertin! Then Madame will compose herself to hear little that is
+agreeable, for it is a tale of tragedy." His eyes wandered for a
+moment; he seemed to be renewing and testing again the flavor of
+memories. Under his trim moustache the mouth set and grew harder.
+Then, without further preamble, he began to speak.
+
+"Bertin and I were of the same rank," he said, "and of much the same
+age. There was never a time when we were friends; there stood between
+us too pronounced a difference--a difference, Madame, of spirit, of
+aim, and even of physique. Bertin was large, sanguine, with the face
+of a bold lover, of a man noticeably gallant. I recall him most
+vividly as he sat in a cafe behind a little round table. It was thus
+one saw him most frequently, with his hard, swarthy face and
+moustaches that curled like a ram's horns. In such places he seemed
+most at home, with men about him and cards ready to his hand; and
+yet--has Madame seen the kind of man who is never wholly at his ease,
+who stands for ever on his guard, as it were! Bertin was such a one;
+there were many occasions when I remarked it. He would be in the
+centre of a company of his friends, assured, genial, dominant; and
+yet, at each fresh arrival in the room, he would look up with
+something furtive and defensive in his expression. I have seen
+deserters like that, but in Bertin it lacked an explanation."
+
+"And there was a further matter yet. He was my fellow officer; I saw
+him on parade and at mess; but his life, the life of his own choice,
+was lived among those who were not our equals. How shall I make that
+clear to you, Madame? In those days, Europe drained into Algiers; it
+had its little world of men who gambled and drank much, and
+understood one another with a complete mistrust; it was with such as
+these that Bertin occupied his leisure. It was with them that his
+harshness and power were most efficacious. Naturally, it was not
+pleasant for us, his colleagues, to behold him for ever with such
+companions; the most of them seemed to be men connected with one
+sport or another, with billiards, or racing, or the like; but there
+was nothing to be done."
+
+The Comtesse shifted slightly in her chair. "He had power," she said
+thoughtfully.
+
+The little Colonel nodded twice. "He had power, as Madame observes.
+He had many good qualities--not quite enough, it is true, but many.
+There were even those that loved him, dogs, horses, waiters,
+croupiers and the poor women who made up the background of his life.
+I have thought, sometimes, that it is easy for a man to be loved,
+Madame, if he will take that responsibility. But what befell Bertin
+was not commonplace. He returned to France on leave, for six months,
+and it was then, I believe, that he first met the lady who became
+Madame Bertin?"
+
+He gave the words the tone of a question, and the Comtesse answered
+with a slow gesture of assent.
+
+"Yes, I have heard that it was so," said the Colonel. "Of what took
+place at that time I can tell nothing, naturally, and Madame is no
+doubt sufficiently informed. But I saw him--I saw them both--within a
+week of their return. Upon that occasion I dined at a hotel with two
+friends, Captain Vaucher and Lieutenant de Sailles. Bertin, with some
+friends and his wife, was at a table near-by. She was the only lady
+of the party; her place was between an Englishman, a lean, twisted
+man with the thin legs of a groom, and a Belgian who passed for an
+artist. It was de Sailles who pointed them out; and in effect it was
+a group to see with emotion. The lady--she was known to you, Madame?
+Then the position will be clear. She was of that complete and perfect
+type we honor as the Parisienne, a product of the most complex life
+in the world. She was slender and straight--ah! straight as a lance,
+with youth and spirit and buoyancy in the carriage of her head, the
+poise of her body, the color upon her cheeks. But it was not that--
+the beauty and the courage--that caused her to stand out among those
+men as a climbing rose stands out from an old wall; it was the
+schooled and perfected quality of her, the fineness and delicacy of
+her manner and expression, the--in short, the note of breeding,
+Madame, the unmistakable ensign of caste. The Englishman fidgeted and
+lounged beside her; the fat Belgian drank much and was boisterous;
+Bertin was harsh and rudely jovial and loud. It was as though she
+were enveloped in a miasma."
+
+"'So that is what Bertin has brought back,' said Vaucher slowly, as
+his custom was."
+
+"'It is a crime,' said de Sailles."
+
+"'I wonder,' said Vaucher, and drank his wine. He was much my friend,
+a man with the courage and innocence of a good child; but his thought
+was not easy to follow. He gave Bertin's group another look under
+puckered brows, and then turned his back on it and began to talk of
+other matters. I might have known then that--but I must tell my tale
+in order."
+
+"Bertin was not wise--if it were nothing more--to bring such a wife
+to Algiers. It turned eyes upon him. Those who had been aware of him
+merely as a man of low tastes now began to notice his particular
+actions. He had a house in a certain impasse, and one night there was
+a brawl there--an affair of a man drunk and angry, of a knife drawn
+and some one stabbed. Before, it might have passed; our discipline
+was indulgent; but now it took on the shape of a scandal. It was
+brief and ugly, but it marked a stage passed in Bertin's career. And
+it was only two days later that Vaucher came to me in my quarters
+with a manner at once deprecating and defiant. He sat in my arm-chair
+and laughed quietly before he spoke."
+
+"'I am looking for friends,' he said; 'for a pair of friends.'"
+
+"Then, of course, I understood. I bade him count on me. 'And there is
+also de Sailles,' I reminded him. 'He has a very just taste in these
+affairs. But who is our opponent?'"
+
+"'It is Bertin,' he answered."
+
+"I was astonished, and he told me all. It was an episode of quixotry,
+a thing entirely imprudent and altogether lovable in him. It chanced
+that on the evening of Bertin's little--er--fracas, Vaucher had
+passed by the impasse in which Bertin lived. He had heard the scream
+of the man with the knife in him and paused. It was a dark night, and
+in the impasse there was but one lamp which stood near Bertin's door.
+There was a babble of many voices after that scream--shouts of fury,
+the whining of the would-be assassin, and so on; he was about to pass
+on, when Bertin's door opened and a woman slipped out and stood
+listening on the pavement. Her attitude was that of one ready to
+flee, terrified but uncertain. As the noises within died down she
+relapsed from her tense pose and showed her face to Vaucher in the
+light of the lamp. It was Madame Bertin. She did not see him where he
+waited, and all of a sudden her self-possession snapped like a twig
+you break in your fingers. She was weeping, leaning against the wall,
+weeping desolately, in an abandonment of humiliation and impotence.
+But Vaucher was not moved when he told me of it."
+
+"'That I could have endured,' he said. 'I held my peace and did not
+intrude upon her. But presently they brought the wounded man
+downstairs, and Bertin came forth to seek a fiacre to take him away.
+She heard him ere he came out and gained thus the grace of an
+instant. There was never anything in life so pitiful, so moving, as
+the woman's strength that strangled down her sobs, dried the tears at
+their source, and showed to her husband a face as calm as it was
+cold. He spoke to her and she gave him a word in answer. But'--and he
+leaned forward in my chair and struck his fist on the arm of it--'but
+that poor victory is sore in my memory like a scar."
+
+"All that was comprehensible. Vaucher was a man of heart. 'But what
+is the quarrel?' I demanded."
+
+"'The quarrel!' he repeated. 'Let me see; what was it, now?' He had
+actually forgotten. 'Oh yes. He spoke to me. That was it. He spoke to
+me, and I desired him not to speak to me for the future, of course.'
+
+"Madame, up to the time when I went with Vaucher to the ground I had
+not given a thought to the issue of the affair. I had taken it for
+granted that Bertin would go down; at such seasons, one is blinded by
+one's sense of right. It lasted not two minutes. They fought with the
+saber--our custom at that time. Though it was early in the morning,
+there was a strong sun; it made a flame on the blades as they saluted
+before engaging. Bertin was very sober and serious, but one had only
+to glance at him to perceive a very heat of wrath masked under his
+heavy countenance. Vaucher was intent, wary, full of careful purpose.
+Their blades touched. 'All'ez!' There were a couple of moments of
+fencing, of almost formal escrime, and then Vaucher lengthened his
+arm and attacked. Bertin stepped back a pace, and, as Vaucher
+advanced, he slashed with a high open cut, and it was over. Vaucher
+threw up both hands and came to his knees. I remember that I stood,
+unable to move, staring aghast at this end to the affair; while
+Bertin threw down his sword, turned his back, and went to where his
+clothes lay. At that moment he seemed as vast against the morning sky
+as a monument, as a sphinx carved out of a mountain. He had spoken no
+word."
+
+"We took Vaucher back to the city. It was a cut in the head. Madame
+shall be spared the particulars. I think he is living yet, but it was
+the end of him, none the less."
+
+The little Colonel's voice dropped on the last words. He did not take
+the sympathy and friendship that waited for him in Elsie's grey eyes;
+he looked with a somber gaze at the Comtesse. She still held her
+favorite attitude, leaning a little to one side in her great chair,
+so that she could watch the shifting shapes in the fire. She was
+smiling slightly, but her smile vanished as the Colonel paused.
+
+"He was a gallant gentleman," she said softly. Elsie turned her head
+to look at her, surprised, for the thing was said perfunctorily, in
+the manner of a commonplace of politeness.
+
+Colonel Saval bowed. "Madame la Comtesse is only just," he said. But
+he glanced sharply at her serene, preoccupied face with a manner of
+some dissatisfaction.
+
+He resumed his tale with a sigh. "After all," he said, "there is not
+much to tell. I was not fortunate enough to meet Madame Bertin
+frequently during the two years that followed. From time to time I
+saw her, always with some wonder, for she preserved to the end that
+delicate and superb quality which so distinguished her. The scandal
+of the brawl was the small thing that was needed to turn Bertin's
+course downhill; almost from that day one could mark his decline. It
+was not a matter of incidents; it was simply that within a year most
+of us were passing him without recognition, and there was talk of
+debts that troubled him. He had deteriorated, too; whereas of old he
+was florid, now he was inflamed and gross; where he had been merely
+loud, he was now coarse. Within eighteen months the Colonel had made
+him a scene, had told him sour truths, and shaken his finger at him.
+That power of his, Madame, was not the power that enables a man to
+hold his level. Even with the companions of his leisure, his
+ascendancy faded. I recollect seeing him once, at the corner of the
+Place du Gouvernement, in the centre of a group of them, raging
+almost tearfully, while they laughed at him. The horrible laughter of
+those outcasts, edged like a saw, cruel and vile! And he was purple
+with fury, shaking like a man in an ague, and helpless against them.
+I was young in those days and not incapable of generous impulses; I
+recollect that as I passed I jostled one of those creatures out of
+the path, and then turned and waited for the remonstrance which he
+decided not to make."
+
+The Comtesse nodded at the fire, like one well pleased. The little
+Colonel gave her another of his shrewd glances and went on.
+
+"As you see, Madame, it is not possible to describe to you the steps
+by which Bertin sank. The end came within two years of the duel. One
+knew--somehow--that it was at hand. There were things dropped in
+talk, things overheard and pieced together--a whole atmosphere of
+scandal, in which there came and went little items of plain fact. The
+trouble was with regimental funds; again I will spare Madame the
+details; but certain of them which should have passed through
+Bertin's hands had not arrived at their destination. Clerks from a
+bank came to work upon the accounts; strange, cool young men, who
+hunted figures through ledgers as a ferret traces a rat under a
+floor. You must understand that for the regiment it was a monstrous
+matter, an affair to hide sedulously; it touched our intimate honor.
+There was a meeting of the rest of us to consider the thing; finally,
+it was I that was deputed to go forthwith to Bertin and persuade him
+to leave the city, to vanish, to do his part to save our credit. And
+that evening, as soon as it was dark enough to be convenient, I
+went."
+
+"There was still that light in the impasse by which my poor friend
+Vaucher had seen Madame Bertin weeping; but from the windows of the
+house there came none. It was shuttered like a fort. It was not till
+I had knocked many times upon the door that there came any response.
+At last I heard bolts being withdrawn--bolt after bolt, as if the
+place had been a prison or a treasury; and Madame Bertin herself
+stood in the entry. The one lamp in the impasse showed her my
+uniform, and she breathed like one who had been running."
+
+"I saluted her and inquired for Bertin."
+
+"'Captain Bertin?' she repeated after me. 'I do not know--I fear----'"
+
+"'My business with him is urgent,' I told her, and at that she
+whitened. 'And unofficial,' I added, therefore."
+
+"At that she stood aside for me to enter. I aided her to fasten the
+door again, and she led me up the stairs to a small room, divided by
+large doors from an inner chamber."
+
+"'If you will please be seated,' she said, 'I will send Captain
+Bertin in to you.'"
+
+"She was thinner, I thought, and perhaps a trifle less assured; but
+that was to be understood. For the rest, she had the deliberate tones
+of the salon, the little smile of a convention that is not irksome.
+Her voice, her posture, had that grace one knows and defers to at
+sight. It was all very wonderful to come upon in that house. As she
+left the room, her profile shone against the wall like a cameo, so
+splendid in its pallor and the fineness of its outline."
+
+"She must have gone from the passage by another entrance to the room
+beyond the double doors, for I heard her voice there--and his. They
+spoke together for some minutes, she at length, but he shortly; and
+then the doors slid apart a foot or so, and he came through sideways.
+He gave me a desperate look, and pulled at the doors to close them
+behind him. They stuck and resisted him, and he ceased his efforts at
+once."
+
+"'You wanted to speak to me?' he asked. He seemed to be frowning as a
+child will frown to keep from bursting into tears. 'But not
+officially, I believe? It is not official, is it?'"
+
+"'No,' I answered. 'It is a message--quite private.'"
+
+"He ceased to frown at that, staring at me heavily, and chewing his
+moustache."
+
+"'Sit down,' he said suddenly, and came nearer, glancing over his
+shoulder at the aperture of the doors. Something in that movement
+gave me the suggestion that he was accustomed to guard against
+eavesdroppers; all those poor forlorn gamesters and wastrels are full
+of secrets and privacies. One sees them for ever in corners with
+furtive eyes for listeners, guiding their business like
+conspirators."
+
+"I gave him my message at once. There was a need upon me for plain
+speech with the man, like that need for cold steel which came upon
+poor Vaucher."
+
+"'There is time for you to make your packages and be gone,' I said.
+'Time for that and no more, and I recommend you to let the packages
+be few. If you go, you will not be sought for. That is what I have to
+say to you.'"
+
+"He glanced over his shoulder again and came a step nearer. 'You
+mean----'he said, and hesitated."
+
+"'The money? Yes,' I answered. 'That is what I mean. You will go?"
+
+"He stared at me a moment in silence. I felt as if I had struck him
+and spat in his face. But he had no such thought."
+
+"'How long have I?' he asked suddenly."
+
+"'You have to-night,' I answered."
+
+"It seemed as if he were going to ask further questions, but at that
+moment Madame Bertin appeared in the doorway behind him. I knew she
+had heard our talk.
+
+"'Your business is finished?' she asked carelessly, coming forward
+into the room."
+
+"'It is quite finished,' I replied."
+
+"She nodded, smiling. 'Captain Bertin has to catch a train,' she
+said, 'and if I did not watch the time for him, he would surely lose
+it. He has no idea of punctuality.'"
+
+"'I hope he has not much packing to do,' I said."
+
+"'I have seen to that,' she replied."
+
+"'Then I will not intrude upon your adieux,' I said, preparing to
+depart. Ma foi, I was ready to weep, as Vaucher had wept, at the gay
+courage of her. But she stopped me."
+
+"'Oh, the adieux are complete like the packing,' she said. 'And if
+you should have anything further to say to Captain Bertin, you can
+drive with him to the station.'"
+
+"I could see her meaning in that; my company would guard him till he
+left. So I bowed."
+
+"'I shall be very happy,' I said."
+
+"'Then if you will send for a fiacre,' she suggested to her husband.
+He was standing between us, wordless and dull. He gave her a look of
+inquiry; she returned it with a clear, high gaze, and he went at
+once."
+
+"'It is a good season for traveling, I believe!' she said, when the
+door had closed behind him."
+
+"'Captain Bertin could not have chosen a better,' I assured her."
+
+"Her composure was more than wonderful; by no sign, no hint of
+weakness or ill ease, did she make any appeal to me. To my sympathy,
+my admiration, my devotion, she offered only that bright surface of
+her schooled manner and disciplined emotions. While her house
+crumbled about her ears, while her world failed her, she deviated not
+a hairbreadth from the line of social amenity."
+
+"'But he is hardly likely to have company?' she asked again."
+
+"As for me, I had visions of the kind of company that was due to him
+--a formal sons-officer with a warrant of arrest, a file of stolid
+soldiers, with rigid faces and curious eyes."
+
+"But I answered her in her own manner."
+
+"'There is certainly that drawback,' I said, and I thought--I hoped--
+I saw gratitude in her answering look."
+
+"Then Bertin returned, with the hat of a civilian and a cloak that
+covered him to the ears. I saw their farewell--his look of appeal at
+her, the smile of amusement which answered it. And next I was seated
+beside him in the fiacre and she was framed in the door, looking
+after us, slender and erect, pale and subtle, smiling still with a
+manner as of weariness. It is thus that I remember her best."
+
+"It was not till we were out of her sight that Bertin spoke. He lit a
+cigarette and stared up at the great white stars."
+
+"'She spoilt my luck from the first,' he said."
+
+"I don't know why, but I laughed. At the moment it seemed to be a
+very droll saying. And at the sound of my laughter he grinned in
+sympathy. He was a wonderful man. When he was established in the
+train, he held out his hand to me."
+
+"'Adieu,' he said. 'You have been kind in your way. You didn't do it
+for me, you know--so adieu!"
+
+"I took his hand. It was a small thing to grant him, and I bad no
+other answer. As the train moved away, I saw his face at the window
+of the carriage, full of a kind of sly humor--gross, amiable, and
+tragic! He waved me a good-bye."
+
+The Colonel paused, staring at his trimly booted toe. Madame la
+Comtesse looked at him thoughtfully.
+
+"You saw him again? she asked.
+
+"Yes," he answered. "But possibly the tale becomes too painful."
+
+The Comtesse passed a hand over her eyes. "I must hear the rest," she
+said. "You saw her, too, again?"
+
+"Yes," said the Colonel.
+
+"She was very hard," said the Comtesse thoughtfully. "Very hard
+always. As a girl I remember----"
+
+The Colonel was looking at her intently, as though some thought had
+suddenly brought him enlightenment. Both he and the Comtesse seemed
+quite to have forgotten Elsie, listening on her stool in bewilderment
+and compassion. She saw them now exchange guarded glances, as though
+measuring each other's penetration.
+
+The Comtesse leaned back. "I beg you to proceed," she said, with a
+sigh. Elsie reached over the arm of the chair and took her hand and
+held it.
+
+The little Colonel shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Since Madame la Comtesse wishes it," he said. "But some years
+elapsed before I saw either of them again. Madame Bertin had said
+nothing which could encourage me to call at the house in the impasse,
+and there was no message from him to carry thither. I heard--it was
+said--that she, too, left the city; Bertin's exit from the service
+was arranged, and thus the matter seemed to close. I preserved
+certain memories, which I still preserve; I was the richer by them.
+Then came active service, expeditions to the interior, some fighting
+and much occupation. It chanced that I was fortunate; I gained some
+credit and promotion; and by degrees the affair of Bertin sank to
+rest in the background of my life. It was a closed incident, and I
+was reconciled never to have it reopened. But it seems one can never
+be sure that a thing is ended; possibly Bertin in his hiding-place
+thought as I did and made the same mistake. I heard the news when I
+visited Algiers on my way to a post up-country at the edge of the
+desert. New powers had taken charge of our business; there was a new
+General, an austere, mirthless man, who knew of Bertin's existence,
+and resented it. He had been concerned here and there in more than
+one enterprise of an unpleasant flavor, and it was the General's
+intention to put a period to him. My friends in barracks told me of
+it, perfunctorily; and my chief sense was of disgust that Bertin
+should continue to be noticeable. And then I went away up-country, in
+a train that carried me beyond the borders of civilization, and set
+me down at last one dawn at a point where a military line trickled
+out into the vast yellow distance, against an undulated horizon of
+sandhills. It was in the chill hour of the morning; a few sentries
+walked their beats, and beyond them there was a plot of silent tents.
+The station was no more than planks laid on the ground beside some
+locked iron sheds, a tank for the engine, and a flagstaff. It was
+infinitely forlorn and empty, with an air of staleness and
+discomfort. At some distance, a single muffled figure sat apart on a
+seat; I thought it was some Arab waiting for the day. Be judge,
+then, of my amazement when it rose, as I would have passed it, and
+spoke."
+
+"'This, also, is a good season for traveling?' it said, and I spun on
+my heel to face it. From the hood of a bernouse there looked out at
+me, pale and delicate still, the face of Madame Bertin."
+
+"In my bewilderment and my--my joy, I caught at both her hands and
+held them for a moment. She smiled and freed herself gently, and her
+eyes mocked me. She was the same as ever, impregnably the same;
+stress of mind, sorrow, exile, loneliness--they could not avail to
+stir her from her pedestal of composure. That manner--it is the armor
+of the woman of the world."
+
+"'I came here on a camel,' she told me, in answer to my inquiries.
+'On a camel from my home. I understand now why chameau is a word of
+abuse.'"
+
+"'I am not very sure that the season is good for traveling,' I said."
+
+"She shrugged her shoulders. 'When one is acclimatized, seasons are
+no longer important.'"
+
+"'And you are acclimatized, Madame?' I asked her."
+
+"She showed me the bernouse. 'Even to this,' she said."
+
+"Across the slopes of sand, one could hear the engine of the little
+military train grunting and wheezing as it collected its cars, and
+the strident voice of a man cursing Arab laborers."
+
+"'You go by that train?' she asked me."
+
+"'To Torah,' I answered."
+
+"'I also,' she said, looking at me inquiringly.
+
+"I said I was fortunate to have her company, and it was plain that
+she was relieved. For I guessed forthwith that it was at Torah that
+Bertin was, and she knew that if my going thither were to arrest him,
+I would spare her. I am sure she knew that."
+
+"It was a journey of a day and a night, while that little train
+rolled at leisure through a world of parched sand, beyond the
+sandhills to the eye-wearying monotony of the desert. Sometimes it
+would halt beside a tank and a tent, while a sore-eyed man ran along
+the train to beg for newspapers. Over us, the sky rose in an arch
+from horizon to horizon, blue and blinding; the heat was like a hand
+laid on one's mouth. I had with me my soldier-servant and a provision
+of food; there was something of both ecstasy and anguish in serving
+her needs, in establishing her comfort. She talked little and always
+so that I stood at a distance from her, fenced apart by little
+graceful formalities, groping hopelessly and vainly towards her
+through the clever mesh of her adroit speech and skilful remoteness.
+I was already fifteen years in the country, and fifteen years her
+inferior in those civilized dexterities. But she thanked me very
+sweetly for my aid."
+
+"Another dawn, and we were at Torah. A half-circle of dusty palms
+leaned away to one side of the place, the common ensign of a well on
+a caravan route. The post was but a few structures of wood and mud,
+and, a little way off, the tents of the camp. In the east, the sky
+was red with foreknowledge of the sun; its light already lay pale
+over the meanness of all the village. I helped her from the train,
+and demanded to know whither I should conduct her."
+
+"'I will not give you further trouble,' she said; and though I
+protested, she was firm. And at last she walked away, alone, to the
+huddle of little buildings, and I saw her pass among them and out of
+my sight. Then I turned and went over to the camp, where my duty
+lay."
+
+"That was a sorrowful place, that Torah. The troops were chiefly men
+of the Foreign Legion, of whom three in every four expressed in their
+eyes only patience and the bitterness of men whose lives are hidden
+things. With them were some elderly officers, whose only enthusiasms
+showed themselves in a crazy bravery in action, the callous courage
+of men who have already died once. From some of these I heard of
+Bertin. It was a brown, sun-dried man who told me."
+
+"'Yes, we know him,' he said. 'He passes under various names, but we
+know him. A man wasted, thrown away, my friend! He should have joined
+us.'"
+
+"'You would have accepted him?' I asked."
+
+"'Why not?' was the answer. 'It is not honest men we ask for, nor
+true men, nor even brave men--only fighting men. And any man can be
+that.'"
+
+"It made me wonder if it were yet too late for Bertin, 'and whether
+he might not still find a destiny in the ranks of that regiment where
+so many do penance. But when I saw him, a week later, I knew that the
+chance had gone by with his other chances, It was in a cafe in the
+village, a shed open at one side to the little street of sand, and
+furnished only with tables and chairs. A great Spahi, in the splendid
+uniform of his corps, lounged in one corner; a shrouded Arab tended
+the coffee apparatus in another; in the middle, with a glass before
+him, sat Bertin. The sun beat in at the open front of the building
+and spread the shadows in a tangle on its floor; he was leaning with
+both elbows on the table, gazing before him with the eyes of a dead
+man. He had always promised to be stout, but he was already fat--a
+flabby, blue-jowled heap of a man, all thick creases and bulges; and
+his face had patches of blue and purple in its hollows. He was
+ponderous, he was huge; and with it there was an aspect of horror, as
+though all that flesh were diseased."
+
+"I paused by his table and slowly he looked up to me. His features
+labored with thought, and he recognized me."
+
+"'Saval!' he ejaculated hoarsely. 'You--you want me?'"
+
+"I sat down at his table. 'I haven't come to arrest you,' I told him.
+'But you had better know that the authorities have decided to arrest
+you.'"
+
+"He gasped. 'For--for----'"
+
+"'I don't know what for,' I told him. 'For whatever you have been
+doing.'"
+
+"He had to blink and swallow and wipe his brow before he mastered the
+fact. His mind, like his body, was a shameful ruin. But the fact that
+he was not to be arrested at the moment seemed to comfort him. He
+leaned over the table to me."
+
+"'My wife's here,' he said, in a raucous whisper."
+
+"'Yes; she knows,' I answered."
+
+"He frowned, and seemed perplexed. 'She'll make me shoot myself,' he
+went on. 'I know what she means. I warn you, she'll make me do it.
+Have a drink?'"
+
+"He was horrible, an offence to the daylight. He bawled an order to
+the Arab, and turned to me again."
+
+"'That's what it'll come to,' he said. 'I warn you.'"
+
+"He repeated the last phrase in whispers, staring at me heavily: 'I
+warn you; I warn you.'"
+
+"'Have you a pistol?' I asked him. Yes, Madame, I asked him that."
+
+"He smiled at me. 'No, I haven't,' he said, still confidentially.
+'You see how it is? I haven't even a pistol. But I know what she
+means.'"
+
+"I was in field uniform, and I unbuttoned my holster and laid the
+revolver on the table before him. He looked at it with an empty
+smile. 'It is loaded,' I said, and left him."
+
+"But I wondered. It seemed to me that there was a tension in the
+affairs of Bertin and his wife which could not endure, that the
+moment was at hand when the breaking-point would be reached. And it
+was this idea that carried me the same evening to visit Madame
+Bertin. The night about me was still, yet overhead there was wind,
+for great clouds marched in procession across the moon, trailing
+their shadows over the sand. Bertin inhabited a little house at the
+fringe of the village; it looked out at the emptiness of the desert.
+I was yet ten paces from the door when it opened and Madame Bertin
+came forth. She was wrapped in her bernouse, and she closed the door
+behind her quickly and stepped forward to meet me. She gave me
+greeting in her cool even tones, the pallor of her face shining forth
+from the hood of her garment."
+
+"'Since you are so good as to come and see me,' she said, 'let us
+walk here for a while. Captain Bertin is occupied; and we can watch
+the clouds on the sand.'"
+
+"We walked to and fro before the house. 'I saw your husband to-day,'
+I told her."
+
+"'He said so,' she answered. 'It was pleasant for him to talk with an
+old comrade.'"
+
+"One window in the house was lighted, with a curtain drawn across it.
+As we paused, I saw the shadow of a man on the curtain--a man who
+lurched and pressed both hands to his head. I could not tell whether
+Madame Bertin saw it also; she continued to walk, looking straight
+before her; her face was calm."
+
+"'Doubtless he has his occupations here?' I ventured presently.
+'There are matters in which he interests himself--non?'"
