Stories by American Authors, Volume 5
by
Various
Part 1 out of 3
Produced by Stan Goodman and PG Distributed Proofreaders
[Illustration: H. James]
Stories by American Authors V.
A LIGHT MAN.
By Henry James.
YATIL.
By F.D. Millet.
THE END OF NEW YORK.
By Park Benjamin.
WHY THOMAS WAS DISCHARGED.
By George Arnold.
THE TACHYPOMP.
By E.P. Mitchell.
1884
A LIGHT MAN.
BY Henry James.[1]
"And I--what I seem to my friend, you see--
What I soon shall seem to his love, you guess.
What I seem to myself, do you ask of me?
No hero, I confess."
_A Light Woman.--Browning's Men and Women_.
April 4, 1857.--I have changed my sky without changing my mind. I resume
these old notes in a new world. I hardly know of what use they are; but
it's easier to stick to the habit than to drop it. I have been at home
now a week--at home, forsooth! And yet, after all, it is home. I am
dejected, I am bored, I am blue. How can a man be more at home than
that? Nevertheless, I am the citizen of a great country, and for that
matter, of a great city. I walked to-day some ten miles or so along
Broadway, and on the whole I don't blush for my native land. We are a
capable race and a good-looking withal; and I don't see why we
shouldn't prosper as well as another. This, by the way, ought to be a
very encouraging reflection. A capable fellow and a good-looking withal;
I don't see why he shouldn't die a millionaire. At all events he must do
something. When a man has, at thirty-two, a net income of considerably
less than nothing, he can scarcely hope to overtake a fortune before he
himself is overtaken by age and philosophy--two deplorable obstructions.
I am afraid that one of them has already planted itself in my path. What
am I? What do I wish? Whither do I tend? What do I believe? I am
constantly beset by these impertinent whisperings. Formerly it was
enough that I was Maximus Austin; that I was endowed with a cheerful
mind and a good digestion; that one day or another, when I had come to
the end, I should return to America and begin at the beginning; that,
meanwhile, existence was sweet in--in the Rue Tronchet. But now! Has the
sweetness really passed out of life? Have I eaten the plums and left
nothing but the bread and milk and corn-starch, or whatever the horrible
concoction is?--I had it to-day for dinner. Pleasure, at least, I
imagine--pleasure pure and simple, pleasure crude, brutal and
vulgar--this poor flimsy delusion has lost all its charm. I shall never
again care for certain things--and indeed for certain persons. Of such
things, of such persons, I firmly maintain, however, that I was never an
enthusiastic votary. It would be more to my credit, I suppose, if I had
been. More would be forgiven me if I had loved a little more, if into
all my folly and egotism I had put a little more _naivete_ and
sincerity. Well, I did the best I could, I was at once too bad and too
good for it all. At present, it's far enough off; I have put the sea
between us; I am stranded. I sit high and dry, scanning the horizon for
a friendly sail, or waiting for a high tide to set me afloat. The wave
of pleasure has deposited me here in the sand. Shall I owe my rescue to
the wave of pain? At moments I feel a kind of longing to expiate my
stupid little sins. I see, as through a glass, darkly, the beauty of
labor and love. Decidedly, I am willing to work. It's written.
7th.--My sail is in sight; it's at hand; I have all but boarded the
vessel. I received this morning a letter from the best man in the world.
Here it is:
DEAR MAX: I see this very moment, in an old newspaper which had
already passed through my hands without yielding up its most
precious item, the announcement of your arrival in New York. To
think of your having perhaps missed the welcome you had a right to
expect from me! Here it is, dear Max--as cordial as you please.
When I say I have just read of your arrival, I mean that twenty
minutes have elapsed by the clock. These have been spent in
conversation with my excellent friend Mr. Sloane--we having taken
the liberty of making you the topic. I haven't time to say more
about Frederick Sloane than that he is very anxious to make your
acquaintance, and that, it your time is not otherwise engaged, he
would like you very much to spend a month with him. He is an
excellent host, or I shouldn't be here myself. It appears that he
knew your mother very intimately, and he has a taste for visiting
the amenities of the parents upon the children; the original ground
of my own connection with him was that he had been a particular
friend of my father. You may have heard your mother speak of him.
He is a very strange old fellow, but you will like him. Whether or
no you come for his sake, come for mine.
Yours always, THEODORE LISLE.
Theodore's letter is of course very kind, but it's remarkably obscure.
My mother may have had the highest regard for Mr. Sloane, but she never
mentioned his name in my hearing. Who is he, what is he, and what is the
nature of his relations with Theodore? I shall learn betimes. I have
written to Theodore that I gladly accept (I believe I suppressed the
"gladly" though) his friend's invitation, and that I shall immediately
present myself. What can I do that is better? Speaking sordidly, I shall
obtain food and lodging while I look about me. I shall have a base of
operations. D., it appears, is a long day's journey, but enchanting when
you reach it. I am curious to see an enchanting American town. And to
stay a month! Mr. Frederick Sloane, whoever you are, _vous faites bien
les choses_, and the little that I know of you is very much to your
credit. You enjoyed the friendship of my dear mother, you possess the
esteem of the virtuous Theodore, you commend yourself to my own
affection. At this rate, I shall not grudge it.
D--, 14th.--I have been here since Thursday evening--three days. As we
rattled up to the tavern in the village, I perceived from the top of the
coach, in the twilight, Theodore beneath the porch, scanning the
vehicle, with all his amiable disposition in his eyes. He has grown
older, of course, in these five years, but less so than I had expected.
His is one of those smooth, unwrinkled souls that keep their bodies fair
and fresh. As tall as ever, moreover, and as lean and clean. How short
and fat and dark and debauched he makes one feel! By nothing he says or
means, of course, but merely by his old unconscious purity and
simplicity--that slender straightness which makes him remind you of the
spire of an English abbey. He greeted me with smiles, and stares, and
alarming blushes. He assures me that he never would have known me, and
that five years have altered me--_sehr_! I asked him if it were for the
better? He looked at me hard for a moment, with his eyes of blue, and
then, for an answer, he blushed again.
On my arrival we agreed to walk over from the village. He dismissed his
wagon with my luggage, and we went arm-in-arm through the dusk. The town
is seated at the foot of certain mountains, whose names I have yet to
learn, and at the head of a big sheet of water, which, as yet, too, I
know only as "the Lake." The road hitherward soon leaves the village and
wanders in rural loveliness by the margin of this expanse. Sometimes the
water is hidden by clumps of trees, behind which we heard it lapping and
gurgling in the darkness: sometimes it stretches out from your feet in
shining vagueness, as if it were tired of making, all day, a million
little eyes at the great stupid hills. The walk from the tavern takes
some half an hour, and in this interval Theodore made his position a
little more clear. Mr. Sloane is a rich old widower; his age is
seventy-two, and as his health is thoroughly broken, is practically even
greater; and his fortune--Theodore, characteristically, doesn't know
anything definite about that. It's probably about a million. He has
lived much in Europe, and in the "great world;" he has had adventures
and passions and all that sort of thing; and now, in the evening of his
days, like an old French diplomatist, he takes it into his head to write
his memoirs. To this end he has lured poor Theodore to his gruesome
side, to mend his pens for him. He has been a great scribbler, says
Theodore, all his days, and he proposes to incorporate a large amount of
promiscuous literary matter into these _souvenirs intimes_. Theodore's
principal function seems to be to get him to leave things out. In fact,
the poor youth seems troubled in conscience. His patron's lucubrations
have taken the turn of many other memoirs, and have ceased to address
themselves _virginibus puerisque_. On the whole, he declares they are a
very odd mixture--a medley of gold and tinsel, of bad taste and good
sense. I can readily understand it. The old man bores me, puzzles me,
and amuses me.
He was in waiting to receive me. We found him in his library--which, by
the way, is simply the most delightful apartment that I ever smoked a
cigar in--a room arranged for a lifetime. At one end stands a great
fireplace, with a florid, fantastic mantelpiece in carved white
marble--an importation, of course, and, as one may say, an
interpolation; the groundwork of the house, the "fixtures," being
throughout plain, solid and domestic. Over the mantel-shelf is a large
landscape, a fine Gainsborough, full of the complicated harmonies of an
English summer. Beneath it stands a row of bronzes of the Renaissance
and potteries of the Orient. Facing the door, as you enter, is an
immense window set in a recess, with cushioned seats and large clear
panes, stationed as it were at the very apex of the lake (which forms an
almost perfect oval) and commanding a view of its whole extent. At the
other end, opposite the fireplace, the wall is studded, from floor to
ceiling, with choice foreign paintings, placed in relief against the
orthodox crimson screen. Elsewhere the walls are covered with books,
arranged neither in formal regularity nor quite helter-skelter, but in a
sort of genial incongruity, which tells that sooner or later each volume
feels sure of leaving the ranks and returning into different company.
Mr. Sloane makes use of his books. His two passions, according to
Theodore, are reading and talking; but to talk he must have a book in
his hand. The charm of the room lies in the absence of certain pedantic
tones--the browns, blacks and grays--which distinguish most libraries.
The apartment is of the feminine gender. There are half a dozen light
colors scattered about--pink in the carpet, tender blue in the curtains,
yellow in the chairs. The result is a general look of brightness and
lightness; it expresses even a certain cynicism. You perceive the place
to be the home, not of a man of learning, but of a man of fancy.
He rose from his chair--the man of fancy, to greet me--the man of fact.
As I looked at him, in the lamplight, it seemed to me, for the first
five minutes, that I had seldom seen an uglier little person. It took me
five minutes to get the point of view; then I began to admire. He is
diminutive, or at best of my own moderate stature, and bent and
contracted with his seventy years; lean and delicate, moreover, and very
highly finished. He is curiously pale, with a kind of opaque yellow
pallor. Literally, it's a magnificent yellow. His skin is of just the
hue and apparent texture of some old crumpled Oriental scroll. I know a
dozen painters who would give more than they have to arrive at the exact
"tone" of his thick-veined, bloodless hands, his polished ivory
knuckles. His eyes are circled with red, but in the battered little
setting of their orbits they have the lustre of old sapphires. His nose,
owing to the falling away of other portions of his face, has assumed a
grotesque, unnatural prominence; it describes an immense arch, gleaming
like a piece of parchment stretched on ivory. He has, apparently, all
his teeth, but has muffled his cranium in a dead black wig; of course
he's clean shaven. In his dress he has a muffled, wadded look and an
apparent aversion to linen, inasmuch as none is visible on his person.
He seems neat enough, but not fastidious. At first, as I say, I fancied
him monstrously ugly; but on further acquaintance I perceived that what
I had taken for ugliness is nothing but the incomplete remains of
remarkable good looks. The line of his features is pure; his nose,
_caeteris paribus_, would be extremely handsome; his eyes are the oldest
eyes I ever saw, and yet they are wonderfully living. He has something
remarkably insinuating.
He offered his two hands, as Theodore introduced me; I gave him my own,
and he stood smiling at me like some quaint old image in ivory and
ebony, scanning my face with a curiosity which he took no pains to
conceal. "God bless me," he said, at last, "how much you look like your
father!" I sat down, and for half an hour we talked of many things--of
my journey, of my impressions of America, of my reminiscences of Europe,
and, by implication, of my prospects. His voice is weak and cracked, but
he makes it express everything. Mr. Sloane is not yet in his dotage--oh
no! He nevertheless makes himself out a poor creature. In reply to an
inquiry of mine about his health, he favored me with a long list of his
infirmities (some of which are very trying, certainly) and assured me
that he was quite finished.
"I live out of mere curiosity," he said.
"I have heard of people dying from the same motive."
He looked at me a moment, as if to ascertain whether I were laughing at
him. And then, after a pause, "Perhaps you don't know that I disbelieve
in a future life," he remarked, blandly.
At these words Theodore got up and walked to the fire.
"Well, we shan't quarrel about that," said I. Theodore turned round,
staring.
"Do you mean that you agree with me?" the old man asked.
"I certainly haven't come here to talk theology! Don't ask me to
disbelieve, and I'll never ask you to believe."
