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THE NINETEENTH OF OCTOBER.
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It was eight o'clock on the following morning. A dense fog covered Leipsic as with an impenetrable veil, and extended far over the landscape. No one could see as yet, in the darkness of the night, what had been done by friend or foe. At times the allies heard loud explosions, and saw flashes on the side of the French; then all was dark and silent again. Suddenly, however, a bright glare illuminated the night, for in the French camp large fires blazed, and, like a flaming serpent, stretched our far into the plain.
"Ha!" said Blucher; "Gneisenau, I was right after all: Bonaparte is retreating. Do you know the meaning of those fires? The French have placed their caissons on both sides of the road, and set them on fire, that they may serve as beacons to the retreating troops. See! they reach up to the city of Leipsic. It is as I said; the French intend to march through that city, and retreat across the Saale. Well, I think General York will await them there, and Langeron will finish them. But come, Gneisenau, the fog is clearing. Let us ride to yonder knoll; we shall be able to see better there."
With the nimbleness of a lad Blucher mounted his horse, and, no longer restraining his impatience, he galloped off. Gneisenau rode by his side, and at some distance behind him trotted the pipe- master, with the iron box on the pommel of his saddle.
They reached the crest of the knoll and stopped. The fog had disappeared, and they could distinctly see a field of horror and desolation as far as their eyes reached. The immense plain was covered far and wide with piles of corpses; rivulets of blood intersected the down-trodden soil; fragments of wagons, cannon, and vast heaps of horses, lay in wild disorder, and all around the horizon gleamed the dying fires of upward of twenty villages.
Blucher cast a mournful look on this harrowing spectacle. "Gneisenau," he said, "it is almost impossible for one to rejoice over this victory, for it costs too many tears--too much blood. How those poor brave men are lying there, dead or dying, and have not even a grave at which their mothers and wives may weep! May the good God in heaven have mercy on their souls, and comfort those who are weeping for them!" He took off his cap, and, shading his face with it, uttered a short, low prayer for the repose of the dead. With a quick jerk he then put on his cap again. "Well," he said, "we have prayed, and we will now try to find that accursed Bonaparte, who is at the bottom of all this carnage, and--" At this moment the pipe-master galloped up to his general.
"Well, what do you want, Christian?"
"The morning pipe," said Christian, presenting the short pipe to his master.
Blucher stretched out his hand for it, but drew it back and cast a glance on the piles of dead which covered the battle-field. "No, pipe-master," he said, solemnly, "it would be unbecoming to smoke here. We should show our respect for the dead; but hold the pipe in readiness for me, and when we ride back I will take it. Now, get out of my way, that I may no longer see the pipe, else--Begone, Christian!"
"No, I shall stay," said the pipe-master, coolly; "I have promised the general's wife always to stay near him, and, besides, you will soon need me, for you will not stand it long without your pipe. Call me, your excellency, when you want me." He moved his horse a few steps back, and was busily occupied in keeping the general's pipe lit.
Blucher and Gneisenau in the mean time were keenly looking to the side of the French camp; but not a vestige of it was to be seen. There could be no doubt now that Napoleon had commenced retreating; he had profited by the night to remove the remnants of his army toward Leipsic, that they might still be able to cross the Saale without hinderance. Blucher uttered a loud cry of joy. "He is retreating! Gneisenau, am I right now?"
"Yes, general, you are. With your sagacity you have divined Napoleon's plans better than the rest of us, and, thanks to your wise dispositions, he will find Langeron and Sacken at the gates of Leipsic, and York on the banks of the Saale."
"My dear sir, he will find us, too," exclaimed Blucher, in great glee. "We are not through yet; I know Napoleon thoroughly. You think, perhaps, that he has merely rested at Leipsic, and will evacuate the city without fighting? No, sir, then you do not know much about him. He will not yield an inch unless he must. By a battle in and around Leipsic, he intends to cover the retreat of his army, and I tell you, Gneisenau, we shall have hard work yet. Forward!"
"Yes, forward!" cried Gneisenau. "We must dispatch couriers to all the generals, and send them the glad tidings."
"Now comes the last assault," shouted Blucher. "We must take the city by storm; and this will blow Bonaparte over the Rhine, and back to France, like a bundle of rags! Forward! Pipe-master, my pipe! We will attack them!"
At ten in the morning the cannon commenced booming again around Leipsic. The city was attacked on all sides by the armies of the allies. In the south stood the commander-in-chief, Prince Schwartzenberg, with the Austrian army; in the east, the Russian General Benningsen and the crown prince of Sweden; in the north, Blucher, with the Prussians, and the Russian corps under General Sacken.
"Charge!" shouted Blucher to his troops. "General Bulow has attacked the Halle gate; we must hasten to his assistance, for the French are stubborn."
At this moment another volley of grape-shot was discharged from the pieces which the French had placed inside the city, and hurled death and destruction into the ranks of the assailants.
"We must reenforce Bulow," cried Blucher! "General Sacken must advance his troops! We must hurl light infantry against the gate! Charge! Forward!" And, brandishing his sword, Blucher galloped to the side of General Sacken, who was moving with the Russians toward the point of attack.
"Forward!" thundered Blucher to the troops. The Russians did not understand him, but they saw his countenance radiant with impatience and warlike ardor, his flashing eyes, and uplifted hand pointing the sword at the gate, and they understood his meaning.
"Perod!" shouted the Russians, exultingly. "Forward! Perod!"
The grape-shot of the enemy, and the rattling fire of the French skirmishers behind the walls, drowned their shouts. But when the artillery ceased and the smoke disappeared, they saw again the face of the old general with his young eyes, and the long white mustache, He halted on his horse in the midst of the shower of bullets fired by the skirmishers, and uttered again and again his favorite command.
"Marshal Perod!" shouted the Russians. "He is a little Suwarrow! Long live little Suwarrow! Long live Marshal Forward!" and, amid renewed battle--cries in honor of Blucher, and with resistless impetuosity, the Russians assaulted the gate.
While these scenes were passing outside the city, Napoleon remained within. He had sat up till daylight with Caulaincourt and Bertmer, receiving reports and issuing orders; toward morning he had slept a little, and now, at ten o'clock, he dictated his last orders to the two generals. In the streets were heard the roar of artillery, the crashing of falling buildings, the wails, shrieks, and shouts of the terrified inhabitants. The field-pieces rattled past, regiments trotted along, and disappeared around the corners, constituting a scene of indescribable terror and destruction; but here, in the emperor's room, every thing presented a spectacle of peace and repose. Caulaincourt and Berthier sat at their desks, writing. The emperor was slowly walking up and down. He did not even listen to the noise outside; he dictated his orders in a calm, firm voice, and his face was as immovable as usual.
"Marshal Macdonald," said the emperor, concluding his instructions, "is commissioned to defend the city and the suburbs; for this purpose he will have his own corps, and those of Lauriston, Poniatowsky, and Keynier. He will hold the city until the corps of Marmont and Ney have evacuated it, and the rear-guard safely withdrawn. As soon as these troops have crossed the Pleisse, the bridge will be blown up." He nodded to his generals, and, striding across the room, opened the door of the antechamber. "To horse, gentlemen!" he shouted to the generals assembled there. "We must start for Erfurt!" He slowly descended the staircase and mounted his horse, the generals and adjutants following him in silence.
But the emperor did not turn his horse toward the side where the troops were marching along in heavy columns; he rode to the market- place, and halted in front of a large, old-fashioned house in the middle of the square. The King of Saxony and his consort lived there. "Wait!" said the emperor to his suite, alighting from his horse, and walking past the saluting sentinels into the house.
In the small sitting-room up-stairs were old King Frederick Augustus, his consort, and the Princess Augusta. The king sat with his hands folded on his knees, and his lustreless eye fixed on the windows, trembling incessantly from the roar of artillery and the rattle of musketry. The queen was near him, and whenever the volleys resounded, she groaned, and covered her face with her handkerchief, which was already moist with tears. The Princess Augusta knelt in a corner of the room, praying, while tears were rolling down her cheeks.
"Oh," murmured the queen when another rattle of musketry rent the air, "why does not a bullet strike my heart!"
"Father in heaven, and all saints, have mercy on us!" prayed the princess.
"Grant victory to the great and noble Emperor Napoleon, my God!" sighed the king. "I love him as a father, and he has always treated me with the love of a son. I have remained faithful to him when all the others betrayed him. Punish not my constancy, therefore, my Lord and God; grant victory to Napoleon, that happiness may be restored to me!"
A cry burst from the lips of the queen, and she started up from her seat. "The emperor!" she cried, looking toward the door.
Yes, in the open door that form in the gray, buttoned-up overcoat, with the small hat, and pale, stony face, was the Emperor Napoleon's. "I come to bid you farewell," he said, stepping slowly and calmly to the king.
"Farewell!" groaned Frederick Augustus, sinking back. "All is lost, then!"
"No, not all, sire," said Napoleon, solemnly. "We have lost a battle, but not our honor. The fortune of battles is fickle. After twenty years of victory, it has this time declared against me. But honor remains to me. I have, for four days, held out against an army three times as large as mine in troops, as well as in artillery, and they have not overpowered me. I have voluntarily evacuated the battle-field, not in a wild flight as did the Prussians at Jena, and the Austrians at Austerlitz. Our honor is intact. With that we must content ourselves this time."
"Oh, sire," cried the king, with tearful eyes, "how generous you are! You speak of our honor! But _I_ have lost my honor, for my troops have committed treason--they deserted my noble, beloved ally during the battle! Oh, sire, pardon me! I am innocent of the defection of my troops!" And, rising, the king made a movement as if to kneel; but Napoleon held him in his arms, and then gently pressed him back into the easy-chair. "Sire," he said, "treason is a disease which, by this time, has become an epidemic in Germany. All those who are now fighting against me are traitors, for all of them were my allies, and, while still negotiating with me, they had already formed a league against me. Your Saxons were infected by the troops from Bavaria, Wurtemberg, and Baden."
"Alas," sighed the king, "I had a better opinion of my Saxons! They have turned traitors, and my heart will always remain inconsolable."
"But this is no time for giving way to grief," said Napoleon. "Your majesty must leave Leipsic immediately. You must not expose yourself to the dangers of a capitulation, which, unfortunately, has become unavoidable. Come, sire, intrust yourself to my protection. By my side, and in the midst of my troops, you will be safe."
"No," said the king, resolutely; "I remain! Let them kill me; I am tired of the dangers of flight! But you, sire, you must make haste! Leave us! --your precious life must not be endangered! Every minute renders the peril more imminent! Hasten to preserve yourself to your people, your consort, and your son!"
"My son!" said Napoleon, and for the first time something like an expression of pain flashed over his features. "Poor little King of Rome, from whose blond ringlets his own grand-father wants to tear the crown!" He dropped his head on his breast.
"Sire, make haste!" implored the king. --"Make haste!" echoed the queen and the princess.
At this moment there was a terrific roar of artillery. The queen buried her face in her hands; the princess had knelt again and prayed; the king leaned his head against the back of the chair, pale as a corpse, and with his eyes closed. Napoleon alone stood erect; his face was calm and inscrutable; his glances were turned toward the windows, and he seemed to listen eagerly to the thunders of war.
The door was violently opened, and General Caulaincourt appeared, pale and breathless.
"Sire," he said, "you must leave! Bernadotte has taken one of the suburbs by assault, and the forces of Blucher, Benningsen, and Schwartzenberg, are pouring in on all sides into the city, so that our troops are compelled to defend themselves from house to house."
"Sire, have mercy! --save yourself!" cried the king. "I can no longer help you, no longer support you! I have nothing left to give you-- nothing but my life, and that is of no value! Save yourself, unless you want me to die at your feet!"
"Sire," exclaimed Caulaincourt, "every minute increases the danger. A quarter of an hour hence your majesty may, perhaps, be unable to get out of the captured city." Napoleon turned with a haughty movement toward his general. "Nonsense," he said, "have I not a sword at my side? But, as you wish me to go, sire--as you are alarmed, I will leave! Farewell! May we meet in happier circumstances!"
"Sire, up there!" said the king, solemnly, pointing toward heaven. He then quickly rose from his seat, and approaching Napoleon, who had taken leave of the queen and the princess, took his arm and conducted him hastily out of the room, through the corridor, and down the staircase. At the foot he stood, and clasping the emperor in his arms, whispered, "Farewell, sire; I feel it is forever! I shall await you in heaven! Not another word now, sire! Make haste!" He turned, and slowly reascended the staircase. The emperor mounted his horse, and directed his course toward the gate of Ranstadt. Behind him rode Berthier, Caulaincourt, and a few generals; a mounted escort followed them.
The streets presented a spectacle of desolation and horror, which, the closer they approached the gate, became more heart-rending. Field-pieces, caissons, soldiers on foot and on horseback, screaming women, wounded and dying cows, sheep, and swine, entangled in an enormous mass, made it impossible to pass that way. Napoleon turned his horse, and took the road to St. Peter's gate. Slowly, and with perfect composure, he rode through Cloister and Burg Streets. Not a muscle of his fane betrayed any uneasiness or embarrassment; it was grave and inscrutable as usual.
When he arrived at the inner St. Peter's gate, he found the crowd and confusion to be nearly as great as at that of Ranstadt; he did not turn his horse, but said, in a loud voice, "Clear a passage!" The generals and the mounted escort immediately rode forward, and, unsheathing their swords and spurring their horses, galloped into the midst of the crowd, driving back those who could flee, trampling under foot those who did not fall back quick enough, and removing the obstacles which obstructed their passage. In five minutes a way was cleared for the emperor--the wounded lying on both sides, and a few corpses in the middle of the street, showed how violently the cortege had penetrated the obstructing mass. The emperor took no notice of this; he was silent and indifferent, while his escort attacked the crowd, and rode on as if nothing had occurred.
At length the city lay behind him; he had passed the bridge across the Elster, and reached the mill of Lindenau, where he intended to establish his headquarters. Constant and Roustan had already reached the place with the emperor's carriages, and prepared a room for him. Napoleon rapidly stepped into it, and, greeting Constant with a nod, he said, "Only a little patience! In a week we shall be in Paris, and there you shall all have plenty of repose! We shall leave our beautiful France no more! Ah, how the Empress will rejoice, and how charming it will be for me again to embrace the little King of Rome!"
It was touching and mournful, indeed, to hear this man, usually so cold and reserved, this general who had just lost a great battle, speak of his return home and his child in so gentle and affectionate a tone, and to see how his rigid features became animated under the charm of his recollections, and how the faint glimmer of a mournful smile stole upon his lips. But it soon disappeared, and, with a sigh, the emperor drooped his head.
"Your majesty ought to try to sleep a little," said Constant, in an imploring voice.
"Yes, sleep!" exclaimed Napoleon. "To sleep is to forget!"
It was the first, the only complaint which he allowed to escape his lips, and he seemed to regret it, for, while he threw himself on the field-bed, he cast a gloomy glance on Constant, and, as if to prove how easy it was for him to forget, he fell asleep in a few minutes.
From the neighboring city resounded the artillery, indicating the final struggle of the French and the allies. The emperor's slumber was not disturbed, for the roar of battle was too familiar to him. Suddenly, however, there was a terrific explosion that shook the earth; the windows of the room were shattered to pieces, and the bed on which the emperor was reposing was pushed from the wall as if by invisible arms. He sprang to his feet and glanced wonderingly around. "What was that?" he inquired. "It was no discharge of artillery, it was an explosion!" He quickly left the mill and stepped out of the front door. There stood the generals, and looked in evident anxiety toward Leipsic. Here and there bright flames were bursting from the roofs of the houses; one-half of the city was wrapped in clouds of smoke, so that it was impossible to distinguish any thing.
"An explosion has taken place there," said Napoleon, pointing to that side.
At this moment several horsemen galloped rapidly toward the mill; they were headed by the King of Naples in his uniform, decked with glittering orders. A few paces from the emperor he stopped his horse and alighted.
"Murat," shouted the emperor to him, "what has happened?"
"Sire," he said, "a terrible calamity has occurred. The bridge across the Elster, the only remaining passage over the river, has been blown up!"
"And our troops?" cried the emperor.
"Sire, the rear-guard, twenty thousand strong, are still on the opposite bank, and unable to escape."
The emperor uttered a cry, half of pain, half of anger. "Ah," he exclaimed, "this, then, is the way in which my orders are carried out! My God! twenty thousand brave men are lost--hopelessly lost!" He struck both his hands against his temples.
No one dared disturb him; his generals surrounded him, silent and gloomy. Presently, some horsemen galloped up; at their head was a general, hatless and in a dripping uniform.
"Sire, there comes Marshal Macdonald," exclaimed Murat.
Napoleon hastened forward to meet the marshal, who had just jumped from his horse.
"You come out of the water, marshal?" inquired Napoleon, pointing to his wet uniform.
"Yes, sire. By swimming my horse across, I have escaped to this side of the river, and I come to inform your majesty that the troops intrusted to me have perished through no fault of mine. Sire, they were twenty thousand strong, and I come back alone. I come to lay my life at the feet of your majesty."
"God be praised that you at least have been preserved," said the emperor, offering his hand to Macdonald. "But you say the troops have perished? Is, then, that impossible for the soldiers which was possible for you? Cannot they swim across to this side of the river?"
"Sire, my escape was almost miraculous. I owe it to my horse, who carried me across in the agony of despair; I owe it to God, who, perhaps, wished to preserve a faithful and devoted servant to your majesty. But, by my side, no less faithful servants were carried away, and, standing on the other bank, I saw their corpses drifting along."
"Who were they?" asked Napoleon, abruptly, and almost in a, harsh tone.
"Sire, General Dumoustier was one; but he is not the victim most to be lamented of this disastrous day."
"Who is it?" exclaimed the emperor, and, casting around a hasty, anxious glance, he seemed to count his attendants to see who was missing.
"Sire," said Macdonald, in a trembling voice, "Prince Joseph Poniatowsky plunged with his horse into the river--" "And he perished?" cried Napoleon.
"Yes, sire, he did not reach the opposite bank!"
The emperor buried his face in his hands, and groaned. He sat for some time motionless. At length he removed his hands from his face, which looked like marble, bloodless and cold.
"And my soldiers?" he inquired. "Did they endeavor to escape as Poniatowsky?"
"Yes, sire! Thousands threw themselves into the river, but only a few succeeded in escaping, while the others fell into the deep and muddy channel; and those who were on the opposite bank were made prisoners by the allies, who are now in possession of the city."
"Twenty thousand men lost!" sighed Napoleon, and he relapsed into gloomy thought. Presently he raised his head again and cast a flaming glance on Macdonald.
"Marshal," he said, "you will investigate this affair in the most rigorous manner; you will give me the name of him who has dared to disobey my orders. He is the murderer of twenty thousand men! He deserves death, and I shall have no mercy on him!"
"Sire, he stands already before his Supreme Judge! It was the corporal charged with applying the match as soon as our troops had all passed. He thought he saw the enemy advancing upon the bridge, and fired the train, throwing himself into the Elster. He is drowned!"
"It is good for him," said Napoleon. "God will deal more leniently with him than I should have done. To horse, gentlemen, to horse!" He walked slowly and with bowed head to his horse, and murmured, "Another Beresina! It costs me twenty thousand soldiers!"
The generals followed him, and as they saw him walking with bowed head, they whispered to one another, "Look at him now, how he is broken down! That was his very appearance when he returned from Russia! He has no strength to bear up under misfortune!"
While the emperor and his suite slowly and mournfully took the road to Mark Ranstadt, the allies made their entrance into Leipsic. At the head of the procession rode the Emperor of Russia and the King of Prussia; behind them followed their brilliant staff, and then came the victorious troops, with colors flying and drums beating. The cannon still thundered, but louder were the cheers and exultant acclamations of the people, who crowded the streets by thousands, to receive the sovereigns and the victorious army. The windows of the houses were opened, and at them stood their inmates with joyful faces, holding white handkerchiefs in their hands, with which they waved their greetings. The friends--the long-yearned-for friends were there, and they received them with tears, exultation, and thanksgiving. Merry chimes rang from every steeple, and proclaimed the resurrection of Germany. The sovereigns rode to the great square; they halted in front of the very house of the King of Saxony, but they turned no glance upward to the windows, behind the closed blinds of which the unfortunate royal family were assembled. The victors seemed to have forgotten them.
The two monarchs alighted, for now came from the other side the crown prince of Sweden, Bernadotte, at the head of his guards, and through the other street approached the commander-in-chief of the allies, Prince Schwartzenberg. The Russian emperor and the Prussian king advanced into the middle of the square, and Bernadotte and Schwartzenberg arrived there simultaneously with them. Suddenly, deafening cheers rent the air; they drew nearer, and amid these acclamations Blucher, at the head of his staff, rode up. When he perceived the monarchs, he stopped his horse and vaulted with youthful agility from the saddle in order to meet them; but the Emperor Alexander, anticipating him, was by his side. "God bless you, heroic Blucher!" he exclaimed, affectionately embracing him, "You have fulfilled your promise made at Breslau. You have become the liberator of Germany. Your brave sword and your intrepid heart have conquered. Come, I must conduct you to the King of Prussia!" He took Blucher's arm, and, advancing with him, he said, "Sire, I bring you here your hero, Blucher!"
"You bring me Field-Marshal Blucher!" said the king. "God bless you, field-marshal!"
"Sire," exclaimed Blucher, "you apply to me an honorary title--" "Which you deserve," interrupted the king. "Do not thank me, for, if you do, for conferring a title on you, how shall I thank you, who have given me by far greater honor? I know what I owe you, Blucher; your energy, courage, determination, and ardor, have gained ns the most glorious victories!"
"I have only done my duty, your majesty," said Blucher. "But I think our work is not half done yet, your majesty; we are to-day in fact only at the commencement of it. It is not enough for us to drive the French from Leipsic; we must pursue them, and expel them from Germany. For this purpose we must make haste. We have no time to rest on our laurels and sing hymns--the main point is to pursue the enemy--pursue him incessantly and effectually."
"Again, the hot-headed madcap, whose fiery spirit believes that every thing is done too slowly," exclaimed the Emperor Alexander, smiling. "Now I ask you, as the king asked you at Breslau, 'How old are you?' --you who never need rest, like other poor mortals--myself, for instance? I confess that, after all this excitement and these long fatigues, I am longing for repose, and would not take it amiss if war and pursuit were no longer thought of. But you are always intent on going forward!"
"Sire," exclaimed the king, who in the mean time had conversed with General Sacken, "I just learned that your troops have anticipated me, and given Blucher a title that is far better than mine. At the gate of Halle they cheered, and called him 'Marshal Forward!'" "Ah, I should like to embrace my soldiers for this excellent word," cried Alexander. "That is an honorary title, Blucher, which no prince can confer, and which only your own merit and the gratitude of the people can bestow. Yes, you are 'Marshal Forward,' and by that name history will know you; and Germany will love, praise, and bless you. You have earned this title by your deeds, and the soldiers have conferred it upon you as a token of their appreciation. Now, the soldiers are a part of the people, and the voice of the people is the voice of God. Heaven bless you, 'Marshal Forward!'"
At this moment a procession was approaching from the other side of the square, consisting of twenty-four young maidens dressed in white. All held wreaths in their hands, while the three who headed the procession carried them on silken cushions. They approached the emperor, the king, and the crown prince of Sweden, and offered them the wreaths. [Footnote: The emperor of Austria did not make his entry with the other monarchs, but came only in the afternoon to Leipsic, where he remained scarcely an hour. He then returned to Rotha. --Beitzke, vol. ii.] The emperor took that presented to him, and pressed it with a quick and graceful movement on Blucher's head. "I represent the Muse of History," he said, "and crown 'Marshal Forward' in a becoming manner."
"And I," said the crown prince of Sweden, handing his laurel-wreath to Prince Schwartzenberg, "I present this to the commander-in-chief of all our armies, and wish him joy of having achieved a victory over which so many nations will rejoice, and which will render his name illustrious now and forever."
"Ah," cried Schwartzenberg, "I have unfortunately been unable to do much. I have only faithfully carried out my orders, and it is to them, and to the brave troops, that we are indebted for the victory," [Footnote: Prince Schwartzenberg's words. --Beitzke, ii., 639] The king said nothing; holding his wreath, he looked at it gravely and musingly. The presentations were over, and the princes prepared to return to their quarters.
"I hope, sire, we shall all remain together to-day?" remarked Alexander, turning toward the king.
"Pray excuse me, sire," said Frederick William, bowing, "I intend to go to Berlin to-night, but I shall be back in a few days."
"But you, I suppose, will remain?" asked Alexander, turning toward Bernadotte.
"I shall remain, your majesty," said the crown prince of Sweden, with a polite smile. "My troops are in need of rest."
"Yes, his troops are always in need of rest," murmured Blucher to himself; "I believe--" Just then the Emperor Alexander turned toward him. "Well, field- marshal, and you--you will stay, too, will you not? I pray you to be my guest to-day."
"Sire, I regret that I cannot accept this gracious invitation," said Blucher. "I cannot stay, and my troops, thank God! are not in need of rest. I shall start immediately in pursuit of the enemy. It is not enough for us to have gained a victory; we must also know how to profit by it. I shall march this very evening, and take up my quarters for the night at Skeuditz."
"Marshal Forward! always Marshal Forward!" exclaimed Alexander, smiling. --"Come, sire, let us hasten to dinner; otherwise he will not even permit us to dine, but compel us all to set out immediately." He took the king's arm, and went with him to the horses standing near. When he was about to vault into the saddle, he turned toward one of his adjutants. "Ah," he said, "there is another little matter which I almost forgot! --General Petrowitch, go up there." He pointed to the house of the King of Saxony. "Inform the king, in my name, that he is a prisoner. [Footnote: Beitzke, vol. ii., p. 652] Have a guard of thirty men placed in front of the house."
On the same evening Blucher rode, by the side of Gneisenau and attended by his staff, out of the gate of Leipsic, following his troops already on the road to Skeuditz. "Well," said Blucher, smoking his pipe, "we cannot deny that there has been an abundant shower of orders and titles to-day, and that we have all been thoroughly drenched. So I am a field-marshal now; the Emperor of Austria has conferred on me the order of Maria Theresa; and the Emperor of Russia has given me a splendid sword, which I will send as a souvenir to my Amelia. And you, Gneisenau, I hope you have also received your share?"
"Why, yes," said Gneisenau, "I have received titles from all the three monarchs. You are right, there was all day a perfect shower of them--orders and honors; and not a general, not a dignitary or diplomatist has been forgotten. Count Metternich, you know, has been raised by his sovereign to the rank of a prince, in acknowledgment of his diplomatic services; and Prince Schwartzenberg, already enjoying the highest Austrian honors, has received permission to add the escutcheon of the Hapsburgs to his coat-of-arms."
"These two have been in the shower of honors, but very little in the shower of balls," remarked Blucher, laconically. "I wonder what rewards will be conferred on the crown prince of Sweden?"
"He has already received the highest Prussian, Austrian, and Russian orders," replied Gneisenau, scornfully. "As stated before, no one has been forgotten but ONE!"
"Who is it?" asked Blucher. "Who has been forgotten?"
"Field-marshal, one deserving the most honor--one that joyfully sacrificed property, blood, and life, who did not demand any reward, and did every thing for the sake of honor, and from love of country, and for the princes."
"What!" cried Blucher, angrily. "The monarchs have forgotten to reward such a one?"
"Yes, field-marshal, they have! This one is the people, the German people! --the noble, enthusiastic people, who joyously and generously shed their blood for the deliverance of the fatherland, whose mothers and wives allowed their sons and husbands exultingly to march into the field, and made themselves sisters of charity for the wounded and sick; whose men and youths did not hesitate to leave their houses, their families, their property, their business, but readily took up arms to deliver the fatherland; whose aged men became young, whose children transformed themselves into youths, to participate in the holy struggle--all these, the great, noble German people, have received no reward, and not even a promise!"
"But, Gneisenau, how strange you are!" said Blucher, drawing his mustache through his fingers. "The monarchs have rewarded those whom they were able to reward. How can they reward the people? What could they do?"
"They could bestow on them more liberty, more independence and honor," said Gneisenau. "by giving them the constitution which the King of Prussia promised to his people in his manifesto of the 17th of March."
"Yes, that is true," said Blucher, thoughtfully. "Well, Stein is present, and he will surely remind the king of what he ought to do. He is a patriot and a true man!"
"Yes, but he is alone," said Gneisenau, mournfully. "His voice will die away like that of the preacher in the desert. You will see, field-marshal, these promises will soon be forgotten!"
"Well," exclaimed Blucher, "we shall see. For the time being let us rejoice that we have fought the great battle of the nations, and that Napoleon's doom is sealed now. It is all-important for us to finish him quickly and without mercy. You know my battle-cry: 'He must be dethroned!' --Oh, pipe-master! Another pipe, this one does not burn."
As Napoleon and Blucher left Leipsic on the 19th of October, King Frederick William set out from the city for Berlin to rejoice with his people, and to thank God for the victory. All Berlin received the king with exultation, and the 20th of October was a day of universal joy. Germany was free, and this conviction transported every heart, and every one wished to greet the king. Thousands surrounded the royal palace at Berlin all day, and whenever the king appeared at the windows or on the balcony, they saluted him with cheers and waving of hats and handkerchiefs. Multitudes thronged toward the cathedral, to thank God for the glorious victory vouchsafed to them. In every house were festivities in honor of the great battle of the nations fought at Leipsic.
But during this universal exultation the king left Berlin, without his suite, attended only by his old friend, General Kockeritz, and rode to Charlottenburg. No notice was taken of the unpretending equipage, drawn by two horses, destitute of escutcheons and liveries, which drove out of the Brandenburg gate, and the king reached Charlottenburg without being recognized. He did not, however, enter the palace, but ordered Kockeritz to fetch the castellan, that he might open the vault of the royal tomb; then, wrapping his cloak closer about him, under which he seemed to conceal something, he trod the dark path leading to the mausoleum. He paced the gloomy avenue of cypress and pines with a slow step, absorbed in deep reflection. Holy peace surrounded him--not a sound of the people's joy reached him--naught disturbed the silence, save some gentle breeze that rustled the foliage, and as a spirit-voice greeted the king's return. The recollections of other days, with all their troubles, came to him, and revived the painful emotions of the past. He had suffered so much, and alone! And as he had been alone in his affliction, he was now alone in his prosperity. No one was with him at this holy hour to understand his heart, except her whose spirit he believed to be always near him. Grief for the humiliation of her country occasioned her death; joy and pride in the victory of her country would, if possible, have reawakened her from the dead.
The king slowly walked toward the mausoleum. The door was open, and he entered softly. He looked around to assure himself that he was alone, and that no strange eyes desecrated this devout pilgrimage. He took off his cloak, and that which he had borne under it was no longer hidden. It was the laurel-wreath presented on the preceding day at Leipsic. With this crown of victory in his hand he approached the black sarcophagus in which reposed all that was mortal of Louisa! Bending over it, he kissed the place beneath which her head rested, and laid down the wreath. [Footnote: Eylert, "Characterzuge aus dem Leben Friedrich Wilhelm III." vol. ii., p. 162.]
"Take it, Louisa," he murmured. "It belongs to you! Your spirit was with us, and led us to victory. Oh, why did you leave me? Why are you not with me in the days of prosperity as in the days of adversity? I have seen your beautiful eyes shed many tears, but now I cannot see them brighten with joy. I can hear no more your sweet voice, your merry laughter! I am alone!" He leaned his hands on the sarcophagus, and, pressing his head on the laurel-wreath, shed abundant tears. After a long pause, he rose and suppressed his grief. "Farewell, my Louisa," he said. "I know that you are with me, and that your love accompanies me! Farewell!" Casting a parting glance on his wife's tomb, the king left the sacred cell, and walked slowly toward the palace through the shadowy and silent avenue of the cypress-trees.
HANNIBAL ANTE PORTAS
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{
"id": "3801"
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40
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BLUCHER'S BIRTHDAY.
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Two months had elapsed since the great battle of Leipsic, during which, to Blucher's unbounded despair, much had been spoken, much negotiated, many schemes devised, but nothing done. Owing to the slowness of the allies, Napoleon had succeeded, aside from some unfortunate engagements during the retreat, in safely returning with the remnant of his army to France; and this dilatory system of the allies seemed to be constantly adopted. The armies advanced slowly, or not at all. For weeks the headquarters had been at Frankfort-on- the-Main. There were the Emperor of Russia, the King of Prussia, the crown prince of Sweden, and Prince Schwartzenberg as representative of the Emperor of Austria, besides Metternich and Hardenberg, and the whole army of diplomatists, who deemed it incumbent on them to put an end with their pens to this war which the swords of the generals had concluded by a victory. The peace party were incessantly intent on gaining the allies at headquarters over to their side, and the crown prince of Sweden and Prince Metternich stood at their head. Bernadotte cautioned the allies against the dangers in which an invasion of France would involve them; Metternich deemed it more advisable for them to conclude an advantageous peace with the angry lion Napoleon. Blucher kept murmuringly away from the headquarters, and stayed with his staff at Hochst, near his troops.
It was the 16th of December. The field-marshal was alone in his room, and sat on the sofa, in his comfortable military cloak, smoking his morning pipe. Before him lay a map of Germany, on which he fixed his eyes, and across which he eagerly moved his fingers from time to time, drawing lines here and there, and apparently conceiving plans of operation. The door opened, and Pipe-Master Hennemann walked in. --In full gala-uniform, holding both hands behind him, he stood at the door, hoping that his field-marshal would see and ask him what he wanted. But Blucher did not look up; he was absorbed in studying his map. Christian Hennemann, therefore, ventured to interrupt him. "Field-marshal," he said, in a low and timid voice, "I--" "Well, what do you want, Christian?" asked Blucher, lifting his eyes from the map. "What is the matter? Why do you wear your gala- uniform, and look as if you were about to go on parade? Have you become a Catholic in this Catholic country, Christian, and are you celebrating a saint's holiday?"
"Yes, field-marshal," said Christian, resolutely stepping forward, "I am celebrating the holiday of my saint, and his name is Blucher!"
"He is a queer saint," cried Blucher, laughing. "But what does it all mean, Christian?"
"It means, field-marshal, that this is your birthday, and that you are seventy-one years old to-day."
"That is true," said Blucher to himself. "My birthday! I had given strict orders not to celebrate it, and I had forgotten it myself!"
"But no one can prevent me from celebrating it, your excellency!" exclaimed Christian. "That would be very pretty, if I could not congratulate my 'Marshal Forward' on his birthday. Long live my field-marshal! And may God spare him many years to us yet, that we may catch Bonaparte at Paris; for, if 'Marshal Forward' does not do it, no one will!"
"Yes, if they would only let me!" cried Blucher, striking with his hand on the table; "but they will not! I am sitting here like a pug- dog in a deal box, and Bonaparte stands outside; I can only bark--I cannot bite him, for they will not let me out."
"They will have to, your excellency," said Hennemann, quickly, "and before many pipes are smoked. But I would request your excellency to be so kind as to smoke this pipe." He drew forth his right hand, which he had held behind him, and produced a short pipe, neatly adorned with a rose-colored ribbon terminating in a rosette with two long ends. "Field-marshal," he said, "in return for all the favors you have conferred on me, a poor boy, and for having made me, a stupid peasant-lad, pipe-master of the famous Field-Marshal Blucher, I take the liberty of presenting you with this short pipe." And making a polite obeisance, he handed it to the general, who took it smilingly, and was about to reply, but Christian added, in a louder voice, "But your excellency must not think that this is a common pipe. In the first place, it is not made of clay."
"No," said Blucher, contemplating it; "the small tube is made of wood, and mounted with silver, sure enough; the bowl is carved out of wood, too, and there is another bowl inside."
"But it is no common wood, your excellency," said Christian, solemnly. "You remember that I requested a furlough immediately after the battle of Leipsic, and said I would go home, see my dear Mecklenburg again, and visit my brothers and sisters. Well, that was not my principal object; there was another reason why I wanted to go. I have never forgotten what my General Blucher said when I first came to him, and what he told us of his mutting--that he still loved her. Well, I thought it would gladden the field-marshal's heart to have a little souvenir of his mother. And, therefore, I wended my way to Rastow, where my dear field-marshal's mother is buried. I went to her grave, said my prayers, and then cut off a branch from the linden which stands on her grave. Like every other son of Mecklenburg, you ought to have a souvenir of your mutting. Here it is. The tube and the bowl of the pipe I carved out of the branch cut from the linden, and, that you might know what it is, I cut these letters in the wood. Read, sir."
"Sure enough, there are letters on it," cried Blucher. "They say 'Souvenir of Mutting!'"
"Yes, that it is," said Christian; "you know, with us, those who love their mother call her as you did, and therefore I offer you this souvenir."
"Christian," said Blucher, in a tremulous voice, "that was well done, and I can tell you that you give me great joy, and that I shall not forget your kindness. This shall be my gala-pipe, and I will smoke it on gala-days only, that is to say, when we go into battle. I thank you a thousand times, Christian, my boy, and if my dear mutting has not forgotten me, she will look down upon her boy to-day, who is seventy-one years old, and it will gladden her to know that he has now a memorial of her--and from her grave! You were on her grave, then, Christian? How does it look?"
"It was decked with flowers, your excellency, and finches and larks were chirping in the large linden overshadowing it. The old grave- digger told me the linden had been planted on the day when Madame von Blucher was buried, and it was quite a small twig at that time."
"Yes, that is the course of things," said Blucher, mournfully; "when I saw my mother last, she was a handsome lady, and I was a boy of sixteen. I have not felt that so many years have elapsed since then, and I feel myself still as active as a lad. But they tell me I am decrepit, and that there is but a step between me and the grave."
"Well, I should like to see the giant who could cross that step," cried Christian; "a hundred thousand French corpses and Bonaparte's overturned throne lie in that step between you and the grave."
Blucher laughed. "You are a good boy, pipe-master, and in honor of you I will smoke the new pipe to-day. Fill and light it; I will--who knocks there? --Open the door, Christian."
"It is I, your excellency," said General Gneisenau, who entered the room. "You must not refuse to see me. It is true, you have forbidden any celebration, serenade, or congratulation; but you must not turn me from your door; for you know that I love you like a son, and therefore you must permit me to come and wish myself joy that Field- Marshal Blucher still lives for the welfare of Germany."
Blucher kindly shook hands with him. "Would that you were right, Gneisenau, and that I really lived for the welfare of Germany! But the gentlemen at headquarters need me no longer. I am once more a nuisance and a stumbling-block--I am, according to them, the old madcap again--the rash hussar, just because I shout, 'We must advance upon Paris!' while the trubsalsspritzen [Footnote: A favorite expression of Blucher when he alluded to the timid diplomatists who advised the allies to make peace with Napoleon.] are croaking all the time, 'We must make peace! If we go to France, we are lost!' Gneisenau, if this state of affairs goes on for any length of time, this will be my last birthday, for I shall die of anger. I know if we make peace, the blood shed has been in vain, and our victories in vain; and in a few years, when he has recovered from his losses, Bonaparte will commence the same game, and we shall have to pass through the same series of disastrous events. But they are destitute of courage. Bernadotte does not want us to hurt the French, and the Emperor of Austria desires to spare his dear son-in- law, and they are besieging our king and the Emperor Alexander in such a vigorous manner, that they are at a loss what to do."
"And what should we be here for?" inquired Gneisenau, smiling. "What would Field-Marshal Blucher be here for, if we do not march forward? No, the gentlemen who are so desirous of making peace are greatly mistaken if they believe that they are able to set at naught our successes, and that it depends on their will only to make peace or war. The wheel that is to crush Napoleon is in motion, and no human hand can arrest it. Let the trubsalsspritzen, as your excellency says, croak: public opinion in Germany and throughout Europe speaks louder, and it clamors for war, and we shall have it. For this reason your excellency ought not to despond, nor prevent us from celebrating your birthday in a worthy manner. Your whole army longs to present its congratulations to you, and the officers of York's corps, who intended to give your excellency a ball to-night, and had so confidently counted upon your consent that they had already made all arrangements, are in despair because you did not accept their invitation. General York himself is quite vexed at your refusal, and thinks you decline because you do not wish to meet him."
"I do not care if he is vexed, old curmudgeon that he is!" cried Blucher. "He must always have something to grumble at, and has often enough said very hard things about me. Let him do so again, for aught I care! I shall, nevertheless, not go to the ball. What should I do there? Merry I cannot be, for my indignation almost stifles my heart, and, instead of smiling on people, I would rather show them my fist. Ah, Gneisenau, men are mean and contemptible, after all, and those at headquarters are the most despicable! They want peace! Do you comprehend that, Gneisenau--peace! now that we are on the road to Paris, and only need make up our minds to destroy the power of our enemy! Oh, it is enough to make a fellow swear! To the gallows with all the trubsalsspritzen! --all the old women who are wearing uniforms, and who, in place of cocked hats, should rather put nightcaps on their heads!"
"Ah!" exclaimed Gneisenau, smiling, "should they do so, your excellency would tear off their nightcaps, and forcibly put their hats again on their heads. And as for the old women, Blucher, the young hero, will in the end rout them all, and drive them from the field."
"Ah, Gneisenau, if I succeed in doing so, then I should be young again, and live to see still many a birthday," sighed Blucher. "I have conceived every thing so clearly and well--the whole plan of the campaign was already settled in my mind! Come, Gneisenau, let me show you all on the map, and then you will have to admit that Napoleon would be annihilated if we could carry this plan into execution. Come, look at the map!"
Gneisenau stood by the side of the field-marshal, and bent over the map lying on the table.
"See," said Blucher, eagerly, "here is Paris, here is the Rhine, and here are we; farther below--" "But, your excellency," interrupted Gneisenau, surprised, "you have a very old and poor map; it is impossible to base any strategic plans on it."
"How so?" asked Blucher, in amazement.
"Because this map is certainly incorrect, your excellency; we have entirely new and very accurate maps now, made from the latest surveys."
"Ah, what do I care for your surveys?" cried Blucher, impatiently. "By your surveys, I suppose, you cannot displace the countries, cities, and rivers? Paris remains where it is, the Rhine flows where it has always flowed, and behind the Rhine lies Germany, where it has always lain?"
"Yes, but you will not find on this map the towns, villages, forests, rivers, and hills, which you will meet on your advance, and which, if not taken into consideration, might prove formidable obstacles."
"What do I care for the towns, villages, forests, rivers, and hills?" replied Blucher: "I advance all the time, and that says every thing. In the towns and villages I shall cause my troops to take up their quarters; through the forests we shall cut a road if there is none; we shall build bridges across the rivers, and run over the tops of the mountains; if the field-pieces cannot be hauled over them, we shall take them around the base. The most important thing is, that we advance, and I am quite able to consider that on my map here. --Now, then! here is Paris. Put your finger on Paris, Gneisenau." The general obeyed, and pressed the tip of his forefinger on the spot indicated. "And here," cried Blucher, pressing his own finger on the map, "here are we, the Silesian army. Between us lies the Rhine. Put your other finger on the Rhine, Gneisenau." Gneisenau put his middle-finger on the black line marking the Rhine. "Now put your little-finger down here, between Mannheim and Kehl; there stands the army of Bohemia under Prince Schwartzenberg; and up here, where I hold my thumb, in Holland, is Bulow, with his corps. See, on this side, we have therefore completely hemmed in France; and, on the other side, where the Atlantic Ocean is--or is it no longer there on your new-fangled maps?"
"Yes, your excellency," exclaimed Gneisenau, laughing, "it is still there."
"Well, then, England posts her ships there; and in the south, on the Pyrenees, stand the Spaniards, who have sworn to revenge themselves on Bonaparte. Now we advance all at the same time into France. Prince Schwartzenberg penetrates with his army through Switzerland; Bulow marches through the Netherlands, after conquering them, and joins my forces; and I cross the Rhine here in three large columns with the Silesian army--the first column at Mannheim, the second at Kaub, and the third--well, now I have no finger left to--" "Here is mine, your excellency," said Gneisenau, raising the finger marking the line of the Rhine.
But Blucher hastily pressed it down. "Do not remove that!" he cried; "what is to become of my whole plan if that finger should desert its position? Keep it there, then! --Well, here, where I hold my left thumb, at Coblentz, the third column will cross the Rhine. On the other bank we shall all unite, take Sarrebruck, advance by forced marches upon Metz, and--" "Your excellency," shouted the pipe-master, throwing open the door, "a courier from the King of Prussia, from Frankfort-on-the-Main!"
"Let him come in!" cried Blucher, hastily throwing off his military cloak, and putting on his uniform-coat. He had not yet quite done so when the courier entered the room.
"What orders do you bring from my king and master?" inquired Blucher, meeting the officer.
"Your excellency, his majesty King Frederick William III., and his majesty the Emperor Alexander, request Field-Marshal Blucher to repair immediately to Frankfort, where the monarchs have an important communication to make to the field-marshal. They wish your excellency to start forth-with, in order to reach Frankfort as soon as possible."
"Inform their majesties that I shall be there in two hours. --Well, Gneisenau, what do you say now?" asked Blucher, when the courier left the room.
"I say that the monarchs have at length discovered who alone can give them efficient assistance and valuable advice, and that they have, therefore, applied to Field-Marshal Blucher."
"And I tell you," shouted Blucher, in a thundering voice, "that the monarchs send for me to inform me that we are to face about and go home. If it were any thing else, they would have sent me word by an officer; but, as it is, they are afraid lest I grow furious, and so they intend to inform me in the mildest possible manner of their decision, and wish to pat my cheeks tenderly while telling me of it. But they mistake; I shall tell them the truth, as I would any one else, and they shall see that it is all the same to me whether they have a crown on their heads or a forage-cap; the truth must out, and they shall hear it, as sure as my name is Blucher! But I must dress for the occasion--it shall be a gala-day for me. With my orders on my breast, and the emperor's sword of honor at my side, I will appear before them and tell them the truth."
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{
"id": "3801"
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41
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PASSAGE OF THE RHINE.
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The Emperor Alexander and King Frederick William were in the king's cabinet, awaiting Field-Marshal Blucher, for the courier had just returned and reported that the field-marshal promised to be at Frankfort within two hours.
"The two hours have just elapsed," said Alexander, glancing at the clock, "and Blucher, who is known to be a very punctual man, will undoubtedly soon be here. Ah, there is a carriage; it is he, no doubt!"
"Yes, it is he," said the king, who had stepped to the window, and was looking out. "He is alighting with the nimbleness of a youth, in spite of his seventy-one years. He is really a hero!"
"And will your majesty be so kind as to enter into my jest? Will you assist me in it, and confirm my words?"
"Certainly, sire; but I tell you, beforehand, our jest may render the old firebrand very grave, and we may happen to get a scolding."
"That is just what I am longing for," replied the emperor, smiling. "Old Blucher's scolding is wholesome, and invigorates the heart; it is a new and vital air which his words breathe upon me. It is flattering to be scolded for once like a common mortal."
"Well, if you desire that, sire," said the king, smiling, "Blucher will certainly afford you this pleasure to-day."
The door opened; a footman entered and announced Field-Marshal Blucher. The two monarchs met him. Both shook hands with him, and bade him welcome with great cordiality. This, however, instead of gladdening Blucher, filled him with distrust.
"They pat me, because they want to scratch me," said Blucher to himself, "but they shall not fool me!" His features assumed a defiant expression, and a dark cloud covered his brow.
"To-day is your birthday, field-marshal," said the king; "that is the reason we have sent for you; we desired to congratulate you in person. You have passed through a year of heroism, and the new one cannot bring you nobler laurels than those you have already."
"Ah, your majesty, I believe it might after all," said Blucher, quickly. "The laurels growing in France are the noblest of all; that is why I should like to gather them."
"Ah! the Emperor Napoleon will not suffer it," said Alexander. "He values them too highly, and it is not advisable for us to seek them, for he is not the man to allow us to take what belongs to him."
"But he was the very man to take a great many things that did not belong to him," cried Blucher, vehemently.
"That which did not belong to him we have taken again, and have satisfied the ends of justice," said the king, gravely.
"No, we have not satisfied the ends of justice," cried Blucher. "It is justice if we march to Paris--to take all from him whom your majesties still call the Emperor Napoleon, but who, in my eyes, is nothing but an infamous tyrant, presumptuous enough to put a crown on his head, and ascend a throne to which he has no right whatever, and who, moreover, has treated us Germans as though we were his slaves. Ay, it is justice if we take from the robber of kingdoms, the braggart winner of battles, all that he has appropriated, and send him back to Corsica. That would be justice, your majesty; and if it is not administered, it is a morbid generosity that prevents it, and which is utterly out of place in regard to him."
The emperor cast a glance full of indescribable satisfaction on the king, who responded to it with a gentle nod.
"My dear Blucher," said Alexander, kindly, "you have not yet permitted me to wish you joy of your birthday. God bless you, my dear field-marshal, and may this year bring us the peace and repose which one so much needs after the exposures of campaign life, and especially when he is seventy-one years old!"
"I do not know whether I am as old as that," said Blucher, indignantly; "I know only that I am by no means desirous of repose, but rather deem it a great misfortune just now."
The emperor seemed not to have heard him, but continued quietly: "Yes, certainly, my dear field-marshal, you need retirement; at your venerable age we should not subject ourselves to such prolonged fatigues in the field."
"Besides, I am sure you wish peace, like the rest of us," said the king, who saw that the veins on Blucher's forehead were swelling, and who wished to forestall too violent a reply. "We have reflected a long while how we might give you a pleasant surprise on your birthday, but it was difficult for us. Yon have already all the orders and honor we can bestow; you are blessed with riches, and we have found it difficult to make you a present worthy of the respect and love we entertain for you."
"But his majesty the king has resolved to give you something which will gladden your noble heart. Field-marshal, we give you peace as a birthday present! We have resolved, to make peace with Napoleon; and to-day, on your birthday, the conditions, which, you know, have for a long time past formed the subject of secret negotiations, are to be signed. The Emperor Napoleon has declared his readiness to accept them, and, therefore, there are no further obstacles to the cessation of war."
"To-morrow our troops will set out for home," said the king. "The requirements of honor and duty have been satisfied; the welfare and prosperity of our subjects demand peace. You, my dear field-marshal, have been selected to direct the retreat of the troops. Conformably to the wishes of his majesty the Emperor Alexander, and his royal highness the crown prince of Sweden, I appoint you commander-in- chief of all the retreating troops. The generals will have strictly to comply with your orders; and, just as Prince Schwartzenberg was general-in-chief of the advance, you, field-marshal, are general-in- chief of the retreat. Confiding in your energy, sagacity, and zeal, we hope that you will conduct the retreat, satisfactorily, and the men will reach their homes as soon as possible. You are now, therefore, commander-in-chief; that is your birthday gift, and we hope you will be content with it."
"No," cried Blucher, drawing a deep breath, and unable longer to restrain his anger, "I am not content with it--not at all; and I must say that I do not wish this appointment, which seems to me a disgrace. General-in-chief of the retreating armies! I should like to ask his majesty the Emperor of Russia why his soldiers have given me the honorary title of 'Marshal Forward,' if I am now to be 'General-in-chief Backward?' If your majesty has given me the golden-sheathed sword only for the purpose of wearing it on parade, I do not want it. Sire, here it is; I lay it down at your feet with due respect. Your majesty, you desired to give it to the general-in- chief of the retreating troops, and that I am not, and cannot be!" He hastily unbuckled his sword, and laid it on the table beside the emperor.
"And why can you not?" asked Alexander, composedly.
"Because I cannot disgrace my honest name by doing dishonest things," cried Blucher, vehemently.
"Blucher, you forget yourself," said the king, almost sternly; "your words are too strong."
"Yes, your majesty, I know that they are strong," exclaimed Blucher; "but the truth is strong, too; I must relieve myself of it; I can no longer keep it back, and, the truth is, that it would be a shame and a stupidity if we retreat without reconquering, on the left bank of the Rhine, that which we were obliged to cede to France. Your majesties have said that the requirements of honor and justice are satisfied. Permit me to reply that this is not so, and cannot be, if we retreat; for we show that we are still distrusting our own power, and, notwithstanding our superior army, deem ourselves too weak to attack the man who has been attacking us for nearly twenty years, and to whom nothing was sacred, whether treaties, or rights of property, or nationality. No, the requirements of justice are not satisfied if we face about now and consider the frontiers of France more sacred than the French have ever considered the frontiers of Germany. Bonaparte has as yet Holland, a piece of Germany, and Italy, and he says he will not yield a single village which he has conquered, though the enemy stand on the heights of Paris. It would but be right for us to march to that city, and compel him to disgorge, not merely a village, but all that he has taken. And if this be not done, if the peace-croakers attain their object, a cry of disappointment and anger will burst forth throughout Europe, and the nations, lifting their hands to God, will curse the pussillanimity and weakness of their princes. They would be justified in doing so; for it was not for this that brave men, at the first call of their king, left their families; it was not for this that they sacrificed their property on the altar of the fatherland. The women did not become nurses and sisters of charity, nor did their husbands and sons shed their blood, that only one great battle might be gained over Bonaparte, and that he then might be allowed leisurely to evacuate Germany. We did not even pursue him, but marched slowly, while he safely wended his way to the Rhine, And now he is to remain quietly in France! The world is to receive no satisfaction, and the tyrant is not to be punished! If that be right and just, well--no matter! I am an old soldier, and am not versed in the tricks of diplomatists! Nor do I care to be versed in them! They know how to manage matters so insidiously that at last they convert wrong into right--falsehood into truth, and disguise their cowardice in such a manner that it looks like wisdom. The only thing I understand is, that I am no more of any use, and I request your majesty to give me my discharge as a birthday present--be so kind as to grant it immediately. I am much too young to become General-in-chief Backward, and it is, therefore, better for me to stand aside, and let others take the command of the retreating troops. Your majesties will graciously pardon me if I take the liberty of withdrawing." He bowed with respect and turned quickly toward the door.
"But why in such haste?" asked the king. "Pray stay; I have not yet granted your discharge."
"But your majesty, I know, will grant it, and I consider you have already done so. I beg leave to withdraw."
"But stay!" exclaimed Alexander.
"Pardon me, your majesty, I must go!"
"Why? Tell us honestly the truth, field-marshal."
"Well," said Blucher, standing at the door, "if your majesty orders me to tell the truth, I will do so. I must go, because I cannot endure it here; I must find some place where I may give vent to my rage, and, by a vast amount of swearing, relieve my heart."
"What!" cried Alexander, laughing. "Your heart is still oppressed?"
"Yes, your majesty, what I have said is as nothing," replied Blucher, in a melancholy tone; "those words were only as a few rain- drops; the whole violence of my anger, with its thunder, lightning, hail, and storm, is still in my heart, and may God have mercy on him on whom it will burst! Your majesties may see that it is high time for me to withdraw."
"Otherwise, you think, the thunder-storm might burst here?" inquired Alexander, smiling.
"I am afraid so, sire," replied Blucher, gravely.
"Perhaps it may be allayed, however," said Frederick William, approaching Blucher. "You have determined, then, not to accept the position offered you?"
"I demand at once my discharge, your majesty; my discharge!"
"You do not wish to be commander-in-chief of the retreating troops?" asked Alexander.
"My name is 'Marshal Forward!'" said Blucher, proudly.
"And it is your firm belief, field-marshal," asked the king, "that it would be neither just nor honorable for the allies now to make peace and go home?"
"Your majesty, it is--it is my earnest conviction, and I shall never be able to change it."
"Well, then," said Alexander turning toward the king, "is not your majesty, too, of the opinion that it would be advantageous for us to allow ourselves to be directed by the views and convictions of so brave and experienced a general? Do you not believe that we owe it to him, in consideration of the distinguished services which he has performed, to believe him, the brave soldier, rather than the tricky diplomatists?"
"I have no doubt of it," said the king, smiling, "and I confess that all that the field-marshal has told us has greatly modified my views, and induced me to adopt another course. If Blucher insists that, in order to satisfy the requirements of honor and justice, we should not now make peace, I believe him."
"And if he has insurmountable objections to being called Marshal Backward," exclaimed the emperor, merrily, "well, then, he must retain the name my soldiers have given him."
"But, your majesty," cried Blucher, who listened with amazement, "what means all this?"
"It means," said the king, putting his hand on Blucher's shoulder, "it means that I cannot grant you the discharge which you have requested, because I need your services more than ever."
"It means," said the emperor, putting his hand on Blucher's other shoulder, "that Marshal Forward is the very man we need at this juncture. For, in spite of all ministers, diplomatists, and peace- croakers (I thank you for that word), we have determined to carry on the war to the best of our power."