+
+"'That is so,' she replied. 'And this evening he tells me he has a
+letter to write, concerning some matters of importance. I have
+promised him that for an hour he shall not be interrupted. What
+wonderful color there is yonder?'"
+
+"The shadow of a great cloud, blue-black like a moonlit sea, was
+racing past us; it seemed to break like surf on a line of sandhills.
+But while I watched it awe was creeping upon me. She was erect and
+grave, with lips a little parted, staring before her; the heavy folds
+of the bernouse were like the marble robe of a statue. I glanced
+behind me at the lighted window, and the shadow of an arm moved upon
+it, an arm that gesticulated and conveyed to me a sense of agony, of
+appeal. I remembered the revolver; I felt a weakness overcome me."
+
+"'Madame!' I cried. 'I fear--I doubt that it is safe to leave him for
+an hour to-night.'"
+
+"She turned to me with a faint movement of surprise. The moon showed
+her to me clearly. Before the deliberate strength of her eyes, my
+gaze faltered."
+
+"'But I assure you,' she answered; 'nothing can be safer.'"
+
+"I made one more effort. 'But if I might see him for an instant,' I
+pleaded."
+
+"She smiled and shook her head. I might have been an importunate
+child. 'I promised him an hour,' she said. Her voice was indulgent,
+friendly, commonplace; it made me powerless. I had it on my lips to
+cry out, 'He is in there alone, working himself up to the point of
+suicide!' But I could not utter it. I could no more say it than I
+could have smitten her in the face. She was impregnable behind; that
+barrier of manners which she upheld so skillfully. She continued to
+look at me for some seconds and to smile--so gently, so mildly. I
+think I groaned."
+
+"She began to talk again of the clouds, but I could not follow what
+she said. That was my hour of impotence. Madame, I have seen battles
+and slaughter and found no meaning in them. But that isolated tragedy
+boxed up in the little house between the squalid town and the
+lugubrious desert--it sucked the strength from my bones. She
+continued to speak; the cultivated sweetness of her voice came and
+went in my ears like a maddening distraction from some grave matter
+in hand. I think I was on the point of breaking in, violently,
+hysterically, when I cast a look at the lighted window again. I cried
+out to her."
+
+"'Look! Look!' I cried."
+
+"She did not turn. 'I have seen the sea like that at Naples,' she was
+saying, gazing out to the desert, with her back to the house. 'With
+the moon shining over Capri----'"
+
+"'For the love of God!' I said, and made one step toward the house.
+But it was too late. The shadowed hand--and what it held--rose; the
+shadowed head bent to meet it."
+
+"Even at the sound of the shot she did not turn. 'What was that?' she
+said tranquilly."
+
+"For the moment I could not speak. I had to gulp and breathe to
+recover myself."
+
+"'Let us go and see,' I said then. 'The hour is past, and the letter
+of importance is finished.'"
+
+"She nodded. 'By all means,' she agreed carelessly, and I followed
+her into the house."
+
+"Once again I will spare Madame la Comtesse the details. Bertin had
+evaded arrest. At the end of all his laborings and groanings, the
+instant of resolution had come to him and he had made use of it. On
+the table were paper and writing-things; one note was finished."
+
+"'It is not for me,' said Madame Bertin, as she leaned upon the table
+and read it. I was laying a sheet upon the body; when I rose she
+handed it to me. It bore neither name nor address; the poor futile
+life had blundered out without even this thing completed. It was
+short, and to some woman. 'Tres-chere amie,' it said; 'once I made a
+mistake. I have paid for it. You laughed at me once; You would not
+laugh now. If you could see----'"
+
+The Colonel stopped; the Comtesse was holding out both hands as
+though supplicating him. Elsie Gray rose and bent over her. The
+Comtesse put her gently aside.
+
+"You have that letter?" she asked.
+
+The little Colonel passed a hand into a breast pocket and extracted a
+dainty Russia-leather letter-case. From it he drew a faded writing
+and handed it to the Comtesse.
+
+"Madame la Comtesse is welcome to the letter," he said. "Pray keep
+it."
+
+The Comtesse did not read it. She folded it in her thin smooth hands
+and sighed.
+
+"And then?" she asked.
+
+"This is the end of my tale," said the Colonel. "I took the letter
+and placed it in my pocket. Madame Bertin watched me imperturbably."
+
+"'I may leave the formalities to you?' she asked me suddenly; 'the
+notification of death and so on?'"
+
+"I bowed; I had still a difficulty in speaking."
+
+"'Then I will thank you for all your friendship,' she said."
+
+"I put up my hand. 'At least do not thank me,' I cried. I could not
+face her serene eyes, and that little lifting of the brows with which
+she answered my words. Awe, dread, passion--these were at war within
+me, and the dead man lay on the floor at my feet, I pushed the door
+open and fled."
+
+Colonel Saval sat up in his chair and uncrossed his legs.
+
+"I saw her no more," he said. "Madame la Comtesse knows how she
+returned to Algiers and presently died there? Yes."
+
+The Comtesse bowed. "I thank you, Monsieur," she said. "You have done
+me a great service."
+
+"I am honored," he replied, as he rose. "I wish you a good-night.
+Mademoiselle, good-night."
+
+He was gone. The white doors closed behind him. The Comtesse raised
+her face and kissed the tall, gentle girl.
+
+"Leave me now," she said. "I must read my letter alone."
+
+And Elsie went. The story was finished at last.
+
+
+
+IX
+
+LOLA
+
+Rubies ripped from altar cloths Leered a-down her rich attire; Her
+mad shoes were scarlet moths In a rose of fire.
+
+A. T. Quiller-Couch.
+
+From the briskness of the street, with its lamps aglitter in the
+lingering May evening, O'Neill entered to the sober gloom and the
+restless echoes of the great studio. He had come to hate the place of
+late. The high poise of its walls, like the sides of a well, the pale
+shine of the north light in the roof, the lumber of naked marble and
+formal armor and the rest, peopling its shadows, were like a tainted
+atmosphere to him; they embarrassed the lungs of his mind. Only the
+name of friendship exacted these visits from him; Regnault, dying
+where he had worked, was secure against desertion.
+
+Buscarlet opened the door to him, his eyes wide and bewildered behind
+his spectacles.
+
+"How is he?" asked O'Neill curtly, entering the great room.
+
+"Ill," answered the other. "Very ill, so that one cannot tell whether
+he sleeps or wakes. There should be a nun here to nurse him, only--"
+
+O'Neill nodded. The sick man's bed was set in the centre of the great
+room, shielded from the draughts of the door by a tall screen of gilt
+leather. From behind this screen, a shaded lamp by the bedside made
+an island of soft radiance in the darkness.
+
+They went together past the screen and stopped to look at Regnault.
+He was lying on his back, with closed eyes, and his keen aquiline
+face upturned to the pallor of the "light" in the roof. The white
+hair tumbled on the pillow, and the long, beautiful hands that lay on
+the coverlet were oddly pathetic in contrast to the potency of the
+unconscious face. Even in sleep it preserved its cast of high
+assurance, its note of ideals outworn and discounted. It was the face
+of a man who had found a bitter answer for most of life's questions.
+By the bed sat Truelove, his servant, ex-corporal of dragoons. He
+rose noiselessly as O'Neill approached.
+
+"No change, sir," he reported. "Talked a bit, an hour ago. Mr.
+Buscarlet was then 'ere."
+
+"Any attacks?" asked O'Neill.
+
+"One, sir, but I 'ad the amyl under 'is nose at the first gasp, an'
+'e came round all right."
+
+"Good," said O'Neill. "You go and get some supper now, Truelove. I'll
+attend to everything till you get back."
+
+The corporal bowed and went forthwith. O'Neill set the capsules out
+on the table to be easily accessible, and joined Buscarlet by the
+great fireplace at the end of the room, whence he could keep watch on
+the still profile that showed against the gold of the screen. From
+without there came the blurred noises of the Paris street, mingled
+and blended in a single hum, as though life were laying siege to that
+quiet chamber.
+
+Buscarlet was eager to talk. He was a speciously amiable little man,
+blonde and plump, a creature of easy emotions, prone to panic and
+tears.
+
+"Ah, he talked indeed!" he said, as soon as O'Neill was seated. "At
+first I thought: 'This is delirium. He is returning to the age of his
+innocence.' But his eyes, as he looked at me, were wise and serious.
+My friend, it gave me a shock."
+
+"What did he talk about?" asked O'Neill.
+
+Buscarlet coughed. "Of his wife," he answered. "Fancy it!"
+
+"His wife? Why, is he married?" demanded O'Neill in astonishment.
+
+Buscarlet nodded two or three times. "Yes," he replied; "that is one
+of the things that has happened to him. One might have guessed it,
+hein?--a life like that! Ah, my friend, there is one who has put out
+his hours at usury. What memories he must have!"
+
+O'Neill grunted, with his eyes on the bed. "He's had a beastly life,
+if that's what you mean," he said, "Who was the woman?'
+
+"One might almost have guessed that, too," said Buscarlet. He rose.
+"Come and see," he said.
+
+There was a recess beside the great mantelpiece, and in it hung
+Regnault's famous picture, "The Dancer," all scarlet frock and white
+flesh against an amber background.
+
+"That?" exclaimed O'Neill. "Lola?"
+
+Buscarlet nodded; he had forced a good effect.
+
+"That is she," he answered.
+
+The picture was familiar to O'Neill; to him, as to many another young
+painter of that time, it was an upstanding landmark on the road of
+art. He looked at it now, in the sparse light from the bedside lamp,
+with a fresh interest in its significance. He saw with new
+understanding the conventionalism of the pose--hip thrust out, arm
+akimbo, shoulder cocked--contrasted against the dark vivacity of the
+face and all the pulsing opulence of the flesh. It was an epic, an
+epic of the savage triumphant against civilization, of the spirit
+victorious against the forms of art.
+
+He stared at it, Buscarlet smiling mildly at his elbow; then he
+turned away and went back to his seat. The face on the bed was
+unchanged.
+
+"So Regnault married Lola!" he said slowly. "When?"
+
+"Ah, who knows?" Buscarlet shrugged graphically. "Many years ago, of
+course. It is twenty years since she danced."
+
+"And what was he saying about her?" asked O'Neill.
+
+"Nothing to any purpose," replied Buscarlet. "I think he had been
+dreaming of her. You know the manner he has of waking up--coming back
+to consciousness with eyes wide open and his mind alert, with no
+interval of drowsiness and reluctance? Yes? Well, he woke like that
+before I knew he had ceased to sleep. 'I should like to see her now,'
+he said. 'Whom?' I asked, and he smiled. 'Lola,' he answered, and he
+went on to say that she was the one woman he had never understood.
+'That was her advantage,' he said, smiling still; 'for she understood
+me; yes, she knew me as if she had made me.' After a while, he smiled
+again, and said, 'Yes, I should like to see her now.'"
+
+O'Neill frowned thoughtfully. "Well, she ought to be here if she's
+his wife," he said. "Is she in Paris, d'you know? We might send for
+her."
+
+"I do not know," replied Buscarlet. "Nobody knows, but I have heard
+she retired upon religion."
+
+Their talk dwindled a little then. O'Neill found himself dwelling in
+thought upon that long-ago marriage of the great artist with Lola,
+the dancer. To him she was but a name; her sun had set in his
+boyhood, and there remained only the spoken fame of her wonderful
+dancing and a tale here and there of the fervor with which she had
+lived. It was an old chronicle of passion and undiscipline, of a
+vehement personality naming through the capitals of Europe, its trail
+marked by scandals and violences, ending in the quick oblivion which
+comes to compensate for such lives. On the whole, he thought, such a
+marriage was what one would have looked for in Regnault; as Buscarlet
+said, one might almost have guessed. He, with his genius and his
+restlessness, his great fame and his infamy, the high achievement of
+his art and the baseness of his relaxations, he was just such another
+as Lola.
+
+Friendship, or even the mere forms of friendship, are the touchstone
+of a man. O'Neill was credited in his world with the friendship of
+Regnault. It had even been to him a matter of some social profit;
+there were many who deferred willingly to the great man's intimate.
+O'Neill saw no reason to set them right, but he knew himself that he
+had come by a loss in his close acquaintance with the Master. To know
+him at a distance, to be sure of just enough to interpret his work by
+the clue of his personality, was a thing to be glad of. But if one
+went further, incurred a part of his confidence, and ascertained his
+real flavor, then, as O'Neill once said, it was like visiting one's
+kitchen; it killed one's appetite.
+
+While he pondered, he was none the less watchful; he saw the change
+on the still face as soon as it showed. With a quick exclamation he
+crossed to the bed. Regnault's jaw had set; his eyes were wide and
+rigid. On the instant his forehead shone with sweat. Deftly and
+swiftly O'Neill laid his hands on a capsule, crushed it in his palm,
+and held it to the sick man's face. The volatile drug performed its
+due miracle.
+
+The face that had been a livid shell slackened again; the fixed glare
+sank down; and Regnault shuddered and sighed. Buscarlet, trembling
+but officious, wiped his brow and babbled commiserations.
+
+"Ah!" said Regnault, putting up a thin hand to stop him. "It takes
+one by the throat, this affair."
+
+Though he spoke quietly, his voice had yet the conscious fullness,
+the deliberate inflection, of a man accustomed to speak to an
+audience.
+
+"Yes," said O'Neill. "Were you sleeping?"
+
+The sick man smiled. "A peu pres," he answered.
+
+"I was remembering certain matters--dreaming, in effect."
+
+He shifted his head on his pillow, and his eyes traveled to and fro
+about the great room.
+
+"If this goes on," he said, "I shall have to ask a favor of
+somebody." His quick look, with its suggestion of mockery, rested on
+O'Neill. "And that would be dreadful," he concluded.
+
+"If it's anything I can do, I'll do it, of course," said O'Neill
+awkwardly.
+
+He aided Buscarlet to set the bed to rights and change the pillow-
+cover, conscious that Regnault was watching him all the time with a
+smile.
+
+"One should have a nun here," remarked Buscarlet. "They come for so
+much a day, and do everything."
+
+"Yes," said Regnault;--"everything. Who could stand that!"
+
+He shifted in his bed cautiously, for he knew that any movement might
+provoke another spasm.
+
+"Now, tell me, O'Neill," he said, in the tone of commonplace
+conversation. "That doctor--the one that walked like a duck--he was
+impressive, eh?"
+
+O'Neill sat down on the foot of the bed.
+
+"He's the best man in Paris," he answered. "He did his best to be
+impressive. He thought we weren't taking your illness seriously
+enough."
+
+"Well," said Regnault, his fingers fidgeting on the coverlet, "I can
+be serious when I like. I'm serious now, foi de gentilhomme. Did he
+say when I should die!"
+
+"Yes," replied O'Neill. "He said you'd break like the stem of a pipe
+at the first strain."
+
+Regnault's eyes were half closed. "Metaphor, eh?" he suggested
+dreamily.
+
+"He said," continued O'Neill, "that you were not to move sharply, not
+to laugh or cry, not to be much amused or surprised--in fact, you
+were to keep absolutely quiet. He suggested, too, that you'd had your
+share of emotions, and would be better without them now."
+
+Regnault smiled again. "Wonderful," he said softly. "They teach them
+all that in the hospitals. Then, in effect, I hold this appointment
+during good Conduct?"
+
+"That's the idea," said O'Neill gravely.
+
+There was a long pause; Regnault seemed to be thinking deeply. The
+amyl had brought color back to his face; except for the disorder of
+his long white hair he seemed to be his normal self.
+
+"It will not be amusing," he said at length. "For you, I mean."
+
+"Oh, I shall be all right," answered O'Neill, but the same thought
+had occurred to him.
+
+"No, it will not be amusing to you," repeated Regnault. "For this
+good Buscarlet it is another thing. I shall keep him busy. You like
+that, don'it you, Emile?"
+
+Poor Buscarlet choked and gurgled. Regnault laughed softly.
+
+"Take the lamp, Emile," he said, "and carry it to 'The Dancer.' I
+want to see it."
+
+Buscarlet was eager to do his bidding. O'Neill frowned as he picked
+up the lamp.
+
+"Careful," he said, in a low voice to Regnault.
+
+"Oh," said Regnault, "this is not an emotion." He laughed again.
+
+Across the room Buscarlet lifted the shade from the lamp and held it
+up. Again there came into view the white and scarlet of the picture,
+the high light on the bare shoulder, the warm tint of the naked arm,
+the cheap diablerie of the posture, the splendid rebellion of the
+face. Regnault turned and stared at it under drawn brows.
+
+"Thank you, Emile," he said at last, and lay back on his pillow. For
+an instant of forgetfulness his delicate face was ingenuous and
+expressive; he caught himself back to control as he met O'Neill's
+eyes.
+
+"Il est un age dans la vie Ou chaque reve doit finir, Un age ou l'ame
+recueillie A besoin de se souvenir,"
+
+he quoted softly. Buscarlet was fitting the shade on the lamp again.
+
+"I think," Regnault went on, "that I have come to that, after all. He
+told you, eh? Buscarlet told you that she--Lola--is my wife?"
+
+"Yes," answered O'Neill. "Would you like me to send for her?"
+
+"She would not come for that," said Regnault. He was studying the
+young man's face with bright eyes. "Ah," he sighed; "you don't know
+these things. We parted--of course; but not in weariness, not in the
+grey staleness of fatigue and boredom. No; but in a splendid wreck of
+wrath and jealousy and hatred. We did not run aground tamely; we
+split in vehemence on the very rock of discord. She would not come
+for a letter."
+
+"Is she in Paris?" asked O'Neill.
+
+"No, in Spain," answered Regnault. "At Ronda, in a great house on the
+edge of the hill, a house of small windows and strong doors. She is
+religious, Lola is; she fears hell. Let me see; she must be near to
+fifty now. It is twenty years and more since I saw her."
+
+"But if I wrote," began O'Neill again.
+
+"She would not come for a letter," persisted Regnault. "What would
+you write? 'He is dying,' you would say, 'Poof!' she would answer,
+'he has been dead this twenty years to me.'"
+
+"Well, then, what do you suggest?"
+
+Regnault opened his eyes and looked up sharply. He stretched out one
+long slender hand in a sudden gesture of urgency. His face, upon the
+moment, recovered its wonted vivacity.
+
+"Go to her," he said. "Go to her, O'Neill; you are young and long-
+legged; you have the face of one to whom adventures are due. She will
+receive you. Speak to her; tell her--tell her of this gloomy room and
+its booming echoes and the little white bed in the middle of it. Make
+your voice warm, O'Neill, and tell her of all of it. Then, perhaps,
+she will come."
+
+There was no mistaking his earnestness. O'Neill stared at him in
+astonishment. Regnault moistened his lips, breathing hard.
+
+"Really," said O'Neill, "I don't quite know how to answer you,
+Regnault."
+
+Regnault put the empty phrase from him with a movement of impatience.
+
+"Go to her," he said again, and his brows creased in effort. "Is it
+because she is religious that you hesitate! You think I am an offence
+to her religion? O'Neill, I will offer it no offence. I have myself
+an instinct that way now. It is true. I have."
+
+"Wait," said O'Neill. He was thinking confusedly. "You know you're
+like a spoiled child, Regnault. You'd die for a thing so long as some
+one denied it you. Now, what strikes me is this. Your wife ought to
+be with you, as a matter of decent usage and--and all that. But if
+you want her here just so that you can flog up the thrill of one of
+your old beastly adventures, I'll not lift a finger to help you.
+D'you see!"
+
+Regnault nodded. Buscarlet, standing behind the bed, was trembling
+like a man in an ague.
+
+"I'll go to Ronda, and do what I can," said O'Neill, "so long as
+you're playing fair. But I've got to be sure of that, Regnault."
+
+Regnault nodded again. "I see," he answered. "What shall I say to
+you? Will you not trust me, O'Neill, in a question of taste? Morals--
+I don't say. But taste--come now!"
+
+"You mean, you want to see your wife in ordinary affection and--well,
+and because she is your wife?" demanded O'Neill.
+
+"You put it very well," replied Regnault placidly. "Give me some
+paper and I will write you her name and address. And, O'Neill, I have
+an idea! I will give you, for your own, 'The Dancer.' It shall be my
+last joke. After this, I am earnest."
+
+He wrote painfully on the paper which they gave him.
+
+"There," he said, when he had done. "And now I will compose myself."
+
+Buscarlet saw O'Neill forth of the door, for he was to leave for
+Spain in the morning. On the threshold he tapped O'Neill on the arm.
+
+"It is worth a hundred thousand francs," he whispered, with startled
+eyes. "And besides, what a souvenir!"
+
+The little room in which they bade O'Neill wait for the Senora opened
+upon the patio of the house, where a sword of vivid sunlight sliced
+across the shadows on the warm brick flooring, and a little
+industrious fountain dribbled through a veil of ferns. There was a
+shrine in the room; its elaboration of gilt and rosy wax faced the
+open door, and from a window beside it one could see, below the
+abrupt hill of Ronda, the panorama of the sun-steeped countryside.
+
+The cool of the room was grateful to O'Neill after the heat of the
+road. He set his hat on the small table and took a seat, marking the
+utter stillness that reigned in that great Moorish house. Save for
+the purr of the fountain no sounds reached him in all that nest of
+cool chambers. The thought of it awoke in him new speculation as to
+the woman he had come to see, who had buried the ashes of her fiery
+youth in this serene retreat. He had thought about her with growing
+curiosity throughout the journey from Paris, endeavoring to reduce to
+terms of his own understanding the spirit that had flamed and faded
+and guttered out in such a manner. The shrine at his elbow recalled
+to him that she was "religious." It explained nothing.
+
+He was staring at it in perplexity, when the doorway darkened, and he
+was conscious that he was not alone. He started to his feet and bowed
+confusedly to the woman on the threshold.
+
+"Mr. O'Neill?" she inquired. Her pronunciation had the faultless
+precision of the English-speaking Spaniard. He bowed again, and drew
+out a chair for her.
+
+It seemed that she hesitated a moment ere she came forward and
+accepted it. When she stood in the door, with the slanting sun at her
+back, O'Neill could see little of her save the trim outline of her
+figure, wrought to plain severity by the relentless black dress she
+wore. Now, when she was seated, he regarded her with all an artist's
+quick curiosity. As Regnault had said, she was not much less than
+fifty years old, but they were years that had trodden lightly. There
+was nothing of age in the strong brows and the tempestuous eyes that
+were dark under them; the mouth was yet full and impetuous. Some
+discipline seemed to have laid a constraint on her; there was a
+somber seriousness in her regard; but O'Neill recognized without
+difficulty the proud, hardy, unquelled countenance that stared from
+the canvas in Regnault's studio.
+
+She had his visiting-card in her fingers. Lest he should be denied
+admittance he had penciled on it, below his name, "with a message
+from M. Regnault, who is very ill."
+
+She was looking at him steadily, aware of his scrutiny.
+
+"I will hear your message," she said. "Please sit down."
+
+O'Neill took a chair where he could continue to see her face.
+
+"Senora," he said, "I must tell you, first of all, that M. Regnault
+is ill beyond anything you can picture to yourself. He sends this
+message, in truth, from his last bed, the bed he is to die on. And
+that may be at any moment. His is a disease that touches the heart;
+any emotion or quick movement--anything at all, Senora, may cut off
+the very source of his life. I ask you to have this in mind while you
+hear me."
+
+Her dark face was intent upon him while he spoke.
+
+"What do you call this disease?" she asked.
+
+"The doctors call it angina pectoris," he answered. She nodded
+slowly. Her interest encouraged him to speak with more liberty.
+
+"I could tell you a great deal about it," he went on; "but it might
+be aside from the point. Still--" he pondered a moment, studying
+her. "Still, imagine to yourself how such a malady sits upon a man
+like Regnault. It is a fetter upon the most sluggish; for him, with
+all his vivacity of temperament, his ardor, his quickness, it is a
+rack upon which he is stretched. You do not know the studio he has
+now, Senora! It is a great room, with walls of black panels and a
+wide window in the slope of the roof. Here and there are statues in
+marble, suits of armor--the wreck and debris of dead ages. And in one
+corner hangs a picture which the world values, Senora. It is called
+'The Dancer.'"
+
+A spark, a quick gleam in her eyes, rewarded him. Her hands, crossed
+in her lap, trembled a little.
+
+"It is all of a dark and somber splendor," O'Neill continued. "A
+great, splendid room, Senora, uncanny with echoes. And in the middle
+of it, like a little white island, there is a narrow bed where he
+lies through the days and nights, camping on the borders of the
+grave. There are some of us that share the watches by his bedside, to
+be ready with the drug that holds him to life; and I can tell you
+that it is sad there, in the hush and the shadows, with the noises of
+Paris rising about one from without."
+
+He ceased. She was frowning as she listened to him, with her
+resemblance to the pictured face in Paris strangely accentuated by
+the emotions that warred within her. For a minute neither of them
+spoke.
+
+"I can see what you would have me see," she said at last, raising her
+head. "It belongs to that world in which I have now no part, Senior.
+No part at all. And it brings us no nearer to the message with which
+you are charged."
+
+"Your pardon," said O'Neill. "It is a part of my message. And the
+rest is quickly told. It is Regnault's request, his prayer to you,
+that you will come to him, to your husband."
+
+"Ah!" The constraint upon her features broke like ice under a quick
+sun. "I guessed it. I--to come to him! You should be his friend
+indeed, to be the bearer of such a message to me."
+
+Her dark eyes, suddenly splendid, flashed at him with strong anger.
+The whole woman was transformed; she sat up in her chair, and her
+breast swelled. O'Neill saw before him the Lola of twenty years
+before.
+
+He held up one hand to stay her.
+
+"I should be his friend, as you say," he told her. "But he knows that
+it is not so. I came for two reasons: because now is not the time to
+be discriminating in my service to him, and also because I am glad to
+help him to do right. I will take back what answer you please,
+Senora, for I came here with no great hopes; but still I am glad I
+came, for the second reason."
+
+"Help him to do right!" She repeated the words in a manner of
+perplexity. "What is it you mean to do right?"
+
+O'Neill had a moment's clear insight into the aspects of his task
+which made him unfit for it. "Eight" was a term that puzzled his
+auditor.
+
+"Senora," he answered gravely, "his passions are burned out. He is
+too sick a man to do evil. It is late, no doubt, and very late; but
+his mood is not to die as he has lived. He asks, not for those who
+would come at a word, but for his wife. And I am glad to be the
+bearer of that message even if I carry back a curse for an answer."
+
+It was not in O'Neill to know how well and deftly Regnault had chosen
+his messenger. His lean, brown face and his earnestness were having
+their effect.
+
+The Senora bent her keen gaze on him again.
+
+"Ah," she cried, with a sort of bitterness, "he regrets, eh? He
+repents?" She laughed shortly.
+
+"I do not think so," answered O'Neill.
+
+"No?" She considered him anew. "Tell me,"--she leaned forward in a
+sudden eagerness--"why does he ask for me? If he is sober and
+composed for death, why--why does he ask for me?"
+
+O'Neill made a gesture of helplessness. "Senora," he said, "you
+should know; you have the key to him."
+
+Gone was all the discipline to which her nature had deferred. Twenty
+years of quiet and atonement were stripped from her like a flimsy
+garment. The fire was alight in all her vivid face again as she
+brooded upon his answer.
+
+"Ah!" she cried of a sudden. "Everything is stale for a stale soul.
+Does he count on that? Senor, you speak well; you have made me a
+picture of him. He has heard that I have made religion the pillow of
+my conscience, eh? He folds his hands, eh?--thin, waxen hands,
+clasping in piety upon his counterpane, eh? He will wear the air of a
+thin saint and bless me in a beautiful voice? Am I right? Am I
+right?"
+
+She forced her questions into his face, leaning forward in a quick
+violence.
+
+"Goodness knows!" said O'Neill. "I shouldn't wonder."
+
+She nodded at him with tight lips. "I know," she said. "I know. I
+have him by heart." She rose from her seat and stood thinking.