"Come," cried Mr. Sloane, rubbing his hands, "you'll not persuade me you
are a Christian--like your friend Theodore there."
"Like Theodore--assuredly not." And then, somehow, I don't know why, at
the thought of Theodore's Christianity I burst into a laugh. "Excuse me,
my dear fellow," I said, "you know, for the last ten years I have lived
in pagan lands."
"What do you call pagan?" asked Theodore, smiling.
I saw the old man, with his hands locked, eying me shrewdly, and waiting
for my answer. I hesitated a moment, and then I said, "Everything that
makes life tolerable!"
Hereupon Mr. Sloane began to laugh till he coughed. Verily, I thought,
if he lives for curiosity, he's easily satisfied.
We went into dinner, and this repast showed me that some of his
curiosity is culinary. I observed, by the way, that for a victim of
neuralgia, dyspepsia, and a thousand other ills, Mr. Sloane plies a most
inconsequential knife and fork. Sauces and spices and condiments seem to
be the chief of his diet. After dinner he dismissed us, in consideration
of my natural desire to see my friend in private. Theodore has capital
quarters--a downy bedroom and a snug little _salon_. We talked till near
midnight--of ourselves, of each other, and of the author of the memoirs,
down stairs. That is, I spoke of myself, and Theodore listened; and then
Theodore descanted upon Mr. Sloane, and I listened. His commerce with
the old man has sharpened his wits. Sloane has taught him to observe and
judge, and Theodore turns round, observes, judges--him! He has become
quite the critic and analyst. There is something very pleasant in the
discriminations of a conscientious mind, in which criticism is tempered
by an angelic charity. Only, it may easily end by acting on one's
nerves. At midnight we repaired to the library, to take leave of our
host till the morrow--an attention which, under all circumstances, he
rigidly exacts. As I gave him my hand he held it again and looked at me
as he had done on my arrival. "Bless my soul," he said, at last, "how
much you look like your mother!"
To-night, at the end of my third day, I begin to feel decidedly at
home. The fact is, I am remarkably comfortable. The house is pervaded by
an indefinable, irresistible love of luxury and privacy. Mr. Frederick
Sloane is a horribly corrupt old mortal. Already in his relaxing
presence I have become heartily reconciled to doing nothing. But with
Theodore on one side--standing there like a tall interrogation-point--I
honestly believe I can defy Mr. Sloane on the other. The former asked me
this morning, with visible solicitude, in allusion to the bit of
dialogue I have quoted above on matters of faith, whether I am really a
materialist--whether I don't believe something? I told him I would
believe anything he liked. He looked at me a while, in friendly sadness.
"I hardly know whether you are not worse than Mr. Sloane," he said.
But Theodore is, after all, in duty bound to give a man a long rope in
these matters. His own rope is one of the longest. He reads Voltaire
with Mr. Sloane, and Emerson in his own room. He is the stronger man of
the two; he has the larger stomach. Mr. Sloane delights, of course, in
Voltaire, but he can't read a line of Emerson. Theodore delights in
Emerson, and enjoys Voltaire, though he thinks him superficial. It
appears that since we parted in Paris, five years ago, his conscience
has dwelt in many lands. _C'est tout une histoire_--which he tells very
prettily. He left college determined to enter the church, and came
abroad with his mind full of theology and Tuebingen. He appears to have
studied, not wisely but too well. Instead of faith full-armed and
serene, there sprang from the labor of his brain a myriad sickly
questions, piping for answers. He went for a winter to Italy, where, I
take it, he was not quite so much afflicted as he ought to have been at
the sight of the beautiful spiritual repose that he had missed. It was
after this that we spent those three months together in Brittany--the
best-spent months of my long residence in Europe. Theodore inoculated
me, I think, with some of his seriousness, and I just touched him with
my profanity; and we agreed together that there were a few good things
left--health, friendship, a summer sky, and the lovely byways of an old
French province. He came home, searched the Scriptures once more,
accepted a "call," and made an attempt to respond to it. But the inner
voice failed him. His outlook was cheerless enough. During his absence
his married sister, the elder one, had taken the other to live with her,
relieving Theodore of the charge of contribution to her support. But
suddenly, behold the husband, the brother-in-law, dies, leaving a mere
figment of property; and the two ladies, with their two little girls,
are afloat in the wide world. Theodore finds himself at twenty-six
without an income, without a profession, and with a family of four
females to support. Well, in his quiet way he draws on his courage. The
history of the two years that passed before he came to Mr. Sloane is
really absolutely edifying. He rescued his sisters and nieces from the
deep waters, placed them high and dry, established them somewhere in
decent gentility--and then found at last that his strength had left
him--had dropped dead like an over-ridden horse. In short, he had worked
himself to the bone. It was now his sisters' turn. They nursed him with
all the added tenderness of gratitude for the past and terror of the
future, and brought him safely through a grievous malady. Meanwhile Mr.
Sloane, having decided to treat himself to a private secretary and
suffered dreadful mischance in three successive experiments, had heard
of Theodore's situation and his merits; had furthermore recognized in
him the son of an early and intimate friend, and had finally offered him
the very comfortable position he now occupies. There is a decided
incongruity between Theodore as a man--as Theodore, in fine--and the
dear fellow as the intellectual agent, confidant, complaisant, purveyor,
pander--what you will--of a battered old cynic and dilettante--a
worldling if there ever was one. There seems at first sight a perfect
want of agreement between his character and his function. One is gold
and the other brass, or something very like it. But on reflection I can
enter into it--his having, under the circumstances, accepted Mr.
Sloane's offer and been content to do his duties. _Ce que c'est de
nous!_ Theodore's contentment in such a case is a theme for the
moralist--a better moralist than I. The best and purest mortals are an
odd mixture, and in none of us does honesty exist on its own terms.
Ideally, Theodore hasn't the smallest business _dans cette galere_. It
offends my sense of propriety to find him here. I feel that I ought to
notify him as a friend that he has knocked at the wrong door, and that
he had better retreat before he is brought to the blush. However, I
suppose he might as well be here as reading Emerson "evenings" in the
back parlor, to those two very plain sisters--judging from their
photographs. Practically it hurts no one not to be too much of a prig.
Poor Theodore was weak, depressed, out of work. Mr. Sloane offers him a
lodging and a salary in return for--after all, merely a little tact. All
he has to do is to read to the old man, lay down the book a while, with
his finger in the place, and let him talk; take it up again, read
another dozen pages and submit to another commentary. Then to write a
dozen pages under his dictation--to suggest a word, polish off a period,
or help him out with a complicated idea or a half-remembered fact. This
is all, I say; and yet this is much. Theodore's apparent success proves
it to be much, as well as the old man's satisfaction. It is a part; he
has to simulate. He has to "make believe" a little--a good deal; he has
to put his pride in his pocket and send his conscience to the wash. He
has to be accommodating--to listen and pretend and flatter; and he does
it as well as many a worse man--does it far better than I. I might bully
the old man, but I don't think I could humor him. After all, however,
it is not a matter of comparative merit. In every son of woman there are
two men--the practical man and the dreamer. We live for our dreams--but,
meanwhile, we live by our wits. When the dreamer is a poet, the other
fellow is an artist. Theodore, at bottom, is only a man of taste. If he
were not destined to become a high priest among moralists, he might be a
prince among connoisseurs. He plays his part, therefore, artistically,
with spirit, with originality, with all his native refinement. How can
Mr. Sloane fail to believe that he possesses a paragon? He is no such
fool as not to appreciate a _nature distinguee_ when it comes in his
way. He confidentially assured me this morning that Theodore has the
most charming mind in the world, but that it's a pity he's so simple as
not to suspect it. If he only doesn't ruin him with his flattery!
19th.--I am certainly fortunate among men. This morning when,
tentatively, I spoke of going away, Mr. Sloane rose from his seat in
horror and declared that for the present I must regard his house as my
home. "Come, come," he said, "when you leave this place where do you
intend to go?" Where, indeed? I graciously allowed Mr. Sloane to have
the best of the argument. Theodore assures me that he appreciates these
and other affabilities, and that I have made what he calls a "conquest"
of his venerable heart. Poor, battered, bamboozled old organ! he would
have one believe that it has a most tragical record of capture and
recapture. At all events, it appears that I am master of the citadel.
For the present I have no wish to evacuate. I feel, nevertheless, in
some far-off corner of my soul, that I ought to shoulder my victorious
banner and advance to more fruitful triumphs.
I blush for my beastly laziness. It isn't that I am willing to stay here
a month, but that I am willing to stay here six. Such is the charming,
disgusting truth. Have I really outlived the age of energy? Have I
survived my ambition, my integrity, my self-respect? Verily, I ought to
have survived the habit of asking myself silly questions. I made up my
mind long ago to go in for nothing but present success; and I don't care
for that sufficiently to secure it at the cost of temporary suffering. I
have a passion for nothing--not even for life. I know very well the
appearance I make in the world. I pass for a clever, accomplished,
capable, good-natured fellow, who can do anything if he would only try.
I am supposed to be rather cultivated, to have latent talents. When I
was younger I used to find a certain entertainment in the spectacle of
human affairs. I liked to see men and women hurrying on each other's
heels across the stage. But I am sick and tired of them now; not that I
am a misanthrope, God forbid! They are not worth hating. I never knew
but one creature who was, and her I went and loved. To be consistent, I
ought to have hated my mother, and now I ought to detest Theodore. But I
don't--truly, on the whole, I don't--any more than I dote on him. I
firmly believe that it makes a difference to him, his idea that I _am_
fond of him. He believes in that, as he believes in all the rest of
it--in my culture, my latent talents, my underlying "earnestness," my
sense of beauty and love of truth. Oh, for a _man_ among them all--a
fellow with eyes in his head--eyes that would know me for what I am and
let me see they had guessed it. Possibly such a fellow as that might get
a "rise" out of me.
In the name of bread and butter, what am I to do? (I was obliged this
morning to borrow fifty dollars from Theodore, who remembered gleefully
that he has been owing me a trifling sum for the past four years, and in
fact has preserved a note to this effect.) Within the last week I have
hatched a desperate plan: I have made up my mind to take a wife--a rich
one, _bien entendu_. Why not accept the goods of the gods? It is not my
fault, after all, if I pass for a good fellow. Why not admit that
practically, mechanically--as I may say--maritally, I _may_ be a good
fellow? I warrant myself kind. I should never beat my wife; I don't
think I should even contradict her. Assume that her fortune has the
proper number of zeros and that she herself is one of them, and I can
even imagine her adoring me. I really think this is my only way.
Curiously, as I look back upon my brief career, it all seems to tend to
this consummation. It has its graceful curves and crooks, indeed, and
here and there a passionate tangent; but on the whole, if I were to
unfold it here _a la_ Hogarth, what better legend could I scrawl beneath
the series of pictures than So-and-So's Progress to a Mercenary
Marriage?
Coming events do what we all know with their shadows. My noble fate is,
perhaps, not far off. I already feel throughout my person a magnificent
languor--as from the possession of many dollars. Or is it simply my
sense of well-being in this perfectly appointed house? Is it simply the
contact of the highest civilization I have known? At all events, the
place is of velvet, and my only complaint of Mr. Sloane is that, instead
of an old widower, he's not an old widow (or a young maid), so that I
might marry him, survive him, and dwell forever in this rich and mellow
home. As I write here, at my bedroom table, I have only to stretch out
an arm and raise the window-curtain to see the thick-planted garden
budding and breathing and growing in the silvery silence. Far above in
the liquid darkness rolls the brilliant ball of the moon; beneath, in
its light, lies the lake, in murmuring, troubled sleep; round about, the
mountains, looking strange and blanched, seem to bare their heads and
undrape their shoulders. So much for midnight. To-morrow the scene will
be lovely with the beauty of day. Under one aspect or another I have it
always before me. At the end of the garden is moored a boat, in which
Theodore and I have indulged in an immense deal of irregular
navigation. What lovely landward coves and bays--what alder-smothered
creeks--what lily-sheeted pools--what sheer steep hillsides, making the
water dark and quiet where they hang. I confess that in these excursions
Theodore looks after the boat and I after the scenery. Mr. Sloane avoids
the water--on account of the dampness, he says; because he's afraid of
drowning, I suspect.