Blucher uttered a cry of joy, and lifting up his large eyes, he exclaimed: "Good Heaven, I thank Thee, with all my heart; for the day is dawning now, and we shall soon see how the sun shines in Paris!"
"You did not wish to be commander-in-chief of the retreating army," said the king, kindly; "let us appoint you, then, second general-in- chief of the advancing army."
"How so? I do not understand that," said Blucher, bewildered. "That is to say, I remain general-in-chief of my Silesian army?"
"Yes, but with enlarged power and independence, and with a greater number of troops. Your corps has suffered a great deal; on your victorious fields of Mockern and Leipsic you lost many brave soldiers. Your ranks need filling up, in order that you may act vigorously and energetically. Therefore, three new corps will be added to your forces [Footnote: Varnhagen von Ense, "Biography of Prince Blucher of Wahlstatt," p. 205.] --a Prussian corps under General Kleist, a Hessian corps under the crown prince of Hesse, and a mixed corps under the Duke of Saxe-Coburg, the whole amounting to about fifty thousand fresh soldiers. With these reenforcements, added to your own eighty-five thousand men, you will be at the head of an army with which great things may be accomplished, and with which I believe you may gather your laurels in France."
"Moreover," said Alexander, kindly, "you will hereafter not be responsible to any other commander. We shall consider jointly with you all operations of the war, and the whole plan of the campaign, and lay before you all general communications. Prince Schwartzenberg will always keep you well instructed of the movements of the grand army, and only REQUEST you to inform him of those you deem it best for the Silesian army to make in cooperation with the former. [Footnote: Varuhagen von Euse, "Biography of Prince Blucher of Wahlstatt," p. 205.] You will, therefore, be entirely at liberty to carry your own plans into execution, and will have only to report to Schwartzenberg and to us what you are doing. Are you now content, Blucher?"
"Do you still demand your discharge as a birthday present?" inquired the king.
"You ask me whether I am content, or demand my discharge?" cried Blucher, cheerfully. "Now that we advance, I would not take my discharge, and should your majesty give it to me, to punish me for my unseemly conduct, I would secretly accompany the army and fight in the ranks; for you ought to know that I do not advocate a vigorous prosecution of the war on account of the honor it might reflect on me, but for the rights of all Germany; and for this reason I am not only content, but I thank Heaven, my king, and the Emperor Alexander, from the bottom of my heart; and especially for the great confidence you place in me. This is the most flattering of all the honors you have lavished upon me, and I shall endeavor with head and arm to render myself worthy of it. I shall always remember that my king intrusted me with the sacred mission of blotting out the disgrace of Jena, and of causing our angel, Queen Louisa, who shed so many tears for us on earth, to rejoice in heaven over our deeds--and--" his words choked his utterance, his eyes grew dim; pressing his hand to them with a quivering movement, he said, in a stifled voice, "I believe--may God forgive me! --I believe I am weeping! But my tears are tears of joy; they do my heart good, and your majesties will forgive them! --Well, now I am all right again," he added, after a pause. "I request your majesties to give me instructions, and tell me what is to be done, and when we shall cross the Rhine."
Toward nightfall Blucher returned from Frankfort to Hochst. In front of his door he was met by General Gneisenau, Colonel Muffling, and several other gentlemen of his staff. Blucher made a very wry face, receiving them with loud grumbling. "Oh, it is all very well," he said, alighting from his carriage. "I can now communicate bad news to you. We shall lie still here, like lazy bears, during the whole winter; we shall neither advance nor retreat. The diplomatists have hatched out the idea, and I am sure they will arrange a pretty treaty of peace for us! Well, I do not care; I will try to suppress my grief, and lead a happy life. If we are inactive, we shall at least try to kill time in as pleasant a manner as possible. I shall commence diverting myself this very day, and, despite the apostles of peace, show that they have not ruffled my temper. The officers of York's corps will give a ball at Wiesbaden to-night. I will go, immediately setting out for Wiesbaden, and conveying the tidings to old York. Well, gentlemen, prepare to accompany me; and you, General Gneisenau, be so kind as to go with me to my room for a minute or two. I wish to tell you something." He saluted the officers, and stepped quickly into the house. Followed by Gneisenau, he entered the room, and carefully locked the door. The wrinkles now disappeared from his forehead, and an expression of happiness beamed in his face. "Gneisenau," he said, encircling the tall form of his friend in his arms, "now listen to what I have to say. What I told you about peace was not true. We are to advance--ay, to advance! and it seems to me as if I hear Bonaparte's throne giving way!"
"What, your excellency!" exclaimed Gneisenau, joyfully, "we are going to advance--to march into France?"
Blucher hastily pressed his hand on his mouth. "Hush, general!" he whispered. "At present no one must hear it; it is a secret, and we must try to conceal our movements as much as possible. We ought to do our best to mislead the enemy--that is my plan. We must make him believe that the whole offensive force of the allies is turning toward Switzerland, and that the Silesian army is to remain on the Rhine as a mere corps of observation. Napoleon will make his dispositions accordingly: he will leave but a small force on the bank of the Rhine opposite us, and on passing over to the other side we shall meet with little resistance."
"That is again a plan altogether worthy of my Ulysses," said Gneisenau, smiling. "It is all-important now for us to let every one, and above all Napoleon, know as soon as possible that we stay here."
"I will swear and rave so loudly that he will certainly hear it in Paris," said Blucher. "Let us curse the necessity imposed on us, and secretly make all necessary dispositions, inform the commanders, and issue the orders, so that we may all cross the Rhine at midnight on the 31st of December."
"What! The passage is to take place at midnight on the 31st of December?" asked Gneisenau.
"Yes, general. Let us begin the new year with a great deed, that we may end it with one."
"But will that be possible, field-marshal? Can all our troops be prepared at so short a notice?"
"That is your task, Gneisenau; ideas are your province, execution is mine. You are my head, I am your arm; and these two, I believe, ought jointly to enable us to cross the Rhine at midnight on the 31st of December, as the holy army of vengeance, which God Himself sends to Bonaparte as a New-Year's gift. But come, Gneisenau, let us ride to the ball. I must dance! Joy is in my legs, and I must allow it to get out of them. I shall ask old York to dance, and, while we two are hopping around, I must tell him what is to be done. We are to advance!"
Blucher's resolutions were carried into effect. All dispositions were made in a quiet and efficient manner; and while the field- marshal scolded vehemently at the inactivity of the winter, General Gneisenau secretly took steps to prepare for the passage of the Rhine. Napoleon's spies at Frankfort and on the Rhine heard only the grumbling of Blucher, but they did not see the preparations of Gneisenau.
On the 26th of December orders were dispatched to the commanders of the different corps of the great Silesian army, communicating the time and place of crossing the Rhine, and on the 31st every soldier of that army stood on the bank ready for the passage. This was to be effected at three different points--Mannheim, Caub, and Coblentz. The grand, all-important moment had come; midnight was at hand.
It was a clear and beautiful night; the deep-blue sky was spangled with stars, and the air cold and bracing. None saw the blank columns moving toward the Rhine. The French, on the opposite side, were asleep; they did not perceive Field-Marshal Blucher, who, at Caub, on the bank of the river, was halting on horse back by the side of his faithful Gneisenau, apparently listening in breathless suspense. Suddenly, the stillness was interrupted by the chime of a neighboring church-clock; another struck, and, like echoes, their notes resounded down the Rhine, in all cities and villages, proclaiming that the old year was past, and a new one begun.
Blucher took off his gray forage-cap, and, holding it before his face, uttered a low, fervent prayer. "And now, forward!" he said, in a resolute tone. "Let us in person convey our 'happy New-Year' to the French! --And Thou, great God, behold Thy German children, who are shaking off the thraldom of long years, and who have become again brave men! Heavenly Father, bless our undertaking! Bless the Rhine, that it may flow to the ocean again as a free German river for German freeman! --And now, boys, forward! Build your bridges, for Heaven sends us to France to punish Bonaparte, and sing him a song of the Rhine! Forward!"
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42
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NAPOLEON'S NEW-YEAR'S-DAY.
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It was early on the morning of the 1st of January. Napoleon was angrily pacing his cabinet, while the police-minister, Duke de Rovigo, was standing by the emperor's desk, and waiting, as if afraid to look at his master, lest his anger burst upon his head.
"Why did you not tell me so yesterday, Savary?" asked Napoleon, with his flaming eyes on the police-minister. "Why did you not inform me, immediately after the close of the meeting of the Chamber of Deputies, of the seditious and refractory spirit of the speeches which certain members dared to deliver?"
"Sire, I had no proofs of their guilt. Speeches, it is true, had been made, but they vanish, and offer no solid grounds for convicting men of crime. As I have not the honor of being a member of the committee which your majesty has appointed to take the condition of France into consideration, I was unable to hear the speeches delivered at the meeting. I had to obtain palpable evidence. I knew, not only that the commission of the Chamber of Deputies had resolved to have an address to your majesty published, but that the opposition speaker of the committee, M. Raynouard, intended to have his speech printed and circulated, in order to prove to France that the committee of the Chamber had done every thing to give peace to the nation."
"As if that were the task of those gentlemen--as if they had to give me advice, or could influence me!" cried Napoleon, vehemently. "They have never dared raise their voices against me; but now that we are surrounded by enemies--now that it is all-important for France to startle the world by her energy and the unanimity of her will, these men dare oppose me! You allowed, then, their addresses to be sent to the printing-office, Savary?"
"Yes, sire. But I had the printing-office surrounded by my police- agents, and waited until the composition was completed and the printing commenced. Then they entered the press-room, seized the copies already printed, knocked the types into pi, and burned the manuscripts, [Footnote: "Memoires d'un Homme d'Etat," vol. xii., p. 294.] as well as the proofs, except this one, which I have the honor of bringing to your majesty."
The emperor, with an impetuous movement, took up the printed sheet lying on the table by the side of the duke, and glanced over it. "Savary," he said, pointing out a passage on the paper, "read this to me. Read the conclusion of Raynouard's speech. Read it aloud!" He handed the paper to the duke, and pointed out the passage.
Savary read as follows: "'Let us attempt no dissimulation--our evils are at their height; the country is menaced on the frontiers at all points; commerce is annihilated, agriculture languishes, industry is expiring; there is no Frenchman who has not, in his family or his fortune, some cruel wound to heal. The facts are notorious, and can never be sufficiently enforced. Agriculture, for the last five years, has gained nothing; it barely exists, and the fruit of its toil is annually dissipated by the treasury, which unceasingly devours every thing to satisfy the cravings of ruined and famished armies. The conscription has become, for all France, a frightful scourge, because it has always been driven to extremities in its execution. For the last three years the harvest of death has been reaped three times a year! A barbarous war, without object, swallows up the youth torn from their education, from agriculture, commerce, and the arts. Have the tears of mothers and the blood of whole generations thus become the patrimony of kings? It is fit that nations should have a moment's breathing-time; the period has arrived when they should cease to tear out each other's entrails; it is time that thrones should be consolidated, and that our enemies be deprived of the plea that we are forever striving to carry into the world the torch of revolution. . . . To prevent the country from becoming the prey of foreigners, it is indispensable to nationalize the war; and this cannot be done unless the nation and its monarch bo united by closer bonds. It has become indispensable to give a satisfactory answer to our enemies' acensations of aggrandizement: there would be real magnanimity in a formal declaration that the independence of the French people and the integrity of its territory are all that we contend for. It is for the government to propose measures which may promptly repel the euemy, and secure peace on a durable basis. Those measures would be at once efficacious, if the French people were persuaded that the government in good faith aspired only to the glory of peace, and that their blood would no longer be shed but to defend our country, and secure the protection of the laws. But these words of 'peace' and 'country' will resound in vain, if the institutions are not guaranteed which secure those blessings. It appears, therefore, to the commission, to be indispensable that, at the same time that the government proposes the most prompt and efficacious measures for the security of the country, his majesty should be supplicated to maintain entire the execution of the laws which guarantee to the French the rights of liberty and security, and to the nation the free exercise of its political rights." [Footnote: "Memoires d'un Homme d'Etat," vol. xii., p. 208.]
"Well," cried the emperor, impetuously, "what do you think of that? Does it not sound like the first note of the tocsin by which the people are to be called upon to rise in rebellion?"
"Sire, it is the language of treason!" replied Savary. "The conduct of the members of this committee would justify your majesty to have them shot as traitors." [Footnote: Ibid., p. 294.]
The emperor made no reply, but bowed his head on his breast, and, with his hands folded behind him, paced the room for a few moments. "Savary," he then said, "it is sufficient for us to be at war with our foreign enemies; let us not get into difficulty with our domestic adversaries. This is not the time for doing so. If we conquer our foreign enemies, the domestic ones will of themselves be silent; but if we succumb, every thing will be different. Those gentlemen have acted both foolishly and ungenerously (at a moment when it is all-important that France should act and think as one man), to stir up political partisan feeling; and it is ungrateful to oppose me at a time when, overwhelmed with care and work, I need my whole energy to maintain my position. Let us leave it to fate to punish the traitors. They will not have long to wait!"
"And those haughty members of the Chamber of Deputies do not even feel that they are deserving of punishment," exclaimed the duke, indignantly. "The whole committee, and M. Raynouard with them, have accompanied me to the Tuileries, and repaired to the throne-hall in order to offer your majesty their congratulations for the new year."
"Ah, it is true, to-day is New-Year's-day," said Napoleon; "I had almost forgotten it, for the cares and anxiety of the old year have, as a most faithful suite, followed me into the new year. But I am glad you remind me of it! I will go to the throne-hall and receive the congratulations of my faithful subjects, or those who call themselves so. Follow me!"
In the throne-hall were assembled, as on every New-Year's-day, the dignitaries of France and the most prominent authorities of the government; but for the first time, since the establishment of the empire, the representatives of the foreign powers and the ambassadors of the European princes failed to appear at the reception in the Tuileries. In former years they had hastened to present their congratulations; to-day not one of those representatives was present, not even the ambassador of the Emperor of Austria, Napoleon's father-in-law--not even the ambassador of the King of Naples, his brother-in-law! The troops of the Emperor Francis had invaded France; the troops of King Murat had returned to Naples, and he had informed his brother-in-law that the welfare of his own country rendered it necessary for him to forsake France. The very princes of the Confederation of the Rhine, hitherto the most sycophantic flatterers of the emperor, had likewise turned away from him; all the allies, adulators, and friends of his days of prosperity had left him, as rats desert the sinking ship. No one was in the throne-hall except the dignitaries and officers of France, and one-half of these came, perhaps, because the duties of their offices rendered it incumbent on them--because the events of the future could not be positively foreseen, and the emperor, thanks to his lucky star, might finally conquer his enemies.
The emperor entered with his usual proud and careless indifference. His quick glance swept past the ranks of the assembly, and rested for a moment on the place where the ambassadors of the foreign governments formerly stood beside the throne, and where no one was to be seen to-day. But not a feature changed; he was still calm and grave. With a gentle nod he turned toward the ministers who were on the left, and addressed each of them a few kind words; he then quickly ascended the steps of the throne. Under the canopy, he turned his eyes toward the side where were the members of the senate and the legislature.
Napoleon's eyes flashed down the silent assembly with an expression of terrible anger. When he spoke, his voice rolled like thunder through the hall, and echoed in the trembling hearts of those who were conscious of their guilt, and who hung their heads under the outburst of their sovereign's wrath. "Gentlemen of the legislature," he said, "you come to greet me. I accept your greetings, and will tell you what you ought to hear. You have it in your power to do much good, and you have done nothing but mischief. Eleven-twelfths of you are patriotic, the rest are factious. What do you hope by putting yourselves in opposition? To gain possession of power? But what are your means? Are you the representatives of the people? I am. Four times I have been invoked by the nation, and have had the votes of four millions of men. I have a title to supreme authority, which you have not. You are nothing but the representatives of the departments. Your report is drawn up with an astute and perfidious spirit, of the effects of which you are well aware. Two battles lost in Champagne would not have done me so much mischief. I have sacrificed my passions, my pride, my ambition, to the good of France. I was in expectation that you would appreciate my motives, and not urge me to what is inconsistent with the honor of the nation. Far from that, in your report you mingle irony with reproach: you tell me that adversity has given me salutary counsels. How can you reproach me with my misfortunes? I have supported them with honor, because I have received from nature a sturdy temper; and if I had not possessed it, I would never have raised myself to the first throne in the world. Nevertheless, I have need of consolation, and I expected it from you: so far from receiving it, you have endeavored to depreciate me; but I am one of those whom you may kill, but cannot dishonor. Is it by such reproaches that you expect to restore the lustre of the throne? What is the throne? Four pieces of gilded wood, covered with a piece of velvet. The real throne has its seat in the heart of the nation. You cannot separate the two without mutual injury; for it has more need of me than I have of it. What could the nation do without a chief? When the question was, how we could repel the enemy, you demand institutions as if we had them not! Are you not content with the constitution? If you are not, you should have told me so four years ago, or postponed your demand to two years after a general peace. Is this the moment to insist on such a demand? You wish to imitate the Constituent Assembly, and commence a revolution? Be it so. You will find I will not imitate Louis XVI.: I would rather abandon the throne, I would prefer making part of the sovereign people, to being an enslaved king. I am sprung from the people; I know the obligations I contracted when I ascended the throne. You have done much mischief; you would have done me still more, if I had allowed your report to be printed. --You speak of abuses, of vexations. I know, as well as you, that such have existed; they arose from circumstances, and the misfortunes of the times. But was it necessary to let all Europe into our secrets? Is it fitting to wash our dirty linen in public? In what you say there is some truth and some falsehood. What, then, was your obvious duty? To have confidentially made known your grounds of complaint to me, by whom they would have been thankfully received. I do not, any more than yourselves, love those who have oppressed you. In three months we shall have peace: the enemy will be driven from our territory, or I shall be dead. We have greater resources than you imagine: our enemies have never conquered us--never will. They will be pursued over the frontier more quickly than they crossed it. Go!" [Footnote: Bucher et Roux, "Histoire Parl. de France," vol. xxxix., pp. 460, 46l.]
The last words of the speech were still resounding through the hall when the deputies, with pale faces, bowing timidly and silently before the throne, turned and walked toward the door. All eyes were riveted on them, and it was felt that the men whom the emperor dismissed with such a strain of vehement invective were twenty new enemies whom Napoleon sent into the provinces, and who would bring a new hostile army--public opinion--into the field against him. Many hoped that the emperor, perceiving his blunder, would call back the deputies by some pleasant word, in order to bring about a reconciliation between him and those who, whatever the emperor might say, represented in the throne-hall the opinion of the people.
But Napoleon did not call them back; standing on his throne, haughty and defiant, he looked after the disappearing deputies in anger; and only when the door of the anteroom closed, did he turn his eyes toward those who surrounded him. As if by a magician's wand his face resumed its former expression of august calmness. He slowly left the throne, and, dropping here and there a few condescending words, crossed the hall. Suddenly he noticed Baron Fontaine, the architect of the imperial palaces. "Ah," exclaimed Napoleon, quickly advancing toward him, "you are here, Fontaine? I intended to send for you to- day. Did you bring your plans with you?"
"Yes, sire."
"Well, then, come; and you, ministers, Duke de Rovigo, Duke de Vicenza, Duke de Bassano, pray follow me into my cabinet."
The officers and cavaliers who remained in the hall looked after the emperor with anxious glances. "A cabinet meeting on this holiday! and at which the imperial architect has to be present!" they whispered. "What means this? Will the emperor commission M. de Fontaine to transform the Tuileries into a fortress, and construct ramparts and ditches? Are we, if all should be lost, to defend ourselves? Or will the emperor convert Paris into a fortress? Is M. de Fontaine to erect outworks and fortifications? Or will the emperor have a new Bastile built for the purpose of confining the traitorous legislature and several hundreds of these new-fangled royalists who are now springing up like mushrooms?"
But the emperor did not think of all this when, followed by the three ministers and Baron Fontaine, he entered his cabinet. An expression of affability overspread his features, and round his lips played the sunny smile which appeared so irresistible to all who had ever seen it. "Come hither, gentlemen," he said, merrily, "let us act here as judges. Fontaine brings us plans for a palace for the King of Rome. It is high time for me to think of building one for the heir-apparent, and this idea has engrossed my mind for a long period. If the times had not been so unfavorable, it would already have been completed. I will begin now, in order to prove to the foreign powers how great is the confidence felt by France and her emperor in their ability to withstand the attacks of the allies; for, while their armies are fighting the enemy, they are constructing a palace for their future emperor. --Now let me see your plans, Fontaine; unroll them!"
Fontaine spread out on the table the papers which he had brought with him from the anteroom. The emperor bent over them, and asked the architect to explain to him the different lines and figures. The three ministers stood beside them, grave and silent, and their furtive glances seemed to ask whether this really was not a scene intentionally contrived by the emperor--whether he really could think of building a palace for the King of Rome at a moment, when France was hemmed in on all sides, and menaced by enemies, endangering the existence of the imperial throne!
But Napoleon really seemed to be quite sincere. With his magic energy he appeared to have banished all gloomy thoughts, and to be engrossed only in plans for a serene future. "See here, Caulaincourt," he said, pointing to one of the plans, "what do you think of this? It is a sort of castle or fort, and looks well, does it not?"
"Very, indeed," replied Caulaincourt. "It reminds me of the palace at Oranienbaum, which Paul I. built. The towers at the corners, the bastions, and ditches, are similar; and the interior had not only many rooms, but secret staircases, doors, and hidden passages."
"And yet Paul I. was assassinated in that palace!" cried the emperor, whose face suddenly darkened. "The doors and passages did not protect him from murderers. --Well, Maret and Savary, what do you think of it? Do you deem it best that I should build the palace for the King of Rome in the style of a fortress, like that of Oranienbaum?"
"Sire," exclaimed Savary, eagerly, "so precious a head cannot be sufficiently protected. In building a palace for the king, less attention should be paid to an attractive appearance than to safety and convenience."
"Is that your opinion, too, Maret?"
The Duke de Bassano was silent for a moment, and closely examined the plan. "No, sire," he then said, looking at the emperor, with a polite yet somewhat singular smile--"no, sire. I believe we should avoid the semblance of a fortress built for the heir-apparent, just as though he should ever need such a place of refuge against his own subjects, and in the middle of his capital! People would say your majesty intended to reconstruct for your successor the old Bastile."
"Maret is right," exclaimed the emperor. "No fortress! The confidence, love, and attachment of his people should be the only safeguard of a monarch. Ramparts did not save Paul I.; the greatest precautions, locked and guarded doors, did not protect the sultan from the scimitars of the Janizaries; every one falls when his hour has struck; it will strike for me, too, and my life will belong to him who is willing to give up his life for mine! But I shall teach my son to govern the Parisians without fortresses, and make them love him. [Footnote: Napoleon's words. --Vide "Memoirs of the Duchess d'Abrantes."] It is true, however, there will always be malicious men to frustrate our efforts, and sow the seeds of discord between me and my people."
"Sire," said Fontaine, anxious to turn the emperor's thoughts into a different channel, "here is another plan. The former was in the old feudal style; this would look more like a villa."
"That is the very thing I want," exclaimed the emperor, eagerly. "A villa in the grandest possible style--a palace magnificent enough to be mentioned after the Louvre, but still with all the peculiarities of a villa. For the palace of the King of Rome, after all, will be only a sort of villa in Paris; as a winter residence the Tuileries, or the Louvre, would be preferred. But, though I want the building to be large and brilliant, the total cost must not exceed ten million francs. I do not want a chimera, but something real, substantial, and practical, for myself and the king, and not a fanciful structure merely gratifying to the architect. The completion of the Louvre will give glory enough to the architect. As to the palace of the King of Rome, he may forget his personal interest, and think only of rendering the structure as convenient as possible. It is to become a sort of Sans-Souci, where one is merry, forgets care, enjoys the sunshine in the apartments, and the shade in the garden, and may combine the simplicity of rural life with the comforts of a great city. Imagine you were building a commodious residence for a rich private citizen, a convalescent who has need of comfort, repose, and diversion. There must be, therefore, a small theatre, a small chapel, a concert-hall, a ball-room, a billiard- room, and a library; fish-ponds, and shady groves in the garden--in short, a genuine villa." [Footnote: Napoleon's words. --Vide Constant, "Memoires," vol. v., p. 184.]
"I believe your majesty will find all that you wish for united in this," said the Duke de Bassano, who had carefully examined the second plan. "It is a villa in grand style, and surely worthy of a great prince."
"Ah," said the emperor, with a profound sigh, "would it were already finished, and I could live in it with my son! I--" At this moment the folding-doors of the cabinet were thrown open, and the usher's voice shouted, "His majesty the King of Rome!"
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43
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THE KING OF ROME.
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The emperor, with a joyful exclamation, turned toward the door. On its threshold stood a boy of remarkable beauty, such as Correggio or Murillo would have selected as a cherub model. His slender but vigorous form was clothed in sky-blue velvet, embroidered with silver, and his fairy-like feet wore shoes of the same color. His dimpled arms were bare, and a fleece of golden ringlets fell on his fair neck and shoulders. An ingenuousness, undeformed by bad training, increased the charm of his natural beauty. There was nothing affected in his blooming face; and, while a happy temper played about his lips, there was a light in his large blue eyes, reminding the beholder of his great father, from whom he also inherited a forehead which, when the attractions of his childhood had passed away, would at once assert his manly gravity and thought.
Behind the boy appeared the dignified form of Madame de Montesquiou, his governess, who seemed to take pains to keep back the boy, and, seizing his hand, hastily whispered a few words to him. But he forcibly disengaged himself, and, without noticing any one but the emperor, rushed toward him with open arms. "Papa," he cried, in an imploring tone--"papa, have you not given me permission to come to you at any time?"
"Yes, sire," said the emperor, tenderly, lifting him into his arms, "and the proof of it is that you are here."
"Well, dear 'Quiou," asked the boy, in a triumphant tone, turning toward Madame de Montesquiou--"did I not tell you so? --The usher would not admit me, papa, though I told him I am the King of Rome!"
"He ran away from me," said the governess, "in the first anteroom, and so fast that I could not follow him."
"It was because I wanted to see my dear papa emperor," cried the child, fixing his eyes with an expression of indescribable tenderness on his father.
"But that was the reason, sire," said the governess, "why the usher would not immediately open the door to you. He did not know whether he was allowed to do so, and waited, therefore, until I came."
"But why did he not know that he was allowed to do so?" cried the little king, impetuously. "Did I not tell him, 'I WILL it, I am the King of Rome?' Pray tell me, papa emperor, do not the ushers obey you either when you say, 'I will it?'"
The emperor laughed as loudly and merrily as he had done in the days of his prosperity, and the ministers and Baron Fontaine joined heartily in his mirth; even Madame de Montesquiou could not suppress a faint smile. The boy saw it, and asked hastily, "Why do you laugh, 'Quiou? Did I say any thing ridiculous?"
"No, rather something charming," said the emperor, smiling, laying his hand on the blond head of his child, and pressing it closer to his breast. With the child still in his arms, he seated himself in an easy-chair, and, placing the little fair-haired king on his knee, gazed at him with joyful eyes. His whole countenance was changed, and beaming with mildness; even his voice assumed another tone, and seemed incapable of command or threat.
"Sire," said the emperor, "we were just speaking of you."
"Ah," cried the child, with an arch smile, "I know what it was! My papa emperor was thinking of a New-Year's present!"
"But, sire," exclaimed the governess, sharply, "it is unseemly to ask for presents."
A blush suffused the child's face, and seemed reflected on the pale cheeks of the emperor, who felt almost pained at seeing him so much ashamed of himself.
"Madame," he said, turning hastily to the governess, "I have to ask a favor of you: pray leave the King of Rome here with me for a time. I myself will take him back to you, and I promise to watch carefully over his majesty."
Madame de Montesquiou made a ceremonious obeisance; the little king kissed his hand to her, and she then left the cabinet. No sooner had the door closed than the boy, with a smile, encircled the emperor's neck with his arms, and cried, "Now we are alone, papa emperor!"
"Oh, no!" said the emperor, smiling, "did you not yet see these gentlemen?"
"No," said the child, looking round in surprise, "I saw only you, papa!"
Never had the lips of the most beautiful woman uttered words that gladdened his heart so much as these. But before his ministers he was almost ashamed of his sensitiveness, and, therefore, he forced himself to assume a graver air. "Sire," he said, "above all, you must greet these gentlemen; they are my ministers, and very dear friends of mine."
"Ah, then they are friends of mine, too," cried the boy, with that politeness which comes from the heart. Quickly descending from his father's knee to the carpet on the floor, the little King of Rome walked several steps toward the gentlemen, and bowed so deeply to them that his blond ringlets rolled down over his face. "Pardon me, gentlemen," he said, "if I did not see and greet you! I came to my papa emperor because to-day is a holiday, and I desired to wish him a happy New-Year. I see you now, gentlemen, and, if you will permit me, I wish you all, too, a happy New-Year."
The gentlemen bowed, and looked with an expression of gentle sympathy and emotion on the lovely child, as if imploring the blessing of Heaven upon him. The emperor probably read this in their eyes, for he greeted the gentlemen with a pleasant smile, and nodded to them with the triumphant air of a happy father.
"Papa emperor," exclaimed the child, turning once more to his father, "my dear Madame 'Quiou says that France has now need of prosperity, and that I, therefore, ought to pray the good God to grant us His favor."
"Well, and did you do so?" inquired the emperor.
"Yes," replied the child, "I did, from the bottom of my heart."
"How did you pray? Let me hear, sire; it can do no harm if you pray to God once more to grant us His favor. What did you say?"
The child assumed a grave air, and knelt down. He then raised his clasped hands, and, leaning back his head, lifted up his large blue eyes. "Good God," he said aloud, "I pray to Thee for France and for my father!"
These words, uttered in so clear and melodious a voice, sounding like an angel's greeting in the solemn cabinet of the emperor, made a wonderful impression. The gentlemen averted their heads, to conceal their emotion from Napoleon. But he paid no attention to them; his eyes rested on his child with an expression of profound affection; a veil seemed to overspread them, and as it perhaps prevented the emperor from seeing his kneeling child distinctly, he quickly moved his hand across his eyes. The veil disappeared, but the hand that had drawn it aside was moist.
The boy jumped up and hastened back to his father, who clasped him tenderly in his arms, and then, as if to apologize, turned toward his ministers. "Well, gentlemen," he said, gayly, "do you believe that the voice of the King of Rome is strong enough to reach to heaven, and bring prosperity to France and to myself?"
"Sire, I do," said the Duke de Bassano, in a trembling voice.
"And I feel convinced of it," said the Duke de Rovigo. "If any prayer can reach heaven, this must."
"It will bless France and her august emperor," said the Duke de Vicenza. "Sire, permit me to ask a favor of you. Give to France as a New-Year's present of your love, the picture of the King of Rome praying for France and his father. Your majesty, send for Isabey, and have him represent the king in this charming attitude. He will paint such a picture both with his hand and his heart, and within a month it must be circulated as a copperplate throughout France. Sire, I venture to assert that this engraving will win all hearts, and the members of the legislature cannot excite half as much hatred in the provinces as this picture will produce love."
"You are right," said the emperor, "that is an excellent idea. France shall learn that my son prays, first for it, and then for me. --Maret, see to it that Isabey come to-morrow. The plate must be ready for distribution in the course of a month. [Footnote: This copperplate really appeared shortly after; it is a sweet and beautiful portrait of the little King of Rome.] And now," added the emperor, putting the child again on his knee, "now tell me what do you want me to give you as a New-Year's present?"
"Oh," cried the little king, smiling, "I know something, dear papa emperor, but I dare not say what it is."
"Ah, you may," said the emperor. "I pledge you my word that I will fulfil your wish, if it be possible. Speak, then."
"Sire," asked little Napoleon, nodding toward the ministers, "sire, will these gentlemen not betray me to Madame de Montesquieu?"
"I warrant you they will not," said the emperor, gravely. "Let me hear what you want."
"Well, then, papa emperor," said the boy, leaning his head on his father's breast, and looking up to him, "I feel a great wish that I could run just once all alone into the street, and play in the mud and the gutter, as other children do." [Footnote: Bausset, "Memoires sur Intterieur du Palais Imperial," vol. ii.]
The emperor burst into loud laughter, in which the others did not fail to join. "Ah, you see, gentlemen," exclaimed the emperor, "this is a new rendering of Lafontaine's celebrated 'Toujours perdrix!' The King of Rome, being able to command all that is beautiful and agreeable to his heart's content, is longing for the gutter. --Be patient, sire, I cannot immediately fulfil your wish, but I shall have a palace for you, and in its court-yard you shall have a gutter, too. Sire, look at those plans which Baron Fontaine has drawn up for a palace destined for you alone."
"What! For me alone?" asked the child, in dismay. "You will not live with me in the palace?"
"No, sire. The King of Rome must have a palace of his own where he will reside with his court."
"Papa emperor, I thank you for your New-Year's gift," said the boy, sullenly; "I thank you, but do not accept it. I do not want a palace of my own. I thank your majesty, but prefer remaining at the Tuileries."
"But, sire, just think of it--a splendid palace belonging to you alone!"
"I do not want to live alone!"
"Well, sire, then you will request your beautiful mother, the empress, to live with you. Will that be sufficient?"
The boy glanced quickly and anxiously around the room, as if to satisfy himself that neither the empress nor Madame de Montesquiou was present; he then threw both his arms round the emperor's neck, and exclaimed, "I want to be where you are, papa!"
Napoleon pressed his lips with passionate tenderness on his son's head. "Well, sire," he said, in a voice tremulous with love, "I believe your wishes will have to be complied with. As soon as your palace is completed I shall live with you. Do you accept your palace on this condition?"
"Yes, my dear papa emperor," exclaimed the prince, joyously, "now I accept it, and thank you for it."
"Well, you hear that, Fontaine," said Napoleon, turning toward his architect. "You may begin the construction of the palace; the King of Rome accepts it. I sanction this second plan. Build a magnificent villa, and it must be completed in two years. In two years--" Suddenly the emperor paused, and his face darkened. "Ah," he said, gloomily, putting his hand on the prince's head, "ah, we purpose building you a palace, but if they conquer me you will not even possess a cabin!" [Footnote: Napoleon's words. --Vide "Memoirs of the Duchess d'Abrantes."] The emperor's head dropped on his breast, and a pause ensued, which the child, usually so vivacious, did not venture to interrupt.
At length Napoleon said: "Go, Fontaine, and take your plans along; I will confer further about the matter. And you, ministers, come, we have to settle some questions of importance. But, first, I must take the king back to his governess."
The boy clung with almost anxious tenderness to his father. "Ah, dear, dear papa emperor," he begged, "let me stay here! I will be quiet--oh, so very quiet! I will only sit on your knee, lean my head on your breast, and not disturb you at all."
"Well, you may stay then," said Napoleon. "We shall see whether you really can be quiet and not disturb us."
The little child kept his word. Sitting quietly on the emperor's knee, and leaning his little head on his father's breast, he did not interrupt in the least the important conference of Napoleon and his ministers. An hour afterward the conference was over, and the dukes were dismissed.
"Now, sire," said Napoleon, turning toward the child, now "let us play."
But the little king, who always received these words with exultation, remained silent, and when the emperor bent over him, he saw that he had fallen asleep. "Happy king!" murmured Napoleon, "happy king! who can fall asleep in the midst of state business!" Softly and cautiously drawing the boy closer to his breast, and taking pains not to disturb his slumber, he sat still and motionless, scarcely breathing, although sad thoughts oppressed his mind. It was an interesting spectacle--this lovely boy leaning his head in smiling dreams on the breast of his father, who was looking down on him with grave and tender eyes.
The emperor sat thus a long time. Strange and wonderful thoughts stole upon him--thoughts of past happiness, of past love. He thought of how long he had yearned to possess a son, and how many tears his first consort shed--how ardently he had been loved by the noble and beautiful Josephine, whom, in his pride, which demanded an heir- apparent, he had thrust into solitude. Providence had given Bonaparte all that his heart had longed for--a beautiful young wife, who loved him, and who was the daughter of an emperor; and a sweet, lovely child that was to be the heir of his imperial throne. But Providence, by giving him all, had taken all from Josephine--the heart and hand of her husband, her dignity and authority as an empress and sovereign. She was now nothing but a deserted and unhappy lady, who had only tears for her past, no joy in the present, no hopes for the future.
All this was on account of the child adored by his father, and hailed by France; and yet, despite all the mischief this little boy had done her and the fact that he was the child of another woman, Josephine loved him, and often implored the emperor to let her see and embrace the little King of Rome. He had always refused to grant this request, in order not to stir up the jealousy of his young wife, but, at this quiet hour, when he was alone with his sleeping child, Napoleon thought of Josephine with melancholy tenderness. Amid the profound silence which surrounded him, his recollections spoke to him. They pointed him to Josephine in the imperishable splendor of her love, her grace, and goodness; he thought he saw her sweet lips, which had always a smile for him; her brilliant eyes, which had ever looked tenderly on him, and which had learned to read his most secret thoughts.
"Poor Josephine!" he murmured, "poor Josephine! she loved me ardently, and many things might be different now if she were still by my side. She was my guardian angel, and with her my success has departed. She sacrificed her happiness to me and my ambition; and while formerly all hastened to offer congratulations on this day and pay homage to the empress, she now sits lonely and deserted at Malmaison. --No," he then said aloud, "no, she shall not be lonely and deserted! I surely owe it to her to occasion her a moment of joy. She shall see my son--I myself will take him to her." He cautiously lifted up the boy in his arms and rose. The prince awoke and looked smilingly up to his father, who carried him to the sofa and laid him with tender care on the cushions. But little Napoleon jumped up, and said laughingly. "I am no longer tired. The dukes are gone now, and let us play, papa!"
"No, sire," said the emperor, "not now, I have business to attend to. But listen to me: at noon to-day I will take a ride with yon, all alone--that is to be my New-Year's present."
The boy uttered a cry of joy. "All alone, papa emperor? Oh, that will be splendid!"
"But now go to Madame de Montesquiou, sire," said the emperor. -- "Constant!" When the valet de chambre entered the room, he ordered Constant, "Pray conduct his majesty the King of Rome to Madame de Montesquiou, and tell her I shall call for him in a few hours in order to take a ride with him alone, without any attendants whatever. --Adieu, Sire, in a few hours we shall meet again."
But the boy stood and looked at the emperor with grave and sullen glances. "Sire," he said, "my dear Madame 'Quiou tells me often a king ought to keep his word. Now I ask you must an emperor not keep his word also?"
"Certainly, sire!"
"Well, then, your majesty, take me to Madame 'Quiou," cried the boy, joyously; "you told her you would do so. Come, papa!"
"Ah," exclaimed the emperor, smiling, "you are right--an emperor must fulfil his word, though he has pledged it only to a king. Come, sire, I will conduct you to Madame de Montesquiou. Constant, await me here!"
A few minutes afterward, the emperor returned to his cabinet. "Constant," he said, in a low voice, "I know you loved the Empress Josephine, and have not forgotten her, I suppose?"
"Sire, the empress was my benefactress; I owe to her all that I am, and she was always kind to me."
"More so than the present empress, you mean to say?" asked the emperor, casting a searching glance on his valet de chambre; and, as Constant was silent, Napoleon added, "It is true, the young empress is less condescending than my first consort. But that is, Constant, because she was brought up as the daughter of an emperor, and her feelings were restrained by the narrow limits of etiquette. Josephine forgot too much that she was an empress, Maria Louisa forgets it too little; but her heart is good and gentle, and she would never wish to grieve me. So, Constant, you have not yet forgotten the Empress Josephine?"
"Sire, none that ever knew the Empress Josephine could help remembering her. For my own part, I can never forget her."
"Ah, what a fripon you are, to give me such a reply! Well, I will prove to you, M. Fripon, that I have not forgotten Josephine, either. This is New-Year's-day. Would you not like to offer your congratulations to the Empress Josephine at Malmaison?"
"Sire, if so humble and low a servant as I am may dare, I should certainly be very happy to lay my congratulations at her feet."
"Go, I permit you to do so, and the empress will surely receive you very kindly."
"Particularly, sire, if I had a message from his majesty the emperor to deliver."
"Fripon, I believe you take the liberty of guessing my thoughts! Yes, I will give you a message. Hasten to the Empress Josephine, take her my greetings, but see that the empress receives you without witnesses. --Do you hear, Constant--without witnesses? Then tell her to have her carriage immediately brought to the door, and, on the pretext of being alone with her mournful New-Year's meditations, to take a ride without attendants. But when she is at a considerable distance from Malmaison, she is to order the coachman to drive to the little castle of La Bagatelle. She must be there precisely at four o'clock. I shall be there, and tell her majesty I shall not come alone. Now make haste, Constant! Recommend entire reticence to the empress. As to yourself, pray do not forget that, if any one shall hear of this affair, you must be held responsible. Go!"
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{
"id": "3801"
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44
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JOSEPHINE.
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Just as the clock struck four, the carriage of the Empress Josephine wheeled into the courtyard of the little castle of La Bagatelle. She inquired of the castellan, in a tremulous voice, whether any one had arrived there, and she breathed more freely when he replied in the negative. She left the carriage with youthful alacrity and entered the castle, followed by the castellan, who gazed in amazement at this empress without court or suite, who arrived stealthily and tremblingly, like a maiden to meet her lover for the first time. She hurried through the well-known apartments of the castle, and entered the hall in which, during the days of her happiness, she had so often received the foreign princes and ambassadors, or the dignitaries of France. The hall was now empty; no one was there to receive the deserted empress; but bright, merry fires were burning in the fireplaces, and every thing was in readiness for the reception of distinguished guests.
"You knew, then, that I was to come?" inquired the empress of the castellan.
"Your majesty," he replied, in a low and reverential voice, "M. Constant was here, and gave orders to have the rooms in readiness. If your majesty wishes refreshments, you will find every thing served up in the dining-room."
"No, no, I thank you," cried the empress, hastily. "But tell me is my dressing-room--my former dressing-room," she corrected herself falteringly--"is that heated, too?"
"Your majesty will find all your rooms comfortable, just as though you still condescended to reside here."
"Well, then, I will go to that room. If any one comes, I shall notice it through the opened doors; it is unnecessary for you to inform me; I will go then at once to the reception-room."
The castellan withdrew, and Josephine hastened through the adjoining apartment into the dressing-room. With a long, painful sigh she glanced around the room which had so often witnessed her happiness and her triumphs. Here, surrounded by her ladies in front of this mirror, she had had her hair dressed, and the emperor had almost always made his appearance at that hour to chat with her, look at her toilet, and delight her heart by a smile, a glance, that was more transporting to her than all the homage and flattery paid her by all her other admirers. Now she was here again, but alone, and with a mournful sigh she stepped to the mirror which had so often reflected her charming portrait, radiant with happiness, and sparkling with diamonds.
And what did she see now in this mirror? A woman with a pale, grief- stricken face, features growing old, and a desponding exhaustion which only a good and pleasant life can disguise when the vigor of youth has faded.
"Oh, I have become old!" sighed Josephine; "the years of tears and solitude count double, for one consumes then in days the strength of many years. I have grown old because I have wept for HIM, and because I have felt his misfortunes. Oh, how will he look? Will his cheeks be even paler and his eyes gloomier than formerly? I have not seen him since his return from his disastrous campaign; if I read the history of his sufferings on his face, my grief will kill me. But no," she encouraged herself, "I will not weep, nor trouble him with my tears. I will be serene, and suppress my emotions. He will not come alone; but whom will he bring with him? I hope not the woman who is my rival--to whom I had to yield my throne! --No, I know Bonaparte's heart, I know that he would be incapable of such cruelty. She, young, beautiful, the reigning empress--I, old, sorrowful, faded, the deserted empress! I--ah, there is a carriage rolling into the courtyard! He comes!" Her whole form trembled, and, breathless, her face suffused with deep blushes, she sank into an easy-chair. "I love him still," she murmured; "my heart does not forget!" A low knocking at the small side-door leading to the inner corridor, was heard, and Constant entered. Josephine rose hastily, and with quivering lips asked, "Constant, is he there?"
"Yes, your majesty. The emperor requests you to repair to the reception-room. He will be there in a moment."
"And who is accompanying him?"
"His majesty has commissioned me to tell you that it would afford him great satisfaction to prepare a little surprise for your majesty, and that he has, therefore, fulfilled a wish which you have felt for a long time."
"Constant!" exclaimed Josephine, joyfully, "the emperor brings the King of Rome to me?"
"Yes, your majesty."
"Ah, her child!" cried the empress, with an emotion of jealousy, burying her face in her hands.
"The emperor requests your majesty to be so gracious as not to let the little king suspect whom he has the honor to approach," whispered Constant.
"Ah, she is not to suspect that her child has come to me!" murmured Josephine, while fresh tears trickled down her cheeks.
"The emperor, besides, implores your majesty not to frighten the prince by a sadness which your majesty, in the generosity and kindness of your heart, has so often overcome."
"Yes," said the empress, removing her hands from her face, and hastily drying her tears with her handkerchief, "I will not weep. It is true, I have often begged that I might see the King of Rome--the child for whom I have suffered so much, and to read in his face whether he is worthy of my sacrifice. The emperor is so kind as to fulfil my wish; tell him that I am profoundly grateful to him, that I will restrain my emotion and not make the prince suspect who I am. Tell him that I shall not weep when I see the child of the present empress. No, do not tell him that, Constant; it would grieve him-- tell him only that I thank him, and that he shall not be displeased with me. Go! I am ready, and shall be happy to see the boy. It is not HER child, but HIS that I am to embrace." And greeting Constant with that inimitable smile of grace and kindness peculiar to her, she walked toward the reception-room. "How my heart throbs!" she murmured; "it is as if my limbs were failing me--as if I should die." Nearly fainting, she slowly glided through the adjoining apartment, and entered the reception-room. "Courage, my heart! for it is HIS child that I am to greet." Sitting down on an easy-chair near the window, she looked in anxiety and suspense toward the large folding doors.
At length the emperor appeared. Josephine had not seen him for nearly a year, and at first her eyes beheld only him. She read in his pallid and furrowed face the secret history of his sorrows, which he had not, perhaps, communicated to any one, but which he could not conceal from the eye of love. Unutterable sympathy and tender compassion for him filled her soul. And now she almost timidly looked upon the child that Napoleon led by the hand.
How charming was this child! How proud of him was his father! Josephine felt this, and she said almost exultingly to herself "I have not, been sacrificed in vain! This child is an ample indemnity for my tears. I am the boy's real mother, for I have suffered, sorrowed, and prayed for him!" Rejoicing in this sentiment, which seemed to restore the beauty of former days, Josephine stretched out her arms toward the child.
"Go, my son, and embrace the lady," said Napoleon, dropping the hand of the prince. He advanced, while his father stood at the table in the middle of the room, supporting his right hand on the marble slab. He looked gravely but kindly upon the empress, from whom he felt separated, by the presence of his child, as by an impassable gulf.
The little prince offered his hand to the empress with a smile, and Josephine drew him into her arms, pressing his head to her bosom. A sigh, in spite of herself, came from the depths of her heart. She slowly bent back the boy's head and gazed at him with a mournful but loving expression. Then her glance fell upon the emperor, and, with an indescribable look of love and tenderness, she said: "Sire, he is like you; God bless him for it!"
There was something so touching and heartfelt in these words--in the tone of her voice, and the glance of her eyes, that the emperor was profoundly moved, and responded only by a silent nod, not venturing to speak lest the tremor of his words should betray his emotion. Even the little king seemed to understand the excellent heart of this lady. He clung to her and said in a sweet voice, "I love you, madame, and want you to love me, too!"
"I love you, sire," cried Josephine, "and shall pray God every day to preserve you to your father--to your parents," she corrected herself with the self-abnegation of a true woman. "You will one day confer happiness on France and your people, for you undoubtedly wish to become as good, great, and wise, as your father."
"Oh, yes, my papa emperor is very good, and I love him dearly!" exclaimed the boy, looking toward his father. "But, papa, why do you not come to us? Why do you not shake hands with this dear lady, who is so good and loves me so well?"
"The emperor is generous," said Josephine, gently; "he wished me to have you a moment by yourself, sire; he has you every day, but I have never had you before."
"Why did you not come and see me?" asked the child. "You live near Paris; and, if you loved me, you would often come and see how the little King of Rome is getting on. The emperor told me you were a dear and kind-hearted lady, and that every one loved you."
"Did he tell you so, sire?" exclaimed the empress, drawing the boy into her arms. "Oh, tell the emperor that I shall always be grateful to him for it, and that these words will forever silence my grief." Her eyes glanced in gratitude to the emperor, who softly laid his finger on his mouth, to admonish her to be silent and calm.
The little prince had now, with the facility with which children pass from one subject to another, turned his attention to a large diamond brooch fastened to Josephine's golden sash. "How beautiful it is!" he exclaimed--"how it is flashing as though it were a star fallen from heaven, and fastened to your breast, because it loves you, madame, and because you are so good! And what fine ornaments you have on your watch! Ah, look here, papa emperor; see those pretty things! Come, papa, and look at them!"
"No, sire," said the emperor, with a strange and mournful smile, "let me remain here. I can see all those pretty things quite distinctly."
"They are very beautiful, are they not?" cried the child. "And if--" "Well, sire," asked Josephine, "why do you pause? Pray speak!"
The boy had suddenly assumed a grave air, and gazed upon the ornaments of the empress. "I was just thinking--but you will be angry if I tell you what, madame."
"Certainly not, sire; tell me what you thought."
"It occurred to my mind that we met in the forest on our way a poor man who looked haggard and wretched, and begged us to give him something. But papa and I could not, for we had already distributed all our money among the unfortunate persons whom we had previously met. Why are there so many poor people, madame? --why does my papa emperor not order all men to be happy and rich?"
"Because it is impossible for him to do so, sire," said Josephine.
"And because, in order to be able to make others happy, we must ourselves be rich!" exclaimed the emperor, smiling. "Now you said yourself, sire, we could not give the poor man in the forest any thing, for we had nothing to give him."
"Yes, and I was very sorry," said the boy, "And now I was thinking if we sent for the poor man, and you, madame, gave him your watch and your diamonds, and he sold them, he would have a great deal of money, and be very rich and happy."
Josephine pressed the boy tenderly to her heart. "Sire," she said, "I promise you that I will send for your poor man and give him so much money that he will never again be wretched."
"Oh!" exclaimed the prince, encircling the lady's neck with his arms, "how good you are, madame, and how I love you!"
Josephine pressed his head to her bosom. "Oh, you may certainly love me a little," she replied, with a touching smile; "I have really deserved it of you."
"Sire," said the emperor, advancing a few steps, "now bid the lady farewell. We must go."
"Papa!" cried the boy, joyously--"papa, we must take the dear lady with us; she is so good, and I love her. Let her live with us in the Tuileries, and always stay with us. I want her to do so, and you, too, papa, do you not?"
Josephine's eyes filled with tears, and she looked at the emperor with an expression of unutterable woe. He immediately averted his face, perhaps to prevent Josephine from noticing his emotion. "Come, sire," he said imperiously, "it is high time; it is growing dark. Take leave of madame!"
"Oh, no; I will not take leave of her!" cried the boy, vehemently. "I say to her rather--Come with us to the Tuileries!"
"It cannot be, sire," said Josephine, smiling amidst her tears.
"Why?" cried the boy, impatiently, and throwing back his head. "Come; you may accompany the emperor, and I want you to do so!"
Napoleon, painfully moved by this scene, quickly advanced to the prince, and took his hand. "Come, sire," he said in a tone so grave that the boy dared no longer resist. Submitting to his father's will, he stepped back, and, pleasantly bowing, took leave of the empress.
"We shall meet again," said Josephine, and, turning her tearful eyes to Napoleon, she asked, "We shall meet again, sire, shall we not?"
"Yes," said Napoleon, gravely, "we shall meet again." He then took leave of her with an affectionate look, which fell as a sunbeam upon her desolate heart, and, leading the boy by the hand, turned quickly toward the door. She looked after them in silence and with clasped hands. As the door opened, the emperor turned again with a parting but melancholy glance.
Josephine was again alone. With a groan she fell on her knees, and lifting her face toward heaven, she cried, "My God, protect-- preserve him! Whatever I may suffer, oh, let him be happy!"
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{
"id": "3801"
}
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45
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TALLEYRAND.
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For a week the emperor had scarcely left his cabinet; bending over his maps, he anxiously examined the position of his army, and that of the constantly advancing allies. Every day couriers with news of fresh disasters arrived at Paris; rumors of invading armies terrified the citizens, and disturbed the emperor's temper. It was impossible for the government to conceal the misfortunes which had befallen France from the beginning of the new year. The people knew that Blucher had crossed the Rhine, and, victoriously penetrating France, on the 16th of January had taken up his quarters at Nancy. It was publicly known that a still larger army of the allies, commanded by Prince Schwartzenberg, had advanced through Switzerland, Lorraine, and Alsace, taken the fortresses, overcome all resistance, and that both generals had sworn to appear in front of Paris by February, and conquer the capital. All Paris knew this, and longed for peace as the only way to put an end to the sufferings of the nation. The strength and the superiority of the allied army could not be concealed, and it was felt to be impossible to expel the powerful invaders.
Napoleon himself at length saw the necessity of peace, and, conquering his proud heart, he sent the Duke de Vicenza, his faithful friend Caulaincourt, to the headquarters of the allies, to request them to send plenipotentiaries to a peace congress. The allies accepted this proposition, but they declared that, despite the peace congress, the course of the war could not in the least be interrupted; that the operations in the field must be vigorously continued. Napoleon responded to this by decreeing a new conscription, ordering all able-bodied men in France to be enrolled in the national armies. The terrors of war were, therefore, approaching, and yet Paris was in hope that peace would be concluded; Caulaincourt was still at the headquarters of the allies, treating with them about the congress.
Early on the morning of the 23d of January, another dispatch from Caulaincourt to Maret was received at Paris, and the minister immediately repaired to the Tuileries, to communicate it to the emperor. This dispatch confirmed all the disastrous tidings which had arrived from day to day, and convinced Napoleon and his minister that the vast superiority of the allied armies rendered it impossible for the emperor to rid his country of the formidable invaders.
"Maret," said Napoleon, gloomily, "come and look at this map. What do you see here?"
"Sire, a number of colored pins extending in all directions."
"And a small number of white pins. Well these are my troops; the colored pins designate the armies of my enemies. They are allied; but I--I have no longer a single ally at this hour; I stand alone, and have to meet eight different armies. See here, Maret: there is, in the first place, the grand army of the Russians, Austrians, Bavarians, and Wurtembergers, commanded by Prince Schwartzenberg, and accompanied by the allied monarchs; next, there is the grand Prussian army, with the Russian and Saxon corps, under the command of Blucher, the hussar; here stand the Swedes under Bernadotte, reenforced by Russian and English corps, and the German troops of the Confederation of the Rhine; there comes the Anglo-Batavian army; here, farther to the South, is Wellington's army, composed of English, Spaniards, and Portuguese; there, in Italy, is an Austrian corps under Bellegarde; at no great distance from it, the Neapolitan corps under the King of Naples; and, finally, here at Lyons, is another Austrian corps under Bubna. The armies of Schwartzenberg, Blucher, and Bernadotte, are about six hundred thousand strong. And now see what forces I have--I cannot call them armies! Augereau's corps is stationed near Lyons; Ney, Marmont, and Mortier, are with their corps here between the Meuse and the Seine; Sebastiani and Macdonald are with the remnants of their corps on the frontier of the Netherlands. Maret, my troops are hardly one hundred thousand; the allies, therefore, are six to one."
"Sire," said Maret, "even a military genius like that of your majesty, will be unable to cope with such odds, and it reflects no dishonor on the bravest to submit to the decrees of Fate."
"It is true," murmured Napoleon, throwing himself into his easy- chair, with his arm leaning on the desk, and his head bent forward-- "it is true, I have no sufficient force to oppose them; their armies are six times as strong as mine, and, unless fortune greatly favors me, I must yield!"
"But fortune has forsaken us, sire, and we have no strength left. Yield, therefore, sire; submit to a stern necessity; comply with the anxious demand of France; restore peace to your people--to the world! Do not endanger, without prospect of success, your precious life, which is necessary to France--your throne, threatened by foreign and domestic foes. All is at stake. Save France, save the throne! Make peace at any cost!"
While Maret was speaking, Napoleon slowly raised his head, and sent a flaming glance on his minister. Now that Maret was silent, the emperor quickly took up an open book from his desk and handed it to Maret. "I will not answer you, duke," said Napoleon, "but Marmontel shall. Read this. Read it aloud."