+Suddenly she laughed, and strode to the middle of the room. Her gait
+had the impatience and lightness of a dancer's. Quickly she wheeled
+and faced O'Neill, laughing again.
+
+"Now, by his salvation and mine," she cried, "I will do what he asks.
+I will go to him. He thinks his heart is dry to me. I will show him!
+I will show him!" She opened her arms with a sweep. "Tell me," she
+cried, "am I old? Am I the nun you looked for?" Her voice pealed
+scornfully. "Scarlet," she said; "I will go to him in scarlet, as he
+pictured me when I posed for 'The Dancer!' His pulses shall welcome
+me; his soul was in its grave when I was in my cradle."
+
+O'Neill had risen too. "Senora," he protested, "you must consider--
+he is a dying man!"
+
+He spoke to her back. Laughing again, she had turned from him to the
+gilt shrine and plucked a flower from it. She was fixing it in her
+hair when she faced him.
+
+"To-night," she said, "we travel north. You are"--she paused,
+smiling--"you are my impresario, and Lola--Lola makes her curtsy
+again!"
+
+She caught her black skirt in her hand and curtsied to him with an
+extravagant grace.
+
+That was a strange journey to Paris that O'Neill made with the
+Senora. He had seen her humor change swiftly in response to his
+appeal; what was surprising was that that new humor should maintain
+its nervous height. It was soon enough apparent that the Lola of
+twenty years before lived yet, her flamboyant energy, her unstable
+caprice, her full-blooded force conserved and undiminished. It was
+like the bursting of one of those squalls that come up with a
+breathless loom of cloud, hang still and brooding, and then flash
+without warning into tempest. She faced him at the station with an
+electric vivacity; her voice was harsh and imperious to her servants
+who put her into the train and disposed of her luggage. It occurred
+to O'Neill that she traveled well equipped; there were boxes and
+baskets in full ampleness. When at last the train tooted its little
+horn and started, she flung herself down in the seat facing him and
+broke into shrill laughter.
+
+"It is the second advent of Lola," she cried. "There should be a
+special train for me."
+
+Her dress was still of black, but it had suffered some change O'Neill
+did not trouble to define. He saw that it no longer had the formal
+plainness of the gown she had worn earlier. It achieved an effect.
+But the main change was in the woman herself. It was impossible to
+think of her and her years in the same breath. She had cast the long
+restraint from her completely; all her sad days of quiet were
+obliterated. She was once again the stormy, uneasy thing that had
+dominated her loose world, a vital and indomitable personality
+untempered by reason or any conscience. Even when she sat still and
+seemingly deep in thought, one felt and deferred to the magnetism and
+power that were expressed in every feature of that dark and alert
+face.
+
+O'Neill deemed himself fortunate that she did not speak of Regnault
+till Paris lay but a few hours away. The whirlwind of her mood was a
+thing that did not touch him, but it would have been mere torment to
+battle on with that one topic. When she did speak of him it was with
+the suddenness with which she approached everything. She had been
+silent for nearly an hour, gazing through the window at the scurrying
+landscape.
+
+"Then," she said, as though resuming some conversation--"then he is,
+in truth, sick to death?"
+
+"You mean--Regnault!" asked O'Neill, caught unawares. "Yes, Senora.
+He is sick to death."
+
+Her steady gaze from under the level brows embarrassed him like an
+assault.
+
+"And he is frightened?" she demanded.
+
+"I don't think he is in the least frightened," replied O'Neill.
+
+She nodded to him, with the shape of a smile on her full lips.
+
+"I tell you, then, that he is frightened," she said. "I know. There
+is nothing in all that man I do not know. He is frightened."
+
+She paused, still staring at him.
+
+"People like us are always frightened in the end," she went on. She
+lifted her forefinger like one who teaches a little child. "You see,
+with us, we guess. We guess at what comes after. We are sure--certain
+and very sure--that we, at least, deserve to suffer. And that is why
+I have lived under my confessor for ten lifetimes. You gee!"
+
+O'Neill nodded. It was not hard to understand that the splendid
+animal in the Senora could never conceive the idea, of its utter
+extinction. Death--to Lola and her kind--is not the end, it is the
+beginning of bondage.
+
+There was another interval of silence while she twisted her fingers
+in her lap.
+
+"Ah," she said. "I know. He will be beautiful in his bed, dying like
+an abbot. He is frightened--yes. But he thinks himself safe from me.
+He imagines me sour, decorous, with a skinny neck. Because he thinks
+me all but a nun, he will be all but a priest. We shall see, Senor
+O'Neill. We shall see!"
+
+Soon after that she left him to retire to the compartment in which
+her maid traveled alone.
+
+"We arrive at eight, do we not?" she asked him. "Then I must make my
+toilet." She smiled down on him as she spoke, and gave him a little
+significant nod.
+
+The train was already running into the station when she returned.
+O'Neill, nervous and apprehensive, gave her a quick glance. She was
+covered in a long cloak of black silk that hid her figure entirely;
+the hood of it rose over her hair and made a frame to her face. Under
+the hood he could distinguish the soft brightness of a red rose stuck
+ever one ear.
+
+"Senora," he said, "I take the liberty to remind you that we are
+going to the bedside of a dying man."
+
+She turned on him with slow scorn. "Yes," she replied. "It is, as
+you say, a liberty."
+
+The long robe rose and fell over her breast with her breathing; her
+eyes traveled over him from head to feet and back again deliberately.
+
+O'Neill took his temper into custody. "Still," he urged, "if you have
+it in mind to compass any surprising effect, remember--it may be his
+death."
+
+She laughed slowly. "What is a death?" she answered. And then, with
+a hissing vehemence: "He sent for me, and I am here. Should I wear a
+veil, then--Lola?"
+
+He put further remonstrances by, with a feeling of sickness in the
+throat. Again realization surged upon him that he had no words with
+which to speak to people like this. They lived on another plane, and
+saw by other lights. He was like a child wandering on a field of
+battle.
+
+He found a carriage, and got into it beside her, and sat in silence
+while they drove through the throng of the streets. He saw, through
+the window, the brisk tides of the pavement, the lights and the
+cafes; they seemed remote from him, inaccessible. Inside the
+carriage, he could hear the steady, full breathing of the woman at
+his side.
+
+"You will at least allow me to go first," he said, as they drew up at
+last. He was prepared to carry this point if he had to lock her out
+of the house. But she made no demur.
+
+"As you will," she murmured.
+
+He found her a place to wait, an alcove on the stairs. As he guided
+her to it, a touch on the arm showed him she was trembling.
+
+"I will be a very little while," he promised, and ran up the stairs.
+
+It was Buscarlet who opened the door to him, with Truelove standing
+behind his shoulder.
+
+"Welcome, welcome!" babbled Buscarlet. "Oh, but we have been eager
+for you! Tell me, will she--will she come?"
+
+"She is waiting on the stairs, in the alcove," answered O'Neill.
+
+Buscarlet's mild eyes opened in amaze. "You have brought her with
+you?" he cried.
+
+O'Neill nodded.
+
+"Thank God!" ejaculated Truelove.
+
+"How is he?" asked O'Neill. "Still--er--living, eh?"
+
+It was Truelove that replied. "Still keeping on, sir," he answered.
+"But changed, as you might say. Softened would be the word, sir."
+
+"What d'ye mean?" demanded O'Neill.
+
+"Well, sir," said the ex-corporal of dragoons, with a touch of
+hesitation, "it isn't for me to judge, but I should say he's--he's
+got religion. Or a taste of it, anyway."
+
+O'Neill stared at the pair of them in open dismay. "Let me see him,"
+he said shortly, and they followed him through the little anteroom to
+the great studio.
+
+Behind the screen, the narrow bed was white, and on it Regnault lay
+in stillness, looking up.
+
+He started slightly as O'Neill appeared at the foot of his bed, and
+the faint flush rose in his face. "Hush!" he said, with a forefinger
+uplifted, and poised for a few seconds on the brink of a spasm.
+
+"Ah!" he said when he was safe. "That was a near thing, O'Neill. I am
+glad to see you back, my friend."
+
+He was tranquil; even that undertone of mockery, so familiar in his
+voice, was gone. A rosary sprawled on his breast; O'Neill recognized
+it for a splendid piece of Renaissance work that had lain about the
+room for months.
+
+"I have found my happiness in meditation," Regnault was saying, in a
+still, silken voice. "But tell me, O'Neill--will she come?"
+
+"Yes," said O'Neill, wearily, "she will come." Regnault made a gentle
+gesture of thanks and closed his eyes. His long fingers slid on the
+ivory beads and his lips moved. O'Neill gazed down on him with a
+weakness of bewilderment; his landmarks were shifting.
+
+He was standing thus, looking in mere absence of mind, when a
+footfall beyond the screen reached his ear.
+
+"Oh Lord!" he cried.
+
+It was she. As his eyes fell upon her she was letting fall her long
+cloak. It lay on the floor about her feet, and she towered over it,
+in superb scarlet. Against her background of shadow her neck and arms
+and the abundance of her breast shone like silver. Ere he could go to
+her she waved him away with a sweep of a naked arm. A hand was on her
+hip, and she moved towards the bed with the sliding gait of the
+Spanish dancer.
+
+It was an affair of an instant. Buscarlet and Truelove hastened upon
+his exclamation, and Buscarlet, stumbling, brushed against the
+screen. He caught at it to save it from falling, and the bed was bare
+to the room. Regnault and his wife looked into each other's face.
+She, undisturbed by the suddenness of it all, held yet her posture of
+the stage, glowing in her silk with something dangerous and ominous
+about her, something blatant and yet potent, like a knife in a
+stocking. It was as though she wrought in violence for the admiration
+of the man on the bed. He, on his elbow, turned to her a thin face
+with lips parted and trembling; for an intolerable instant they hung,
+mute and motionless. Then, slowly, she turned with one foot sliding,
+and the light of the lamp was full on her face.
+
+It seemed to break the tense spell; Regnault's face was writhing; of
+a sudden he burst into shrill, hideous laughter, and his right hand
+flung out and pointed at her. None moved; none could. His laugh rang
+and broke, and rang again, outrageous and uncontrollable, merry and
+hearty and hateful. The woman, at the first peal of it, started and
+stood as though stricken to stone; they could see her shrivel under
+the blast of it, shrivel and shrink and age.
+
+Then, as though it had been overdue and long awaited, the laugh
+checked and choked. It freed them from the thrall that held them.
+Regnault's head fell back.
+
+"The amyl!" cried O'Neill, and they were all about him. "The amyl--
+where is it?"
+
+Regnault's face was a mask of paralyzed pain; but the silver patch-
+box that held the capsules was not on the table. It took a minute to
+find it on the floor. O'Neill smashed a couple, and thrust his hand
+into the waxen face--and waited. Buscarlet was breathing like a man
+in a nightmare. Truelove stood to attention. But Regnault did not
+return to the shape of life.
+
+O'Neill let his hand drop, and turned to Truelove. "He's got it," he
+said; "But fetch a doctor."
+
+His eyes fell on the dancer in her shimmering scarlet, where she
+knelt at the bedside, with her head bowed to the counterpane and her
+hands clasped over it.
+
+He sighed. He did not understand.
+
+
+
+X
+
+THE POOR IN HEART
+
+It was his habit of an evening to play the flute; and he was playing
+it faithfully, with the score propped up against a pile of books on
+his table, when the noises from the street reached him, and
+interrupted his music. With the silver-dotted flute in his hand he
+moved to the window and put aside the curtains to look out.
+
+The flute is the instrument of mild men; and Robert Lucas had
+mildness for a chief quality. At the age of thirty-five, in the high
+noon of his manhood, he showed to the world a friendly,
+unenterprising face, neatly bearded, and generally a little vacant.
+The accident that gave him a Russian mother was his main
+qualification for the post he now held--that of representative of a
+firm of leather manufacturers in the Russian town of Tambov. He spoke
+Russian, he knew leather, and he could ignore the smells of a
+tanyard; these facts entitled him to a livelihood.
+
+To right and left, as he looked forth, the cobbled street was dark;
+but opposite, in the silversmith's shop, there were lights, and,
+below, a small crowd had gathered. He watched wonderingly. He knew
+the silversmith well enough to nod as he passed his door--a young,
+laborious man with a rapt, uncertain face and a tumbled mane of black
+hair. There were also a little, grave wife and a fat, grave baby; and
+these, when they were visible, received separate and distinctive
+nods, and always returned them. The hide-sellers and tanners were,
+for the most part, crude and sportive persons with whom he could have
+nothing in common; they lived, apparently, on drink and uproar; and
+he had come to regard the silversmith and his family as vague
+friends. He pressed his face closer to the glass of the double
+casement to see more certainly.
+
+The little shop seemed to be full of lights and people, and outside
+its door there was a press of folk. The murmur of voices was audible,
+though he could distinguish nothing that was said. But now and again
+there was laughter. It was the laughter that held him gazing and
+apprehensive; it had a harsher note than mirth. It seemed to him,
+too, that some of the men in the doorway were in uniform; he could
+see them only in outline, mere black silhouettes against the interior
+lights; but there was about them the ominous cut of the official,
+that Russian bird of ill-omen. And then, while yet he doubted, there
+sounded the very keynote of disaster. From somewhere within the
+silversmith's shop a woman screamed, sudden and startling.
+
+"Now, now!" said Robert Lucas, at his window, grasping his flute
+nervously. And, as though in answer to his remonstrance, there was
+again that guttural, animal laughter. He frowned.
+
+"I must see into this," he told himself very seriously.
+
+He turned from the window. His pleasant room, with the bright lamp on
+the table and the music leaning beside it, seemed to advise him to
+proceed with caution. He and his life were not devised for situations
+in which women screamed on that tense note of anguish and terror; he
+had never done a violent thing in all his days. There was no clear
+purpose in his mind as he pulled open his door to go out--merely an
+ill-ease that forced him to go nearer to the cause of those screams.
+He had descended the stairs and was fumbling at the latch of the
+street-door before he realized that he was still holding the flute.
+
+"Oh, bother!" he exclaimed, in extreme exasperation when the
+instrument proved too long for his pocket, and went out carrying it
+like some remarkable and ornate baton.
+
+The small crowd before the silversmith's shop numbered, perhaps, a
+hundred people, and even before his eyes were acclimatized to the
+darkness he smelt sheepskin coats and tan-bark. He touched one big
+man on the arm and asked a question. The lights in the shop lit up
+the fellow's hairy face and loose grin as he turned to answer.
+
+"Eh?" said the man. "Why, it's a Jew that the police are clearing
+out. Did you hear the Jewess squeal?"
+
+"Yes, I heard," said Lucas, and moved away.
+
+He was cut off from the door of the shop by the backs of the crowd,
+and passed along the street to get round them. Inside the lighted
+house the baby had begun to cry, but there was no more screaming. He
+had a sense that unless he hurried he might be too late for what was
+in preparation. The crowd seemed to be waiting for some culminating
+scene, with more than screams in it. A touch of nervous excitement
+came to fortify him, and he thrust in between two huge slaughterers,
+whose clothes reeked of the killing sheds.
+
+"Make way!" he said breathlessly, as they turned on him.
+
+One of them swore and would have shoved him back, and others looked
+round at the sound of strife. Lucas put up an uncertain hand to guard
+the blow. It, was the hand that held the flute, whose silver keys
+flashed in the lights from the shop.
+
+"Ha!" grunted the slaughterer, arrested by that sight. He looked at
+Lucas doubtfully, his neat clothes, his general aspect of a superior.
+"Who are you?" he demanded.
+
+"Make way!" repeated Lucas.
+
+It seemed to confirm the slaughterer in his suspicion that this was a
+personage to be deferred to.
+
+"Hi, there!" he bellowed helpfully. "Give room for his Excellency.
+Let his Excellency come through! Don't you see what he's got in his
+hand? Make way, will you?"
+
+He bent his huge, unclean shoulder to the business of clearing a
+path, and drove through like a snow-plough. Lucas followed along the
+lane that he made, and came to the pavement close by the shop.
+
+It was fortunate that events marched sharply from that point, and
+forced him to act without thinking. He had some vague notion of
+finding the officer in charge of the police and speaking to him. But
+before he could move to do so there was a fresh activity of the
+people within the bright windows; he saw something that had the look
+of a struggle. Voices babbled, and the crowd pressed closer; and
+suddenly, from the open doorway, two figures reeled forth, clutching
+and thrusting. One was in uniform, the other was a woman. For a
+couple of seconds they wrenched and fought, staged before the crowd
+on the lighted doorstep; and then the woman broke away and ran
+blindly towards the spot where Lucas stood. She had, he saw suddenly,
+a child in her arms that cried unceasingly.
+
+The uniformed man who had tried to hold her came plunging after her;
+his face was creased in clownish and cruel smiles. Lucas saw the
+thing stupidly; his mind prompted him to nothing; he stood where he
+was, empty of resource. He was directly in the flying woman's path,
+and she rushed at him as to a refuge. He was the sole thing in that
+narrow arena of dread which she did not recognize as a figure of
+oppression; and she floundered to her knees at his-feet and held
+forth the terrified child to him in an agony of appeal. Her tormented
+and fearful face was upturned to him; he knew her for the Jewess, the
+wife of the silversmith.
+
+"Father!" she breathed, in the pitiful idiom of that land of orphans.
+
+"Ye-es," said Robert Lucas vaguely, and put a hand on her head.
+
+Never before, in all the orderly level of his life, had a human being
+chosen him for champion and savior. He was aware of something within
+him that surged, some spate of force and potency in his blood; he
+stood upright with a start to confront the policeman who was on the
+woman's heels. The man was grinning still, fatuously and consciously,
+like a buffoon who knows he will be applauded; Lucas fronted his
+smiling security with a still fury that wiped the mirth from his face
+and left him gaping.
+
+"Get back!" said Lucas. He spoke in a low tone, and the crowd jostled
+nearer to hear.
+
+The policeman stared at him, amazed and uncomprehending.
+
+"Sir," he stammered; "Excellency--this Jewess she----"
+
+He stopped. Lucas was pointing at him with the flute across the bowed
+head of the woman, who crouched over her child at his feet.
+
+"You shall report the matter to the Governor," said Lucas, in the
+same tone of icy anger. "And I will report it to the Minister."
+
+He touched the woman. "Get up," he said. "Come with me."
+
+He had to repeat it before she understood; she was numb with terror.
+She rose with difficulty to her feet, clasping the child, whose wail
+was now weak with exhaustion. The peering crowd made a ring of brute
+faces about them, full of menace and mystery, but the new power in
+him moved them to right and left at his gesture, and they gave him
+passage, with the woman behind him, across the road. The stupefied
+policeman watched them go, and then ran off to place the matter in
+the hands of his superior.
+
+Lucas was at his door when the officer whom the policeman had fetched
+touched him on the elbow. He was a young man; if he had been older
+Lucas's difficulties might have been increased. He peered in the
+darkness, and was visible as a narrow, black-moustached face, with
+heavy eyebrows and a brutal mouth. The one thing that deterred him
+from brisk action was the fact that Lucas was a foreigner, whose
+rights and liabilities were therefore uncertain.
+
+"This woman," he said, "is arrested."
+
+Lucas was unlocking the door. He turned with his hand on the key, and
+the woman touched his arm. Perhaps that touch aided him to use big
+words. As a resident in Tambov he knew the officer by sight, and had
+always been a little daunted by his manner of power. In Russia one
+comes easily to fear the police. But now he was free of fear.
+
+"You be careful," he said. "I saw what was being done."
+
+With his left hand he pushed the door, and it swung open. He motioned
+the woman to enter, and nodded as he saw her cross the threshold.
+
+The officer vented a click of impatience.
+
+"I tell you----" he began, and moved forward a step. Lucas extended
+an arm and the hand that held the flute across his chest.
+
+"Back!" he said. "You mustn't enter this house--you know that! You
+can go to the Governor, if you like, and I will go over his head. But
+you shall not touch that woman."
+
+"She is arrested," said the officer obstinately, still studying his
+antagonist. "If you wish to aid her, you must go to the Bureau; but
+you cannot take her away like this."
+
+"Eh?" Lucas swung round on him; the time was fertile in inspirations.
+"Can't I?!" he demanded threateningly. "But I have taken her, man. If
+you seize her now you must arrest me, too, and then--we shall see!"
+
+"I must do my duty," persisted the other.
+
+"Do it, then," said Lucas, standing square across the door. "Do it,
+and see if you can explain afterwards how you did it. I am not a
+woman who can be insulted with safety; my arrest will have to be
+explained to St. Petersburg, and you will have to pay for it. I saw
+how she was being handled, and how your duty was being done. I tell
+you, you're in danger. Be careful!"
+
+"So?" replied the officer slowly. He turned to the folk who were the
+absorbed audience of this conference. "Move away, there," he
+commanded harshly. "This is none of your business. Off with you!"
+
+They shifted back reluctantly, and he waited till he could speak
+unheard by them. Then he turned to Lucas again with a touch of the
+confidential in his manner.
+
+"What do you want with her?" he asked.
+
+"Want with her?" repeated Lucas, not immediately comprehending. Then,
+as the man's meaning reached him he trembled. "I don't want her," he
+cried. "I don't want her. You want her, not I; and you shan't have
+her. Do you understand? You shan't have her!"
+
+"Shan't I?" retorted the officer, but there was indecision in his
+voice.
+
+"No!" said Lucas.
+
+There was a pause. Neither of them was sure of himself. The officer
+found himself in face of a situation which he could not gauge; and
+it would never do for a provincial police official to attract notice
+in remote St. Petersburg. For all he knew, this flimsy little man,
+who had snatched his Jewess from him, might be able to set in motion
+those mills which grind erring servants of the State into disgrace
+and ruin. He certainly had a large and authoritative way with him.
+
+"Will you come to the Bureau, then, and speak with the chief?" he
+suggested. "You see, your action causes a difficulty."
+
+"No, I won't," said Lucas flatly.
+
+He also was in doubt. It seemed to him that he stood in a
+considerable peril, and he was aware that his mood of high temper was
+failing him. It needed an effort to maintain an assured and
+uncompromising front. Behind him, on the unlighted stairs, the woman
+breathed heavily. He summoned what he had of stubbornness to uphold
+him. The affair so far had gone valiantly; he meant that it should
+continue on the same plane.
+
+He saw the officer hesitate frowningly, and quaked. In a moment the
+man might make up his mind and seize him; there was an urgent
+necessity for some action that should quell him. Like all weak men,
+he saw a resource in violence, and as the officer opened his lips to
+speak again he interrupted.
+
+"No more!" he shouted. "You have heard what I had to say; that is
+enough. Now go!"
+
+He pointed frantically with his flute, and the officer, at the sudden
+lifting of his arm, made a surprised movement, which Lucas
+misunderstood.
+
+With a cry that was half terror and half ecstasy he smote, and the
+flute beat the officer's cap down over his eyes.
+
+"Yei Bohu!" ejaculated the officer, falling back,
+
+Lucas did not wait for him to thrust the cap away and recover
+himself. He had done his utmost, and the next step must rest with
+Providence. It was but two paces to the doorway. The officer was not
+quick enough to see his panic-stricken retirement. He recovered his
+sight only to see the slam of the door, which seemed to close in his
+face with a contemptuous and defiant emphasis. It was like a final
+fist shaken at him to drive home a warning. He shook his head
+despondently.
+
+On the other side of the door Lucas, fighting with his loud breath,
+heard his slow footsteps on the cobbles as he departed. He waited,
+hardly daring to relax his mind to hope, till he heard the party of
+them drawing off. He was weak with unaccustomed emotions.
+
+What struck him as marvelous was that the woman, whose face he had
+last seen as a writhen mask of fear, should appear in the light of
+his room with her calm restored, with nothing but some disorder of
+her hair and dress to betoken her troubles. Even the child in her
+arms, worn out with weeping perhaps, had fallen asleep. He stared at
+the pair of them vacantly. His lamp, his music, all the apparatus of
+his gentle and decorous existence were as he had left them; their
+familiar and prosaic quality made his adventure appear by contrast
+monstrous.
+
+The Jewess was watching him. In her dark, serious way she had a
+certain striking beauty. Her grave eyes waited for him to look at
+her.
+
+"What is it?" he said at last.
+
+"If I might put the child down," she suggested timidly.
+
+Lucas pointed to the double-doors of his bedroom. "My bed is in
+there," he answered. She lowered her head, as though in obedience to
+a command he had given, and carried the child out. Lucas watched her
+go, and then crossed the room to a cupboard which contained, among
+other things, a bottle of brandy.
+
+While he was drinking she returned, pausing in the door to look back
+at the child. He noticed that she left the door partly open to hear
+it if it should wake, and somehow this struck him as particularly
+moving.
+
+She came across the room to him, with her steadfast eyes on his face,
+and, without speaking, fell on her knees before him and put the edge
+of his coat to her lips.
+
+Lucas stood while she did it; he hardly dared to move and interrupt
+that reverent and symbolic act of gratitude. But once again, as when
+on the pavement she had held the child to him in frantic appeal, the
+simple soul within him flamed into splendor, and he was in touch with
+great passions and mighty emotions. It is the mood of martyrs and
+heroes. He looked down to her dark eyes, bright with swimming tears,
+and helped her to her feet.
+
+"You shall be safe here," he told her. "Nobody shall touch you here."
+
+She believed it utterly; he was a champion sent straight from God;
+she had seen him conquering and irresistible. To fear now would be a
+blasphemy.
+
+"I am quite safe," she agreed. "I am not afraid. To-morrow some of my
+people will come for me."
+
+He nodded. "There is some food in the cupboard there," he told her.
+"Milk, too, if the child wants it. And nobody can come up the stairs
+without meeting me; and if they try, God help them!"
+
+She half smiled at the idea. "They would never dare," she agreed
+confidently.
+
+He would have been glad of his overcoat, but that was in his bedroom,
+and he dreaded the indelicacy of going there while she was present.
+So in the event he bade her a brief good-night, and found himself on
+the dark and chilly stairs without so much as a pillow or a blanket
+to make sleep possible. For lack of anything else in the shape of a
+weapon, he had brought his silver-keyed flute with him; if he were
+invaded in the small hours it might serve him again; it seemed to
+have a virtue for quelling police officials.
+
+About three o'clock in the morning he awoke from an uneasy doze,
+chilled to the marrow, and was prompted to try if the flute would
+still make music. It would not. It is too much to ask of any
+instrument that has been used as an instrument of war. It had saved a
+Jewess and her child, magnified its owner into a man of action, and
+was thenceforth silent for ever.
+
+"I must have hit that officer pretty hard," was the reflection of
+Robert Lucas.
+
+The episode closed shortly before noon next day, when two elderly men
+of affairs came to fetch his guests away. They entered the room while
+he was entertaining the baby with a whistled selection from his
+repertoire of flute music, and he broke off short as they regarded
+him from the doorway. The Jewess looked up alertly as they entered.
+
+They bowed to Lucas with a manner of servility in which there was an
+ironic suggestion, while their eyes examined him shrewdly. They were
+bearded, aquiline persons, soft-spoken and withal formidable. He had
+a notion that they found him amusing, but suppressed their amusement.
+
+"Then it is you we have to thank," said the elder of them, when
+formal greetings had been exchanged, "for the safety of this girl and
+her child."
+
+"I don't want any thanks," protested Lucas.
+
+He could not tell them how the thanks he had already received
+transcended any words they could speak.
+
+"It was a villainous thing," he went on. "I'm glad I could help. Er--
+is the silversmith all, right?"
+
+"Money was paid," answered the grey-haired Jew; "he is safe,
+therefore. But he spent the night in chains, while his wife was here
+with you."
+
+He spoke with a pregnant gravity. The Jewess started up and addressed
+him in a tongue Lucas could not understand. He saw that she pointed
+to him and to the bedroom and to the stairs, and that she spoke with
+heat. The old Jew heard her intently.
+
+"So!" he said, in his deep voice. "Then we have more to thank you for
+than we thought. You gave up your rooms, it seems?"
+
+"It is nothing," said Lucas. "You see, a lady--well, I could hardly--"
+
+"Yes, I see," agreed the old Jew. "I have to do with a noble spirit.