22d.--Theodore is right. The _bonhomme_ has taken me into his favor. I
protest I don't see how he was to escape it. _Je l'ai bien soigne_, as
they say in Paris. I don't blush for it. In one coin or another I must
repay his hospitality--which is certainly very liberal. Theodore dots
his _i_'s, crosses his _t_'s, verifies his quotations; while I set traps
for that famous "curiosity." This speaks vastly well for my powers. He
pretends to be surprised at nothing, and to possess in perfection--poor,
pitiable old fop--the art of keeping his countenance; but repeatedly, I
know, I have made him stare. As for his corruption, which I spoke of
above, it's a very pretty piece of wickedness, but it strikes me as a
purely intellectual matter. I imagine him never to have had any real
senses. He may have been unclean; morally, he's not very tidy now; but
he never can have been what the French call a _viveur_. He's too
delicate, he's of a feminine turn; and what woman was ever a _viveur_?
He likes to sit in his chair and read scandal, talk scandal, make
scandal, so far as he may without catching a cold or bringing on a
headache. I already feel as if I had known him a lifetime. I read him
as clearly as if I had. I know the type to which he belongs; I have
encountered, first and last, a good many specimens of it. He's neither
more nor less than a gossip--a gossip flanked by a coxcomb and an
egotist. He's shallow, vain, cold, superstitious, timid, pretentious,
capricious: a pretty list of foibles! And yet, for all this, he has his
good points. His caprices are sometimes generous, and his rebellion
against the ugliness of life frequently makes him do kind things. His
memory (for trifles) is remarkable, and (where his own performances are
not involved) his taste is excellent. He has no courage for evil more
than for good. He is the victim, however, of more illusions with regard
to himself than I ever knew a single brain to shelter. At the age of
twenty, poor, ignorant and remarkably handsome, he married a woman of
immense wealth, many years his senior. At the end of three years she
very considerately took herself off and left him to the enjoyment of his
freedom and riches. If he had remained poor he might from time to time
have rubbed at random against the truth, and would be able to recognize
the touch of it. But he wraps himself in his money as in a wadded
dressing-gown, and goes trundling through life on his little gold
wheels. The greater part of his career, from the time of his marriage
till about ten years ago, was spent in Europe, which, superficially, he
knows very well. He has lived in fifty places, known thousands of
people, and spent a very large fortune. At one time, I believe, he
spent considerably too much, trembled for an instant on the verge of a
pecuniary crash, but recovered himself, and found himself more
frightened than hurt, yet audibly recommended to lower his pitch. He
passed five years in a species of penitent seclusion on the lake of--I
forget what (his genius seems to be partial to lakes), and laid the
basis of his present magnificent taste for literature. I can't call him
anything but magnificent in this respect, so long as he must have his
punctuation done by a _nature distinguee_. At the close of this period,
by economy, he had made up his losses. His turning the screw during
those relatively impecunious years represents, I am pretty sure, the
only act of resolution of his life. It was rendered possible by his
morbid, his actually pusillanimous dread of poverty; he doesn't feel
safe without half a million between him and starvation. Meanwhile he had
turned from a young man into an old man; his health was broken, his
spirit was jaded, and I imagine, to do him justice, that he began to
feel certain natural, filial longings for this dear American mother of
us all. They say the most hopeless truants and triflers have come to it.
He came to it, at all events; he packed up his books and pictures and
gimcracks, and bade farewell to Europe. This house which he now occupies
belonged to his wife's estate. She had, for sentimental reasons of her
own, commended it to his particular care. On his return he came to see
it, liked it, turned a parcel of carpenters and upholsterers into it,
and by inhabiting it for nine years transformed it into the perfect
dwelling which I find it. Here he has spent all his time, with the
exception of a usual winter's visit to New York--a practice recently
discontinued, owing to the increase of his ailments and the projection
of these famous memoirs. His life has finally come to be passed in
comparative solitude. He tells of various distant relatives, as well as
intimate friends of both sexes, who used formerly to be entertained at
his cost; but with each of them, in the course of time, he seems to have
succeeded in quarrelling. Throughout life, evidently, he has had capital
fingers for plucking off parasites. Rich, lonely, and vain, he must have
been fair game for the race of social sycophants and cormorants; and
it's much to the credit of his sharpness and that instinct of
self-defence which nature bestows even on the weak, that he has not been
despoiled and _exploite_. Apparently they have all been bunglers. I
maintain that something is to be done with him still. But one must work
in obedience to certain definite laws. Doctor Jones, his physician,
tells me that in point of fact he has had for the past ten years an
unbroken series of favorites, _proteges_, heirs presumptive; but that
each, in turn, by some fatally false movement, has spilled his pottage.
The doctor declares, moreover, that they were mostly very common people.
Gradually the old man seems to have developed a preference for two or
three strictly exquisite intimates, over a throng of your vulgar
pensioners. His tardy literary schemes, too--fruit of his all but
sapless senility--have absorbed more and more of his time and attention.
The end of it all is, therefore, that Theodore and I have him quite to
ourselves, and that it behooves us to hold our porringers straight.
Poor, pretentious old simpleton! It's not his fault, after all, that he
fancies himself a great little man. How are you to judge of the stature
of mankind when men have forever addressed you on their knees? Peace and
joy to his innocent fatuity! He believes himself the most rational of
men; in fact, he's the most superstitious. He fancies himself a
philosopher, an inquirer, a discoverer. He has not yet discovered that
he is a humbug, that Theodore is a prig, and that I am an adventurer. He
prides himself on his good manners, his urbanity, his knowing a rule of
conduct for every occasion in life. My private impression is that his
skinny old bosom contains unsuspected treasures of impertinence. He
takes his stand on his speculative audacity--his direct, undaunted gaze
at the universe; in truth, his mind is haunted by a hundred dingy
old-world spectres and theological phantasms. He imagines himself one of
the most solid of men; he is essentially one of the hollowest. He thinks
himself ardent, impulsive, passionate, magnanimous--capable of boundless
enthusiasm for an idea or a sentiment. It is clear to me that on no
occasion of disinterested action can he ever have done anything in
time. He believes, finally, that he has drained the cup of life to the
dregs; that he has known, in its bitterest intensity, every emotion of
which the human spirit is capable; that he has loved, struggled,
suffered. Mere vanity, all of it. He has never loved any one but
himself; he has never suffered from anything but an undigested supper or
an exploded pretension; he has never touched with the end of his lips
the vulgar bowl from which the mass of mankind quaffs its floods of joy
and sorrow. Well, the long and short of it all is, that I honestly pity
him. He may have given sly knocks in his life, but he can't hurt any one
now. I pity his ignorance, his weakness, his pusillanimity. He has
tasted the real sweetness of life no more than its bitterness; he has
never dreamed, nor experimented, nor dared; he has never known any but
mercenary affection; neither men nor women have risked aught for
_him_--for his good spirits, his good looks, his empty pockets. How I
should like to give him, for once, a real sensation!
26th.--I took a row this morning with Theodore a couple of miles along
the lake, to a point where we went ashore and lounged away an hour in
the sunshine, which is still very comfortable. Poor Theodore seems
troubled about many things. For one, he is troubled about me: he is
actually more anxious about my future than I myself; he thinks better of
me than I do of myself; he is so deucedly conscientious, so scrupulous,
so averse to giving offence or to _brusquer_ any situation before it
has played itself out, that he shrinks from betraying his apprehensions
or asking direct questions. But I know that he would like very much to
extract from me some intimation that there is something under the sun I
should like to do. I catch myself in the act of taking--heaven forgive
me!--a half-malignant joy in confounding his expectations--leading his
generous sympathies off the scent by giving him momentary glimpses of my
latent wickedness. But in Theodore I have so firm a friend that I shall
have a considerable job if I ever find it needful to make him change his
mind about me. He admires me--that's absolute; he takes my low moral
tone for an eccentricity of genius, and it only imparts an extra
flavor--a _haut gout_--to the charm of my intercourse. Nevertheless, I
can see that he is disappointed. I have even less to show, after all
these years, than he had hoped. Heaven help us! little enough it must
strike him as being. What a contradiction there is in our being friends
at all! I believe we shall end with hating each other. It's all very
well now--our agreeing to differ, for we haven't opposed interests. But
if we should _really_ clash, the situation would be warm! I wonder, as
it is, that Theodore keeps his patience with me. His education since we
parted should tend logically to make him despise me. He has studied,
thought, suffered, loved--loved those very plain sisters and nieces.
Poor me! how should I be virtuous? I have no sisters, plain or
pretty!--nothing to love, work for, live for. My dear Theodore, if you
are going one of these days to despise me and drop me--in the name of
comfort, come to the point at once, and make an end of our state of
tension.
He is troubled, too, about Mr. Sloane. His attitude toward the
_bonhomme_ quite passes my comprehension. It's the queerest jumble of
contraries. He penetrates him, disapproves of him--yet respects and
admires him. It all comes of the poor boy's shrinking New England
conscience. He's afraid to give his perceptions a fair chance, lest,
forsooth, they should look over his neighbor's wall. He'll not
understand that he may as well sacrifice the old reprobate for a lamb as
for a sheep. His view of the gentleman, therefore, is a perfect tissue
of cobwebs--a jumble of half-way sorrows, and wire-drawn charities, and
hair-breadth 'scapes from utter damnation, and sudden platitudes of
generosity--fit, all of it, to make an angel curse!
"The man's a perfect egotist and fool," say I, "but I like him." Now
Theodore likes him--or rather wants to like him; but he can't reconcile
it to his self-respect--fastidious deity!--to like a fool. Why the deuce
can't he leave it alone altogether? It's a purely practical matter.
He ought to do the duties of his place all the better for having his
head clear of officious sentiment. I don't believe in disinterested
service; and Theodore is too desperately bent on preserving his
disinterestedness. With me it's different. I am perfectly free to love
the _bonhomme_--for a fool. I'm neither a scribe nor a Pharisee; I am
simply a student of the art of life.
And then, Theodore is troubled about his sisters. He's afraid he's not
doing his duty by them. He thinks he ought to be with them--to be
getting a larger salary--to be teaching his nieces. I am not versed in
such questions. Perhaps he ought.
May 3d.--This morning Theodore sent me word that he was ill and unable
to get up; upon which I immediately went in to see him. He had caught
cold, was sick and a little feverish. I urged him to make no attempt to
leave his room, and assured him that I would do what I could to
reconcile Mr. Sloane to his absence. This I found an easy matter. I read
to him for a couple of hours, wrote four letters--one in French--and
then talked for a while--a good while. I have done more talking, by the
way, in the last fortnight, than in any previous twelve months--much of
it, too, none of the wisest, nor, I may add, of the most superstitiously
veracious. In a little discussion, two or three days ago, with Theodore,
I came to the point and let him know that in gossiping with Mr. Sloane I
made no scruple, for our common satisfaction, of "coloring" more or
less. My confession gave him "that turn," as Mrs. Gamp would say, that
his present illness may be the result of it. Nevertheless, poor dear
fellow, I trust he will be on his legs to-morrow. This afternoon,
somehow, I found myself really in the humor of talking. There was
something propitious in the circumstances; a hard, cold rain without, a
wood-fire in the library, the _bonhomme_ puffing cigarettes in his
arm-chair, beside him a portfolio of newly imported prints and
photographs, and--Theodore tucked safely away in bed. Finally, when I
brought our _tete-a-tete_ to a close (taking good care not to overstay
my welcome) Mr. Sloane seized me by both hands and honored me with one
of his venerable grins. "Max," he said--"you must let me call you
Max--you are the most delightful man I ever knew."
Verily, there's some virtue left in me yet. I believe I almost blushed.
"Why didn't I know you ten years ago?" the old man went on. "There are
ten years lost."
"Ten years ago I was not worth your knowing," Max remarked.