Maret read: "'I know of nothing more sublime than the resolution taken by a monarch living in our times, who would be buried under the ruins of his throne rather than accept terms to which a king should not listen; he was possessed of too proud a soul to descend lower than unavoidable misfortune. He knew full well that courage may restore strength and lustre to a crown, but that cowardice and dishonor never can.'" [Footnote: Marmontel, "Grandeur et Decadence des Romains," ch. v.] "That is my reply, Maret," exclaimed Napoleon. "The example of Louis XIV. shall teach me to perish rather than humiliate myself."
"Sire," said Maret, solemnly, "Marmontel is wrong; there is something more sublime than to be buried under the ruins of a throne--a king sacrificing his own greatness to the welfare of a state that must perish with him."
"Never!" exclaimed the emperor, impetuously. "I can die beneath the ruins of my throne, but I cannot sign my own humiliation! Maret, I have made up my mind: I will continue this struggle to the last: I will conquer or die! Tomorrow I set out for the army. Ah, I want to see whether that drunken general of hussars, Blucher, shall not yield to me, notwithstanding his crazy cavalry tricks; whether Schwartzenberg, my faithless pupil, who had learned the art of war from me, will meet me in a pitched battle; and whether Bernadotte, my rebellious subject, dare look me in the face. Maret, the decisive struggle is at hand. I will take the field, save Paris, and conquer the enemy. I must call upon all the men of France to defend the sacred soil of our country, and convert every house into a castle, every village into a fortress, so that my enemies shall have to wrest every inch of ground from us at a vast sacrifice. Not another word about peace! Every thing is ready. Troops are hurrying forward from Spain to fill up my army; in a few days they will be here. Between the Seine and the Marne all my forces will unite and put a stop to the advance of the allies upon Paris. We shall occupy a position by which it will be easy for us to divide, disperse, and crush the enemy. Here, in the plain between these rivers, I shall march along the Aube, scatter the allied army, hurl most of my troops at one of its wings, and, by skilful manoeuvres, compel the other wing to fall back. The enemy must retreat; I shall profit by it, and when I have gained a great battle over him, I can impose my own terms; I have then conquered an HONORABLE peace for France--one that we can subscribe to without blushing. Ah, I see a brilliant future! It is time to begin. My eagles are ascending; they are not ravens or bats--they are soaring to the sun." As the emperor uttered these words his soul illuminated his face; he was again the conqueror, confiding in his star.
Maret looked anxiously, but admiringly, at Napoleon's face, in which great resolutions were beaming, and he read there an assurance and determination that nothing could change. "You have made up your mind, then, sire: the war is to go on, and the peace congress is not to meet?"
"On the contrary," exclaimed Napoleon, smiling, "let it meet, if the allies wish it. While Caulaincourt, Metternich, and Hardenberg, are dictating terms of peace with their pens, we shall do so with our swords, and we shall soon see which will make the more progress. But let us now commence with some movements of peace. We must be on good terms with Spain and Rome. Let Ferdinand return as King to Spain, and as such become my ally. I shall also open the doors of Pope Pius's prison at Fontainebleau; let him return as pope to Rome, and, as God's vicegerent, be on my side. Maret, here are already two allies. In order to conquer, but one is wanting; and it is for you, Maret, to procure it."
"Sire, what is the name of this ally?" asked the Duke de Bassano, in amazement.
"Money! money! and, for the third time, money! Procure me five millions in cash, and I can add one hundred thousand men to my army."
"Ah, sire, our chests are empty!" sighed Maret.
"But I must have money," replied Napoleon, vehemently. "Without it no war can be waged--no victory gained. Five millions, Maret; I need them; I must have them!"
Maret looked thoughtful. Suddenly his face kindled, and his whole frame shook with joy. "Sire, your majesty asks for five millions?"
"Yes, five millions, to begin with."
"Well, then, sire, I can tell you where to find them, and perhaps more."
"Where?"
"Sire, will you pledge me your imperial word not to betray that it was I who told you where to find this money?"
"Certainly, Maret."
"Listen, sire; but permit me to whisper what I do not wish even the walls to hear." He bent close to the emperor's ear.
Napoleon listened with breathless attention, and nodded repeatedly. "You really believe this to be true, Maret?" he then asked, eagerly.
"Sire, I affirm it to be true. It is a secret known only to three persons! It was betrayed to me to gain me over by an act of treachery--but that is altogether another matter; the fact is sufficient."
"And this fact is, that I shall find with my mother the millions that I need?" said the emperor. "Maret, if that is so, I shall have them this very day."
"Your majesty believes so? Madame Letitia--" "My mother is avaricious, you wish to say? It is true, her extreme economy has often vexed me; to-day it gladdens my heart; for, thanks to her parsimony, I shall find with her what I need for my army. She will deny these millions to me, to be sure; but you told me where to look for them, and I pledge you my word I know how to find and take them! Hush, not another word! I shall have what I want within an hour. Go now, Maret. You will meet the Prince de Benevento in the antechamber. Send him to me. I have to address a few parting words to M. de Talleyrand."
The emperor stood in the middle of the magnificently furnished cabinet when the Prince de Benevento slowly opened the door and entered. The prince bore the emperor's piercing look with a perfectly composed air. Not a feature of his aristocratic countenance expressed any anxiety and his smile did not for an instant vanish from his lips. With a sort of careless bearing he approached the emperor, who allowed him to come near him, still watching every expression of his countenance.
"I wished to see you," he said, "in order to tell you that I shall set out for the army the day after to-morrow." Talleyrand bowed, but made no reply. "Do you desire to accompany me?" asked the emperor, vehemently.
"Sire, what should I do at the headquarters of the army?" said Talleyrand, shrugging his shoulders. "Your majesty knows well that I could be of very little service in the army--that I am able only to wield the pen."
"And the tongue!" added Napoleon. "But before leaving Paris I will give you some wholesome advice; bridle both your tongue and your pen a little better than you have done of late. I know that you will not shrink from any treachery, and that you are the first rat that will desert the sinking ship; but consider what you are doing. The ship is not yet in danger, and, spreading her sails, she will move proudly on her way."
"I hope she will have favorable winds and deep water," said Talleyrand, bowing carelessly.
Napoleon looked at him with hatred and rage. These equivocal words-- the calm, cold tone in which they were uttered, disturbed the emperor, and his blood boiled. "I believe in the sincerity of your wish," he said, "although there are many who assert that you are a traitor. I have given you fair warning; now prove to those who are accusing you, that they are doing you injustice. No intrigues! You will be closely watched. Beware!" Talleyrand bowed again, and his face still retained its indifferent, smiling expression. "Listen now to what I have to say," added Napoleon. "Prior to my departure I desire to put an end to the dissensions with Rome and Spain. The pope will leave Fontainebleau to-morrow and return to Rome. The Infante of Spain, too, is at liberty to return to his country and ascend the throne of his ancestors. Go to-morrow to Valencay. It was you who conveyed Ferdinand thither; you must, therefore, open the doors of his prison that you locked."
"Sire, I thank your majesty for the favor which you desire to confer on me," said Talleyrand, gravely. "But it was not I who arrested the sacred person of the legitimate King of Spain; it was not I who dared to deprive him of his rights--nay, his very liberty. I acted only as the obedient servant of my master, for your majesty's orders made me the jailer of the Infante of Spain."
Napoleon approached Talleyrand, and his flaming eyes seemed to pierce his soul. "What!" he shouted, in a loud voice. "You wish to give yourself now the semblance of innocence in this affair? What! You only executed my orders, and I made you the jailer of the infante! Who was it, then, that urged me to do this? Who was it that told me it was indispensable for me to crush the head of this Spanish hydra? Who wished even to persuade me to more energetic measures than imprisonment, in order to get rid of the royal family of Spain? Who told me at that time that it would be wiser and better for the welfare of Europe to cut the Gordian knot instead of untying it? Do you remember who did all this?"
Talleyrand made no reply. His countenance still exhibiting the same indifferent composure, he seemed scarcely to have heard the rebukes of the emperor. His head slightly bent forward, his eyes half closed, his lips compressed, he stood leaning with one hand on the back of a chair, and with the other playing with his lace-frill. This conduct greatly augmented the emperor's anger. "Will you reply to me?" thundered Napoleon, stamping the floor, and so near to Talleyrand's foot that the prince softly drew it back. "Will you reply to me?"
Talleyrand looked at the emperor with immovable calmness. "Sire," he said, slowly, "I do not know what your majesty means."
"You do not know what I mean?" echoed Napoleon. "If you do not, listen!" Unable longer to overcome his anger, he advanced toward Talleyrand, and the prince drew back. As if beside himself, the emperor raised his clinched fists, and held them toward the prince's face, moving through the large room, while Talleyrand, looking the emperor full in the face, retreated, taking care to get nearer the door.
"I will tell you that you are a traitor," cried Napoleon, rushing forward--"a traitor who would like to deny to-day what he did yesterday, because he believes that another era is dawning, and that he must betray his master before the cock crows for the first time. You wish to deny that it was you who urged me to imprison the Spanish prince? You are impudent enough to tell me that to my face?" So saying, the emperor's clinched fists almost touched the cheek of the prince, who was still receding, and now noticed with a feeling of relief that he had reached the end of his dangerous promenade.
"Do you really dare deny your past in so barefaced a manner?" cried Napoleon, still holding his fist so close to Talleyrand's cheek that he almost felt it.
The prince softly put his hand behind his back, and fortunately succeeded in seizing the door-knob. He opened the door with a hasty jerk so wide that the gentlemen assembled in the anteroom enjoyed the spectacle of Napoleon with uplifted fists threatening his minister.
"Sire," said Talleyrand, in a calm voice, "I shall not dare say any thing; for I know of no reply to what your majesty has said." The prince pointed with a sarcastic smile to the clinched fists of the emperor, and, without complying with the requirements of usual ceremony, he hastened, more rapidly than his lame foot generally permitted him to do, through the antechamber, saluting the gentlemen as he passed with a wave of his hand and a smile. On stepping into the outer room he accelerated his pace, gliding down-stairs as softly as a cat, and hurrying across the hall to his carriage.
"Home," he said aloud, "at a gallop!" When the horses started, Talleyrand leaned back, and said to himself, "This was our last adieu! I shall take good care not to meet Napoleon again, provided he is stupid enough to give me time for making my dispositions."
The emperor in the mean time, half ashamed of himself, reentered the cabinet, and locked the door. Angry as a lion in his cage, he paced to and fro with quick steps, when suddenly a gentle voice behind him said, "Sire, pray be so gracious as to listen to me!"
The emperor turned with an angry gesture, and saw the Duke do Rovigo standing near the open door of the antechamber. "Well, Savary, what do yo want?" he asked in a faint voice. "Shut the door, and come here. Speak! What do you want?"
"Sire, to implore you to be on your guard," said the duke. "Your majesty has just had a violent scene with the Prince de Benevento."
"Who told you so?"
"Sire, we could distinctly hear your majesty's voice in the antechamber; and, when the prince opened the door, the rest, like myself, saw your threatening attitude. In an hour all Paris will know it."
"Well?"
"Sire, the Prince de Benevento is not the man to forgot an insult, and it will mortify him doubly that the world will hear of it."
"Let it mortify him!" cried Napoleon. "All of you have insinuated to me that Talleyrand is a traitor, deserving punishment. I have chastised him; that is all."
"Sire, the chastisement was either too severe, or not severe enough," said Savary, gravely. "Had it been too severe, the generous heart of your majesty would think of offering him some satisfaction; but I know Talleyrand, and am firmly convinced of the truth of my statement--I pronounce him a plotter of dangerous intrigues. Your majesty therefore cannot chastise him too severely; and, having gone so far, you must now go still farther."
"How so? What do you mean?"
"Sire, I mean that your majesty, instead of allowing the Prince de Benevento to return home, ought to send him to Vincennes, and recommend him to the special care of your friend General Daumesnil."
"Ah, I ought to have him arrested!" cried Napoleon, shrugging his shoulders. "I ought to make a martyr out of a traitor!"
"No, sire, punish a traitor, neither more nor less! I know that Talleyrand is one. He is in secret communication with the legitimists, corresponding with the Bourbons, through other hands; at his house, meetings of malcontents and secret royalists are held every day; there the fires are kindled that will soon burst into devouring energy, unless your majesty extinguish them in time. You have disdained to regain Talleyrand by promises or honors. You have insulted him, and he will revenge himself, if the power of doing so be left him. Sire, I venture to remind your majesty of Machiavel, 'One ought never to make half an enemy.'"
"It is true," murmured Napoleon to himself, thoughtfully, "nothing is more dangerous than such half enmities. Under the mask of friendship they betray us the more surely."
"Hence, sire, pray tear this mask from Talleyrand's treacherous face. Meet him as an open enemy. Then either his enmity will be destroyed by terror, or he will betray his intentions."
"I lack proof to convict him," said Napoleon, in a hesitating and wavering tone.
"Well, yes," exclaimed Savary, "you have no proof, but there cannot be the least doubt as to the intrigues which he is bold enough to plot. The opportunity is too favorable that he should not endeavor to embrace it. Sire, I should like to urge the example of the great police-minister of Louis XV. Whenever M. de Sartines was on the eve of a festival, or any great public ceremony, he sent for all suspicious persons to whom his attention was particularly directed, and said to them, 'I have no charge against you at present, but to- morrow it may be different. Habit you know has power over you, and you are unlikely to resist temptation. It would be incumbent upon me to treat you with extreme rigor. For your sake, as well as mine, be kind enough therefore to repair for a few days to a prison, the choice of which I leave to yourselves.' The suspected persons willingly complied with his request, and no arrests were made."
"You may be right; M. de Sartines was undoubtedly a sagacious police-minister," said the emperor, musingly. "His precaution is good for those who are afraid; but I am not! If I conquer my enemies, I thereby trample in the dust this vile serpent, too, that would sting me, and then would crawl as a worm at my feet. If I yield to my enemies, let the structure which I have built fall upon me. It will not matter then whether Talleyrand's hand, too, broke off a piece of the wall or not; it would have fallen without him. Not another word about it, Savary! My carriage--I will ride to my mother!"
On the evening of the same day, the Prince de Benevento left his palace, entered a hackney-coach, and was driven to one of the remote streets of the Faubourg St. Germain. He stopped in front of a small, mean-looking house; and, when the coach had gone, the prince knocked three times in a peculiar manner at the street door. It opened, and he cautiously entered. No one was to be seen in the lighted hall; but Talleyrand seemed perfectly familiar with the locality; and crossing, without hesitation, a long passage, he ascended the thickly-carpeted staircase. Here was another locked door, beside which was a bell, which the prince rang three times. The door was opened, and he walked through a long corridor. The passage widened, and the prince was now in a brilliant hall, decorated with paintings and gildings. The entrance through the small house was plainly but a circuitous road to one of the palaces of the Faubourg St. Germain where the royalists were plotting mischief. At the end of this hall was a portiere, in front of which was a richly-liveried footman. Talleyrand whispered a few words; the servant bowed and opened the door. The prince now entered a saloon, furnished in the most magnificent and tasteful style, where another liveried attendant was waiting. "The Countess du Cayla?" asked the Prince de Benevento.
"She is in her cabinet. Shall I announce your highness?"
"It is unnecessary."
He quickly approached and knocked softly at the door of the cabinet. A sweet voice bade him come in. Before him stood a young lady who welcomed him with a charming smile, but with an air of ill-concealed amazement. "Oh, the Prince de Benevento!" she exclaimed, merrily. "You come to me to-day; but yesterday, when I went to you to bring you greetings from our august master, King Louis XVIII., you feigned not to understand whom I wished to speak of, and imposed silence."
"To-day I come to make amends for what I did yesterday, countess," said Talleyrand, with his graceful kindness. "Be good enough to inform his majesty King Louis XVIII. that he may henceforth count upon my services and my zealous devotedness. I shall assist him in opening the road to Paris, and do all I can that his majesty may soon be able to make his entrance into the capital of his kingdom."
"Then you have forsaken Napoleon openly and unreservedly!" exclaimed the Countess du Cayla, the zealous agent of the Count de Lille, whom at that time none but the royalists secretly called King Louis XVIII. "You are, then, one of us, now and forever?"
"Yes, I consider myself a member of your party," said Talleyrand, "and at heart I was always one of the most faithful and zealous servants of the king. I can prove it, for it was I who led Napoleon, step by step, frequently even in spite of his reluctance, to the brink of ruin, on which he is standing now, and I am ready to give him a last thrust to plunge him into the abyss. The emperor has been guilty of great folly to-day. He ought to have had me arrested, but he failed to do so. For this mistake I shall punish him by profiting by my liberty in the service of his majesty the king. Let us consider, therefore, countess, what we ought to do for the speedy return of King Louis XVIII. to Paris."
"Yes, let us consider that," exclaimed the countess; "and if you have no objection, prince, we shall allow the faithful friends of his majesty to participate in the consultation. Upward of one hundred friends are already assembled in the large saloon, and they are doubtless astonished at my prolonged absence. Come, prince! You will meet an old friend among your new friends."
"Who is it, countess?"
"The Duke d'Otranto!"
"What? Is he here? Has he dared to return?"
"He has, with the emperor's sister, the Princess Eliza Bacciochi; and he is believed to be with her in the south of France, in order to await the course of events. But he has secretly and in disguise come to Paris, in order, like you, to offer his services to King Louis. Late events seem to have converted him into a very zealous royalist, and he openly admits his conversion. He boasts of having said to the Princess Eliza: 'Madame, there is but one way of salvation: the emperor must be killed on the spot.'" [Footnote: "Memoires du Duo de Rovigo," vol. vi., p. 352.]
"In truth, he is right," said Talleyrand, smiling; "that would speedily put an end to all embarrassments. Well, the emperor intends to join the army; perhaps, a hostile bullet may become our ally, and save us further trouble. If not, we shall speak of the matter hereafter. Permit me, countess, to conduct you to the saloon."
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{
"id": "3801"
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46
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MADAME LETITIA.
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Profound silence reigned in the palace of "Madame Mere." It was noonday, and the male and female servants, as well as the ladies of honor of the emperor's mother, had left the palace to take elsewhere the dinner which Madame Letitia refused to give them, and for which she paid them every month a ridiculously small sum; only the two cooks, whom madame, notwithstanding her objections, had to keep, in compliance with the express orders of the emperor, were in the kitchen, but under the vigilant supervision of old Cordelia, the faithful servant who had accompanied madame from Corsica to France, and who, since then, notwithstanding all vicissitudes, had remained her companion. Cordelia not only watched the cooks and gave them what was needed for preparing the meals, but, as soon as the dishes were handed to the servant who was to carry them to the table, she hastened after him in order to prevent him from putting anything aside. When Cordelia went with the servant, she opened, with an air of self-importance, a cupboard fixed in the wall of the corridor, near the dining-room, of which she alone possessed the key, and, as soon as the servant returned with the fragments of the dinner, she locked them in this cupboard with the wine and bread; only on Sundays did the dinner-table of Madame Mere provide any thing for the servants.
To-day, however, was not Sunday, and hence Madame Cordelia herself had placed a bottle, half filled with wine remaining from yesterday's dinner, on the table, at which no one but Madame Letitia was to seat herself, one of the ladies of honor, who always dined with her, having been excused on account of indisposition. Madame Letitia was therefore alone to-day; it was unnecessary for her to submit to the restraint of etiquette, and she yielded with genuine relief to an unwonted freedom. She was in her sitting-room, busily engaged in taking from a large basket, the plebeian appearance of which contrasted strangely with the magnificent Turkish carpet on which it stood, the folded clothes which the washerwoman had just delivered. The appearance of Madame Mere herself was also in some contrast with the gorgeous surroundings amid which she moved.
The room was furnished with princely magnificence, the walls being hung with heavy satin, and curtains of the same description, adorned with gold embroideries, suspended on both sides of the high windows; the richly-carved chairs and sofas were covered with purple velvet, and the tables had marble slabs of Florentine workmanship. A chandelier of rock-crystal hung in solid gold chains from the ceiling; masterly paintings in broad, rich frames were on the silken walls; Japan vases stood on gilded consoles, and numerous costly ornaments added to the splendor of the aristocratic apartment.
Madame Letitia, standing beside the wash-basket, presented a marked contrast with all this. Her tall figure was wrapped in a light white muslin dress trimmed below with rosettes, and from which protruded a rather large foot, covered with a cotton stocking, and encased in a coarse, worn-out shoe. A sash of rose-colored silk, with faded embroidery, encircled her waist; a lace shawl, crossed over her bosom, and tied in a careless knot on her back, enveloped her neck and full shoulders. Her hair, falling down in heavy gray ringlets, was surmounted by a sort of turban, and a large bouquet of artificial roses, fastened above her forehead, was her only ornament.
There was nothing therefore imposing in the appearance of the emperor's mother; but still there was something noble about her, and that was her face. It was of imperishable beauty; its outlines were classic and of great dignity, and her eyes, which were of the deep, incomparable color which she had bequeathed to her son the emperor, possessed still the lustre of youth; her lips were fresh, and her teeth faultless; not a single wrinkle furrowed her forehead, and her finely-curved nose added to the imperious expression of her features. The whole bearing of Madame Letitia indicated a lofty and yet a gentle spirit. He who beheld only this form, with its strange dress, could not refrain from smiling; but a glance at the beautiful and dignified face filled the beholder with feelings of reverence and admiration.
Madame Letitia, as we have said, was engaged in unpacking the clothes just returned by the laundress. This was an occupation which she never intrusted to any of her attendants, but in which she could generally engage only secretly and at night, after she had dismissed them; for the emperor made it incumbent on his mother's ladies of honor to observe the strictest etiquette, and forbade her to occupy herself with affairs improper for the mother of an emperor. Hence, Madame Letitia was obliged, for the most part, to lead the life of an aristocratic lady, embroider a little, ride out, have her companions read to her, receive visitors, and pass the day in ennui. Only at night, when the ladies left the palace--when etiquette permitted Madame Letitia to retire with her maid Cordelia into her bedroom--only then commenced her active life. At that time madame conversed with her confidantes about her household affairs; she decided what dishes should be prepared for the following day. and, when all were asleep and she was sure of being watched by no one, she proceeded with her faithful Cordelia to the cupboard of the corridor to examine the remnants saved from dinner, and to decide whether they might not be served up again.
On this day she was free from the restraints of etiquette. The lady on service had been taken ill; and her second lady of honor, not anticipating such an event, had obtained leave to take a trip to Versailles. Madame Letitia, therefore, was at liberty to dispose of her time as she pleased; she could fearlessly indulge in occupations entirely contrary to etiquette, and she embraced this rare opportunity in the course of the forenoon of examining the clothes, which otherwise would have had this honor only after nightfall. But the consequence was, that the usually serene forehead of Madame Letitia grew dark, because she was by no means satisfied with the performance of her laundress. Just as her busy hands took up another piece from the basket and unfolded it, the door behind her opened. She heard it, but did not turn, knowing very well that it was Cordelia who entered her room, for no one else had the right of taking such a liberty without being duly and formally announced.
"Cordelia," she exclaimed, "Cordelia, come and look at these towels of the cook; all of them are already threadbare, and it is but a year since I bought them. You ought to tell the cook very emphatically that she should be more careful and not ruin my towels. Do you hear, Cordelia?"
"Cordelia is not here," said a grave, angry voice behind her. Madame Letitia started, and a deep blush suffused her cheeks. Close behind her stood the emperor, fixing his stern eyes on his mother.
"The emperor!" she murmured, yielding to the first movement of terror, and sinking back on her chair.
"Yes, the emperor!" said Napoleon, approaching and casting angry glances on the clothes spread out on the table. "The emperor pays a visit to his mother, and finds to his amazement that little respect is felt here for his orders, and that it is deemed unnecessary to comply with his wishes. Ah, madame, how can the emperor expect the people to obey him everywhere and unconditionally, when his own family set an example of disobedience, and openly show that the emperor's orders are indifferent to them?"
"When have I shown indifference to them?" asked Madame Letitia, casting a despairing glance on the basket.
"You show it at this very hour," said the emperor, sternly, "and every thing proves that you are in the habit of disobeying my wishes. I met with no footmen in the outer antechamber; I did not see the chamberlain of your imperial highness in the adjoining room."
"It is noonday, and they have gone to dinner."
"Ah, it is true, your imperial highness directs your court to take their meals at other houses," exclaimed the emperor, with a sarcastic smile. "You are paying board-money to the chamberlain, the valet de chambre, and the footman, so that it is unnecessary for you to feed them. But where is your waiting-lady, madame? Did I not issue orders that etiquette should be observed at my mother's palace, and that your imperial highness should always have your lady of honor with you?"
"The Duchess d'Abrantes was suddenly taken sick this morning, and had to return to her house."
"In that case the second lady of honor ought to have taken her place."
"Yesterday I gave permission to the Countess de Castries to go to a family-festival to be celebrated at Versailles, and she went early this morning."
"Every thing, then, is here just as it ought to be!" cried the emperor, indignantly, thrusting the basket with his foot. "It is in strict accordance with my wishes that your house is empty, that you are so occupied, that you are alone, and that there was no one to announce my visit?"
"But Cordelia certainly was there, and quite ready to attend to this."
"Yes, she was," cried the emperor, "and it is true she wished to do me that honor. But I would not allow her, and preferred coming to you without being announced. In truth, it would be too ludicrous if the old Sibyl had served the emperor as mistress of ceremonies."
"She formerly did him far greater and more difficult service," said Madame Letitia, in a firm and calm voice, for she had fully recovered her presence of mind, and, rising from her easy-chair, proudly bridled herself up and turned toward the emperor her face, which now had resumed its expression of noble dignity and composure.
"When I first saw your countenance," she said, calmly, "I was frightened, and greeted you in my terror as the emperor. Pardon me for it! I ought to have remembered that when the emperor crosses the threshold of this house, he ceases to be emperor, and is simply Napoleon Bonaparte, who, as it behooves a son, comes to pay his respects to his mother. Hence, I ought to have greeted you at once as my son, and if I did not, it was because I was frightened, for I am not accustomed to see anyone enter here without being announced. Now, I have overcome my terror, I bid you welcome with all my heart, my dear son!" She offered her hand to Napoleon so proudly that the emperor, scarcely aware of what he did, pressed the small white hand of his mother to his lips.
A gentle smile lit up the beautiful face of Madame Letitia. "I forgive you also your vehement words, my son," she said; "and how could I be angry with you for forgetting for a moment that you are here only my son, when I myself remembered only that you are the emperor? Let us, therefore, make peace again. Napoleon, my son, I bid you welcome once more with all my heart."
"Even, my mother, if I should come to ask my dinner of you?" inquired the emperor, smiling.
Madame Letitia was silent for a moment. "Even then!" she said, after a pause. "My son will be content with what I am able to give, and he will pardon an old woman, who attaches little value to the pleasures of the table, if she has, on account of her health, but a very plain dinner."
"That is to say, we shall have the national dish of Corsica--rice dumplings baked in oil!" exclaimed the emperor, laughing.
"So it is," said madame, merrily. "Ah, I see my son has not forgotten his native Corsica; then he will also have a kind look for poor old Cordelia, who, both in good and evil days, has been the most faithful and honest servant of our house, who frequently carried Napoleon Bonaparte for whole days in her arms, and when he was sick sat at his bedside and nursed him with the tenderness of a mother. I will tell Cordelia to take this basket away, and inform the cook that we have a guest." She rang the bell; the door of the adjoining room opened immediately, and old Cordelia entered. She stood still at the door, and cast mournful glances, now on Madame Letitia, now on the emperor.
"Well, Cordelia, do you not greet my son?" asked madame. "He is not the emperor to-day, but comes incognito as my son to ask dinner of me."
"And listen, dear Delia," said the emperor, speaking to her in the voice of a child--"listen, dear old Cordelia; afterward let us go and play, and gather shells on the sea-shore. Shall we do so, 'Lia?"
An air of unutterable happiness illuminated the face of old Cordelia when Napoleon repeated to her, in the voice of his childhood, the words which he had so often addressed to her. She rushed toward him, and, sinking down before him, seized both his hands and pressed them to her lips. "Now do with me what you like, Napoleon," she cried, in the language of her native country, while the tears were rolling down her cheeks, "I belong to you again, with every drop of my heart's blood. Trample me under foot, strike me, kick me, as you often did during your childhood--I shall never murmur. I am as a faithful dog, who allows himself to be beaten, and yet loves his master to the last!"
"Yes, she is as constant as the sea that washes the shores of our native country," said madame, with a tear in her eye. "You may count on both of us, Napoleon, and if there is power in our prayers you will always be victorious."
The emperor's face--darkened. He had forgotten every thing for a moment; but he soon recollected himself. In order to be victorious and prosperous he needed not only soldiers but money, and he had come for the purpose of obtaining this from his mother. He disengaged his hands from those of old Cordelia, and motioned her to rise. She obeyed in silence, quietly took up the clothes, and carried them off in the basket.
"See that we soon have dinner," said madame to her. Cordelia turned and looked inquiringly at her mistress, who nodded to her; Cordelia nodded, too, and went out smiling.
A quarter of an hour afterward, the emperor conducted his loving mother to the dining-table, at which none other than themselves were to be seated. When they entered, the emperor's eyes glided with a strange, searching look along the paintings hanging on the walls, and rested for a moment on the landscape which, in a broad gilded frame, was directly opposite; then a faint smile flitted over his features, and he turned toward his mother to address a few pleasant words to her.
The dinner commenced, as the emperor anticipated, with Corsican rice dumplings baked in oil. He partook of them with great relish, and this favorite dish of his childhood seemed to have restored his good humor. "I believe." he said, gayly, "I am still able to read as well in your face, mother, as I could when I was a boy, and took pains to discover whether or not I had deserved punishment for some naughty prank. I believe I have understood your mute dialogue with Cordelia. Will you confess the truth to me if I tell you what Cordelia's glances and your nod signified?"
"Yes, if you guess it."
"Well, then, mother, did not Cordelia inquire by her glances whether she was to send to the baker for bread, and whether the remnant of yesterday's dinner should not be served again in honor of my presence? And did not your nod reply, 'Yes?' Was not that the meaning of it? Do I guess right?"
"Yes, my son," said madame, smiling; "I see that my haughty daughters Pauline and Eliza have made you familiar with the habits of my household."
"They have," exclaimed Napoleon. "They told me Madame Mere had every day only three loaves of white bread brought from the baker for herself and Cordelia."
"They told you the truth; all my officers and servants receive their board-money, and three loaves are sufficient for us two. Ah, my son, how happy would you have often been, when still a lieutenant, had you had only one of the three loaves every day!"
"Eliza told me still other things," said Napoleon, casting a glance toward the large oil painting. "She told me you had, like all honest bourgeoises, your water-carrier, who furnished every day six buckets of water."
"Eliza told you the truth again. It is still the same water-carrier whom we employed when we lived in the Faubourg St. Honore; he is a faithful and honest man; why, then should I withdraw this little patronage from him?"
"But you pay him no more for his water, now that you are the emperor's mother, than you did when you were a poor widow with nine children."
"God makes the water flow, and it is the same now as then. Why should I, then, pay more for it?"
"Eliza told me, also," added the emperor, dwelling with singular perseverance on the same subject, "that, instead of collecting a library, and buying the books you read, you have subscribed to the bookseller Renard's circulating library."
"There are very few books that deserve the honor of being bought," said madame, in a dignified tone.
"And is it true, too," asked the emperor, "that you have the books brought by the bookseller's clerk to you every week the year round, and that you have the same exchanged by your servants during only New-Year's week, in order thereby to avoid giving a New-Year's present to the clerk?"
"It is true," said madame, calmly. "This clerk is not poor, nor the father of a family; I avoid, therefore, giving him the money which I prefer giving to poor men."
"But, madame," cried Napoleon, angrily, "you really surpass Harpagon, and Moliere has cause to complain that he did not know you." [Footnote: Napoleon's words. --Vide Le Normand, vol. ii., p. 451.]
"Moliere has assuredly cause to deplore that he did not live at the present time," said madame, quietly, "for if he lived now, he would have seen on the throne of France a prince who is even greater and more illustrious than his own Louis XIV. And he would have certainly been glad to make my acquaintance, as I am the mother of this great man."
"The mother of an emperor, and yet living so parsimoniously that one might believe your son suffered you to starve! And still, if I am not mistaken, you receive a million francs a year for defraying the expenses of your court. Am I right, mother?"
"Yes, my son; I receive a million francs a year."
"Ah, madame," cried the emperor, "then you must, considering your economy, lay by riches every year?"
Madame Letitia's face was serious; the emperor had touched a chord unpleasant to her ear.
"No," she said, abruptly, "I lay by no riches, for my expenses are heavy."
"But your income is larger," exclaimed Napoleon. "I am satisfied that you spend far less than you receive. Whom do you economize for, madame?"
"Whom?" asked madame, in an angry voice. "I might say for myself, for my future, for that is uncertain, and one is never able to know what may happen. But, in addition to myself, I have to take care of your brother Lucien, for your majesty knows well that he is poor," "Because he would not accept the kingdom which I offered to him."
"Because, as a king, he would not be a dependent vassal, the mere lieutenant of his brother. What, sire! Would you accept a kingdom offered to you on condition that you should never have a will of your own, but always obey that of another?"
"I would not," said the emperor, smiling; "but I am the emperor."
"You are Lucien's brother, and he is no less proud than the emperor. Let us say no more about it. He is poor; that was all I wished to say. He is unable to endow his daughters, and I have, therefore, taken this upon myself. You know now, my son, what my savings are for."
"But I am just as well your son as Lucien," said the emperor, in a bland voice; "you may very well have laid by money for both of your sons. I am in the same predicament as my brother. I am poor, and need money. Hence I come to you, to my mother, and pray you, let me have some of your savings. I know you have money; I need it, and you would place me under the greatest obligations if you would lend me a large sum."
Madame Letitia gravely shook her head. "You are mistaken, sire," she said; "I have only as much as I need."
The emperor's forehead darkened more and more. "Madame," he cried, in a tone of irritation, "I repeat to you, it is a great favor which I ask of you!"
"And I repeat that I have no money to spare; I had some, but sent it recently to Lucien, who needs it."
"Well, then, let us say no more about it," replied the emperor, rising, and, as if to overcome his vexation, turning toward the paintings, and closely inspecting one after another. "You have very fine paintings, madame," he said, after a pause.
"Yes, the work of great masters," replied madame, composedly. "You reproach me with being very parsimonious, sire; I have, however, paid very large sums to artists."
"I am especially delighted with this landscape," said the emperor, standing in front of the Swiss landscape, on which he had repeatedly cast furtive glances.
"Well, it is very fine and costly," said madame.
The emperor was silent, and looked up again attentively to the painting. He then turned toward his mother, who stood near him. "Mother," he exclaimed, "I asked money of you, and you refused it. Will you refuse my request, too, if I ask you to present me with this fine landscape?"
"On the contrary," said madame, "I am glad to be able to fulfil your majesty's wish. I shall have the painting conveyed to the Tuileries this very day."
"No," exclaimed the emperor, smiling, "it will be better to take it at once with me in my carriage. You are so economical, mother, you might repent of having given me so costly a present, and might want to keep it."
"Sire," said madame, solemnly, "the emperor's mother pledges you her word that you shall receive the painting this very day."
"Madame," replied her proud son, no less solemnly, "the emperor's mother also pledged me her word that she has no money to lend me, and yet I venture to believe that she has laid by a great deal. Pardon me, therefore, if I persist in taking the painting with me,-- Delia, Delia!" The door of the corridor opened, and old Cordelia looked in. "Run, Cordelia, and tell my two valets de chambre, Constant and Roustan, to come hither at once."
Cordelia disappeared, and Napoleon now turned his head slowly toward his mother. Madame Letitia became pale; large drops stood on her forehead; her eyes were flashing with angry excitement, and her lips were quivering. But overcoming her agitation she forced herself to smile, and offered her hand to the emperor. "Come, my son, let us go into my cabinet and take coffee. It is unnecessary for us to be present with the servants. Come, sire."
The emperor did not take her hand, but, slightly bowing, drew back. "Permit me to stay, madame, till my servants have taken the painting from the wall."
Madame could not suppress a sigh, and clutched a chair, as if she needed a support.
The door opened, and the two imperial valets de chambre, Constant and Roustan, entered. "Come here," cried the emperor, "take this down and carry it into my carriage." The valets hastened to take the painting carefully from the wall. The emperor's glance passed over the spot which it had covered. He saw that part of the silk hangings looked somewhat fresher and darker than the rest. "One would think the wall here were wet, and had moistened the hangings," he said, laying his hand on the dark spot. "No," he then exclaimed, "the wall is hollow here! Let us see what it means."
Madame uttered a cry, and, sinking into a chair, closed her eyes.
The emperor now hastily tore off the dark piece covering the wall, and behind it was a deep square hole, in which stood a rather large- sized iron box. "Ah! do you see, madame," cried the emperor, smiling gayly, "I discover here a secret which you yourself were ignorant of. It is evidently a box which the former proprietors of this palace concealed here during the revolution from the rapacious hands of the Jacobins."
Madame made no reply; her eyes were still closed, and she sat pale and motionless.
"The box is heavy!" added the emperor, trying to lift it up. "Constant, fetch the footmen to assist you in carrying it into my carriage. --I will take it with me, madame," he said, turning toward his mother, "I will personally examine its contents." At this moment Constant returned with four footmen, and the six men succeeded at length in lifting the iron box. "Now carry it immediately into my carriage," commanded the emperor.
Panting under their heavy load, the men left the room. The emperor looked after them until the door closed. He then turned again toward his mother, who sat motionless and with her eyes closed. "Farewell, mother," he said; "I am anxious to examine the contents of the box which I was lucky enough to find. But I must not dare now to deprive you of your beautiful painting. This hole in the wall must be covered, and your imperial highness might not at once have another picture worthy of replacing this landscape. I thank you, therefore, for your present, and take the will for the deed. Farewell, madame!" He bowed and walked slowly toward the door. [Footnote: Le Normand, "Memoires," vol. ii., p. 448.]
Madame Letitia said nothing, and made no movement to return the emperor's salutation. As he departed, she groaned and wept. "Five millions!" she murmured, after a pause--"the savings of long years has my son taken from me. Five millions! --the dower that I had laid by for Lucien's daughters--that I had economized for the time when these days of prosperity will end." She buried her face in her hands and sobbed aloud. At length her grief seemed somewhat calmed, and she raised her head again. "Well," she said, aloud, "I formerly supported my family of nine children on an income of less than a hundred louis d'ors a year; if need be, I can do so again, and I hope I shall have at least so much left that Lucien and his daughters will not starve. I must be even more parsimonious." [Footnote: Lucien, the ablest and noblest of Napoleon's brothers, lived in constant dissension with him, for he would not submit to his will. He declined the throne of Naples because the emperor imposed the condition that he should govern in precise accordance with the orders given him. He married a distinguished and beautiful Roman lady, and when Napoleon afterward offered him the throne of Tuscany on condition that he should get a divorce from his wife, Lucien refused, and preferred to live in obscurity outside of France, and to dispense with the splendor surrounding his family.]
Two days afterward, on the 25th of January, the emperor left Paris for his army, and entered upon the last struggle. He was fully aware of the dangers threatening him. Hence, prior to leaving Paris, he put his house in order. The regency by letters-patent was conferred on the Empress Maria Louisa, but with her was conjoined his brother Joseph, under the title of lieutenant-general of the empire; and Cambaceres, the arch-chancellor, was placed at the head of the council of state. The emperor then received the officers of the National Guard of Paris in the apartments of the Tuileries. The empress preceded him on entering the apartments, carrying the King of Rome in her arms. Greeting the officers, the emperor said: "Gentlemen of the National Guard of Paris, I am glad to see you assembled here. I am about to set out for the army. I intrust to you what I hold dearest in the world--my wife and my son. Let there be no political divisions; let the respect for property, the maintenance of order, and, above all, the love of France, animate every heart. I do not disguise that, in the course of the military operations to ensue, the enemy may approach in force to Paris; it will be an affair of only a few days: before they are passed I will be on the flanks and rear, and annihilate those who have dared to invade our country. Efforts will be made to cause you to waver in your allegiance and the fulfilment of your duty; but I firmly rely on your resisting such perfidious temptations. Farewell, and God bless us all!" [Footnote: Constant, "Memoires," vol. vl., p. 7.] Then, taking his son in his arms, he went through the ranks of the officers, and, presenting him to them as their future sovereign, he exclaimed, in a voice tremulous with emotion: "I intrust him to you; I intrust him to the love of my loyal city of Paris!"
The National Guard responded by protestations of fidelity and devotedness. Cries of enthusiasm rent the apartments; tears were shed, and a sense of the solemnity of the moment penetrated every mind. All shouted, "Long live the emperor! Long live the empress!" Maria Louisa, pale with emotion, her face bathed in tears, leaned her head on the emperor's shoulder; and, holding his son in his left arm, he placed his right around the trembling form of his consort. At the sight of this touching group the enthusiasm of the National Guard knew no bounds. They wept, cheered, and swore they would die to a man rather than forsake the emperor--that they would allow Paris to be laid in ruins by the artillery of the enemy rather than surrender the empress and the King of Rome.
But this enthusiasm of the National Guard met with no response beyond the Tuileries. Paris maintained an ominous silence, and, when the emperor rode through the city at night, the streets were deserted; no one had awaited him to pay homage on his departure. Paris was asleep--its sleep that of exhaustion--and the people were dreaming, perhaps, that adversity was hastening upon them.
FALL OF PARIS.
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{
"id": "3801"
}
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47
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THE BATTLE OF LA ROTHIERE.
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The morning of the 1st of February dawned cold and gloomy; heavy gusts, driving the snow across the plain, gave to the landscape a sad and dreary aspect. Silence reigned in the camps of the hostile armies. In that of Napoleon at Brienne, and farther down the valley at the village of La Rothiere, on this side of the Aube, the camp- fires of the night were flickering in the gray morning, and far away on the horizon were seen the dark outlines of the castle of Brienne. There Napoleon had passed the last night of January, and in the vicinity encamped his troops, scarcely thirty thousand strong, the remnant of that "grand army" which the emperor had so often led to victory.
In the camp of the Silesian army, too, all was quiet. It encamped beyond the Aube, on the heights of Trannes and Felance, in the vineyards and the forests of Beaulieu; it was enjoying repose after a prolonged exposure and privation. But its commander-in-chief, Field-Marshal Blucher, seemed to have no need of rest. Scarcely had daylight dawned when he was already on horseback, and rode to the crest of the mountain, by the side of his faithful adviser and friend General Gneisenau, and followed by his pipe-master. From the crest he was able to survey the whole valley of La Rothiers and Brienne, lying at a distance of scarcely four miles.
Blucher raised his right arm toward the city and heaved a deep sigh. "Gneisenau," he said, "I am deeply mortified at the defeat which Bonaparte inflicted on us two days ago. I cannot get over it, and can imagine what a hue-and-cry the distinguished gentlemen at headquarters have raised, and how the trubsalsspritzen are croaking again: Blucher is a crazy hussar who always wants to drive his head through a wall, and yet cannot get through it, and only causes us all a vast deal of trouble.' I can imagine how the peace apostles are raising their voices again, crying that war ought to cease, and we should run home because we did not gain the battle of Brienne. It is indispensable, therefore, for us, Gneisenau, to strike a good blow and get even with Napoleon. Yonder the fellow stands, with his few thousand men, showing his teeth, as if he were still the lion that needed only to shake his mane to frighten us off as flies. I will show him that I am no fly, but a man who is able at any time to cope with him and such as are with him. Gneisenau, we cannot help it; we must attack him this very day. We must silence the trubsalsspritzen, in order to accelerate our operations against Paris."
"You are right, field-marshal," said Gneisenau; "we must strike a decisive blow, and compel the gentlemen at headquarters to discontinue their present system of procrastination. We must show Napoleon that we have also passed through a military school, though not at Brienne."
"It makes me feel angry, Gneisenau, that we were unable to show him that at the very city of Brienne. I had thought how well it would be for me to prove to him, at the place where he passed his examination and received his first commission, that I had also passed my examination and learned something. Well, it is no use crying about it now; we must, try to get over it, and only think of the best manner in which we may be even with him. General Wrede must join us with his troops at noon to-day, when we shall be--stronger than Bonaparte, Marment, and all his marshals together."
"See!" cried Gneisenou, whose eyes were directed to the camp of the enemy, "the troops yonder have put themselves in motion; I see it quite distinctly now that the view is clearer. But they are not advancing."
"No," cried Blucher, "they are retreating; they intend to escape us; Bonaparte wishes to avoid a battle. But that will not do; I must have my battle here! How am I to get to Paris if I do not rout his forces? how am I to pull him down if the present state of affairs goes on as heretofore? A blow must be struck now; we must take revenge for Brienne today!"
"Wrede will be here with his troops at noon," said Gneisenau, thoughtfully; "let us, therefore, attack the enemy at twelve o'clock, and make all necessary dispositions for it. Above all, couriers should be sent to headquarters."
"Yes, Gneisenau, it is your province to attend to all that, for you know well that you are the head and I am the arm. Consider all that is necessary; I know only that Bonaparte contemplates a retreat, and that I must compel him to accept battle. I have felt sad enough for the past three days; for, say yourself, Gneisenau, is it not sheer arrogance for Bonaparte to remain here so long quietly in front of us, as though he intended to give us time for uniting our forces, and thought we were after all, too cowardly to defeat him?"
"It is, perhaps, not arrogance, but disgust and weariness," said Gneisenau, thoughtfully. "The prince of battles seems to be exhausted, and to have lost confidence."
"A pretty fellow he is whom misfortunes at once exhaust," grumbled Blucher, "and who is courageous only as long as he is successful! But I do not object to this disposition of Bonaparte, for every thing turns out now highly advantageous to us. The Austrians, the Wurtembergers, and the Bavarians, have come up, and will cooperate with us. Gneisenau, dispatch your couriers to headquarters, that the monarchs may come. Take out your note-book; I will dictate to you what occurs to me, and what are my plans in regard to the battle. -- Halloo, Christian! give me a pipe! I can think much better when smoking!"
Christian galloped up, and with a grave air handed the short pipe to his master. "Pipe-master," said Blucher, "hold a good many pipes in readiness to-day, for there will be a fight, and you know that our gunners fire more steadily when my pipe is burning well. --Well, write now, Gneisenau: 'Precisely at twelve the troops will be put in motion, and descend from Trannes into the plain. In the centre, Sacken's infantry will advance upon La Rothiere in two columns. The Austrians form the left, and will march on the town of Dionville. The hereditary Prince of Wurtemberg's corps, composing the right wing, will penetrate through the forest of Beaulieu, and take the village of La Gibrin. Olsuwiew's infantry and Wassilchikow's cavalry, Sacken's reserves, will follow the two columns of the centre. Two divisions of Russian cuirassiers and Rajewski's corps of grenadiers will remain in reserve on the heights of Trannes. The Bavarian corps, under Wrede, will be stationed on the extreme right wing.' [Footnote: Beitzke, vol. iii., p. 118] Well, that is enough; close your note-book," said Blucher, blowing a large cloud of smoke from his mouth. "Every thing else will come of itself after the fight has begun. I have said what I had to say, and now commences your work, Gneisenau. Dispatch couriers quickly to the headquarters of the sovereigns, and may they arrive here in time, and not again, by their hesitation and timidity, spoil our game, coming too late from fear of coming too early! Let me tell you that I am not afraid of Bonaparte, with his young guard and his army of conscripts. We are twice as strong, for we have eighty thousand men, and his forces, I believe, are not forty thousand. Besides, we have allies whom Bonaparte cannot have--the good God and His angel, Queen Louisa. He has sent us to put an end to the tyranny of the robber of crowns, and Queen Louisa is looking down and praying for us and Prussia's honor. The enemy, however, whom I am afraid of is, in our own flesh and blood; he is creeping around the headquarters of the monarchs, and singing peace-hymns, and raising a hue-and-cry about the greatness of Bonaparte, representing him as Invincible, and ourselves as insignificant. In that way are all our arms paralyzed! Gneisenau, should they hesitate to act in an energetic manner, and fail to be on hand in time, it would be dreadful, and I believe my rage would kill me!"
But Blucher's apprehensions were not to be verified. All the corps on which he had counted in drawing up his plan of operations arrived at the stated hour, and precisely at noon appeared the Emperor of Russia, the King of Prussia, and Prince Schwartzenberg, with their numerous and brilliant suites. The monarchs surveyed the position of the two armies from the heights of Trannes, and had Blucher explain his plan to them in his brief and energetic manner.
The Emperor Alexander then turned with a gentle smile toward Prince Schwartzenberg, commander-in-chief of the allied forces. "And what do you think of this plan of the brave field-marshal?"
"It is as well conceived as it is bold," said Schwartzenberg, "and I beg leave to intrust the command of the whole army to Field-Marshal Blucher. I renounce the privilege of directing the operations of to- day, and leave every thing to the discretion of the field-marshal."
Blucher's eyes sparkled with delight, and a glow suffused his cheeks. "Prince," he exclaimed, offering his hand to Schwartzenberg, "this is an honor for which I shall always be grateful to you. You have a generous heart, and know that I must take revenge for the disastrous affair of Brienne. I thank you, prince, for giving me an opportunity. Now I shall prove to their majesties that Bonaparte is not invincible, or, if I cannot prove it to them, I shall die! Hurrah! Let us begin!" He galloped with the impatience and ardor of a youth to the front of the troops, which put themselves rapidly in motion, and rushed like a torrent down the heights of Trannes.
Soon the artillery commenced to boom, and transmitted Blucher's battle-cry to Napoleon. The emperor, who had intended to retreat with his small army, in order to avoid a fight, now halted his troops, and formed them into line. As the allies were advancing with great impetuosity, a further retreat would have been equivalent to flight. Napoleon, therefore, accepted the battle, and his cannon soon responded. The engagement raged with murderous energy; the balls hissed in every direction; the allies rushed forward in strong columns, but the French did not fall back before them. In the midst of the fearful carnage they stood like heroes, sometimes repulsing the superior enemy with sublime valor; and when they gave way, they rallied and advanced to reconquer their positions. It was easy to see that it was Napoleon's presence that inspired the French with irresistible courage. Hour after hour vast numbers were slain on both sides, and while the earth was trembling beneath the strife, the snow fell to such a depth as to shroud the dead from view.
The contest was most furious in and around the village of La Rothiere. The French held it with the utmost obstinacy, and vainly did Sacken's corps, which had been repeatedly repulsed, return to the charge; the French stood like a wall, and their cannon hurled death into the ranks of their adversaries.
Blucher witnessed this doubtful struggle for some time with growing impatience; his loud "Forward!" encouraged the troops to charge, but their assaults were in vain. "Gneisenau," he cried, "we must take the village, for La Rothiere is the key of the position. --Halloo, pipe-master!" Hennomann was by his master's side. "There," said Blucher, taking the pipe from his mouth, and handing it to Christian, "take this pipe, and stay, do you hear, on this spot! I shall soon be back, and you will see to it that I then get a lighted pipe. I have to say a word or two to the French."
"You may depend on it, field-marshal, I shall stay here," said Christian, gravely; "you will find me and the pipe here."
"Very well; and now come, Gneiseuau," said Blucher, galloping to the head of the assaulting columns. Turning his face, full of warlike ardor, toward his soldiers, he shouted: "You call me Marshal Forward! Now I will show you what that means!" He turned his horse, and, brandishing his sword, rushed toward the village. The soldiers followed him with deafening cheers.
Christian Hennemann looked composedly after them, and, putting the field-marshal's pipe into his mouth, he murmured, "Well, I wonder if this will burn until the field-marshal returns, or if I shall have to light another!" At this moment a bullet whizzed through the air, carrying away the pipe from his mouth, and slightly wounding him. "Well," he murmured, calmly, "the first one is gone, and a piece of my head to boot! Let us immediately dress the wound, and then light another pipe; for if he should return, and it is not ready for him-- thunder and lightning!" After giving vent to his feelings, the pipe- master took oat his little dressing-pouch, stanched the blood, applied a plaster to the wound, and wrapped a linen handkerchief around his head. "Now I am all right again, and will do my duty," said Christian, closing the pouch, and opening the box, which was fastened to the pommel of his saddle.
The fight was still raging. Night came, accompanied by a violent snow-storm, so as to render the muskets useless. As on the Katzbach, Blucher's soldiers had to attack the enemy with their swords and bayonets. At length the allies were successful; the French were overpowered and driven back. The soldiers, headed by Blucher, rushed exultingly into the village of La Rothiere. "Forward!" shouted the field-marshal. "Forward!" repeated the soldiers. They halted in the middle of the village. The French still occupied the houses on both sides of the principal street, and, converting every building into a fortress, they fought like lions against the impetuous enemy. Blucher was in the midst of the flying bullets, but he did not notice them. The position had to be taken, and he knew that his presence inspired his soldiers to heroic efforts. The village was soon on fire, for the wind carried the flames from house to house, and the snowy plain reflected the red glare far and wide. The French rushed from the houses in hurried flight, hotly pursued by Blucher's soldiers. The battle was gained! The enemy evacuated La Rothiere, and retreated in disorder to Brienne and across the Aube.
Blucher could now return to his headquarters and inform the monarchs of a victory. He rode back, thoughtfully; and Gneisenau, who was by his side, was also grave and silent.
"Gneisenau," he exclaimed, "I believe we have done very well to- day!"
"Your excellency must not say we, but _I_ have done very well to- day," said Gneisenau, smiling. "You alone conceived the plan of battle, and directed it;--for La Rothiere was the key of the whole position, and it was Marshal Forward who took it. This time your deeds must give the name to the battle, and it must be called 'the battle of La Rothiere.'"
"Well, I do not care," said Blucher. "We have gained today, then, the battle of La Rothiere, and, what is still better, we have shown the French in their own country that Napoleon's invincibility is a myth, and that he can be beaten as well as any other general. --But what is that? See there, Gneisenau! what sentinel is posted on the road yonder?"
In fact, a dark form on horseback halted by the roadside; the flames of the burning village rose higher, and shed a light on the stranger. It was a man dressed in the uniform of a hussar; a white, blood-stained handkerchief was wrapped around his head and half his face; his right arm was also bandaged, and in his mouth was a clay pipe.
"It is the pipe-master!" cried Blucher, quickly galloping up.
"Yes, it is I--who should it be?" grumbled Christian.
"But, Christian," exclaimed Blucher, "how in Heaven's name do you look! And what are you doing here?"
"I am waiting for Field-Marshal Blucher. Did you not tell me that I was to wait for you here, and keep the pipe in order? Well, I did wait for you, field-marshal. And you ask, too, how I look? Just like one around whom the blue beans have been whizzing for hours past, and whose head and arm have been scratched a great deal. You kept me waiting a long time, field-marshal--more than four hours! The French have shot pipe after pipe from my mouth, and this is the last I have. If you had not come soon, it would have been smashed, too."
"No," said Blucher, smiling, "the French will not break another pipe of mine to-day, Christian, for they have taken to their heels. It is true, however, I have kept you waiting a long time. But that was the fault of the French; they resisted with the greatest obstinacy, For the rest, Christian, you had a pipe of tobacco at least during the whole time that you were waiting, and did not fare so badly after all; as for your wounds, I shall have them well attended to, my boy. You have behaved as a brave man, and stood fire as a genuine soldier ought to do. When we get home I will relate it to your old father, and he will rejoice over it. Now, give me the pipe; it will be the last that you will fill for me for some time to come, for you are disabled; your right arm is shattered, and you must be cured."
"Well," exclaimed Christian, "with my left hand I can fill your pipes. I am and must be Field-Marshal Blucher's pipe-master, and, if they do not shoot off my head, I will not give up my position!"
On the following day Blucher received at the castle of Brienne the congratulations and thanks of the allied monarchs. The Emperor Alexander embraced him, and his eyes were filled with tears of joyful emotion. "Field-marshal," he said, "you have crowned all your former efforts by this glorious triumph. I do not know how we are to reward you for this. But I know we must admire and love you."
King Frederick William shook hands with Blucher, and a smile illuminated his features. "Blucher," he said, mildly, "you have kept your word; you have fulfilled all that you promised us at Frankfort, when I informed you of your appointment to the command-in-chief. To- day you have blotted out the disgrace of Jena. Have you any wish which I am able to fulfil? Pray let me know it, for I should like to prove to you my gratitude and love."
"I have a wish, and before it is gratified, I shall neither sleep well by night nor be calm by day. Now your majesties are quite able to grant this wish of mine, and therefore I urgently pray both of you to do so."