+And you do not want any thanks? So? But we Jews, we have more things
+to give than thanks, and better things."
+
+"I don't want anything," Lucas answered him. "I'm glad everything's
+all right."
+
+"You are very good," said the old man, "very good and generous. But
+some day, perhaps, you will have a need--and then you will find that
+our people do not forget."
+
+The Jewess had nothing to take with her but her child. She bowed her
+head and murmured something as she passed out, and the baby laughed
+at him.
+
+"Our people do not forget," repeated the old Jew, as he bowed himself
+forth.
+
+"Well," said Lucas, half aloud, when he was once more alone in his
+room, "that's finished, anyhow."
+
+It was the knell of his greater self, of the man he had contrived to
+be for a few hours. He sat in his chair, dimly realizing it, with
+vague and wordless regrets. Then, upon the table, he saw the flute,
+and rose to put it in the cupboard. It would never be useful again,
+but he did not want to throw it away.
+
+The old dramas, which somehow came so close to reality with so little
+art--or because of so little art--had a way of straddling time like
+life itself. "Twenty years elapse between Acts II and III," the
+playbills said unblushingly, and the fact is that what most men sow
+at twenty they reap at forty; the twenty years do elapse between the
+acts. The curtain that goes down on Robert Lucas in his room at
+Tambov rises on Robert H. Lucas in New York, with the passage of time
+marked on him as clearly as on a clock. With grey in his beard and
+patches on his boots, and quarters in a boarding-house in Long Island
+City, he is still concerned with leather, but no longer prosperous.
+His work involves much calling on dealers and manufacturers, and
+their manner of receiving him has done nothing to harden his manner
+of diffidence and incompetence. His linen strives to be
+inconspicuous; his clothes do not inspire respect; the total effect
+of him is that of a man who has been at great pains to plant himself
+in a wrong environment. Tambov now is no more than a memory; it is
+less than an experience, for it has left the man unchanged. It is a
+thing he has seen--not a thing he has lived.
+
+The accident that gave his name and the address of his boarding-house
+a place in the papers has no part in his story; he was an unimportant
+witness in the trial of a man whom he had seen in the street cutting
+blood-spots out of his clothing. He had bought a paper which
+mentioned him to read on the ferry as he returned home, and had been
+mildly thrilled to find that an artist had sketched him and
+immortalized him in his columns. And next morning came the letter.
+
+"Guelder and Zorn" was the name engraved across the head of it, in a
+slender Italian script; it conveyed nothing to him. The body of the
+communication was typewritten, and stated that if Mr. Robert H. Lucas
+would present himself at the above address, the firm would be glad to
+serve him. Nothing more.
+
+"Mean to say you haven't heard of Guelder and Zorn?" demanded the
+young man whose place at breakfast in the boarding-house was opposite
+to him, when he asked a question. "Say--d'you know what money is?
+Hard, round flat stuff--money? You do know that, eh? Well, Guelder
+and Zorn is the same thing."
+
+Somebody laughed. Lucas looked round rather helplessly.
+
+"They say," he explained, referring to the letter, "that they'll be
+glad to serve me."
+
+"Then you might lend me a couple of million," suggested the young man
+opposite, with entire disbelief. "Them Jews would never miss it."
+
+Lucas had the sense to drop the matter there. He put the letter in
+his pocket and went on with his breakfast, and listened with
+incredulous interest to the talk that went on about the wealth, the
+greatness, the magnificence and power of the financial house which
+professed itself anxious to be of use to him. He was sorry to have to
+leave the table before it came to an end.
+
+It is characteristic of him that the letter aroused no wild hopes,
+nor even an acute curiosity. He came, in the course of the morning,
+to the offices of Messrs. Guelder and Zorn in much the same frame of
+mind he brought to his business efforts. They were near, but not in,
+Wall Street--a fact of some symbolic quality which he, of course,
+could not appreciate. He stood on the edge of the side-walk for some
+moments, looking up at the solid, responsible block of building which
+anchored their fortunes to earth, till some one jostled him into the
+gutter. Then he recollected himself and prepared to enter the money-
+mill.
+
+A hall porter like a comic German heard his inquiry, scrutinized him
+with a withering glare, and jerked a thumb towards a door. He found
+himself in such an office as may have seen the first Rothschild make
+his first profits--a room austere as a chapel, rigidly confined to
+the needs of business. A screen, pierced by pigeon-holes, cut it in
+half. Experience has proved that no sum of money is too large to
+pass through a pigeon-hole.
+
+"Veil?"
+
+A whiskered, spectacled face, framed in the central pigeon-hole, with
+eyes magnified by the spectacles, regarded him sharply.
+
+"Oh!" He recalled himself to his concerns with a jerk, and fumbled in
+his pockets. "I had a letter," he explained.
+
+"Vere is de letter?"
+
+He found it, after an exciting search, and passed it over. The
+whiskered face developed a hand to receive it.
+
+"I don't know what it's about," explained Lucas.
+
+"Perhaps your people have made a mistake in the name, or something."
+
+"Our beoble," said the face in the pigeon-hole, with malignant
+emphasis, "do nod make mistagues!"
+
+There was an interval while the letter was read, and Lucas stood and
+fidgeted, with a sense that he was intrusive and petty and undesired.
+"Yes," said the owner of the spectacles, at length. "You vait. I vill
+enguire."
+
+He left his pigeon-hole unshuttered, and to Lucas, while he waited,
+it seemed that several men came to it and glanced at him
+forbiddingly. None spoke; they just looked as though in righteous
+indignation at his presence, with seventy-five cents in his pocket,
+in that high temple of finance. Then the whiskered and spectacled
+face fitted itself again into the aperture.
+
+"So you are Mr. Robert H. Lugas, are you?" it inquired. "Den vere vas
+you in de year 1886?"
+
+"Where was I?" repeated Lucas vaguely. "Let me see! 1886--yes! I was
+in Russia then--in Tambov."
+
+"Yes." The other's regard was keen. "An' now tell me aboud de man dat
+lived obbosite to you in Tambov?"
+
+"Do you mean the silversmith?" said Lucas. The other nodded. "Oh,
+him! He was a Jew. They expelled him."
+
+"And his vife?"
+
+"His wife! They expelled her too," he answered. "I never heard of her
+again."
+
+"Vot vas de last you heard of her?"
+
+"Oh, that!"
+
+Lucas was staring at him vacantly. It did not occur to him that, by
+not answering promptly, he might give ground for doubt and suspicion.
+The question had re-illuminated in his mind--perhaps for the first
+time since the event which it touched--that night of twenty years
+before. He flavored again the heady and effervescent vintage of
+strong action, of crowded happenings and poignant emotions.
+
+"Veil?" demanded the other.
+
+"There was a police officer," began Lucas obediently; "his name was
+Semianoff;" and in bald, halting words he told the story. He told it
+absently, languidly, for no words within his reach could convey the
+thing as it dwelt in his memory, the warmth and color of it, its
+uplifting and transfiguring quality.
+
+The man behind the pigeon-hole heard him intently.
+
+"Yes," he said again, as Lucas finished. "You are de man. Ve do not
+reguire further broof, Mr. Lugas."
+
+He produced a slip of paper and a pen which he laid on the ledge
+before his pigeon-hole.
+
+"I am instrugted to say dat if you vill fill in and sign dis cheque,
+ve vill cash it."
+
+"Eh?" Lucas was slow to understand.
+
+"Ve vill cash it," repeated the other. "You fill it in--and sign it--
+and I vill cash it now."
+
+"But"--Lucas took the pen from him in mere obedience to his gesture--
+"but--what for?"
+
+"My instrugtions are to cash it--no more!"
+
+Lucas stared at the tight-lipped, elderly face, like the face of a
+wise and distrustful gnome, and held the pen uncertainly above the
+cheque form.
+
+"How much am I to write?" he asked.
+
+"I haf no instrugtions about de amount," was the reply.
+
+"But," cried Lucas, "I might write fifty thousand dollars!"
+
+"My instrugtions are to cash de cheque ven you haf written it."
+
+"Oh!" said Lucas.
+
+He stared incredulously at the face for some moments and then wrote a
+cheque for the sum he had named--fifty thousand dollars. He was about
+to add his signature when something occurred to him.
+
+"Is it because I went across the road to that little woman in
+Tambov?" he asked suddenly.
+
+The whiskered face answered composedly: "No. It is because you went
+out of your rooms and slept on de stairs."
+
+"Because"--he seemed puzzled--"but that is a thing--why, any
+gentleman would do it."
+
+"Dose are my instrugtions," said the man behind the pigeon-hole.
+
+"I see."
+
+Lucas stood upright, the uncompleted cheque in his fingers. All
+surprise and excitement had vanished from his regard; he seemed
+taller and stronger than he had been a minute before. He had yet many
+calls to make, and, in the nature of things, many rebuffs to receive,
+before he went home to supper; and the money in his pocket totaled
+seventy-five cents. He needed new boots, new clothes, leisure,
+consideration, and a sight of his native land; in short, he needed
+fifty thousand dollars.
+
+"You will cash this because I didn't fail to respect a helpless
+woman?" he asked, in level tones.
+
+The whiskered cashier replied: "Yes. Because you gave up your room
+and kept watch on de stairs."
+
+Lucas laughed gently. "That is not the way to deal with a gentleman,"
+he said. "I will make your firm a present of fifty thousand dollars."
+
+He showed the cheque he had written, with the figures clear and
+large. And then, with leisurely motions, he tore it across and again
+across.
+
+"Much obliged," said Robert H. Lucas, and made for the door.
+
+
+
+XI
+
+THE MAN WHO KNEW
+
+Bearded, bowed, with hard blue eyes that questioned always, so we
+knew David Uys as children; an old, remotely quiet man, who was to be
+passed on the other side of the street and in silence. I have
+wondered sometimes if the old man ever noticed the hush that, ran
+before him and the clamor that grew up behind, the games that held
+breath, while he went by, and the children that judged him with wide
+eyes. He alone, of all the people in the little dorp, made his own
+world and possessed it in solitude; about him, the folk held all
+interest in community and measured life by a trivial common standard.
+At his doorstep, though, lay the frontier of little things; he was
+something beyond us all, and therefore greater or less than we. The
+mere pictorial value of his tall figure, the dignity of his long,
+forked beard, and the expectancy of his patient eyes, must have
+settled it that he was greater. I was a child when he died, and
+remember only what I saw, but the rest was talk, and so, perhaps,
+grew the more upon me.
+
+One day he died. For years he had walked forth in the morning and
+back to his house at noon, a purple spot on the raw color of the
+town. He had always been still and somewhat ominous, and conveyed to
+all who saw him a sense of looking for something. But on this day he
+went back briskly, walking well and striding long, with the gait of
+one that has good news, and he smiled at those he passed and nodded
+to them, unheeding or not seeing their strong surprise nor the alarm
+he wrought to the children. He went straight to his little house,
+that overlooks a crowded garden and a pool of the dorp spruit,
+entered, and was seen no more alive. His servant, a sullen Kafir,
+found him in his bed when supper-time came, called him, looked, made
+sure, and ran off to spread the news that David Uys was dead. He was
+lying, I have learned, as one would lie who wished to die formally,
+with a smile on his face and his arms duly crossed. This is copiously
+confirmed by many women who crowded, after the manner of Boers, to
+see the corpse; and of all connected with him, I think, his end and
+the studied manner of it, implying an ultimate deference to the
+conventions, have most to do with the awe in which his memory is
+preserved.
+
+Now, a death so well conceived, so aptly preluded, must, in the
+nature of things, crown and complete a life of singular and strong
+quality. A murder without a good motive is mere folly; properly
+actuated, it is tragedy, and therefore of worth. So with a death one
+seldom dies well, in the technical sense, without having lived well,
+in the artistic sense; and a man who will furnish forth a good death-
+bed scene seldom goes naked of an excellent tradition. I have been at
+some pains to discover the story of David Uys; and though some or the
+greater part of it may throw no further back than to the vrouws of
+the dorp, it seems to me that they have done their part at least as
+well as David Uys did his, and this is the tale I gleaned.
+
+When David was a young man the Boers were not yet scattered abroad
+all over the veldt, and the farms lay in to the dorps, and men saw
+one another every day. There was still trouble with the Kafirs at
+times, little risings and occasional murders, with the sacking and
+burning of homesteads, and it was well to have the men within a
+couple of days' ride of the field-cornet, for purposes of defense and
+retaliation. But when David married all this weighed little with him.
+
+"What need of neighbors?" he said to his young wife. "We have more
+need of land--good land and much of it. We will trek."
+
+"It shall be as you will, David," answered Christina. "I have no wish
+but yours, and neighbors are nothing to me."
+
+There was a pair of them, you see--both Boers of the best, caring
+more for a good fire of their own than to see the smoke from
+another's chimney soiling the sky. Within a week of their agreement
+the wagons were creaking towards the rising sun, and the whips were
+saluting the morning. David and Christina fronted a new world
+together, and sought virgin soil. For a full month they journeyed
+out, and out-spanned at last, on a mellow evening, on their home.
+
+"Could you live here, do you think, Christina?" asked David, smiling,
+and she smiled back at him and made no other answer.
+
+There was no need for one, indeed, for no Boer could pass such a
+place. It was a rise, a little rand, flowing out from a tall kopje,
+grass and bush to its crown, and at its skirts ran a wide spruit of
+clear water. The veldt waved like a sea--not nakedly and forlorn, but
+dotted with grey mimosa and big green dropsical aloes, that here and
+there showed a scarlet plume like a flame. The country was thigh-deep
+in grass and spoke of game; as they looked, a springbok got up and
+fled. So here they stayed.
+
+David and his Kafirs built the house, such a house as you see only
+when the man who is to make his home in it puts his hand to the
+building. David knew but one architecture, that of the great hills
+and the sky, and when all was done, the house and its background
+clove together like a picture in a fit frame, the one enhancing the
+other, the two being one in perfection. It was thatched, with deep
+eaves, and these made a cool stoep and cast shadows on the windows;
+while the door was red, and took the eye at once, as do the plumes of
+the aloes. It was not well devised--to say so would be to lend David
+a credit not due to him; but it occurred excellently.
+
+The next thing that occurred was a child, a son, and this set the
+pinnacle on their happiness. His arrival was the one great event in
+many years, for the multiplication of David's flocks and herds was so
+well graduated, the growth of his prosperity so steady and of so even
+a process, that it tended rather to content than to joy. It was like
+having money rather than like getting it. In the same barefoot quiet
+their youth left them, and the constant passing of days marked them,
+tenderly at first and then more deeply. Their boy, Frikkie, was a
+man, and thinking of marrying, when the consciousness of the leak in
+their lives, stood up before them.
+
+They were sitting of an evening on the stoep, watching the sun go
+down and pull his ribbons after him, when Christina spoke.
+
+"David," she said, "yesterday was twenty-five years since our
+marriage. We--we are growing old, David."
+
+She spoke with a falter, believing what she said. For though the
+blood is running strong and warm, and the eye is as clear as the
+heart is loyal, twenty-five years is a weary while to count back to
+one's youth.
+
+David turned and looked at her. He saw for a moment with her eyes--
+saw that the tenseness of her girlhood had vanished, and he was
+astonished. But he knew he was strong and hale, well set-up and a
+good man to be friends with, and as he gripped his knees, he felt the
+tough muscle under his fingers, and it restored him.
+
+"Christina," he said, seeing she was troubled, "it is the same with
+both of us. You are not afraid to grow old with me, little cousin?"
+
+She came closer to him but said nothing. It was soon after that, and
+a wonderful thing in its way, such as David had never heard of
+before, that there came to them another boy, a wee rascal that
+shattered all the cobwebs of twenty-five years, and gave Christina
+something better to think of than the footsteps of time.
+
+Frikkie had been glorious enough in his time, and was glorious enough
+still, for the matter of that; but this was a creature with
+exceptional points, which neither David nor Christina--nor, to do him
+justice, Frikkie--could possibly overlook. Frikkie had a voice like a
+bell, and whiskers like the father of a family, and stood six foot
+two in his naked feet, and lacked no excellence that a sturdy
+bachelor should possess. But the other, who was born to the name of
+Paul, lamented his arrival with a vociferous note of disappointment
+in the world that was indescribably endearing; had a head clothed in
+down like the intimate garments of an ostrich chick, and was small
+enough for David to put in his pocket. He brought a new horizon with
+him and imposed it on his parents; he was, in brief, a thing to make
+a deacon of a Jew peddler.
+
+Thereafter, life for David and Christina was no longer a single
+phenomenon, but a series of developments. It was like sailing in
+agreeably rough water. No pensive mood could survive the sight of
+mighty Frikkie gambolling like a young bull in the company of Paul;
+nor could quiet hours impart a melancholy while the welkin rang with
+the voice of the kleintje bullying the adoring Kafirs. Where before
+life had glided, now it steeplechased, taking its days bull-headed,
+and Paul grew to the age of four as a bamboo grows, in leaps.
+
+Then Frikkie, the huge, the hairy, the heavy-footed, the man who
+prided himself on his ability to make circumstances, discovered, in a
+revealing flash, that he was, after all, a poor creature, and that
+the brightest being on earth was Katje Voss, whose people had settled
+about thirty miles off--next door, as it were. Katje held views not
+entirely dissimilar, but she consented to marry him, and the big
+youth walked on air. Katje was a dumpy Boer girl, with a face all
+cream and roses, and a figure that gave promise of much fat
+hereafter. Christina had imagined other things, but the ideal is a
+rickety structure, and she yielded; while David had never considered
+such an emergency, and consented heartily. Behind Frikkie's back he
+talked of grandchildren, and was exceedingly happy.
+
+Then his dream-fabric tumbled about his ears.
+
+Frikkie had ridden off to worship his beloved, and David and
+Christina, as was their wont, sat on the stoep. They' watched the
+figure of their son out of sight, and talked a while, and then lapsed
+into the silence of perfect companionship. The veldt was all about
+them, as silent and friendly as they, and the distance was mellow
+with a haze of heat. From the kraals came at intervals the voice of
+little Paul in fluent Kafir; David smiled over his pipe and nodded to
+his wife once when the boy's voice was raised in a shout. Christina
+was sewing; her thoughts were on Katje, and were still vaguely
+hostile.
+
+Of a sudden she heard David's pipe clatter on the ground, and looked
+sharply round at him. He was staring intently into the void sky; his
+brows were knitted and his face was drawn; even as she turned he gave
+a hoarse cry.
+
+She rose quickly, but he rose too, and spoke to her in an unfamiliar
+voice.
+
+"Go in," he said. "Have all ready, for our son has met with a mishap.
+He has fallen from his horse."
+
+She gasped, and stared at him, but could not speak.
+
+"Go and do it," he said again, looking at her with hard eyes; and
+suddenly she saw, as by an inward light, that here was not madness,
+but truth. It spurred her.
+
+"I will do it," she said swiftly. "But you will go and bring him in?"
+
+"At once," he replied, and was away to the shed for the cart. The
+Kafirs came running to inspan the horses, and shrank from him as they
+worked. He was white through his tan, and he breathed loud. Little
+Paul saw him, and sat down on the ground and cried quietly.
+
+Before David went his wife touched him on the arm, and he turned. She
+was white to the lips.
+
+"David," she said, and struggled with her speech. "David."
+
+"Well?" he answered, with a pregnant calm.
+
+"David, he is not--not dead?"
+
+"Not yet," he answered; "but I cannot say how it will be when I get
+there." A tenderness overwhelmed him, and he caught a great sob and
+put his arm about her. "All must be ready, little cousin. Time enough
+to grieve afterwards--all our lives, Christina, all our lives!"
+
+She put her hand on his breast.
+
+"All shall be ready, David," she answered. "Trust me, David."
+
+He drove off, and she watched him lash the horses down the hill and
+force them at the drift--he, the man who loved horses, and knew them
+as he knew his children. His children! She fled into the house to do
+her office, and to drink to the bottom of the cup the bitterness of
+motherhood. A cool bed, linen, cold water and hot water, brandy and
+milk, all the insignia of the valley of the shadow did she put to
+hand, and con over and adjust and think upon, and then there was the
+waiting. She waited on the stoep, burning and tortured, boring at the
+horizon with dry eyes, and praying and hoping. A lifetime went in
+those hours, and the sun was slanting down before the road yielded,
+far and far away, a speck that grew into a cart going slowly. By and
+by she was able to see her husband driving, but nobody with him--only
+a rag or a garment that fluttered from the side. Her mind snatched at
+it; was it--God! what was it?
+
+David drove into the yard soberly; she was at the stoep.
+
+"All is ready," she said, in a low voice. "Will you bring him in?"
+
+"Yes," he said; and she went inside with her heart thrashing like a
+kicking horse.
+
+David carried in his son in his arms; he was not yet past that. On
+the white bed inside they laid him, and where his fair head touched
+the pillow it dyed it red. Frikkie's face was white and blue, and his
+jaw hung oddly; but once he was within the door, some reinforcement
+of association came to Christina, and she went about her ministry
+purposefully and swiftly, a little comforted. At the back of her
+brain dwelt some idea such as this: here was her house, her home,
+there David, there Frikkie, here she, and where these were together
+Death could never make the fourth. The same thought sends a stricken
+child to its mother. David leant on the foot of the bed, his burning
+eyes on the face of his son, and his brows tortured with anxiety.
+Christina brought some drink in a cup and held it to the still lips
+of the young man.
+
+"Drink. Frikkie," she pleaded softly. "Drink, my kleintje. Only a
+drop, Frikkie, and the pain will fly away."
+
+She spoke as though he were yet a child, for a mother knows nothing
+of manhood when her son lies helpless. The arts that made him a man
+shall keep him a man; so she coaxed the closed eyes and the dumb
+mouth.
+
+But Frikkie would not drink, heard nothing, gave no sign. Christina
+laid drenched cloths to his forehead, deftly cleansed and bandaged
+the gaping rent in the base of the skull whence the life whistled
+forth, and talked to her boy all the while in the low crooning mother
+voice. David never moved from the foot of the bed, and never loosed
+his drawn brows. In came little Paul silently and took his hand, but
+he never looked down, and the father and the child remained there
+throughout the languid afternoon.
+
+Evening cool was growing up when Frikkie opened his eyes. Christina
+was wetting towels for bandages, and her back was towards him, but
+she knew instantly, and came swiftly to his side. David leaned
+forward breathlessly, and little Paul cried out with the grip of his
+hand. They saw a waver of recognition in Frikkie's eyes, a fond
+light, and it seemed that his lips moved. Christina laid her ear to
+them.
+
+"And--a--shod--horse!" murmured Frikkie. Nothing more. An hour after
+he was cold, and David was alone on the stoep, questioning pitiless
+skies and groping for God, while Christina knelt beside the bed
+within and wept blood from her soul.
+
+They buried Frikkie in a little kraal on the hillside, and David made
+the coffin. When he nailed down the lid he was an old man; when the
+first red clod rang on it, he felt that life had emptied itself. When
+they were back in the house again, Christina turned to him.
+
+"You knew," she said, in a strange voice--"you knew, but you could
+not save him." And she laughed aloud. David covered his face with his
+hands and groaned, but the next instant Christina's arms were about
+him.
+
+Yet of their old life, before the deluge of grief, too much was happy
+to be all swamped. Time softened the ruggedness of their wound
+somewhat, and a day came when all the world was no longer black.
+Little Paul helped them much, for what had once been Frikkie's was
+now his; and as he grew before their eyes, his young strength and
+beauty were a balm to them. David was much abroad in the lands now,
+for he was growing mealies and rapidly becoming a rich man; and as he
+rode oft in the morning and rode in at sundown, his new gravity of
+mind and mien broke up to the youngster who jumped at the stirrup
+with shouts and laughter, and demanded to ride on the saddle-bow. At
+intervals, also, Paul laid claim to a gun, to spurs, to a watch, to
+all the things that go in procession across a child's horizon, and
+Christina was not proof against the impulse to smile at him.
+
+It is not to be thought, of course, that the shock of foreknowledge,
+of omnipotent vision, had left David scathless. Though the other
+details of the tragedy shared his memory, and elbowed the terrifying
+sense of revelation, he would find himself now and again peering at
+the future, straining to foresee, as a sailor bores at a fog-bank.
+Then he would catch himself, and start back shuddering to the instant
+matters about him. Eventualities he could meet, but in their season
+and hand to hand; afar off they mastered him. Christina, too, dwelt
+on it at seasons; but, by some process of her woman's mind, it was
+less dreadful to her than to David: she, too, could dream at times.
+
+One day she was at work within the house, and Paul ran in and out.
+She spoke to him once about introducing an evil-smelling water-
+tortoise; he went forth to exploit it in the yard. From time to time
+his shrill voice reached her; then the frayed edges of David's black
+trousers of ceremony engaged her, to the exclusion of all else.
+Between the scissors and the needle, at last, there stole on her ear
+a faint tap, tap--such a sound as water dropping on to a board makes.
+It left her unconscious for a while, and then grew a little louder,
+with a note of vehemence. At last she looked up and listened. Tap,
+tap, it went, and she sprang from her chair and went to the stoep and
+looked out along the road. Far off on the hillside was a horse,
+ridden furiously on the downward road, and though dwarfed by the
+miles, she could see the rider flogging and his urgent crouch over
+the horse's withers. It was a picture of mad speed, of terror and
+violence, and struck her with a chill. Were the Kafirs risen? she
+queried. Was there war abroad? Was this mad rider her husband?
+
+The last question struck her sharply, and she glanced about. Little
+Paul was sitting on a stone, plaguing the water-tortoise with a
+stick, and speaking to himself and it. The sight reassured her, and
+she viewed the rider again with equanimity. But now she was able to
+place him: it was David, and the horse was his big roan. The pace at
+which he rode was winding up the distance, and the hoofs no longer
+tap-tapped, but rang insistently. There was war, then; it could be
+nothing else. Her category of calamities was brief, and war and the
+death of her dear ones nearly exhausted it.
+
+David galloped the last furlongs with a tightened rein, and froth
+snowed from the bit. He pulled up in the yard and slipped from the
+saddle. Christina saw again on his face the white stricken look and
+the furrowed frown that had stared on Frikkie's death. David stood
+with the bridle in his hand and the horse's muzzle against his arm
+and looked around. He saw Christina coming toward him with quick
+steps, and little Paul, abandoning the skellpot, running to greet
+him. He staggered and drew his hand across his forehead.
+
+Christina had trouble to make him speak. "A dream," he kept saying,
+"an evil dream."
+
+"A lying dream," suggested Christina anxiously.
+
+"Yes," he hastened to add, "a lying dream."
+
+"About--about little Paul?" was her timid question.
+
+David was silent for a while, and then answered. "I saw him dead," he
+replied, with a shudder. "God! I saw it as plain as I saw him a
+moment ago in the kraal."
+
+They heard the child's gleeful shout the same instant. "I've got you!
+I've got you!" he cried from without.
+
+"He has a water-tortoise," explained Christina with a smile. "Paul,"
+she called aloud, "come indoors."
+
+"Ja," shouted the child, and they heard him run up the steps of the
+stoep.
+
+"Look," he said, standing at the door, "I found this in the grass.
+What sort is it, father?"
+
+David saw something lithe and sinuous in the child's hands, and
+stiffened in every limb. Paul had a skaapstikker in his grip, the
+green-and-yellow death-snake that abounds in the veldt. Its head lay
+on his arm, its pin-point eyes maliciously agleam, and the child
+gripped it by the middle. Christina stood petrified, but the boy
+laughed and dandled the reptile in glee.
+
+"Be still, Paul," said David, in a voice that was new to him--"be
+still; do not move."
+
+The child looked up at him in astonishment. "Why?" he began.
+
+"Be still," commanded David, and went over to him cautiously. The
+serpent's evil head was raised as he approached, and it hissed at
+him. Paul stood quite quiet, and David advanced his naked hand to his
+certain death and the delivery of his child. The reptile poised, and
+as David snatched at it, it struck--but on his sleeve. The next
+instant was a delirious vision of writhing green and yellow; there
+was a cry from Paul, and the snake was on the floor. David crushed it
+furiously with his boot.