"But I did know you!" cried the _bonhomme_. "I knew you in knowing your
mother."
Ah! my mother again. When the old man begins that chapter I feel like
telling him to blow out his candle and go to bed.
"At all events," he continued, "we must make the most of the years that
remain. I am a rotten old carcass, but I have no intention of dying. You
won't get tired of me and want to go away?"
"I am devoted to you, sir," I said. "But I must be looking for some
occupation, you know."
"Occupation? bother! I'll give you occupation. I'll give you wages."
"I am afraid that you will want to give me the wages without the work."
And then I declared that I must go up and look at poor Theodore.
The _bonhomme_ still kept my hands. "I wish very much that I could get
you to be as fond of me as you are of poor Theodore."
"Ah, don't talk about fondness, Mr. Sloane. I don't deal much in that
article."
"Don't you like my secretary?"
"Not as he deserves."
"Nor as he likes you, perhaps?"
"He likes me more than I deserve."
"Well, Max," my host pursued, "we can be good friends all the same. We
don't need a hocus-pocus of false sentiment. We are _men_, aren't
we?--men of sublime good sense." And just here, as the old man looked at
me, the pressure of his hands deepened to a convulsive grasp, and the
bloodless mask of his countenance was suddenly distorted with a nameless
fear. "Ah, my dear young man!" he cried, "come and be a son to me--the
son of my age and desolation! For God's sake, don't leave me to pine and
die alone!"
I was greatly surprised--and I may add I was moved. Is it true, then,
that this dilapidated organism contains such measureless depths of
horror and longing? He has evidently a mortal fear of death. I assured
him on my honor that he may henceforth call upon me for any service.
8th.--Theodore's little turn proved more serious than I expected. He has
been confined to his room till to-day. This evening he came down to the
library in his dressing-gown. Decidedly, Mr. Sloane is an eccentric, but
hardly, as Theodore thinks, a "charming" one. There is something
extremely curious in his humors and fancies--the incongruous fits and
starts, as it were, of his taste. For some reason, best known to
himself, he took it into his head to regard it as a want of delicacy, of
respect, of _savoir-vivre_--of heaven knows what--that poor Theodore,
who is still weak and languid, should enter the sacred precinct of his
study in the vulgar drapery of a dressing-gown. The sovereign trouble
with the _bonhomme_ is an absolute lack of the instinct of justice. He's
of the real feminine turn--I believe I have written it before--without
the redeeming fidelity of the sex. I honestly believe that I might come
into his study in my night-shirt and he would smile at it as a
picturesque _deshabille_. But for poor Theodore to-night there was
nothing but scowls and frowns, and barely a civil inquiry about his
health. But poor Theodore is not such a fool, either; he will not die of
a snubbing; I never said he was a weakling. Once he fairly saw from what
quarter the wind blew, he bore the master's brutality with the utmost
coolness and gallantry. Can it be that Mr. Sloane really wishes to drop
him? The delicious old brute! He understands favor and friendship only
as a selfish rapture--a reaction, an infatuation, an act of aggressive,
exclusive patronage. It's not a bestowal, with him, but a transfer, and
half his pleasure in causing his sun to shine is that--being wofully
near its setting--it will produce certain long fantastic shadows. He
wants to cast my shadow, I suppose, over Theodore; but fortunately I am
not altogether an opaque body. Since Theodore was taken ill he has been
into his room but once, and has sent him none but a dry little message
or two. I, too, have been much less attentive than I should have wished
to be; but my time has not been my own. It has been, every moment of it,
at the disposal of my host. He actually runs after me; he devours me; he
makes a fool of himself, and is trying hard to make one of me. I find
that he will bear--that, in fact, he actually enjoys--a sort of
unexpected contradiction. He likes anything that will tickle his fancy,
give an unusual tone to our relations, remind him of certain historical
characters whom he thinks he resembles. I have stepped into Theodore's
shoes, and done--with what I feel in my bones to be very inferior skill
and taste--all the reading, writing, condensing, transcribing and
advising that he has been accustomed to do. I have driven with the
_bonhomme_; played chess and cribbage with him; beaten him, bullied him,
contradicted him; forced him into going out on the water under my
charge. Who shall say, after this, that I haven't done my best to
discourage his advances, put myself in a bad light? As yet, my efforts
are vain; in fact they quite turn to my own confusion. Mr. Sloane is so
thankful at having escaped from the lake with his life that he looks
upon me as a preserver and protector. Confound it all; it's a bore! But
one thing is certain, it can't last forever. Admit that he _has_ cast
Theodore out and taken me in. He will speedily discover that he has made
a pretty mess of it, and that he had much better have left well enough
alone. He likes my reading and writing now, but in a month he will begin
to hate them. He will miss Theodore's better temper and better
knowledge--his healthy impersonal judgment. What an advantage that
well-regulated youth has over me, after all! I am for days, he is for
years; he for the long run, I for the short. I, perhaps, am intended for
success, but he is adapted for happiness. He has in his heart a tiny
sacred particle which leavens his whole being and keeps it pure and
sound--a faculty of admiration and respect. For him human nature is
still a wonder and a mystery; it bears a divine stamp--Mr. Sloane's
tawdry composition as well as the rest.
13th.--I have refused, of course, to supplant Theodore further, in the
exercise of his functions, and he has resumed his morning labors with
Mr. Sloane. I, on my side, have spent these morning hours in scouring
the country on that capital black mare, the use of which is one of the
perquisites of Theodore's place. The days have been magnificent--the
heat of the sun tempered by a murmuring, wandering wind, the whole north
a mighty ecstasy of sound and verdure, the sky a far-away vault of
bended blue. Not far from the mill at M., the other end of the lake, I
met, for the third time, that very pretty young girl who reminds me so
forcibly of A.L. She makes so lavish a use of her eyes that I ventured
to stop and bid her good-morning. She seems nothing loath to an
acquaintance. She's a pure barbarian in speech, but her eyes are quite
articulate. These rides do me good; I was growing too pensive.
There is something the matter with Theodore; his illness seems to have
left him strangely affected. He has fits of silent stiffness,
alternating with spasms of extravagant gayety. He avoids me at times for
hours together, and then he comes and looks at me with an inscrutable
smile, as if he were on the verge of a burst of confidence--which again
is swallowed up in the immensity of his dumbness. Is he hatching some
astounding benefit to his species? Is he working to bring about my
removal to a higher sphere of action? _Nous verrons bien_.
18th.--Theodore threatens departure. He received this morning a letter
from one of his sisters--the young widow--announcing her engagement to a
clergyman whose acquaintance she has recently made, and intimating her
expectation of an immediate union with the gentleman--a ceremony which
would require Theodore's attendance. Theodore, in high good humor, read
the letter aloud at breakfast--and, to tell the truth, it was a charming
epistle. He then spoke of his having to go on to the wedding, a
proposition to which Mr. Sloane graciously assented--much more than
assented. "I shall be sorry to lose you, after so happy a connection,"
said the old man. Theodore turned pale, stared a moment, and then,
recovering his color and his composure, declared that he should have no
objection in life to coming back.
"Bless your soul!" cried the _bonhomme_, "you don't mean to say you will
leave your other sister all alone?"
To which Theodore replied that he would arrange for her and her little
girl to live with the married pair. "It's the only proper thing," he
remarked, as if it were quite settled. Has it come to this, then, that
Mr. Sloane actually wants to turn him out of the house? The shameless
old villain! He keeps smiling an uncanny smile, which means, as I read
it, that if the poor young man once departs he shall never return on the
old footing--for all his impudence!
20th.--This morning, at breakfast, we had a terrific scene. A letter
arrives for Theodore; he opens it, turns white and red, frowns, falters,
and then informs us that the clever widow has broken off her engagement.
No wedding, therefore, and no departure for Theodore. The _bonhomme_ was
furious. In his fury he took the liberty of calling poor Mrs. Parker
(the sister) a very uncivil name. Theodore rebuked him, with perfect
good taste, and kept his temper.
"If my opinions don't suit you, Mr. Lisle," the old man broke out, "and
my mode of expressing them displeases you, you know you can easily
protect yourself."
"My dear Mr. Sloane," said Theodore, "your opinions, as a general thing,
interest me deeply, and have never ceased to act beneficially upon the
formation of my own. Your mode of expressing them is always brilliant,
and I wouldn't for the world, after all our pleasant intercourse,
separate from you in bitterness. Only, I repeat, your qualification of
my sister's conduct is perfectly uncalled for. If you knew her, you
would be the first to admit it."
There was something in Theodore's look and manner, as he said these
words, which puzzled me all the morning. After dinner, finding myself
alone with him, I told him I was glad he was not obliged to go away. He
looked at me with the mysterious smile I have mentioned, thanked me, and
fell into meditation. As this bescribbled chronicle is the record of my
follies as well of my _hauts faits_, I needn't hesitate to say that for
a moment I was a good deal vexed. What business has this angel of candor
to deal in signs and portents, to look unutterable things? What right
has he to do so with me especially, in whom he has always professed an
absolute confidence? Just as I was about to cry out, "Come, my dear
fellow, this affectation of mystery has lasted quite long enough--favor
me at last with the result of your cogitations!"--as I was on the point
of thus expressing my impatience of his ominous behavior, the oracle at
last addressed itself to utterance.
"You see, my dear Max," he said, "I can't, in justice to myself, go away
in obedience to the sort of notice that was served on me this morning.
What do you think of my actual footing here?"
Theodore's actual footing here seems to me impossible; of course I said
so.
"No, I assure you it's not," he answered. "I should, on the contrary,
feel very uncomfortable to think that I had come away, except by my own
choice. You see a man can't afford to cheapen himself. What are you
laughing at?"
"I am laughing, in the first place, my dear fellow, to hear on your lips
the language of cold calculation; and in the second place, at your odd
notion of the process by which a man keeps himself up in the market."
"I assure you it's the correct notion. I came here as a particular favor
to Mr. Sloane; it was expressly understood so. The sort of work was
odious to me; I had regularly to break myself in. I had to trample on my
convictions, preferences, prejudices. I don't take such things easily; I
take them hard; and when once the effort has been made, I can't consent
to have it wasted. If Mr. Sloane needed me then, he needs me still. I am
ignorant of any change having taken place in his intentions, or in his
means of satisfying them. I came, not to amuse him, but to do a certain
work; I hope to remain until the work is completed. To go away sooner
is to make a confession of incapacity which, I protest, costs me too
much. I am too conceited, if you like."
Theodore spoke these words with a face which I have never seen him
wear--a fixed, mechanical smile; a hard, dry glitter in his eyes; a
harsh, strident tone in his voice--in his whole physiognomy a gleam, as
it were, a note of defiance. Now I confess that for defiance I have
never been conscious of an especial relish. When I am defied I am
beastly. "My dear man," I replied, "your sentiments do you prodigious
credit. Your very ingenious theory of your present situation, as well as
your extremely pronounced sense of your personal value, are calculated
to insure you a degree of practical success which can very well dispense
with the furtherance of my poor good wishes." Oh, the grimness of his
visage as he listened to this, and, I suppose I may add, the grimness of
mine! But I have ceased to be puzzled. Theodore's conduct for the past
ten days is suddenly illumined with a backward, lurid ray. I will note
down here a few plain truths which it behooves me to take to
heart--commit to memory. Theodore is jealous of Maximus Austin. Theodore
hates the said Maximus. Theodore has been seeking for the past three
months to see his name written, last but not least, in a certain
testamentary document: "Finally, I bequeath to my dear young friend,
Theodore Lisle, in return for invaluable services and unfailing
devotion, the bulk of my property, real and personal, consisting of--"
(hereupon follows an exhaustive enumeration of houses, lands, public
securities, books, pictures, horses, and dogs). It is for this that he
has toiled, and watched, and prayed; submitted to intellectual weariness
and spiritual torture; accommodated himself to levity, blasphemy, and
insult. For this he sets his teeth and tightens his grasp; for this
he'll fight. Dear me, it's an immense weight off one's mind! There are
nothing, then, but vulgar, common laws; no sublime exceptions, no
transcendent anomalies. Theodore's a knave, a hypo--nay, nay; stay,
irreverent hand!--Theodore's a _man_! Well, that's all I want. _He_
wants fight--he shall have it. Have I got, at last, my simple, natural
emotion?