"Tell us what it is!" exclaimed the emperor; "I am anxious to grant it as far as I am concerned, for an heroic head like yours must not lie uneasy at night, and a childlike heart like yours must be content. Speak, then!"
"Ah, sire," said the king, smiling, and fixing a searching look on Blucher's bold face, "sire, beware of promising, for then he will leave us no rest; he will not even let us sleep at night until he has driven us to Paris. --That is your wish, Blucher, is it not?"
"It is!" exclaimed Blucher, ardently. "That is my wish; and, as your majesty has called upon me to tell you something that you could grant, and as his majesty the emperor tells me, too, that he would like to gratify me--I say, let us now set out by forced marches for Paris. Let us advance with all our armies on the capital, for then the war will soon be over. I implore your majesties, let us proceed quickly. Let us give Bonaparte no time for heading us off; but let us outstrip him moving on Paris, and, if need be, take the city by storm. When Paris falls all France is ours, and the war is over!"
"Well, what says your majesty?" asked Alexander, turning toward the king. "Shall we comply with the wish of our young madcap?"
"Sire, as far as I am concerned, I have pledged him my word," said Frederick William; "hence, I must keep it."
"And I assent with the greatest pleasure, sire," exclaimed Alexander; "let us march on Paris, then; but we should agree as to the best way of doing so."
"Well, we have invited our generals to hold a council of war, and I believe they are waiting for us now," said the king. "Come, therefore, sire; and you, Blucher, pray accompany us. One thing is settled: we shall march on Paris in accordance with your wish--only we have to select the routes which the various columns of the army are to take, for they are too large to move by the same road; they could not find the necessary supplies in the same section of country. We must divide them, and that is the question which we shall now discuss with our generals."
"I do not care about that," replied Blucher, merrily; "if the chief point is settled, all the rest is indifferent to me; I shall obey the orders of my king, and be content with the route selected for me and my corps. The point is--we must profit by our victory and outstrip Bonaparte! We must take Paris!"
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{
"id": "3801"
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48
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THE DISEASED EYES.
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Upward of a month had elapsed since the victory of La Rothiere, and Blucher's ardent wish had not yet been fulfilled; the allies were not in Paris. The system of procrastination had again obtained the upper hand at the headquarters of the allies. Austria hesitated to use her power in a decisive manner against Napoleon, the emperor's son-in-law; the crown prince of Sweden wished to spare France, and was still in hope that the congress, which had been in session at Chatillon since the 4th of February, would conclude a treaty of peace. Among the very attendants of the Emperor of Russia and the King of Prussia this peace party had its active supporters, who opposed an energetic policy, and wished the congress of Chatillon, and not the army, to put an end to the war.
Blucher once had dared openly to oppose these "peace apostles," and disregarded the instructions received from the allied monarchs to move farther back from Paris, and, instead of crossing the Seine, retreat with his army to Chaumont and Langres. This order filled the field-marshal with anger, and his generals and staff-officers shared it. Great as he was in all his actions, Blucher took the bold resolution to pay no attention to the retrograde movements of Schwartzenberg and the crown prince of Sweden, but to continue his march, even at the risk of appearing in front of Paris without support.
But it was not as a rebel that he had wished to take so daring a step; on the contrary, before moving, he wrote to King Frederick William, and implored him to fulfil his wish, and allow him to advance. He did not wait, however, for the king's answer, but, though he knew that the commander-in-chief, Prince Schwartzenberg, had already commenced retreating, continued to march with his Silesian army alone upon the capital of France.
The monarchs themselves were of Blucher's opinion, and gave him full power, having his army reenforced by the corps of Bulow and Winzingerode. With his forces thus increased to twice their original strength, he was able to confront Napoleon, and attack Paris even without Schwartzenberg's assistance. But the fortune of war is fickle, and he did not continue his march without experiencing this. On the 7th of March he fought a bloody battle with Napoleon and his marshals between Soissons and Craonne, and, to his profound regret, was defeated, and forced to retreat.
He took revenge at Laon, where he and his brave Silesian army gained a victory on the 9th of March. This was followed by still another. He at length silenced the "trubsalsspritzen" and "peace apostles," who had up to this time raised their influential voices at headquarters. All felt that a retreat, after this great victory, was entirely out of the question, and even Schwartzenberg and Bernadotte joined in Blucher's "Forward!" and marched their armies to Paris.
But the brave field-marshal himself was at this time unable to join in the movement. Since the battle of Laon he had been affected with a violent inflammation of the eyes, aggravated by a fever. Confined to his dark room, he was obliged to remain ten days at Laon, suffering not only physical but mental pain. For how could he redeem his pledge--how achieve a final victory over Napoleon--if, half- blind and doomed to the captivity of a sick-room, he could not march with his troops, and lead them in person into battle? Regardless of the warnings of his physicians, he tried to brave his sufferings, and, putting himself at the head of his troops, again advanced with them. Finally, on the 24th of March, by way of Rheims, he arrived at Chalons. But the inflammation of his eyes had grown worse on the road, and gave him intolerable pain; the fever sent his blood like fire through his veins, and what neither age, nor defeat, nor disappointed hope, had been able to accomplish, was accomplished by sickness. He grew faint-hearted--his disease destroyed his enthusiasm. Longing for tranquillity, he remembered how beautiful and peaceful his dear Kunzendorf was, how kind and mild the sweet face of his Amelia, and with what soft hands she would wash his inflamed eyes, and apply the remedies.
During the last march from Rheims to Chalons he constantly thought of this. At length he made up his mind, and no sooner had he arrived at Chalons than he sent for Hennemann, and locked himself in his room with him.
"Christian," said Blucher, in a subdued voice, "I am going to see whether you are really a faithful fellow, and whether I may confide something to you."
"Very well, field-marshal, put me to the test."
"Not so loud!" cried Biucher, anxiously. "Let us first discover whether any one can hear us here." He opened the door, and looked into the antechamber. No one was there. He then examined the dark alcove adjoining the sitting-room, which was empty, too. "We are alone; no one can overhear us," said Blucher, returning from his reconnoissance to the sitting-room. "Now, pipe-master, listen to me. First, however, look at my eyes, do you hear; look closely at them. Well, how do they look?"
"Very sore," said Christian, mournfully.
"And they have not grown better, though Voelzke, the surgeon-general has been doctoring them every day; and, by his salves, mixtures, leeches, and blisters, causing me almost as much pain as the eyes themselves. Nay, they grow rather worse from day to day, and if I remain here longer, and allow the physicians to torment me, I shall finally lose my eyesight altogether, and when I am blind, I shall be of no account--unable to use my sword and fight Bonaparte. I am afraid the good God will not permit me to pull down Bonaparte from his throne. He knows I should then be too happy, and therefore says, 'Gotthold Leberecht Blucher, I have permitted thee to bring Bonaparte to the brink of ruin; now thine armies are close to Paris, and will, without thee, get into the city. Go, therefore, old boy, and have thine eyes cured!' Well, I will comply with God's will, and go to some place and have myself healed, where they know better how to do it than our doctors here. I have been told that there are excellent oculists at Brussels, and Brussels is not very far from here. I will, therefore, go there."
"The field-marshal intends to retreat, then?" said Christian, laconically.
"Retreat!" cried Blucher, angrily. "Who takes the liberty of saying that Field-Marshal Blucher intends to retreat?"
"I take that liberty," said Christian. "The field-marshal intends to retreat from the inflammation of his eyes."
"Why, yes; that is an enemy from which it is no disgrace to retreat."
"A retreat is always a retreat," said Christian, with a shrug, "and if you carry out your intention you will no longer be called Marshal Forward!"
"I do not care to be called so now!" exclaimed Blucher. "The inflammation of my eyes has made me desperate; I shall lose my sight if I stay here, and then they will lead me by the nose like a blind bear. There is no use in talking any more about it; I will and must go. If you do not wish to accompany me say so, and you may stay here."
"If you go, then I will too," said Christian, with his usual calmness, "for where the field-marshal is the pipe-master must be; that is a matter of course. I have pledged my word to my father, to Madame von Blucher, and to the good God, that I would never leave my general, and it makes no difference if he is field-marshal now. If they do not shoot me, I shall stay with my field-marshal."
"Christian," said Blucher, offering him his hand, "you are a dear boy; your heart is in the right place, and it is always the best thing in a man. When we get back to Kunzendorf you shall lead a very pleasant life, for I can never forget what a faithful and excellent young fellow you have been. Then you will go with me?"
"Yes, to the end of the world, general!"
"Well, we shall not go so far as that--only to Brussels, where there are good oculists; and when they have cured me, I will see whether they still need me here, and whether every thing has then been done to my liking."
"Oh, I believe it will be then as it is now," said Christian, in a contemptuous tone. "When Marshal Forward is no longer here, things will go backward, that is sure. But we need not care, for we shall go forward to Brussels."
"Yes, to Brussels," said Blucher; "we set out to-night; but no one must know it; I will leave as quietly as possible. I cannot stand bidding them all farewell, and listening to their fine speeches; I will leave, therefore, so that no one shall discover it before I am gone."
"A secret flight!" said Christian, laconically.
"Secret flight? how stupid!" grumbled Blucher. "It is strange what ridiculous words the boy uses! How a flight? I believe I am no prisoner."
"No, but you are field-marshal."
Blucher's red eyes cast an angry glance on the bold pipe-master. "You talk as you understand it," he cried; "when I am a poor blind fellow, swallowing powders and using salves all day I am no longer a field-marshal and had better resign, not waiting to be deposed by a few polite phrases. That is the reason why I am going to leave."
"And I leave, too," said Christian; "but as the field-marshal does not wish me to say any thing about it, of course I shall not. But how are we to get away, if no one is to be informed?"
"Well, listen! I will tell you. I have already devised the whole plan of operations, and--but, hark! something seems moving in the alcove, as if a door opened."
"There is no door in the alcove," said Christian; "it was, perhaps, a mouse, and it tells no tales. Inform me, field-marshal, what I have to do."
"Well, listen, Christian!" And the field-marshal began to explain to him, in his vivacious manner, the whole plan of his departure. Christian comprehended it, and entered very seriously into the duties of quartermaster-general to his field-marshal.
"Do you remember it all now?" asked Blucher, at the conclusion of their conference. "Do you know all that you have to do?"
"I know all," said Christian. "In the first place, I am to go to General Gneisenau and inform him that the field-marshal is sick and confined to his bed to-day, and refuses to see any one. General Gneisenau will mention it, of course, to Surgeon-General Dr. Voelzke, who will come to see the field-marshal. I am to tell him that he is in so much pain from his inflamed eyes that he had ordered me to admit no one--that he is trying to sleep. Then I am to come back to you, and your excellency will give me the farewell letters to General Gneisenau, whereupon I am to pack up your things and lock the bags. When it grows dark, I am to carry them secretly into our carriage. Then it will suddenly occur to your excellency to take an airing, the sun having set, and therefore unable to hurt your eyes. I am to accompany you, and we shall not come back."
"No, we shall not come back," said Blucher, thoughtfully. "Well, every thing is settled now; run, and attend to what I told you. We shall set out at seven o'clock to-night."
Christian hastened away. Blucher looked after him with a mournful glance and a deep sigh. "The die is cast," he murmured to himself; "now I am indeed a poor old invalid, no longer of any use. God has refused to fulfil my dearest wish; He would not let me hurl Bonaparte from his stolen throne. I must face about at the gates of Paris, and creep back into obscurity. Well, let God's will be done! I have labored as long as there was daylight; now comes the night, when I can work no more. Ah, my poor sore eyes! I--but there is, after all, some one in the alcove," cried Blucher, springing to his feet. Again he heard a noise as of footsteps, and an opening door. He bounded into the alcove, but all was still; no one was there, and no door to be seen. "I was mistaken," he said. "A bad conscience is a very queer thing. Because I am about to do something secret, I am thinking that eavesdroppers are watching me and trying to forestall me."
It was seven in the evening; the sun had set. Field-Marshal Blucher, who was very sick all day, now intended to take an airing. The pipe- master had, therefore, ordered the coachman; and the field-marshal's carriage, drawn by four black horses, had just come to the door. Blucher was still in his room, but all his preparations were completed. On the table lay two letters--one addressed to the king, the other to General Gneisenau; the carpet-bags had already been conveyed into the carriage, together with his pipe-box. The invalid had only to wrap himself in his military cloak, leave the room, and enter the carriage; but he still hesitated. An anxiety, such as he had never known before, had crept over him; and, what had never before happened to him, his heart beat with fear. "That was just wanting to me," he murmured. "I have become a white-livered coward, whose legs are trembling, and whose heart is throbbing! What am I afraid of, then? Is that wrong which I am about to do? My heart has never acted thus even in the storm of battle. What does it mean? Bah! it is folly; no attention should be paid to it. I hope, however, that no one will meet me when I go down-stairs, or at the carriage when I enter it. Let me see if there is any one in the street." He quickly stepped to the window and looked out; there was no one in the street, or near his carriage. "I will go now," said Blucher, turning again toward the room. "I--" He paused, and a blush suffused his cheeks. There, in the middle of the room, stood General Gneisenau, and gazed at him with a strange, mournful air. "Gneisenau, is it you?" asked Blucher, in a faltering voice. "How did you get in?"
"Simply by the door, your excellency," said Gneisenau, smiling. "Your pipe-master kept the door closed all day, and turned me away by informing me the field-marshal had ordered him to admit no one, because he wished to sleep; but my desire to see you brought me back again and again, and so I have come, fortunately at the opportune hour, when the Cerberus is no longer at the door, but is standing below at the carriage, waiting for the field-marshal, who intends to take an airing."
"Yes, I do," said Blucher, casting an anxious glance on the two letters lying on the table. "I do intend to take an airing; good-by, then, Gneisenau!" He turned toward the door, but Gneisenau kept him back. "Your excellency must not ride out to-night," he said; "I implore you not to do so. There is a cold wind, and you must not expose your inflamed eyes to it. You are not careful enough of your health; Surgeon-General Voelzke complains of the little attention you pay to his proscriptions, and that your eyes, instead of getting better, are growing worse and worse."
"Yes, that is true," grumbled Blucher, "they are burning like fire. I will go out, therefore; the night-wind will cool them."
He turned again toward the door, but at this moment it was thrust open, and Surgeon-General Voelzke entered the room. "I am told your excellency intends to take an airing," said the physician, almost indignantly. "But I declare that I cannot permit it. You have intrusted yourself to my treatment; I am responsible to God, to the king, to the whole world--nay, to history, if I allow you to rush so recklessly to destruction; I will not suffer it; your excellency must not ride out!"
"I should like to see who is to prevent me!" cried Blucher, striding toward the door.
"The physician will prevent you," said Voelzke, standing in the doorway with his large, tall form. "The physician has the right of giving orders to kings and emperors, and Marshal Forward has to submit to his commands, too."
"I do not think of it," said Blucher; "I do not permit any one to give me orders."
"Not even your disease--your inflamed eyes?" asked Voelzke, solemnly. "Did you not obey when your fever and inflamed eyes commanded you to remain idle at Laon for ten days, although you were in a towering passion, and were bent on advancing with the army? Well, your excellency, I tell you, if you do not now obey me. and consent to desist from taking an airing--if you are determined to ride out in the cold night-air, one more powerful than I am will compel you to obey; and that one is your disease. You may ride out today, but to-morrow it will command you to keep your bed, the inflammation of your eyes will make you a prisoner, and you will be unable to flee from it, notwithstanding your imperious will, or your four-horsed carriage."
"Well, well," said Blucher, "you put on such solemn airs as almost to frighten me. It is true, my disease is very powerful, and this soreness of my eyes has already rendered me so desperate that--" "That your excellency has written letters," interposed Gneisenau, pointing to the table. "But, what do I see? There is one addressed to me!"
"No, give it to me," cried Blucher, embarrassed; "now that you are here, I can tell you every thing verbally, and it is unnecessary for you to read what I have written."
He was about to seize the letter, but Gneisenau drew hack a step, and, bowing deeply said, "Your excellency has done me the honor of writing to me. Permit me, therefore, to read." He stepped quickly into the window-niche, and opened the letter.
"Well, stand back there, doctor," cried Blucher, "let me out! Do not make me angry; leave the door!"
"I do not care if you are angry, your excellency," said the surgeon- general, folding his arms, "but in order to get me out of this doorway you will have to kill me."
At this moment, Gneisenau uttered a cry of terror, and hastened toward Blucher. "What! your excellency," he exclaimed, "you intend to leave us? To set out secretly?"
"What do you say?" thundered the physician. "What did my patient intend to do?"
"He intends to forsake us--his army that worships him, his friends who idolize him, his king who hopes in him--he intends to leave us all!" said Gneisenau, mournfully. "It is written here, doctor; I may mention it to you, for you are one of our most devoted friends."
"And he intends also to leave his physician; he will go, and get blind!" exclaimed Voelzke, reproachfully.
"Well, it is precisely because I do not wish to get blind that I must move from here," said Blucher, who had now recovered his firmness, and felt relieved, since his secret had been disclosed. "What am I, a poor blind old man, to do longer in the field? I am fit for nothing. In the end I shall perhaps fare like old Kutusoff, whom they dragged along with the army. Thus would they drag me when I am no longer myself." [Footnote: Blucher's words. --Vide Varnhagun, "Prince Blucher of Wahlstatt," p. 373] "But," said the physician, "your excellency is not blind; you will be well in two weeks if you only resolve to comply with my prescriptions, use the remedies I give you, and punctually obey my instructions. You intend to go to Brussels, where you will certainly find celebrated physicians; but they do not know you; they will only doctor your eyes, not suspecting that the seat of your disease is in your nerves, and that your eyes are unhealthy because your mind is suffering. And it will suffer still more when you have deserted your army, your friends--nay, I may say, your duty. The strange surroundings, the want of care, the unknown physicians, your anxiety at being ignorant of what the army is doing--all this will torture your soul, and aggravate the disease of your eyes."
"It is true, I shall be very lonely in a foreign city," said Blucher, thoughtfully; "but it is, after all, better than to stay here as a useless, blind old man. I can never again command an army or direct a battle."
"If you cannot command an army in person, you can by your words," exclaimed Gneisenau; "and if you cannot direct the battle with your arms, you can do so with your spirit; for that fires our hearts as long as you are with us, and bids defiance to the adversaries and hesitating diplomatists. If your person leaves us, your spirit does also, and with Marshal Forward we lose all prospect of marching forward. Consider this, your excellency; consider that you endanger not only the welfare of your army, but the success of the war; for when you are not present, all will go wrong."
"Well, you will be here, Gneisenau," said Blucher; "you are half myself; you know my thoughts just as well as I do--nay, you often know them much better! You will, therefore, carry on all just as though I were still here."
"But shall I have the power to do so?" asked Gneisenau. "Your excellency did not take into the account that when you leave the army, and give up your position as commander-in-chief, another general must be appointed in your stead. Who will receive this nomination? The senior general is Langeron, and do you consider him qualified to replace you?"
"Well, that would be a pretty thing, if HE should become commander- in-chief!" cried Blucher. "The confusion and wrangling that would ensue would baffle description; for York and Bulow would be even more disobedient to him than they are to me."
"But he would have to take command of the army until orders from headquarters arrived appointing another general-in-chief. We might have to wait a long time; for we are distant from the allied monarchs now, and they, moreover, will not hasten to make that appointment. Until this is done, Langeron will command the army, and thereby I, the quartermaster-general, as well as Colonels Muffling and Grolman, will be completely paralyzed in the discharge of our duties, or even lose our positions, which your excellency has always said we filled to your satisfaction, and in a manner conducive to the welfare of the army. If you go now, you thereby deprive three men of their places, although they feel strong enough yet to serve their country."
"It is true, I have not thought of that," said Blucher, embarrassed. "It did not occur to me that I should have a successor here, and that he might be so stupid as to be unable to appreciate my Gneisenau, and the brave Colonels Muffling and Grolman. No, no, that will not do; Langeron must not become commander-in-chief."
"If you leave us, he will surely have that position, and our brave Silesian army will then be headed by a Russian. No, field-marshal, you must not go. You have no right to quit the army so arbitrarily, and without the king's permission!"
"Well, I should like to see who would prevent me!" cried Blucher, defiantly.
"Your noble soul, your devotion to duty, and your love of country, will prevent you," said Gneisenau. "You will refuse to abandon your work before it is completed. You will not incur the disgrace of confessing to all the world that you are unable to fulfil your word- -not to rest before having overthrown Napoleon, and made your entrance into Paris. Nor will you tarnish your glory on account of your eyes. You will not become a faithless father and friend to your soldiers, whom you have so often greeted as your children, and who have always confided in you; nor will you break our courage and paralyze our souls by deserting us in this manner."
"It is true, I did not think sufficiently on this matter," murmured Blucher to himself--"Voelzke," he then cried aloud, "you pledge me your word of honor that you can cure me?"
"I swear it to your excellency by all that is sacred that, if you take care of yourself, and comply with my prescriptions, you will be cured in the course of two weeks."
"Well," said Blucher, after a short reflection, "in that case I will yield, and stay."
"Heaven be praised, your excellency!" cried Gneisenau, tenderly embracing Blucher, "you are still my noble field-marshal, who will not desert his army, his fatherland, and his friends, for the sake of his individual comfort."
"Yes, I will stay," said Blucher; "but as I have to obey the grim doctor there, and submit to his treatment thoroughly, as a matter of course I cannot work and make the necessary dispositions, but leave this to my head--to Gneisenau alone. I lend you my name for two weeks, and know that you will make good use of it. But if at the end of that time, doctor, I am not yet well, then, beware! May the Lord have mercy on your soul! for you will certainly get yourself into trouble."
"Your excellency," cried a loud voice outside, at this moment--"your excellency, are you not coming at all?" The door of the anteroom was violently thrust open, and the pipe-master appeared on the threshold. "It is past eight o'clock," he exclaimed, "and--" He paused on perceiving the two gentlemen, and was about to retire very quickly.
"Come here, pipe-master," exclaimed Blucher, "come here and look at me. Now tell me, pipe-master, have you been a chatterbox, after all, and told these two gentlemen what was the object of our airing?"
"No, your excellency; I have not uttered a word about it to any one," replied the pipe-master, solemnly. "I have been as dumb as a fish; only in secret have I complained of my distress; and, when that did not relieve me, and I still felt as though my heart would burst, I did what I have learned to do from the field-marshal: I went to my room, closed the door, and swore in the most fearful manner! That relieved my heart, and I proceeded to do all your excellency charged me with."
"First, therefore, you had to swear?" asked Blucher, drawing his long mustache through his fingers. "You were, then, greatly dissatisfied with my departure?"
"I did not conceal it from your excellency. I told you honestly that you would no longer be called Marshal Forward if you retreated."
"Yes, retreat--that is just what he said," exclaimed Blucher, laughing, and turning again toward the two gentlemen; "and when I told him I would leave the army and set out for Brussels he remarked that it was a secret flight."
"The pipe-master is an honest man, who loves his master," said Gneisenau, kindly smiling on him. "I have often and urgently begged him to-day to announce me to the field-marshal; but he persisted in replying that he was not allowed to do so, and that he was ordered to admit no one."
"And I would have given my little-finger, if I could have admitted General Gneisenau, and Dr. Voelzke, too; for I knew that, as soon as they would be with the field-marshal, his departure would not be very soon. As they are here now--though I do not know how they got here so unexpectedly--I suppose, field-marshal, we shall not set out, and I may send the horses back to the stable?"
"Yes, you may," said Blucher. "But wait, Christian, do not go yet; I have first to say a few words to these gentlemen, and you may listen. I will stay here, then, but on one condition. Will you fulfil it?"
"Yes, your excellency," cried Gneisenau and Voelzke at the same time.
"Well, tell me, then, how did you discover that I intended to start to-day, the pipe-master having said nothing about it to you? For I shall never believe that both of you could happen to come to me at so unusual an hour, and without any reason. Reply--who told you that I was about to leave?"
"You yourself, your excellency," said Surgeon-General Voelzke.
"What, I! What nonsense is this!" cried Blucher, laughing.
"Yes, I heard it from yourself. Do you not remember that you heard a mouse rustle in your alcove?"
"To be sure, I did; I heard it twice."
"Well, then, the mouse was myself! I discovered a small secret side- door in your room, and desired to know whither it led. I therefore thrust it open, and was in your alcove; just as I entered I heard your voice, saying, 'It is settled, then, Christian, I shall set out for Brussels to-night, but no one must know a word about it!' Your excellency, I confess my crime: I stood and listened; only when the pipe-master left your room did I softly creep away, too, and hasten to General Gneisenau to inform him of what I had heard."
"Let us examine the alcove more carefully, pipe-master," said Blucher, "and see whether there is not somewhere else a secret door. Well, you may go now, Hennemann, and send the horses back to the stable."
"Heaven be praised!" exclaimed Christian, hastening out of the room. But scarcely had he closed the door, when he thrust it open again. "Field-marshal," he said, "General von Pietrowitch, adjutant of the Emperor of Russia, wishes to see your excellency immediately."
"Come in, general," exclaimed Blucher; and offering his hand to the officer, he asked hastily, "tell me, in the first place, general, whether you bring good or bad news?"
"I believe I bring what Marshal Forward would call good news," said the general, smiling. "I come as a messenger from the emperor my master, and the king your master, and am commissioned to inform you of the determination taken at headquarters, and to obtain your consent and cooperation."
"Is it a secret mission?" asked Gneisenau.
"On the contrary, the whole army will have to hear it tonight," said the general. "My first news, then, is, that the congress of Chatillou was dissolved on the 19th of March."
"Without leading to any results?" asked Blucher, breathlessly. "Without agreeing on a treaty of peace, or an armistice?"
"Nothing of the kind, your excellency. The congress has had an entirely opposite result--the speedy and energetic prosecution of the war. All the diplomatists, and the Emperor Francis with them, after the dissolution of the congress, retired southward to Dijon."
"And Schwartzenberg?" cried Blucher.
"Prince Schwartzenberg remained, and held a council of war with the monarchs yesterday near Vitry. The result of this I am commissioned to communicate to you. The resumption of the offensive against Paris has been decided upon. Prince Schwartzenberg agrees with the sovereigns that Paris is the decisive point, and that it is all- important for us to cut off Napoleon from the capital, and take the city before he is able to reach it. Prince Schwartzenberg, therefore, sends word to your excellency that from this day all his standards are turned toward Paris, and that the army of Bohemia is marching in three columns. To-night they encamp at Fere Champeuoise, where the headquarters of the allies are to be. Now, Prince Schwartzenberg invites you to participate with the Silesian army in this advance, starting at once, and advancing by the road of Montmirail and La Ferte-sous-Jonarre, and then form a connection with the army of Bohemia." [Footnote: Beitzke, vol. iii., p. 431.]
"Yes, I shall certainly do so," joyfully cried Blucher. "Hurrah! This is good news; now the word is not only with us, but everywhere, 'Forward!' Tell their majesties, and, above all, Prince Schwartzenberg, that they have made me very happy, and have performed a truly miraculous cure. I was sick and desponding; now, since you have come, I am again well and in good spirits. I feel no longer any pain, and my eyes will be all right again, now that they know that they are to see the city of Paris. I thought that it would come to this--that my brave brother Schwartzenberg would at length agree with me. We shall soon now put an end to the war. Bonaparte must be dethroned, and that speedily." [Footnote: Blucher's own words. --Vide Varnhagen von Ense, "Blucher," p. 375.]
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49
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ON TO PARIS!
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Napoleon's courage was not yet paralyzed; he had not yet given up the struggle. His indomitable heart was still wrestling with adversity, and hoping that he would be able to overcome it. It is true, the disastrous battle of Bar-sur-Aube, where the army of Bohemia had gained a victory on the 20th of March, had greatly weighed him down; but a few days sufficed to restore his determination and energy. On the 26th, when he arrived with his army at St. Dizier, he had already devised new plans, and was again resolved to give battle to the allies. "We are still strong," he said to Caulaincourt, who had just joined him at St. Dizier. "We have upward of fifty thousand men here. I have issued orders to Marshals Marmont and Victor, as well as to all reinforcements that are on the road from Paris, to join our army. When they arrive, my forces will be eighty thousand, and the allies will not dare march on Paris, where they will find me. If I can now induce them to hesitate, and retard their operations a short time, by drawing reinforcements from the neighboring fortresses of the Meuse and the Moselle, I shall increase my army to upward of one hundred thousand, and it will then be easy for me to delay the progress of the enemy by constantly renewed attacks, and thus prolong the war."
"But I am afraid, sire, you labor under a delusion as to one point: that it is still possible for you to delay the progress of the allies by any means whatever," sighed Caulaincourt. "I have examined every thing on my trip to your majesty's headquarters; I have conversed with every prisoner fallen into the hands of our troops, and I do not believe that the army of Bohemia is in the rear of your majesty, but that it has outstripped you, and is already on the road to Paris."
Napoleon shrugged his shoulders and stepped to the door, which he opened, shouting, "The mayor of St. Dizier!" The corpulent form of the mayor, who greeted the emperor with awkward obeisances, appeared immediately. "Pray repeat your statements," said the emperor, "The enemy's troops were here yesterday, were they not?"
"They were, sire; all St. Dizier was occupied by them. It was General Winzingerode, with the soldiers of the allies. They stated that they were the vanguard of the principal army. General Winzingerode inspected all the large houses in the city, and reserved the best, adding that the Emperor of Russia and the King of Prussia would arrive here tomorrow, and take up their quarters at those houses; [Footnote: This was a stratagem, resorted to by Winzingerode, in order to mislead Napoleon as to the march of the allies.] but when the approach of your majesty was reported, the enemy quickly left the city."
"Very well; you may go," said Napoleon, motioning to the mayor to leave the room. --"Well, Caulaincourt, have you satisfied yourself now? Do you see now that the allies are not in our front, but still in our rear?"
"Sire, suppose it were a delusion, after all?" sighed Caulaincourt: "Suppose the allies had devised this stratagem, to mislead your majesty? --if none but Winzingerode's corps follow us, while the principal army is hastening toward Paris by different routes? Oh, I implore your majesty, do not suffer your keen eyes to be blinded by false hopes! Look around and examine the evidences that confirm my views, All the prisoners report that the armies of Bohemia and Silesia have united, and are now marching on Paris. Besides, on our way from Bar-sur-Aube to this place, we have nowhere met with large columns of troops, and nothing whatever indicates the approach of the enemy in force."
"Well," cried Napoleon, vehemently, "if we have not met with the enemy's forces, it may be because they are in full retreat toward Lorraine, and that they are at last tired of carrying on a fruitless struggle with me." [Footnote: Fain, "Manuscrit de 18l4," p. 142.]
"Ah, your majesty still thinks that you are opposed only by the timid and desponding enemies of former times!" said Caulaincourt, sighing; "but this is a mistake, which will prove disastrous."
"Ah!" cried Napoleon, vehemently, "you dare tell me that?"
"Sire," said Caulaincourt, calmly, "it is my duty to tell you the truth, and you are in duty bound to listen to it. [Footnote: Caulaincourt's words,--"Memoires d'un Homme d'Etat," vol. xii., p. 292] Now, the truth is, that the allies are firmly determined to carry on the war to the last extremity, and that, at the best, they will leave to your majesty the frontiers of France as they were under the Bourbons. I venture, therefore, once more to implore your majesty to make peace; sire, peace at any cost! Perhaps it may be time yet. Send me once more to the allied monarchs! Tell them that you will now accept the ultimatum offered us at the congress of Chatillon, and that you will content yourself with the frontiers of France, as they were previous to the rise of the empire. Send me with this declaration to the Emperor Alexander of Russia, who, at the bottom of his heart, is still your friend!"
"And whose devoted friend you are!" cried Napoleon. "Yes, you are Alexander's servant, and not mine! You are a thorough Russian!"
"No, sire, I am a Frenchman!" said Caulaincourt, proudly, looking the emperor full in the face, "and I believe I prove it by imploring your majesty to give peace to France and save your crown."
"Ah, save my crown!" exclaimed Napoleon. "Who dares, then, threaten my crown?"
"Sire, the allies and the Bourbons. The former have issued a proclamation, stating that they come to this country to make war on the Emperor Napoleon, and not on France; and the Bourbons, who are now in France, at the headquarters of the allies, have issued another proclamation, calling upon the nation to return to its duty and to the allegiance due to its legitimate king."
"I am neither afraid of the allies nor of the Bourbons," said Napoleon. "The French nation knows no Bourbons; it knows none but ME, its emperor, and we two shall not break the faith we have plighted to each other. We shall conquer together. Dare no longer ask me to accept the ignominious terms of the congress of Chatillon. It is better to die beneath the ruins of my throne than be at the mercy of my enemies. The allies are in my rear, and the arrival of reinforcements will soon enable me to give them battle; I shall win, and it will be for me to dictate terms. Under the walls of Paris the grave of the Russians will be dug. My dispositions have been made, and I shall not fail." [Footnote: Napoleon's words. --Vide Constant, "Memoires," vol. vi., p. 48.]
Caulaincourt sighed, and gazed with an air of painful astonishment on the serene face of the emperor. "Sire," he said, solemnly, "I call Heaven to witness that I have tried my best to incline your majesty to my prayers! You have refused to listen to me."
"Because I am not at liberty to do so, Caulaincourt; and, besides, I do not believe in your apprehensions. Suppose that Alexander and Frederick William should determine to continue the war, there is a third sovereign who will decide the matter--the Emperor Francis, my father-in-law, and grand-father of the King of Rome. You see, therefore, that, though the present prospects were unfavorable to me, I should at least have nothing to fear from the Bourbons; for the emperor will not permit his daughter to be robbed of her crown, nor his grandson of his rightful inheritance."
"Sire," said Caulaincourt, in a low voice, "do not rely too much on the attachment of the Emperor Francis. I know that, though he is your father-in-law, he has never forgotten the day when, after the battle of Austerlitz, he met you as an humble supplicant at your camp-fire, and begged you to spare him and make peace with him. I know that that recollection has greater power over him than any bonds of relationship. I know that Metternich, who is still devoted to your majesty, vainly tried a few days ago to prevail upon the Emperor Francis to intercede energetically with the other monarchs for his son-in-law and daughter, and that he unsuccessfully urged him to take into consideration the future of his grandson, the King of Rome."
"And what did the emperor reply?" asked Napoleon, quickly.
"Sire, the emperor replied, in his strong Austrian dialect, 'Do not always talk to me about the child! I have at home many children of whom I ought to think first.'" [Footnote: The Emperor Francis said: "Rodt's mier nit alleweil von dem Kind; bei mier z' Haus hab' ich gar vielle Kinder, an die ich z'erst denken muess." --Hormayr, "Lebensbllder," vol. i., p. 98.]
"That is not true; he did not say so!" cried Napoleon.
"Sire, he did; Prince Metternich told me so."
Napoleon paused a moment. A low knocking at the door interrupted his meditation. One of the adjutants entered, and reported that the emperor's equerry, Count Saint-Aignan, whom the emperor had intrusted with a mission, had returned, and requested an audience of his majesty. The emperor himself hastened to the door, and eagerly motioned to the count to approach. "Well, Saint-Aignan," he asked, "what did you find? How is the disposition of the people in the south of France?"
"Sire," said the count, mournfully, "I bring no news that will gladden your majesty's heart. Southern France is discontented; the people are complaining of the duration of the war; they desire peace at any price, and are disposed to resort to extreme measures in order to reestablish it."
"What does that mean?" asked the emperor. "I do not understand you; express yourself more distinctly."
"Well, then, sire, the people there have read the proclamation of the Bourbons, and think of reinstating them, for the purpose of putting an end to the war."
"They will not dare to do that," cried Napoleon, casting an angry glance on Saint-Aignan.
"They have already, sire," said the count. "The city of Bordeaux has declared for the Bourbons, and the Count d'Artois, as well as the Duke and Duchess d'Angouleme, have made their entrance into the city, and--" "And have been received with enthusiasm by the population!" cried Napoleon. "Pray, finish your sentence, and tell me so. Add that the inhabitants of Bordeaux have returned to their duty, and that you, too, have discovered what your duty is, and that you intend to return to the legitimate rulers of France! Go! I permit you; I relieve you of the duties of your office! Go to the Bourbons!"
Count Saint-Aignan did not stir; pallor overspread his cheeks; his eyes, fixed on the emperor with an indescribable expression of grief, filled with tears, and his quivering lips were unable to speak.
"Sire," said the Duke de Vicenza, "your majesty does injustice to the count. You commanded him to give a reliable report of his mission; he was not at liberty, therefore, to conceal any thing, but was obliged to tell you the whole truth."
"The truth!" cried Napoleon, violently stamping, "that which you fear or desire you call the truth! You all see through the colored spectacles of your anxiety, and would compel me to do so, too; but I will not; my eyes are open, and see things as they are. Go, Count Saint-Aignan; your report is finished!" The count, with a sigh, approached the door, and, slowly walking backward, left the room. "The Bourbons!" murmured Napoleon to himself; "they shall not dare to threaten me with this spectre! There are no Bourbons! I am the Emperor of France, and it is to me alone that the French nation owes allegiance!" He looked thoughtfully, with a dark and wrinkled forehead, but, presently lifting his head--"Oh, Caulaincourt," he exclaimed, "I will personally satisfy myself whether the army of the allies is really in our rear, or whether your fears are well grounded. Let us set out for Vitry!"
"Heaven be praised!" replied the Duke de Vicenza, joyfully. "All is not yet lost; for Vitry is on the road to Paris."
On the following morning the emperor moved with his forces toward Vitry, and took up his quarters at Marolles, a short distance from the little fortress. Here at length he was to find out the true state of affairs. He was met by inhabitants of Fere Champenoise, who had fled to Marolles, and informed him that Marshals Marmont and Mortier had suffered decisive defeats at the hands of the allies; that the divisions of General Pacthod and Aurey had been annihilated, and that the united armies of Bohemia and Silesia were in rapid march on Paris.
An expression of terror passed over the face of Napoleon, and his equanimity seemed to be shaken; but he soon overcame the effect of this news, calmly remarking, "Well, if the allies are marching on Paris, we must march too."
"Yes, on to Paris!" cried the marshals. "That is the most important point in present circumstances, and it can be defended, if the emperor hasten with his army."
"On to Paris, then!" exclaimed Napoleon. "But we must move with the speed of the wind!" He appeared to have regained his whole energy; his eyes beamed again, his face resumed its old determination, and he issued his orders in a firm and cheerful voice.
It was all-important to defend the emperor's throne at Paris, and to protect the inheritance of the King of Rome from the allies and the Bourbons. Forward, then, by forced marches! Napoleon's headquarters were soon at Montier-en-Der--much nearer the capital. On the 28th of March he reached Doulerant, when a horseman, covered with dust, pale and breathless, coming from the direction of the capital, galloped up to the head of the column. "Where is the emperor?" he cried. Having been conducted to him, "Sire," he whispered, "I am sent by the postmaster-general, your faithful Count La Valette, to deliver this paper."
The emperor unfolded the paper and read. A slight tremor pervaded his frame, and his eyes grew gloomier. He cast another glance on the paper, and then, seizing it with his teeth, he tore it to pieces. None but himself was to learn the contents of that paper, which read: "The adherents of the invaders, encouraged by the defection of Bordeaux, are raising their heads; secret intrigues are helping them. The emperor's presence is necessary, if he wishes to prevent his capital from being delivered into the hands of the enemy. We must march immediately. Not a moment is to be lost." [Footnote: Fain, "Manuscrit de 1814."]
"Forward!" shouted the emperor. "We must hasten to Paris, and be there to-morrow!" The emperor, with the cavalry of his guard, headed the column. His countenance was still calm and impenetrable; but at times a gleam lit up his sombre eyes, as he moved on in a violent thunderstorm.
Another courier galloped up and asked for the emperor. "Announce me to him. The lieutenant-general of the empire, King Joseph, the emperor's brother, sends me."
He was conducted to Napoleon, who received him with the words, "News from my brother in Paris? Give me your dispatch!"
"Sire, I have no dispatch to deliver; dispatches may be lost, or revealed if their bearer should be arrested; but memory betrays nothing. I have ridden from Paris in fourteen hours. Here are my credentials, King Joseph's signet-ring."
"I recognize it. Speak!" By a wave of his hand Napoleon ordered the marshals to retire, and, bending his head toward his brother's messenger, he repeated calmly, "Speak!"
"Sire," whispered the messenger, "the king informs your majesty that the allies are near Paris; that Marshals Marmont and Mortier, though determined to defend the capital, have no hope of holding their positions. The king implores your majesty most urgently to leave nothing undone to hasten to the assistance of your capital." [Footnote: Fain, "Manuscrit de 1814."]
Having heard this message, the emperor's face was unveiled; it was quivering with anguish, and his eyes turned to heaven in despair. "Oh, if I had wings!" he cried, in an outburst of grief; "if I could be in Paris at this hour!" Then he became silent, and his head sank on his breast. His generals surrounded him, when he lifted his head again with drops of sweat on his forehead, but his face resumed its wonted calmness. "General Dejean," he cried, in a powerful voice, "ride to Paris as fast as you can. Inform my brother that I am making a forced march to the capital. Hasten then to Marmont and Mortier; tell them to resist to the last, and leave nothing untried in order to hold out but for two days. In that time I shall be in front of Paris, and it is safe! Marmont is to dispatch a courier to Prince Schwartzenberg, and inform him that I have sent an envoy to the Emperor Francis with propositions leading to peace. Schwartzenberg will hesitate, and we shall gain time. Haste, Dejean, and remember that the fate of my capital rests with you!"
When General Dejean rode off, Napoleon sought his faithful friend, the Duke de Vicenza. He was by his side before the emperor had uttered his name. "Caulaincourt," he said, in a gentle voice, "you were right. I have lost two days. I might now be in Paris. Fate is behind me, intent on crushing me, and death itself refuses to take me! At the battle of Bar-sur-Aube I did all I could to die while defending my country. I plunged into the thickest of the fight; the balls tore my clothes, and yet not one of them injured me. I am a man doomed to live [Footnote: Napoleon's words. --"Vide Bausset's Memoires," vol. ii., p. 246.] --a man that, for the welfare of his people, is to subscribe his own humiliation and disgrace! Caulaincourt, go to the Emperor Francis of Austria. Tell him I accept the ultimatum which the allies offered me at Chatillon. I sign the death-warrant of my glory! Hasten! And now, forward! In two days we must reach Paris!"
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50
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DEPARTURE OF MARIA LOUISA.
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On the same day, and nearly at the same hour of the 29th of March, while the emperor was moving with his troops toward Paris, a scene of an entirely different description took place at the rooms of the empress, his consort, in the Tuileries. Napoleon, in his despair, wished for wings to fly to Paris; Maria Louisa, in her anguish, wished for wings to fly away from Paris; for the enemy was at its gates, and it was plain that the city must either capitulate or run the risk of an assault.
As yet Maria Louisa called the allies threatening the throne of her husband, and the inheritance of her son, her enemies, although her own father was among them. She deemed herself in duty bound to stand by her husband, to brave the vicissitudes of fortune jointly with him, and obey his will. The emperor desired that his consort and his son should not remain in the city if any danger should menace them. When the news reached the Tuileries that the allies had arrived at the walls of Paris, and it became obvious that the corps of Marmont and Mortier were not strong enough to withstand the armies of the enemy, King Joseph, the lieutenant of the emperor, summoned the regent, Maria Louisa, and the council of state, to deliberate on the grave question whether or not the empress and the King of Rome should remain, or be withdrawn to a place of safety beyond the Loire.
The decision was left with Maria Louisa; but the regent had declared it was not for her to settle this question; it was for the very purpose of advising her and guiding her steps that the emperor had associated the council of state with her. King Joseph produced a letter from Napoleon of a nature to indicate his wishes. It was dated Rheims, 15th of March, and read: "In accordance with the verbal instructions which I have given, and with the spirit of all my letters, you are in no event to permit the empress and the King of Rome to fall into the hands of the enemy. I am about to manoeuvre in such a manner that you may possibly be several days without hearing from me. Should the enemy advance upon Paris with such forces as to render all resistance impossible, send off in the direction of the Loire the empress, the King of Rome, the great dignitaries, the ministers, the officers of the senate, the president of the council of state, the great officers of the crown, and the treasure. Never quit my son; and keep in mind that I would rather see him in the Seine than in the hands of the enemies of France! The fate of Astyanax, a prisoner in the hands of the Greeks, has always appeared to me the most deplorable in history."
"Your brother, NAPOLEON."
[Footnote: Baron de Meneval, "Marie Louise et Napoleon," vol. ii., p. 230.]
This, of course, put an end to all debate. The emperor's precise and final order, providing for the very case which had occurred, could not be disregarded, and Maria Louisa accordingly determined to leave with her son and her suite for Rambouillet. The morning of the 29th of March was fixed for the departure. The travelling-carriages, loaded with baggage, stood in the court-yard of the Tuileries; but Maria Louisa still hesitated. Her travelling-toilet was completed; her ladies were with her in the reception-room, filled with persons forming the cortege of the empress. All entered in mournful silence, and to their bows the empress responded only with a nod. Her eyes, red with weeping, were fixed on the door; she awaited in suspense the return of King Joseph, who had left the Tuileries at daybreak, and had gone to the gates of Paris to reconnoitre the enemy's position. At first the departure was to have taken place at eight in the morning; now it was past nine, and King Joseph had not yet returned.
This unexpected delay increased the anxiety. None dared interrupt the breathless silence reigning in the apartment; only here and there some one whispered, and, whenever a door opened, all started and turned anxiously toward it, as if expecting a bearer of sad tidings. The face of the empress was pale and agitated; her form trembled; at times she turned toward her ladies, who stood behind her, and addressed to them some almost inaudible question, not waiting for a reply, but looking again toward the door, or inclining her head on her bosom.
Suddenly the door was opened, and on the threshold appeared the little King of Rome, followed by his governess, Madame de Montesquieu. The boy's face did not exhibit today its air of childlike mirth, which usually beamed like sunshine from his beautiful features. No smile was on his fresh lips, and his lustrous eyes were dimmed. With a sullen face and without looking at any one, the child, so intelligent for his years, stepped through the room directly toward his mother. "Mamma empress," he said, in his silvery voice, "my 'Quiou says that we are about to leave Paris, and shall no longer live at the Tuileries. Is that true, mamma?"
"Yes, my son, we must leave," said the empress, in a low voice, "but we shall return."
"We MUST leave?" inquired the little king. "But my papa once said to me, the word 'must' is not for me, and I do not want it either, and I pray my dear mamma not to leave Paris with me."
"But the emperor himself wishes us to leave, Napoleon," said the empress, sighing, and with some displeasure. "Your papa has ordered us to depart if the enemy should come."
"The enemy!" cried the boy; "I am not afraid of the enemy. If he, comes, we do as my papa emperor always does--we beat the enemy, and then he runs away."
But these words of the brave child, which would have delighted his father's heart, seemed to make a disagreeable impression upon his mother. She murmured a few inaudible words, and slightly shrugged her shoulders.
Madame de Montesquiou took the child by the hand, "Come, sire," she said, in a low voice, "do not disturb her majesty. Come!"
"No, no," cried the boy, violently disengaging himself, "I am sure you want to carry me down to the carriage, and I tell you I will not go! Let me stay here with my mother, dear 'Quiou; I do not disturb her, for you see she is not busy, and she does not want to be alone either, for there are a great many persons with her. Therefore, I may stay here, too, may I not, dear mamma empress!"
"Yes, my son, stay here," said the empress, abstractedly, looking again at the door.
"I am not afraid of the enemy," cried the little king, proudly throwing back his head. "My papa will soon come and drive him away. But tell me, mamma, what is the name of the enemy who wants to rob us of our beautiful palace? What is his name?"
"Hush, Napoleon!" said the empress, almost indignantly; "what good would it do you to hear what you do not understand?"
"Oh, dear mamma," cried the child, with a triumphant air, "I can understand very well, for my papa has often played war on the floor with me, and we have built fortresses. And not long ago, papa emperor told me, too, that he was going to the army, and he spoke of his enemies. I remember them very well; they are the Emperor of Russia--who once kissed my papa's hand, and thanked God that papa emperor consented to be his friend; the King of Prussia, from whom my papa could have taken all his states; the crown prince of Sweden, who learned the art of war from my papa, and is a faithless servant; and last, the Emperor of Austria. But tell me, mamma, is not he your father? And did you not tell me that I ought to pray every night for my grandfather, the Emperor of Austria?"
"I did tell you so, Napoleon," whispered the empress, whose eyes filled with tears.
The boy looked down for a moment musingly; and then, lifting his large blue eyes to his mother, "Mamma," he said, "henceforth I shall never again pray for the Emperor of Austria, for he is now my papa's enemy, and, therefore, no longer my grandfather. No, no, I shall not pray for him, but only as my papa likes me to do." And the boy knelt down, lifting up his hands, and exclaiming in a loud voice, "Good God, I pray to Thee for France and for my father!"
Expressions of deep emotion were heard in the room. The empress covered her face with her handkerchief, and wept bitterly. The little king was still on his knees, with his eyes raised toward heaven. Suddenly the door at which the empress had looked so long and anxiously, opened. It was not King Joseph who entered, but the adjutant of General Clarke, the regent's minister of war. Approaching the empress, he begged leave to communicate a message from the minister.
"Speak," said Maria Louisa, hastily, "and loud enough for every one to hear the news."
"His excellency, the minister of war, has commissioned me to implore your majesty in his name to leave without a moment's delay. He believes that every minute increases the danger, and that an hour hence it might be impossible for you to get away, because your majesty would then run the risk of falling into the hands of roving bands of Cossacks. The Russian corps are already near, and we shall soon hear their cannon thunder at the very gates of Paris." [Footnote: Meneval, "Marie Louise," vol. II., p. 266.]
"Well, then," said Maria Louisa, with quivering lips, "be it so! Let us set out."
All felt that the decisive hour was at hand. The empress quickly advanced a few steps. "Come!" she exclaimed, in feverish agitation. "Let us set out for Rambouillet!"
Suddenly her son grasped her hand and endeavored to draw her back. "Dear mamma," he cried, anxiously, "do not go! Rambouillet is an ugly old castle. Let us not go, but stay here!" [Footnote: The little king's words. Ibid.]
"It cannot be, my son; we must go!"
But little Napoleon pushed back her hand with a gesture of indignation. "Well, then, mamma," he said, "go! I will not go. I will not leave my house! As papa is not here, I am the master! and I say I WILL not go!" [Footnote: Meneval, "Marie Louise."]
The empress motioned to the equerry on service. "M. de Comisy," she ordered, "take the prince in your arms and carry him to the carriage."
"The prince! I am no prince, I am the King of Rome," cried the boy, in the most violent anger. "I will not go! I will not leave my house; I do not want you to betray my dear papa!" [Footnote: The king's words. --Vide "Memoires du Due de Rovigo," vol. vii., p. 5.] The empress took no longer any notice of him; M. de Comisy lifted the crying, struggling boy into his arms. " 'Quiou, dear 'Quiou!" cried the child, "oh, come to my assistance! I will not leave my house!"
"Sire," said Madame de Montesquieu, weeping, "we must leave: the emperor has ordered us to do so!"
"It is false!" cried the prince, bursting into a flood of tears, and still trying to disengage himself. "My papa never ordered any such thing, for he says that one ought never to flee from the enemy. I will not go, I will not flee!"
"Come, sire; come!" exclaimed M. de Comisy.
"I will not go!" said the boy, and clung to the door. But Madame de Montesqnion, vainly trying to comfort the prince by gentle words, disengaged his tiny hands, and M. de Comisy hurried on. The whole court, the whole travelling cortege thronged, forward, following the empress and the King of Rome.
Soon the brilliant apartment was empty; but the deserted rooms echoed the distant cries of the little King of Rome. All his struggles were in vain. M. de Comisy was not allowed to have pity on him; the will of the empress had to be fulfilled.
At length the preparations were completed, and all had taken their seats. The large clock on the tower of the Tuileries struck eleven as the empress's carriage rolled slowly across the spacious court- yard. The crying of the little king, who sat by the side of his mother, was still heard. With them were also the mistress of ceremonies, the Duchess de Montebello, and the governess. Nine other carriages followed, decorated with the imperial coat-of-arms, and numerous baggage-wagons, and the whole train of a brilliant court. The procession filled the whole length of the court-yard of the Tuilories.
When the carriage of the empress drove through the large iron enclosure, a small crowd of spectators stood near, and gazed in mournful silence. Not a hand was raised to salute the fugitives; not a voice shouted farewell. The sad train passed along, while the people looked after it, as if the funeral procession of the empire. The imperial party disappeared among the trees of the Champs Elysees, and left Paris by the "Gate of Victory."
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{
"id": "3801"
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51
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THE CAPITULATION OF PARIS.
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The roar of cannon, which continued all the day long of the 30th of March, began now to cease; but the great battle which the allies fought under the walls of Paris with the corps of Marmont and Mortier, was not finished. Before resorting to a bombardment, and an assault on the city, conciliation was once more to be tried. Delegates of the monarchs, therefore, repaired to the marshals, and requested them to consent to an honorable capitulation.
"This is another instance of our foolish generosity!" growled Blucher, leaning back in his carriage. "The whole rats'-nest ought to be demolished; Bonaparte and the French would then have to submit. But I see already how it will be. The peace will be unsatisfactory, and our demands will be as modest as possible, lest we incur the displeasure of the dear French. --Pipe-master, hand me a short pipe! I must smoke, to stifle my anger."
"Your excellency," said Christian, riding up to the carriage, "you have promised the surgeon general not to smoke much, and least of all a short pipe, because the hot smoke is injurious to the eyes. Your excellency has smoked six pipes to-day!"
"And it seems to me that is very little! What are six pipes for a general-in-chief, who has to reflect so much as I have to-day? Give me a pipe, Christian; it is bad enough that I have to sit in such a monkey-box of a carriage, instead of riding on horseback at the head of my troops."
"Nevertheless, every thing passed off very well," said Christian, calmly. "You shouted your orders out of the carriage like a madman, and the generals and adjutants heard and executed all as if you had been on horseback among them. In fact, it would have been only necessary for you to order, 'Forward!' It would have been just as well, for your hussars were intent on nothing else; and, like their field-marshal, they wished only to reach Paris."
"And now we have to wait here without firing a gun," replied Blucher. "Moreover, my eyes ache as if they were burning. The sun has been blazing all day, as though curious to see whether or not we should take Paris; he has poured his rays on me since daybreak, and I had no protection for my old eyes. On looking out of the carriage early this morning I lost my shade; the wind carried it off as though it were a kite. I have lost it, and, what is worse, I cannot even enter Paris, for we shall of course sign a capitulation."
"Here is the pipe, your excellency," said Christian, "and now, good- by, field-marshal; I have to attend to a little private matter."
He galloped off, and Blucher looked after him. "Happy fellow!" he said, sighing; "he can gallop as light as a bird, while I must sit here as a poor old prisoner!" At this moment his adjutant, Major von Nostiz, rode up to the field-marshal's carriage. "Well, Nostiz, tell me how things look in the outer world. What is the news?"
"Bad and good, your excellency," said Nostiz. "A murderous battle has taken place to-day, and we have sustained heavy losses. About eight thousand men were killed on our side, but in return we have gained a large number of trophies, field-pieces, caissons, and stands of colors."
"We ought to have taken all their colors!" cried Blucher, eagerly. "What say the monarchs now, Nostiz? Will they still leave the Parisians the choice to suffer a bombardment or not?"
"The negotiations are still pending."
"Are the monarchs themselves taking part in them? Do they condescend to negotiate in person?"
"No, your excellency. The monarchs have returned to their quarters; the King of Prussia has gone to the village of Pantin, the Emperor of Russia to Bondy, and their representatives have repaired to the suburb of La Chapelle, where they are treating with Marshals Mortier and Marmont and their two adjutants in regard to the capitulation of Paris."
"Would that their negotiations were unsuccessful--that we might have the pleasure of bombarding this infamous city which, for twenty years past, has brought so much misery on Europe!"
"There is some prospect of it," said Nostiz, smiling. "The allies have demanded that the French corps should surrender as prisoners of war. To this the marshals refused to accede, declaring that they would perish first in the streets, so the allies agreed to abandon this article. A discussion next rose as to the route by which the corps of Marmont and Mortier should retire, so as to be prevented from joining the approaching forces of the emperor, the allies insisting for that of Brittany, the French for any that they might choose. The marshals refused positively to agree to these demands."