+
+Christina snatched the child. "Did it bite you, Paul!" she screamed.
+"Did it bite you?"
+
+The boy shook his head, but David interposed with a voice of thunder.
+
+"Of course it did!" he vociferated with blazing eyes; "what else did
+my dream point to? But we'll fight with God yet. Bring me the child,
+Christina."
+
+On the plump forearm of Paul they found two minute punctures and two
+tiny points of blood. David drew his knife, and the child shrieked
+and struggled.
+
+"Get a hot iron, Christina," cried David, and gripped Paul with his
+knees.
+
+In the morning the room was wild and grisly with blood and the smell
+of burnt flesh, and David lay face downwards on the floor, writhing
+as the echoes of Paul's shrieks tortured his ears. But in the next
+room little Paul was still for ever, and all the ghostly labor was to
+no purpose.
+
+I suppose there is some provision in the make of humanity for
+overflow grief, some limit impregnable to affliction; for when little
+Paul was laid beside his brother, there were still David and
+Christina to walk aimlessly in their empty world. Their scars were
+deep, and they were crippled with woe, and it seemed to them they
+lived as paralytics live, dead in all save in their susceptibility to
+torture. Moreover, there was a barrier between them in David's
+disastrous foreknowledge, for Christina could not throw off the
+thought that it contained the causal elements which had robbed her of
+her sons. Pain had fogged her; she could not probe the matter, and
+sensations tyrannised over her mind. David, too, was bowed with a
+sense of guilt that he could not rise to throw off. All motive was
+buried in the kraal; and he and his wife sat apart and spent days and
+nights without the traffic of speech.
+
+But Christina was seized with an idea. She woke David in the night
+and spoke to him tensely.
+
+"David," she cried, gripping him by the arm. "David! We cannot live
+for ever. Do you hear me? Look, David, look hard! Look where you
+looked before. Can you see nothing for me--for us, David?"
+
+He was sitting up, and the spell of her inspiration claimed him. He
+opened his eyes wide and searched the barren darkness for a sign. He
+groped with his mind, tore at the bonds of the present.
+
+"Do you see nothing?" whispered Christina. "Oh, David, there must be
+something. Look--look hard!"
+
+For the space of a hundred seconds they huddled on the bed, David
+fumbling with the keys of destiny, Christina waiting, breathless.
+
+"Lie down," said David at last. "You are going to die, little cousin.
+It is all well." His voice was the calmest in the world. "And you!"
+cried Christina; "David, and you?"
+
+"I see nothing," he said.
+
+"Poor David!" murmured his wife, clinging to him. "But I am sure all
+will yet be well, David. Have no fear, my husband."
+
+She murmured on in the dark, with his arm about her, and promised him
+death, entreated him to believe with her, and coaxed him with the
+bait of the grave. They were bride and groom again, they two, and
+slept at last in one another's arms.
+
+In the morning all was well with Christina, and she bustled about as
+of old. David was still, and hoped ever, with a tired content in what
+should happen, a languor that forbade him from railing on fate.
+Together they prepared matters as for a journey.
+
+"If the black trousers come frayed again," said Christina, "try to
+remember that the scissors are better than a knife. And the seeds are
+all in the box under our bed."
+
+"In the box under our bed," repeated David carefully. "Yes, under the
+bed. I will remember."
+
+"And this, David," holding up piles of white linen, "this is for me.
+You will not forget?"
+
+"For you?" he queried, not understanding.
+
+"Yes," she answered softly. "I will be buried in this."
+
+He started, but recovered himself with a quivering lip.
+
+"Of course," he answered. "I will see to it. I must be very old,
+Christina."
+
+She came over and kissed him on the forehead.
+
+In the middle of the afternoon she went to bed, and he came in and
+sat beside her. She held his hand, and smiled at him.
+
+"Are you dying now?" he asked at length.
+
+"Yes," she said. "What shall I tell Frikkie and the kleintje from
+you?"
+
+"Tell them nothing," he said, after a pause. "It cannot be that I
+shall be apart from you all long. No; I am very sure of that."
+
+She pressed his hand, and soon afterwards felt some pain. It was
+little, and she made no outcry. Her death was calm and not strongly
+distressing, and the next day David put her into the ground where her
+sons lay.
+
+But, as I have made clear, he did not die till long afterwards, when
+he had sold his farm and come to live in the little white house in
+the dorp, where colors jostled each other in the garden, and
+fascinated children watched him go in and come out. I think the story
+explains that perpetual search of which his vacant eyes gave news,
+and the joyous alacrity of his last home-coming, and the perfect
+technique of his death. It all points to the conclusion, that however
+brave the figures, however aspiring their capers, they but respond to
+strings which are pulled and loosened elsewhere.
+
+
+
+XII
+
+THE HIDDEN WAY
+
+A veil 'twixt us and Thee, dread Lord, A veil 'twixt us and Thee!
+Lest we should hear too clear, too clear, And unto madness see.
+
+Carrick crossed the fields in time to see, from the low bank above
+the churchyard, the children coming forth from Sunday school in the
+church, blinking contentedly at the late summer sunlight and all the
+familiar world from which, for two hours, they had been exiles. A
+little behind them came Mr. Newman, carrying his sober hat in his
+hand, and the curate.
+
+"Hi!" called Carrick, and they turned toward him as he came down the
+bank, with his sly spaniel shambling at his heels.
+
+The curate looked with disfavor at Carrick's worn tweed clothes and
+his general week-day effect. "I think," he said primly, "I'll be
+getting along."
+
+"I should," said Carrick shortly, turning his back on him. "I want to
+speak to you, Newman."
+
+"Then we will walk together," agreed Mr. Newman. "Good-bye till this
+evening," he called after the departing curate.
+
+It was an afternoon of June, languid and fragrant; the declining sun
+was in their faces as they went in company under the high arches of
+the elms, in a queer contrast of costume and personality. Carrick,
+the man of science, the adventurer in the bypaths of knowledge,
+affronted the Sabbath in the clothes which gave offence to the
+curate. He was a thin, impatient man, standing on the brink of middle
+age, with the hard, intent face of one accustomed to verify the
+evidence of his own senses. A habit he had of doing his thinking in
+the open air had left him tanned and limber; he walked easily, with
+the light foot of an athlete, while Mr. Newman, decorous in the black
+clothes which are the uniform of the regular churchgoer, trod
+deliberately at his side and mopped his brow with a handkerchief.
+
+"It was very warm in the church this afternoon," explained Mr. Newman
+mildly. "Very warm."
+
+He was an older man than Carrick, and altogether a riper and most
+complacent figure. He had a large and benevolent face, which would
+have been common-place but for a touch of steadfastness and serenity
+which dignified it, and an occasional vivacity of the kindly eyes.
+One perceived in him a man who had come smoothly through life, secure
+in plain faiths and clear hopes, unafraid of destiny. Something
+reverend in his general effect accentuated his difference from his
+companion.
+
+"Ventilation," Carrick was saying. "On an afternoon like this you
+might as well shut those children up in a family vault. Twenty of
+them, all breathing carbonic acid gas, besides yourself--and that
+ass!"
+
+"You mean the curate?" inquired Mr. Newman. "Really, he isn't an ass.
+He didn't like your clothes--that was all."
+
+"What's the matter with 'em?" demanded Carrick, inspecting his shabby
+sleeve. "You don't want me to dress up like--like you, do you?"
+
+"My dear fellow!" Mr. Newman smiled protestingly, lifting a suave
+hand. "I don't care how you dress. I don't want you to 'make broad
+your phylacteries,' you know."
+
+Carrick snorted, and they walked in silence through the little
+village that lay below the church.
+
+The matter they had in common, which bridged their diversity and made
+it possible for them to be, after their fashion, friends, was their
+interest in the subject which Carrick had made his own--experimental
+psychology. Like all successful business men, Mr. Newman had an
+unschooled aptitude for the science, and had practised it with profit
+on his competitors and employees before he knew a word of its
+technology. In Carrick's bare and lamp-lit study they had joined
+forces to bewilder and undermine the intelligence of the sly spaniel,
+and there had been sessions of hypnotism, with Mr. Newman rigid in
+trances, while Carrick groped, as it were, among the springs of his
+mind. The pair of them had incurred the indignation of European
+authorities, writing in obscure and costly little journals whose
+names the general public never heard. The bond of martyrdom--
+martyrdom in print--united them.
+
+"By the way," suggested Mr. Newman, when the village was behind them
+and they were walking between high hedgerows flamboyant with summer
+growth. "By the way, wasn't there something you wanted to speak to
+me about?"
+
+"Eh? Oh yes," replied Carrick. "Bother! I want you to come to my
+place to-night to try something--something new, a big thing."
+
+"To-night?" said Mr. Newman. "No, not to-night, Carrick."
+
+"Why not?" demanded Carrick. "I tell you, it's a big thing. I've had
+an idea of it for some time; those clairvoyant tests put me on to it;
+but I've only just got it clear. It's big."
+
+Mr. Newman shook his head. "Not to-night," he said. "You're a queer
+fellow, Carrick; you never can remember what day of the week it is
+for more than five minutes at a time."
+
+"Oh!" Carrick scowled. "You mean it's Sunday. But this--I tell you,
+this isn't just an ordinary thing, Newman. I'll explain--it's new and
+it's big!"
+
+"No," said Newman. "Not to-night, Carrick, please!"
+
+"Hang it!" said Carrick. He would have spoken more liberally, but the
+choice was between restraint in language and the loss of Mr. Newman
+as an acquaintance. That had been made clear soon after their first
+meeting.
+
+Mr. Newman smiled, and rested a large hand on Carrick's arm.
+
+"We go by different roads to our goal, Carrick," he said, "but it is
+the same goal. We serve the same Master, under different names and in
+different ways. You call Him Science and I call Him Christ--the same
+Master, though; and my services take me to church to-night. But to-
+morrow, if you like, I will come over to your place."
+
+"Get back," said Carrick violently to the dog. "To heel, you beast!"
+
+The fork of the road was in front of them; they paused at the
+division of the way.
+
+"Will that suit you?" inquired Mr. Newman. "I can come round after
+dinner."
+
+Carrick gave him a look in which contempt, fury, and a certainly
+involuntary liking were strangely at war.
+
+"Of all the sanctimonious asses," he said, and broke off. "Good-
+night!" he concluded abruptly.
+
+"I'll come, then," said Mr. Newman, smiling. "Good-night, my dear
+fellow."
+
+He went off at his deliberate gait, humming to himself the tune of
+the last hymn which the children had sung at the Sunday school.
+Evening was settling about him on the trees and fields; after the
+still heat of the sun, it was like an amen to the day, a vast low
+note of organ music. There was a pond gleaming among the trees.
+
+"He leadeth me beside the still waters," he said aloud to himself,
+and then Carrick's footsteps were audible behind him. He turned.
+Carrick came up swiftly.
+
+"Don't eat much dinner to-morrow night," he said, with immense
+seriousness.
+
+"It's more hypnotism, then?" inquired Mr. Newman.
+
+Carrick nodded. "Yes," he said. "But--it's a big thing, all the
+same."
+
+He clicked to his dog and went off abruptly, passing with long, jerky
+strides into the enveloping stillness of the evening, and Mr. Newman
+resumed his homeward walk, taking up his mood of reflective quiet at
+the point where Carrick had broken in upon it. He was a man made for
+the Sabbath; he breathed its atmosphere of a day consecrated to
+observances with a pleasure that was almost sensuous. For him, piety
+was that manner of life which gave the quality of Sunday to each
+other of the seven days of the week, softening them and rendering
+them august with the sense of a great adorable Presence presiding
+over their hours.
+
+The curate who disliked Carrick occupied the pulpit that evening; he
+preached from half a text, after the manner of curates. "For they
+shall see God"--he repeated it in a poignant undertone--he, tall and
+young and priestly in his vestments, seen against the dim glory of a
+stained window--and Mr. Newman, attentive in his pew, leaned forward
+suddenly to hear, like a man touched by excitement.
+
+Carrick's study was one of a pair of rooms he had added to the
+farmhouse which he inhabited, a long apartment of many windows,
+designed for spaciousness, and possessing no other good quality. No
+fire could warm more than an end of it, and his lamp, wherever it was
+placed, was but a heart of light in a body of shadow. He had
+furnished it with the things he required; a desk was here, a table
+there, bookcases were along the walls, a variety of chairs stood
+where he happened to push them. It had the air of a waiting-room or a
+mortuary.
+
+Carrick was at his desk when Mr. Newman, on the Monday evening, was
+shown in to him by the ironclad widow who kept house for him. He
+looked up with impatience as his guest entered.
+
+"Oh, it's you?" was his greeting.
+
+"Good evening," said Mr. Newman cheerfully. "You'd forgotten to
+expect me, I suppose. But I'm here, all the same."
+
+"All right," said Carrick. "Sit down somewhere, will you?"
+
+He rose and shoved a chair forward with his foot for Mr. Newman's
+accommodation, and began to walk slowly to and fro with his hands in
+his pockets.
+
+"Well," said Newman; "and what's this miracle we're to work?"
+
+"I'll show you," said Carrick, still walking. He stopped and turned
+toward his guest. "Newman," he said, "where do you reckon you were a
+hundred years ago?"
+
+Mr. Newman laughed, crossing his legs as he sat.
+
+"I'm not as old as that," he replied. "Whatever place you're
+thinking of, I wasn't there."
+
+Carrick was frowning thoughtfully. "I'm not thinking of places," he
+said. "You--you exist; the matter that composes you is indestructible;
+the--the essential you, the thing in that matter that makes it
+mean something, the soul, if you like--that's indestructible, too.
+Everything's indestructible. A hundred years hence, you'll be
+somewhere; but where were you--you, that is--a hundred years ago?"
+
+He pointed the "you" with a jabbing forefinger as he spoke it,
+standing in front of Mr. Newman in the lamplight and talking down to
+him.
+
+"Oh!" said Mr. Newman, "I see--yes! A hundred years, ago I was part
+of my Maker's unfinished plan of to-day."
+
+"Were you?" said Carrick, snapping at him. "You were, eh? Part of--
+we'll see! Come over to the big chair and undo your collar."
+
+Mr. Newman rose; the big arm-chair was his place when Carrick
+hypnotised him, and the loosening of his collar was part of the
+ritual.
+
+"What is the idea?" he asked, fumbling at his stud.
+
+"Tell you afterwards," said Carrick. "If I told you now, you'd not
+get it out of your mind. Can't you get that collar off, man?"
+
+"It was stiff," apologised Mr. Newman, arranging himself in the large
+chair. "How are you going to do it?"
+
+Carrick's hot hand pressed his head back on the cushions.
+
+"Shut up," he was told. "Let yourself go, now; just let yourself go."
+
+The chair faced the blank, bare wall of the room; there was nothing
+in front of Mr. Newman for his eyes to rest on and take hold of.
+Carrick's hands no longer touched his head; he was alone in his
+chair, in a posture of ease, with the gear of his mind slacked off,
+his consciousness unmoored to drift with what-ever current should
+flow about it. He knew, without noting it, that something like a fog
+was creeping up about him; the pale wall became a bank of mist,
+stirring slowly; his pulse was a rhythm that lulled him faintly. He--
+the aggregate of powers, capacities habits that made the sum of him--
+was adrift, flowing like a vapor that leaks into the air and thins
+abroad. A coolness was on his forehead as of a little breeze.
+
+Carrick, behind the chair, saw that his head drooped, and came round
+to look at him. He seemed to slumber with his eyes half open, and his
+plump hands, white and luxurious, were clasped in his lap. Carrick
+considered him and then crossed to his desk to get his pipe. He
+expected to have to wait for some time.
+
+But it was less than five minutes before Mr. Newman stirred like a
+man who moves in his-sleep and emitted a long gusty sigh. His hands
+unclasped; he drove up to consciousness like a diver who shoots up
+through strangling fathoms of water to the generous air above. Life
+was compelling him; through the confusion of his senses he felt
+Carrick's hand on his shoulder and heard him speaking.
+
+"Feeling quite all right--what? Here, drink some of this. It's only
+water. A drop more? Right!"
+
+Mr. Newman pushed the glass away and sat upright, staring wide-eyed
+into the curious face of Carrick, who bent over him, tumbler in hand.
+
+"All right?" asked Carrick again.
+
+"Yes--now," replied Mr. Newman slowly. "But--what did you do to me,
+Carrick?"
+
+Carrick gave a relieved snort and set the tumbler down on the
+mantelshelf.
+
+"What did I do?" he repeated. "Opened a door for you--that's all.
+What did you find the other side?"
+
+Mr. Newman passed an uncertain hand across his eyes. The feeling with
+which he had returned to consciousness, that liberties had been taken
+with him, was leaving him as the familiar ugly room grew about him
+again.
+
+"It was queer," he said doubtfully, and Carrick bent his head in
+eagerness to listen.
+
+"You've been hypnotised before, often enough. What was queer?"
+
+"Hypnotism is unconsciousness, so far as I'm concerned," said Mr.
+Newman. "But this--wasn't! Not dreams, either; the thing was so
+absolutely real."
+
+"Go on," said Carrick, as he paused to ponder.
+
+"I felt myself going off, you know, just as usual--the mistiness, the
+reposefulness, the last moment when one would rebel if one could--but
+one can't; that was all ordinary. And then came the blank, that
+second of utter emptiness, as though one were alone in the wilderness
+of outer space, and light were not yet created. As a rule, that ends
+it; one's asleep then. But this time I wasn't. It seemed--it sort of
+dawned toward me----" Mr. Newman groped for a word which eluded him,
+with a face that brooded heavily.
+
+"What did?" demanded Carrick.
+
+"It was a lightness, first of all, a thinning of the dark, that grew
+and broadened till it was like a thing coming at me--like something
+thrown at me. And suddenly it was all about me, and I was in it, and
+it was daylight--just ordinary daylight, you know. There was a white,
+flat road, with a hedge on one side and a low leaning fence on the
+other, and over the fence there were fields; and I was walking along
+by the roadside, with the thick powdery dust kicking up from under my
+feet as I went."
+
+He paused. "Yes?" cried Carrick. "Yes? Yes?"
+
+"I don't remember what I was thinking," said Mr. Newman. "Perhaps I
+wasn't thinking. I saw a signpost farther along the road with
+something like a long bundle--it was rather like a limp bolster, I
+fancy--hanging from it. I was staring toward it, when there came a
+noise behind me, like a trumpet being blown, and I turned to see a
+coach with four horses come tearing along toward me, with a red-
+coated man at the back, blowing a horn. The roof of it was crowded
+with people curiously dressed; they all looked down on me as they
+came abreast, and their faces had a sort of strange roughness. I saw
+them as clearly as all that--a coarseness, it was--a kind of cruel
+stupidity. Several of them seemed to be pock-marked, too. It struck
+me; I wondered how a coach-load of such people had been gathered
+together; and I might have wondered longer; but one of them laughed,
+a great neighing guffaw of a laugh, as the coachman swung his whip."
+
+Mr. Newman paused, and his hand floated to his face again.
+
+"It cut me across here," he said thoughtfully. "It--it hurt.
+Awfully!"
+
+Carrick nodded.
+
+"And that was all," Mr. Newman went on. "At the sting of the lash, as
+though some one had turned a switch, the daylight went out--to the
+sound of that gross animal laugh. There was again the frozen dark,
+the solitude--the chill--and I heard you saying, as from another
+planet, across great gulfs of space: 'Drink some of this!' Only--"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"It's like a memory of something that actually took place. I ought to
+have a weal just below my eyes where the whip took me-it wasn't five
+minutes ago. I remember the dusty smell of that white road-and how
+the thing that hung on the signpost was-some-how-ugly and nasty. It's
+awfully queer, Carrick."
+
+"Yes!" Carrick sank his hands in his pockets and walked away to the
+shadowy far end of the room. Mr. Newman sat in thought, flavoring the
+vivid quality of his vision, with his underlip caught up between his
+teeth. The great room was silent for a space of minutes.
+
+"I say!" Carrick spoke from the other end of it.
+
+"What?"
+
+"That signpost you saw-it wasn't a signpost, you know."
+
+"What was it, then?"
+
+"It was a gallows," said Carrick, "with a man hanging on it."
+
+There was a pause. "Eh?" said Mr. Newman, and rose from his chair.
+"Carrick, what exactly did you do to me?"
+
+"I sent you back a hundred years," Carrick answered, in a measured
+voice. His excitement got the better of his restraint and his voice
+cracked. "Part of the-what was it you said you were, Newman?" he
+cried, on a note of shrillness. "I tell you, man, you've proved a
+hundred things you never dreamed of-theories of mine. You've proved
+them, I tell you. I've dipped you back into the past as I dip my
+hands into water. What you saw was what happened; it was you-you,
+man, a hundred years ago. Oh, why did I stop at a hundred? A
+thousand, a dozen thousand years would have been as easy."
+
+He came down the long room almost at a run.
+
+"Newman," he said, taking the elder man by the arm with a swift,
+feverish hand; "we've got 'em, all those old diploma-screened fools
+that call us quacks-Zinzau, Berlier, von Rascowicz, Scott-Evans-we've
+got 'em. We'll make 'em squeal. Before I've done with you, we'll see
+what the earth was like when it was in the pot, being cooked. You
+shall be a batwinged lizard again, and a cave-dweller, and a flint
+man. We'll turn you loose through history-our special correspondent
+at the siege of Troy-what?"
+
+He broke into high, uncontrollable laughter.
+
+"The Wandering Jew," he babbled. "We'll show him!"
+
+Mr. Newman heard him with growing wonder, but now he shook his arm
+loose.
+
+"Get yourself a drink," he said. "You're raving. I want to talk to
+you."
+
+The word was enough; Carrick stopped laughing, and walked away toward
+his desk. Mr. Newman, standing by the big arm-chair from which he had
+just risen, looked after him with a sudden liveliness growing in his
+face. The experience through which he had just come, abiding with him
+as so secure a memory, precluded the doubts he might otherwise have
+felt; Carrick's words and his excitement, so unusual in him, and the
+clear, unquestionable sense of recollection with which he summoned
+again to his mind the white dusty road, the swaying body of the
+hanged man, the drum of the hoofs of the coach-horses-these stormed
+his reason and forced conviction on him.
+
+"The siege of Troy, you said?" he asked, with a nervous titter. The
+thing was gripping him.
+
+Carrick had seated himself at his desk, as though to steady himself
+by the sight of its prosaic litter. He looked up now, his face
+composed and usual in the light of the reading lamp.
+
+"Or anywhere," he said shortly. He nodded two or three times
+impressively; he was master of himself again. "It's true, Newman; I
+can do it; I've opened the door. We must have a few more tests and
+verify the method by trying it on another subject. Then we'll go to
+war with the professors."
+
+"Ye-es," agreed Mr. Newman absently. "Anywhere, you said? You can
+open my eyes at any period in time? You can do that, Carrick?"
+
+"Well," began Carrick, and paused. "Why?" he demanded. "What have you
+got in your mind?"
+
+Mr. Newman came slowly down toward him till he leaned across the top
+of the desk facing the younger man. He was smiling still, but a fire
+had lit in his eyes, something adventurous and strong looked out
+through them. The elderly stout man was braced and exalted like a
+martyr going to the stake.
+
+"Can you?" he repeated. "Can you, Carrick? Say--can you do that?"
+
+"Unless----" hesitated the other, staring at him. "But--you must have
+been somewhere, at any time. Yes, I can do it."
+
+Mr. Newman's eyes looked over his head and beyond him.
+
+"Then," he said, and a deep note reverberated in his even voice--
+"then show me the day on which Christ died!"
+
+He continued to look past Carrick at the shadowy end of the room,
+still smiling his strange and uplifted smile.
+
+Carrick moved in his chair, with a half-gesture as of irritation.
+
+"Look here," he said. "Pull yourself together, Newman. There are
+limits, you know, after all."
+
+Two days elapsed before the evening on which the attempt was to be
+made; Carrick, alleging difficulties and dangers with long scientific
+names, had refused to try it earlier. He had been unwilling to try it
+at all.
+
+"I don't want to mix up a matter of clear science with your religious
+emotions," he had declared. "And I've got a certain amount of
+religion of my own, for that matter. I manage to believe in it
+without corroboration; what's the matter with yours, that you can't
+do the same?"
+
+But it was not corroboration which Mr. Newman desired. He had not so
+much argued as insisted; and it had been difficult to reason with his
+manner of one buoyed up, exalted, inspired. He had had his way, on
+the sole condition that he should wait two days--"and give sanity a
+chance," Carrick had added.
+
+But on the stroke of nine, on the appointed evening, he was standing
+within the door of Carrick's study, his hat in his hand, a white silk
+muffler about his neck, instead of a collar.
+
+"I was very careful to eat very little at dinner," were his first
+words.
+
+Carrick, who had been looking forward to his arrival with nervous
+dread, glanced up sharply with an affectation of annoyance at an
+interruption.
+
+"More fool you," he barked, in his harshest voice. Mr. Newman smiled,
+and laid his hat down on the table and began to unwind his muffler.
+
+Carrick frowned at him. "I'm rather busy to-night, Newman," he said.
+That had no effect. He rose. "Besides, something has occurred to me,
+and--it is not safe, you know."
+
+Mr. Newman laid his muffler beside his hat; without it he had a
+curiously incomplete and undressed appearance. He turned round.
+
+"Oh yes, it is," he contradicted mildly. "As safe as it was on
+Monday, at any rate!"
+
+"Ah!" Carrick caught him up eagerly. "But that wasn't safe, either.
+I hadn't thought of this then. You see, we don't understand yet how
+the thing applies. What is it that becomes conscious in the period
+you see? Is it you, in an earlier incarnation? If so, supposing I--I
+let go of you at a time when you were dead! What happens then? Do I
+get you back--or what?"
+
+He tried to make the consideration graphic, driving it at Mr.
+Newman's serenity with a knit brow and a moving forefinger.
+
+Mr. Newman shook his head. "I don't know," he answered, unmoved by
+Carrick's fervor. "I can't tell you that. But--you leave me where you
+found me--in the hands of my God."
+
+With the same quiet cheerfulness, he crossed to the big chair, turned
+it to face the wall, and sat down in it. "I'm quite ready," he said.
+
+Carrick was still standing by the table. He was frowning heavily; the
+proceeding was utterly against his inclination. When Mr. Newman
+spoke, he sighed windily, a sigh of resignation, of defeat.
+
+"I warned you," he said, and wiped the palms of his hands on his
+trousers for what he had to do.
+
+A less honest man than Carrick, finding himself in the like
+predicament, might plausibly have contrived a failure. Nothing easier
+than to tell Mr. Newman that nerves, a mental burden, or what not,
+stood in the way of the adventure. Mr. Carrick got to work forthwith.
+
+Mr. Newman, supine in his chair, knew the preliminary stages of the
+process well. They took longer than usual to-night; both of them were
+unkeyed and had to compose themselves to the affair. But at last the
+visible world, the wall before him, commenced to dislimn; it shifted;
+it became mist, writhing and tinged with faint colors, that submerged
+his will and his consciousness, till they sank, gathering impetus,
+into a void below--the vacancy of the spirit that looses its hold on
+the body and is rudderless. He knew the blackness which is death, the
+momentary throe of entering it, the shock, the sense of chill, the
+dumbness.
+
+"Ah!" Carrick saw that his head fell, and ceased his labors. He
+stood, gaunt and perplexed, contemplating the body from which he had
+expelled the will, the life--the soul. It was a plump body, well
+clad, well fed, a carcase that had absorbed much of its world. It
+cost labor and the pains of innumerable toilers to clothe it, nourish
+it, maintain it, guard, comfort, and embellish it. And an effort of
+ten minutes was enough to drain it of all save the fleshly, the mere
+bestial. The habit of his mind impelled him to sneer as he stood
+above it, to moralise in the tune of cynicism. "Ecce homo!" were the
+words he chanced upon; but the flavor of them troubled him when he
+remembered the goal of the journey upon which that absent spirit had
+departed.