21st.--I have lost no time. This evening, late, after I had heard
Theodore go to his room (I had left the library early, on the pretext of
having letters to write), I repaired to Mr. Sloane, who had not yet gone
to bed, and informed him I should be obliged to leave him at once, and
pickup a subsistence somehow in New York. He felt the blow; it brought
him straight down on his marrow-bones. He went through the whole gamut
of his arts and graces; he blustered, whimpered, entreated, flattered.
He tried to drag in Theodore's name; but this I, of course, prevented.
But, finally, why, _why_, WHY, after all my promises of fidelity, must I
thus cruelly desert him? Then came my trump card: I have spent my last
penny; while I stay, I'm a beggar. The remainder of this extraordinary
scene I have no power to describe: how the _bonhomme_, touched,
inflamed, inspired, by the thought of my destitution, and at the same
time annoyed, perplexed, bewildered at having to commit himself to doing
anything for me, worked himself into a nervous frenzy which deprived him
of a clear sense of the value of his words and his actions; how I,
prompted by the irresistible spirit of my desire to leap astride of his
weakness and ride it hard to the goal of my dreams, cunningly contrived
to keep his spirit at the fever-point, so that strength and reason and
resistance should burn themselves out. I shall probably never again have
such a sensation as I enjoyed to-night--actually feel a heated human
heart throbbing and turning and struggling in my grasp; know its pants,
its spasms, its convulsions, and its final senseless quiescence. At
half-past one o'clock Mr. Sloane got out of his chair, went to his
secretary, opened a private drawer, and took out a folded paper. "This
is my will," he said, "made some seven weeks ago. If you will stay with
me I will destroy it."
"Really, Mr. Sloane," I said, "if you think my purpose is to exert any
pressure upon your testamentary inclinations--"
"I will tear it in pieces," he cried; "I will burn it up! I shall be as
sick as a dog to-morrow; but I will do it. A-a-h!"
He clapped his hand to his side, as if in sudden, overwhelming pain,
and sank back fainting into his chair. A single glance assured me that
he was unconscious. I possessed myself of the paper, opened it, and
perceived that he had left everything to his saintly secretary. For an
instant a savage, puerile feeling of hate popped up in my bosom, and I
came within a hair's-breadth of obeying my foremost impulse--that of
stuffing the document into the fire. Fortunately, my reason overtook my
passion, though for a moment it was an even race. I put the paper back
into the bureau, closed it, and rang the bell for Robert (the old man's
servant). Before he came I stood watching the poor, pale remnant of
mortality before me, and wondering whether those feeble life-gasps were
numbered. He was as white as a sheet, grimacing with pain--horribly
ugly. Suddenly he opened his eyes; they met my own; I fell on my knees
and took his hands. They closed on mine with a grasp strangely akin to
the rigidity of death. Nevertheless, since then he has revived, and has
relapsed again into a comparatively healthy sleep. Robert seems to know
how to deal with him.
22d.--Mr. Sloane is seriously ill--out of his mind and unconscious of
people's identity. The doctor has been here, off and on, all day, but
this evening reports improvement. I have kept out of the old man's room,
and confined myself to my own, reflecting largely upon the chance of his
immediate death. Does Theodore know of the will? Would it occur to him
to divide the property? Would it occur to me, in his place? We met at
dinner, and talked in a grave, desultory, friendly fashion. After all,
he's an excellent fellow. I don't hate him. I don't even dislike him. He
jars on me, _il m'agace_; but that's no reason why I should do him an
evil turn. Nor shall I. The property is a fixed idea, that's all. I
shall get it if I can. We are fairly matched. Before heaven, no, we are
not fairly matched! Theodore has a conscience.
23d.--I am restless and nervous--and for good reasons. Scribbling here
keeps me quiet. This morning Mr. Sloane is better; feeble and uncertain
in mind, but unmistakably on the rise. I may confess now that I feel
relieved of a horrid burden. Last night I hardly slept a wink. I lay
awake listening to the pendulum of my clock. It seemed to say, "He
lives--he dies." I fully expected to hear it stop suddenly at _dies_.
But it kept going all the morning, and to a decidedly more lively tune.
In the afternoon the old man sent for me. I found him in his great
muffled bed, with his face the color of damp chalk, and his eyes glowing
faintly, like torches half stamped out. I was forcibly struck with the
utter loneliness of his lot. For all human attendance, my villainous
self grinning at his bedside and old Robert without, listening,
doubtless, at the keyhole. The _bonhomme_ stared at me stupidly; then
seemed to know me, and greeted me with a sickly smile. It was some
moments before he was able to speak. At last he faintly bade me to
descend into the library, open the secret drawer of the secretary (which
he contrived to direct me how to do), possess myself of his will, and
burn it up. He appears to have forgotten his having taken it out night
before last. I told him that I had an insurmountable aversion to any
personal dealings with the document. He smiled, patted the back of my
hand, and requested me, in that case, to get it, at least, and bring it
to him. I couldn't deny him that favor? No, I couldn't, indeed. I went
down to the library, therefore, and on entering the room found Theodore
standing by the fireplace with a bundle of papers. The secretary was
open. I stood still, looking from the violated cabinet to the documents
in his hand. Among them I recognized, by its shape and size, the paper
of which I had intended to possess myself. Without delay I walked
straight up to him. He looked surprised, but not confused. "I am afraid
I shall have to trouble you to surrender one of those papers," I said.
"Surrender, Maximus? To anything of your own you are perfectly welcome.
I didn't know that you made use of Mr. Sloane's secretary. I was looking
for some pages of notes which I have made myself and in which I conceive
I have a property."
"This is what I want, Theodore," I said; and I drew the will, unfolded,
from between his hands. As I did so his eyes fell upon the
superscription, "Last Will and Testament, March. F.S." He flushed an
extraordinary crimson. Our eyes met. Somehow--I don't know how or why,
or for that matter why not--I burst into a violent peal of laughter.
Theodore stood staring, with two hot, bitter tears in his eyes.
"Of course you think I came to ferret out that thing," he said.
I shrugged my shoulders--those of my body only. I confess, morally, I
was on my knees with contrition, but there was a fascination in it--a
fatality. I remembered that in the hurry of my movements the other
evening I had slipped the will simply into one of the outer drawers of
the cabinet, among Theodore's own papers. "Mr. Sloane sent me for it," I
remarked.
"Very good; I am glad to hear he's well enough to think of such things."
"He means to destroy it."
"I hope, then, he has another made."
"Mentally, I suppose he has."
"Unfortunately, his weakness isn't mental--or exclusively so."
"Oh, he will live to make a dozen more," I said. "Do you know the
purport of this one?"
Theodore's color, by this time, had died away into plain white. He shook
his head. The doggedness of the movement provoked me, and I wished to
arouse his curiosity. "I have his commission to destroy it."
Theodore smiled very grandly. "It's not a task I envy you," he said.
"I should think not--especially if you knew the import of the will." He
stood with folded arms, regarding me with his cold, detached eyes. I
couldn't stand it. "Come, it's your property! You are sole legatee. I
give it up to you." And I thrust the paper into his hand.
He received it mechanically; but after a pause, bethinking himself, he
unfolded it and cast his eyes over the contents. Then he slowly smoothed
it together and held it a moment with a tremulous hand. "You say that
Mr. Sloane directed you to destroy it?" he finally inquired.
"I say so."
"And that you know the contents?"
"Exactly."
"And that you were about to do what he asked you?"
"On the contrary, I declined."
Theodore fixed his eyes for a moment on the superscription and then
raised them again to my face. "Thank you, Max," he said. "You have left
me a real satisfaction." He tore the sheet across and threw the bits
into the fire. We stood watching them burn. "Now he can make another,"
said Theodore.
"Twenty others," I replied.
"No," said Theodore, "you will take care of that."
"You are very bitter," I said, sharply enough.
"No, I am perfectly indifferent. Farewell." And he put out his hand.
"Are you going away?"
"Of course I am. Good-by."
"Good-by, then. But isn't your departure rather sudden?"
"I ought to have gone three weeks ago--three weeks ago." I had taken his
hand, he pulled it away; his voice was trembling--there were tears in
it.
"Is _that_ indifference?" I asked.
"It's something you will never know!" he cried. "It's shame! I am not
sorry you should see what I feel. It will suggest to you, perhaps, that
my heart has never been in this filthy contest. Let me assure you, at
any rate, that it hasn't; that it has had nothing but scorn for the base
perversion of my pride and my ambition. I could easily shed tears of joy
at their return--the return of the prodigals! Tears of sorrow--sorrow--"
He was unable to go on. He sank into a chair, covering his face with his
hands.
"For God's sake, stick to the joy!" I exclaimed.
He rose to his feet again. "Well," he said, "it was for your sake that I
parted with my self-respect; with your assistance I recover it."
"How for my sake?"
"For whom but you would I have gone as far as I did? For what other
purpose than that of keeping our friendship whole would I have borne you
company into this narrow pass? A man whom I cared for less I would long
since have parted with. You were needed--you and something you have
about you that always takes me so--to bring me to this. You ennobled,
exalted, enchanted the struggle. I _did_ value my prospect of coming
into Mr. Sloane's property. I valued it for my poor sister's sake as
well as for my own, so long as it was the natural reward of
conscientious service, and not the prize of hypocrisy and cunning. With
another man than you I never would have contested such a prize. But you
fascinated me, even as my rival. You played with me, deceived me,
betrayed me. I held my ground, hoping you would see that what you were
doing was not fair. But if you have seen it, it has made no difference
with you. For Mr. Sloane, from the moment that, under your magical
influence, he revealed his nasty little nature, I had nothing but
contempt."
"And for me now?"
"Don't ask me. I don't trust myself."
"Hate, I suppose."
"Is that the best you can imagine? Farewell."
"Is it a serious farewell--farewell forever?"
"How can there be any other?"
"I am sorry this should be your point of view. It's characteristic. All
the more reason then that I should say a word in self-defence. You
accuse me of having 'played with you, deceived you, betrayed you.' It
seems to me that you are quite beside the mark. You say you were such a
friend of mine; if so, you ought to be one still. It was not to my fine
sentiments you attached yourself, for I never had any or pretended to
any. In anything I have done recently, therefore, there has been no
inconsistency. I never pretended to take one's friendships so seriously.
I don't understand the word in the sense you attach to it. I don't
understand the feeling of affection between men. To me it means quite
another thing. You give it a meaning of your own; you enjoy the profit
of your invention; it's no more than just that you should pay the
penalty. Only it seems to me rather hard that _I_ should pay it."
Theodore remained silent, but he looked quite sick. "Is it still a
'serious farewell'?" I went on. "It seems a pity. After this clearing
up, it appears to me that I shall be on better terms with you. No man
can have a deeper appreciation of your excellent parts, a keener
enjoyment of your society. I should very much regret the loss of it."
"Have we, then, all this while understood each other so little?" said
Theodore.
"Don't say 'we' and 'each other.' I think I have understood you."
"Very likely. It's not for my having kept anything back."
"Well, I do you justice. To me you have always been over-generous. Try
now and be just."
Still he stood silent, with his cold, hard frown, it was plain that, if
he was to come back to me, it would be from the other world--if there be
one! What he was going to answer I know not. The door opened, and Robert
appeared, pale, trembling, his eyes starting in his head.
"I verily believe that poor Mr. Sloane is dead in his bed!" he cried.
There was a moment's perfect silence. "Amen," said I. "Yes, old boy, try
and be just." Mr. Sloane had quietly died in my absence.
24th.--Theodore went up to town this morning, having shaken hands with
me in silence before he started. Doctor Jones, and Brooks the attorney,
have been very officious, and, by their advice, I have telegraphed to a
certain Miss Meredith, a maiden lady, by their account the nearest of
kin; or, in other words, simply a discarded niece of the defunct. She
telegraphs back that she will arrive in person for the funeral. I shall
remain till she comes. I have lost a fortune, but have I irretrievably
lost a friend? I am sure I can't say. Yes, I shall wait for Miss
Meredith.