"They did!" cried Blucher, in an angry voice. "Well, I am glad of it, for I see now that we shall have a bombardment. Let us immediately make all necessary dispositions for it, in order that when the fun commences we may be ready. Bring me my horse!" With the activity of a youth Blucher opened his carriage and vaulted on the horse, which the groom led close to the carriage. For a moment he reeled in the saddle; for he felt as if red-hot daggers were piercing his eyes, but he overcame his faintness and pain. "Where are the members of my staff, Nostiz?" he asked, eagerly.
"They are near, your excellency, at La Villette."
"Let us ride, then, to La Villette, and thence up the Montmartre. Nostiz, you will have immediately eighty or ninety pieces planted on the Montmartre, that, when the bombardment commences early in the morning, there may be no delay. [Footnote: Varnhagen von Esse, "Life of Blucher," p. 380.] Make haste, Nostiz! There must be at least eighty pieces! We shall startle the Parisians out of their slumber," growled Blucher, riding along the road to La Villette, attended by his orderlies; "let them see that another state of affairs exists, and that they are no longer the masters of the world, and able to trample others in the dust!"
At La Villette, Blucher met the members of his staff, and, with Gneisenau and Muffling by his side, and followed by the other officers, rode up the heights of Moutmartre. The sun had set, but his last beams still lingered in the evening clouds. The silence reigning around them after the uproar of the day, made upon their minds a solemn impression. At first the party engaged in an animated conversation, but it gradually ceased. Peaceful nature in this spring eventide contrasted the noise and bloodshed of the day with her own indifference, so that even Blucher himself was deeply moved.
They reached the crest of the Montmartre. Paris--the long-feared, but now vanquished Paris, which for centuries had not seen a conquering enemy near its walls--lay at their feet. The steeples of Notre-Dame, of St. Genevieve, the large cupola of the Hotel des Invalides, the countless spires proudly looming up, the vast pile of the Tuileries, the Louvre, the Palais-Royal, where for twenty years Napoleon had given laws to trembling Europe, were plainly discerned. And this great city, with its temples and palaces, was in the hands of the enemy. They were Prussian generals who looked down from the heights of the Montmartre, and who for seven years had borne the disgrace of their country with sad yet courageous hearts; but this moment was a sufficient indemnity for the long years of wretchedness.
"This, then, is Paris," said Blucher, after a long pause, and his voice was gentle and tremulous. "This is Paris, for which I have longed during seven years--the city which I knew my eyes would see, that I might die in peace! Good God," he cried, lifting his blue eyes toward heaven, and taking off his cap, "I thank Thee for having permitted us to be here, for lending us Thy assistance in attaining our object, and hurling from the throne the man who has so long been a terror to humanity. I thank Thee for having called us, the men who saw the disastrous day of Jena, to participate in the day of liberation! Blessed spirit of our Queen Louisa! if thou, with thine heavenly eyes that wept so much on earth, now lookest down upon us, behold our hearts full of gratitude toward God, and of love for thee as when thou wast among us! Thou hast assisted us in gaining the victory; assist us now, too, in profiting by it in a manner worthy ourselves, and for the welfare of the fatherland!" he paused, and, shading his face with his cap, prayed in a low voice. The generals followed his example; removing their hats, they offered silent prayers of gratitude to God. "Now," cried Blucher, putting on his cap again, "we have paid homage to Heaven, let us think a little of ourselves. I am still in hope that there will be a bombardment, and that we shall send our balls to the Parisians for breakfast to- morrow. I will, therefore, remain on the Montmartre, and establish here my quarters for the night."
"Field-marshal!" shouted a voice at a distance. "Field-Marshal Blucher, where are you?"
"Here I am!" shouted Blucher.
"And here I am!" cried Hennemann, galloping up.
"Pipe-master, is it you?" asked Blucher, in amazement. "Well, what do you want, and where have you been so long?"
"I have just brought an eye-shade for you, and here it is," said Christian, handing with profound gravity a lady's bonnet of green silk, with a broad green brim.
"A bonnet!" exclaimed Blucher, laughing. "What am I to do with it?"
"Put it on," said Christian, composedly. "We can cut off the crown, then it will be a good shade; your excellency will put it on, and wear your general's hat over it."
"That will do," said Blucher. "But tell me, my boy, where did you get it?"
"I saw this afternoon a lady with a green bonnet at a villa near which I passed, and when you told me you ought to have an eye-shade, I thought immediately of the bonnet. Well, I rode to the house, and knocked so long at the door that they opened it. There were none but women at the house, and they cried and wailed dreadfully on seeing me. Well, I told them at once that I would not hurt them, but was only desirous of getting the green bonnet. While the women were raising such a hue-and-cry, another door opened, and the lady who owned the house came in, with the bonnet on. Well, I went directly to her, made her an obeisance, and said, 'Madame, be so kind as to give me your green bonnet for my field-marshal, who has sore eyes.'"
"Well, and did she understand your good Mecklenburg German?" inquired Blucher, smiling.
"No, she did not understand me apparently, but I made myself understood, your excellency."
"Well, what did you do?"
"Oh, your excellency, I simply stepped near her, took hold of the large knot by which her bonnet was tied under her chin, loosened it, seized the bonnet by the brim, and took it very gently from her head. She cried a little, and fainted away--but that will not hurt a woman; I know she will soon be better. I secured my prize, and here I am, and here is your excellency's eye-shade."
"And a good one it is. I thank you, my boy; I will wear it in honor of you, for my eyes are aching dreadfully, and I have need of a shade. I will raise this standard when we make our entrance into Paris, and I believe, pipe-master, the fair Parisians will rejoice at seeing me dressed in the latest Parisian fashion. But now, milliner, cut off the crown, else I cannot use it."
"I will do so at once," said Christian, taking a pair of scissors from his dressing-pouch, and transforming a lady's bonnet into an eye-shade.
A few hours afterward, all was quiet on the Montmartre, and on all the other heights around Paris. After the battle the armies needed sleep, and it was undisturbed, for there was no longer an enemy to dispute their possession of the French capital.
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"id": "3801"
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52
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NIGHT AND MORNING NEAR PARIS.
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So the allied armies encamped and rested round the bivouac-fires, while, at a house in the suburbs of La Chapelle, the plenipotentiaries of the sovereigns were still negotiating with the French marshals the terms on which the city was to be surrendered. But he who now rode along the road to Paris at a gallop in an open carriage knew no peace or rest. His quivering features were expressive of alarm; ruin sat enthroned on his forehead, covered with perspiration. By his side sat Caulaincourt; behind him, Berthier and Flahault. The carriage thundered along at the utmost speed. "Caulaincourt, I shall arrive at Paris in time," murmured the emperor; "we are already at Fromenteau; in an hour we shall be there. The watch-fires of the enemy are seen on the opposite bank of the Seine. Ah, I shall extinguish them; to-morrow night the enemy will not be so near. --But what is that? Do you hear nothing? Have the carriage stopped!"
Berthier shouted to the driver--the carriage stopped. They all heard a sort of hollow noise.
"It is a squad of cavalry riding along this road," whispered Caulaincourt.
"It is artillery," murmured Napoleon. "Forward! They can only be our own men. But why are they retreating from Paris? Forward!"
The carriage rolled on. And from the other side of the road a dark mass, with a rumbling noise, moved toward them. Napoleon was not mistaken, nor was Caulaincourt mistaken.
"Who is there?" shouted the emperor to the horsemen at the head of the column. "Halt!"
"It is the emperor!" cried a voice, in amazement, and a horseman dismounting in a moment approached the carriage.
"It is General Belliard," exclaimed the emperor, and alighted hastily from his carriage. "General, whither are you moving? What about Paris?"
"Sire, all is lost!" said Belliard, after a mournful pause.
"How so?" cried Napoleon, vehemently. "You see I am coming! I shall be in Paris in an hour. I will call out the National Guard, and put myself at the head of the troops."
"Sire, we are too weak; the enemy is five times stronger."
"But I am there, and my name will increase the strength of my army fivefold."
"Sire, it is too late."
"Too late! What do you mean?"
"Marmont and Mortier have capitulated; we are taking advantage of the night to evacuate Paris, while the marshals are still negotiating the terms of capitulation."
A single cry of anger burst from Napoleon's lips; then, as if crushed by the blow, his head dropped on his breast. Recovering himself in a moment, he said, imperiously: "General Belliard! return with your troops; I shall be there before you reach the city. Resuming hostilities, I will call upon all Paris to take up arms; the people love me, they will remain faithful; the majority of the working-men are composed of old soldiers. They know how to fight, and I will lead them. We shall fight as the Spaniards fought against us at Saragossa, defending with our blood the streets of our capital; detaining the enemy at least for a day, my army will arrive, and we shall be strong enough to give battle. I must go to Paris; when I am not there, they do nothing but blunder! My brother Joseph is a pusillanimous and easily-disheartened man, and Minister Clarke is a blockhead. Marmont and Mortier are traitors deserving death, for they violated my express instructions. I asked them to hold out only two days, and the traitors capitulated before they had elapsed! Oh, I shall hold them responsible for it: I know how to punish traitors and poltroons!" He hurried on in a rapid step, General Belliard walking by his side, and Caulaincourt, Berthier, and Flahault following him. "I must go to Paris," cried the emperor, after a momentary pause. "Order my carriage!"
"Sire," said Belliard, solemnly, "it is no longer possible for your majesty to reach Paris. You would run the risk of falling into the hands of the vanguard of the allies. If your majesty were at Paris, it would be of no avail. The enemy is in possession of all the heights, and they can bombard the city without being interfered with by the exhausted troops of Mortier and Marmont. Sire, all is lost; there is no prospect which would justify us to hope for a favorable change."
"To Paris!" cried the emperor. "You say I can no longer enter the city. Well, then, I shall put myself at the head of the troops of Marshals Mortier and Marmont, and, while the allies are making their entrance into the city, resume the struggle."
"Sire," said Belliard, mournfully, "it is too late, the marshals have agreed to surrender Paris; it was only on this condition that our troops were allowed to move out. The capitulation cannot be broken."
"What do I care for the capitulation of traitorous marshals?" said the emperor, stamping; "my will alone reigns here, and my will is, that the troops face about and follow me. --Say, Hulin," said the emperor, turning toward the commander of Paris, who had just approached him, "are you not of my opinion? The troops should return to Paris?"
"No, sire," said General Hulin, sighing, "the capitulation has already been concluded, and it does not permit the soldiers to return on any pretext."
"Are you of the same opinion?" asked Napoleon, turning toward General Curial, who had just come up with a corps of infantry, and saluted the emperor.
"I am, sire," said Curial. "The capitulation has been concluded, and we are happy to have received permission for our troops, who are exhausted, to evacuate the city. We are already on the march in the direction of Fontainebleau. We have no hope of conquering, and we could only be involved in a last dreadful but useless carnage. Your majesty cannot desire that. Have pity on poor France, bleeding from a thousand wounds; you do not wish the enemy to bombard the heart of our country."
"And you?" asked Napoleon, turning his eyes, with an expression of agony, toward his attendants. "Caulaincourt, do you, too, share the views of these gentlemen?"
"Yes, sire," said Caulaincourt, with tears in his eyes. "It is too late to conquer; it only remains for us to save what we can."
"And you, Berthier and Flahault?"
"Sire, that is our opinion! It is too late; all is lost!"
Napoleon's sigh sounded like a death-rattle. "Well, then," he said, in a faint, hollow voice, "I will return to Fontainebleau."
Napoleon reentered his carriage. When his three attendants had taken seats, he rose and called out in a commanding voice, "General Belliard!" The general approached the carriage hesitatingly; he was still afraid lest the emperor should change his mind.
"Belliard," said Napoleon, "dispatch immediately an orderly to Marshals Marmont and Mortier, and communicate to them that they march their troops to Essonne, ten leagues south of Paris; there they are to take a position, and await further orders. --To Fontainebleau!"
The carriage passed again along the road by which it had arrived, bearing away a wearied and despairing man, who a moment before was full of hope and energy. The clock of the village of Jurissy struck twelve, when he halted in front of the "Cour de France," and had the horses changed. "Caulaincourt," he said, hurriedly, "alight, take post-horses, and hasten to Paris! Penetrate to the headquarters of the Emperor Alexander! Prevent the capitulation--do so in my name; you have full powers! Negotiate, consent to any treaty that recognizes me as sovereign of France!" [Footnote: Beitzke vol. iii., p. 496.]
It was past midnight, and with a new day began a new era. The rising sun shone upon the brilliant array of the allies. The terms of the capitulation had been adjusted at two in the morning. It was stipulated that the marshals should evacuate Paris at seven on the same day; that the public arsenals and magazines be surrendered in the same state in which they were when the capitulation was concluded; that the National Guard, according to the pleasure of the allies, be either disbanded, or employed under their direction in the service of the city; that the wounded and stragglers, found after ten in the morning, be considered prisoners of war; and that Paris be recommended to the generosity of the sovereigns. [Footnote: "Memoires du Duc de Rovigo," vol. iii.]
It was now eight in the morning, and the corps of the allied troops that were to make their entrance into the city were in readiness. A staff, composed of hundreds of Austrian, Russian, Prussian, Wurtemberg, Bavarian, and Swedish generals, awaited the arrival of the Emperor of Russia and the King of Prussia, when the triumphal march into Paris would take place.
Overcoming his pain, and keeping erect by a violent effort, Field- Marshal Blucher had himself dressed by his servants. The toilet was finished, and, attired in his uniform, covered with glittering orders, he stepped from his bedroom, and sent for Christian. "Pipe- master," he said, "I am ready now, and believe I look quite imposing; but you must adjust the last ornament of my toilet. You captured it, and ought to add it to my uniform."
"What ornament, your excellency?"
"Well, the eye-shade, Christian. Come and adorn me!" He handed the crownless bonnet to Christian, and sat down on a chair. The article was carefully placed on the head of the field-marshal, so that his bald scalp protruded from the aperture of the shade like a full moon surrounded by a green halo. He then carefully put on it the field- marshal's hat, with its waving plumes and gold-lace. [Footnote: Varnhagen, "Life of Blucher," p. 382] "Now I am ready," said Blucher, rising.
At this moment the door opened, and General Gneisenau, accompanied by Surgeon-General Voelzke, entered the room.
"What!" exclaimed Gneisenau, in amazement. "An hour ago I found you in bed, a prey to a raging fever, complaining of your eyes; and now you have not only risen, but are in full feather, and ready for the march into the city!"
"Why, yes, of course, I am," said Blucher, sullenly. "I must make my entry, I must keep my word, and get into Paris after aiding in getting HIM out of it."
"That is to say," cried Dr. Voelzke, "you intend to break your pledge, and prove faithless to your oath?"
"What oath?" asked Blucher, greatly surprised.
"Did you not solemnly pledge me your word four days ago, your excellency, to submit to my treatment for two weeks, and adhere to my instructions?"
"Yes, and I think I have kept my word. I have swallowed your medicines, pills, and powders, rubbed in your salves, and applied your plasters, in accordance with your directions, although I must say that all this did not help me any."
"But your eyes have not grown any worse, and they will soon improve, if you continue my treatment."
"Well, what do you want me to do, then?"
"You must stay here. You must not be six or eight hours on horseback; you must not expose yourself so long to the dust and sun."
"What! I am not to participate in the entrance of the monarchs into Paris?" cried Blucher, indignantly.
"I implore your excellency not to do so," said the physician, in an impressive tone. "Give yourself a few days' rest and recreation, and your eyes will get well; but if you expose yourself to-day I shall never again cross your threshold, for I do not care to be disgraced by the report that Field-Marshal Blucher lost his eyesight while under my care; and I tell you, you will be blind, and then I can do nothing for you."
"Stay here, your excellency," begged Gneisenau; "do not trifle with your dear eyes, destined to see still many beautiful things, and gladden the world by their heroic glances! What can a triumph of a few hours' duration be to you to whom every day will be a triumph, and whom delivered Germany awaits to greet with manifestations of love and gratitude?"
"Ah, it is not for the sake of the triumph that I wish to go," cried Blucher, morosely. "But I have sworn, for seven years, and it has been my only consolation, that, in spite of Bonaparte, I would make my triumphal entrance into Paris, as Bonaparte did into Berlin, and now you insist on my not fulfilling my oath!"
"You will nevertheless make your entrance into Paris," exclaimed Gneisenau; "though your person be absent, your name will float as our banner of victory over the monarchs, and all know full well that Blucher is THE conqueror."
"Stay!" begged Voelzke; "think of the pain which you have already suffered, and of that you will suffer, and of which I give you sufficient warning."
"Yes, field-marshal," begged Hennemann, with tearful eyes, "pray do what the doctor says; do not hazard your sight; for, let me say, field-marshal, a blind man is like a pipe that will not draw; both of them will go out."
"Well, I do not care," cried Blucher, "I will stay. It will not hurt me. My task is performed, and it makes no difference to me how I enter Paris. I have my share of the victory, and no one can take it from me. HE has been cast down, and none will deny that I assisted."
"Well, I think I have also assisted a little in it," said Christian, solemnly; "for had I not always kept the pipes in so good a state, the field-marshal would not have had such successful ideas, nor could he have so well said, 'Forward!'"
"You are right, pipe-master," said Blucher, pleasantly. "The pipe-- but what is that? Was not that a gun, and there another? Have the negotiations miscarried, after all, and the bombardment commenced in earnest?"
"No, your excellency," said Gneisenau, smiling, "you must give up that hope! These are the guns which give the troops the signal that the monarchs have arrived, and that the march into the city is to commence."
"Well, good-by, then; make haste and leave!" cried Blucher, pushing Gneisenau and Voelzke toward the door.
They left, and the field-marshal was again alone with Christian Hennemann.
"Well," he said, "give me a pipe: while the others are making their entrance into Paris, I want you to afford me a little pleasure, too. Come here, therefore, and sing to me the Low-German song which you sang to me on the day when you arrived at Kunzendorf."
The reports of the artillery continued; the monarchs were entering Paris. The field-marshal in the mean time sat with the green bonnet on his head, puffing his pipe. No one was with him but Christian Hennemann, who sang in a loud voice, "Spinn doch, spinn doch, mihn lutt lewes Dochting!"
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53
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NAPOLEON AT FONTAINEBLEAU.
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Napoleon passed seven days of indescribable mental anguish at Fontainebleau. Adversity had befallen him, but he bore it with the semblance of calmness, uttering no complaint. His was still the cold, inscrutable face of the emperor, such as it had been on his triumphal entrance into Berlin and Madrid, after the victories of Austerlitz and Jena, in the days of Erfurt and Tilsit, at the conflagration of Moscow, at the Beresina, and at Leipsic. He gave no expression to his soul's agony. It was only in the dead of night that his faithful servants heard him sometimes sigh, pacing his room, restless and melancholy. He did not yet feel wholly discouraged; he still hoped. His bravest marshals were still with him; his Old Guard had not yet gone, and at Paris there were many devoted friends, because they owed to him honor and riches.
He was hopeful that Marmont's troops would arrive at Fontainebleau, when, concentrating all his corps, he would march with them and reconquer his capital. Engrossed with this idea, he was alone in his cabinet; bent over his maps, he examined the various positions of his troops, and considered when they might all reach him. But while he was thinking of war, his marshals were thinking of peace. They had withdrawn into one of the remote apartments of Fontainebleau for the purpose of holding a secret consultation. There were his old comrades Ney, Prince de la Moskwa; Macdonald, Duke de Tarento; Lefebvre, Duke de Dantzic; Oudinot, Duke de Reggio--all of them owing their glory to Napoleon: it was, therefore, pardonable if he confided in their gratitude--but gratitude to the fallen, who had nothing more to give, and whose misfortunes resembled an infectious disease, repelling even his dearest friends.
"He is lost," said Oudinot, in an undertone; "he is on the edge of the precipice, and those who abide by him will fall with him."
"We must, therefore, leave him," whispered Lefebvre. "We are unable to keep him back; prudence commands us to keep aloof."
"We have suffered and bled for him for years," said Macdonald; "it is time now for him to suffer and bleed for us. His death would be a relief."
"Yes," murmured Ney, "his death would give us a new life. But he will not die; his heart is made of bronze, and will not break."
"No, he will not die voluntarily," said Oudinot.
The marshals paused and looked at each other with dark and significant glances. All seemed to read each other's souls, and to divine the sinister thoughts that began to find utterance.
"No, he will not die voluntarily," repeated Macdonald. "But the millions of soldiers that have fallen on the battlefields have not died voluntarily, either: Napoleon drove them into the jaws of death. Now he is no longer any thing but a mere soldier; could we be blamed, if, in order to save France, we should drive him into the grave?"
"But how could we do it?" asked Lefebvre. "He has with him Caulaincourt, Berthier, and Maret, who would certainly be capable of showing, like Anthony, the blood-stained cloak of Caesar to the people, and of bringing upon us a destiny such as befell Brutus and Cassius. I am not desirous of seeing my house set on fire, and of being compelled to flee."
"We ought not to imitate Caesar's generals," said Ney, gloomily. "He has lived like a demi-god, and must die like a demi-god. Not a vestige of him must remain; he must, like Romulus, ascend to the gods."
"Let us consider what ought to be done," said Macdonald.
They whispered in low tones, so that they themselves scarcely heard each other. After a prolonged secret consultation, they seemed agreed as to what should be done, and as if there were now no longer any doubt or objection.
"Caulaincourt, Bertrand, and Maret, are alone to be feared," said Oudinot, loudly. "If they refuse to be silent, they must be silenced! And Berthier? what are we to do with Berthier?"
"We shall tell him all when it is over," responded Macdonald, with a shrug. "Berthier is not formidable; he has a heart of cotton, and a head of wind."
All laughed; Oudinot then said, in a grave and menacing voice: "It is time for us to come to a decision. We are already in April, and nothing decided; the Emperor of Russia is impatient, and the future King of France will never forgive us if we delay his return to Paris. Come, gentlemen, let us for the last time try the way of kindness and persuasion. Let us openly and honestly advise Napoleon to abdicate; he must make up his mind to do so, or--" "Or we shall compel him," said Macdonald. "He has often enough compelled us to do what was repugnant to us. Come, gentlemen, let us go to the emperor." [Footnote: "Memoirs of the Duchess d'Abrantes."]
The emperor was sill bending over his maps when the four marshals entered his cabinet. With a quick glance he read in their pale, sullen faces that they came to him, not as friends and servants, but as adversaries. "I am glad," he said calmly, "that you anticipate my request, and come to me when I intended to send for you. We must hold a council of war, marshals. I have determined to make a general assault upon the allies to-morrow, and I wished to assemble you here to lay the details of my plan before you. One of you may go and call Berthier, who should participate in our deliberations."
"Sire," said Ney, in a harsh tone, "before entering into deliberations on the war, we should first consider whether it is still desirable." Napoleon cast on him a glance which once would have frozen the marshal's blood, but which now made no impression on him. "I believe," added Ney, "that France can no longer bear the burden of war. She is exhausted, bleeding from many wounds, and would sink to certain ruin if she continue a useless struggle. Her finances cannot be restored, for the people are destitute. Our fields are uncultivated, our industry is paralyzed; our workshops and stores are closed, our commerce is prostrated, for France is destitute of money, credit, and laborers. What means has your majesty to shield her from the most terrible misfortunes?"
"I have but one--to attack the allies to-morrow, expelling those who have caused all the misfortunes of France."
"Sire, our country is tired of war," cried Ney; "she wants peace."
"Is that your opinion, marshals?" asked the emperor, hastily.
"Yes, sire, it is."
"Well, then," said Napoleon, after a moment's reflection, "do you know of any way of restoring peace?"
The marshals were silent. Their lips seemed to shrink from uttering the thoughts of their souls; but the Prince de la Moskwa, Marshal Ney, overcame his timidity. "Sire," he remarked, "the allies say in their proclamation that it is not France against which they wage war."
"Not France, but myself!" cried Napoleon. "Ah, you come to propose an abdication to me?"
"We come to implore your majesty to make a last great sacrifice."
"Sire," exclaimed Oudinot, "let your heroic soul conquer itself, and restore peace to France."
"She will forever bless you," said Lefebvre.
"Restore to France the peace for which she has been vainly longing for twenty-five years!" cried Macdonald.
Now that they had all spoken, there was an anxious, breathless pause. Suddenly Napoleon passed over to his desk. He cast a last glance, full of pride, contempt, and anger, on his four marshals; then, seating himself, he took up a pen with a firm hand, and wrote. The marshals stood in silence, and looked at him in an embarrassed manner. Laying aside the pen, and rising, he held up the paper on which he had written, and motioned to Marshal Ney. "Here, Prince de la Moskwa," said Napoleon, "read to the marshals what I have written."
Ney read in a tremulous voice: "'The allied powers, having proclaimed that the Emperor Napoleon is the sole obstacle to the reestablishment of peace in Europe, the Emperor Napoleon, faithful to his oath, declares that he is ready to descend from the throne, to quit France, and even life itself, for the good of the country, inseparable from the rights of his son, of the regency of the empress, and of the maintenance of the laws of the empire.'" [Footnote: Fain, "Manuscrit de 1814," p. 221.]
"You have willed it so," said Napoleon, when Ney had finished. "Macdonald and Ney, with Caulaincourt, will immediately repair with this document to Paris. On the way they will meet Mortier, and request him to accompany them. The four dukes will present my conditional abdication to the Emperor Alexander, and treat with him in regard to the future of my son and the regency of my consort."
On the 7th of April the Duke de Vicenza entered the emperor's cabinet, pale and with a mournful air.
"Caulaincourt," cried Napoleon, "you have delivered my abdication to Alexander?"
"Yes, sire," said Caulaincourt, sadly. "Ah, sire, I bring bad news, which my lips almost refuse to utter!"
"Speak, I am courageous enough to hear all; be, then, courageous enough to tell me all. I wish no concealment whatever--I desire to know the whole truth."
"Well, sire, all is lost. The Emperor Alexander has issued to-day a manifesto, which has been placarded over every part of Paris, to the effect that 'he would no longer treat with Bonaparte, nor with any member of his family.'"
"Ah, the perfidious wretch!" murmured Napoleon, "he plighted me once eternal friendship and fidelity. --Proceed, Caulaincourt! What says the so-called provisional government presided over by M. Talleyrand, the renegade priest, whom I made a man of distinction, whom I raised to the dignity of a prince, on whom I lavished honors, and who has now become the leader of the royalists? What say M. Talleyrand, and the provisional government, and the senate, who swore allegiance to me?"
"Sire, the senate solemnly declared yesterday, the 6th of April, that the Emperor Napoleon has forfeited his throne, because, by abusing the powers conferred on him, by despotism, by trampling under foot the liberty of the press, by undertaking wars in violation of right, and by his openly manifested contempt of man and human law, he has rendered himself unworthy of the sovereignty of the nation. The senate, besides, have called back the Bourbons to the throne of France. In consequence of this declaration, the provisional government has proclaimed to-day that, till the arrival of King Louis XVIII., the administration is exclusively in their hands."
"Ah, the traitors!" cried Napoleon. "They have dared to proclaim such sentiments! to carry their impudence so far! See what venal creatures those men are! As long as fortune was faithful to me, they, who now call themselves the provisional government and senate, in the name of France, were my most sycophantic servants. A sign from me was an order for the senate, who always did more than was desired of them, and not a whisper was heard against the abuses of power. Ah, they charge me with despising them--tell me, Caulaincourt, will not the world see now whether or not I had reasons for my opinion?" [Footnote: Fain, "Manuscrit de 1814," p. 225.]
"Sire, it is true, your majesty has met with many ingrates during your career, and will still meet with them," said Caulaincourt, sighing. "Perfidy seems to have become an epidemic."
"Ah, I see you have not yet told me every thing. Speak! In the first place, what was the result of your negotiations with the Emperor Alexander?"
"Sire, if your majesty agrees to renounce, for yourself and your heirs, the throne of France, the allied sovereigns offer Corsica or Elba as a sovereign principality, and France will pay your majesty an annual pension of two million francs."
"I am to renounce the throne, too, for my son--my dear little King of Rome?" cried Napoleon, mournfully. "No, never! I cannot deprive my son of his inheritance. This is too much. I will put myself at the head of my army and run the risk of any calamities, rather than submit to a humiliation worse than them all!"
"Your majesty has no army. Treason has infected your marshals."
"What do you mean? Ah. it is true, you come alone! Where are the marshals? Where is Ney? Where is Macdonald?"
"Sire, they have remained in Paris."
"Ah, I understand," exclaimed Napoleon, with a scornful laugh; "they are waiting there for King Louis XVIII., in order to offer him their services. But where is Marmont? You know well that I am greatly attached to Marmont, and I long to see him. Why does he not come?"
"Sire, Marshal Marmont has passed over to the allies with a corps of ten thousand men."
"Marmont!" cried Napoleon, almost with a scream--"Marmont a traitor! That is false--that is impossible! Marmont cannot have betrayed me!"
"Sire, he did betray you. He marched the troops, notwithstanding their undisguised reluctance, to Versailles, in order there to join the allies, after receiving from them the solemn promise that the French soldiers should be treated as friends."
"Marmont has betrayed me!" murmured Napoleon. "Marment, whom I loved as a son--who owes me all--who--" His voice faltered; his heart was rent, and, sinking on a chair, he buried his quivering face in his hands.
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{
"id": "3801"
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54
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A SOUL IN PURGATORY.
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It was the 11th of April. Napoleon, at Fontaineblean, sat at his desk and stared at the paper before him. It contained an absolute resignation of his throne for himself and his family. After signing this document, he was no more Emperor of France, nor his son King of Rome, nor his consort empress--perhaps, no longer even his wife. By signing this paper, he accepted all the conditions imposed on him by the allies; that is to say, he descended from the sovereignty of all his states and went to the little island of Elba, to live there a pensioner of Europe; his consort wore no longer, like him, the imperial title, but became Duchess of Parma; and the King of Rome became not the heir of his father, the Emperor of Elba, but the heir of his mother, the Duchess of Parma, and the title of "Duke de Reichstadt" was to be given him. He renounced not only France, but his wife and his son!
Napoleon was fondly and sincerely attached to Maria Louisa, and he loved the King of Rome with passionate tenderness. Before consenting, therefore, to affix his signature to this act of abdication, he wished to know whether Maria Louisa agreed to it, and whether she would not at least ask the allies, one of whom was her own father, to permit her to reside with her son and her husband on the island of Elba, sharing the emperor's exile. For some time he had not heard from his consort; he wrote to her every day, but for six days past no answers came. He did not, however, distrust her; he knew that Maria Louisa loved him. His heart longed for her and his child. He had sent Berthier to Orleans the day before with a letter for Maria Louisa. He was to tell him what his consort was thinking and wishing. If she was courageous enough to claim her rights, and desired to do so, Berthier was to convey her to the emperor, and, at Fontainebleau, Maria Louisa was to declare to her father that she insisted on her sacred right of staying with her husband. Napoleon expected this, and he was nervous and anxious, waiting for the return of his general, and in hope that Maria Louisa would accompany him.
He contemplated the paper, and, while reading the words of despair, he thought of the past--of the days when Europe had been at his feet, and when he himself showed no mercy. The door of the cabinet was softly opened, and the Duke de Bassano entered. "Maret," he exclaimed, "you come to inform me that Berthier has returned, do you not?"
"Yes, sire."
"And he--he is alone?"
"Yes, sire, he is alone."
Napoleon sighed. "Admit Berthier," he said, "but stay here."
Maret stepped to the door and opened it. The Prince of Neufchatel entered, mournful and silent. A single glance told Napoleon that his mission had failed.
"Well, Berthier, you have seen the empress?"
"I have, sire. I met the empress leaving Orleans."
"Ah, then, she is coming!" exclaimed Napoleon.
"No, sire. Prince Metternich had paid her a visit on the preceding day, and delivered to her autograph letters from her father the Emperor of Austria. He had asked his daughter to repair to Rambouillet, where he would meet her."
"And Louisa consented?"
"She did, sire. Her majesty told me with tears in her eyes that nothing remained for her but to submit to the will of her father, because only his intercession could secure her own future and that of her son. She deplored that she was not at liberty to come to Fontainebleau, but stated she had solemnly pledged her word to Prince Metternich, who, in the emperor's name, had required a pledge neither to see nor to correspond with your majesty."
"And she did not indignantly reject this base demand?" cried the emperor. "She did not remember that she is my wife, and that she plighted her faith to me?"
"Sire, the empress said that, for her son's sake, she was allowed now only to consider herself a princess of Austria, and the Austrian princesses were all educated in unconditional and unmurmuring obedience to the orders of the emperor their father. [Footnote: Meneval, "Memoires," etc., vol. ii., p. 80.] Hence, she obeyed her father now, in order to enjoy at a later time the happiness of belonging to your majesty. For, as soon as her future was secured, as soon as the duchy of Parma was settled upon her, and her son declared its heir, nothing would prevent her from rejoining her beloved husband; and if your majesty agreed to accept the island of Elba, the empress would certainly soon repair thither. She proposed that, prohibited from directly corresponding with your majesty, you might have intercourse through your private secretaries; your majesty might have Baron Fain write to her all you wished her to know, and she would do the same through Baron de Meneval."
"A genuine woman's stratagem," murmured Napoleon, gloomily, to himself. "She is destitute of courage, and does not love me enough to brave her father. --Berthier," he then asked aloud, "did you see my son?"
"No, sire, they would not let me see the prince; they feared lest it would excite him too much, and remind him of the past. For the King of Rome is constantly longing for his father."
"And his father cannot see him--cannot call him to his side! Oh, Berthier, this is painful, very painful!"
"But your majesty will soon be reunited with him," said Maret, feelingly. "Sign the act of abdication; go to Elba, sire, and no one can prevent the empress from coming to you with her son. She wishes and has a right to do so."
"Well, then, be it so," said the emperor, drawing a deep breath. "I will sign every thing. I will abdicate; I will sign this second treaty, which makes me Emperor of Elba! My wife and my son must be restored to me!" He quickly stepped to the desk, and signed the two papers with a steady hand.
"Well," he said, flinging the pen into a corner of the room, "now I am no longer Emperor of France, but at the same time no longer a prisoner at Fontainebleau. At Elba I shall be free, at least; I shall be surrounded by the brave soldiers of my Old Guard; I shall see again my wife and my son. That is to say," he gloomily murmured to himself, "if her father permits them to rejoin me; for without his permission she will not come. Louisa is a princess of Austria, and has, therefore, been brought up in obedience. Oh, how I longed for the consolation of her presence! She ought not to have left me alone in these days!" His lips murmured softly, "Josephine would not have done so! She would have gone with me into exile!" He sat a long time absorbed in his reflections, which whispered to him of the past, and of Josephine. He felt that they moved him too deeply, and, with an impetuous gesture, he jumped up, and, proudly throwing back his head, exclaimed: "Well, then, I have submitted to my fate, and shall bear it manfully. We shall go to Elba, then! You will accompany me, my friends, and I shall not be alone? Maret and Berthier, you will not leave me, I hope?"
"Sire, I would follow your majesty to the end of the world!" said Maret, tenderly.
"I know of no more glorious destiny than to remain your majesty's faithful servant," exclaimed Berthier, emphatically. "I thank you for permitting me to go with you to Elba, and I joyfully accept this permission; but as I have to make some necessary preparatious, I request two days' leave of absence of your majesty."
While Berthier was speaking, the emperor contemplated him with painful astonishment; now he quickly came near him, and, laying his hand on his shoulder, he fixed his keen eyes on him, as if he wished to read his most secret thoughts. "Berthier," he said, in a gentle, imploring voice, "you see how much I have need of consultation; how necessary it is for me to have true friends about me. You will, therefore, return to-morrow, will you not?"
"Sire, certainly," faltered Berthier.
Napoleon's eyes still rested on the pale, confused face of the prince. "Berthier," he said, after a pause, "if you wish to leave me, tell me so frankly and sincerely."
"I leave you!" exclaimed Berthier. "Your majesty knows well that I am devoted to you with immovable fidelity--that my heart can never forget you, and that I shall always be your obedient servant."
"Words, words!" said Napoleon, shaking his head. "Well, then, it is your will: go, therefore, to Paris. Attend to the affairs which you have more at heart than my wishes. Go, and--if you can, come back soon!"
Berthier wished to grasp the emperor's hand and press it to his lips, but he hastily withdrew it, and, lifting it up, pointed with an imperious glance at the door. Berthier bowed, and, walking backward, approached the door with bent head, and departed. The emperor looked after him long and gloomily; then he slowly turned his head toward the Duke de Bassano. "Maret," he said, slowly, "Berthier will not come back."
"What, sire!" exclaimed Maret, in dismay. "Your majesty believes--" "I know it," said Napoleon, slowly, "Berthier will not come back!" He threw himself into an easy-chair, at times heaving a sigh, but without uttering a single complaint; and thus he sat all day. From time to time the few faithful men who had remained with him dared to speak, but the emperor, starting from his meditations, only stared at them, and then slowly dropped his head again on his breast. At dinner-time Maret endeavored to induce him to go to the table; but he only responded by indignantly shaking his head, and waving him toward the door.
Evening had come, and the emperor still sat alone in his cabinet, motionless and sad. He did not hear the door behind him softly open; he did not see a dark, veiled female form that had slowly entered, and now, as if overwhelmed by grief, leaned against the wall. Her veil prevented her, perhaps, from seeing Napoleon; she threw it back, and now Josephine's pale, quivering face was seen. She fixed her eyes on him with an expression of boundless tenderness, and then lifted them to heaven with an imploring air, softly raising her arms, and her lips moving in inaudible prayer.
The emperor did not yet notice her. Josephine stepped noiselessly across the carpet, and laid her hand gently on his head. "Napoleon," she whispered, "Napoleon!"
He uttered a cry and jumped up. "Josephine," he exclaimed, "my Josephine! Oh, now I am no longer alone!" He clasped her with impassioned tenderness in his arms; he kissed her quivering lips, and held her streaming face between his hands, gazing at it with the tender expression of a lover. Encircling her with his arms, and no longer able to restrain his heart, he laid his head on her shoulder, and wept bitterly. Recovering, his face resumed its inscrutable expression. "Josephine," he said, "I have wrung many tears from you, but Fate has avenged you; I have wept, too; and what is worse than tears is that which is gnawing at my heart. I thank you, Josephine, for coming to me. All have deserted me!"
"I know it, Napoleon," whispered Josephine, smiling amid tears, "and that is why I am here. You will not go all alone to Elba; I shall go with you. No, Bonaparte, no! do not shake your head; do not reject me! I have a right to accompany you; for, whatever men may say, I was your wife, and am your wife, and what God has joined together no man can sunder. My soul is one with yours. I love you to-day as tenderly as I did on the day when I stood with you before the altar and plighted my fidelity to you; I love you now even more intensely, for you are unfortunate, and have need of my love. Bid me, therefore, not go any more. SHE is not here, and her place by your side, which she has deserted, belongs to me!"
"No," said Napoleon, gravely, "let her absence remind her of her duty. I will not give my son's mother a pretext for staying away from me; she shall not say that she cannot rejoin me because I have yielded to another woman the place that belongs to her. No, Josephine, she must not be able to reproach me. I thank you for coming, but you have come to take leave of me. I have seen you--your faithful love has been a balm to my heart. Now, farewell!"
"Then, you bid me go already?" cried Josephine, reproachfully; "oh, Bonaparte, let me stay here at least till your departure. No one will betray to HER that I am here."
"It would remain no secret, Josephine, and it would be used to excuse her, and to accuse me. Go, then, and take with you the consciousness that you have afforded me the last joy of my life."
"Oh, Bonaparte, you break my heart!" murmured Josephine, leaning her head on his shoulder. "I cannot leave you, I cannot bear to see you go alone into exile."
"Fate has decreed it, and so has the evil star that arose upon my path when I left you, Josephine! Let this be my farewell. Now, go!"
"No, Bonaparte," she cried, passionately; "tell me not to go if you do not wish me to die! Your misfortunes have pierced my heart. My only hope of life is by your side, for sorrow at the remembrance of your misfortunes will kill me."
A strange smile played around the emperor's lips. "I do not pity those who die," he said; "death is a kind friend, and pray God that He may soon send this friend to me!" He kissed her forehead and conducted her gently to the door. "Go, my Josephine," he said; "this is the last sacrifice which I shall ask of you!"
"I go!" she sighed. "Farewell, Bonaparte, farewell!" She fixed on him a look full of love and grief. "We shall never meet again!"
"Yes," he said, slowly and solemnly, lifting his hand toward heaven, "we shall meet again!"
"I shall await you there!" she said, with an expression of intense love and sorrow.
The door closed; Napoleon was again alone; he stood in the middle of the room, as if still beholding her pale, smiling face, and hearing her sweet voice. "She will await me there!" he murmured. "But why should she await me? Why should she die, and I live? And why must I live?" he asked, in a loud, and almost joyful tone. "Why shall I suffer these mean, cowardly creatures, who formerly lay in the dust before me, now to enjoy their triumph? Why must I live?" He sank into his chair, thinking of the disgrace soon to be brought upon him, remembering that each of the allied sovereigns would send an envoy to Fontainebleau, and that he was to be transported to Elba-- escorted, like a caged lion, by Russian, Prussian, and Austrian commissioners! His heart for a moment grew strong in his anguish. He jumped up, rushed to his desk, pulled out the drawers, and opened a secret compartment. There lay a small black silken bag. Taking it out, he cut it open, and drew a package from it. "Ha!" he exclaimed, joyfully, "now I have the kind friend that will deliver me! They want to drag me through the country as a prisoner! But thou, blessed poison, wilt release me!"
In the night of the 13th of April, Constant, Napoleon's valet de chambre, was awakened by an extraordinary groaning proceeding from Napoleon's bedroom, whither Constant hastened. Yes, it was the emperor who was suffering. His face was deadly pale; his limbs were quivering; a paper lay on the floor in front of him; on the table by his side stood a glass, in which were still seen some drops of a whitish color. Constant rushed toward him. He gazed at his servant with fixed looks, and murmured, "I suffer dreadfully! Fire is consuming my bowels; but it does not kill me!"
Uttering a cry, and hastening from the room, Constant went for the domestic surgeon, Dr. Ivan, Maret, and Caulaincourt. They appeared in the utmost consternation, and surrounded the easy-chair on which the emperor still sat. Dr. Ivan felt his forehead, which was covered with clammy perspiration; and his pulse was feeble and sluggish, but still throbbing. He recognized his physician, and his livid lips murmured almost inaudibly, "Ivan, I have taken poison, that which you gave me one day in Russia; but it has lost its efficacy! It does not kill, while it causes me excruciating pain."
Ivan went weeping out of the room to prepare a remedy.
Napoleon turned his eyes with an expression of agony toward Maret and Caulaincourt, who were kneeling before him. "My friends," he said, "I sought death! But you see God did not will it! He commands me to live and suffer." [Footnote: Constant's "Memoires," vol. vi., p. 88. Fain, "Manuscrit."]
On the morning after this night of terror, the emperor rose from his couch, and his face, which for the last few days had been so gloomy, assumed now a serene expression. "Providence has spared me for other purposes," he murmured to himself. "Well, then, I shall live! To the living belongs the future!" ! [Footnote: Bausset's "Memoires," vol. ii., p. 244.]
A week afterward, on the 20th of April, Napoleon left Fontainebleau for Elba. In the court-yard of the palace the Old Guard was drawn up in the splendor of their arms, with their eagles and banners. Near the ranks of the soldiers, in front of the main portal, stood Bonaparte's travelling-carriage, and beside it the foreign commissioners. Before setting out, he wished to take leave of his faithful soldiers. Advancing into the midst of the Old Guard, he addressed them in a firm voice: "Soldiers of my Old Guard, I bid you adieu! During twenty years I have ever found you in the path of honor. In the last days, as in those of our prosperity, you have never ceased to be models of bravery and fidelity. With such men as you our cause could never have been lost; but the war would never end; it would have become a civil war, and France must daily have been more unhappy. I have, therefore, sacrificed all our interests to those of our country: I depart; but you remain to serve France. Her happiness was my only thought; it will always be the object of my fervent wishes. Lament not my destiny: if I have consented to survive myself, it was because I might contribute to your glory. Adieu, my children! I would I could press you all to my heart; but I will, at least, press your eagle!" At these words, General Petit advanced with the eagle; Napoleon received the general in his arms, and, kissing the standard, he added: "I cannot embrace you all, but I do so in the person of your general! Adieu, once again, my old companions!"
The veteran soldiers had no reply but tears and sobs, and, stretching out their hands toward Napoleon, they implored him to stay. But the carriage rolled rapidly across the court-yard, bearing into exile, or at best to the sovereignty of an insignificant island, a man who, in aiming at the empire of the world, had subdued almost all the kingdoms of Europe.
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A great multitude of people filled the church, crowded together in the old black pews, standing closely thronged in the nave and aisles, pressing shoulder to shoulder even in the two chapels on the right and left of the apse, a vast gathering of pale men and women whose eyes were sad and in whose faces was written the history of their nation. The mighty shafts and pilasters of the Gothic edifice rose like the stems of giant trees in a primeval forest from a dusky undergrowth, spreading out and uniting their stony branches far above in the upper gloom. From the clerestory windows of the nave an uncertain light descended halfway to the depths and seemed to float upon the darkness below as oil upon the water of a well. Over the western entrance the huge fantastic organ bristled with blackened pipes and dusty gilded ornaments of colossal size, like some enormous kingly crown long forgotten in the lumber room of the universe, tarnished and overlaid with the dust of ages. Eastwards, before the rail which separated the high altar from the people, wax torches, so thick that a man might not span one of them with both his hands, were set up at irregular intervals, some taller, some shorter, burning with steady, golden flames, each one surrounded with heavy funeral wreaths, and each having a tablet below it, whereon were set forth in the Bohemian idiom, the names, titles, and qualities of him or her in whose memory it was lighted. Innumerable lamps and tapers before the side altars and under the strange canopied shrines at the bases of the pillars, struggled ineffectually with the gloom, shedding but a few sickly yellow rays upon the pallid faces of the persons nearest to their light.
Suddenly the heavy vibration of a single pedal note burst from the organ upon the breathing silence, long drawn out, rich, voluminous, and imposing. Presently, upon the massive bass, great chords grew up, succeeding each other in a simple modulation, rising then with the blare of trumpets and the simultaneous crash of mixtures, fifteenths and coupled pedals to a deafening peal, then subsiding quickly again and terminating in one long sustained common chord. And now, as the celebrant bowed at the lowest step before the high altar, the voices of the innumerable congregation joined the harmony of the organ, ringing up to the groined roof in an ancient Slavonic melody, melancholy and beautiful, and rendered yet more unlike all other music by the undefinable character of the Bohemian language, in which tones softer than those of the softest southern tongue alternate so oddly with rough gutturals and strident sibilants.
The Wanderer stood in the midst of the throng, erect, taller than the men near him, holding his head high, so that a little of the light from the memorial torches reached his thoughtful, manly face, making the noble and passionate features to stand out clearly, while losing its power of illumination in the dark beard and among the shadows of his hair. His was a face such as Rembrandt would have painted, seen under the light that Rembrandt loved best; for the expression seemed to overcome the surrounding gloom by its own luminous quality, while the deep gray eyes were made almost black by the wide expansion of the pupils; the dusky brows clearly defined the boundary in the face between passion and thought, and the pale forehead, by its slight recession into the shade from its middle prominence, proclaimed the man of heart, the man of faith, the man of devotion, as well as the intuitive nature of the delicately sensitive mind and the quick, elastic qualities of the man’s finely organized, but nervous bodily constitution. The long white fingers of one hand stirred restlessly, twitching at the fur of his broad lapel which was turned back across his chest, and from time to time he drew a deep breath and sighed, not painfully, but wearily and hopelessly, as a man sighs who knows that his happiness is long past and that his liberation from the burden of life is yet far off in the future.
The celebrant reached the reading of the Gospel and the men and women in the pews rose to their feet. Still the singing of the long-drawn-out stanzas of the hymn continued with unflagging devotion, and still the deep accompaniment of the ancient organ sustained the mighty chorus of voices. The Gospel over, the people sank into their seats again, not standing, as is the custom in some countries, until the Creed had been said. Here and there, indeed, a woman, perhaps a stranger in the country, remained upon her feet, noticeable among the many figures seated in the pews. The Wanderer, familiar with many lands and many varying traditions of worship, unconsciously noted these exceptions, looking with a vague curiosity from one to the other. Then, all at once, his tall frame shivered from head to foot, and his fingers convulsively grasped the yielding sable on which they lay.
She was there, the woman he had sought so long, whose face he had not found in the cities and dwellings of the living, neither her grave in the silent communities of the dead. There, before the uncouth monument of dark red marble beneath which Tycho Brahe rests in peace, there she stood; not as he had seen her last on that day when his senses had left him in the delirium of his sickness, not in the freshness of her bloom and of her dark loveliness, but changed as he had dreamed in evil dreams that death would have power to change her. The warm olive of her cheek was turned to the hue of wax, the soft shadows beneath her velvet eyes were deepened and hardened, her expression, once yielding and changing under the breath of thought and feeling as a field of flowers when the west wind blows, was now set, as though for ever, in a death-like fixity. The delicate features were drawn and pinched, the nostrils contracted, the colourless lips straightened out of the lines of beauty into the mould of a lifeless mask. It was the face of a dead woman, but it was her face still, and the Wanderer knew it well; in the kingdom of his soul the whole resistless commonwealth of the emotions revolted together to dethrone death’s regent--sorrow, while the thrice-tempered springs of passion, bent but not broken, stirred suddenly in the palace of his body and shook the strong foundations of his being.
During the seconds that followed, his eyes were riveted upon the beloved head. Then, as the Creed ended, the vision sank down and was lost to his sight. She was seated now, and the broad sea of humanity hid her from him, though he raised himself the full height of his stature in the effort to distinguish even the least part of her head-dress. To move from his place was all but impossible, though the fierce longing to be near her bade him trample even upon the shoulders of the throng to reach her, as men have done more than once to save themselves from death by fire in crowded places. Still the singing of the hymn continued, and would continue, as he knew, until the moment of the Elevation. He strained his hearing to catch the sounds that came from the quarter where she sat. In a chorus of a thousand singers he fancied that he could have distinguished the tender, heart-stirring vibration of her tones. Never woman sang, never could woman sing again, as she had once sung, though her voice had been as soft as it had been sweet, and tuned to vibrate in the heart rather than in the ear. As the strains rose and fell, the Wanderer bowed his head and closed his eyes, listening, through the maze of sounds, for the silvery ring of her magic note. Something he heard at last, something that sent a thrill from his ear to his heart, unless indeed his heart itself were making music for his ears to hear. The impression reached him fitfully, often interrupted and lost, but as often renewing itself and reawakening in the listener the certainty of recognition which he had felt at the sight of the singer’s face.
He who loves with his whole soul has a knowledge and a learning which surpass the wisdom of those who spend their lives in the study of things living or long dead, or never animate. They, indeed, can construct the figure of a flower from the dried web of a single leaf, or by the examination of a dusty seed, and they can set up the scheme of life of a shadowy mammoth out of a fragment of its skeleton, or tell the story of hill and valley from the contemplation of a handful of earth or of a broken pebble. Often they are right, sometimes they are driven deeper and deeper into error by the complicated imperfections of their own science. But he who loves greatly possesses in his intuition the capacities of all instruments of observation which man has invented and applied to his use. The lenses of his eyes can magnify the infinitesimal detail to the dimensions of common things, and bring objects to his vision from immeasurable distances; the labyrinth of his ear can choose and distinguish amidst the harmonies and the discords of the world, muffling in its tortuous passages the reverberation of ordinary sounds while multiplying a hundredfold the faint tones of the one beloved voice. His whole body and his whole intelligence form together an instrument of exquisite sensibility whereby the perceptions of his inmost soul are hourly tortured, delighted, caught up into ecstasy, torn and crushed by jealousy and fear, or plunged into the frigid waters of despair.
The melancholy hymn resounded through the vast church, but though the Wanderer stretched the faculty of hearing to the utmost, he could no longer find the note he sought amongst the vibrations of the dank and heavy air. Then an irresistible longing came upon him to turn and force his way through the dense throng of men and women, to reach the aisle and press past the huge pillar till he could slip between the tombstone of the astronomer and the row of back wooden seats. Once there, he should see her face to face.
He turned, indeed, as he stood, and he tried to move a few steps. On all sides curious looks were directed upon him, but no one offered to make way, and still the monotonous singing continued until he felt himself deafened, as he faced the great congregation.
“I am ill,” he said in a low voice to those nearest to him. “Pray let me pass!”
His face was white, indeed, and those who heard his words believed him. A mild old man raised his sad blue eyes, gazed at him, and while trying to draw back, gently shook his head. A pale woman, whose sickly features were half veiled in the folds of a torn black shawl, moved as far as she could, shrinking as the very poor and miserable shrink when they are expected to make way before the rich and the strong. A lad of fifteen stood upon tiptoe to make himself even slighter than he was and thus to widen the way, and the Wanderer found himself, after repeated efforts, as much as two steps distant from his former position. He was still trying to divide the crowd when the music suddenly ceased, and the tones of the organ died away far up under the western window. It was the moment of the Elevation, and the first silvery tinkling of the bell, the people swayed a little, all those who were able kneeling, and those whose movements were impeded by the press of worshippers bending towards the altar as a field of grain before the gale. The Wanderer turned again and bowed himself with the rest, devoutly and humbly, with half-closed eyes, as he strove to collect and control his thoughts in the presence of the chief mystery of his Faith. Three times the tiny bell was rung, a pause followed, and thrice again the clear jingle of the metal broke the solemn stillness. Then once more the people stirred, and the soft sound of their simultaneous motion was like a mighty sigh breathed up from the secret vaults and the deep foundations of the ancient church; again the pedal note of the organ boomed through the nave and aisles, and again the thousands of human voices took up the strain of song.
The Wanderer glanced about him, measuring the distance he must traverse to reach the monument of the Danish astronomer and confronting it with the short time which now remained before the end of the Mass. He saw that in such a throng he would have no chance of gaining the position he wished to occupy in less than half an hour, and he had not but a scant ten minutes at his disposal. He gave up the attempt therefore, determining that when the celebration should be over he would move forward with the crowd, trusting to his superior stature and energy to keep him within sight of the woman he sought, until both he and she could meet, either just within or just without the narrow entrance of the church.
Very soon the moment of action came. The singing died away, the benediction was given, the second Gospel was read, the priest and the people repeated the Bohemian prayers, and all was over. The countless heads began to move onward, the shuffling of innumerable feet sent heavy, tuneless echoes through vaulted space, broken every moment by the sharp, painful cough of a suffering child whom no one could see in the multitude, or by the dull thud of some heavy foot striking against the wooden seats in the press. The Wanderer moved forward with the rest. Reaching the entrance of the pew where she had sat he was kept back during a few seconds by the half dozen men and women who were forcing their way out of it before him. But at the farthest end, a figure clothed in black was still kneeling. A moment more and he might enter the pew and be at her side. One of the other women dropped something before she was out of the narrow space, and stooped, fumbling and searching in the darkness. At the minute, the slight, girlish figure rose swiftly and passed like a shadow before the heavy marble monument. The Wanderer saw that the pew was open at the other end, and without heeding the woman who stood in his way, he sprang upon the low seat, passed her, stepped to the floor upon the other side and was out in the aisle in a moment. Many persons had already left the church and the space was comparatively free.
She was before him, gliding quickly toward the door. Ere he could reach her, he saw her touch the thick ice which filled the marble basin, cross herself hurriedly and pass out. But he had seen her face again, and he knew that he was not mistaken. The thin, waxen features were as those of the dead, but they were hers, nevertheless. In an instant he could be by her side. But again his progress was momentarily impeded by a number of persons who were entering the building hastily to attend the next Mass. Scarcely ten seconds later he was out in the narrow and dismal passage which winds between the north side of the Teyn Kirche and the buildings behind the Kinsky Palace. The vast buttresses and towers cast deep shadows below them, and the blackened houses opposite absorb what remains of the uncertain winter’s daylight. To the left of the church a low arch spans the lane, affording a covered communication between the north aisle and the sacristy. To the right the open space is somewhat broader, and three dark archways give access to as many passages, leading in radiating directions and under the old houses to the streets beyond.
The Wanderer stood upon the steps, beneath the rich stone carvings which set forth the Crucifixion over the door of the church, and his quick eyes scanned everything within sight. To the left, no figure resembling the one he sought was to be seen, but on the right, he fancied that among a score of persons now rapidly dispersing he could distinguish just within one of the archways a moving shadow, black against the blackness. In an instant he had crossed the way and was hurrying through the gloom. Already far before him, but visible and, as he believed, unmistakable, the shade was speeding onward, light as mist, noiseless as thought, but yet clearly to be seen and followed. He cried aloud, as he ran, “Beatrice! Beatrice!”