+
+"Oh, Lord!" said Carrick, in a kind of whispering panic.
+
+He cast scared looks to and fro, as though he feared the great room
+should contain a spy upon him. It was empty save for him and that
+witless body. He put his hands together with the gesture of a child
+and shut his eyes tight.
+
+"Our Father," he began, "Which art in Heaven, Hallowed be Thy Name!"
+
+The place was as still as a church. He recited his prayer aloud, in a
+quiet, careful voice that echoed faintly among the book-shelves.
+
+He bad got as far as "Thine is the kingdom, the power"--no farther--
+when Mr. Newman stirred, and he gabbled the words to an end hastily
+before he opened his eyes. Mr. Newman came back to consciousness
+with a rush; his body inflated with life, his still face woke, and
+his vacant eyes, meeting Carrick's and recognising him, suddenly lit
+with sense--and terror.
+
+"I say!" exclaimed Carrick; "will you have some water?"
+
+His hand groped for the glass on the mantelshelf, but he continued to
+look at Mr. Newman, and presently he forgot the glass. Terror was the
+word, the terror of a man who finds--unawaited, ambushed in his
+being--depths and capacities unguessed and appalling. A blank,
+horror-ridden face fronted his own, till Mr. Newman put his hands
+before his face and shuddered. "What is it?" cried Carrick. "Old
+chap, what's up?"
+
+"My God!"
+
+It was not an expletive, but a prayer, a supplication. Mr. Newman
+dashed the hands from his face and sprang up. Carrick caught him by
+the arm.
+
+"I say," he cried. "It's rot. It's a fake--it must be! Whatever
+happened--it's not a sure thing. Pull yourself together, Newman. I--I
+may be wrong; perhaps it's all an induced--you know, an illusion. I
+say, look here----"
+
+"No!"
+
+Gently, but with decision, Mr. Newman put his friendly hand away.
+"It's not an illusion," he said.
+
+He walked away. Carrick stood staring after him, a battlefield of
+compunctions and a growing curiosity. Mr. Newman was wrestling with
+his trouble in the shadows; minutes passed before he came again into
+the lamplight. His face was blenched, but something like a stricken
+purpose dwelt on it.
+
+"I'll tell you," he said. Then, wildly, "Oh, man! why did you let me?
+This trick of yours--it's the knowledge of good and evil; it's the
+forbidden fruit. Why did you let me?"
+
+Carrick stammered futilely; there was no answer possible to give.
+
+"I am a Christian," went on Mr. Newman, as though he appealed for
+justification. "By my lights I serve God. I try not to judge others.
+I've not judged you, have I, Carrick? You--you don't go to church,
+but I make a friend of you, don't I?"
+
+"Yes," said Carrick.
+
+"Then--why--" cried Mr. Newman--"why, of all people, should I--oh,
+Carrick, I don't know how to tell you."
+
+Let Carrick's answer be remembered when his epitaph is written.
+
+"Then don't tell me," he said. "I don't want to hear."
+
+Mr. Newman shook his head. He had come to a standstill at the side of
+the big chair. He looked old and stricken and sad.
+
+"Ah," he said. "But listen all the same."
+
+He remained standing while he told his tale, with eyes that sought
+Carrick's listening face and fell away again.
+
+"It took you longer than it usually does," he said; "to send me on, I
+mean. I expect I wasn't as good a subject as usual, too. I know I was
+full of a sort of gladness and expectation, for I didn't doubt that
+you could do it. I had a feeling that I was going to see--really to
+see, with mortal eyes--Him, my Redeemer, the Son of God! I wasn't
+afraid--only joyful with a great solemnity. I carried it with me,
+that joy, into the fog and darkness; it was all that I knew when the
+utter night surged up and gulfed me, and even life was forgotten. I
+was to see Him, like the pure in heart who are to see God. I had had
+that wonder in my mind since Sunday evening; the curate preached on
+it--and I--I thought my heart was pure."
+
+His fearful eyes fluttered to Carrick's face and sank.
+
+"The light came as it came before," he went on, quickly and
+miserably. "First a sense of something that was not mere darkness,
+infinitely distant, but swooping down upon me at an unimaginable
+speed, broadening more quickly than the sense could follow--and then
+it was daylight all about me, and I was in the world, seeing,
+hearing, and--yes, and speaking, speaking, Carrick. Oh, my God!"
+
+He shivered and put a hand out to the arm of the big chair. Carrick
+said nothing.
+
+"It's so clear," said Mr. Newman. "If it weren't so clear, I might
+persuade myself that it was an illusion, a vision--but it's not. It
+happened. The first thing I know was that it was very hot. A sun
+stood in the sky; its rays beat on me, and they were strong. I was in
+a crowd of people, and they--we, that is--we all stood facing a
+building, a white building with a great door. There were many of us;
+I was thrust between two big hairy men, and there was a great noise.
+Everybody was shouting. I was shouting too. I had both my arms raised
+above my head, with my fists clenched--like that----"
+
+Mr. Newman raised his shut hands as high as he could; his tragic face
+compelled Carrick's eyes.
+
+"But my arms were bare and very brown, I noticed. I was shouting
+vehemently, frantically, in some strange tongue. It was a language I
+do not know; but I knew what I was shouting, and I know still."
+
+He stopped. Carrick waited.
+
+"What was it?" he asked at last.
+
+For answer Mr. Newman raised his arms again, the hands clenched, in a
+sudden and savage gesture.
+
+"I was shouting like this," he said, and raised a voice that Carrick
+did not recognize. "Crucify Him! Crucify Him!"
+
+He dropped his arms and stood staring at Carrick; then covered his
+face with his hands.
+
+Carrick stood aghast and shaken. At last he went to his friend and
+took his arm.
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+THE STRANGE PATIENT
+
+There were only two arrivals by the train from London when it stopped
+at the little flower-banked station of Barthiam; and Mary, who was
+waiting for it, had no difficulty in deciding which of them was
+Professor Fish. That great man never failed to look the part. His
+tall, lean figure, stooping at the shoulders, his big, smooth-shaven
+face, mildly abstracted behind his glasses, but retaining always
+something of a keen and formidable character, his soft hat and great
+flapping ulster, made up a noticeable personality anywhere. He seemed
+alone to crowd the little platform; the small man who accompanied him
+was lost in his shadow.
+
+"Professor Fish?" accosted Mary primly, at his elbow.
+
+He turned upon her with a movement like a swoop.
+
+"I am Mary Pond," she explained. "My father was called away to a
+case, so he sent me to meet you and bring you up to the house. I have
+a fly waiting."
+
+"Ah!" The Professor nodded and was bland. "Very good of you to take
+the trouble, Miss Pond. I am much obliged." He stepped aside to let
+his companion be seen. "This," he explained, "is your--er--guest."
+
+Mary put out her hand, but the little man, who had been standing
+behind the Professor, made no motion to take it. He was staring at
+the planks of the platform; he lifted his eyes for an instant to
+glance at her, and dropped them again at once. Mary saw a listless,
+empty face, pale eyes, and pale hair, a mere effect of vacuity and
+weakness. The man drooped where he stood as though he were no more
+than half alive; his clothes were grotesquely ill-fitting. A little
+puzzled, she looked up to the Professor, and saw that he was watching
+her.
+
+"How do you do?" she asked gently of the little man.
+
+The Professor answered for him. "He does very well, Miss Pond," he
+said robustly. "Much better than he thinks. Between ourselves,"
+dropping his voice and nodding at her with intention, "a most
+remarkable case. Very remarkable indeed. And now, if I can find a
+porter, we might as well be moving."
+
+He seemed to hesitate for a moment before leaving them; then he set
+off down the platform. He walked with long strides in great spasms of
+energy, as he did everything. Mary turned from looking after him to
+the little creature beside her with a sense of absurd contrast. As
+she did so she saw that he too was looking after the Professor, and
+his empty face had suddenly become intent; it was hardened and
+vicious, with the parted lips and narrow eyes of hate. The man had
+discovered some spring of life within his listless body. It lasted
+only while one might draw a full breath; then he saw her scrutiny,
+and sank again to his still dreariness. It was a startling thing to
+see that flabby little insignificance strengthen to such a force of
+feeling, and Mary was conscious of a sort of alarm. But before she
+could frame a thing to say the Professor was back again, and the
+atmosphere of his vigour had enveloped them.
+
+Professor Fish sat next to her in the cab, and the new patient, who
+was to be an inmate of her house for some time to come, leaned
+against the cushions opposite, with eyes half closed and his coarse
+hands folded in his lap. The Professor talked without ceasing, gazing
+through the open window at the fat lands of Kent unfolded beside the
+road and torpid under the July sun; but Mary found more of interest
+in the still face before her, cryptic and mysterious in its utter
+vacancy. So little it expressed besides weakness that Mary wondered
+what illness could thus have cut the man off from the world. She was
+used to the waste products of life; one "resident patient" succeeded
+another at her father's house, and to each she was a deft nurse and a
+supple companion. They had in common, she found, a certain
+paltriness; most of them had been overtaxed by easy burdens; but this
+man's aspect conveyed suggestions of a long struggle with a burden
+beyond all strength. The meanness of him, all his appearance of
+having begun in the gutter and failed there, touched her not at all;
+Mary had had too much to do with human flesh in the raw to be greatly
+concerned about such matters as that.
+
+Dr. Pond was at home to meet them when the cab drew up at the door,
+an elderly, good-natured man, white-haired and sprucely white-
+bearded. He greeted Professor Fish with some deference, and helped
+the new patient carefully forth from the cab. It was Mary's duty to
+see the one trunk of new shining tin carried in and placed in the
+room that was prepared for the house's new inmate. This done, she
+went to the others in the little drawing-room. Her father and
+Professor Fish were seated in the window, busy with talk; the new
+patient had an upright chair against the wall, and sat in it with the
+same lassitude and downcast gaze which had already drawn Mary's
+wondering compassion. The Professor rose at her entry.
+
+"Ah! Miss Pond," he said in his cheerful, booming voice, "I was just
+giving your father a few particulars about our young friend."
+
+"I should like to hear them," she answered, taking the chair he
+reached for her. "You see, I shall have a good deal to do with him."
+
+Old Dr. Pond nodded. "Mary," he said, "is my right hand, Professor."
+
+"Of course," agreed the Professor. "I can see that."
+
+He was seated again, and he leaned across to Mary confidentially,
+with an explanatory forefinger hovering.
+
+"As I told your father, Miss Pond, it isn't necessary to go far back
+in the case," he said. "As a matter of fact, I took this case up--
+experimentally. The subject was a good one for a--well, call it a
+theory of mine, a new idea in pathology. You see? I wanted to try it
+on the dog before publishing it, and our young friend there"--he
+nodded at the back of the room and sank his voice--"he was the dog.
+You understand?"
+
+Mary nodded, and the Professor smiled.
+
+"Well," he said, "I have succeeded. The patient is convalescent,
+but--you see how he is. He has very little vital force, and also,
+occasionally, delusions. Merely ephemeral, you know, but delusions.
+He wants quiet chiefly, and very little else--just that atmosphere of
+repose and--er--peace which you can create for him, Miss Pond."
+
+"These delusions," put in Dr. Pond, "are they of any special
+character!"
+
+"H'm!" The Professor stroked his chin. "No," he said. "Curious, you
+know, but not symptomatic." His hard eye scanned the old doctor
+purposely. "Sometimes," he said slowly, "he thinks he has been dead,
+and that I brought him back to life."
+
+"And he hates you for it," suggested Mary. The Professor stared at
+her in open astonishment.
+
+"How on earth did you know that?" he cried.
+
+"I saw him looking after you in the station," Mary explained. "He
+just--glared."
+
+"I see." Professor Fish was always rather extravagant in manner and
+speech; his relief now seemed a little exaggerated. He drew a deep
+breath and glanced past Mary to the patient on his chair at the far
+end of the room. "Yes," he said, "at such times he is distinctly
+resentful. I don't wonder you noticed it."
+
+"Your letter didn't mention his name," said Mary.
+
+"I should call him Smith," answered the Professor.
+
+"It's a good name. And that, I think, is all there is to tell. Oh, by
+the way, though he has no suicidal tendency, of course, or I
+shouldn't put him here; but all the same----"
+
+Mary nodded. "Quite so," she said. "No razor."
+
+"Exactly," said the Professor. "And no money. Give him the things he
+needs, and let me have the bill."
+
+He rose and reached for his hat.
+
+"But you will stay and have something to eat," protested old Dr.
+Pond.
+
+"Can't," answered the Professor. "Got an engagement in town. I've
+just time to catch the train back. Now, you quite understand about
+this case? Just quietness and soothing companionship, you know, fresh
+air and sleep, and all that."
+
+"We quite understand," said Mary. "We'll do our best."
+
+"I'm sure you will," said Professor Fish cordially. He moved over to
+where the patient sat; he had not moved at all. He continued to gaze
+at the carpet while the tall Professor stood over him.
+
+"Now, Smith," said the Professor in his loud voice, "I'm off. You're
+in good hands here, you know. You've only to take it easy and rest."
+
+"Rest?" Smith repeated the word in a hoarse whisper; it was the
+first he had spoken. He looked up, and his eye went to the
+Professor's face with a sort of challenge.
+
+"Yes," said the Professor. "Good-bye."
+
+Smith continued to look at him, but answered nothing. Professor Fish
+shrugged his shoulders and turned away sharply.
+
+"He'll soon pick up," he said to Dr. Pond. "And now I really must
+go."
+
+He shook hands with Mary with a manner of cheerful vigour, beaming at
+her through his gold-rimmed glasses, big, whimsical, and quick. A
+moment later, Dr. Pond was showing him out, and Mary, alone with her
+patient, had another glimpse of hate and contempt animating and
+enlivening that weak and formless face.
+
+She waited till she heard the front door close and the Professor's
+departing feet crunch on the gravel of the garden path. Then she went
+and put a hand on the little man's shoulder.
+
+"You look very tired," she said, quietly, in her level, pleasant
+voice. "Would you like to go to your room and lie down? And I will
+send you up some tea."
+
+There was a long pause, and she thought he was not going to answer.
+But she waited restfully, and at last he sighed.
+
+"Yes," he said wearily, "that's what I want."
+
+His voice had the flat tones of Cockneydom, but Mary took no note of
+it.
+
+"Then let me show you the way," she said, still gently; and he rose
+at the word and followed her upstairs.
+
+In this manner the new patient was installed in the household of Dr.
+Pond. He slipped into his place like a shadow, displacing nothing.
+The Doctor, swollen with the distinction of a visit by Professor Fish
+in person, would willingly have made a fuss of him, if it had been
+possible. But Smith was not amenable to polite attentions. To
+attempts to render him particular consideration he opposed a barren
+inertia; one could as easily have been obliging to a lamp-post. The
+man's consciousness seemed to exist in a vacuum; he lived in a
+solitude to which the kindly Doctor could never penetrate. Once,
+certainly, his persistent geniality won him a rebuff. It was at
+breakfast, and he was following his custom of endeavoring to trap
+Smith into conversation. Smith sat opposite him at the table, staring
+vacantly at the tablecloth.
+
+"It is a fine morning," the Doctor observed, "I wonder, now, Mr.
+Smith, if you would care for a little drive with me. I have some
+brief visits to pay here and there, and I could drop you here again
+before I go on. The fresh air would do you good--freshen you up, you
+know; put a little life into you. Come, now! what do you say to
+accompanying me?"
+
+Smith said nothing, but his cheek twitched once. "Come now!" pressed
+the Doctor persuasively. "See what a lovely day it is. Sun, fresh
+air, the smell and sight of the fields--it'll put fresh life into
+you."
+
+Smith's white face worked slightly. "Ere," he said, and paused. The
+Doctor bent forward, pleased. "Go to 'ell!" said Smith thoughtfully.
+
+Mary had much more success with him; a slender link of sympathy had
+established itself between the healthy, tranquil girl and this dreary
+wisp of a man. She asked him no questions, and in return for her
+forbearance he would sometimes speak to her voluntarily. He would
+emerge from his trance-like apathy to watch her as she went about her
+household duties. Professor Fish had spoken truly when he said that
+Mary Pond knew how to create about her an atmosphere of serenity. The
+tones of her quiet voice, the gentleness of her movements, the kindly
+sobriety of her regard seemed to fortify her patient. For her part, a
+genuine compassion for the little man was mixed with some liking; he
+was a furtive and vulgar creature at the best, but his dependence on
+her, his helplessness and trouble, reached to the maternal in her
+honest heart. She could manage him; but for her strategy he would
+have lived in his bed, day and night, in a sort of half torpor.
+
+"It's remarkable what a control you have over these low natures,
+Mary," Dr. Pond said to her. He had come home one afternoon to find
+that she had actually sent Smith out for a walk. "I confess it's a
+case that's beyond me altogether. There doesn't seem to be any thing
+to take hold of in the man. It would be better if he felt a little
+pain now and again; it would give one an opening, as it were."
+
+Seated in a low chair in the window, Mary was hemming dusters. She
+looked up at him thoughtfully.
+
+"Father," she said, "what do you think was the matter with him in the
+first place? What was the disease that Professor Fish cured?"
+
+Dr. Pond shook his white head vaguely.
+
+"Impossible to say," he answered. "It looks like, a mental case,
+doesn't it? And yet----You see, Fish has had so many specialities. He
+was in practice in Harley Street as a nerve man. Then, next thing,
+one hears of him in heart surgery. He's had a go at electricity
+lately. And between you and me--he's a great man, of course--but if
+it wasn't for his position and all that, we'd be calling him a
+quack."
+
+"Then you can't tell what the disease was?" persisted Mary.
+
+"No," said Dr. Pond. "Nor even if there was a disease. For all I
+know, Fish may have been vivisecting him. He wouldn't stop at a thing
+like that, if I know anything about him."
+
+"He ought to have told us," said Mary.
+
+"Yes," agreed the Doctor. "But Fish always does as he likes. How long
+has Smith been out now, Mary?"
+
+"He went out at three," she answered. "And now it's half-past five.
+He ought to be in. I think I'll put my hat on, father, and go after
+him."
+
+Dr. Pond nodded. "I would," he said.
+
+The road along which Smith had departed ran past the village, and
+Mary walked forth by it to seek her patient. It was a splendid still
+afternoon; the trees by the wayside stood motionless in the late
+heat, their shadows in jet black twined and laced upon the white
+road. Far ahead of her she could see the land undulating in easy
+green bosoms against the radiant west; the sun was in her face as she
+walked. She had no fear that Smith had wandered far; for one thing,
+he had no strength to do so, and for another, she knew intuitively
+that the man lacked any purpose to carry him away. Therefore she
+walked at her ease, keeping cool and comely, and at the first corner
+in the road met a slim youth on horseback, who stopped to salute her.
+It was Harry Wylde, son of the great man of the neighborhood.
+
+"Afternoon, Miss Pond," he called cheerfully. "Have you lost a little
+thing about the size of a pickpocket?"
+
+"A little bigger than that, I think," she answered. "Have you seen
+him, Mr. Wylde?"
+
+"Yes," said Harry Wylde. "I've seen him before, too, I'll swear. I
+knew the little beast at once. I say, Miss Pond, how the dickens did
+you manage to get mixed up with him?"
+
+"He's my patient," said Mary. "Where did you see him, please?"
+
+Harry Wylde pointed down the road. "I passed him just now," he said.
+"He was in the churchyard."
+
+"The churchyard?"
+
+"Yes, sitting on the grass, having no end of a time. Looked as happy
+as a trout in a sand-bath. I knew him at once."
+
+"How did you know him?" demanded Mary.
+
+Harry Wylde leaned forward over his saddle. "Miss Pond," he said
+seriously, "there's hardly a man that goes to races in all England
+that doesn't know him. His name's Woolley--that's one of his names,
+anyhow. He was a kind of jockey once, and since then he's been the
+lowest, meanest little sharper in all the dirty little turf swindles
+that was ever kicked off a racecourse. If I wasn't sure I wouldn't
+say so; but you ought to know whom you are entertaining."
+
+"But you must be utterly mistaken," cried Mary. "Professor Fish
+brought him to us. It's impossible."
+
+"Case of Fish and foul," suggested the youth. "But I'm not mistaken.
+The man I mean has lost the tip of his ear, the left one. Somebody
+bit it off, I believe. Now, have you noticed your chap's ear?"
+
+He looked at her acutely, and she colored in hot distress.
+
+"I see you have," he said. "I'd ask this Fish person for an
+explanation, if I were you; particularly as Woolley is supposed to be
+dead. The police want him pretty badly, you know. It looks queer,
+doesn't it?"
+
+"I--I can't understand it," said Mary. "I'm sure there's a mistake
+somewhere."
+
+Young Wylde nodded. "We'll call it a mistake," he said. "He was
+injured on the Underground in London and taken to St. Brigid's
+Hospital, where he died. I remember reading about it. Now, of course,
+I shan't say anything to anybody; but you ought to have an explanation.
+Fish--is that his name--seems to have played it pretty low down on
+you." He gathered up his bridle and nodded to her with intent.
+
+"Good afternoon, Miss Pond," he said. "Sorry to make trouble, but I
+couldn't leave you in the dark about a thing like this."
+
+Mary walked on to the churchyard in considerable bewilderment. With
+the character of a patient who came under her care she had no
+particular concern; a nurse must be as little discriminating as
+death. But she did not like the story; it troubled and offended her--
+its connexion with matters that interested the police, and all its
+suggestion that she and her father were being used as a means of
+hiding, touched her with a sense of disgust. It did not occur to her
+to doubt Harry Wylde; he had been altogether too circumstantial to
+be doubted.
+
+She reached the low wall that separated the churchyard from the road.
+The old graces, with their tombstones leaning awry, like gapped,
+uneven teeth, reminded her of her errand, and soon she saw Smith. He
+had found himself a seat where an old tomb with railings and monument
+was overrun with ground ivy; he sat among the coarse green of it,
+staring before him with his chin propped on one hand. All the glory
+of the western sky was beyond him; his profile stood out against it
+like a sharp silhouette. Mary stopped to look, and for the time
+forgot the wretched story she had just heard. The man was as
+motionless as the stone on which he sat-still with such a stillness
+as one sees not in the living. But it was not that which held. Mary
+gazing; it came suddenly to her that in his attitude there was
+something apt; and significant, something with a meaning, requiring
+only a key to interpret it. She wondered about it, vaguely, and
+without framing words for her thoughts it occurred to her that the
+stillness, the attitude, the mute surrender that spoke in every
+contour of the silhouetted figure, the very posture of rest, bespoke
+contentment, tile welcome of relief which one feels on reaching one's
+own place, one's familiar atmosphere, one's due haven.
+
+Minutes passed, and still she stood gazing; then, as though restive
+under the impressions that invaded her, she moved forward and entered
+the churchyard. It was not till she stood before him that Smith was
+aware of her; with a wrinkling of his brow and a sigh, he came back
+to his surroundings. Mary saw and noted how the raptness of his face
+gave way to its usual feebleness as he roused himself.
+
+"You have been out a long time, nearly three hours," he said. "I
+think you ought to come in now."
+
+He sighed again. "All right," he said slowly. But he did not rise,
+and Mary did not hurry him. She stood looking down at him, while his
+slack lips fidgeted and his pale eyes flitted here and there over the
+ancient graves.
+
+"Why did you come here to this place?" she asked him presently. Her
+voice was very low.
+
+He hesitated. "It's where I ought to be," he said heavily. "Only I
+didn't have no luck." One hand went out uncertainly and he pointed to
+the graves. "Them chaps is past bothering," he said. "There's no
+gettin' at them."
+
+He shook his head--it was as though he shivered--and relapsed into
+silence again.
+
+"You shouldn't think about things like that," Mary said.
+
+He looked up at her almost shrewdly. "Think!" he repeated. "I got no
+need to think. I know."
+
+"Know--what?"
+
+"Ah!" he said, and gat brooding. "I'm alive, I am," he said, at last;
+"but I been better off once. There's no way of tellin' it, 'cos it
+don't' fit into words. Words wasn't meant to show such things. But I
+wasn't just a limpin', squintin' little welsher; I was something that
+could feel the meaning of things and the reason for them, just like
+you can feel 'eat and cold. Could feel and know things such as nobody
+can't feel or know till 'e's done with this rotten bustle of livin'
+and doin' things. That's what I know, Miss; that's what I found out
+when I died in that there 'orspital."
+
+Mary stared at him; a brief vivacity was in his face as he spoke, a
+tone of certainty in his voice.
+
+"But," she cried, "you're alive."
+
+"Ay," he said. "I'm alive. That's the doin' of that Fish. He's the
+man; proddin' and workin' away there in that big room of his with the
+bottles and machines, and bits of dead men on the tables. 'E thinks
+I'm a bit touched in the brain, but I know, I do! I remember all
+right that mornin', with the grey sky showin' over the wire blinds
+and the noise of the carts just beginnin' in the streets. There was
+sparkles in my eyes, flashes and colors, you know, and a feelin' as
+if I was all wet with warm water. I couldn't see at first, but by an'
+by I put up my 'and and cleared my eyes--all pins and needles, my
+'and was. Then I got on my elbow, and saw--the room and the bottles
+and all, and me naked on a table under a big light. An' against the
+wall, at the other side o' the room, there was 'im--Fish--in a white-
+rubber gown and a face like chalk, shakin' an' sweatin' an' starin'
+at me. His eyes were all big an' flat; an' I lay there an' looked at
+him, while he bit his lips an' got a hold on himself. At last 'e come
+over to me. ''Ow are you feeling?' 'e says. I'd been thinking. 'You
+devil, you've brought me back,' I shouted. He was shakin' still like
+a flag in the wind. 'Yes,' he says, 'unless I'm mad, I've brought you
+back.' I 'adn't the strength to do no more than lie still; so I just
+watched 'im while 'e got brandy and drank it from the bottle. Oh, I
+remember; I remember the whole thing. That Fish can fool you an' old
+Pond, but there's no foolin' me. I know!"
+
+He leaned forward and spat; the gesture emphasised the hard
+deliberation of his speech. The look he gave her now was much more
+assured than her own.
+
+"We must be getting back," Mary said uneasily. She remembered what
+Professor Fish had mentioned of Smith's delusions. But the
+strangeness and assurance of what he had said were not in accord with
+what she knew of unstable minds.
+
+He rose and accompanied her docilely enough, but the strength that
+had furnished him with force to speak seemed to last only while he
+was in the churchyard. As they went along the quiet road he was again
+the flimsy, unlovely shell of a man she had first known. They went
+slowly, for Mary accommodated her gait to his; he walked weakly,
+looking down always. Where the road passed the end of the village a
+few people turned to look after them with slow curiosity. The village
+policeman, chin in hand, stared with bovine intensity; his big,
+simple face was clenched in careful observation. Mary recalled Harry
+Wylde's story, and his warning that the authorities had been seeking
+for Smith; she quickened her pace a little to get out of that mild
+publicity.
+
+"What were you before you--before you met Professor Fish?" she asked
+him suddenly.
+
+"A bettin' tout," he answered, "and a thief." He spoke absently and
+with complete composure.
+
+"Well," said Mary, "will you do something for me if I ask you?"
+
+He looked aside at her. "Don't ask," he said. "Don't ask me to do
+anything. 'Cos I can't."
+
+"It's only this," said Mary. "What you told me in the churchyard was
+very wonderful and dreadful; but even if it was true, it would be a
+bad thing for you to think much about. It couldn't help you to live;
+it could only come between you and being well. So I want you, as far
+as you can, not to think about it. Try to forget it. Will you?"
+
+He made some inarticulate sound with his lips. "Did Fish warn you?"
+he asked. "Did he tell you I was crazy and had notions? Ah!" he
+exclaimed, "I can see he did. He's as cunning as a fox, he is. He's
+got me tied hand and foot!"
+
+"Hush! Don't talk like that!" bade Mary. "Do as I ask you. You know
+I'm your friend. Don't you?"
+
+He shrugged uncertainly. "You would be if you knew how," he said
+slowly. "But, Lord! you don't know nothing that matters. It's only us
+that knows what's what--only us."