[1] _The Galaxy, July_, 1869.
YATIL.[2]
BY F.D. MILLET.
While in Paris, in the spring of 1878, I witnessed an accident in a
circus, which for a time made me renounce all athletic exhibitions. Six
horses were stationed side by side in the ring before a spring-board,
and the whole company of gymnasts ran and turned somersaults from the
spring over the horses, alighting on a mattress spread on the ground.
The agility of one finely developed young fellow excited great applause
every time he made the leap. He would shoot forward in the air like a
javelin, and in his flight curl up and turn over directly above the
mattress, dropping on his feet as lightly as a bird. This play went on
for some minutes, and at each round of applause the favorite seemed to
execute his leap with increased skill and grace. Finally, he was seen to
gather himself a little farther in the background than usual, evidently
to prepare for a better start. The instant his turn came he shot out of
the crowd of attendants and launched himself into the air with
tremendous momentum. Almost quicker than the eye could follow him, he
had turned and was dropping to the ground, his arms held above his head,
which hung slightly forward, and his legs stretched to meet the shock of
the elastic mattress.
But this time he had jumped an inch too far. His feet struck just on the
edge of the mattress, and he was thrown violently forward, doubling up
on the ground with a dull thump, which was heard all over the immense
auditorium. He remained a second or two motionless, then sprang to his
feet, and as quickly sank to the ground again. The ring attendants and
two or three gymnasts rushed to him and took him up. The clown, in
evening dress, personating the mock ringmaster, the conventional spotted
merryman, and a stalwart gymnast in buff fleshings, bore the drooping
form of the favorite in their arms, and, followed by the bystanders, who
offered ineffectual assistance, carried the wounded man across the ring
and through the draped arch under the music gallery. Under any other
circumstances the group would have excited a laugh, for the audience was
in that condition of almost hysterical excitement when only the least
effort of a clown is necessary to cause a wave of laughter. But the
moment the wounded man was lifted from the ground, the whole strong
light from the brilliant chandelier struck full on his right leg
dangling from the knee, with the foot hanging limp and turned inward. A
deep murmur of sympathy swelled and rolled around the crowded
amphitheatre.
I left the circus, and hundreds of others did the same. A dozen of us
called at the box-office to ask about the victim of the accident. He was
advertised as "The Great Polish Champion Bareback Rider and Aerial
Gymnast." We found that he was really a native of the East, whether Pole
or Russian the ticket-seller did not know. His real name was Nagy, and
he had been engaged only recently, having returned a few months before
from a professional tour in North America. He was supposed to have
money, for he commanded a good salary, and was sober and faithful. The
accident, it was said, would probably disable him for a few weeks only,
and then he would resume his engagement.
The next day an account of the accident was in the newspapers, and
twenty-four hours later all Paris had forgotten about it. For some
reason or other I frequently thought of the injured man, and had an
occasional impulse to go and inquire after him; but I never went. It
seemed to me that I had seen his face before, when or where I tried in
vain to recall. It was not an impressive face, but I could call it up at
any moment as distinct to my mind's eye as a photograph to my physical
vision. Whenever I thought of him, a dim, very dim memory would flit
through my mind, which I could never seize and fix.
Two months later I was walking up the Rue Richelieu, when some one,
close beside me and a little behind, asked me in Hungarian if I was a
Magyar. I turned quickly to answer no, surprised at being thus
addressed, and beheld the disabled circus-rider. It flashed upon me, the
moment I saw his face, that I had seen him in Turin three years before.
My surprise at the sudden identification of the gymnast was construed by
him into vexation at being spoken to by a stranger. He began to
apologize for stopping me, and was moving away, when I asked him about
the accident, remarking that I was present on the evening of his
misfortune. My next question, put in order to detain him, was:
"Why did you ask if I was a Hungarian?"
"Because you wear a Hungarian hat," was the reply.
This was true. I happened to have on a little round, soft felt hat,
which I had purchased in Buda Pesth.
"Well, but what if I were Hungarian?"
"Nothing; only I was lonely and wanted company, and you looked as if I
had seen you somewhere before. You are an artist, are you not?"
I said I was, and asked him how he guessed it.
"I can't explain how it is," he said, "but I always know them. Are you
doing anything?"
"No," I replied.
"Perhaps I may get you something to do," he suggested. "What is your
line?"
"Figures," I answered, unable to divine how he thought he could assist
me.
This reply seemed to puzzle him a little, and he continued:
"Do you ride or do the trapeze?"
It was my turn now to look dazed, and it might easily have been
gathered, from my expression, that I was not flattered at being taken
for a saw-dust artist. However, as he apparently did not notice any
change in my face, I explained without further remark that I was a
painter. The explanation did not seem to disturb him any; he was
evidently acquainted with the profession, and looked upon it as kindred
to his own.
As we walked along through the great open quadrangle of the Tuileries, I
had an opportunity of studying his general appearance. He was neatly
dressed, and, though pale, was apparently in good health.
Notwithstanding a painful limp his carriage was erect, and his movements
denoted great physical strength. On the bridge over the Seine we paused
for a moment and leaned on the parapet, and thus, for the first time,
stood nearly face to face. He looked earnestly at me a moment without
speaking, and then, shouting "_Torino_" so loudly and earnestly as to
attract the gaze of all the passers, he seized me by the hand, and
continued to shake it and repeat "_Torino_" over and over again.
This word cleared up my befogged memory like magic. There was no longer
any mystery about the man before me. The impulse which now drew us
together was only the unconscious souvenir of an earlier acquaintance,
for we had met before. With the vision of the Italian city, which came
distinctly to my eyes at that moment, came also to my mind every detail
of an incident which had long since passed entirely from my thoughts.
It was during the Turin carnival, in 1875, that I happened to stop over
for a day and a night, on my way down from Paris to Venice. The festival
was uncommonly dreary, for the air was chilly, the sky gray and gloomy,
and there was a total lack of spontaneity in the popular spirit. The
gaudy decorations of the Piazza and the Corso, the numberless shows and
booths, and the brilliant costumes, could not make it appear a season of
jollity and mirth, for the note of discord in the hearts of the people
was much too strong. King Carnival's might was on the wane, and neither
the influence of the Church nor the encouragement of the State was able
to bolster up the superannuated monarch. There was no communicativeness
in even what little fun there was going, and the day was a long and a
tedious one. As I was strolling around in rather a melancholy mood, just
at the close of the cavalcade, I saw the flaming posters of a circus,
and knew my day was saved, for I had a great fondness for the ring. An
hour later I was seated in the cheerfully lighted amphitheatre, and the
old performance of the trained stallions was going on as I had seen it a
hundred times before. At last the "Celebrated Cypriot Brothers, the
Universal Bareback Riders," came tripping gracefully into the ring,
sprang lightly upon two black horses, and were off around the narrow
circle like the wind, now together, now apart, performing all the while
marvellous feats of strength and skill. It required no study to discover
that there was no relationship between the two performers. One of them
was a heavy, gross, dark-skinned man, with the careless bearing of one
who had been nursed in a circus. The other was a small, fair-haired
youth of nineteen or twenty years, with limbs as straight and as shapely
as the Narcissus, and with joints like the wiry-limbed fauns. His head
was round, and his face of a type which would never be called beautiful,
although it was strong in feature and attractive in expression. His eyes
were small and twinkling, his eyebrows heavy, and his mouth had a
peculiar proud curl in it which was never disturbed by the tame smile of
the practised performer. He was evidently a foreigner. He went through
his acts with wonderful readiness and with slight effort, and, while
apparently enjoying keenly the exhilaration of applause, he showed no
trace of the _blase_ bearing of the old stager. In nearly every act that
followed he took a prominent part. On the trapeze, somersaulting over
horses placed side by side, grouping with his so-called brother and a
small lad, he did his full share of the work, and when the programme
was ended he came among the audience to sell photographs while the
lottery was being drawn.
As usual during the carnival, there was a lottery arranged by the
manager of the circus, and every ticket had a number which entitled the
holder to a chance in the prizes. When the young gymnast came in turn to
me, radiant in his salmon fleshings and blue trunks, with slippers and
bows to match, I could not help asking him if he was an Italian.
"No, signor, Magyar!" he replied, and I shortly found that his knowledge
of Italian was limited to a dozen words. I occupied him by selecting
some photographs, and, much to his surprise, spoke to him in his native
tongue. When he learned I had been in Hungary he was greatly pleased,
and the impatience of other customers for the photographs was the only
thing that prevented him from becoming communicative immediately. As he
left me I slipped into his hand my lottery-ticket, with the remark that
I never had any luck, and hoped he would.
The numbers were, meanwhile, rapidly drawn, the prizes being arranged in
the order of their value, each ticket taken from the hat denoting a
prize, until all were distributed. "Number twenty-eight--a pair of
elegant vases!" "Number sixteen--three bottles of vermouth!" "Number one
hundred and eighty-four--candlesticks and two bottles of vermouth!"
"Number four hundred and ten--three bottles of vermouth and a set of
jewelry!" "Number three hundred and nineteen--five bottles of vermouth!"
and so on, with more bottles of vermouth than anything else. Indeed,
each prize had to be floated on a few litres of the Turin specialty, and
I began to think that perhaps it would have been better, after all, not
to have given my circus friend the ticket, if he were to draw drink with
it.
Many prizes were called out, and at last only two numbers remained. The
excitement was now intense, and it did not diminish when the conductor
of the lottery announced that the last two numbers would draw the two
great prizes of the evening, namely: An order on a Turin tailor for a
suit of clothes, and an order on a jeweller for a gold watch and chain.
The first of these two last numbers was taken out of the hat.
"Number twenty-five--order for a suit of clothes!" was the announcement.
Twenty-five had been the number of my ticket. I did not hear the last
number drawn, for the Hungarian was in front of my seat trying to press
the order on me, and protesting against appropriating my good luck. I
wrote my name on the programme for him, with the simple address, U.S.A.,
persuaded him to accept the windfall, and went home. The next morning I
left town.
On the occasion of our mutual recognition in Paris, the circus boy began
to relate, as soon as the first flush of his surprise was over, the
story of his life since the incident in Turin. He had been to New York
and Boston, and all the large sea-coast towns; to Chicago, St. Louis,
and even to San Francisco; always with a circus company. Whenever he had
had an opportunity in the United States, he had asked for news of me.
"The United States is so large!" he said, with a sigh. "Every one told
me that, when I showed the Turin programme with your name on it."
The reason why he had kept the programme and tried to find me in America
was because the lottery ticket had been the direct means of his
emigration, and, in fact, the first piece of good fortune that had
befallen him since he left his native town. When he joined the circus he
was an apprentice, and beside a certain number of hours of gymnastic
practice daily and service in the ring both afternoon and evening, he
had half a dozen horses to care for, his part of the tent to pack up and
load, and the team to drive to the next stopping-place. For sixteen and
often eighteen hours of hard work he received only his food and his
performing clothes. When he was counted as one of the troupe his duties
were lightened, but he got only enough money to pay his way with
difficulty. Without a _lira_ ahead, and with no clothes but his rough
working-suit and his performing costume, he could not hope to escape
from this sort of bondage. The luck of number twenty-five had put him on
his feet.
"All Hungarians worship America," he said, "and when I saw that you
were an American I knew that my good fortune had begun in earnest. Of
course I believed America to be the land of plenty, and there could have
been no stronger proof of this than the generosity with which you, the
first American I had ever seen, gave me, a perfect stranger, such a
valuable prize. When I remembered the number of the ticket and the
letter in the alphabet, Y, to which this number corresponds, I was dazed
at the significance of the omen, and resolved at once to seek my fortune
in the United States. I sold the order on the tailor for money enough to
buy a suit of ready-made clothes and pay my fare to Genoa. From this
port I worked my passage to Gibraltar, and thence, after performing a
few weeks in a small English circus, I went to New York in a
fruit-vessel. As long as I was in America everything prospered with me.