His strong voice echoed along the dank walls and out into the court beyond. It was intensely cold, and the still air carried the sound clearly to the distance. She must have heard him, she must have known his voice, but as she crossed the open place, and the gray light fell upon her, he could see that she did not raise her bent head nor slacken her speed.
He ran on, sure of overtaking her in the passage she had now entered, for she seemed to be only walking, while he was pursuing her at a headlong pace. But in the narrow tunnel, when he reached it, she was not, though at the farther end he imagined that the fold of a black garment was just disappearing. He emerged into the street, in which he could now see in both directions to a distance of fifty yards or more. He was alone. The rusty iron shutters of the little shops were all barred and fastened, and every door within the range of his vision was closed. He stood still in surprise and listened. There was no sound to be heard, not the grating of a lock, nor the tinkling of a bell, nor the fall of a footstep.
He did not pause long, for he made up his mind as to what he should do in the flash of a moment’s intuition. It was physically impossible that she should have disappeared into any one of the houses which had their entrances within the dark tunnel he had just traversed. Apart from the presumptive impossibility of her being lodged in such a quarter, there was the self-evident fact that he must have heard the door opened and closed. Secondly, she could not have turned to the right, for in that direction the street was straight and without any lateral exit, so that he must have seen her. Therefore she must have gone to the left, since on that side there was a narrow alley leading out of the lane, at some distance from the point where he was now standing--too far, indeed, for her to have reached it unnoticed, unless, as was possible, he had been greatly deceived in the distance which had lately separated her from him.
Without further hesitation, he turned to the left. He found no one in the way, for it was not yet noon, and at that hour the people were either at their prayers or at their Sunday morning’s potations, and the place was as deserted as a disused cemetery. Still he hastened onward, never pausing for breath, till he found himself all at once in the great Ring. He knew the city well, but in his race he had bestowed no attention upon the familiar windings and turnings, thinking only of overtaking the fleeting vision, no matter how, no matter where. Now, on a sudden, the great, irregular square opened before him, flanked on the one side by the fantastic spires of the Teyn Church, and the blackened front of the huge Kinsky Palace, on the other by the half-modern Town Hall with its ancient tower, its beautiful porch, and the graceful oriel which forms the apse of the chapel in the second story.
One of the city watchmen, muffled in his military overcoat, and conspicuous by the great bunch of dark feathers that drooped from his black hat, was standing idly at the corner from which the Wanderer emerged. The latter thought of inquiring whether the man had seen a lady pass, but the fellow’s vacant stare convinced him that no questioning would elicit a satisfactory answer. Moreover, as he looked across the square he caught sight of a retreating figure dressed in black, already at such a distance as to make positive recognition impossible. In his haste he found no time to convince himself that no living woman could have thus outrun him, and he instantly resumed his pursuit, gaining rapidly upon her he was following. But it is not an easy matter to overtake even a woman, when she has an advantage of a couple of hundred yards, and when the race is a short one. He passed the ancient astronomical clock, just as the little bell was striking the third quarter after eleven, but he did not raise his head to watch the sad-faced apostles as they presented their stiff figures in succession at the two square windows. When the blackened cock under the small Gothic arch above flapped his wooden wings and uttered his melancholy crow, the Wanderer was already at the corner of the little Ring, and he could see the object of his pursuit disappearing before him into the Karlsgasse. He noticed uneasily that the resemblance between the woman he was following and the object of his loving search seemed now to diminish, as in a bad dream, as the distance between himself and her decreased. But he held resolutely on, nearing her at every step, round a sharp corner to the right, then to the left, to the right again, and once more in the opposite direction, always, as he knew, approaching the old stone bridge. He was not a dozen paces behind her as she turned quickly a third time to the right, round the wall of the ancient house which faces the little square over against the enormous buildings comprising the Clementine Jesuit monastery and the astronomical observatory. As he sprang past the corner he saw the heavy door just closing and heard the sharp resounding clang of its iron fastening. The lady had disappeared, and he felt sure that she had gone through that entrance.
He knew the house well, for it is distinguished from all others in Prague, both by its shape and its oddly ornamented, unnaturally narrow front. It is built in the figure of an irregular triangle, the blunt apex of one angle facing the little square, the sides being erected on the one hand along the Karlsgasse and on the other upon a narrow alley which leads away towards the Jews’ quarter. Overhanging passages are built out over this dim lane, as though to facilitate the interior communications of the dwelling, and in the shadow beneath them there is a small door studded with iron nails which is invariably shut. The main entrance takes in all the scant breadth of the truncated angle which looks towards the monastery. Immediately over it is a great window, above that another, and, highest of all, under the pointed gable, a round and unglazed aperture, within which there is inky darkness. The windows of the first and second stories are flanked by huge figures of saints, standing forth in strangely contorted attitudes, black with the dust of ages, black as all old Prague is black, with the smoke of the brown Bohemian coal, with the dark and unctuous mists of many autumns, with the cruel, petrifying frosts of ten score winters.
He who knew the cities of men as few have known them, knew also this house. Many a time had he paused before it by day and by night, wondering who lived within its massive, irregular walls, behind those uncouth, barbarously sculptured saints who kept their interminable watch high up by the lozenged windows. He would know now. Since she whom he sought had entered, he would enter too; and in some corner of that dwelling which had long possessed a mysterious attraction for his eyes, he would find at last that being who held power over his heart, that Beatrice whom he had learned to think of as dead, while still believing that somewhere she must be yet alive, that dear lady whom, dead or living, he loved beyond all others, with a great love, passing words.
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The Wanderer stood still before the door. In the freezing air, his quick-drawn breath made fantastic wreaths of mist, white and full of odd shapes as he watched the tiny clouds curling quickly into each other before the blackened oak. Then he laid his hand boldly upon the chain of the bell. He expected to hear the harsh jingling of cracked metal, but he was surprised by the silvery clearness and musical quality of the ringing tones which reached his ear. He was pleased, and unconsciously took the pleasant infusion for a favourable omen. The heavy door swung back almost immediately, and he was confronted by a tall porter in dark green cloth and gold lacings, whose imposing appearance was made still more striking by the magnificent fair beard which flowed down almost to his waist. The man lifted his heavy cocked hat and held it low at his side as he drew back to let the visitor enter. The latter had not expected to be admitted thus without question, and paused under the bright light which illuminated the arched entrance, intending to make some inquiry of the porter. But the latter seemed to expect nothing of the sort. He carefully closed the door, and then, bearing his hat in one hand and his gold-headed staff in the other, he proceeded gravely to the other end of the vaulted porch, opened a great glazed door and held it back for the visitor to pass.
The Wanderer recognized that the farther he was allowed to penetrate unhindered into the interior of the house, the nearer he should be to the object of his search. He did not know where he was, nor what he might find. For all that he knew, he might be in a club, in a great banking-house, or in some semi-public institution of the nature of a library, an academy or a conservatory of music. There are many such establishments in Prague, though he was not acquainted with any in which the internal arrangements so closely resembled those of a luxurious private residence. But there was no time for hesitation, and he ascended the broad staircase with a firm step, glancing at the rich tapestries which covered the walls, at the polished surface of the marble steps on either side of the heavy carpet, and at the elaborate and beautiful iron-work of the hand-rail. As he mounted higher, he heard the quick rapping of an electric signal above him, and he understood that the porter had announced his coming. Reaching the landing, he was met by a servant in black, as correct at all points as the porter himself, and who bowed low as he held back the thick curtain which hung before the entrance. Without a word the man followed the visitor into a high room of irregular shape, which served as a vestibule, and stood waiting to receive the guest’s furs, should it please him to lay them aside. To pause now, and to enter into an explanation with a servant, would have been to reject an opportunity which might never return. In such an establishment, he was sure of finding himself before long in the presence of some more or less intelligent person of his own class, of whom he could make such inquiries as might enlighten him, and to whom he could present such excuses for his intrusion as might seem most fitting in so difficult a case. He let his sables fall into the hands of the servant and followed the latter along a short passage.
The man introduced him into a spacious hall and closed the door, leaving him to his own reflections. The place was very wide and high and without windows, but the broad daylight descended abundantly from above through the glazed roof and illuminated every corner. He would have taken the room for a conservatory, for it contained a forest of tropical trees and plants, and whole gardens of rare southern flowers. Tall letonias, date palms, mimosas and rubber trees of many varieties stretched their fantastic spikes and heavy leaves half-way up to the crystal ceiling; giant ferns swept the polished marble floor with their soft embroideries and dark green laces; Indian creepers, full of bright blossoms, made screens and curtains of their intertwining foliage; orchids of every hue and of every exotic species bloomed in thick banks along the walls. Flowers less rare, violets and lilies of the valley, closely set and luxuriant, grew in beds edged with moss around the roots of the larger plants and in many open spaces. The air was very soft and warm, moist and full of heavy odours as the still atmosphere of an island in southern seas, and the silence was broken only by the light plash of softly-falling water.
Having advanced a few steps from the door, the Wanderer stood still and waited, supposing that the owner of the dwelling would be made aware of a visitor’s presence and would soon appear. But no one came. Then a gentle voice spoke from amidst the verdure, apparently from no great distance.
“I am here,” it said.
He moved forward amidst the ferns and the tall plants, until he found himself on the farther side of a thick network of creepers. Then he paused, for he was in the presence of a woman, of her who dwelt among the flowers. She was sitting before him, motionless and upright in a high, carved chair, and so placed that the pointed leaves of the palm which rose above her cast sharp, star-shaped shadows over the broad folds of her white dress. One hand, as white, as cold, as heavily perfect as the sculpture of a Praxiteles or a Phidias, rested with drooping fingers on the arm of the chair. The other pressed the pages of a great book which lay open on the lady’s knee. Her face was turned toward the visitor, and her eyes examined his face; calmly and with no surprise in them, but not without a look of interest. Their expression was at once so unusual, so disquieting, and yet so inexplicably attractive as to fascinate the Wanderer’s gaze. He did not remember that he had ever seen a pair of eyes of distinctly different colours, the one of a clear, cold gray, the other of a deep, warm brown, so dark as to seem almost black, and he would not have believed that nature could so far transgress the canons of her own art and yet preserve the appearance of beauty. For the lady was beautiful, from the diadem of her red gold hair to the proud curve of her fresh young lips; from her broad, pale forehead, prominent and boldly modelled at the angles of the brows, to the strong mouldings of the well-balanced chin, which gave evidence of strength and resolution wherewith to carry out the promise of the high aquiline features and of the wide and sensitive nostrils.
“Madame,” said the Wanderer, bending his head courteously and advancing another step, “I can neither frame excuses for having entered your house unbidden, nor hope to obtain indulgence for my intrusion, unless you are willing in the first place to hear my short story. May I expect so much kindness?”
He paused, and the lady looked at him fixedly and curiously. Without taking her eyes from his face, and without speaking, she closed the book she had held on her knee, and laid it beside her upon a low table. The Wanderer did not avoid her gaze, for he had nothing to conceal, nor any sense of timidity. He was an intruder upon the privacy of one whom he did not know, but he was ready to explain his presence and to make such amends as courtesy required, if he had given offence.
The heavy odours of the flowers filled his nostrils with an unknown, luxurious delight, as he stood there, gazing into the lady’s eyes; he fancied that a gentle breath of perfumed air was blowing softly over his hair and face out of the motionless palms, and the faint plashing of the hidden fountain was like an exquisite melody in his ears. It was good to be in such a place, to look on such a woman, to breathe such odours, and to hear such tuneful music. A dreamlike, half-mysterious satisfaction of the senses dulled the keen self-knowledge of body and soul for one short moment. In the stormy play of his troubled life there was a brief interlude of peace. He tasted the fruit of the lotus, his lips were moistened in the sweet waters of forgetfulness.
The lady spoke at last, and the spell left him, not broken, as by a sudden shock, but losing its strong power by quick degrees until it was wholly gone.
“I will answer your question by another,” said the lady. “Let your reply be the plain truth. It will be better so.”
“Ask what you will. I have nothing to conceal.”
“Do you know who and what I am? Do you come here out of curiosity, in the vain hope of knowing me, having heard of me from others?”
“Assuredly not.” A faint flush rose in the man’s pale and noble face. “You have my word,” he said, in the tone of one who is sure of being believed, “that I have never, to my knowledge, heard of your existence, that I am ignorant even of your name--forgive my ignorance--and that I entered this house, not knowing whose it might be, seeking and following after one for whom I have searched the world, one dearly loved, long lost, long sought.”
“It is enough. Be seated. I am Unorna.”
“Unorna?” repeated the Wanderer, with an unconscious question in his voice, as though the name recalled some half-forgotten association.
“Unorna--yes. I have another name,” she added, with a shade of bitterness, “but it is hardly mine. Tell me your story. You loved--you lost--you seek--so much I know. What else?”
The Wanderer sighed.
“You have told in those few words the story of my life--the unfinished story. A wanderer I was born, a wanderer I am, a wanderer I must ever be, until at last I find her whom I seek. I knew her in a strange land, far from my birthplace, in a city where I was known but to a few, and I loved her. She loved me, too, and that against her father’s will. He would not have his daughter wed with one not of her race; for he himself had taken a wife among strangers, and while she was yet alive he had repented of what he had done. But I would have overcome his reasons and his arguments--she and I could have overcome them together, for he did not hate me, he bore me no ill-will. We were almost friends when I last took his hand. Then the hour of destiny came upon me. The air of that city was treacherous and deadly. I had left her with her father, and my heart was full of many things, and of words both spoken and unuttered. I lingered upon an ancient bridge that spanned the river, and the sun went down. Then the evil fever of the south laid hold upon me and poisoned the blood in my veins, and stole the consciousness from my understanding. Weeks passed away, and memory returned, with the strength to speak. I learned that she I loved and her father were gone, and none knew whither. I rose and left the accursed city, being at that time scarce able to stand upright upon my feet. Finding no trace of those I sought, I journeyed to their own country, for I knew where her father held his lands. I had been ill many weeks and much time had passed, from the day on which I had left her, until I was able to move from my bed. When I reached the gates of her home, I was told that all had been lately sold, and that others now dwelt within the walls. I inquired of those new owners of the land, but neither they or any of all those whom I questioned could tell me whither I should direct my search. The father was a strange man, loving travel and change and movement, restless and unsatisfied with the world, rich and free to make his own caprice his guide through life; reticent he was, moreover, and thoughtful, not given to speaking out his intentions. Those who administered his affairs in his absence were honourable men, bound by his especial injunction not to reveal his ever-varying plans. Many times, in my ceaseless search, I met persons who had lately seen him and his daughter and spoken with them. I was ever on their track, from hemisphere to hemisphere, from continent to continent, from country to country, from city to city, often believing myself close upon them, often learning suddenly that an ocean lay between them and me. Was he eluding me, purposely, resolutely, or was he unconscious of my desperate pursuit, being served by chance alone and by his own restless temper? I do not know. At last, some one told me that she was dead, speaking thoughtlessly, not knowing that I loved her. He who told me had heard the news from another, who had received it on hearsay from a third. None knew in what place her spirit had parted; none knew by what manner of sickness she had died. Since then, I have heard others say that she is not dead, that they have heard in their turn from others that she yet lives. An hour ago, I knew not what to think. To-day, I saw her in a crowded church. I heard her voice, though I could not reach her in the throng, struggle how I would. I followed her in haste, I lost her at one turning, I saw her before me at the next. At last a figure, clothed as she had been clothed, entered your house. Whether it was she I know not certainly, but I do know that in the church I saw her. She cannot be within your dwelling without your knowledge; if she be here--then I have found her, my journey is ended, my wanderings have led me home at last. If she be not here, if I have been mistaken, I entreat you to let me set eyes on that other whom I mistook for her, to forgive then my mannerless intrusion and to let me go.”
Unorna had listened with half-closed eyes, but with unfaltering attention, watching the speaker’s face from beneath her drooping lids, making no effort to read his thoughts, but weighing his words and impressing every detail of his story upon her mind. When he had done there was silence for a time, broken only by the plash and ripple of the falling water.
“She is not here,” said Unorna at last. “You shall see for yourself. There is indeed in this house a young girl to whom I am deeply attached, who has grown up at my side and has always lived under my roof. She is very pale and dark, and is dressed always in black.”
“Like her I saw.”
“You shall see her again. I will send for her.” Unorna pressed an ivory key in the silver ball which lay beside her, attached to a thick cord of white silk. “Ask Sletchna Axenia to come to me,” she said to the servant who opened the door in the distance, out of sight behind the forest of plants.
Amid less unusual surroundings the Wanderer would have rejected with contempt the last remnants of his belief in the identity of Unorna’s companion, with Beatrice. But, being where he was, he felt unable to decide between the possible and the impossible, between what he might reasonably expect and what lay beyond the bounds of reason itself. The air he breathed was so loaded with rich exotic perfumes, the woman before him was so little like other women, her strangely mismatched eyes had for his own such a disquieting attraction, all that he saw and felt and heard was so far removed from the commonplaces of daily life as to make him feel that he himself was becoming a part of some other person’s existence, that he was being gradually drawn away from his identity, and was losing the power of thinking his own thoughts. He reasoned as the shadows reason in dreamland, the boundaries of common probability receded to an immeasurable distance, and he almost ceased to know where reality ended and where imagination took up the sequence of events.
Who was this woman, who called herself Unorna? He tried to consider the question, and to bring his intelligence to bear upon it. Was she a great lady of Prague, rich, capricious, creating a mysterious existence for herself, merely for her own good pleasure? Her language, her voice, her evident refinement gave colour to the idea, which was in itself attractive to a man who had long ceased to expect novelty in this working-day world. He glanced at her face, musing and wondering, inhaling the sweet, intoxicating odours of the flowers and listening to the tinkling of the hidden fountain. Her eyes were gazing into his, and again, as if by magic, the curtain of life’s stage was drawn together in misty folds, shutting out the past, the present, and the future, the fact, the doubt, and the hope, in an interval of perfect peace.
He was roused by the sound of a light footfall upon the marble pavement. Unorna’s eyes were turned from his, and with something like a movement of surprise he himself looked towards the new comer. A young girl was standing under the shadow of a great letonia at a short distance from him. She was very pale indeed, but not with that death-like, waxen pallor which had chilled him when he had looked upon that other face. There was a faint resemblance in the small, aquiline features, the dress was black, and the figure of the girl before him was assuredly neither much taller nor much shorter than that of the woman he loved and sought. But the likeness went no further, and he knew that he had been utterly mistaken.
Unorna exchanged a few indifferent words with Axenia and dismissed her.
“You have seen,” she said, when the young girl was gone. “Was it she who entered the house just now?”
“Yes. I was misled by a mere resemblance. Forgive me for my importunity--let me thank you most sincerely for your great kindness.” He rose as he spoke.
“Do not go,” said Unorna, looking at him earnestly.
He stood still, silent, as though his attitude should explain itself, and yet expecting that she would say something further. He felt that her eyes were upon him, and he raised his own to meet the look frankly, as was his wont. For the first time since he had entered her presence he felt that there was more than a mere disquieting attraction in her steady gaze; there was a strong, resistless fascination, from which he had no power to withdraw himself. Almost unconsciously he resumed his seat, still looking at her, while telling himself with a severe effort that he would look but one instant longer and then turn away. Ten seconds passed, twenty, half a minute, in total silence. He was confused, disturbed, and yet wholly unable to shut out her penetrating glance. His fast ebbing consciousness barely allowed him to wonder whether he was weakened by the strong emotions he had felt in the church, or by the first beginning of some unknown and unexpected malady. He was utterly weak and unstrung. He could neither rise from his seat, nor lift his hand, nor close the lids of his eyes. It was as though an irresistible force were drawing him into the depths of a fathomless whirlpool, down, down, by its endless giddy spirals, robbing him of a portion of his consciousness at every gyration, so that he left behind him at every instant something of his individuality, something of the central faculty of self-recognition. He felt no pain, but he did not feel that inexpressible delight of peace which already twice had descended upon him. He experienced a rapid diminution of all perception, of all feeling, of all intelligence. Thought, and the memory of thought, ebbed from his brain and left it vacant, as the waters of a lock subside when the gates are opened, leaving emptiness in their place.
Unorna’s eyes turned from him, and she raised her hand a moment, letting it fall again upon her knee. Instantly the strong man was restored to himself; his weakness vanished, his sight was clear, his intelligence was awake. Instantly the certainty flashed upon him that Unorna possessed the power of imposing the hypnotic sleep and had exercised that gift upon him, unexpectedly and against his will. He would have more willingly supposed that he had been the victim of a momentary physical faintness, for the idea of having been thus subjected to the influence of a woman, and of a woman whom he hardly knew, was repugnant to him, and had in it something humiliating to his pride, or at least to his vanity. But he could not escape the conviction forced upon him by the circumstances.
“Do not go far, for I may yet help you,” said Unorna, quietly. “Let us talk of this matter and consult what is best to be done. Will you accept a woman’s help?”
“Readily. But I cannot accept her will as mine, nor resign my consciousness into her keeping.”
“Not for the sake of seeing her whom you say you love?”
The Wanderer was silent, being yet undetermined how to act, and still unsteadied by what he had experienced. But he was able to reason, and he asked of his judgment what he should do, wondering what manner of woman Unorna might prove to be, and whether she was anything more than one of those who live and even enrich themselves by the exercise of the unusual faculties of powers nature has given them. He had seen many of that class, and he considered most of them to be but half fanatics, half charlatans, worshipping in themselves as something almost divine that which was but a physical power, or weakness, beyond their own limited comprehension. Though a whole school of wise and thoughtful men had already produced remarkable results and elicited astounding facts by sifting the truth through a fine web of closely logical experiment, it did not follow that either Unorna, or any other self-convinced, self-taught operator could do more than grope blindly towards the light, guided by intuition alone amongst the varied and misleading phenomena of hypnotism. The thought of accepting the help of one who was probably, like most of her kind, a deceiver of herself and therefore, and thereby, of others, was an affront to the dignity of his distress, a desecration of his love’s sanctity, a frivolous invasion of love’s holiest ground. But, on the other hand, he was stimulated to catch at the veriest shadows of possibility by the certainty that he was at last within the same city with her he loved, and he knew that hypnotic subjects are sometimes able to determine the abode of persons whom no one else can find. To-morrow it might be too late. Even before to-day’s sun had set Beatrice might be once more taken from him, snatched away to the ends of the earth by her father’s ever-changing caprice. To lose a moment now might be to lose all.
He was tempted to yield, to resign his will into Unorna’s hands, and his sight to her leading, to let her bid him sleep and see the truth. But then, with a sudden reaction of his individuality, he realized that he had another course, surer, simpler, more dignified. Beatrice was in Prague. It was little probable that she was permanently established in the city, and in all likelihood she and her father were lodged in one of the two or three great hotels. To be driven from the one to the other of these would be but an affair of minutes. Failing information from this source, there remained the registers of the Austrian police, whose vigilance takes note of every stranger’s name and dwelling-place.
“I thank you,” he said. “If all my inquiries fail, and if you will let me visit you once more to-day, I will then ask your help.”
“You are right,” Unorna answered.
|
{
"id": "3816"
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3
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He had been deceived in supposing that he must inevitably find the names of those he sought upon the ordinary registers which chronicle the arrival and departure of travellers. He lost no time, he spared no effort, driving from place to place as fast as two sturdy Hungarian horses could take him, hurrying from one office to another, and again and again searching endless pages and columns which seemed full of all the names of earth, but in which he never found the one of all others which he longed to read. The gloom in the narrow streets was already deepening, though it was scarcely two hours after mid-day, and the heavy air had begun to thicken with a cold gray haze, even in the broad, straight Przikopy, the wide thoroughfare which has taken the place and name of the moat before the ancient fortifications, so that distant objects and figures lost the distinctness of their outlines. Winter in Prague is but one long, melancholy dream, broken sometimes at noon by an hour of sunshine, by an intermittent visitation of reality, by the shock and glare of a little broad daylight. The morning is not morning, the evening is not evening; as in the land of the Lotus, it is ever afternoon, gray, soft, misty, sad, save when the sun, being at his meridian height, pierces the dim streets and sweeps the open places with low, slanting waves of pale brightness. And yet these same dusky streets are thronged with a moving multitude, are traversed ever by ceaseless streams of men and women, flowing onward, silently, swiftly, eagerly. The very beggars do not speak above a whisper, the very dogs are dumb. The stillness of all voices leaves nothing for the perception of the hearing save the dull thread of many thousand feet and the rough rattle of an occasional carriage. Rarely, the harsh tones of a peasant, or the clear voices of a knot of strangers, unused to such oppressive silence, startle the ear, causing hundreds of eager, half-suspicious, half-wondering eyes to turn in the direction of the sound.
And yet Prague is a great city, the capital of the Bohemian Crownland, the centre of a not unimportant nation, the focus in which are concentrated the hottest, if not the brightest, rays from the fire of regeneration kindled within the last half century by the Slavonic race. There is an ardent furnace of life hidden beneath the crust of ashes: there is a wonderful language behind that national silence.
The Wanderer stood in deep thought under the shadow of the ancient Powder Tower. Haste had no further object now, since he had made every inquiry within his power, and it was a relief to feel the pavement beneath his feet and to breathe the misty frozen air after having been so long in the closeness of his carriage. He hesitated as to what he should do, unwilling to return to Unorna and acknowledge himself vanquished, yet finding it hard to resist his desire to try every means, no matter how little reasonable, how evidently useless, how puerile and revolting to his sounder sense. The street behind him led directly towards Unorna’s house. Had he found himself in a more remote quarter, he might have come to another and a wiser conclusion. Being so near to the house of which he was thinking, he yielded to the temptation. Having reached this stage of resolution, his mind began to recapitulate the events of the day, and he suddenly felt a strong wish to revisit the church, to stand in the place where Beatrice had stood, to touch in the marble basin beside the door the thick ice which her fingers had touched so lately, to traverse again the dark passages through which he had pursued her. To accomplish his purpose he need only turn aside a few steps from the path he was now following. He left the street almost immediately, passing under a low arched way that opened on the right-hand side, and a moment later he was within the walls of the Teyn Kirche.
The vast building was less gloomy than it had been in the morning. It was not yet the hour of vespers, the funeral torches had been extinguished, as well as most of the lights upon the high altar, there were not a dozen persons in the church, and high up beneath the roof broad shafts of softened sunshine, floating above the mists of the city without, streamed through the narrow lancet windows and were diffused in the great gloom below. The Wanderer went to the monument of Brahe and sat down in the corner of the blackened pew. His hands trembled a little as he clasped them upon his knee, and his head sank slowly towards his breast.
He thought of all that might have been if he had risked everything that morning. He could have used his strength to force a way for himself through the press, he could have thrust the multitude to the right and left, and he could have reached her side. Perhaps he had been weak, indolent, timid, and he accused himself of his own failure. But then, again, he seemed to see about him the closely packed crowd, the sea of faces, the thick, black mass of humanity, and he knew the tremendous power that lay in the inert, passive resistance of a vast gathering such as had been present. Had it been anywhere else, in a street, in a theatre, anywhere except in a church, all would have been well. It had not been his fault, for he knew, when he thought of it calmly, that the strength of his body would have been but as a breath of air against the silent, motionless, and immovable barrier presented by a thousand men, standing shoulder to shoulder against him. He could have done nothing. Once again his fate had defeated him at the moment of success.
He was aware that some one was standing very near to him. He looked up and saw a very short, gray-bearded man engaged in a minute examination of the dark red marble face on the astronomer’s tomb. The man’s head, covered with closely-cropped gray hair, was half buried between his high, broad shoulders, in an immense collar of fur, but the shape of the skull was so singular as to distinguish its possessor, when hatless, from all other men. The cranium was abnormally shaped, reaching a great elevation at the summit, then sinking suddenly, then spreading forward to an enormous development at the temple just visible as he was then standing, and at the same time forming unusual protuberances behind the large and pointed ears. No one who knew the man could mistake his head, when even the least portion of it could be seen. The Wanderer recognised him at once.
As though he were conscious of being watched, the little man turned sharply, exhibiting his wrinkled forehead, broad at the brows, narrow and high in the middle, showing, too, a Socratic nose half buried in the midst of the gray hair which grew as high as the prominent cheek bones, and suggesting the idea of a polished ivory ball lying in a nest of grayish wool. Indeed all that was visible of the face above the beard might have been carved out of old ivory, so far as the hue and quality of the surface were concerned; and if it had been necessary to sculpture a portrait of the man, no material could have been chosen more fitted to reproduce faithfully the deep cutting of the features, to render the close network of the wrinkles which covered them like the shadings of a line engraving, and at the same time to give the whole that appearance of hardness and smoothness which was peculiar to the clear, tough skin. The only positive colour which relieved the half tints of the face lay in the sharp bright eyes which gleamed beneath the busy eyebrows like tiny patches of vivid blue sky seen through little rifts in a curtain of cloud. All expression, all mobility, all life were concentrated in those two points.
The Wanderer rose to his feet.
“Keyork Arabian!” he exclaimed, extending his hand. The little man immediately gripped it in his small fingers, which, soft and delicately made as they were, possessed a strength hardly to have been expected either from their shape, or from the small proportions of him to whom they belonged.
“Still wandering?” asked the little man, with a slightly sarcastic intonation. He spoke in a deep, caressing bass, not loud, but rich in quality and free from that jarring harshness which often belongs to very manly voices. A musician would have discovered that the pitch was that of those Russian choristers whose deep throats yield organ tones, a full octave below the compass of ordinary singers in other lands.
“You must have wandered, too, since we last met,” replied the taller man.
“I never wander,” said Keyork. “When a man knows what he wants, knows where it is to be found, and goes thither to take it, he is not wandering. Moreover, I have no thought of removing myself or my goods from Prague. I live here. It is a city for old men. It is saturnine. The foundations of its houses rest on the silurian formation, which is more than can be said for any other capital, as far as I know.”
“Is that an advantage?” inquired the Wanderer.
“To my mind. I would say to my son, if I had one--my thanks to a blind but intelligent destiny for preserving me from such a calamity! --I would say to him, ‘Spend thy youth among flowers in the land where they are brightest and sweetest; pass thy manhood in all lands where man strives with man, thought for thought, blow for blow; choose for thine old age that spot in which, all things being old, thou mayest for the longest time consider thyself young in comparison with thy surroundings.’ A man can never feel old if he contemplates and meditates upon those things only which are immeasurably older than himself. Moreover the imperishable can preserve the perishable.”
“It was not your habit to talk of death when we were together.”
“I have found it interesting of late years. The subject is connected with one of my inventions. Did you ever embalm a body? No? I could tell you something singular about the newest process.”
“What is the connection?”
“I am embalming myself, body and mind. It is but an experiment, and unless it succeeds it must be the last. Embalming, as it is now understood, means substituting one thing for another. Very good. I am trying to purge from my mind its old circulating medium; the new thoughts must all be selected from a class which admits of no decay. Nothing could be simpler.”
“It seems to me that nothing could be more vague.”
“You were not formerly so slow to understand me,” said the strange little man with some impatience.
“Do you know a lady of Prague who calls herself Unorna?” the Wanderer asked, paying no attention to his friend’s last remark.
“I do. What of her?” Keyork Arabian glanced keenly at his companion.
“What is she? She has an odd name.”
“As for her name, it is easily accounted for. She was born on the twenty-ninth day of February, the year of her birth being bisextile. Unor means February, Unorna, derivative adjective, ‘belonging to February.’ Some one gave her the name to commemorate the circumstance.”
“Her parents, I suppose.”
“Most probably--whoever they may have been.”
“And what is she?” the Wanderer asked.
“She calls herself a witch,” answered Keyork with considerable scorn. “I do not know what she is, or what to call her--a sensitive, an hysterical subject, a medium, a witch--a fool, if you like, or a charlatan if you prefer the term. Beautiful she is, at least, whatever else she may not be.”
“Yes, she is beautiful.”
“So you have seen her, have you?” The little man again looked sharply up at his tall companion. “You have had a consultation----” “Does she give consultations? Is she a professional seer?” The Wanderer asked the question in a tone of surprise. “Do you mean that she maintains an establishment upon such a scale out of the proceeds of fortune-telling?”
“I do not mean anything of the sort. Fortune-telling is excellent! Very good!” Keyork’s bright eyes flashed with amusement. “What are you doing here--I mean in this church?” He put the question suddenly.
“Pursuing--an idea, if you please to call it so.”
“Not knowing what you mean I must please to call your meaning by your own name for it. It is your nature to be enigmatic. Shall we go out? If I stay here much longer I shall be petrified instead of embalmed. I shall turn into dirty old red marble like Tycho’s effigy there, an awful warning to future philosophers, and an example for the edification of the faithful who worship here.”
They walked towards the door, and the contrast between the appearance of the two brought the ghost of a smile to the thin lips of the pale sacristan, who was occupied in renewing the tapers upon one of the side altars. Keyork Arabian might have stood for the portrait of the gnome-king. His high and pointed head, his immense beard, his stunted but powerful and thickset limbs, his short, sturdy strides, the fiery, half-humorous, half-threatening twinkle of his bright eyes gave him all the appearance of a fantastic figure from a fairy tale, and the diminutive height of his compact frame set off the noble stature and graceful motion of his companion.
“So you were pursuing an idea,” said the little man as they emerged into the narrow street. “Now ideas may be divided variously into classes, as, for instance, ideas which are good, bad, or indifferent. Or you may contrast the idea of Plato with ideas anything but platonic--take it as you please. Then there is my idea, which is in itself, good, interesting, and worthy of the embalming process; and there is your idea, which I am human enough to consider altogether bad, worthless, and frivolous, for the plain and substantial reason that it is not mine. Perhaps that is the best division of all. Thine eye is necessarily, fatally, irrevocably evil, because mine is essentially, predestinately, and unchangeably good. If I secretly adopt your idea, I openly assert that it was never yours at all, but mine from the beginning, by the prerogatives of greater age, wider experience, and immeasurably superior wisdom. If you have an idea upon any subject, I will utterly annihilate it to my own most profound satisfaction; if you have none concerning any special point, I will force you to accept mine, as mine, or to die the intellectual death. That is the general theory of the idea.”
“And what does it prove?” inquired the Wanderer.
“If you knew anything,” answered Keyork, with twinkling eyes, “you would know that a theory is not a demonstration, but an explanation. But, by the hypothesis, since you are not I, you can know nothing certainly. Now my theory explains many things, and, among others, the adamantine, imperishable, impenetrable nature of the substance vanity upon which the showman, Nature, projects in fast fading colours the unsubstantial images of men. Why do you drag me through this dismal passage?”
“I passed through it this morning and missed my way.”
“In pursuit of the idea, of course. That was to be expected. Prague is constructed on the same principle as the human brain, full of winding ways, dark lanes, and gloomy arches, all of which may lead somewhere, or may not. Its topography continually misleads its inhabitants as the convolutions of the brain mislead the thoughts that dwell there, sometimes bringing them out at last, after a patient search for daylight, upon a fine broad street where the newest fashions in thought are exposed for sale in brightly illuminated shop windows and showcases; conducting them sometimes to the dark, unsavoury court where the miserable self drags out its unhealthy existence in the single room of its hired earthly lodging.”
“The self which you propose to preserve from corruption,” observed the tall man, who was carefully examining every foot of the walls between which he was passing with his companion, “since you think so poorly of the lodger and the lodging, I wonder that you should be anxious to prolong the sufferings of the one and his lease of the other.”
“It is all I have,” answered Keyork Arabian. “Did you think of that?”
“That circumstance may serve as an excuse, but it does not constitute a reason.”
“Not a reason! Is the most abject poverty a reason for throwing away the daily crust? My self is all I have. Shall I let it perish when an effort may preserve it from destruction? On the one side of the line stands Keyork Arabian, on the other floats the shadow of an annihilation, which threatens to swallow up Keyork’s self, while leaving all that he has borrowed of life to be enjoyed, or wasted by others. Could Keyork be expected to hesitate, so long as he may hope to remain in possession of that inestimable treasure, his own individuality, which is his only means for enjoying all that is not his, but borrowed?”
“So soon as you speak of enjoyment, argument ceases,” answered the Wanderer.
“You are wrong, as usual,” returned the other. “It is the other way. Enjoyment is the universal solvent of all arguments. No reason can resist its mordant action. It will dissolve any philosophy not founded upon it and modelled out of its substance, as Aqua Regia will dissolve all metals, even to gold itself. Enjoyment? Enjoyment is the protest of reality against the tyranny of fiction.”
The little man stopped short in his walk, striking his heavy stick sharply upon the pavement and looking up at his companion, very much as a man of ordinary size looks up at the face of a colossal statue.
“Have wisdom and study led you no farther than that conclusion?”
Keyork’s eyes brightened suddenly, and a peal of laughter, deep and rich, broke from his sturdy breast and rolled long echoes through the dismal lane, musical as a hunting-song heard among great trees in winter. But his ivory features were not discomposed, though his white beard trembled and waved softly like a snowy veil blown about by the wind.
“If wisdom can teach how to prolong the lease, what study can be compared with that of which the results may beautify the dwelling? What more can any man do for himself than make himself happy? The very question is absurd. What are you trying to do for yourself at the present moment? Is it for the sake of improving the physical condition or of promoting the moral case of mankind at large that you are dragging me through the slums and byways and alleys of the gloomiest city on this side of eternal perdition? It is certainly not for my welfare that you are sacrificing yourself. You admit that you are pursuing an idea. Perhaps you are in search of some new and curious form of mildew, and when you have found it--or something else--you will name your discovery _Fungus Pragensis_, or _Cryptogamus minor Errantis_--‘the Wanderer’s toadstool.’ But I know you of old, my good friend. The idea you pursue is not an idea at all, but that specimen of the _genus homo_ known as ‘woman,’ species ‘lady,’ variety ‘true love,’ vulgar designation ‘sweetheart. ’” The Wanderer stared coldly at his companion.
“The vulgarity of the designation is indeed only equalled by that of your taste in selecting it,” he said slowly. Then he turned away, intending to leave Keyork standing where he was.
But the little man had already repented of his speech. He ran quickly to his friend’s side and laid one hand upon his arm. The Wanderer paused and again looked down.
“Is it of any use to be offended with my speeches? Am I an acquaintance of yesterday? Do you imagine that it could ever be my intention to annoy you?” the questions were asked rapidly in tones of genuine anxiety.
“Indeed, I hardly know how I could suppose that. You have always been friendly--but I confess--your names for things are not--always----” The Wanderer did not complete the sentence, but looked gravely at Keyork as though wishing to convey very clearly again what he had before expressed in words.
“If we were fellow-countrymen and had our native language in common, we should not so easily misunderstand one another,” replied the other. “Come, forgive my lack of skill, and do not let us quarrel. Perhaps I can help you. You may know Prague well, but I know it better. Will you allow me to say that I know also whom it is you are seeking here?”
“Yes. You know. I have not changed since we last met, nor have circumstances favoured me.”
“Tell me--have you really seen this Unorna, and talked with her?”
“This morning.”
“And she could not help you?”
“I refused to accept her help, until I had done all that was in my own power to do.”
“You were rash. And have you now done all, and failed?”
“I have.”
“Then, if you will accept a humble suggestion from me, you will go back to her at once.”
“I know very little of her. I do not altogether trust her--” “Trust! Powers of Eblis--or any other powers! Who talks of trust? Does the wise man trust himself? Never. Then how can he dare trust any one else?”
“Your cynical philosophy again!” exclaimed the Wanderer.
“Philosophy? I am a mysosophist! All wisdom is vanity, and I hate it! Autology is my study, autosophy my ambition, autonomy my pride. I am the great Panegoist, the would-be Conservator of Self, the inspired prophet of the Universal I. I--I--I! My creed has but one word, and that word but one letter, that letter represents Unity, and Unity is Strength. I am I, one, indivisible, central! O I! Hail and live for ever!”
Again the little man’s rich bass voice rang out in mellow laughter. A very faint smile appeared upon his companion’s sad face.
“You are happy, Keyork,” he said. “You must be, since you can laugh at yourself so honestly.”
“At myself? Vain man! I am laughing at you, and at every one else, at everything except myself. Will you go to Unorna? You need not trust her any more than the natural infirmity of your judgment suggests.”
“Can you tell me nothing more of her? Do you know her well?”
“She does not offer her help to every one. You would have done well to accept it in the first instance. You may not find her in the same humour again.”
“I had supposed from what you said of her that she made a profession of clairvoyance, or hypnotism, or mesmerism--whatever may be the right term nowadays.”
“It matters very little,” answered Keyork, gravely. “I used to wonder at Adam’s ingenuity in naming all living things, but I think he would have made but a poor figure in a tournament of modern terminologists. No. Unorna does not accept remuneration for her help when she vouchsafes to give it.”
“And yet I was introduced to her presence without even giving my name.”
“That is her fancy. She will see any one who wishes to see her, beggar, gentleman, or prince. But she only answers such questions as she pleases to answer.”
“That is to say, inquiries for which she is already prepared with a reply,” suggested the Wanderer.
“See for yourself. At all events, she is a very interesting specimen. I have never known any one like her.”
Keyork Arabian was silent, as though he were reflecting upon Unorna’s character and peculiar gifts, before describing them to his friend. His ivory features softened almost imperceptibly, and his sharp blue eyes suddenly lost their light, as though they no longer saw the outer world. But the Wanderer cared for none of these things, and bestowed no attention upon his companion’s face. He preferred the little man’s silence to his wild talk, but he was determined, if possible, to extract some further information concerning Unorna, and before many seconds had elapsed he interrupted Keyork’s meditations with a question.
“You tell me to see for myself,” he said. “I would like to know what I am to expect. Will you not enlighten me?”
“What?” asked the other vaguely, as though roused from sleep.
“If I go to Unorna and ask a consultation of her, as though she were a common somnambulist, and if she deigns to place her powers at my disposal what sort of assistance shall I most probably get?”
They had been walking slowly forward, and Keyork again stopped, rapping the pavement with his iron-shod stick, and looking up from under his bushy, overhanging eyebrows.
“Of two things, one will happen,” he answered. “Either she will herself fall into the abnormal state and will answer correctly any questions you put to her, or she will hypnotise you, and you will yourself see--what you wish to see.”
“I myself?”
“You yourself. The peculiarity of the woman is her duality, her double power. She can, by an act of volition, become hypnotic, clairvoyant--whatever you choose to call it. Or, if her visitor is at all sensitive, she can reverse the situation and play the part of the hypnotiser. I never heard of a like case.”
“After all, I do not see why it should not be so,” said the Wanderer thoughtfully. “At all events, whatever she can do, is evidently done by hypnotism, and such extraordinary experiments have succeeded of late--” “I did not say that there was nothing but hypnotism in her processes.”
“What then? Magic?” The Wanderer’s lip curled scornfully.
“I do not know,” replied the little man, speaking slowly. “Whatever her secret may be, she keeps it, even when speaking in sleep. This I can tell you. I suspect that there is some other being, or person, in that queer old house of hers whom she consults on grave occasions. At a loss for an answer to a difficult scientific question, I have known her to leave the room and to come back in the course of a few minutes with a reply which I am positive she could never have framed herself.”
“She may have consulted books,” suggested the Wanderer.
“I am an old man,” said Keyork Arabian suddenly. “I am a very old man; there are not many books which I have not seen and partially read at one time or at another, and my memory is surprisingly good. I have excellent reasons for believing that her information is not got from anything that was ever written or printed.”
“May I ask of what general nature your questions were?” inquired the other, more interested than he had hitherto been in the conversation.
“They referred to the principles of embalmment.”
“Much has been written about that since the days of the Egyptians.”
“The Egyptians!” exclaimed Keyork with great scorn. “They embalmed their dead after a fashion. Did you ever hear that they embalmed the living?” The little man’s eyes shot fire.
“No, nor will I believe in any such outrageous impossibilities! If that is all, I have little faith in Unorna’s mysterious counsellor.”
“The faith which removes mountains is generally gained by experience when it is gained at all, and the craving for explanation takes the place, in some minds, of a willingness to learn. It is not my business to find explanations, nor to raise my little self to your higher level, by standing upon this curbstone, in order to deliver a lecture in the popular form, upon matters that interest me. It is enough that I have found what I wanted. Go and do likewise. See for yourself. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain. You are unhappy, and unhappiness is dangerous, in rare cases fatal. If you tell me to-morrow that Unorna is a charlatan, you will be in no worse plight than to-day, nor will your opinion of her influence mine. If she helps you to find what you want--so much the better for you--how much the better, and how great the risk you run, are questions for your judgment.”
“I will go,” answered the Wanderer, after a moment’s hesitation.
“Very good,” said Keyork Arabian. “If you want to find me again, come to my lodging. Do you know the house of the Black Mother of God?”
“Yes--there is a legend about a Spanish picture of our Lady once preserved there--” “Exactly, it takes its name from that black picture. It is on the corner of the Fruit Market, over against the window at which the Princess Windischgratz was shot. I live in the upper story. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye.”
|
{
"id": "3816"
}
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4
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None
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After the Wanderer had left her, Unorna continued to hold in her hand the book she had again taken up, following the printed lines mechanically from left to right, from the top of the page to the foot. Having reached that point, however, she did not turn over the leaf. She was vaguely aware that she had not understood the sense of the words, and she returned to the place at which she had begun, trying to concentrate her attention upon the matter, moving her fresh lips to form the syllables, and bending her brows in the effort of understanding, so that a short, straight furrow appeared, like a sharp vertical cut extending from between the eyes to the midst of the broad forehead. One, two and three sentences she grasped and comprehended; then her thoughts wandered again, and the groups of letters passed meaningless before her sight. She was accustomed to directing her intelligence without any perceptible effort, and she was annoyed at being thus led away from her occupation, against her will and in spite of her determination. A third attempt showed her that it was useless to force herself any longer, and with a gesture and look of irritation she once more laid the volume upon the table at her side.
During a few minutes she sat motionless in her chair, her elbow leaning on the carved arm-piece, her chin supported upon the back of her half-closed hand, of which the heavy, perfect fingers were turned inwards, drooping in classic curves towards the lace about her throat. Her strangely mismatched eyes stared vacantly towards an imaginary horizon, not bounded by banks of flowers, nor obscured by the fantastic foliage of exotic trees.
Presently she held up her head, her white hand dropped upon her knee, she hesitated an instant, and then rose to her feet, swiftly, as though she had made a resolution and was about to act upon it. She made a step forward, and then paused again, while a half-scornful smile passed like a shadow over her face. Very slowly she began to pace the marble floor, up and down in the open space before her chair, turning and turning again, the soft folds of her white gown following her across the smooth pavement with a gentle, sweeping sound, such as the breeze makes among flowers in spring.
“Is it he?” she asked aloud in a voice ringing with the joy and the fear of a passion that has waited long and is at last approaching the fulfilment of satisfaction.
No answer came to her from among the thick foliage nor in the scented breath of the violets and the lilies. The murmuring song of the little fountain alone disturbed the stillness, and the rustle of her own garments as she moved.
“Is it he? Is it he? Is it he?” she repeated again and again, in varying tones, chiming the changes of hope and fear, of certainty and vacillation, of sadness and of gladness, of eager passion and of chilling doubt.
She stood still, staring at the pavement, her fingers clasped together, the palms of her hands turned downward, her arms relaxed. She did not see the dark red squares of marble, alternating with the white and the gray, but as she looked a face and a form rose before her, in the contemplation of which all her senses and faculties concentrated themselves. The pale and noble head grew very distinct in her inner sight, the dark gray eyes gazed sadly upon her, the passionate features were fixed in the expression of a great sorrow.
“Are you indeed he?” she asked, speaking softly and doubtfully, and yet unconsciously projecting her strong will upon the vision, as though to force it to give the answer for which she longed.
And the answer came, imposed by the effort of her imagination upon the thing imagined. The face suddenly became luminous, as with a radiance within itself; the shadows of grief melted away, and in their place trembled the rising light of a dawning love. The lips moved and the voice spoke, not as it had spoken to her lately, but in tones long familiar to her in dreams by day and night.
“I am he, I am that love for whom you have waited; you are that dear one whom I have long sought throughout the world. The hour of our joy has struck, the new life begins to-day, and there shall be no end.”
Unorna’s arms went out to grasp the shadow, and she drew it to her in her fancy and kissed its radiant face.
“To ages of ages!” she cried.
Then she covered her eyes as though to impress the sight they had seen upon the mind within, and groping blindly for her chair sank back into her seat. But the mechanical effort of will and memory could not preserve the image. In spite of all inward concentration of thought, its colours faded, its outlines trembled, grew faint and vanished, and darkness was in its place. Unorna’s hand dropped to her side, and a quick throb of pain stabbed her through and through, agonising as the wound of a blunt and jagged knife, though it was gone almost before she knew where she had felt it. Then her eyes flashed with unlike fires, the one dark and passionate as the light of a black diamond, the other keen and daring as the gleam of blue steel in the sun.
“Ah, but I will!” she exclaimed. “And what I will--shall be.”
As though she were satisfied with the promise thus made to herself, she smiled, her eyelids drooped, the tension of her frame was relaxed, and she sank again into the indolent attitude in which the Wanderer had found her. A moment later the distant door turned softly upon its hinges and a light footfall broke the stillness. There was no need for Unorna to speak in order that the sound of her voice might guide the new comer to her retreat. The footsteps approached swiftly and surely. A young man of singular beauty came out of the green shadows and stood beside the chair in the open space.
Unorna betrayed no surprise as she looked up into her visitor’s face. She knew it well. In form and feature the youth represented the noblest type of the Jewish race. It was impossible to see him without thinking of a young eagle of the mountains, eager, swift, sure, instinct with elasticity, far-sighted and untiring, strong to grasp and to hold, beautiful with the glossy and unruffled beauty of a plumage continually smoothed in the sweep and the rush of high, bright air.
Israel Kafka stood still, gazing down upon the woman he loved, and drawing his breath hard between his parted lips. His piercing eyes devoured every detail of the sight before him, while the dark blood rose in his lean olive cheek, and the veins of his temples swelled with the beating of his quickened pulse.
“Well?”
The single indifferent word received the value of a longer speech from the tone in which it was uttered, and from the look and gesture which accompanied it. Unorna’s voice was gentle, soft, half-indolent, half-caressing, half-expectant, and half-careless. There was something almost insolent in its assumption of superiority, which was borne out by the little defiant tapping of two long white fingers upon the arm of the carved chair. And yet, with the rising inflection of the monosyllable there went a raising of the brows, a sidelong glance of the eyes, a slowly wreathing smile that curved the fresh lips just enough to unmask two perfect teeth, all of which lent to the voice a meaning, a familiarity, a pliant possibility of favourable interpretation, fit rather to flatter a hope than to chill a passion.
The blood beat more fiercely in the young man’s veins, his black eyes gleamed yet more brightly, his pale, high-curved nostrils quivered at every breath he drew. The throbbings of his heart unseated his thoughts and strongly took possession of the government of his body. Under an irresistible impulse he fell upon his knees beside Unorna, covering her marble hand with all his lean, dark fingers and pressing his forehead upon them, as though he had found and grasped all that could be dear to him in life.
“Unorna! My golden Unorna!” he cried, as he knelt.
Unorna looked down upon his bent head. The smile faded from her face, and for a moment a look of hardness lingered there, which gave way to an expression of pain and regret. As though collecting her thoughts she closed her eyes, as she tried to draw back her hand; then as he held it still, she leaned back and spoke to him.
“You have not understood me,” she said, as quietly as she could.
The strong fingers were not lifted from hers, but the white face, now bloodless and transparent, was raised to hers, and a look of such fear as she had never dreamed of was in the wide black eyes.
“Not--understood?” he repeated in startled, broken tones.
Unorna sighed, and turned away, for the sight hurt her and accused her.
“No, you have not understood. Is it my fault? Israel Kafka, that hand is not yours to hold.”
“Not mine? Unorna!” Yet he could not quite believe what she said.
“I am in earnest,” she answered, not without a lingering tenderness in the intonation. “Do you think I am jesting with you, or with myself?”
Neither of the two stirred during the silence which followed. Unorna sat quite still, staring fixedly into the green shadows of the foliage, as though not daring to meet the gaze she felt upon her. Israel Kafka still knelt beside her, motionless and hardly breathing, like a dangerous wild animal startled by an unexpected enemy, and momentarily paralysed in the very act of springing, whether backward in flight, or forward in the teeth of the foe, it is not possible to guess.
“I have been mistaken,” Unorna continued at last. “Forgive--forget--” Israel Kafka rose to his feet and drew back a step from her side. All his movements were smooth and graceful. The perfect man is most beautiful in motion, the perfect woman in repose.
“How easy it is for you!” exclaimed the Moravian. “How easy! How simple! You call me, and I come. You let your eyes rest on me, and I kneel before you. You sigh, and I speak words of love. You lift your hand and I crouch at your feet. You frown--and I humbly leave you. How easy!”
“You are wrong, and you speak foolishly. You are angry, and you do not weigh your words.”
“Angry! What have I to do with so common a madness as anger? I am more than angry. Do you think that because I have submitted to the veering gusts of your good and evil humours these many months, I have lost all consciousness of myself? Do you think that you can blow upon me as upon a feather, from east and west, from north and south, hotly or coldly, as your unstable nature moves you? Have you promised me nothing? Have you given me no hope? Have you said and done nothing whereby you are bound? Or can no pledge bind you, no promise find a foothold in your slippery memory, no word of yours have meaning for those who hear it?”
“I never gave you either pledge or promise,” answered Unorna in a harder tone. “The only hope I have ever extended to you was this, that I would one day answer you plainly. I have done so. You are not satisfied. Is there anything more to be said? I do not bid you leave my house for ever, any more than I mean to drive you from my friendship.”
“From your friendship! Ah, I thank you, Unorna; I most humbly thank you! For the mercy you extend in allowing me to linger near you, I am grateful! Your friend, you say? Ay, truly, your friend and servant, your servant and your slave, your slave and your dog. Is the friend impatient and dissatisfied with his lot? A soft word shall turn away his anger. Is the servant over-presumptuous? Your scorn will soon teach him his duty. Is the slave disobedient? Blows will cure him of his faults. Does your dog fawn upon you too familiarly? Thrust him from you with your foot and he will cringe and cower till you smile again. Your friendship--I have no words for thanks!”
“Take it, or take it not--as you will.” Unorna glanced at his angry face and quickly looked away.
“Take it? Yes, and more too, whether you will give it or not,” answered Israel Kafka, moving nearer to her. “Yes. Whether you will, or whether you will not, I have all, your friendship, your love, your life, your breath, your soul--all, or nothing!”
“You are wise to suggest the latter alternative as a possibility,” said Unorna coldly and not heeding his approach.
The young man stood still, and folded his arms. The colour had returned to his face and a deep flush was rising under his olive skin.
“Do you mean what you say?” he asked slowly. “Do you mean that I shall not have all, but nothing? Do you still dare to mean that, after all that has passed between you and me?”
Unorna raised her eyes and looked steadily into his.
“Israel Kafka, do not speak to me of daring.”
But the young man’s glance did not waver. The angry expression of his features did not relax; he neither drew back nor bent his head. Unorna seemed to be exerting all the strength of her will in the attempt to dominate him, but without result. In the effort she made to concentrate her determination her face grew pale and her lips trembled. Kafka faced her resolutely, his eyes on fire, the rich colour mantling in his cheeks.
“Where is your power now?” he asked suddenly. “Where is your witchery? You are only a woman, after all. You are only a weak woman!”
Very slowly he drew nearer to her side, his lithe figure bending a little as he looked down upon her. Unorna leaned far back, withdrawing her face from his as far as she could, but still trying to impose her will upon him.
“You cannot,” he said between his teeth, answering her thought.