+
+"Who's us?" asked Mary involuntarily.
+
+He looked full at her. "The dead," he answered, and after that they
+went on in silence.
+
+It was not easy for Mary to marshal her thoughts that evening, when
+Smith, after a silent meal, had gone to bed, and left her alone with
+her father. He had spoken with such an effect of intensity that the
+impression of it persisted in her memory like the pain that remains
+from a blow; the figure of him, sitting on the grave, telling his
+strange story in words of impressive simplicity, haunted her
+obstinately. She could see easily the picture he had conjured for her
+of a big electric-lighted room, silent save for remote noises from
+without, and its equipment of dissecting-tables, bottles, and the
+machinery of an anatomist. Wylde's story had sunk into the background
+of her concerns; yet it was of that she had to speak to her father,
+and she was glad rather than surprised when he made an opening for
+her himself.
+
+"Smith seems to be rather a mystery at the village," he remarked.
+"That manner of his is causing talk." He laughed gently. "White--you
+know Ephraim White, the policeman--he asked me what I knew about
+him."
+
+"Yes?" said Mary. "Well, young Mr. Wylde asked me the same thing. He
+was sure he had recognized him."
+
+"Ah! And who was he supposed to be?"
+
+Mary told him what Harry Wylde had said to her in the afternoon, not
+omitting the mention of the mutilated ear. Dr. Pond heard it without
+disturbance, nodding thoughtfully as she spoke.
+
+"Ye-es," he said. "It's curious. It would explain the delusions, you
+know. Smith, bearing a marked resemblance to somebody who is dead--a
+resemblance that even extends to a certain wound--identifies himself
+with that person. A rather dramatic position, isn't it? Still, I hope
+we are not going to have a police inquiry. I shall certainly let Fish
+know that people are becoming suspicious. What did young Wylde say
+the other man's name was?"
+
+"Woolley," answered Mary. "Then you will write to Professor Fish,
+father?"
+
+"Yes," said the Doctor; "He ought to know. I'll write to-night."
+
+"I think I would," agreed Mary thoughtfully, and rose to get him
+writing materials. But some inward function of her was uneasy; she
+felt as though she had failed the little man whose reliance was in
+her. "You know I'm your friend," she had said to him, and this
+reference to the Professor had not the flavor of full friendship. The
+same compunction remained with her next morning, and made her
+specially gentle with Smith. He had fallen back to his usual
+condition of vacuity and inertia; she had to rouse him to eat and
+drink when he sat at table with a face as void of life as a death-
+mask, and eyes empty and unseeing. Dr. Pond had given up his attempts
+to make conversation with him, and saw him with a slight exasperation
+which he was sedulous to conceal, so that he was altogether dependent
+on Mary's unfailing patience.
+
+Professor Fish was not slow to reply to the letter. A telegram from
+him arrived at lunch time, stating that he would come down next day,
+and asking that his train might be met.
+
+"That means you'll have to go again, Mary," said Dr. Pond. "I've an
+appointment at that very hour."
+
+Mary nodded, not displeased at having an opportunity of sounding the
+Professor before anybody else. She saw that Smith had looked up at
+the mention of Fish's name with some quickening of interest. She
+smiled to him and helped him to salad.
+
+The morning of the next day came in squally and wild, with starts of
+rain, a sharp interruption to the summer's tranquillity. Mary was
+rather troubled to dispose of Smith during her absence, but ensconced
+him at last in the room which was known as "the study," an upper
+chamber where Dr. Pond kept his books and those other possessions
+which were not in frequent use. Here was a window giving a view over
+the rain-blurred hedgerows, clear to the swell of the downs, and an
+arm-chair in which Smith could sit in peace and wear undisturbed his
+semblance of a man in a trance. With some notion of leaving nothing
+undone, Mary routed out for him a bundle of old illustrated
+magazines, and left them on the unused writing-table at his side; he
+did not glance at them.
+
+"Now," she said, when all was done, "I must go. I shall be back soon.
+Shake hands with me and say thank you."
+
+She smiled down into his face, as he looked slowly up at her, huddled
+like a lay figure between the arms of the big chair.
+
+"Yes?" she said encouragingly, for his lips had moved.
+
+"I feel," he said in a whisper----
+
+"Yes," urged Mary. "What?"
+
+"Hope!" he said, aloud, and gave her his hand.
+
+The cab of the village bore her to the station over roads tearful
+with rain, and arrived there just as the London train came to a stop.
+The tall figure of Professor Fish, jumping from his compartment and
+turning to slam the door vehemently, struck her as oddly familiar;
+the man's personality stood in high relief from his surroundings. Yet
+there was a certain disturbance in his manner as he greeted her--a
+touch of the confidential, which added to her curiosity. He sat
+opposite to her in the cab, so that when he leaned forward to speak,
+with his hat pushed impatiently back, his big insistent face was
+thrust forward close to hers, and his great shoulders humped as
+though in effort.
+
+"This is a very annoying thing, Miss Pond," he began, as the cab
+started back along the tree-bordered road. "A most annoying thing;
+privacy was absolutely essential. Here is something done, a big
+thing, too; and when only privacy, reticence, quiet are essential, we
+have this infernal fuss on our hands."
+
+He spoke with all his habitual force and volume; but something in him
+suggested to Mary that he did so consciously and of purpose.
+
+"Well," she said; "there's nobody about here that is likely to guess
+at your experiment. That isn't the trouble, you know. The trouble is
+that people say they recognize Mr. Smith as a man who is wanted by
+the police, who is supposed, too, to be dead. So, you see, the only
+thing wanted is an explanation."
+
+"Explanation!" He put the word from him with a gesture of his big,
+smooth hands.
+
+Mary nodded, scanning him coolly. "Yes," she said; "I can understand
+that an explanation might be difficult."
+
+Professor Fish laughed shortly, a mere bark of sour mirth, and turned
+to look through the rain-splashed window of the cab.
+
+"Difficult!" he repeated, and turned his face to her again. "Not at
+all difficult, my dear Miss Pond, but awkward. Lord! it wouldn't do
+at all!" His eyes behind his glasses became keen and lively. He
+looked at her carefully.
+
+"He's talked to you, eh? You've heard his story?"
+
+"Yes," answered Mary. "Once; it was very wonderful."
+
+He nodded, still scrutinising her. "I wish I could make him talk," he
+said thoughtfully. "However----" he shrugged his big shoulders and was
+silent.
+
+There was a pause then, while the wheels squelched through the mud
+below, and the rain beat rhythmically on the windows and roof of the
+cab. Its noise seemed to ally itself to the interior smell of the
+vehicle, an odor of damp leather and stale straw and ancient stables.
+The Professor stared intently through the wet glass, and Mary
+remembered, with a touch of amusement, her first meeting with him,
+when she had sat beside him and occupied her thoughts with the flabby
+phantom of Smith.
+
+"You know," she said, at length, "there'll have to be some sort of
+explanation."
+
+"Well?" demanded the Professor.
+
+"If I knew what you had done to Mr. Smith," she went on, "I could
+help you to keep things as quiet as possible."
+
+He heard her with a frown and shook his head. "If you knew, you'd do
+anything but keep it quiet," he answered shortly.
+
+"Then it was something horrible?" asked Mary quickly.
+
+He smiled. "I expect to have many patients for the same treatment,"
+he replied. "Very many; I expect half the world. Where is Smith now?"
+he asked abruptly.
+
+"At home by himself," replied Mary. "We'll be there in two minutes.
+You'd like to see him first?"
+
+"Yes, please," he said. "I must have a word or two with him."
+
+Dr Pond had not returned when they drew up at the house, and, as soon
+as the Professor had rid himself of his ulster and hat, she led him
+upstairs to the "study."
+
+"You'll find him in here," she said, when they came to the door. "I
+shall be downstairs when you want me."
+
+The Professor nodded absently and turned the handle. Mary was at the
+top of the stairs when he entered. She turned even before he cried
+out, conscious of something happening.
+
+"Stop!" cried the Professor sharply. "Put that down!"
+
+Mary ran to the open door and uttered a cry. Near the window stood
+Smith, erect and buoyant. The contents of desk-drawers were littered
+on the floor--papers, old pipes, a corkscrew, various rubbish--and in
+his hand he held something that Mary recognized with a catch of the
+breath.
+
+"Father's old pistol!" she said, and shuddered. The Professor had
+advanced as far as the middle of the room; the desk was between him
+and Smith, who was looking at him with a smile. Even in the weakness
+of fear that came over her, Mary wondered at the change in him. His
+very stature seemed to be greater; there was a grave power in that
+face she knew as a mask of witlessness and futility. He held the
+revolver in his right hand with the barrel resting in his left, and
+looked at the tall Professor with a smile that had no mirth in it,
+but something like compassion.
+
+"Drop it!" said the Professor again. "Drop it, you fool!" But his
+voice of authority cracked, and he cried out: "For God's sake don't
+make a mess of it now."
+
+Smith continued to look at him with that ghost of a smile on his
+lips, and answered with slow words. He patted the pistol.
+
+"This'll put me out of your reach," he said. "This is what'll do it.
+You won't be able to patch up the hole this'll make."
+
+He raised the pistol, Mary, powerless to move clenched her hands and
+whole being for the shock of imminent tragedy.
+
+"Wait!" cried the Professor, and cast a furtive deprecating glance
+back at Mary. "Wait! I tell you it's no use; you can hurt yourself
+and disfigure yourself and weaken and impair your body, but not the
+life! Not the life! I tell you--it's no good!" He flung out a long
+arm and his great forefinger pointed at Smith imperatively. "I'll
+have you back," he said. "I'll have you back. You're mine, my man;
+and I'll hold you. Put that pistol down; put it down, I tell you! Or
+else----" his arm dropped, and the command failed from his voice. He
+spoke in the tones of tired indifference. "Do it," he said. "Shoot
+yourself, if you want to. I'll deal with you afterwards."
+
+There was a pause, measured in heart-beats. Smith showed yet his face
+of serene gravity. When he spoke, it was strange to hear the voice of
+the back-streets, the gutter's phrase, expressing that quiet
+assurance.
+
+"If it wasn't you," he said, "it wouldn't be nobody else. It's only
+you as can do it." He paused, with lips pursed in deliberation. "If
+you knowed what I know," he went on, "you'd see it wasn't right. I
+reckon you'll have to come too."
+
+"Eh?" The Professor looked up quickly, and threw up an arm as though
+to guard a blow. Mary screamed, and the noise of the shot startled
+her from her posture and she fell on her knees. The Professor took
+one pace forward, turned sharply, and fell full length on his face.
+She heard Smith say something, but the words passed her
+undistinguished; then the second shot sounded, and the fire-irons
+clattered as he tumbled among them.
+
+Those that ran up to the room upon the sound of the shooting found
+her kneeling in the door with her hand over her face.
+
+"Bury them! bury them!" she was crying. "Bury them and let them go!"
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+THE CAPTAIN'S ARM
+
+Seafaring men knew it for a chief characteristic of Captain Price--
+his quiet, unresting watchfulness. Forty years of sun and brine had
+bunched the puckers at the corners of his eyes and hardened the lines
+of his big brown face; but the outstanding thing about him was still
+that silent wariness, as of a man who had warning of something
+impending. It went a little strangely with his figure of a massive,
+steel-and-hickory shipmaster, soaked to the soul with the routine of
+his calling. It seemed to give token of some faculty held in reserve,
+to hint at an inner life, as it were; and not a few of the frank and
+simple men who went to sea with him found it disconcerting. Captains
+who could handle a big steamship as a cyclist manages a bicycle they
+had seen before; they recognized in him the supreme skill, the salt-
+pickled nerve, the iron endurance of a proven sailor; but there their
+experience ended and the depths began.
+
+Sooner or later, most of them went to the Burdock's chief mate for an
+explanation of the unknown quality. "What makes your father act so?"
+was a common form of the question. Arthur Price would smile and shake
+his handsome head.
+
+"It's not acting," he would say. "You drop off to sleep some night on
+this bridge, and you'll find out what he's after. He's after you if
+you don't keep your weather eye liftin'; and don't you forget it!"
+
+In those days the Burdock had a standing charter from Cardiff to
+Barcelona and back with ore to Swansea, a comfortable round trip
+which brought the Captain and his son home for one week in every six.
+
+It suited the mate's convenience excellently, for he was a man of
+social habits, and he had at last succeeded in interesting Miss
+Minnie Davis in his movements. She was the daughter of the Burdock's
+owner, and Arthur Price's cousin in some remote degree, a plump,
+clean, clever Welsh girl, of quick intelligence and pleasant good
+nature. He was a tall young man, a little leggy in his way, who
+filled the eye splendidly. Women said of him that he "looked every
+inch a sailor"; matrons who watched his progress with Minnie Davis
+considered that they would make a handsome couple. Captain Price, for
+all his watchfulness, saw nothing of the affair. He approved of
+Minnie, though; she was born to a share in that life in which ships
+are breadwinners, and never had to be shoo'd out of the way of
+hauling or hoisting gear when she came down aboard the Burdock in
+dock. Her way was straight across the deck to the poop ladder and
+for'ard to the chart-house along the fore-and-aft bridge, trim,
+quiet-footed, familiar. "What did you find in the Bay?" she would
+ask, as she shook hands with Captain Price; and he would answer as to
+one who understood: "It was piling up a bit from the sou'west;" or
+"smooth enough to skate on," as the case might be. Then, without
+further formality, he would return to his papers, and Arthur Price
+would hand over his work to the third mate and wash his hands before
+coming up to make himself agreeable. He always had more to say about
+the trip than his father, and he was prone to translate the weather
+into shore speech. Minnie only half liked his fashion of talking of
+"storms" and "tempests"; but there was plenty else in him she liked
+well enough. Best of all, perhaps, she liked the sight of him--a head
+taller than his father, clean-shaven and accurately groomed, smiling
+readily and moving easily; he was a capital picture.
+
+She fell into a way of driving down to see the Burdock off. It was
+thus that Captain Price learned how matters stood. He came straight
+from the office to the ship, on a brisk July day and went off to her
+at her buoys in the mud-pilot's boat. All was clear for a start and
+the lock was waiting; Arthur Price, in the gold-laced cap he used as
+due to his rank, was standing by to cast off. The Captain went
+forthwith to the bridge; Minnie on the dock-head could see his black
+shore-hat over the weather-cloths and his white collar of ceremony.
+She smiled a little, for she did not know quite enough to see the art
+with which the Captain drew off from his moorings under his own steam,
+nor his splendid handling of the big boat as he bustled her down the
+crowded dock and laid her blunt nose cleanly between the piers of the
+lock. She was watching the brass-buttoned chief mate lording it on
+the fo'c'sle head, as he passed the lines to haul into the lock.
+
+Captain Price was watching him, too. He saw him smiling and talking
+over the rail to the girl.
+
+"Slack off that spring," he roared suddenly, as they began to let the
+ship down to the sea level; and the mate jumped for the coil on the
+bitts.
+
+"Keep your eyes about you, for'ard there," ordered the Captain
+tersely.
+
+"Aye, aye, sir," sang out the mate cheerfully.
+
+The mud pilot, beside the Captain on the bridge, grinned agreeably.
+
+"Arthur's got an eye in his head, indeed," he remarked, and lifted
+his cap to Minnie.
+
+The Captain snorted, and gave his whole attention to hauling out,
+only turning his head at the last minute to wave a farewell to his
+owner's daughter. The mud pilot took charge and brought her clear;
+and as soon as he had gone over to his boat, the Captain rang for
+full steam ahead and waited for the mate to take the bridge.
+
+The young man came up smiling. "It's a fine morning, father," he
+remarked, as he walked over to the binnacle.
+
+"Mister Mate," said the Captain harshly, "you all but lost me that
+hawser."
+
+"Just in time, wasn't it?" replied the mate pleasantly.
+
+"I don't reckon to slack off and take in my lines myself," went on
+the Captain. "I reckon to leave that to my officers. And if an
+officer carries; away a five-inch manila through makin' eyes at girls
+on the pier-head, I dock his wages for the cost of it, and I log him
+for neglectin' his duty."
+
+The mate looked: at him sharply for a moment; the Captain scowled
+back.
+
+"Have you got anything to say to me?" demanded the Captain.
+
+"Yes," said the mate, "I have." He broke into a smile. "But it's
+something I can't say while you're actin' the man-o'-war captain on
+your bridge. It doesn't concern the work o' the ship."
+
+"What does it concern?" asked the Captain.
+
+"Me," said the mate. He folded his arms across the binnacle and
+looked into his father's face confidently. The Captain softened.
+
+"Well, Arthur?" he said.
+
+"That was Minnie on the pier-head," said the mate. The Captain
+nodded. "I was up at their place last night," the young man
+continued, "and we had a talk--she and I--and so it came about that
+we fixed things between us. Mr. Davis is agreeable, so long-----"
+
+"Hey, what's this?" The Captain stared at his son amazedly. "What was
+it you fixed up with Minnie?"
+
+"Why, to get married," replied the mate, reddening. "I was telling
+you. Her father's willing, as long as we wait till I get a command
+before we splice."
+
+"You to marry Minnie!" The mate stiffened at the emphasis on the
+"you." The Captain was fighting for expression. "Why," he said, "why
+--why, you'ld 'a' carried away that hawser if I hadn't sung out at
+ye."
+
+"Father," said the mate. "Mr. Davis'll give me a ship."
+
+"What ship?" demanded the Captain.
+
+"The first he can," replied the other. "He's thinkin' of buyin' the
+Stormberg, Wrench Wylie's big freighter, and he'd shift you on to
+her. Then I'd have the Burdock."
+
+"Then you'd have the Burdock!" The Captain leaned his elbow on the
+engine-room telegraph and faced his son. His expression was wholly
+compounded of perplexity and surprise. He let his eyes wander aft,
+along the big ship's trim perspective to the short poop, and forward
+to where her bluff bows sawed at the skyline.
+
+"She's a fine old boat," he said at last, and stood up with a sigh.
+"but she needs watching." The mate felt a thrill of relief. "I'll
+watch her," he said comfortably. "But don't you want to wish me luck,
+father?"
+
+"Not luck," said the Captain; "not luck, my boy. You run her to a
+hair and keep your eyes slit and you won't want luck. Luck's a
+lubber's standby. But Minnie's a fine girl." He shook his head
+thoughtfully. "She'll rouse you up, maybe."
+
+The mate laughed, and at the sound of it the Captain frowned again.
+
+"Now, lean off that binnacle," he said shortly. "I want to get the
+bearings."
+
+It was not till an hour later that he went to his cabin to shed his
+shore-going gear for ordinary apparel; and as soon as this was done
+he reached down the register from the book-shelf over his bunk to
+look up the Stormberg.
+
+"H'm," he growled, standing over the book at his desk. "Built in 1889
+on the Clyde. I know her style. Five thousand tons, and touch the
+steam steering-gear if you dare! Blast her, and blast Davis for a
+junk-buying fool!"
+
+He closed the book with a slam and glanced mechanically up at the
+tell-tale compass that hung over his bed.
+
+"There's Arthur half a point off already," he said, and made for the
+bridge.
+
+Arthur Price believed honestly that more was exacted from him than
+from other chief mates; and early in that passage he concluded that
+the Old Man was severer than ever. The Burdock butted into a summer
+gale before she was clear of the Bristol Channel, a free wind that
+came from the south-west driving a biggish sea before it. It was
+nothing to give real trouble, but Captain Price took charge in the
+dog watch and set the mate and his men to making all fast about
+decks. With his sou'wester flapped back from his forehead and his
+oilskin coat shrouding him to the heels, he leaned on the bridge
+rail, vociferous and imperative, and his harsh voice hunted the
+workers from one task to another. He had lashings on the anchors and
+fresh wedges to the battens of all hatches; the winches chocked off
+and covered over and new pins in the davit blocks. This took time,
+but when it was done he was not yet satisfied; the mate had to get
+out gear and rig a couple of preventer funnel stays. The men looked
+ahead at the weather and wondered what the skipper saw in it to make
+such a bother; the second and third mates winked at one another
+behind Arthur Price's back; and he, the chief mate, sulked.
+
+"That's all, I suppose?" he asked the Captain when he got on the
+bridge again at last.
+
+"No," was the sharp answer. "It's not all. Speak the engine-room and
+ask the chief how he's hitting it."
+
+"All sweet," reported the mate as he hung up the speaking tube.
+
+"That's right," said the Captain. "You always want to know that,
+Mister Mate. And the lights?"
+
+"All bright, sir," said the mate.
+
+"Then you can go down and get something to eat," said the Captain.
+"And see that the hand wheel's clear as you go."
+
+It breezed up that night, and as the Burdock cleared the tail of
+Cornwall, the heavy Atlantic water came aboard. She was a sound ship,
+though, and Captain Price knew her as he knew the palms of his hands.
+Screened behind the high weather-cloths, he drove her into it, while
+the tall seas filled her forward main deck rail-deep and her bows
+pounded away in a mast-high smother of spray. From the binnacle
+amidships to the weather wing of the bridge was his dominion, while
+the watch officer straddled down to leeward; both with eyes boring at
+the darkness ahead and on either beam, where there came and went the
+pin-point lights of ships.
+
+Arthur Price relieved the bridge at midnight, but the Captain held
+on.
+
+"Ye see how she takes it?" he bawled down the wind to his son. "No
+excuse for steaming wide; ye can drive her to a hair. Keep your eyes
+on that light to port; we don't want anything bumping into us."
+
+"You wouldn't ease her a bit, then?" shouted the mate, the wind
+snatching his words.
+
+"Ease her!" was the reply. "You'd have her edging into France. She'll
+lie her course while we drive her."
+
+When dawn came up the sea had mounted; the Bay was going to be true
+to its name. Captain Price went to his chart-house at midnight, to
+sleep on a settle; but by his orders the Burdock was kept to her
+course and her gait, battering away at the gale contentedly.
+
+After breakfast, he took another look round and then went below to
+rest in his bunk, while the tell-tale swam in wild eccentrics above
+his upturned face. After a while he dozed off to sleep, lulled by the
+click of furnishings that rendered to the ship's roll, the drum of
+the seas on her plates, and the swish of loose water across the deck.
+
+He was roused by his steward. That menial laid a hand on his shoulder
+and he was forthwith awake and competent.
+
+"A ship to windward, sir, showin' flags," said the steward. "The mate
+'ud be glad if you'd go to the bridge."
+
+"A' right," said the Captain, and stood up. "In distress, eh?"
+
+"By the looks of her, sir," admitted the steward, who had been a
+waiter ashore. "She seems to be a mast or two short, sir, so far as I
+can tell. But I couldn't be sure."
+
+He helped the Captain into his oilskins deftly, pulling his jacket
+down under the long coat, and held the door open for him.
+
+Some three miles to windward the stranger lay, an appealing vagabond.
+The Captain found his son standing on the flag-chest, braced against
+a stanchion, watching her through a pair of glasses, when she peeped
+up, a momentary silhouette, over the tall seas. He turned as the
+Captain approached.
+
+"Can't make out her flags, sir," he said. "Too much wind. Looks like
+a barque with only her mizzen standing."
+
+"Gimme the glass," said the Captain, climbing up beside him. He
+braced himself against the irons and took a look at her, swinging
+accurately to the roll of the ship. Beneath him the wind-whipped
+water tumbled in grey leagues; the stranger seemed poised on the rim
+of it. From her gaff, a dot of a flag showed a blur against the sky,
+and a string from her mast-head was equally vague.
+
+"That'll be her ensign upside down at the gaff," he said. "Port your
+helm there; we'll go down and look at her."
+
+"Aye, aye, sir." The mate passed the word and came over. "How would
+it be to see one of the boats clear, father!"
+
+"Aren't the boats clear?" demanded the Captain.
+
+"Oh yes, they're clear," replied the mate. "You had us put new pins
+in the blocks, you know." He met his father's steady eye defiantly.
+"When are a steamer's boats ever clear for hoisting out?" he asked.
+
+"Always, when the mate's fit for his job," was the answer. "Go and
+make sure of the starboard lifeboat, and call the watch."
+
+The Captain took his ship round to windward of the distressed vessel,
+running astern of her within a quarter of a mile. She proved to be
+the remains of a barque, as the mate had guessed, a deep-laden wooden
+ship badly swept by the sea. From the wing of the bridge the
+Captain's glasses showed him the length of her deck, cluttered with
+the wreck of houses torn up by the roots, while the fall of the spars
+had taken her starboard bulwarks with it. Her boats were gone; a
+davit stuck up at the end of the poop crumpled like a ram's horn; and
+by the taffrail her worn and sodden crew clustered and cheered the
+Burdock.
+
+The Captain rang off his engines and rang again to stand by in the
+engine-room. The mate came up the ladder to him while his hand was
+yet at the telegraph.
+
+"Lifeboat's all clear for lowering, sir," he said. "Noble, Peters,
+Hansen, and Kyland are to go in her." He waited.
+
+The old captain stood looking at the wreck, while the steamship
+rolled tumultuously in the trough.
+
+"Who goes in charge?" he asked, after a minute's silence.
+
+"I'll go, father," said the mate eagerly. He paused, but the Captain
+said nothing.
+
+"You know," proceeded the mate, "father, you do know there's none of
+'em here can handle a boat like me."
+
+"Aye," said the Captain, "you can do it." He looked at his son
+keenly. "It 'ud make a good yarn to spin to Minnie," he said, with an
+unwilling smile.
+
+The mate laughed agreeably. "Dear Minnie," he said. "Then I'll go,
+father."
+
+"And I'll just see to the hoisting out of that boat," said the
+Captain. "Good thing I had you put in the new pins."
+
+The third mate on the bridge rang for steam and made a lee for the
+lowering of the lifeboat, the hands put a strain on the tackles, and
+the carpenter and bo'sun went to work to knock out the chocks on
+which she rested. Her steel-shod keel had rusted into them.
+
+"Hoist away on your forward tackle," ordered the Captain. "Belay!
+Make fast! Now get a hold of this guy. Lively there, you men. Noble,
+aloft on the booms and shoulder her over."
+
+She canted clear of the groove in the chocks as they swung the
+forward davit out and the Captain stepped abaft the men who hauled.
+
+"Lively now," he called. "Don't keep those chaps waiting, men. After
+davit tackle, haul! Up with her."
+
+The bo'sun, stooping, looped the fall of the tackle into the snatch-
+block; the men, under the Captain's eye, tumbled to and gave way,
+holding the weight gallantly as the rail swung down and putting their
+backs into the pull as she rolled back.
+
+"Up with her!" shouted the Captain, and she tore loose from her bed.
+"Vast hauling! Belay! Now out with the davit, men."
+
+He stepped a pace forward as they passed out the line. "Haul away,"
+he was saying, when the bo'sun shouted hoarsely and tried to reach
+him with a dash across the slippery deck planks. The mate screamed,
+the Captain humped his shoulders for the blow. It all happened in a
+flash of disaster; the boat's weight pulled the pin from the cheeks
+of the block and down she came, her stern thudding thickly into the
+deck, while the Captain, limp and senseless, rolled inertly to the
+scuppers.
+
+When he came to he was in his bunk. He opened his eyes with a shiver
+upon the familiar cabin, with its atmosphere of compact neatness, its
+gleaming paint and bright-work. A throb of brutal pain in his head
+wrung a grunt from him, and then he realized that something was wrong
+with his right arm. He tried to move it, to bring it above the
+bedclothes to look at it, and the effort surprised an oath from him,
+and left him dizzy and shaking. The white jacket of the steward came
+through a mist that was about him.
+
+"Better, I hope, sir?" the steward was saying. "Beggin' your pardon,
+but you'd better lie still, sir. Is there anything I could bring you,
+sir?"
+
+"Did the boat fall on me?" asked the Captain, carefully. His voice
+seemed thin to himself.
+
+"Not on you, sir," replied the steward. "Not so to speak, on top of
+you. The keel 'it you on the shoulder, sir, an' you contracted a
+thump on the 'ead."
+
+"And the wreck?" asked the Captain.