I made a great deal of money, and spent a great deal. After a couple of
years I went to London with a company, and there lost my pay and my
position by the failure of the manager. In England my good luck all left
me. Circus people are too plenty there; everybody is an artist. I could
scarcely get anything to do in my line, so I drifted over to Paris."
We prolonged our stroll for an hour, for although I did not anticipate
any pleasure or profit from continuing the acquaintance, there was yet a
certain attraction in his simplicity of manner and in his naive faith in
the value of my influence on his fortunes. Before we parted he
expressed again his ability to get me something to do, but I did not
credit his statement enough to correct the impression that I was in need
of employment. At his earnest solicitation I gave him my address,
concealing, as well as I could, my reluctance to encourage an
acquaintance which could not result in anything but annoyance.
One day passed, and two, and on the third morning the porter showed him
to my room.
"I have found you work!" he cried, in the first breath.
Sure enough, he had been to a Polish acquaintance who knew a countryman,
a copyist in the Louvre. This copyist had a superabundance of orders,
and was glad to get some one to help him finish them in haste. My
gymnast was so much elated over his success at finding occupation for me
that I hadn't the heart to tell him that I was at leisure only while
hunting a studio. I therefore promised to go with him to the Louvre some
day, but I always found an excuse for not going.
For two or three weeks we met at intervals. At various times, thinking
he was in want, I pressed him to accept the loan of a few francs, but he
always stoutly refused. We went together to his lodging-house, where the
landlady, an English-woman, who boarded most of the circus people, spoke
of her "poor dear Mr. Nodge," as she called him, in quite a maternal
way, and assured me that he had wanted for nothing, and should not so
long as his wound disabled him. In the course of a few days I had
gathered from him a complete history of his circus-life, which was full
of adventure and hardship. He was, as I had thought then, somewhat of a
novice in the circus business at the time we met in Turin, having left
his home less than two years before. He had indeed been associated as a
regular member of the company only a few months, after having served a
difficult and wearing apprenticeship. He was born in Koloszvar, where
his father was a professor in the university, and there he grew up with
three brothers and a sister, in a comfortable home. He always had had a
great desire to see travel, and from early childhood developed a special
fondness for gymnastic feats. The thought of a circus made him fairly
wild. On rare occasions a travelling show visited this Transylvanian
town, and his parents with difficulty restrained him from following the
circus away. At last, in 1873, one show, more complete and more
brilliant than any one before seen there, came in on the newly opened
railway, and he, now a man, went away with it, unable longer to restrain
his passion for the profession. Always accustomed to horses, and already
a skilful acrobat, he was immediately accepted by the manager as an
apprentice, and after a season in Roumania and a disastrous trip through
Southern Austria, they came into Northern Italy, where I met him.
Whenever he spoke of his early life he always became quiet and
depressed, and for a long time I believed that he brooded over his
mistake in exchanging a happy home for the vicissitudes of Bohemia. It
came out slowly, however, that he was haunted by a superstition, a
strange and ingenious one, which was yet not without a certain show of
reason for its existence. Little by little I learned the following facts
about it: His father was of pure Szeklar or original Hungarian stock, as
dark-skinned as a Hindoo, and his mother was from one of the families of
Western Hungary, with probably some Saxon blood in her veins. His three
brothers were dark like his father, but he and his sister were blondes.
He was born with a peculiar red mark on his right shoulder, directly
over the scapular. This mark was shaped like a forked stick. His father
had received a wound in the insurrection of '48, a few months before the
birth of him, the youngest son, and this birth-mark reproduced the shape
of the father's scar. Among Hungarians his father passed for a very
learned man. He spoke fluently German, French, and Latin (the language
used by Hungarians in common communication with other nationalities),
and took great pains to give his children an acquaintance with each of
these tongues. Their earliest playthings were French alphabet-blocks,
and the set which served as toys and tasks for each of the elder
brothers came at last to him as his legacy. The letters were formed by
the human figure in different attitudes, and each block had a little
couplet below the picture, beginning with the letter on the block. The
Y represented a gymnast hanging by his hands to a trapeze, and being a
letter which does not occur in the Hungarian language except in
combinations, excited most the interest and imagination of the
youngsters. Thousands of times did they practise the grouping of the
figures on the blocks, and the Y always served as a model for trapeze
exercises. My friend, on account of his birth-mark, which resembled a
rude Y, was early dubbed by his brothers with the nick-name Yatil, this
being the first words of the French couplet printed below the picture.
Learning the French by heart, they believed the _Y a-t-il_ to be one
word, and with boyish fondness for nick-names saddled the youngest with
this. It is easy to understand how the shape of this letter, borne on
his body in an indelible mark, and brought to his mind every moment of
the day, came to seem in some way connected with his life. As he grew up
in this belief he became more and more superstitious about the letter
and about everything in the remotest way connected with it.
The first great event of his life was joining the circus, and to this
the letter Y more or less directly! led him. He left home on his
twenty-fifth birth-day, and twenty five was the number of the letter Y
in the block-alphabet.
The second great event of his life was the Turin lottery, and the number
of the lucky ticket was twenty-five. "The last sign given me," he said,
"was the accident in the circus here." As he spoke he rolled up the
right leg of his trowsers, and there, on the outside of the calf, about
midway between the knee and ankle, was a red scar forked like the letter
Y.
From the time he confided his superstition to me he sought me more than
ever. I must confess to feeling, at each visit of his, a little
constrained and unnatural. He seemed to lean on me as a protector, and
to be hungry all the time for an intimate sympathy I could never give
him. Although I shared his secret, I could not lighten the burden of his
superstition. His wound had entirely healed, but as his leg was still
weak and he still continued to limp a little, he could not resume his
place in the circus. Between brooding over his superstition and worrying
about his accident, he grew very despondent. The climax of his
hopelessness was reached when the doctor told him at last that he would
never be able to vault again. The fracture had been a severe one, the
bone having protruded through the skin. The broken parts had knitted
with great difficulty, and the leg would never be as firm and as elastic
as before. Besides, the fracture had slightly shortened the lower leg.
His circus career was therefore ended, and he attributed his misfortune
to the ill-omened letter Y.
Just about the time of his greatest despondency war was declared between
Russia and Turkey. The Turkish embassadors were drumming up recruits all
over Western Europe. News came to the circus boarding-house that good
riders were wanted for the Turkish mounted gensdarmes. Nagy resolved to
enlist, and we went together to the Turkish embassy. He was enrolled
after only a superficial examination, and was directed to present
himself on the following day to embark for Constantinople. He begged me
to go with him to the rendezvous, and there I bade him adieu. As I was
shaking his hand he showed me the certificate given him by the Turkish
embassador. It bore the date of May 25, and at the bottom was a
signature in Turkish characters, which could be readily distorted by the
imagination into a rude and scrawling Y.
A series of events occurring immediately after Nagy left for
Constantinople resulted in my own unexpected departure in a civil
capacity for the seat of war in the Russian lines. The line of curious
coincidences in the experience of the circus-rider had impressed me very
much at the time, but in the excitement of the Turkish campaign I
entirely forgot the circumstance. I do not, indeed, recall any thought
of Nagy during the first five months in the field. The day after the
fall of Plevna I rode through the deserted earthworks toward the town.
The dead were lying where they had fallen in the dramatic and useless
sortie of the day before. The dead on a battle-field always excite fresh
interest, no matter if the spectacle be an every-day one, and as I rode
slowly along I studied the attitudes of the fallen bodies, speculating
on the relation between the death-poses and the last impulse that had
animated the living frame. Behind a rude barricade of wagons and
household goods, part of the train of non-combatants which Osman Pasha
had ordered to accompany the army in the sortie, a great number of dead
lay in confusion. The peculiar position of one of these instantly
attracted my eye. He had fallen on his face against the barricade, with
both arms stretched above his head, evidently killed instantly. The
figure on the alphabet-block, described by the circus-rider, came
immediately to my mind. My heart beat as I dismounted and looked at the
dead man's face. It was a genuine Turk.
This incident revived my interest in the life of the circus-rider, and
gave me an impulse to look among the prisoners to see if by chance he
might be with them. I spent a couple of days in distributing tobacco and
bread in the hospitals and among the thirty thousand wretches herded
shelterless in the snow. There were some of the mounted gensdarmes among
them, and I even found several Hungarians; but none of them had ever
heard of the circus-rider.
The passage of the Balkans was a campaign full of excitement, and was
accompanied by so much hardship that selfishness got entirely the upper
hand of me, and life became a battle for physical comfort. After the
passage of the mountain range we went ahead so fast that I had little
opportunity, even if I had the enterprise, to look among the few
prisoners for the circus-rider.
Time passed, and we were at the end of a three days' fight near
Philippopolis, in the middle of January. Suleiman Pasha's army,
defeated, disorganized, and at last disbanded, though to that day still
unconquered, had finished the tragic act of its last campaign with the
heroic stand made in the foothills of the Rhodope Mountains, near
Stanimaka, south of Philippopolis. A long month in the terrible cold, on
the summits of the Balkan range; the forced retreat through the snow
after the battle of Taskosen; the neck-and-neck race with the Russians
down the valley of the Maritza; finally, the hot little battle on the
river-bank, and the two days of hand-to-hand struggle in the vine-yard
of Stanimaka--this was a campaign to break the constitution of any
soldier. Days without food, nights without shelter from the mountain
blasts, always marching and always fighting, supplies and baggage lost,
ammunition and artillery gone--human nature could hold out no longer,
and the Turkish army dissolved away into the defiles of the Rhodopes.
Unfortunately for her, Turkey has no literature to chronicle, no art to
perpetuate the heroism of her defenders.
The incidents of that short campaign are too full of horror to be
related. Not only did the demon of war devour strong men, but found
dainty morsels for its bloody maw in innocent women and children. Whole
families, crazed by the belief that capture was worse than death,
fought in the ranks with the soldiers. Women ambushed in coverts shot
the Russians as they rummaged the captured trains for much-needed food.
Little children, thrown into the snow by the flying parents, died of
cold and starvation, or were trampled to death by passing cavalry. Such
a useless waste of human life has not been recorded since the
indiscriminate massacres of the Middle Ages.
The sight of human suffering soon blunts the sensibilities of any one
who lives with it, so that he is at last able to look upon it with no
stronger feeling than that of helplessness. Resigned to the inevitable,
he is no longer impressed by the woes of the individual. He looks upon
the illness, wounds, and death of the soldier as a part of the lot of
all combatants, and comes to consider him an insignificant unit of the
great mass of men. At last only novelties in horrors will excite his
feelings.
I was riding back from the Stanimaka battle-field sufficiently elated at
the prospect of a speedy termination of the war--now made certain by the
breaking up of Suleiman's army--to forget where I was, and to imagine
myself back in my comfortable apartments in Paris. I only awoke from my
dream at the station where the highway from Stanimaka crosses the
railway line about a mile south of Philippopolis. The great wooden
barracks had been used as a hospital for wounded Turks, and as I drew
up my horse at the door the last of the lot of four hundred, who had
been starving there nearly a week, were being placed upon carts to be
transported to the town. The road to Philippopolis was crowded with
wounded and refugees. Peasant families struggled along with all their
household goods piled upon a single cart. Ammunition wagons and droves
of cattle, rushing along against the tide of human beings, toward the
distant bivouacs, made the confusion hopeless. Night was fast coming on,
and in company with a Cossack, who was, like myself, seeking the
headquarters of General Gourko, I made my way through the tangle of men,
beasts, and wagons toward the town. It was one of those chill, wet days
of winter when there is little comfort away from a blazing fire, and
when good shelter for the night is an absolute necessity. The drizzle
had drenched my garments, and the snow-mud had soaked my boots. Sharp
gusts of piercing wind drove the cold mist along, and as the temperature
fell in the late afternoon the slush of the roads began to stiffen, and
the fog froze where it gathered. Every motion of the limbs seemed to
expose some unprotected part of the body to the cold and wet. No amount
of exercise that was possible with stiffened limbs and in wet garments
would warm the blood. Leading my horse, I splashed along, holding my
arms away from my body, and only moving my benumbed fingers to wipe the
chill drip from my face. It was weather to take the courage out of the
strongest man, and the sight of the soaked and shivering wounded, packed
in the jolting carts or limping through the mud, gave me, hardened as I
was, a painful contraction of the heart. The best I could do was to lift
upon my worn-out horse one brave young fellow who was hobbling along
with a bandaged leg. Followed by the Cossack, whose horse bore a similar
burden, I hurried along, hoping to get under cover before dark. At the
entrance to the town numerous camp-fires burned in the bivouacs of the
refugees, who were huddled together in the shelter of their wagons,
trying to warm themselves in the smoke of the wet fuel. I could see the
wounded, as they were jolted past in the heavy carts, look longingly at
the kettles of boiling maize which made the evening meal of the
houseless natives.