Men who have tamed wild beasts alone know what such a moment is like. A hundred times the brave man has held the tiger spell-bound and crouching under his cold, fearless gaze. The beast, ever docile and submissive, has cringed at his feet, fawned to his touch, and licked the hand that snatched away the half-devoured morsel. Obedient to voice and eye, the giant strength and sinewy grace have been debased to make the sport of multitudes; the noble, pliant frame has contorted itself to execute the mean antics of the low-comedy ape--to counterfeit death like a poodle dog; to leap through gaudily-painted rings at the word of command; to fetch and carry like a spaniel. A hundred times the changing crowd has paid its paltry fee to watch the little play that is daily acted behind the stout iron bars by the man and the beast. The man, the nobler, braver creature, is arrayed in a wretched flimsy finery of tights and spangles, parading his physical weakness and inferiority in the toggery of a mountebank. The tiger, vast, sleepy-eyed, mysterious, lies motionless in the front of his cage, the gorgeous stripes of his velvet coat following each curve of his body, from the cushions of his great fore paws to the arch of his gathered haunches. The watchfulness and flexible activity of the serpent and the strength that knows no master are clothed in the magnificent robes of the native-born sovereign. Time and times again the beautiful giant has gone through the slavish round of his mechanical tricks, obedient to the fragile creature of intelligence, to the little dwarf, man, whose power is in his eyes and heart only. He is accustomed to the lights, to the spectators, to the laughter, to the applause, to the frightened scream of the hysterical women in the audience, to the close air and to the narrow stage behind the bars. The tamer in his tights and tinsel has grown used to his tiger, to his emotions, to his hourly danger. He even finds at last that his mind wanders during the performance, and that at the very instant when he is holding the ring for the leap, or thrusting his head into the beast’s fearful jaws, he is thinking of his wife, of his little child, of his domestic happiness or household troubles, rather than of what he is doing. Many times, perhaps many hundreds of times, all passes off quietly and successfully. Then, inevitably, comes the struggle. Who can tell the causes? The tiger is growing old, or is ill fed, or is not well, or is merely in one of those evil humours to which animals are subject as well as their masters. One day he refuses to go through with the performance. First one trick fails, and then another. The public grows impatient, the man in spangles grows nervous, raises his voice, stamps loudly with his foot, and strikes his terrible slave with his light switch. A low, deep sound breaks from the enormous throat, the spectators hold their breath, the huge, flexible limbs are gathered for the leap, and in the gaslight and the dead silence man and beast are face to face. Life hangs in the balance, and death is at the door.
Then the tamer’s heart beats loud, his chest heaves, his brows are furrowed. Even then, in the instant that still separates him from triumph or destruction, the thought of his sleeping child or of his watching wife darts through his brain. But the struggle has begun and there is no escape. One of two things must happen: he must overcome or he must die. To draw back, to let his glance waver, to show so much as the least sign of fear, is death. The moment is supreme, and he knows it.
Unorna grasped the arms of her chair as though seeking for physical support in her extremity. She could not yield. Before her eyes arose a vision unlike the reality in all its respects. She saw an older face, a taller figure, a look of deeper thought between her and the angry man who was trying to conquer her resistance with a glance. Between her and her mistake the image of what should be stood out, bright, vivid, and strong. A new conviction had taken the place of the old, a real passion was flaming upon the altar whereon she had fed with dreams the semblance of a sacred fire.
“You do not really love me,” she said softly.
Israel Kafka started, as a man who is struck unawares. The monstrous untruth which filled the words broke down his guard, sudden tears veiled the penetrating sharpness of his gaze, and his hand trembled.
“I do not love you? I! Unorna--Unorna!”
The first words broke from him in a cry of horror and stupefaction. But her name, when he spoke it, sounded as the death moan of a young wild animal wounded beyond all power to turn at bay.
He moved unsteadily and laid hold of the tall chair in which she sat. He was behind her now, standing, but bending down so that his forehead pressed his fingers. He could not bear to look upon her hair, still less upon her face. Even his hands were white and bloodless. Unorna could hear his quick breathing just above her shoulder. She sat quite still, and her lips were smiling, though her brow was thoughtful and almost sad. She knew that the struggle was over and that she had gained the mastery, though the price of victory might be a broken heart.
“You thought I was jesting,” she said in a low voice, looking before her into the deep foliage, but knowing that her softest whisper would reach him. “But there was no jest in what I said--nor any unkindness in what I meant, though it is all my fault. But that is true--you never loved me as I would be loved.”
“Unorna----” “No, I am not unkind. Your love is young, fierce, inconstant; half terrible, half boyish, aflame to-day, asleep to-morrow, ready to turn into hatred at one moment, to melt into tears at the next, intermittent, unstable as water, fleeting as a cloud’s shadow on the mountain side--” “It pleased you once,” said Israel Kafka in broken tones. “It is not less love because you are weary of it, and of me.”
“Weary, you say? No, not weary--and very truly not of you. You will believe that to-day, to-morrow, you will still try to force life into your belief--and then it will be dead and gone like all thoughts which have never entered into the shapes of reality. We have not loved each other. We have but fancied that it would be sweet to love, and the knife of truth has parted the web of our dreams, keenly, in the midst, so that we see before us what is, though the ghost of what might have been is yet lingering near.”
“Who wove that web, Unorna? You, or I?” He lifted his heavy eyes and gazed at her coiled hair.
“What matters it whether it was your doing or mine? But we wove it together--and together we must see the truth.”
“If this is true, there is no more ‘together’ for you and me.”
“We may yet glean friendship in the fields where love has grown.”
“Friendship! The very word is a wound! Friendship! The very dregs and lees of the wine of life! Friendship! The sour drainings of the heart’s cup, left to moisten the lips of the damned when the blessed have drunk their fill! I hate the word, as I hate the thought!”
Unorna sighed, partly, perhaps, that he might hear the sigh, and put upon it an interpretation soothing to his vanity, but partly, too, from a sincere regret that he should need to suffer as he was evidently suffering. She had half believed that she loved him, and she owed him pity. Women’s hearts pay such debts unwillingly, but they do pay them, nevertheless. She wished that she had never set eyes upon Israel Kafka; she wished that she might never see him again; even his death would hardly have cost her a pang, and yet she was sorry for him. Diana, the huntress, shot her arrows with unfailing aim; Diana, the goddess, may have sighed and shed one bright immortal tear, as she looked into the fast-glazing eyes of the dying stag--may not Diana, the maiden, have felt a touch of human sympathy and pain as she listened to the deep note of her hounds baying on poor Actaeon’s track! No one is all bad, or all good. No woman is all earthly, nor any goddess all divine.
“I am sorry,” said Unorna. “You will not understand----” “I have understood enough. I have understood that a woman can have two faces and two hearts, two minds, two souls; it is enough, my understanding need go no farther. You sighed before you spoke. It was not for me; it was for yourself. You never felt pain or sorrow for another.”
He was trying hard to grow cold and to find cold words to say, which might lead her to believe him stronger than he was and able to master his grief. But he was too young, too hot, too changeable for such a part. Moreover, in his first violent outbreak Unorna had dominated him, and he could not now regain the advantage.
“You are wrong, Israel Kafka. You would make me less than human. If I sighed, it was indeed for you. See--I confess that I have done you wrong, not in deeds, but in letting you hope. Truly, I myself have hoped also. I have thought that the star of love was trembling just below the east, and that you and I might be one to another--what we cannot be now. My wisdom has failed me, my sight has been deceived. Am I the only woman in this world who has been mistaken? Can you not forgive? If I had promised, if I had said one word--and yet, you are right, too, for I have let you think in earnest what has been but a passing dream of my own thoughts. It was all wrong; it was all my fault. There, lay your hand in mine and say that you forgive, as I ask forgiveness.”
He was still standing behind her, leaning against the back of her chair. Without looking round she raised her hand above her shoulder as though seeking for his. But he would not take it.
“Is it so hard?” she asked softly. “Is it even harder for you to give than for me to ask? Shall we part like this--not to meet again--each bearing a wound, when both might be whole? Can you not say the word?”
“What is it to you whether I forgive you or not?”
“Since I ask it, believe that it is much to me,” she answered, slowly turning her head until, without catching sight of his face, she could just see where his fingers were resting on her chair. Then, over her shoulder, she touched them, and drew them to her cheek. He made no resistance.
“Shall we part without one kind thought?” Her voice was softer still and so low and sweet that it seemed as though the words were spoken in the ripple of the tiny fountain. There was magic in the place, in the air, in the sounds, above all in the fair woman’s touch.
“Is this friendship?” asked Kafka. Then he sank upon his knees beside her, and looked up into her face.
“It is friendship; yes--why not? Am I like other women?”
“Then why need there be any parting?”
“If you will be my friend there need be none. You have forgiven me now--I see it in your eyes. Is it not true?”
He was at her feet, passive at last under the superior power which he had never been able to resist. Unorna’s fascination was upon him, and he could only echo her words, as he would have executed her slightest command, without consciousness of free will or individual thought. It was enough that for one moment his anger should cease to give life to his resistance; it was sufficient that Unorna should touch him thus, and speak softly, his eyelids quivered and his look became fixed, his strength was absorbed in hers and incapable of acting except under her direction. So long as she might please the spell would endure.
“Sit beside me now, and let us talk,” she said.
Like a man in a dream, he rose and sat down near her.
Unorna laughed, and there was something in the tone that was not good to hear. A moment earlier it would have wounded Israel Kafka to the quick and brought the hot, angry blood to his face. Now he laughed with her, vacantly, as though not knowing the cause of his mirth.
“You are only my slave, after all,” said Unorna scornfully.
“I am only your slave, after all,” he repeated.
“I could touch you with my hand and you would hate me, and forget that you ever loved me.”
This time the man was silent. There was a contraction of pain in his face, as though a violent mental struggle were going on within him. Unorna tapped the pavement impatiently with her foot and bent her brows.
“You would hate me and forget that you ever loved me,” she repeated, dwelling on each word as though to impress it on his consciousness. “Say it. I order you.”
The contraction of his features disappeared.
“I should hate you and forget that I ever loved you,” he said slowly.
“You never loved me.”
“I never loved you.”
Again Unorna laughed, and he joined in her laughter, unintelligently, as he had done before. She leaned back in her seat, and her face grew grave. Israel Kafka sat motionless in his chair, staring at her with unwinking eyes. But his gaze did not disturb her. There was no more meaning in it than in the expression of a marble statue, far less than in that of a painted portrait. Yet the man was alive and in the full strength of his magnificent youth, supple, active, fierce by nature, able to have killed her with his hands in the struggle of a moment. Yet she knew that without a word from her he could neither turn his head nor move in his seat.
For a long time Unorna was absorbed in her meditations. Again and again the vision of a newer happiness took shape and colour before her, so clearly and vividly that she could have clasped it and held it and believed in its reality, as she had done before Israel Kafka had entered. But there was a doubt now, which constantly arose between her and it, the dark and shapeless shadow of a reasoning she hated and yet knew to be strong.
“I must ask him,” she said unconsciously.
“You must ask him,” repeated Israel Kafka from his seat.
For the third time Unorna laughed aloud as she heard the echo of her own words.
“Whom shall I ask?” she inquired contemptuously, as she rose to her feet.
The dull, glassy eyes sought hers in painful perplexity, following her face as she moved.
“I do not know,” answered the powerless man.
Unorna came close to him and laid her hand upon his head.
“Sleep, until I wake you,” she said.
The eyelids drooped and closed at her command, and instantly the man’s breathing became heavy and regular. Unorna’s full lips curled as she looked down at him.
“And you would be my master!” she exclaimed.
Then she turned and disappeared among the plants, leaving him alone.
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{
"id": "3816"
}
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5
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None
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Unorna passed through a corridor which was, indeed, only a long balcony covered in with arches and closed with windows against the outer air. At the farther end three steps descended to a dark door, through the thickness of a massive wall, showing that at this point Unorna’s house had at some former time been joined with another building beyond, with which it thus formed one habitation. Unorna paused, holding the key as though hesitating whether she should put it into the lock. It was evident that much depended upon her decision, for her face expressed the anxiety she felt. Once she turned away, as though to abandon her intention, hesitated, and then, with an impatient frown, opened the door and went in. She passed through a small, well-lighted vestibule and entered the room beyond.
The apartment was furnished with luxury, but a stranger would have received an oddly disquieting impression of the whole at a first glance. There was everything in the place which is considered necessary for a bedroom, and everything was perfect of its kind, spotless and dustless, and carefully arranged in order. But almost everything was of an unusual and unfamiliar shape, as though designed for some especial reason to remain in equilibrium in any possible position, and to be moved from place to place with the smallest imaginable physical effort. The carved bedstead was fitted with wheels which did not touch the ground, and levers so placed as to be within the reach of a person lying in it. The tables were each supported at one end only by one strong column, fixed to a heavy base set on broad rollers, so that the board could be run across a bed or a lounge with the greatest ease. There was but one chair made like ordinary chairs; the rest were so constructed that the least motion of the occupant must be accompanied by a corresponding change of position of the back and arms, and some of them bore a curious resemblance to a surgeon’s operating table, having attachments of silver-plated metal at many points, of which the object was not immediately evident. Before a closed door a sort of wheeled conveyance, partaking of the nature of a chair and of a perambulator, stood upon polished rails, which disappeared under the door itself, showing that the thing was intended to be moved from one room to another in a certain way and in a fixed line. The rails, had the door been opened, would have been seen to descend upon the other side by a gentle inclined plane into the centre of a huge marble basin, and the contrivance thus made it possible to wheel a person into a bath and out again without necessitating the slightest effort or change of position in the body. In the bedroom the windows were arranged so that the light and air could be regulated to a nicety. The walls were covered with fine basket work, apparently adapted in panels; but these panels were in reality movable trays, as it were, forming shallow boxes fitted with closely-woven wicker covers, and filled with charcoal and other porous substances intended to absorb the impurities of the air, and thus easily changed and renewed from time to time. Immediately beneath the ceiling were placed delicate glass globes of various soft colours, with silken shades, movable from below by means of brass rods and handles. In the ceiling itself there were large ventilators, easily regulated as might be required, and there was a curious arrangement of rails and wheels from which depended a sort of swing, apparently adapted for moving a person or a weight to different parts of the room without touching the floor. In one of the lounges, not far from the window, lay a colossal old man, wrapped in a loose robe of warm white stuff, and fast asleep.
He was a very old man, so old, indeed, as to make it hard to guess his age from his face and his hands, the only parts visible as he lay at rest, the vast body and limbs lying motionless under his garment, as beneath a heavy white pall. He could not be less than a hundred years old, but how much older than that he might really be, it was impossible to say. What might be called the waxen period had set in, and the high colourless features seemed to be modelled in that soft, semi-transparent material. The time had come when the stern furrows of age had broken up into countless minutely-traced lines, so close and fine as to seem a part of the texture of the skin, mere shadings, evenly distributed throughout, and no longer affecting the expression of the face as the deep wrinkles had done in former days; at threescore and ten, at fourscore, and even at ninety years. The century that had passed had taken with it its marks and scars, leaving the great features in their original purity of design, lean, smooth, and clearly defined. That last change in living man is rare enough, but when once seen is not to be forgotten. There is something in the faces of the very, very old which hardly suggests age at all, but rather the vague possibility of a returning prime. Only the hands tell the tale, with their huge, shining, fleshless joints, their shadowy hollows, and their unnatural yellow nails.
The old man lay quite still, breathing softly through his snowy beard. Unorna came to his side. There was something of wonder and admiration in her own eyes as she stood there gazing upon the face which other generations of men and women, all long dead, had looked upon and known. The secret of life and death was before her each day when she entered that room, and on the very verge of solution. The wisdom hardly gained in many lands was striving with all its concentrated power to preserve that life; the rare and subtle gifts which she herself possessed were daily exercised to their full in the suggestion of vitality; the most elaborate inventions of skilled mechanicians were employed in reducing the labour of living to the lowest conceivable degree of effort. The great experiment was being tried. What Keyork Arabian described as the embalming of a man still alive was being attempted. And he lived. For years they had watched him and tended him, and looked critically for the least signs of a diminution or an augmentation in his strength. They knew that he was now in his one hundred and seventh year, and yet he lived and was no weaker. Was there a limit; or was there not, since the destruction of the tissues was arrested beyond doubt, so far as the most minute tests could show? Might there not be, in the slow oscillations of nature, a degree of decay, on this side of death, from which a return should be possible, provided that the critical moment were passed in a state of sleep and under perfect conditions? How do we know that all men must die? We suppose the statement to be true by induction, from the undoubted fact that men have hitherto died within a certain limit of age. By induction, too, our fathers, our grandfathers, knew that it was impossible for man to traverse the earth faster than at the full speed of a galloping horse. After several thousand years of experience that piece of knowledge, which seemed to be singularly certain, was suddenly proved to be the grossest ignorance by a man who had been in the habit of playing with a tea-kettle when a boy. We ourselves, not very long ago, knew positively, as all men had known since the beginning of the world, that it was quite impossible to converse with a friend at a distance beyond the carrying power of a speaking trumpet. To-day, a boy who does not know that one may talk very agreeably with a friend a thousand miles away is an ignoramus; and experimenters whisper among themselves that, if the undulatory theory of light have any foundation, there is no real reason why we may not see that same friend at that same distance, as well as talk with him. Ten years ago we were quite sure that it was beyond the bounds of natural possibility to produce a bad burn upon the human body by touching the flesh with a bit of cardboard or a common lead pencil. Now we know with equal certainty that if upon one arm of a hypnotised patient we impress a letter of the alphabet cut out of wood, telling him that it is red-hot iron, the shape of the letter will on the following day be found on a raw and painful wound not only in the place we selected but on the other arm, in the exactly corresponding spot, and reversed as though seen in a looking-glass; and we very justly consider that a physician who does not know this and similar facts is dangerously behind the times, since the knowledge is open to all. The inductive reasoning of many thousands of years has been knocked to pieces in the last century by a few dozen men who have reasoned little but attempted much. It would be rash to assert that bodily death may not some day, and under certain conditions, be altogether escaped. It is nonsense to pretend that human life may not possibly, and before long, be enormously prolonged, and that by some shorter cut to longevity than temperance and sanitation. No man can say that it will, but no man of average intelligence can now deny that it may.
Unorna had hesitated at the door, and she hesitated now. It was in her power, and in hers only, to wake the hoary giant, or at least to modify his perpetual sleep so far as to obtain from him answers to her questions. It would be an easy matter to lay one hand upon his brow, bidding him see and speak--how easy, she alone knew. But on the other hand, to disturb his slumber was to interfere with the continuity of the great experiment, to break through a rule lately made, to incur the risk of an accident, if not of death itself.
She drew back at the thought, as though fearing to startle him, and then she smiled at her own nervousness. To wake him she must exercise her will. There was no danger of his ever being roused by any sound or touch not proceeding from herself. The crash of thunder had no reverberation for his ears, the explosion of a cannon would not have penetrated into his lethargy. She might touch him, move him, even speak to him, but unless she laid her hand upon his waxen forehead and bid him feel and hear, he would be as unconscious as the dead. She returned to his side and gazed into his placid face. Strange faculties were asleep in that ancient brain, and strange wisdom was stored there, gathered from many sources long ago, and treasured unconsciously by the memory to be recalled at her command.
The man had been a failure in his day, a scholar, a student, a searcher after great secrets, a wanderer in the labyrinths of higher thought. He had been a failure and had starved, as failures must, in order that vulgar success may fatten and grow healthy. He had outlived the few that had been dear to him, he had outlived the power to feed on thought, he had outlived generations of men, and cycles of changes, and yet there had been life left in the huge gaunt limbs and sight in the sunken eyes. Then he had outlived pride itself, and the ancient scholar had begged his bread. In his hundredth year he had leaned for rest against Unorna’s door, and she had taken him in and cared for him, and since that time she had preserved his life. For his history was known in the ancient city, and it was said that he had possessed great wisdom in his day. Unorna knew that this wisdom could be hers if she could keep alive the spark of life, and that she could employ his own learning to that end. Already she had much experience of her powers, and knew that if she once had the mastery of the old man’s free will he must obey her fatally and unresistingly. Then she conceived the idea of embalming, as it were, the living being, in a perpetual hypnotic lethargy, from whence she recalled him from time to time to an intermediate state, in which she caused him to do mechanically all those things which she judged necessary to prolong life.
Seeing her success from the first, she had begun to fancy that the present condition of things might be made to continue indefinitely. Since death was to-day no nearer than it had been seven years ago, there was no reason why it might not be guarded against during seven years more, and if during seven, why not during ten, twenty, fifty? She had for a helper a physician of consummate practical skill--a man whose interest in the result of the trial was, if anything, more keen than her own; a friend, above all, whom she believed she might trust, and who appeared to trust her.
But in the course of their great experiment they had together made rules by which they had mutually agreed to be bound. They had of late determined that the old man must not be disturbed in his profound rest by any question tending to cause a state of mental activity. The test of a very fine instrument had proved that the shortest interval of positive lucidity was followed by a slight but distinctly perceptible rise of temperature in the body, and this could mean only a waste of the precious tissues they were so carefully preserving. They hoped and believed that the grand crisis was at hand, and that, if the body did not now lose strength and vitality for a considerable time, both would slowly though surely increase, in consequence of the means they were using to instill new blood into the system. But the period was supreme, and to interfere in any way with the progress of the experiment was to run a risk of which the whole extent could only be realised by Unorna and her companion.
She hesitated therefore, well knowing that her ally would oppose her intention with all his might, and dreading his anger, bold as she was, almost as much as she feared the danger to the old man’s life. On the other hand, she had a motive which the physician could not have, and which, as she was aware, he would have despised and condemned. She had a question to ask, which she considered of vital importance to herself, to which she firmly believed that the true answer would be given, and which, in her womanly impetuosity and impatience, she could not bear to leave unasked until the morrow, much less until months should have passed away. Two very powerful incentives were at work, two of the very strongest which have influence with mankind, love and a superstitious belief in an especial destiny of happiness, at the present moment on the very verge of realisation.
She believed profoundly in herself and in the suggestions of her own imagination. So fixed and unalterable was that belief that it amounted to positive knowledge, so far as it constituted a motive of action. In her strange youth wild dreams had possessed her, and some of them, often dreamed again, had become realities to her now. Her powers were natural, those gifts which from time to time are seen in men and women, which are alternately scoffed at as impostures, or accepted as facts, but which are never understood either by their possessor or by those who witness the results. She had from childhood the power to charm with eye and hand all living things, the fascination which takes hold of the consciousness through sight and touch and word, and lulls it to sleep. It was witchery, and she was called a witch. In earlier centuries her hideous fate would have been sealed from the first day when, under her childish gaze, a wolf that had been taken alive in the Bohemian forest crawled fawning to her feet, at the full length of its chain, and laid its savage head under her hand, and closed its bloodshot eyes and slept before her. Those who had seen had taken her and taught her how to use what she possessed according to their own shadowy beliefs and dim traditions of the half-forgotten magic in a distant land. They had filled her heart with longings and her brain with dreams, and she had grown up to believe that one day love would come suddenly upon her and bear her away through the enchanted gates of the earthly paradise; once only that love would come, and the supreme danger of her life would be that she should not know it when it was at hand.
And now she knew that she loved, for the place of her fondness for the one man had been taken by her passion for the other, and she felt without reasoning, where, before, she had tried to reason herself into feeling. The moment had come. She had seen the man in whom her happiness was to be, the time was short, the danger great if she should not grasp what her destiny would offer her but once. Had the Wanderer been by her side, she would have needed to ask no question, she would have known and been satisfied. But hours must pass before she could see him again, and every minute spent without him grew more full of anxiety and disturbing passion than the last. The wild love-blossom that springs into existence in a single moment has elements which do not enter into the gentler being of that other love which is sown in indifference, and which grows up in slowly increasing interest, tended and refreshed in the pleasant intercourse of close acquaintance, to bud and bloom at last as a mild-scented garden flower. Love at first sight is impatient, passionate, ruthless, cruel, as the year would be, if from the calendar of the season the months of slow transition were struck out; if the raging heat of August followed in one day upon the wild tempests of the winter; if the fruit of the vine but yesterday in leaf grew rich and black to-day, to be churned to foam to-morrow under the feet of the laughing wine treaders.
Unorna felt that the day would be intolerable if she could not hear from other lips the promise of a predestined happiness. She was not really in doubt, but she was under the imperious impulse of a passion which must needs find some response, even in the useless confirmation of its reality uttered by an indifferent person--the spirit of a mighty cry seeking its own echo in the echoless, flat waste of the Great Desert.
Then, too, she placed a sincere faith in the old man’s answers to her questions, regardless of the matter inquired into. She believed that in the mysterious condition between sleep and waking which she could command, the knowledge of things to be was with him as certainly as the memory of what had been and of what was even now passing in the outer world. To her, the one direction of the faculty seemed no less possible than the others, though she had not yet attained alone to the vision of the future. Hitherto the old man’s utterances had been fulfilled to the letter. More than once, as Keyork Arabian had hinted, she had consulted his second sight in preference to her own, and she had not been deceived. His greater learning and his vast experience lent to his sayings something divine in her eyes; she looked upon him as the Pythoness of Delphi looked upon the divinity of her inspiration.
The irresistible longing to hear the passionate pleadings of her own heart solemnly confirmed by the voice in which she trusted overcame at last every obstacle. Unorna bent over the sleeper, looking earnestly into his face, and she laid one hand upon his brow.
“You hear me,” she said, slowly and distinctly. “You are conscious of thought, and you see into the future.”
The massive head stirred, the long limbs moved uneasily under the white robe, the enormous, bony hands contracted, and in the cavernous eyes the great lids were slowly lifted. A dull stare met her look.
“Is it he?” she asked, speaking more quickly in spite of herself. “Is it he at last?”
There was no answer. The lips did not part, there was not even the attempt to speak. She had been sure that the one word would be spoken unhesitatingly, and the silence startled her and brought back the doubt which she had half forgotten.
“You must answer my question. I command you to answer me. Is it he?”
“You must tell me more before I can answer.”
The words came in a feeble piping voice, strangely out of keeping with the colossal frame and imposing features.
Unorna’s face was clouded, and the ready gleam of anger flashed in her eyes as it ever did at the smallest opposition to her will.
“Can you not see him?” she asked impatiently.
“I cannot see him unless you lead me to him and tell me where he is.”
“Where are you?”
“In your mind.”
“And what are you?”
“I am the image in your eyes.”
“There is another man in my mind,” said Unorna. “I command you to see him.”
“I see him. He is tall, pale, noble, suffering. You love him.”
“Is it he who shall be my life and my death? Is it he who shall love me as other women are not loved?”
The weak voice was still for a moment, and the face seemed covered with a veil of perplexity.
“I see with your eyes,” said the old man at last.
“And I command you to see into the future with your own!” cried Unorna, concentrating her terrible will as she grew more impatient.
There was an evident struggle in the giant’s mind, an effort to obey which failed to break down an obstacle. She bent over him eagerly and her whole consciousness was centered in the words she desired him to speak.
Suddenly the features relaxed into an expression of rest and satisfaction. There was something unearthly in the sudden smile that flickered over the old waxen face--it was as strange and unnatural as though the cold marble effigy upon a sepulchre had laughed aloud in the gloom of an empty church.
“I see. He will love you,” said the tremulous tones.
“Then it is he?”
“It is he.”
With a suppressed cry of triumph Unorna lifted her head and stood upright. Then she started violently and grew very pale.
“You have probably killed him and spoiled everything,” said a rich bass voice at her elbow--the very sub-bass of all possible voices.
Keyork Arabian was beside her. In her intense excitement she had not heard him enter the room, and he had surprised her at once in the breaking of their joint convention and in the revelation of her secret. If Unorna could be said to know the meaning of the word fear in any degree whatsoever, it was in relation to Keyork Arabian, the man who during the last few years had been her helper and associate in the great experiment. Of all men she had known in her life, he was the only one whom she felt to be beyond the influence of her powers, the only one whom she felt that she could not charm by word, or touch, or look. The odd shape of his head, she fancied, figured the outline and proportions of his intelligence, which was, as it were, pyramidal, standing upon a base so broad and firm as to place the centre of its ponderous gravity far beyond her reach to disturb. There was certainly no other being of material reality that could have made Unorna start and turn pale by its inopportune appearance.
“The best thing you can do is to put him to sleep at once,” said the little man. “You can be angry afterwards, and, I thank heaven, so can I--and shall.”
“Forget,” said Unorna, once more laying her hand upon the waxen brow. “Let it be as though I had not spoken with you. Drink, in your sleep, of the fountain of life, take new strength into your body and new blood into your heart. Live, and when I next wake you be younger by as many months as there shall pass hours till then. Sleep.”
A low sigh trembled in the hoary beard. The eyelids drooped over the sunken eyes, there was a slight motion of the limbs, and all was still, save for the soft and regular breathing.
“The united patience of the seven archangels, coupled with that of Job and Simon Stylites, would not survive your acquaintance for a day,” observed Keyork Arabian.
“Is he mine or yours?” Unorna asked, turning to him and pointing to the sleeper.
She was quite ready to face her companion after the first shock of his unexpected appearance. His small blue eyes sparkled angrily.
“I am not versed in the law concerning real estate in human kind in the Kingdom of Bohemia,” he answered. “You may have property in a couple of hundredweight, more or less, of old bones rather the worse for the wear and tear of a century, but I certainly have some ownership in the life. Without me, you would have been the possessor of a remarkably fine skeleton by this time--and of nothing more.”
As he spoke, his extraordinary voice ran over half a dozen notes of portentous depth, like the opening of a fugue on the pedals of an organ. Unorna laughed scornfully.
“He is mine, Keyork Arabian, alive or dead. If the experiment fails, and he dies, the loss is mine, not yours. Moreover, what I have done is done, and I will neither submit to your reproaches nor listen to your upbraidings. Is that enough?”
“Of its kind, quite. I will build an altar to Ingratitude, we will bury our friend beneath the shrine, and you shall serve in the temple. You could deify all the cardinal sins if you would only give your attention to the subject, merely by the monstrously imposing proportions you would know how to give them.”
“Does it ease you to make such an amazing noise?” inquired Unorna, raising her eyebrows.
“Immensely. Our friend cannot hear it, and you can. You dare to tell me that if he dies you are the only loser. Do fifty years of study count for nothing? Look at me. I am an old man, and unless I find the secret of life here, in this very room, before many years are over, I must die--die, do you understand? Do you know what it means to die? How can you comprehend that word--you girl, you child, you thing of five and twenty summers!”
“It was to be supposed that your own fears were at the root of your anger,” observed Unorna, sitting down upon her chair and calmly folding her hands as though to wait until the storm should pass over.
“Is there anything at the root of anything except Self? You moth, you butterfly, you thread of floating gossamer! How can you understand the incalculable value of Self--of that which is all to me and nothing to you, or which, being yours, is everything to you and to me nothing? You are so young--you still believe in things, and interests, and good and evil, and love and hate, truth and falsehood, and a hundred notions which are not facts, but only contrasts between one self and another! What were you doing here when I found you playing with life and death, perhaps with my life, for a gipsy trick, in the crazy delusion that this old parcel of humanity can see the shadows of things which are not yet? I saw, I heard. How could he answer anything save that which was in your own mind, when you were forcing him with your words and your eyes to make a reply of some sort, or perish? Ah! You see now. You understand now. I have opened your eyes a little. Why did he hesitate, and suffer? Because you asked that to which he knew there was no answer. And you tortured him with your will until his individuality fell into yours, and spoke your words.”
Unorna’s head sank a little and she covered her eyes. The truth of what he said flashed upon her suddenly and unexpectedly, bringing with it the doubt which had left her at the moment when the sleeper had spoken. She could not hide her discomfiture and Keyork Arabian saw his advantage.
“And for what?” he asked, beginning to pace the broad room. “To know whether a man will love you or not! You seem to have forgotten what you are. Is not such a poor and foolish thing as love at the command of those who can say to the soul, be this, or be that, and who are obeyed? Have you found a second Keyork Arabian, over whom your eyes have no power--neither the one nor the other?”
He laughed rather brutally at the thought of her greatest physical peculiarity, but then suddenly stopped short. She had lifted her face and those same eyes were fastened upon him, the black and the gray, in a look so savage and fierce that even he was checked, if not startled.
“They are certainly very remarkable eyes,” he said, more calmly, and with a certain uneasiness which Unorna did not notice. “I wonder whom you have found who is able to look you in the face without losing himself. I suppose it can hardly be my fascinating self whom you wish to enthrall,” he added, conscious after a moment’s trial that he was proof against her influence.
“Hardly,” answered Unorna, with a bitter laugh.
“If I were the happy man you would not need that means of bringing me to your feet. It is a pity that you do not want me. We should make a very happy couple. But there is much against me. I am an old man, Unorna. My figure was never of divine proportions, and as for my face, Nature made it against her will. I know all that--and yet, I was young once, and eloquent. I could make love then--I believe that I could still if it would amuse you.”
“Try it,” said Unorna, who, like most people, could not long be angry with the gnome-like little sage.
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{
"id": "3816"
}
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6
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I could make love--yes, and since you tell me to try, I will.”
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He came and stood before her, straightening his diminutive figure in a comical fashion as though he were imitating a soldier on parade.
“In the first place,” he said, “in order to appreciate my skill, you should realise the immense disadvantages under which I labour. I am a dwarf, my dear Unorna. In the presence of that kingly wreck of a Homeric man”--he pointed to the sleeper beside them--“I am a Thersites, if not a pigmy. To have much chance of success I should ask you to close your eyes, and to imagine that my stature matches my voice. That gift at least, I flatter myself, would have been appreciated on the plains of Troy. But in other respects I resemble neither the long-haired Greeks nor the trousered Trojans. I am old and hideous, and in outward appearance I am as like Socrates as in inward disposition I am totally different from him. Admit, since I admit it, that I am the ugliest and smallest man of your acquaintance.”
“It is not to be denied,” said Unorna with a smile.
“The admission will make the performance so much the more interesting. And now, as the conjurer says when he begins, observe that there is no deception. That is the figure of speech called lying, because there is to be nothing but deception from beginning to end. Did you ever consider the nature of a lie, Unorna? It is a very interesting subject.”
“I thought you were going to make love to me.”
“True; how easily one forgets those little things! And yet no woman ever forgave a man who forgot to make love when she expected him to do so. For a woman, who is a woman, never forgets to be exigent. And now there is no reprieve, for I have committed myself, am sentenced, and condemned to be made ridiculous in your eyes. Can there be anything more contemptible, more laughable, more utterly and hopelessly absurd, than an old and ugly man declaring his unrequited passion for a woman who might be his granddaughter? Is he not like a hoary old owl, who leaves his mousing to perch upon one leg and hoot love ditties at the evening star, or screech out amorous sonnets to the maiden moon?”
“Very like,” said Unorna with a laugh.
“And yet--my evening star--dear star of my fast-sinking evening--golden Unorna--shall I be cut off from love because my years are many? Or rather, shall I not love you the more, because the years that are left are few and scantily blessed? May not your dawn blend with my sunset and make together one short day?”
“That is very pretty,” said Unorna, thoughtfully. He had the power of making his speech sound like a deep, soft music.
“For what is love?” he asked. “Is it a garment, a jewel, a fanciful ornament which only boys and girls may wear upon a summer’s holiday? May we take it or leave it, as we please? Wear it, if it shows well upon our beauty, or cast it off for others to put on when we limp aside out of the race of fashion to halt and breathe before we die? Is love beauty? Is love youth? Is love yellow hair or black? Is love the rose upon the lip or the peach blossom in the cheek, that only the young may call it theirs? Is it an outward grace, which can live but so long as the other outward graces are its companions, to perish when the first gray hair streaks the dark locks? Is it a glass, shivered by the first shock of care as a mirror by a sword-stroke? Is it a painted mask, washed colourless by the first rain of autumn tears? Is it a flower, so tender that it must perish miserably in the frosty rime of earliest winter? Is love the accident of youth, the complement of a fresh complexion, the corollary of a light step, the physical concomitant of swelling pulses and unstrained sinews?”
Keyork Arabian laughed softly. Unorna was grave and looked up into his face, resting her chin upon her hand.
“If that is love, if that is the idol of your shrine, the vision of your dreams, the familiar genius of your earthly paradise, why then, indeed, he who worships by your side, and who would share the habitation of your happiness, must wear Absalom’s anointed curls and walk with Agag’s delicate step. What matter if he be but a half-witted puppet? He is fair. What matter if he be foolish, faithless, forgetful, inconstant, changeable as the tide of the sea? He is young. His youth shall cover all his deficiencies and wipe out all his sins! Imperial love, monarch and despot of the human soul, is become the servant of boys for the wage of a girl’s first thoughtless kiss. If that is love let it perish out of the world, with the bloom of the wood violet in spring, with the flutter of the bright moth in June, with the song of the nightingale and the call of the mocking-bird, with all things that are fair and lovely and sweet but for a few short days. If that is love, why then love never made a wound, nor left a scar, nor broke a heart in this easy-going rose-garden of a world. The rose blooms, blows, fades and withers and feels nothing. If that is love, we may yet all develop into passionless promoters of a flat and unprofitable commonwealth; the earth may yet be changed to a sweetmeat for us to feed on, and the sea to sugary lemonade for us to drink, as the mad philosopher foretold, and we may yet all be happy after love has left us.”
Unorna smiled, while he laughed again.
“Good,” she said. “You tell me what love is not, but you have not told me what it is.”
“Love is the immortal essence of mortal passion, together they are as soul and body, one being; separate them, and the body without the soul is a monster, the soul without the body is no longer human, nor earthly, nor real to us at all, though still divine. Love is the world’s maker, master and destroyer, the magician whose word can change water to blood, and blood to fire, the dove to a serpent, and the serpent to a dove--ay, and can make of that same dove an eagle, with an eagle’s beak, and talons, and air-cleaving wing-stroke. Love is the spirit of life and the angel of death. He speaks, and the thorny wilderness of the lonely heart is become a paradise of flowers. He is silent, and the garden is but a blackened desert over which a destroying flame has passed in the arms of the east wind. Love stands at the gateway of each human soul, holding in his hands a rose and a drawn sword--the sword is for the many, the rose for the one.”
He sighed and was silent. Unorna looked at him curiously.
“Have you ever loved, that you should talk like that?” she asked. He turned upon her almost fiercely.
“Loved? Yes, as you can never love; as you, in your woman’s heart, can never dream of loving--with every thought, with every fibre, with every pulse, with every breath; with a love that is burning the old oak through and through, root and branch, core and knot, to feathery ashes that you may scatter with a sigh--the only sigh you will ever breathe for me, Unorna. Have I loved? Can I love? Do I love to-day as I loved yesterday and shall love to-morrow? Ah, child! That you should ask that, with your angel’s face, when I am in hell for you! When I would give my body to death and my soul to darkness for a touch of your hand, for as much kindness and gentleness in a word from your dear lips as you give the beggars in the street! When I would tear out my heart with my hands to feed the very dog that fawns on you--and who is more to you than I, because he is yours, and all that is yours I love, and worship, and adore!”
Unorna had looked up and smiled at first, believing that it was all but a comedy, as he had told her that it should be. But as he spoke, and the strong words chased each other in the torrent of his passionate speech, she was startled and surprised. There was a force in his language, a fiery energy in his look, a ring of half-desperate hope in his deep voice, which moved her to strange thoughts. His face, too, was changed and ennobled, his gestures larger, even his small stature ceased, for once, to seem dwarfish and gnome-like.
“Keyork Arabian, is it possible that you love me?” she cried, in her wonder.
“Possible? True? There is neither truth nor possibility in anything else for me, in anything, in any one, but you, Unorna. The service of my love fills the days and the nights and the years with you--fills the world with you only; makes heaven to be on earth, since heaven is but the air that is made bright with your breath, as the temple of all temples is but the spot whereon your dear feet stand. The light of life is where you are, the darkness of death is everywhere where you are not. But I am condemned to die, cut off, predestined to be lost--for you have no pity, Unorna, you cannot find it in you to be sorry for the poor old man whose last pulse will beat for you; whose last word will be your name; whose last look upon your beauty will end the dream in which he lived his life. What can it be to you, that I love you so? Why should it be anything to you? When I am gone--with the love of you in my heart, Unorna--when they have buried the ugly old body out of your sight, you will not even remember that I was once your companion, still less that I knelt before you, that I kissed the ground on which you stood; that I loved you as men love whose hearts are breaking, that I touched the hem of your garment and was for one moment young--that I besought you to press my hand but once, with one thought of kindness, with one last and only word of human pity--” He broke off suddenly, and there was a tremor in his voice which lent intense expression to the words. He was kneeling upon one knee beside Unorna, but between her and the light, so that she saw his face indistinctly. She could not but pity him. She took his outstretched hand in hers.
“Poor Keyork!” she said, very kindly and gently. “How could I have ever guessed all this?”
“It would have been exceedingly strange if you had,” answered Keyork, in a tone that made her start.
Then a magnificent peal of bass laughter rolled through the room, as the gnome sprang suddenly to his feet.
“Did I not warn you?” asked Keyork, standing back and contemplating Unorna’s surprised face with delight. “Did I not tell you that I was going to make love to you? That I was old and hideous and had everything against me? That it was all a comedy for your amusement? That there was to be nothing but deception from beginning to end? That I was like a decrepit owl screeching at the moon, and many other things to a similar effect?”
Unorna smiled somewhat thoughtfully.
“You are the greatest of great actors, Keyork Arabian. There is something diabolical about you. I sometimes almost think that you are the devil himself!”
“Perhaps I am,” suggested the little man cheerfully.
“Do you know that there is a horror about all this?” Unorna rose to her feet. Her smile had vanished and she seemed to feel cold.
As though nothing had happened, Keyork began to make his daily examination of his sleeping patient, applying his thermometer to the body, feeling the pulse, listening to the beatings of the heart with his stethoscope, gently drawing down the lower lid of one of the eyes to observe the colour of the membrane, and, in a word, doing all those things which he was accustomed to do under the circumstances with a promptness and briskness which showed how little he feared that the old man would wake under his touch. He noted some of the results of his observations in a pocket-book. Unorna stood still and watched him.
“Do you remember ever to have been in the least degree like other people?” she asked, speaking after a long silence, as he was returning his notes to his pocket.
“I believe not,” he answered. “Nature spared me that indignity--or denied me that happiness--as you may look at it. I am not like other people, as you justly remark. I need not say that it is the other people who are the losers.”
“The strange thing is, that you should be able to believe so much of yourself when you find it so hard to believe good of your fellow-men.”
“I object to the expression, ‘fellow-men,’” returned Keyork promptly. “I dislike phrases, and, generally, maxims as a whole, and all their component parts. A woman must have invented that particular phrase of yours in order to annoy a man she disliked.”
“And why, if you please?”
“Because no one ever speaks of ‘fellow-women.’ The question of woman’s duty to man has been amply discussed since the days of Menes the Thinite--but no one ever heard of a woman’s duty to her fellow-women; unless, indeed, her duty is to try and outdo them by fair means or foul. Then why talk of man and his fellow-men? I can put the wisest rule of life into two short phrases.”
“Give me the advantage of your wisdom.”
“The first rule is, Beware of women.”
“And the second?”
“Beware of men,” laughed the little sage. “Observe the simplicity and symmetry. Each rule has three words, two of which are the same in each, so that you have the result of the whole world’s experience at your disposal at the comparatively small expenditure of one verb, one preposition, and two nouns.”
“There is little room for love in your system,” remarked Unorna, “for such love, for instance, as you described to me a few minutes ago.”
“There is too much room for it in yours,” retorted Keyork. “Your system is constantly traversed in all directions by bodies, sometimes nebulous and sometimes fiery, which move in unknown orbits at enormous rates of speed. In astronomy they call them comets, and astronomers would be much happier without them.”
“I am not an astronomer.”
“Fortunately for the peace of the solar system. You have been sending your comets dangerously near to our sick planet,” he added, pointing to the sleeper. “If you do it again he will break up into asteroids. To use that particularly disagreeable and suggestive word invented by men, he will die.”
“He seems no worse,” said Unorna, contemplating the massive, peaceful face.
“I do not like the word ‘seems,’” answered Keyork. “It is the refuge of inaccurate persons, unable to distinguish between facts and appearances.”
“You object to everything to-day. Are there any words which I may use without offending your sense of fitness in language?”
“None which do not express a willing affirmation of all I say. I will receive any original speech on your part at the point of the sword. You have done enough damage to-day, without being allowed the luxury of dismembering common sense. Seems, you say! By all that is unholy! By Eblis, Ahriman, and the Three Black Angels! He is worse, and there is no seeming. The heat is greater, the pulse is weaker, the heart flutters like a sick bird.”
Unorna’s face showed her anxiety.
“I am sorry,” she said, in a low voice.
“Sorry! No doubt you are. It remains to be seen whether your sorrow can be utilized as a simple, or macerated in tears to make a tonic, or sublimated to produce a corrosive which will destroy the canker, death. But be sorry by all means. It occupies your mind without disturbing me, or injuring the patient. Be sure that if I can find an active application for your sentiment, I will give you the rare satisfaction of being useful.”
“You have the art of being the most intolerably disagreeable of living men when it pleases you.”
“When you displease me, you should say. I warn you that if he dies--our friend here--I will make further studies in the art of being unbearable to you. You will certainly be surprised by the result.”
“Nothing that you could say or do would surprise me.”
“Indeed? We shall see.”
“I will leave you to your studies, then. I have been here too long as it is.”
She moved and arranged the pillow under the head of the sleeping giant and adjusted the folds of his robe. Her touch was tender and skilful in spite of her ill-suppressed anger. Then she turned away and went towards the door. Keyork Arabian watched her until her hand was upon the latch. His sharp eyes twinkled, as though he expected something amusing to occur.
“Unorna!” he said, suddenly, in an altered voice. She stopped and looked back.
“Well?”
“Do not be angry, Unorna. Do not go away like this.”
Unorna turned, almost fiercely, and came back a step.
“Keyork Arabian, do you think you can play upon me as on an instrument? Do you suppose that I will come and go at your word like a child--or like a dog? Do you think you can taunt me at one moment, and flatter me the next, and find my humour always at your command?”
The gnome-like little man looked down, made a sort of inclination of his short body, and laid his hand upon his heart.
“I was never presumptuous, my dear lady. I never had the least intention of taunting you, as you express it, and as for your humour--can you suppose that I could expect to command, where it is only mine to obey?”
“It is of no use to talk in that way,” said Unorna, haughtily. “I am not prepared to be deceived by your comedy this time.”
“Nor I to play one. Since I have offended you, I ask your pardon. Forgive the expression, for the sake of the meaning; the thoughtless word for the sake of the unworded thought.”
“How cleverly you turn and twist both thoughts and words!”
“Do not be so unkind, dear friend.”
“Unkind to you? I wish I had the secret of some unkindness that you should feel!”
“The knowledge of what I can feel is mine alone,” answered Keyork, with a touch of sadness. “I am not a happy man. The world, for me, holds but one interest and one friendship. Destroy the one, or embitter the other, and Keyork’s remnant of life becomes but a foretaste of death.”
“And that interest--that friendship--where are they?” asked Unorna in a tone still bitter, but less scornful than before.
“Together, in this room, and both in danger, the one through your young haste and impetuosity, the other through my wretched weakness in being made angry; forgive me, Unorna, as I ask forgiveness----” “Your repentance is too sudden; it savours of the death-bed.”
“Small wonder, when my life is in the balance.”
“Your life?” She uttered the question incredulously, but not without curiosity.
“My life--and for your word,” he answered, earnestly. He spoke so impressively, and in so solemn a tone, that Unorna’s face became grave. She advanced another step towards him, and laid her hand upon the back of the chair in which she previously had sat.
“We must understand each other--to-day or never,” she said. “Either we must part and abandon the great experiment--for, if we part, it must be abandoned--” “We cannot part, Unorna.”
“Then, if we are to be associates and companions--” “Friends,” said Keyork in a low voice.
“Friends? Have you laid the foundation for a friendship between us? You say that your life is in the balance. That is a figure of speech, I suppose. Or has your comedy another act? I can believe well enough that your greatest interest in life lies there, upon that couch, asleep. I know that you can do nothing without me, as you know it yourself. But in your friendship I can never trust--never! --still less can I believe that any words of mine can affect your happiness, unless they be those you need for the experiment itself. Those, at least, I have not refused to pronounce.”
While she was speaking, Keyork began to walk up and down the room, in evident agitation, twisting his fingers and bending down his head.
“My accursed folly!” he exclaimed, as though speaking to himself. “My damnable ingenuity in being odious! It is not to be believed! That a man of my age should think one thing and say another--like a tetchy girl or a spoilt child! The stupidity of the thing! And then, to have the idiotic utterances of the tongue registered and judged as a confession of faith--or rather, of faithlessness! But it is only just--it is only right--Keyork Arabian’s self is ruined again by Keyork Arabian’s vile speeches, which have no more to do with his self than the clouds on earth have with the sun above them! Ruined, ruined--lost, this time. Cut off from the only living being he respects--the only being whose respect he covets; sent back to die in his loneliness, to perish like a friendless beast, as he is, to the funereal music of his own irrepressible snarling! To growl himself out of the world, like a broken-down old tiger in the jungle, after scaring away all possible peace and happiness and help with his senseless growls! Ugh! It is perfectly just, it is absolutely right and supremely horrible to think of! A fool to the last, Keyork, as you always were--and who would make a friend of such a fool?”
Unorna leaned upon the back of the chair watching him, and wondering whether, after all, he were not in earnest this time. He jerked out his sentences excitedly, striking his hands together and then swinging his arms in strange gestures. His tone, as he gave utterance to his incoherent self-condemnation, was full of sincere conviction and of anger against himself. He seemed not to see Unorna, nor to notice her presence in the room. Suddenly, he stopped, looked at her and came towards her. His manner became very humble.
“You are right, my dear lady,” he said. “I have no claim to your forbearance for my outrageous humours. I have offended you, insulted you, spoken to you as no man should speak to any woman. I cannot even ask you to forgive me, and, if I tell you that I am sorry, you will not believe me. Why should you? But you are right. This cannot go on. Rather than run the risk of again showing you my abominable temper, I will go away.”
His voice trembled and his bright eyes seemed to grow dull and misty.
“Let this be our parting,” he continued, as though mastering his emotion. “I have no right to ask anything, and yet I ask this of you. When I have left you, when you are safe for ever from my humours and my tempers and myself--then, do not think unkindly of Keyork Arabian. He would have seemed the friend he is, but for his unruly tongue.”
Unorna hesitated a moment. Then she put out her hand, convinced of his sincerity in spite of herself.
“Let bygones be bygones, Keyork,” she said. “You must not go, for I believe you.”
At the words, the light returned to his eyes, and a look of ineffable beatitude overspread the face which could be so immovably expressionless.
“You are as kind as you are good, Unorna, and as good as you are beautiful,” he said, and with a gesture which would have been courtly in a man of nobler stature, but which was almost grotesque in such a dwarf, he raised her fingers to his lips.
This time, no peal of laugher followed to destroy the impression he had produced upon Unorna. She let her hand rest in his a few seconds, and then gently withdrew it.
“I must be going,” she said.
“So soon?” exclaimed Keyork regretfully. “There were many things I had wished to say to you to-day, but if you have no time----” “I can spare a few minutes,” answered Unorna, pausing. “What is it?”
“One thing is this.” His face had again become impenetrable as a mask of old ivory, and he spoke in his ordinary way. “This is the question. I was in the Teyn Kirche before I came here.”
“In church!” exclaimed Unorna in some surprise, and with a slight smile.
“I frequently go to church,” answered Keyork gravely. “While there, I met an old acquaintance of mine, a strange fellow whom I have not seen for years. The world is very small. He is a great traveller--a wanderer through the world.”
Unorna looked up quickly, and a very slight colour appeared in her cheeks.
“Who is he?” she asked, trying to seem indifferent. “What is his name?”
“His name? It is strange, but I cannot recall it. He is very tall, wears a dark beard, has a pale, thoughtful face. But I need not describe him, for he told me that he had been with you this morning. That is not the point.”
He spoke carelessly and scarcely glanced at Unorna while speaking.
“What of him?” she inquired, trying to seem as indifferent as her companion.
“He is a little mad, poor man, that is all. It struck me that, if you would, you might save him. I know something of his story, though not much. He once loved a young girl, now doubtless dead, but whom he still believes to be alive, and he spends--or wastes--his life in a useless search for her. You might cure him of the delusion.”
“How do you know that the girl is dead?”
“She died in Egypt, four years ago,” answered Keyork. “They had taken her there in the hope of saving her, for she was at death’s door already, poor child.”
“But if you convince him of that.”
“There is no convincing him, and if he were really convinced he would die himself. I used to take an interest in the man, and I know that you could cure him in a simpler and safer way. But of course it lies with you.”
“If you wish it, I will try,” Unorna answered, turning her face from the light. “But he will probably not come back to me.”
“He will. I advised him very strongly to come back, very strongly indeed. I hope I did right. Are you displeased?”
“Not at all!” Unorna laughed a little. “And if he comes, how am I to convince him that he is mistaken, and that the girl is dead?”
“That is very simple. You will hypnotise him, he will yield very easily, and you will suggest to him very forcibly to forget the girl’s existence. You can suggest to him to come back to-morrow and the next day, or as often as you please, and you can renew the suggestion each time. In a week he will have forgotten--as you know people can forget--entirely, totally, without hope of recalling what is lost.”
“That is true,” said Unorna, in a low voice. “Are you sure that the effect will be permanent?” she asked with sudden anxiety.
“A case of the kind occurred in Hungary last year. The cure was effected in Pesth. I was reading it only a few months ago. The oblivion was still complete, as long as six months after the treatment, and there seems no reason to suppose that the patient’s condition will change. I thought it might interest you to try it.”
“It will interest me extremely. I am very grateful to you for telling me about him.”
Unorna had watched her companion narrowly during the conversation, expecting him to betray his knowledge of a connection between the Wanderer’s visit and the strange question she had been asking of the sleeper when Keyork had surprised her. She was agreeably disappointed in this however. He spoke with a calmness and ease of manner which disarmed suspicion.
“I am glad I did right,” said he.
He stood at the foot of the couch upon which the sleeper was lying, and looked thoughtfully and intently at the calm features.
“We shall never succeed in this way,” he said at last. “This condition may continue indefinitely, till you are old, and I--until I am older than I am by many years. He may not grow weaker, but he cannot grow stronger. Theories will not renew tissues.”
Unorna looked up.
“That has always been the question,” she answered. “At least, you have told me so. Will lengthened rest and perfect nourishment alone give a new impulse to growth or will they not?”
“They will not. I am sure of it now. We have arrested decay, or made it so slow as to be imperceptible. But we have made many attempts to renew the old frame, and we are no farther advanced than we were nearly four years ago. Theories will not make tissues.”
“What will?”
“Blood,” answered Keyork Arabian very softly.
“I have heard of that being done for young people in illness,” said Unorna.
“It has never been done as I would do it,” replied the gnome, shaking his head and gathering his great beard in his hand, as he gazed at the sleeper.
“What would you do?”
“I would make it constant for a day, or for a week if I could--a constant circulation; the young heart and the old should beat together; it could be done in the lethargic sleep--an artery and a vein--a vein and an artery--I have often thought of it; it could not fail. The new young blood would create new tissue, because it would itself constantly be renewed in the young body which is able to renew it, only expending itself in the old. The old blood would itself become young again as it passed to the younger man.”
“A man!” exclaimed Unorna.
“Of course. An animal would not do, because you could not produce the lethargy nor make use of suggestion for healing purposes--” “But it would kill him!”
“Not at all, as I would do it, especially if the young man were very strong and full of life. When the result is obtained, an antiseptic ligature, suggestion of complete healing during sleep, proper nourishment, such as we are giving at present, by recalling the patient to the hypnotic state, sleep again, and so on; in eight and forty hours your young man would be waked and would never know what had happened to him--unless he felt a little older, by nervous sympathy,” added the sage with a low laugh.
“Are you perfectly sure of what you say?” asked Unorna eagerly.
“Absolutely. I have examined the question for years. There can be no doubt of it. Food can maintain life, blood alone can renew it.”
“Have you everything you need here?” inquired Unorna.
“Everything. There is no hospital in Europe that has the appliances we have prepared for every emergency.”
He looked at her face curiously. It was ghastly pale with excitement. The pupil of her brown eye was so widely expanded that the iris looked black, while the aperture of the gray one was contracted to the size of a pin’s head, so that the effect was almost that of a white and sightless ball.
“You seem interested,” said the gnome.
“Would such a man--such a man as Israel Kafka answer the purpose?” she asked.
“Admirably,” replied the other, beginning to understand.
“Keyork Arabian,” whispered Unorna, coming close to him and bending down to his ear, “Israel Kafka is alone under the palm tree where I always sit. He is asleep, and he will not wake.”
The gnome looked up and nodded gravely. But she was gone almost before she had finished speaking the words.
“As upon an instrument,” said the little man, quoting Unorna’s angry speech. “Truly I can play upon you, but it is a strange music.”
Half an hour later Unorna returned to her place among the flowers, but Israel Kafka was gone.
|
{
"id": "3816"
}
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7
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None
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The Wanderer, when Keyork Arabian had left him, had intended to revisit Unorna without delay, but he had not proceeded far in the direction of her house when he turned out of his way and entered a deserted street which led towards the river. He walked slowly, drawing his furs closely about him, for it was very cold.