+
+"The wreck's crew is aboard, sir; barque Vavasour, of London, sir.
+The mate brought 'em off most gallantly, sir. I was to tell 'im when
+you come to, sir."
+
+"Tell him, then," said the Captain, and closed his eyes wearily. The
+pain in his head blurred his thoughts, but his lifelong habit of
+waking from sleep to full consciousness, with no twilight of muddled
+faculties intervening, held good yet. He remembered, now, the new
+pins in the blocks, and there was even a tincture of amusement in his
+reflections. A soft tread beside him made him open his eyes.
+
+"Well, Arthur," he said.
+
+The tall young mate was beside him.
+
+"Ah, father," he said cheerfully. "Picking up a bit, eh? That's good.
+Ugly accident, that."
+
+"Yes," replied the Captain, looking up into his face. "Block split, I
+suppose?"
+
+"Yes," said the mate. "That's it. How do you feel?"
+
+"You didn't notice the block, I suppose, when you put the new pins
+in?" asked the Captain.
+
+"Can't say I did," answered the mate, "or I'd have changed it. You're
+not going to blame me surely, father?"
+
+The Captain smiled. "No, Arthur, I'm not going to blame you," he
+said. "I want to hear how you brought off that barque's crew. Is it a
+good yarn for Minnie?"
+
+At Barcelona the Captain went to hospital and they took off his right
+arm at the shoulder. The Burdock went back without him, and he lay in
+his bed wondering how it was that the loss of an arm should make a
+man feel lonely.
+
+He was quickly about again. His body was clean from the bone out,
+clean and hard, and he had never been ill. When the time came to take
+a walk, he arrayed himself in shore-going black. It cost him an
+infinity of trouble and more than an hour of the morning to dress
+himself with one hand, but he would not have help. Then it was that
+he discovered a strange thing; it was his right arm, the arm that was
+gone, that hindered him. The scars of the amputation had healed, but
+unless he bore the fact deliberately in mind, he felt the arm to be
+there. He tried to button his braces with it, to knot his tie, to
+lace his boots, and had to overtake the impulse and correct it with
+an effort. When his clothes were on, he put his right hand in his
+trousers pocket, then remembered that it was not there, and withdrew
+hastily the hand he had not got. During the walk the same trouble
+remained with him; it muddled him when he bought tobacco and tried to
+pick up the change. Before he slept that night, he dropped on his
+knees at his bedside, and folded the left hand of flesh against the
+right hand of dreamstuff in prayer.
+
+When his time came to go home in the Burdock, he was an altered man.
+The quiet, all-observant scrutiny had gone, and the officers who
+greeted him as he came up the accommodation ladder saw it at once.
+Arthur Price was now in command, a breezy, good-looking captain in
+blue serge and gold braid.
+
+"You've got her, then, Arthur?" said the old man, as he reached the
+deck and stood looking about him.
+
+"Yes, I've got her," answered his son. "That your kit, father? Sewell
+(to the chief mate), send a couple of hands to get that dunnage
+aboard. Come along below, father."
+
+He tucked his arm into his father's and led him down. Mildly taking
+stock of the well-remembered surroundings, the old man noticed he was
+being taken to the Captain's state-room, and an impulse of gratitude
+moved him. But he was glad he did not speak of it when his son put
+aside the curtains at the door for him, and he saw that this was not
+to be his room. New chintzes took the place of his old leather
+cushions; a big photograph of Minnie stood on the lid of the
+chronometer case, and the broken-backed Admiralty guides, ocean
+directories and the rest were reinforced by a brigade of smartly
+bound novels.
+
+"Sit down," said Arthur, "and make yourself at home till they get
+your dunnage in. I've put you in the spare cabin in the port
+alleyway; you'll find it nice and quiet there. How are you feeling,
+father? Would you care for a drink?"
+
+"Yes, I'd like a tot," replied the old man. "Shall I ring for your
+steward?"
+
+"Don't you trouble," said Arthur. "I've got it here." It was in the
+cupboard under the chronometer, a whole case of whisky. "I carry my
+own," explained the mate; "I don't believe in old Davis's taste in
+whisky. Help yourself, father."
+
+"How is Minnie?" asked the old man as he set down his glass.
+
+"She's all right," was the reply. "I wanted to tell you about that.
+We go into dry dock when we get back from this trip, and Minnie and
+I'll get married before I take her out again. Quick work, isn't it?"
+
+The old Captain nodded; the young Captain smiled.
+
+"You'll be bringing Minnie out for the trip, I suppose?" asked the
+elder.
+
+"That's my idea," agreed Arthur.
+
+"You're a lucky chap," said the old man slowly. He hesitated. "You've
+got your ship in hand, eh, Arthur?"
+
+"I've got her down to a fine point," said Arthur emphatically. "You
+needn't bother about me, father. I know my job, and I don't need more
+teaching. I wish you'd get to understand that. You know Davis has
+bought the Stormberg?"
+
+"I didn't know," said the old man with a sigh. "It don't matter to
+me, anyhow. I'd be reaching for the engine telegraph with my right
+hand as like as not. No, Arthur, I've done. I'll bother young
+officers no more."
+
+The run home was an easy one, but it confirmed old Captain Price in
+his resolution to have done with the sea. Two or three times he fell
+about decks; a small roll, the commonplace movement of a well-driven
+steamship in a seaway shook him from his balance, and that missing
+arm, which always seemed to be there, let him down. He would reach
+for a stanchion with it to steady himself, and none of his falls
+served to cure him of the persistent delusion that he was not a
+cripple. He tried to pick things up with it, and let glasses and the
+like fall every day. The officers and engineers, men who had sailed
+with him at his ablest, saw his weakness quickly, and, with the ready
+tact that comes to efficient seafarers, never showed by increased
+deference or any sign that they were conscious of the change. It was
+only Arthur who went aside to make things easy for him, to cut his
+food for him at table, and so forth.
+
+From Swansea he went home by train; Minnie and her kindly old father
+met him and made much of him. Old Davis was a man who had built up
+his own fortune, scraping tonnage together bit by bit, from the time
+when, as a captain, he had salved a crazy derelict and had her turned
+over to him by the underwriters in quittance of his claims. Now he
+owned a little fleet of good steamships of respectable burthen, and
+was an esteemed owner. He did not press the Stormberg on Captain
+Price. The two old men understood each other.
+
+"I don't want her," Captain Price told him. "There's a time for
+nursin' tender engines and a time for scrappin' them. I'm for the
+scrap heap, David. I'm not the man I was. I don't put faith in myself
+no more. It's Arthur's turn now."
+
+David Davis nodded. "Yes, then. Well, well, now! It's a pity, too,
+John. But you know what's best, to be sure. I don't want you to go
+without a ship while I've got a bottom afloat, but I don't want you
+to put the Stormberg to roost on the rocks of Lundy neither. So you
+wouldn't put faith in yourself no more!"
+
+"No," said Captain Price, frowning reflectively "I wouldn't, and
+that's the truth." He was seated in a plush-covered arm-chair in
+Davis's parlour, and now he leaned forward. "It's this arm of mine.
+It isn't there, but I can't get rid of the feeling of it. I'm always
+reachin' for things with it. I'd be reachin' for the telegraph in a
+hurry, I make no doubt."
+
+"That's funny," said Davis, in sympathy. "Well, then, you just stop
+visiting with me. I've no mind to be alone in the house when your
+Arthur's gone off with my Minnie. He'll push the Burdock back an'
+fore for us, and we'll sit ashore like gentlemen. He makes a good
+figure of a skipper, don't he, John?"
+
+Old Captain Price sighed. "Aye, he looks well on the bridge," he
+said. "I hope he'll watch the ship, though; she's a big old tub to
+handle."
+
+He saw the Burdock into dry dock and strolled down each day to look
+at her. Minnie and Arthur were busy with preparations for the
+wedding. But the girl found time to go down once with the old man,
+and he took her into the dock under the steamship.
+
+"A big thing she looks from here," he said, half to himself.
+
+The girl looked forward. Over them the bottom plates of the Burdock
+made a great sloping roof; her rolling chocks stood out like
+galleries. Her lines bulged heavily out, and the girl saw the
+immensity of the great fabric, the power of the tool her husband
+should wield.
+
+"She's big, indeed," she answered. "Five thousand tons and forty
+lives in one man's hands. It's splendid, uncle. And Arthur," her
+voice softened pleasantly, "is the man."
+
+The old Captain wheeled on her sharply. "Tons and lives!" he cried.
+"Tons and lives be damned! It's not for them she's been run to a
+thumb-span and tended like a sick baby. It's for the clean honesty of
+it, to do a captain's work like a wise captain and not soil a record.
+D'ye think I stump my bridge for forty-eight hours on end because of
+the underwriters and the deck hands? Not me, my girl, not me! It's my
+trade to lay her sweetly in Barcelona bay, and it's my honor to know
+my work and do it."
+
+He seemed to shrug his shoulder. The girl could not know it was his
+right hand he flung up to the scarred steel plates above him.
+
+"There's your Burdock," he said. "She's your dividend-grinder; she's
+my ship. And if I'd thought of no more than your five thousand tons
+and your forty lives, she'd not be where she is."
+
+He held out his left hand, palm uppermost, and started and blinked
+when there came no smack of the right fist descending into it.
+
+"There's me talking again," he said. "Never mind, Minnie dear, it's
+only your old uncle. Let's be back up town."
+
+The wedding day was a Thursday. The ceremony was to take place in the
+chapel of which David Davis was a member; the subsequent festivities
+were arranged for at an hotel. It wag to be a notable affair, an
+epochmaker in the local shipping world, and when all was over there
+would be time for the newly-wedded to go aboard the Burdock and take
+her out on the tide. Old Captain Price, decorous in stiff black,
+drove to the church with his son in a two-horse brougham. Neither
+spoke a word till they were close to the chapel door. Then the old
+man burst out suddenly.
+
+"For God's sake, Arthur boy, do the right thing by your ship."
+
+Arthur Price was a little moved. "I will, father," he said. "Here's
+my hand on it." There was a pause. "Why don't you take my hand,
+father?" he asked.
+
+"Eh?" The old man started. "I thought I'd took it, Arthur. I'll be
+going soft next. Here's the other hand for you."
+
+The reception at the hotel and the breakfast there were notable
+affairs. Everybody who counted for anything with the hosts were
+there, and after a little preliminary formality and awkwardness the
+function grew to animation. The shipping folk of Cardiff know
+champagne less as a beverage than as a symbol, and there was plenty
+of it. Serious men became frivolous; David Davis made a speech in
+Welsh; Minnie glowed and blossomed; Arthur was everybody's friend.
+The old Captain, seated at the bottom of the table with an iron-clad
+matron on one side and a bored reporter on the other, watched him
+with a groan. The man who was to take the Burdock out of dock was
+drinking. Even one glass at such a time would have breached the old
+man's code; it was a crime against shipmastership. But Arthur, with
+his bride beside him, her brown eyes alight, her shoulder against his
+shoulder, had gone much further than the one glass. The exhilaration
+of the day dazzled him; a waiter with a bottle to refill his glass
+was ever at his shoulder. His voice rattled on untiringly; already
+the old man saw how the muscles or the jaw were slack and the eyes
+moved loosely. The young Captain hid a toast to respond to; he swayed
+as he stood up to speak, and his tongue stumbled on his consonants.
+The reporter on Captain Price's left offered him champagne at the
+moment.
+
+"Take it away," rumbled the old man. "Swill it yourself."
+
+The pressman nodded. "It is pretty shocking stuff," he agreed. "I'm
+going nap on the coffee myself."
+
+It came to a finish at last. The bride went up to change, and old
+Captain Price took a cab to the docks. The Burdock was smart in new
+paint, and even the deck hands had been washed for the occasion.
+
+"I'll go down with you a bit," he explained to Sewell, the chief
+mate. "The pilot'll bring me back. I suppose I can go up to the
+chart-house?"
+
+"Of course, sir," said Sewell. "If you can't go where you like aboard
+of us, who can?"
+
+The old man smiled. "That'll be for the Captain to say," he answered,
+and went up the ladder.
+
+She was very smart, the old Burdock, and Arthur had made changes in
+the chart-house, but she had the same feel for her old Captain. Under
+her paint and frills, the steel of her structure was unaltered; the
+old engines would heave her along; the old seas conspire against her.
+Shift and bedeck and bedrape her as they might, she was yet the
+Burdock; her lights would run down the Channel with no new
+consciousness in their stare, and there was work and peril for men
+aboard of her as of old.
+
+"Ah, father," said Arthur Price, as he came on the bridge. "Come to
+shee me chase her roun' the d-dock, eh?" Even as he spoke he
+tottered. "Damn shiip-pery deck, eh!" he said. "Well, you'll shee
+shome shteering, 'tanyrate."
+
+He wiped his forehead and his cap fell off. The old man stooped
+hurriedly and picked it up for him.
+
+"Brace up, Arthur," he said, in an urgent whisper, "an' let the pilot
+take her down the dock. For God's sake, don't run any risks."
+
+"I'm Captain," said the younger man. "Aren't I Capt'n? Well, then,
+'nough said!" He went to the bridge rail.
+
+"All ready, Mish' Mate?" he demanded, and proceeded to get his
+moorings in.
+
+The mud pilot came to the old Captain's side.
+
+"Captain," he said, "that man's drunk."
+
+The old man shuddered a little. "Don't make a noise," he said. "He--
+he was married to-day."
+
+"Aye." The pilot shook his head. "You know me, Captain; it's not me
+that would give a son of yours away. But I can't let him bump her
+about. He isn't you at handling a steamship, and he's drunk."
+
+The old Captain turned to him. "Help me out," he said. "Pilot, give
+me a help in this. I'll stand by him and handy to the telegraph.
+We'll get her through all right. There's that crowd on the dock"--he
+signed to the festive guests--"waiting to see him off, and we mustn't
+make a show of him. And his wife's aboard."
+
+The pilot nodded shortly. "I'm willing."
+
+Arthur, leaning on the rail, was cursing the dock boat at the buoy.
+The lock was waiting for them, and he lurched to the telegraph,
+slammed the handle over with a clatter and rang for steam. The pilot
+and the old man leaned quickly to the indicator; he had ordered full
+speed ahead.
+
+"Stop her!" snapped the pilot as the decks beneath them pulsed to
+the awakening engines. Arthur's hand was yet on the handle, but the
+old man's grip on his wrist was firm, and the bell below clanged
+again. The young Captain wheeled on them furiously.
+
+"Get off my brish," he shouted. "Down with you, th' pair of you." He
+made to advance on them, those two square old shipmen; he projected a
+general ruin; but his feet were not his own. He reeled against the
+rail.
+
+"Port your helm!" commanded the pilot calmly. "Slow ahead!" Old
+Captain Price rang for him and they began to draw out. Ashore the
+wedding guests were a flutter of waving handkerchiefs and hats. They
+thanked God Minnie was not on the bridge. At the rail, Arthur lolled
+stupidly and seemed to be fighting down a nausea.
+
+"Steady!" came the sure voice of the pilot. "Steady as you go! Stop
+her!"
+
+Arthur Price slipped then and came to his knees. Ashore, the party
+was cheering.
+
+"Up with you, Arthur," cried the old man in an agony. "Them people's
+looking. Stiffen up, my boy."
+
+"Half speed ahead!" droned the pilot, never turning his head.
+
+The old man rattled the handle over and stooped to his son.
+
+"You can lie down when you turn her over to the mate," he said
+grimly. "Till then you'll stand up and show yourself, if your feet
+perish under you. I'll hold you."
+
+They were drawing round a tier of big vessels, going cautiously, not
+with the speed and knife-edge accuracy with which the old man had
+been wont to take her out, but groping safely through the craft about
+them. Arthur swayed and smiled and slackened, his head nodding as
+though in response to the friends on the dock who never abated their
+farewell clamor. The grip on his arm held him up, for he had weakened
+on his drink, as excitable men will.
+
+"Starboard!" ordered the pilot, and Captain Price half turned to pass
+the word. It was then that it happened. The drunken man pivoted where
+he stood and stumbled sideways, catching himself on the telegraph.
+The old man snatched him upright, for his knees were melting under
+him, and from below there came the clang of the bell. Arthur Price
+had pulled the handle over. Forthwith she quickened; she drove ahead
+for the stern of the ship she was being conned to clear; her prow was
+aimed at it, like a descending sword.
+
+"Hard a-port!" roared the pilot, jumping back to bellow to the wheel.
+"Spin her round, sheer over with her!" The wheel engine set up its
+clatter; with a savage wrench the old Captain shook his son to
+steadiness for an instant and lifted his eyes to see the Burdock
+charging to disaster.
+
+"Stop her!" cried the pilot. "Full astern!" Captain Price tightened
+his grip on his son's arm and reached for the handle with his other
+hand.
+
+Clang! clang! went the deep-toned bell below, and swoosh went the
+reversed propeller. The pilot's orders rattled like hail on a roof;
+she came round, and old Captain Price had a glimpse of a knot of
+frantic men at the taff-rail of the ship they barely cleared. Then,
+slowly they wedged her into the lock-mouth and hauled in.
+
+"Close thing!" said the pilot, panting a little.
+
+The old man let his son lean against the rail, and turned-to him.
+
+"P'raps not," he said. "Pilot, what did I ring them engines with?"
+The other stared. "I had a hold of him with this hand of mine; I
+reached for the handle with my--other--hand."
+
+"But," the pilot was perplexed--"but, Captain, you ain't got no other
+hand.."
+
+"No!" Captain Price shook his head. "But I rang the engines with it
+all the same. I rang the Burdock out of a bump with it; and--" he
+hesitated a moment and nodded his head sideways at the limp, lolling
+body of his son--"I rang his honor off the mud with it."
+
+The pilot cleared his brow; he simply gave the matter up. "And what
+about now?" he asked. "He ain't fit to be trusted with her?"
+
+"No," said Captain Price firmly. "He's going to retire from the sea;
+and till he does I'll sail as a passenger. And then I'll take the
+Burdock again. She don't care about that old spar of mine, the
+Burdock don't."
+
+
+
+XV
+
+THE WIDOWER
+
+In the evening they sat together, John Morrison and his mother, with
+the curtains drawn, and the clear fire glowing on the red bricks of
+the fireplace. The old lady, after her custom, was prone to silence.
+Since Hilda's death she had said little, sparing the occasion the
+triviality of useless words. That afternoon she had ridden with her
+son to the funeral, holding him up with her strength, fortifying him
+with her courage. But now that his wife was gone for ever, and the
+pleasant house was overcast with its haunting emptiness, it seemed
+that her power was gone.
+
+She had a piece of knitting to occupy her fingers, and over it she
+watched her son. He had been stunned when Hilda died, bewildered and
+uncomprehending; for no young man fully grasps the meaning of death.
+Now, as he sat, he seemed to be convincing himself. He had brought
+down his dead wife's work-basket and a drawer from her dressing-
+table. He sat in a low arm-chair, and had them beside him on the
+floor, and fingered deliberately among their contents for definite
+things, little landmarks of lost days that stabbed him with their
+associations. But what stirred his mother was not the sorrow of his
+loss so much as the uncertainty of parted lips and knitted brows that
+softened his thin, aquiline face, so strongly in contrast with his
+habit of brisk assurance.
+
+She spoke at last. "John, dear, you should go to bed now," she said.
+"It's past eleven, my boy; and I'm afraid you'll wear yourself out."
+
+He had a small silver-backed hand-mirror in his hands. He had been
+staring into the glass of it for ten minutes. He looked up now and
+shook his head. "I couldn't," he answered. "I couldn't, mother.
+There's no sleep in me."
+
+"But John----" began the mother again.
+
+"Please don't bother about me," he interrupted. "I couldn't sleep,
+really. And I couldn't bear to lie awake--alone." His eyes dropped
+toward the mirror again. "You know," he said, "it's only now, mother,
+that I realize that Hilda is really gone. I can't explain it very
+well, but before this evening it seemed--well, it seemed idiotic to
+think that my wife was dead. It felt impossible, somehow."
+
+"My poor boy!" said the old lady gently.
+
+"And even now," he went on, with bowed head, "I have fancies."
+
+"What fancies, John?" asked Mrs. Morrison.
+
+He laid the mirror down on the floor, and glanced over his shoulder
+toward the door of the room before he answered. Then he looked at his
+mother squarely.
+
+"I'll tell you," he said. And then he sat for some seconds in
+thought. "You know, mother, how close together we lived--Hilda and I.
+I suppose it's the same with all husbands and wives who are young and
+love one another. We had a world of familiar little household jokes
+and tricks of our own. There was one in particular. Whenever I was
+in here, and Hilda came in, she'd tiptoe through the door and try to
+get close and surprise me before I heard her. Does it sound foolish
+to you, mother? If it does, you don't understand at all."
+
+Mrs. Morrison picked up her knitting and worked a dozen quick
+stitches. "No; it doesn't seem foolish. I understand it all, my
+dear," she replied.
+
+He nodded. "Well," he said, "that's what my fancies are about. There
+are moments when I seem to hear something; and I feel quite sure--
+absolutely, utterly certain--that if I turn round I shall see her
+there, coming up behind me, all sparkling with laughter. But I've
+looked, and----"
+
+He dropped his head into his hands, and his shoulders heaved.
+
+Mrs. Morrison laid her knitting down and went over to him. "John,
+dear," she said, laying a hand lightly on his arm--"John, dear, this
+won't do at all. I want to help you, my boy. You know that, don't
+you? But I can't let you comfort yourself with these dreams, dear.
+They're bad--very bad for you. It's not that way that we shall see
+our Hilda again, John."
+
+"Oh, I know," he answered. "I know, mother." He sat up again, and put
+her hand away with a warm pressure of thanks.
+
+The old lady went back to her chair with a grave face, and for a
+while they sat again in silence. The fire was burning now a little
+dull, and about the room were sober shadows. John fell again to
+handling trifles from the work-basket and the drawer, lifting each to
+look at it carefully, and laying it aside again.
+
+"Are you looking for something, dear?" asked Mrs. Morrison at last.
+
+"Eh? Oh no," he answered absently. "But I was thinking."
+
+"Don't think too much, my boy," she said.
+
+"It was nothing much," he said, frowning. "But, mother, what horrible
+things these are!" He pointed with a sharp thrust of his finger to
+the trinkets on the floor. "She used them, mother. She had them
+about her every day. She handled them, and used them for her
+momentary purposes and necessities and there is no trace of her on
+any one of them."
+
+"John, John!" Mrs. Morrison appealed to him with an outstretched
+hand, for he spoke with a kind of passion that hurt her like an
+impropriety.
+
+He went on as though he had heard nothing. "Look at this thing," he
+said. "It was the silver mirror. She used it a dozen times a day. Her
+face was bright in it a thousand times--when she put up her hair, and
+when she let it down in a cascade over her shoulders. She was
+beautiful, and it was the companion of her beauty. And--yet it's
+empty now, as empty as her bed, as empty as all this stricken house.
+As though she had never lived, mother--as though there had been no
+Hilda."
+
+He dropped the mirror beside him, and rose from his chair, to pace up
+and down the room with quick, nervous strides.
+
+Mrs. Morrison rose too. "John, dear," she said, stopping him with
+outstretched hands, "don't talk like that. We know better--you and I.
+The mirror can tell us nothing, nor any of those things you are
+torturing yourself with. She gave them nothing, my boy; it was for us
+she lived, not them. Our love, dear, and the pain of our loss, and
+all our memories; these are Hilda's witnesses. They remain to prove
+her to us and fulfil the beauty and goodness of her life. Don't speak
+as though Hilda had been wasted on us, dear."
+
+"Wasted!" He started at the word. "Wasted! Oh God!"
+
+She took him by the arm and drew him back to his chair by the fire.
+But even as he sat down he glanced again over his shoulder at the
+door. To all her entreaties to go to bed he remained obdurate.
+
+"Do you know that I am very tired, John?" she said at last.
+
+He looked up quickly. "Then you go to bed, mother," he urged. "I--I
+wish you would. I'd like to be alone for a little.
+
+"If I leave you, will you promise you will not stay long?" she asked.
+
+"Yes," he said. "All right. I'll promise, mother."
+
+When she had left him he stood for a while in the centre of the
+floor, hands in pockets, his head drooping, in deep thought. He was a
+spare man, lean and tall, bred to composure, and serenity. Thus when
+there came a tragedy to overwhelm his training, he had few reserves;
+his propriety of demeanor lost, his soul was raw. His very attitude,
+as he stood, was eloquent of pain and helplessness. He had been
+married a little more than a year, and it seemed now as though that
+year stood vignetted on a broad border of sadness.
+
+The fire rustled and clicked as the coals spent themselves. He had a
+feeling of chill and faintness, and he went back slowly to his
+chair. Seated there again, the silver toys were all round him,
+gleaming slyly at him with a sort of suggestiveness. He packed up the
+mirror, once more, and looked into the oval glass at it. He was
+feeling a little dizzy, these last days had burdened him heavily, and
+the afternoon had been a long stress of emotion. Thus, for a space of
+minutes he sat, the glass before him, his eyes half closed.
+
+It seemed to him that he must have dozed, for he sat up with the
+start of a man who arrests himself on the brink of sleep. The mirror
+was in his hand. He stared at it with wide eyes, thrusting it at
+arm's length before him. For in it he saw--not a flicker of the
+firelight swaying on the wall, but a face that moved across from the
+door--the face of his dead wife.
+
+He saw it cross the field of the little mirror, reflected in profile,
+and pass beyond it. He sat yet a moment, enthralled in senseless
+amazement, then let the glass fall from his outstretched hand, and
+turned where he sat.
+
+He sprang to his feet. "Hilda!" he cried. "Hilda!"
+
+Her face welcomed him with a little smile, sober and kind.
+
+"Yes, dear," she said gently; "it is Hilda!"
+
+He did not go to her, but stood staring, and groping for the key to
+his understanding. She was about five paces from him--Hilda
+undeniably, to the soft contour of her cheek and the shaded gold of
+her hair.
+
+He found words: "Are you here with me, Hilda? Or have I gone mad? Or
+perhaps I've been mad all along!"
+
+She smiled again, and through the fog of his bewilderment and wonder
+he recognized the smile.
+
+"Not mad, dear," she was saying. "Not mad. But it is very strange and
+wonderful at first, isn't it?"
+
+"Strange and wonderful?" He put an uncertain hand to his face and
+passed it over his eyes. "Something has happened to me," he said. "To
+my eyes, I think. Things look strange. And--and there is Hilda!" He
+paused. "I'd been longing for Hilda."
+
+She came a step nearer to him then. "I know," she murmured softly. "I
+know, dear. But that is past now."
+
+There was an infinite tenderness in her tone, the tenderness of a
+mother who uplifts her child through a season of pain. He felt it,
+and it seemed to help him to clear away some of the dimness that
+besieged his senses.
+
+"Then----" he began, but stayed himself. "You know," he said
+haltingly, "you died. Hilda died. I saw it: my arms were round her."
+
+"Yes, dear," she answered. "Hilda died. But don't you understand?"
+
+"No," he replied, but none the less understanding was dawning upon
+him. "How--how did you come here?" he asked.
+
+"I came by the same way as you, John, dear," she said. As again she
+seemed to take one step toward him. "There is no other way."
+
+"No other way!" He repeated the words twice.
+
+"Hilda," he said, and went to her.
+
+"Yes, dear?"
+
+He took her hand; it lay close and familiarly in his palm.
+
+"Everything seems to be far away from me--except you," he said. "I
+see you; I hear you speak. What does it mean, my darling?"
+
+Her eyes were full of love. "Don't you know yet, John?" she asked.
+
+"No," he answered slowly; "unless--unless----Hilda, am I dead?"
+
+She did not speak to answer him, but nodded thrice, very slowly.
+
+They found him in his chair before the ashes of the fire. At his feet
+the mirror was broken across, where it had dropped from his hand.
+And the lips were parted in a sort of uncertainty.
+
+
+
+
+Cahill & Co., Ltd., London, Dublin and Drogheda.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SECOND CLASS PASSENGER***
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