Inside the town the wounded and the refugees were still more miserable
than those we had passed on the way. Loaded carts blocked the streets.
Every house was occupied, and the narrow sidewalks were crowded with
Russian soldiers, who looked wretched enough in their dripping
overcoats, as they stamped their rag-swathed feet. At the corner, in
front of the great Khan, motley groups of Greeks, Bulgarians, and
Russians were gathered, listlessly watching the line of hobbling wounded
as they turned the corner to find their way among the carts, up the hill
to the hospital, near the Konak. By the time I reached the Khan the
Cossack who accompanied me had fallen behind in the confusion, and
without waiting for him I pushed along, wading in the gutter, dragging
my horse by the bridle. Half way up the hill I saw a crowd of natives
watching with curiosity two Russian guardsmen and a Turkish prisoner.
The latter was evidently exhausted, for he was crouching in the freezing
mud of the street. Presently the soldiers shook him roughly and raised
him forcibly to his feet, and half supporting him between them they
moved slowly along, the Turk balancing on his stiffened legs and
swinging from side to side.
A most wretched object he was to look at. He had neither boots nor fez.
His feet were bare, and his trowsers were torn off near the knee, and
hung in tatters around his mud-splashed legs. An end of the red sash
fastened to his waist trailed far behind in the mud. A blue cloth jacket
hung loosely from his shoulders, and his hands and wrists dangled from
the ragged sleeves. His head rolled around at each movement of the body,
and at short intervals the muscles of the neck would rigidly contract.
All at once he drew himself up with a shudder and sank down in the mud
again.
The guardsmen were themselves near the end of their strength, and their
patience was wellnigh finished as well. Rough mountain marching had torn
the soles from their boots, and great unsightly wraps of rawhide and
rags were bound on their feet. The thin worn overcoats, burned in many
places, flapped dismally against their ankles; and their caps, beaten
out of shape by many storms, clung drenched to their heads. They were in
no condition to help any one to walk, for they could scarcely get on
alone. They stood a moment shivering, looked at each other, shook their
heads as if discouraged, and proceeded to rouse the Turk by hauling him
upon his feet again. The three moved on a few yards, and the prisoner
fell again, and the same operation was repeated. All this time I was
crowding nearer and nearer, and as I got within a half dozen paces the
Turk fell once more, and this time lay at full length in the mud. The
guardsmen tried to rouse him by shaking, but in vain. Finally, one of
them, losing all patience, pricked him with his bayonet on the lower
part of the ribs exposed by the raising of the jacket as he fell. I was
now near enough to act, and with a sudden clutch I pulled the guardsman
away, whirled him around, and stood in his place. As I was stooping over
the Turk he raised himself slowly, doubtless aroused by the pain of the
puncture, and turned on me a most beseeching look, which changed at once
into something like joy and surprise. Immediately a deathlike pallor
spread over his face, and he sank back again with a groan.
By this time quite a crowd of Bulgarians had gathered around us, and
seemed to enjoy the sight of a suffering enemy. It was evident that they
did not intend to volunteer any assistance, so I helped the wounded
Russian down from my saddle, and invited the natives rather sternly to
put the Turk in his place. With true Bulgarian spirit they refused to
assist a Turk, and it required the argument of the rawhide (_nagajka_)
to bring them to their senses. Three of them, cornered and flogged,
lifted the unconscious man and carried him toward the horse, the
soldiers, meanwhile believing me to be an officer, standing in the
attitude of attention. As the Bulgarians bore the Turk to the horse, a
few drops of blood fell to the ground. I noticed then that he had his
shirt tied around his left shoulder, under his jacket. Supported in the
saddle by two natives on each side, his head falling forward on his
breast, the wounded prisoner was carried with all possible tenderness to
the Stafford House hospital, near the Konak. As we moved slowly up the
hill I looked back, and saw the two guardsmen sitting on the muddy
sidewalk, with their guns leaning against their shoulders--too much
exhausted to go either way.
I found room for my charge in one of the upper rooms of the hospital,
where he was washed and put into a warm bed. His wound proved to be a
severe one. A Berdan bullet had passed through the thick part of the
left pectoral, out again, and into the head of the humerus. The surgeon
said that the arm would have to be operated on, to remove the upper
quarter of the bone.
The next morning I went to the hospital to see what had become of the
wounded man, for the incident of the previous evening made a deep
impression on my mind. As I walked through the corridor I saw a group
around a temporary bed in the corner. Some one was evidently about to
undergo an operation, for an assistant held at intervals a great cone of
linen over a haggard face on the pillow, and a strong smell of
chloroform filled the air. As I approached the surgeon turned around,
and recognizing me, with a nod and a smile said, "We are at work on your
friend." While he was speaking he bared the left shoulder of the wounded
man, and I saw the holes made by the bullet as it passed from the
pectoral into the upper part of the deltoid. Without waiting longer, the
surgeon made a straight cut downward from near the acromion through the
thick fibre of the deltoid to the bone. He tried to sever the tendons to
slip the head of the humerus from the socket, but failed. He wasted no
time in further trial, but made a second incision from the bullet-hole
diagonally to the middle of the first cut, and turned the pointed flap
thus made up over the shoulder. It was now easy to unjoint the bones,
and but a moment's work to saw off the shattered piece, tie the severed
arteries, and bring the flap again into its place.
There was no time to pause, for the surgeon began to fear the effects of
the chloroform on the patient. We hastened to revive him by every
possible means at hand, throwing cold water on him and warming his hands
and feet. Although under the influence of chloroform to the degree that
he was insensible to pain, he had not been permitted to lose his entire
consciousness, and he appeared to be sensible of what we were doing.
Nevertheless, he awoke slowly, very slowly, the surgeon meanwhile
putting the stitches in the incision. At last he raised his eyelids and
made a movement with his lips. With a deliberate movement he surveyed
the circle of faces gathered closely around the bed. There was something
in his eyes which had an irresistible attraction for me, and I bent
forward to await his gaze. As his eyes met mine they changed as if a
sudden light had struck them, and the stony stare gave way to a look of
intelligence and recognition. Then, through the beard of a season's
growth and behind the haggard mask before me, I saw at once the
circus-rider of Turin and Paris. I remember being scarcely excited or
surprised at the meeting, for a great sense of irresponsibility came
over me, and I involuntarily accepted the coincidence as a matter of
course. He tried in vain to speak, but held up his right hand, and
feebly made with his fingers the sign of the letter which had played
such a part in the story of his life. Even at that instant the light
left his eyes, and something like a veil seemed drawn over them. With
the instinctive energy which possesses every one when there is a chance
of saving human life, we redoubled our efforts to restore the patient to
consciousness. But while we strove to feed the flame with some of our
own vitality, it flickered and went out, leaving the hue of ashes where
the rosy tinge of life had been. His heart was paralyzed.
As I turned away, my eye caught the surgeon's incision, which was now
plainly visible on the left shoulder. The cut was in the form of the
letter Y.
[2] _Century Magazine, March_, 1883.
THE END OF NEW YORK.[3]
BY PARK BENJAMIN.
INTRODUCTORY.
THE WAR CLOUD.
Towards dusk on the afternoon of Monday, December 5th, 1881, the French
steamer "Canada," from Havre, arrived at her pier in New York City.
Among the passengers was a tall, dark, rather fine-looking man, of about
middle-age. After the usual examination of his baggage by the Custom
House officials had been made, this person, accompanied by a lady, took
a hack at the entrance of the pier, and was driven to the Fifth Avenue
Hotel. The initials on the luggage strapped on the rear of the vehicle
were M.B.
In conversing with the driver the gentleman--for his appearance and
bearing fully indicated his right to the title--spoke English, though
somewhat imperfectly; with the lady he talked in sonorous Castilian.
Apparently, no one bestowed any particular notice upon the pair. They
were two foreigners out of the great throng of foreigners which lands
daily in the metropolis; they were Spaniards and reasonably well-to-do,
seeing that they came over in the saloon, and not in the steerage.
The names registered at the hotel were Manuel Blanco and wife.
Late during the following evening the lady personally came to the office
seemingly in great distress. An interpreter being procured, it was
learned that Senor Blanco, in response to a visiting-card sent to his
room, had left the apartment shortly after breakfast that morning, and
had not since returned.
The lady explained that he had no business affairs in New York, and that
they were merely resting in the city for a few days to recover from the
effects of the ocean voyage, before going to Charleston, S.C., their
destination.
The clerk in the office simply knew that a stranger had called and sent
a card to Senor Blanco, and that the two, after meeting, had left the
hotel together.
The anxiety of Senora Blanco was evidently excessive. She rejected such
commonplace reasons as that her husband might have lost his way, or that
some unlooked-for business matters had claimed his attention.
"No, no!" she repeated, almost hysterically; "no beezness. Ah, Dios! El
esta muerte."
A physician was sent for, and the lady, who was fast reaching a stage of
nervous prostration, placed in his care. The hotel detective proceeded
at once to Police Headquarters, whence telegrams were despatched to the
various precincts, giving a description of the missing man, and making
inquiries concerning him. The replies were all in the negative: no such
person had come under the notice of the police.
From what has thus far been narrated, it might be inferred that Blanco's
absence was due to one of those strange disappearances which happen in
great cities. The inference, however, would be wrong. Blanco had not
disappeared.
True, his agonized wife and the police of New York City had no trace of
his whereabouts; but Mr. Michael Chalmette, an officer detailed by the
U.S. Marshal in New Orleans to arrest Leon Sangrado, at the request of
the Republic of Chili, on the charge of repeatedly committing murder and
highway robbery in that country, was entirely sure that the missing
person was sitting beside him, handcuffed to his left wrist, and that
both were speeding toward New Orleans as fast as a railway-car could
take them.
When the French steamer "Canada" arrived, Mr. Michael Chalmette, wearing
the uniform and badge of a Custom House officer, stationed himself by
the gang-plank and narrowly scrutinized each passenger that came
ashore. While Blanco's trunks were being examined, he stood near that
gentleman, and furtively compared his features with those on a
photograph. It was Chalmette who sent the card to Blanco's room, in the
hotel, next day, and who induced Blanco to accompany him in a carriage,
as he said, to the Custom House, to arrange some irregularity in the
passing of Blanco's luggage. The driver of that carriage, however, was
told to go to the Pennsylvania Railroad Depot, in Jersey City.
Blanco evinced some surprise on being taken across the ferry, but was
easily satisfied by his companion's explanation that the branch of the
Custom House to be visited was on the Jersey side.
When the station was reached Chalmette led the way to the waiting-room,
and quietly observed, before the unsuspecting Blanco could finish a
sentence beginning:
"Ees it posseeble zat zees is ze Custom--"
"You are my prisoner. You had better come without making trouble."
Blanco looked at him aghast--not half comprehending the words.
"A prisoner--I--for what?"
Chalmette returned no answer, but produced his warrant.
"But I no understand--I--"
Just then the warning bell rung. Chalmette seized his prisoner by the
arm and pushed him through the gateway.
On the platform Blanco made some slight resistance. The policeman,
whose attention was attracted thereby, after a few words with Chalmette,
assisted the latter in forcing him upon the train, which was already
slowly moving out of the depot.
* * * * *
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