He found himself in one of those moments of life in which the presentiment of evil almost paralyses the mind’s power of making any decision. In general, a presentiment is but the result upon the consciousness of conscious or unconscious fear. This fear is very often the natural consequence of the reaction which, in melancholy natures, comes almost inevitably after a sudden and unexpected satisfaction or after a period in which the hopes of the individual have been momentarily raised by some unforeseen circumstance. It is by no means certain that hope is of itself a good thing. The wise and mournful soul prefers the blessedness of that non-expectancy which shall not be disappointed, to the exhilarating pleasures of an anticipation which may prove empty. In this matter lies one of the great differences between the normal moral state of the heathen and that of the Christian. The Greek hoped for all things in this world and for nothing in the next; the Christian, on the contrary, looks for a happiness to come hereafter, while fundamentally denying the reality of any earthly joy whatsoever in the present. Man, however, is so constituted as to find it almost impossible to put faith in either bliss alone, without helping his belief by borrowing some little refreshment from the hope of the other. The wisest of the Greeks believed the soul to be immortal; the sternest of Christians cannot forget that once or twice in his life he had been contemptibly happy, and condemns himself for secretly wishing that he might be as happy again before all is over. Faith is the evidence of things unseen, but hope is the unreasoning belief that unseen things may soon become evident. The definition of faith puts earthly disappointment out of the question; that of hope introduces it into human affairs as a constant and imminent probability.
The development of psychologic research in our day has proved beyond a doubt that individuals of a certain disposition may be conscious of events actually occurring, or which have recently occurred, at a great distance; but it has not shown satisfactorily that things yet to happen are foreshadowed by that restless condition of the sensibilities which we call presentiment. We may, and perhaps must, admit that all that is or has been produces a real and perceptible impression upon all else that is. But there is as yet no good reason for believing that an impression of what shall be can be conveyed by anticipation--without reasoning--to the mind of man.
But though the realisation of a presentiment may be as doubtful as any event depending upon chance alone, yet the immense influence which a mere presentiment may exercise is too well known to be denied. The human intelligence has a strong tendency to believe in its own reasonings, of which, indeed, the results are often more accurate and reliable than those reached by the physical perceptions alone. The problems which can be correctly solved by inspection are few indeed compared with those which fall within the province of logic. Man trusts to his reason, and then often confounds the impressions produced by his passions with the results gained by semi-conscious deduction. His love, his hate, his anger create fears, and these supply him with presentiments which he is inclined to accept as so many well-reasoned grounds of action. If he is often deceived, he becomes aware of his mistake, and, going to the other extreme, considers a presentiment as a sort of warning that the contrary of what he expects will take place; if he chances to be often right he grows superstitious.
The lonely man who was pacing the icy pavement of the deserted street on that bitter winter’s day felt the difficulty very keenly. He would not yield and he could not advance. His heart was filled with forebodings which his wisdom bade him treat with indifference, while his passion gave them new weight and new horror with every minute that passed.
He had seen with his eyes and heard with his ears. Beatrice had been before him, and her voice had reached him among the voices of thousands, but now, since the hours has passed and he had not found her, it was as though he had been near her in a dream, and the strong certainty took hold of him that she was dead and that he had looked upon her wraith in the shadowy church.
He was a strong man, not accustomed to distrust his senses, and his reason opposed itself instantly to the suggestion of the supernatural. He had many times, on entering a new city, felt himself suddenly elated by the irresistible belief that his search was at an end, and that within a few hours he must inevitably find her whom he had sought so long. Often as he passed through the gates of some vast burying-place, he had almost hesitated to walk through the silent ways, feeling all at once convinced that upon the very first headstone he was about to see the name that was ever in his heart. But the expectation of final defeat, like the anticipation of final success, had been always deceived. Neither living nor dead had he found her.
Two common, reasonable possibilities lay before him, and two only. He had either seen Beatrice, or he had not. If she had really been in the Teyn Kirche, she was in the city and not far from him. If she had not been there, he had been deceived by an accidental but extraordinary likeness. Within the logical concatenation of cause and effect there was no room for any other supposition, and it followed that his course was perfectly clear. He must continue his search until he should find the person he had seen, and the result would be conclusive, for he would again see the same face and hear the same voice. Reason told him that he had in all likelihood been mistaken after all. Reason reminded him that the church had been dark, the multitude of worshippers closely crowded together, the voices that sang almost innumerable and wholly undistinguishable from each other. Reason showed him a throng of possibilities, all pointing to an error of his perceptions and all in direct contradiction with the one fact which his loving instinct held for true.
The fear of evil, the presentiment of death, defied logic and put its own construction and interpretation upon the strange event. He neither believed, nor desired to believe, in a supernatural visitation, yet the inexplicable certainty of having seen a ghostly vision overwhelmed reason and all her arguments. Beatrice was dead. Her spirit had passed in that solemn hour when the Wanderer had stood in the dusky church; he had looked upon her shadowy wraith, and had heard the echo of a voice from beyond the stars, whose crystal tones already swelled the diviner harmony of an angelic strain.
The impression was so strong at first as to be but one step removed from conviction. The shadow of a great mourning fell upon him, of a grief too terrible for words, too solemn for tears, too strong to find any expression save in death itself. He walked heavily, bending his head, his eyes half closed as though in bodily pain, the icy pavement rang like iron under his tread, the frozen air pierced through him, as his sorrow pierced his heart, the gloom of the fast-sinking winter’s day deepened as the darkness in his own soul. He, who was always alone, knew at last what loneliness could mean. While she had lived she had been with him always, a living, breathing woman, visible to his inner eyes, speaking to his inward hearing, waking in his sleepless love. He had sought her with restless haste and untiring strength through the length and breadth of the whole world, but yet she had never left him, he had never been separated from her for one moment, never, in the years of his wandering, had he entered the temple of his heart without finding her in its most holy place. Men had told him that she was dead, but he had looked within himself and had seen that she was still alive; the dread of reading her sacred name carved upon the stone that covered her resting-place, had chilled him and made his sight tremble, but he had entered the shrine of his soul and had found her again, untouched by death, unchanged by years, living, loved, and loving. But now, when he shut out the dismal street from view, and went to the sanctuary and kneeled upon the threshold, he saw but a dim vision, as of something lying upon an altar in the dark, something shrouded in white, something shapely and yet shapeless, something that had been and was not any more.
He reached the end of the street, but he felt a reluctance to leave it, and turned back again, walking still more slowly and heavily than before. So far as any outward object or circumstance could be said to be in harmony with his mood, the dismal lane, the failing light, the bitter air, were at that moment sympathetic to him. The tomb itself is not more sepulchral than certain streets and places in Prague on a dark winter’s afternoon. In the certainty that the last and the greatest of misfortunes had befallen him, the Wanderer turned back into the gloomy by-way as the pale, wreathing ghosts, fearful of the sharp daylight and the distant voices of men, sink back at dawn into the graves out of which they have slowly risen to the outer air in the silence of the night.
Death, the arch-steward of eternity, walks the bounds of man’s entailed estate, and the headstones of men’s graves are landmarks in the great possession committed to his stewardship, enclosing within their narrow ring the wretched plot of land which makes up all of life’s inheritance. From ever to always the generations of men do bondsmen’s service in that single field, to plough it and sow it, and harrow it and water it, to lay the sickle to the ripe corn if so be that their serfdom falls in the years of plenty and the ear is full, to eat the bread of tears, if their season of servitude be required of them in a time of scarcity and famine. Bondsmen of death, from birth, they are sent forth out of the sublime silence of the pathless forest which hems in the open glebe land of the present and which is eternity, past and to come; bondsmen of death, from youth to age, they join in the labour of the field, they plough, they sow, they reap, perhaps, tears they shed many, and of laughter there is also a little amongst them; bondsmen of death, to the last, they are taken in the end, when they have served their tale of years, many or few, and they are led from furrow and grass land, willing or unwilling, mercifully or cruelly, to the uttermost boundary, and they are thrust out quickly into the darkness whence they came. For their place is already filled, and the new husbandmen, their children, have in their turn come into the field, to eat of the fruit they sowed, to sow in turn a seed of which they themselves shall not see the harvest, whose sheaves others shall bind, whose ears others shall thresh, and of whose corn others shall make bread after them. With our eyes we may yet see the graves of two hundred generations of men, whose tombs serve but to mark that boundary more clearly, whose fierce warfare, when they fought against the master, could not drive back that limit by a handbreadth, whose uncomplaining labour, when they accepted their lot patiently, earned them not one scant foot of soil wherewith to broaden their inheritance as reward for their submission; and of them all, neither man nor woman was ever forgotten in the day of reckoning, nor was one suffered to linger in the light. Death will bury a thousand generations more, in graves as deep, strengthening year by year the strong chain of his grim landmarks. He will remember us every one when the time comes; to some of us he will vouchsafe a peaceful end, but some shall pass away in mortal agony, and some shall be dragged unconscious to the other side; but all must go. Some shall not see him till he is at hand, and some shall dream of him in year-long dreams of horror, to be taken unawares at the last. He will remember us every one and will come to us, and the place of our rest shall be marked for centuries, for years, or for seconds, for each a stone, or a few green sods laid upon a mound beneath the sky, or the ripple on a changing wave when the loaded sack has slipped from the smooth plank, and the sound of a dull splash has died away in the wind. There be strong men, as well as weak, who shudder and grow cold when they think of that yet undated day which must close with its black letter their calendar of joy and sorrow; there are weaklings, as well as giants, who fear death for those they love, but who fear not anything else at all. The master treats courage and cowardice alike; Achilles and Thersites must alike perish, and none will be so bold as to say that he can tell the dust of the misshapen varlet from the ashes of the swift-footed destroyer, whose hair was once so bright, whose eyes were so fierce, whose mighty heart was so slothless, so wrathful, so inexorable and so brave.
The Wanderer was of those who dread nothing save for the one dearly-beloved object, but who, when that fear is once roused by a real or an imaginary danger, can suffer in one short moment the agony which should be distributed through a whole lifetime. The magnitude of his passion could lend to the least thought or presentiment connected with it the force of a fact and the overwhelming weight of a real calamity.
In order to feel any great or noble passion a man must have an imagination both great and sensitive in at least one direction. The execution of a rare melody demands as a prime condition an instrument of wide compass and delicate construction, and one of even more rich and varied capabilities is needed to render those grand harmonies which are woven in the modulation of sonorous chords. A skilful hand may draw a scale from wooden blocks set upon ropes of straw, but the great musician must hold the violin, or must feel the keys of the organ under his fingers and the responsive pedals at his feet, before he can expect to interpret fittingly the immortal thought of the composer. The strings must vibrate in perfect tune, the priceless wood must be seasoned and penetrated with the melodies of years, and scores of years, the latent music must be already trembling to be free, before the hand that draws the bow can command the ears and hearts of those who hear. So, too, love, the chief musician of this world, must find an instrument worthy of his touch before he can show all his power, and make heart and soul ring with the lofty strains of a sublime passion. Not every one knows what love means; few indeed know all that love can mean. There is no more equality among men than there is likeness between them, and no two are alike. The many have little, the few have much. To the many is given the faint perception of higher things, which is either the vestige, or the promise, of a nobler development, past or yet to come. As through a veil they see the line of beauty which it is not theirs to trace; as in a dream they hear the succession of sweet tones which they can themselves never bring together, though their half-grown instinct feels a vague satisfaction in the sequence; as from another world, they listen to the poet’s song, wondering, admiring, but powerless over the great instrument of human speech, from whose 15,000 keys their touch can draw but the dull, tuneless prose of daily question and answer; as in a mirage of things unreal, they see the great deeds that are done in their time for love or hate, for race or country, for ambition and for vengeance, but though they see the result, and know the motive, the inward meaning and spirit of it all escapes them. It is theirs to be, and existence is in itself their all. To think, to create, to act, to feel can be only for the few. To one is given the transcendent genius that turns the very stones along life’s road to precious gems of thought; whose gift it is to find speech in dumb things and eloquence in the ideal half of the living world; to whom sorrow is a melody and joy sweet music; to whom the humblest effort of a humble life can furnish an immortal lyric, and in whom one thought of the Divine can inspire a sublime hymn. Another stoops and takes a handful of clay from the earth, and with the pressure of his fingers moulds it to the reality of an unreal image seen in dreams; or, standing before the vast, rough block of marble, he sees within the mass the perfection of a faultless form--he lays the chisel to the stone, the mallet strikes the steel, one by one the shapeless fragments fly from the shapely limbs, the matchless curves are uncovered, the breathing mouth smiles through the petrifaction of a thousand ages, the shroud of stone falls from the godlike brow, and the Hermes of Olympia stands forth in all his deathless beauty. Another is born to the heritage of this world’s power, fore-destined to rule and fated to destroy; the naked sword of destiny lies in his cradle; the axe of a king-maker awaits the awakening of his strength; the sceptre of supreme empire hangs within his reach. Unknown, he dreams and broods over the future; unheeded, he begins to move among his fellows; a smile, half of encouragement, half of indifference, greets his first effort; he advances a little farther, and thoughtful men look grave, another step, and suddenly all mankind cries out and faces him and would beat him back; but it is too late; one struggle more, and the hush of a great and unknown fear falls on the wrangling nations; they are silent, and the world is his. He is the man who is already thinking when others have scarcely begun to feel; who is creating before the thoughts of his rivals have reached any conclusion; who acts suddenly, terribly and irresistibly, before their creations have received life. And yet, the greatest and the richest inheritance of all is not his, for it has fallen to another, to the man of heart, and it is the inheritance of the kingdom of love.
In all ages the reason of the world has been at the mercy of brute force. The reign of law has never had more than a passing reality, and never can have more than that so long as man is human. The individual intellect and the aggregate intelligence of nations and races have alike perished in the struggles of mankind, to revive again, indeed, but as surely to be again put to the edge of the sword. Here and there great thoughts and great masterpieces have survived the martyrdom of a thinker, the extinction of a school, the death of a poet, the wreck of a high civilisation. Socrates is murdered with the creed of immortality on his very lips; hardly had he spoken the wonderful words recorded in the _Phaedo_ when the fatal poison sent its deathly chill through his limbs; the Greeks are gone, yet the Hermes of Olympia remains, mutilated and maimed, indeed, but faultless still, and still supreme. The very name of Homer is grown wellnigh as mythic as his blindness. There are those to-day who, standing by the grave of William Shakespeare, say boldly that he was not the creator of the works that bear his name. And still, through the centuries, Achilles wanders lonely by the shore of the sounding sea; Paris loves, and Helen is false; Ajax raves, and Odysseus steers his sinking ship through the raging storm. Still, Hamlet the Avenger swears, hesitates, kills at last, and then himself is slain; Romeo sighs in the ivory moonlight, and love-bound Juliet hears the triumphant lark carolling his ringing hymn high in the cool morning air, and says it is the nightingale--Immortals all, the marble god, the Greek, the Dane, the love-sick boy, the maiden foredoomed to death. But how short is the roll-call of these deathless ones! Through what raging floods of destruction have they lived, through what tempests have they been tossed, upon what inhospitable shores have they been cast up by the changing tides of time! Since they were called to life by the great, half-nameless departed, how often has their very existence been forgotten by all but a score in tens of millions? Has it been given to those embodied thoughts of transcendent genius to ride in the whirlwind of men’s passions or to direct the stormy warfare of half frantic nations? Since they were born in all their bright perfection, to live on in unchanging beauty, violence has ruled the world; many a time since then the sword has mown down its harvest of thinkers, many a time has the iron harrow of war torn up and scarred the face of the earth. Athens still stands in broken loveliness, and the Tiber still rolls its tawny waters heavily through Rome; but Rome and Athens are to-day but places of departed spirits; they are no longer the seats of life, their broken hearts are petrified. All men may see the ports through which the blood flowed to the throbbing centre, the traces of the mighty arteries through which it was driven to the ends of the earth. But the blood is dried up, the hearts are broken, and though in their stony ruins those dead world-hearts be grander and more enduring than any which in our time are whole and beating, yet neither their endurance nor their grandeur have saved them from man, the destroyer, nor was the beauty of their thoughts or the thoughtfully-devised machinery of their civilisation a shield against a few score thousand rough-hammered blades, wielded by rough-hewn mortals who recked neither of intellect nor of civilisation, nor yet of beauty, being but very human men, full of terribly strong and human passions. Look where you will, throughout the length and breadth of all that was the world five thousand, or five hundred years ago; everywhere passion has swept thought before it, and belief, reason. And we, too, with our reason and our thoughts, shall be swept from existence and the memory of it. Is this the age of reason, and is this the reign of law? In the midst of this civilisation of ours three millions of men lie down nightly by their arms, men trained to handle rifle and sword, taught to destroy and to do nothing else; and nearly as many more wait but a summons to leave their homes and join the ranks. And often it is said that we are on the eve of a universal war. At the command of a few individuals, at the touch of a few wires, more than five millions of men in the very prime and glory of strength, armed as men never were armed since time began, will arise and will kill civilisation and thought, as both the one and the other have been slain before by fewer hands and less deadly weapons. Is this reason, or is this law? Passion rules the world, and rules alone. And passion is neither of the head, nor of the hand, but of the heart. Passion cares nothing for the mind. Love, hate, ambition, anger, avarice, either make a slave of intelligence to serve their impulses, or break down its impotent opposition with the unanswerable argument of brute force, and tear it to pieces with iron hands.
Love is the first, the greatest, the gentlest, the most cruel, the most irresistible of passions. In his least form he is mighty. A little love has destroyed many a great friendship. The merest outward semblance of love has made such havoc as no intellect could repair. The reality has made heroes and martyrs, traitors and murderers, whose names will not be forgotten, for glory or for shame. Helen is not the only woman whose smile has kindled the beacon of a ten years’ war, nor Antony the only man who has lost the world for a caress. It may be that the Helen who shall work our destruction is even now twisting and braiding her golden hair; it may be that the new Antony, who is to lose this same old world again, already stands upon the steps of Cleopatra’s throne. Love’s day is not over yet, nor has man outgrown the love of woman.
But the power to love greatly is a gift, differing much in kind, though little in degree, from the inspiration of the poet, the genius of the artist, or the unerring instinct and eagle’s glance of the conqueror; for conqueror, artist and poet are moved by passion and not by reason, which is but their servant in so far as it can be commanded to move others, and their deadliest enemy when it would move themselves. Let the passion and the instrument but meet, being suited to each other, and all else must go down before them. Few, indeed, are they to whom is given that rich inheritance, and they themselves alone know all their wealth, and all their misery, all the boundless possibilities of happiness that are theirs, and all the dangers and the terrors that beset their path. He who has won woman in the face of daring rivals, of enormous odds, of gigantic obstacles, knows what love means; he who has lost her, having loved her, alone has measured with his own soul the bitterness of earthly sorrow, the depth of total loneliness, the breadth of the wilderness of despair. And he who has sorrowed long, who has long been alone, but who has watched the small, twinkling ray still burning upon the distant border of his desert--the faint glimmer of a single star that was still above the horizon of despair--he only can tell what utter darkness can be upon the face of the earth when that last star has set for ever. With it are gone suddenly the very quarters and cardinal points of life’s chart, there is no longer any right hand or any left, any north or south, any rising of the sun or any going down, any forward or backward direction in his path, any heaven above, or any hell below. The world has stood still and there is no life in the thick, black stillness. Death himself is dead, and one living man is forgotten behind, to mourn him as a lost friend, to pray that some new destroyer, more sure of hand than death himself, may come striding through the awful silence to make an end at last of the tormented spirit, to bear it swiftly to the place where that last star ceased to shine, and to let it down into the restful depths of an unremembering eternity. But into that place, which is the soul of man, no destroyer can penetrate; that solitary life neither the sword, nor pestilence, nor age, nor eternity can extinguish; that immortal memory no night can obscure. There was a beginning indeed, but end there can be none.
Such a man was the Wanderer, as he paced the deserted street in the cruel, gloomy cold of the late day. Between his sight and the star of his own hope an impenetrable shadow had arisen, so that he saw it no more. The memory of Beatrice was more than ever distinct to his inner sense, but the sudden presentiment of her death, real in its working as any certainty, had taken the reality of her from the ground on which he stood. For that one link had still been between them. Somewhere, near or far, during all these years, she, too, had trodden the earth with her light footsteps, the same universal mother earth on which they both moved and lived. The very world was hers, since she was touching it, and to touch it in his turn was to feel her presence. For who could tell what hidden currents ran in the secret depths, or what mysterious interchange of sympathy might not be maintained through them? The air itself was hers, since she was somewhere breathing it; the stars, for she looked on them; the sun, for it warmed her; the cold of winter, for it chilled her too; the breezes of spring, for they fanned her pale cheek and cooled her dark brow. All had been hers, and at the thought that she had passed away, a cry of universal mourning broke from the world she had left behind, and darkness descended upon all things, as a funeral pall.
Cold and dim and sad the ancient city had seemed before, but it was a thousandfold more melancholy now, more black, more saturated with the gloom of ages. From time to time the Wanderer raised his heavy lids, scarcely seeing what was before him, conscious of nothing but the horror which had so suddenly embraced his whole existence. Then, all at once, he was face to face with some one. A woman stood still in the way, a woman wrapped in rich furs, her features covered by a dark veil which could not hide the unequal fire of the unlike eyes so keenly fixed on his.
“Have you found her?” asked the soft voice.
“She is dead,” answered the Wanderer, growing very white.
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8
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During the short silence which followed, and while the two were still standing opposite to each other, the unhappy man’s look did not change. Unorna saw that he was sure of what he said, and a thrill of triumph, as jubilant as his despair was profound ran through her. If she had cared to reason with herself and to examine into her own sincerity, she would have seen that nothing but genuine passion, good or bad, could have lent the assurance of her rival’s death such power to flood the dark street with sunshine. But she was already long past doubt upon that question. The enchanter had bound her heart with his spells at the first glance, and the wild nature was already on fire. For one instant the light shot from her eyes, and then sank again as quickly as it had come. She had other impulses than those of love, and subtle gifts of perception that condemned her to know the truth, even when the delusion was most glorious. He was himself deceived, and she knew it. Beatrice might, indeed, have died long ago. She could not tell. But as she sought in the recesses of his mind, she saw that he had no certainty of it, she saw the black presentiment between him and the image, for she could see the image too. She saw the rival she already hated, not receiving a vision of the reality, but perceiving it through his mind, as it had always appeared to him. For one moment she hesitated still, and she knew that her whole life was being weighed in the trembling balance of that hesitation. For one moment her face became an impenetrable mask, her eyes grew dull as uncut jewels, her breathing ceased, her lips were set like cold marble. Then the stony mask took life again, the sight grew keen, and a gentle sigh stirred the chilly air.
“She is not dead.”
“Not dead!” The Wanderer started, but fully two seconds after she had spoken, as a man struck by a bullet in battle, in whom the suddenness of the shock has destroyed the power of instantaneous sensation.
“She is not dead. You have dreamed it,” said Unorna, looking at him steadily.
He pressed his hand to his forehead and then moved it, as though brushing away something that troubled him.
“Not dead? Not dead!” he repeated, in changing tones.
“Come with me. I will show her to you.”
He gazed at her and his senses reeled. Her words sounded like rarest music in his ear; in the darkness of his brain a soft light began to diffuse itself.
“Is it possible? Have I been mistaken?” he asked in a low voice, as though speaking to himself.
“Come!” said Unorna again very gently.
“Whither? With you? How can you bring me to her? What power have you to lead the living to the dead?”
“To the living. Come.”
“To the living--yes. I have dreamed an evil dream--a dream of death. She is not--no, I see it now. She is not dead. She is only very far from me, very, very far. And yet it was this morning--but I was mistaken, deceived by some faint likeness. Ah, God! I thought I knew her face! What is it that you want with me?”
He asked the question as though again suddenly aware of Unorna’s presence. She had lifted her veil and her eyes drew his soul into their mysterious depths.
“She calls you. Come.”
“She? She is not here. What can you know of her? Why do you look at me so?”
He felt an unaccountable uneasiness under her gaze, like a warning of danger not far off. The memory of his meeting with her on that same morning was not clear at that moment, but he had not forgotten the odd disturbance of his faculties which had distressed him at the time. He was inclined to resist any return of the doubtful state and to oppose Unorna’s influence. He felt the fascination of her glance, and he straightened himself rather proudly and coldly as though to withdraw himself from it. It was certain that Unorna, at the surprise of meeting her, had momentarily dispelled the gloomy presentiment which had given him such terrible pain. And yet, even his disturbed and anxious consciousness found it more than strange that she should thus press him to go with her, and so boldly promise to bring him to the object of his search. He resisted her, and found that resistance was not easy.
“And yet,” said she, dropping her eyes and seeming to abandon the attempt, “you said that if you failed to-day you would come back to me. Have you succeeded, that you need no help?”
“I have not succeeded.”
“And if I had not come to you--if I had not met you here, you would have failed for the last time. You would have carried with you the conviction of her death to the moment of your own.”
“It was a horrible delusion, but since it was a delusion it would have passed away in time.”
“With your life, perhaps. Who would have waked you, if I had not?”
“I was not sleeping. Why do you reason? What would you prove?”
“Much, if I knew how. Will you walk with me? It is very cold.”
They had been standing where they had met. As she spoke, Unorna looked up with an expression wholly unlike the one he had seen a few moments earlier. Her strong will was suddenly veiled by the most gentle and womanly manner, and a little shiver, real or feigned, passed over her as she drew the folds of her fur more closely round her. The man before her could resist the aggressive manifestation of her power, but he was far too courteous to refuse her request.
“Which way?” he asked quietly.
“To the river,” she answered.
He turned and took his place by her side. For some moments they walked on in silence. It was already almost twilight.
“How short the days are!” exclaimed Unorna, rather suddenly.
“How long, even at their shortest!” replied her companion.
“They might be short--if you would.”
He did not answer her, though he glanced quickly at her face. She was looking down at the pavement before her, as though picking her way, for there were patches of ice upon the stones. She seemed very quiet. He could not guess that her heart was beating violently, and that she found it hard to say six words in a natural tone.
So far as he himself was concerned he was in no humour for talking. He had seen almost everything in the world, and had read or heard almost everything that mankind had to say. The streets of Prague had no novelty for him, and there was no charm in the chance acquaintance of a beautiful woman, to bring words to his lips. Words had long since grown useless in the solitude of a life that was spent in searching for one face among the millions that passed before his sight. Courtesy had bidden him to walk with her, because she had asked it, but courtesy did not oblige him to amuse her, he thought, and she had not the power that Keyork Arabian had to force him into conversation, least of all into conversing upon his own inner life. He regretted the few words he had spoken, and would have taken them back, had it been possible. He felt no awkwardness in the long silence.
Unorna for the first time in her life felt that she had not full control of her faculties. She who was always so calm, so thoroughly mistress of her own powers, whose judgment Keyork Arabian could deceive, but whose self-possession he could not move, except to anger, was at the present moment both weak and unbalanced. Ten minutes earlier she had fancied that it would be an easy thing to fix her eyes on his and to cast the veil of a half-sleep over his already half-dreaming senses. She had fancied that it would be enough to say “Come,” and that he would follow. She had formed the bold scheme of attaching him to herself, by visions of the woman whom he loved as she wished to be loved by him. She believed that if he were once in that state she could destroy the old love for ever, or even turn it to hate, at her will. And it had seemed easy. That morning, when he had first come to her, she had fastened her glance upon him more than once, and she had seen him turn a shade paler, had noticed the drooping of his lids and the relaxation of his hands. She had sought him in the street, guided by something surer than instinct, she had found him, had read his thoughts, and had felt him yielding to her fixed determination. Then, suddenly, her power had left her, and as she walked beside him, she knew that if she looked into his face she would blush and be confused like a shy girl. She almost wished that he would leave her without a word and without an apology.
It was not possible, however, to prolong the silence much longer. A vague fear seized her. Had she really lost all her dominating strength in the first moments of the first sincere passion she had ever felt? Was she reduced to weakness by his presence, and unable so much as to sustain a fragmentary conversation, let alone suggesting to his mind the turn it should take? She was ashamed of her poverty of spirit in the emergency. She felt herself tongue-tied, and the hot blood rose to her face. He was not looking at her, but she could not help fancying that he knew her secret embarrassment. She hung her head and drew her veil down so that it should hide even her mouth.
But her trouble increased with every moment, for each second made it harder to break the silence. She sought madly for something to say, and she knew that her cheeks were on fire. Anything would do, no matter what. The sound of her own voice, uttering the commonest of commonplaces, would restore her equanimity. But that simple, almost meaningless phrase would not be found. She would stammer, if she tried to speak, like a child that has forgotten its lesson and fears the schoolmaster as well as the laughter of its schoolmates. It would be so easy if he would say something instead of walking quietly by her side, suiting his pace to hers, shifting his position so that she might step upon the smoothest parts of the ill-paved street, and shielding her, as it were, from the passers-by. There was a courteous forethought for her convenience and safety in every movement of his, a something which a woman always feels when traversing a crowded thoroughfare by the side of a man who is a true gentleman in every detail of life, whether husband, or friend, or chance acquaintance. For the spirit of the man who is really thoughtful for woman, as well as sincerely and genuinely respectful in his intercourse with them, is manifest in his smallest outward action.
While every step she took increased the violence of the passion which had suddenly swept away her strength, every instant added to her confusion. She was taken out of the world in which she was accustomed to rule, and was suddenly placed in one where men are men, and women are women, and in which social conventionalities hold sway. She began to be frightened. The walk must end, and at the end of it they must part. Since she had lost her power over him he might go away, for there would be nothing to bring him to her. She wondered why he would not speak, and her terror increased. She dared not look up, lest she should find him looking at her.
Then they emerged from the street and stood by the river, in a lonely place. The heavy ice was gray with old snow in some places and black in others, where the great blocks had been cut out in long strips. It was lighter here. A lingering ray of sunshine, forgotten by the departing day, gilded the vast walls and turrets of venerable Hradschin, far above them on the opposite bank, and tinted the sharp dark spires of the half-built cathedral which crowns the fortress. The distant ring of fast-moving skates broke the stillness.
“Are you angry with me?” asked Unorna, almost humbly, and hardly knowing what she said. The question had risen to her lips without warning, and was asked almost unconsciously.
“I do not understand. Angry? At what? Why should you think I am angry?”
“You are so silent,” she answered, regaining courage from the mere sound of her own words. “We have been walking a long time, and you have said nothing. I thought you were displeased.”
“You must forgive me. I am often silent.”
“I thought you were displeased,” she repeated. “I think that you were, though you hardly knew it. I should be very sorry if you were angry.”
“Why would you be sorry?” asked the Wanderer with a civil indifference that hurt Unorna more than any acknowledgment of his displeasure could have done.
“Because I would help you, if you would let me.”
He looked at her with sudden keenness. In spite of herself she blushed and turned her head away. He hardly noticed the fact, and, if he had, would assuredly not have put upon it any interpretation approaching to the truth. He supposed that she was flushed with walking.
“No one has ever helped me, least of all in the way you mean,” he said. “The counsels of wise men--of the wisest--have been useless, as well as the dreams of women who fancy they have the gift of mental sight beyond the limit of bodily vision.”
“Who fancy they see!” exclaimed Unorna, almost glad to find that she was still strong enough to feel annoyance at the slight.
“I beg your pardon. I do not mean to doubt your powers, of which I have had no experience.”
“I did not offer to see for you. I did not offer you a dream.”
“Would you show me that which I already see, waking and sleeping? Would you bring to my hearing the sound of a voice which I can hear even now? I need no help for that.”
“I can do more than that--for you.”
“And why for me?” he asked with some curiosity.
“Because--because you are Keyork Arabian’s friend.” She glanced at his face, but he showed no surprise.
“You have seen him this afternoon, of course,” he remarked.
And odd smile passed over Unorna’s face.
“Yes. I have seen him this afternoon. He is a friend of mine, and of yours--do you understand?”
“He is the wisest of men,” said the Wanderer. “And also the maddest,” he added thoughtfully.
“And you think it was in his madness, rather than in his wisdom, that he advised you to come to me?”
“Possibly. In his belief in you, at least.”
“And that may be madness?” She was gaining courage.
“Or wisdom--if I am mad. He believes in you. That is certain.”
“He has no beliefs. Have you known him long, and do not know that? With him there is nothing between knowledge and ignorance.”
“And he knows, of course, by experience what you can do and what you cannot do?”
“By very long experience, as I know him.”
“Neither your gifts nor his knowledge of them can change dreams to facts.”
Unorna smiled again.
“You can produce a dream--nothing more,” continued the Wanderer, drawn at last into argument. “I, too, know something of these things. The wisdom of the Egyptians is not wholly lost yet. You may possess some of it, as well as the undeveloped power which could put all their magic within your reach if you knew how to use it. Yet a dream is a dream.”
“Philosophers have disputed that,” answered Unorna. “I am no philosopher, but I can overthrow the results of all their disputations.”
“You can do this. If I resign my will into your keeping you can cause me to dream. You can call up vividly before me the remembered and unremembered sights of my life. You can make me see clearly the sights impressed upon your own memory. You might do that, and yet you could be showing me nothing which I do not see now before me--of those things which I care to see.”
“But suppose that you were wrong, and that I had no dream to show you, but a reality?”
She spoke the words very earnestly, gazing into his eyes at last without fear. Something in her tone struck him and fixed his attention.
“There is no sleep needed to see realities,” he said.
“I did not say that there was. I only asked you to come with me to the place where she is.”
The Wanderer started slightly and forgot all the instinct of opposition to her which he had felt so strongly before.
“Do you mean that you know--that you can take me to her----” he could not find words. A strange, overmastering astonishment took possession of him, and with it came wild hope and the wilder longing to reach its realisation instantly.
“What else could I have meant? What else did I say?” Her eyes were beginning to glitter in the gathering dusk.
The Wanderer no longer avoided their look, but he passed his hand over his brow, as though dazed.
“I only asked you to come with me,” she repeated softly. “There is nothing supernatural about that. When I saw that you did not believe me I did not try to lead you then, though she is waiting for you. She bade me bring you to her.”
“You have seen her? You have talked with her? She sent you? Oh, for God’s sake, come quickly! --come, come!”
He put out his hand as though to take hers and lead her away. She grasped it eagerly. He had not seen that she had drawn off her glove. He was lost. Her eyes held him and her fingers touched his bare wrist. His lids drooped and his will was hers. In the intolerable anxiety of the moment he had forgotten to resist, he had not even thought of resisting.
There were great blocks of stone in the desolate place, landed there before the river had frozen for a great building, whose gloomy, unfinished mass stood waiting for the warmth of spring to be completed. She led him by the hand, passive and obedient as a child, to a sheltered spot and made him sit down upon one of the stones. It was growing dark.
“Look at me,” she said, standing before him, and touching his brow. He obeyed.
“You are the image in my eyes,” she said, after a moment’s pause.
“Yes. I am the image in your eyes,” he answered in a dull voice.
“You will never resist me again, I command it. Hereafter it will be enough for me to touch your hand, or to look at you, and if I say, ‘Sleep,’ you will instantly become the image again. Do you understand that?”
“I understand it.”
“Promise!”
“I promise,” he replied, without perceptible effort.
“You have been dreaming for years. From this moment you must forget all your dreams.”
His face expressed no understanding of what she said. She hesitated a moment and then began to walk slowly up and down before him. His half-glazed look followed her as she moved. She came back and laid her hand upon his head.
“My will is yours. You have no will of your own. You cannot think without me,” She spoke in a tone of concentrated determination, and a slight shiver passed over him.
“It is of no use to resist, for you have promised never to resist me again,” she continued. “All that I command must take place in your mind instantly, without opposition. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” he answered, moving uneasily.
For some seconds she again held her open palm upon his head. She seemed to be evoking all her strength for a great effort.
“Listen to me, and let everything I say take possession of your mind for ever. My will is yours, you are the image in my eyes, my word is your law. You know what I please that you should know. You forget what I command you to forget. You have been mad these many years, and I am curing you. You must forget your madness. You have now forgotten it. I have erased the memory of it with my hand. There is nothing to remember any more.”
The dull eyes, deep-set beneath the shadows of the overhanging brow, seemed to seek her face in the dark, and for the third time there was a nervous twitching of the shoulders and limbs. Unorna knew the symptom well, but had never seen it return so often, like a protest of the body against the enslaving of the intelligence. She was nervous in spite of her success. The immediate results of hypnotic suggestion are not exactly the same in all cases, even in the first moments; its consequences may be widely different with different individuals. Unorna, indeed, possessed an extraordinary power, but on the other hand she had to deal with an extraordinary organisation. She knew this instinctively, and endeavoured to lead the sleeping mind by degrees to the condition in which she wished it to remain.
The repeated tremor in the body was the outward sign of a mental resistance which it would not be easy to overcome. The wisest course was to go over the ground already gained. This she was determined to do by means of a sort of catechism.
“Who am I?” she asked.
“Unorna,” answered the powerless man promptly, but with a strange air of relief.
“Are you asleep?”
“No.”
“Awake?”
“No.”
“In what state are you?”
“I am an image.”
“And where is your body?”
“Seated upon that stone.”
“Can you see your face?”
“I see it distinctly. The eyes in the body are glassy.”
“The body is gone now. You do not see it any more. Is that true?”
“It is true. I do not see it. I see the stone on which it was sitting.”
“You are still in my eyes. Now”--she touched his head again--“now, you are no longer an image. You are my mind.”
“Yes. I am your mind.”
“You, my Mind, know that I met to-day a man called the Wanderer, whose body you saw when you were in my eyes. Do you know that or not?”
“I know it. I am your mind.”
“You know, Mind, that the man was mad. He had suffered for many years from a delusion. In pursuit of the fixed idea he had wandered far through the world. Do you know whither his travels had led him?”
“I do not know. That is not in your mind. You did not know it when I became your mind.”
“Good. Tell me, Mind, what was this man’s delusion?”
“He fancied that he loved a woman whom he could not find.”
“The man must be cured. You must know that he was mad and is now sane. You, my Mind, must see that it was really a delusion. You see it now.”
“Yes. I see it.”
Unorna watched the waking sleeper narrowly. It was now night, but the sky had cleared and the starlight falling upon the snow in the lonely, open place, made it possible to see very well. Unorna seemed as unconscious of the bitter cold as her subject, whose body was in a state past all outward impressions. So far she had gone through all the familiar process of question and answer with success, but this was not all. She knew that if, when he awoke, the name he loved still remained in his memory, the result would not be accomplished. She must produce entire forgetfulness, and to do this, she must wipe out every association, one by one. She gathered her strength during a short pause. She was greatly encouraged by the fact that the acknowledgment of the delusion had been followed by no convulsive reaction in the body. She was on the very verge of a complete triumph, and the concentration of her will during a few moments longer might win the battle.
She could not have chosen a spot better suited for her purpose. Within five minutes’ walk of streets in which throngs of people were moving about, the scene which surrounded her was desolate and almost wild. The unfinished building loomed like a ruin behind her; the rough hewn blocks lay like boulders in a stony desert; the broad gray ice lay like a floor of lustreless iron before her under the uncertain starlight. Only afar off, high up in the mighty Hradschin, lamps gleamed here and there from the windows, the distant evidences of human life. All was still. Even the steely ring of the skates had ceased.
“And so,” she continued, presently, “this man’s whole life has been a delusion, ever since he began to fancy in the fever of an illness that he loved a certain woman. Is this clear to you, my Mind?”
“It is quite clear,” answered the muffled voice.
“He was so utterly mad that he even gave that woman a name--a name, when she had never existed except in his imagination.”
“Except in his imagination,” repeated the sleeper, without resistance.
“He called her Beatrice. The name was suggested to him because he had fallen ill in a city of the South where a woman called Beatrice once lived and was loved by a great poet. That was the train of self-suggestion in his delirium. Mind, do you understand?”
“He suggested to himself the name in his illness.”
“In the same way that he suggested to himself the existence of the woman whom he afterwards believed he loved?”
“In exactly the same way.”
“It was all a curious and very interesting case of auto-hypnotic suggestion. It made him very mad. He is now cured of it. Do you see that he is cured?”
The sleeper gave no answer. The stiffened limbs did not move, indeed, nor did the glazed eyes reflect the starlight. But he gave no answer. The lips did not even attempt to form words. Had Unorna been less carried away by the excitement in her own thoughts, or less absorbed in the fierce concentration of her will upon its passive subject, she would have noticed the silence and would have gone back again over the old ground. As it was, she did not pause.
“You understand therefore, my Mind, that this Beatrice was entirely the creature of the man’s imagination. Beatrice does not exist, because she never existed. Beatrice never had any real being. Do you understand?”
This time she waited for an answer, but none came.
“There never was any Beatrice,” she repeated firmly, laying her hand upon the unconscious head and bending down to gaze into the sightless eyes.
The answer did not come, but a shiver like that of an ague shook the long, graceful limbs.
“You are my Mind,” she said fiercely. “Obey me! There never was any Beatrice, there is no Beatrice now, and there never can be.”
The noble brow contracted in a look of agonising pain, and the whole frame shook like an aspen leaf in the wind. The mouth moved spasmodically.
“Obey me! Say it!” cried Unorna with passionate energy.
The lips twisted themselves, and the face was as gray as the gray snow.
“There is--no--Beatrice.” The words came out slowly, and yet not distinctly, as though wrung from the heart by torture.
Unorna smiled at last, but the smile had not faded from her lips when the air was rent by a terrible cry.
“By the Eternal God of Heaven!” cried the ringing voice. “It is a lie! --a lie! --a lie!”
She who had never feared anything earthly or unearthly shrank back. She felt her heavy hair rising bodily upon her head.
The Wanderer had sprung to his feet. The magnitude and horror of the falsehood spoken had stabbed the slumbering soul to sudden and terrible wakefulness. The outline of his tall figure was distinct against the gray background of ice and snow. He was standing at his full height, his arms stretched up to heaven, his face luminously pale, his deep eyes on fire and fixed upon her face, forcing back her dominating will upon itself. But he was not alone!
“Beatrice!” he cried in long-drawn agony.
Between him and Unorna something passed by, something dark and soft and noiseless, that took shape slowly--a woman in black, a veil thrown back from her forehead, her white face turned towards the Wanderer, her white hands hanging by her side. She stood still, and the face turned, and the eyes met Unorna’s, and Unorna knew that it was Beatrice.
There she stood, between them, motionless as a statue, impalpable as air, but real as life itself. The vision, if it was a vision, lasted fully a minute. Never, to the day of her death, was Unorna to forget that face, with its deathlike purity of outline, with its unspeakable nobility of feature.
It vanished as suddenly as it had appeared. A low broken sound of pain escaped from the Wanderer’s lips, and with his arms extended he fell forwards. The strong woman caught him and he sank to the ground gently, in her arms, his head supported upon her shoulder, as she kneeled under the heavy weight.
There was a sound of quick footsteps on the frozen snow. A Bohemian watchman, alarmed by the loud cry, was running to the spot.
“What has happened?” he asked, bending down to examine the couple.
“My friend has fainted,” said Unorna calmly. “He is subject to it. You must help me to get him home.”
“Is it far?” asked the man.
“To the House of the Black Mother of God.”
|
{
"id": "3816"
}
|
9
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None
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The principal room of Keyork Arabian’s dwelling was in every way characteristic of the man. In the extraordinary confusion which at first disturbed a visitor’s judgment, some time was needed to discover the architectural bounds of the place. The vaulted roof was indeed apparent, as well as small portions of the wooden flooring. Several windows, which might have been large had they filled the arched embrasures in which they were set, admitted the daylight when there was enough of it in Prague to serve the purpose of illumination. So far as could be seen from the street, they were commonplace windows without shutters and with double casements against the cold, but from within it was apparent that the tall arches in the thick walls had been filled in with a thinner masonry in which the modern frames were set. So far as it was possible to see, the room had but two doors; the one, masked by a heavy curtain made of a Persian carpet, opened directly upon the staircase of the house; the other, exactly opposite, gave access to the inner apartments. On account of its convenient size, however, the sage had selected for his principal abiding place this first chamber, which was almost large enough to be called a hall, and here he had deposited the extraordinary and heterogeneous collection of objects, or, more property speaking, of remains, upon the study of which he spent a great part of his time.
Two large tables, three chairs and a divan completed the list of all that could be called furniture. The tables were massive, dark, and old-fashioned; the feet at each end consisted of thick flat boards sawn into a design of simple curves, and connected by strong crosspieces keyed to them with large wooden bolts. The chairs were ancient folding stools, with movable backs and well-worn cushions of faded velvet. The divan differed in no respect from ordinary oriental divans in appearance, and was covered with a stout dark Bokhara carpet of no great value; but so far as its use was concerned, the disorderly heaps of books and papers that lay upon it showed that Keyork was more inclined to make a book-case of it than a couch.
The room received its distinctive character however neither from its vaulted roof, nor from the deep embrasures of its windows, nor from its scanty furniture, but from the peculiar nature of the many curious objects, large and small, which hid the walls and filled almost all the available space on the floor. It was clear that every one of the specimens illustrated some point in the great question of life and death which formed the chief study of Keyork Arabian’s latter years; for by far the greater number of the preparations were dead bodies, of men, of women, of children, of animals, to all of which the old man had endeavoured to impart the appearance of life, and in treating some of which he had attained results of a startling nature. The osteology of man and beast was indeed represented, for a huge case, covering one whole wall, was filled to the top with a collection of many hundred skulls of all races of mankind, and where real specimens were missing, their place was supplied by admirable casts of craniums; but this reredos, so to call it, of bony heads, formed but a vast, grinning background for the bodies which stood and sat and lay in half-raised coffins and sarcophagi before them, in every condition produced by various known and lost methods of embalming. There were, it is true, a number of skeletons, disposed here and there in fantastic attitudes, gleaming white and ghostly in their mechanical nakedness, the bones of human beings, the bones of giant orang-outangs, of creatures large and small down to the flimsy little framework of a common bull frog, strung on wires as fine as hairs, which squatted comfortably upon an old book near the edge of a table, as though it had just skipped to that point in pursuit of a ghostly fly and was pausing to meditate a farther spring. But the eye did not discover these things at the first glance. Solemn, silent, strangely expressive, lay three slim Egyptians, raised at an angle as though to give them a chance of surveying their fellow-dead, the linen bandages unwrapped from their heads and arms and shoulders, their jet-black hair combed and arranged and dressed by Keyork’s hand, their faces softened almost to the expression of life by one of his secret processes, their stiffened joints so limbered by his art that their arms had taken natural positions again, lying over the edges of the sarcophagi in which they had rested motionless and immovable through thirty centuries. For the man had pursued his idea in every shape and with every experiment, testing, as it were, the potential imperishability of the animal frame by the degree of life-like plumpness and softness and flexibility which it could be made to take after a mummification of three thousand years. And he had reached the conclusion that, in the nature of things, the human body might vie, in resisting the mere action of time, with the granite of the pyramids. Those had been his earliest trials. The results of many others filled the room. Here a group of South Americans, found dried in the hollow of an ancient tree, had been restored almost to the likeness of life, and were apparently engaged in a lively dispute over the remains of a meal--as cold as themselves and as human. There, towered the standing body of an African, leaning upon a knotted club, fierce, grinning, lacking only sight in the sunken eyes to be terrible. There again, surmounting a lay figure wrapped in rich stuffs, smiled the calm and gentle face of a Malayan lady--decapitated for her sins, so marvellously preserved that the soft dark eyes still looked out from beneath the heavy, half-drooping lids, and the full lips, still richly coloured, parted a little to show the ivory teeth. Other sights there were, more ghastly still, triumphs of preservation, if not of semi-resuscitation, over decay, won on its own most special ground. Triumphs all, yet almost failures in the eyes of the old student, they represented the mad efforts of an almost supernatural skill and superhuman science to revive, if but for one second, the very smallest function of the living body. Strange and wild were the trials he had made; many and great the sacrifices and blood offerings lavished on his dead in the hope of seeing that one spasm which would show that death might yet be conquered; many the engines, the machines, the artificial hearts, the applications of electricity that he had invented; many the powerful reactives he had distilled wherewith to excite the long dead nerves, or those which but two days had ceased to feel. The hidden essence was still undiscovered, the meaning of vitality eluded his profoundest study, his keenest pursuit. The body died, and yet the nerves could still be made to act as though alive for the space of a few hours--in rare cases for a day. With his eyes he had seen a dead man spring half across a room from the effects of a few drops of musk--on the first day; with his eyes he had seen the dead twist themselves, and move and grin under the electric current--provided it had not been too late. But that “too late” had baffled him, and from his first belief that life might be restored when once gone, he had descended to what seemed the simpler proposition of the two, to the problem of maintaining life indefinitely so long as its magic essence lingered in the flesh and blood. And now he believed that he was very near the truth; how terribly near he had yet to learn.
On that evening when the Wanderer fell to the earth before the shadow of Beatrice, Keyork Arabian sat alone in his charnel-house. The brilliant light of two powerful lamps illuminated everything in the place, for Keyork loved light, like all those who are intensely attached to life for its own sake. The yellow rays flooded the life-like faces of his dead companions, and streamed upwards to the heterogeneous objects that filled the shelves almost to the spring of the vault--objects which all reminded him of the conditions of lives long ago extinct, endless heaps of barbarous weapons, of garments of leather and of fish skin, Amurian, Siberian, Gothic, Mexican, and Peruvian; African and Red Indian masks, models of boats and canoes, sacred drums, Liberian idols, Runic calendars, fiddles made of human skulls, strange and barbaric ornaments, all producing together an amazing richness of colour--all things in which the man himself had taken but a passing interest, the result of his central study--life in all its shapes.
He sat alone. The African giant looked down at his dwarf-like form as though in contempt of such half-grown humanity; the Malayan lady’s bodiless head turned its smiling face towards him; scores of dead beings seemed to contemplate half in pity, half in scorn, their would-be reviver. Keyork Arabian was used to their company and to their silence. Far beyond the common human horror of dead humanity, if one of them had all at once nodded to him and spoken to him he would have started with delight and listened with rapture. But they were all still dead, and they neither spoke or moved a finger. A thought that had more hope in it than any which had passed through his brain for many years now occupied and absorbed him. A heavy book lay open on the table by his side, and from time to time he glanced at a phrase which seemed to attract him. It was always the same phrase, and two words alone sufficed to bring him back to contemplation of it. Those two words were “Immortality” and “Soul.” He began to speak aloud to himself, being by nature fond of speech.
“Yes. The soul is immortal. I am quite willing to grant that. But it does not in any way follow that it is the source of life, or the seat of intelligence. The Buddhists distinguished it even from the individuality. And yet life holds it, and when life ends it takes its departure. How soon? I do not know. It is not a condition of life, but life is one of its conditions. Does it leave the body when life is artificially prolonged in a state of unconsciousness--by hypnotism, for instance? Is it more closely bound up with animal life, or with intelligence? If with either, has it a definite abiding place in the heart, or in the brain? Since its presence depends directly on life, so far as I know, it belongs to the body rather than to the brain. I once made a rabbit live an hour without its head. With a man that experiment would need careful manipulation--I would like to try it. Or is it all a question of that phantom, Vitality? Then the presence of the soul depends upon the potential excitability of the nerves, and, as far as we know, it must leave the body not more than twenty-four hours after death, and it certainly does not leave the body at the moment of dying. But if of the nerves, then what is the condition of the soul in the hypnotic state? Unorna hypnotises our old friend there--and our young one, too. For her, they have nerves. At her touch they wake, they sleep, they move, they feel, they speak. But they have no nerves for me. I can cut them with knives, burn them, turn the life-blood of the one into the arteries of the other--they feel nothing. If the soul is of the nerves--or of the vitality, then they have souls for Unorna, and none for me. That is absurd. Where is that old man’s soul? He has slept for years. Has not his soul been somewhere else in the meanwhile? If we could keep him asleep for centuries, or for scores of centuries, like that frog found alive in a rock, would his soul--able by the hypothesis to pass through rocks or universes--stay by him? Could an ingenious sinner escape damnation for a few thousand years by being hypnotised? Verily the soul is a very unaccountable thing, and what is still more unaccountable is that I believe in it. Suppose the case of the ingenious sinner. Suppose that he could not escape by his clever trick. Then his soul must inevitably taste the condition of the damned while he is asleep. But when he is waked at last, and found to be alive, his soul must come back to him, glowing from the eternal flames. Unpleasant thought! Keyork Arabian, you had far better not go to sleep at present. Since all that is fantastic nonsense, on the face of it, I am inclined to believe that the presence of the soul is in some way a condition requisite for life, rather than depending upon it. I wish I could buy a soul. It is quite certain that life is not a mere mechanical or chemical process. I have gone too far to believe that. Take man at the very moment of death--have everything ready, do what you will--my artificial heart is a very perfect instrument, mechanically speaking--and how long does it take to start the artificial circulation through the carotid artery? Not a hundredth part so long a time as drowned people often lie before being brought back, without a pulsation, without a breath. Yet I never succeeded, though I have made the artificial heart work on a narcotised rabbit, and the rabbit died instantly when I stopped the machine, which proves that it was the machine that kept it alive. Perhaps if one applied it to a man just before death he might live on indefinitely, grow fat and flourish so long as the glass heart worked. Where would his soul be then? In the glass heart, which would have become the seat of life? Everything, sensible or absurd, which I can put into words makes the soul seem an impossibility--and yet there is something which I cannot put into words, but which proves the soul’s existence beyond all doubt. I wish I could buy somebody’s soul and experiment with it.”
He ceased and sat staring at his specimens, going over in his memory the fruitless experiments of a lifetime. A loud knocking roused him from his reverie. He hastened to open the door and was confronted by Unorna. She was paler than usual, and he saw from her expression that there was something wrong.
“What is the matter?” he asked, almost roughly.
“He is in a carriage downstairs,” she answered quickly. “Something has happened to him. I cannot wake him, you must take him in--” “To die on my hands? Not I!” laughed Keyork in his deepest voice. “My collection is complete enough.”
She seized him suddenly by both arms, and brought her face near to his.
“If you dare to speak of death----” She grew intensely white, with a fear she had not before known in her life. Keyork laughed again, and tried to shake himself free of her grip.
“You seem a little nervous,” he observed calmly. “What do you want of me?”
“Your help, man, and quickly! Call your people! Have him carried upstairs! Revive him! do something to bring him back!”
Keyork’s voice changed.
“Is he in real danger?” he asked. “What have you done to him?”
“Oh, I do not know what I have done!” cried Unorna desperately. “I do not know what I fear----” She let him go and leaned against the doorway, covering her face with her hands. Keyork stared at her. He had never seen her show so much emotion before. Then he made up his mind. He drew her into his room and left her standing and staring at him while he thrust a few objects into his pockets and threw his fur coat over him.
“Stay here till I come back,” he said, authoritatively, as he went out.
“But you will bring him here?” she cried, suddenly conscious of his going.
The door had already closed. She tried to open it, in order to follow him, but she could not. The lock was of an unusual kind, and either intentionally or accidentally Keyork had shut her in. For a few moments she tried to force the springs, shaking the heavy wood work a very little in the great effort she made. Then, seeing that it was useless, she walked slowly to the table and sat down in Keyork’s chair.
She had been in the place before, and she was as free from any unpleasant fear of the dead company as Keyork himself. To her, as to him, they were but specimens, each having a peculiar interest, as a thing, but all destitute of that individuality, of that grim, latent malice, of that weird, soulless, physical power to harm, with which timid imaginations endow dead bodies.
She scarcely gave them a glance, and she certainly gave them no thought. She sat before the table, supporting her head in her hands and trying to think connectedly of what had just happened. She knew well enough how the Wanderer had lain upon the frozen ground, his head supported on her knee, while the watchman had gone to call a carriage. She remembered how she had summoned all her strength and had helped to lift him in, as few women could have done. She remembered every detail of the place, and everything she had done, even to the fact that she had picked up his hat and a stick he had carried and had taken them into the vehicle with her. The short drive through the ill-lighted streets was clear to her. She could still feel the pressure of his shoulder as he had leaned heavily against her; she could see the pale face by the fitful light of the lanterns as they passed, and of the lamps that flashed in front of the carriage with each jolting of the wheels over the rough paving-stones. She remembered exactly what she had done, her efforts to wake him, at first regular and made with the certainty of success, then more and more mad as she realised that something had put him beyond the sphere of her powers for the moment, if not for ever; his deathly pallor, his chilled hands, his unnatural stillness--she remembered it all, as one remembers circumstances in real life a moment after they have taken place. But there remained also the recollection of a single moment during which her whole being had been at the mercy of an impression so vivid that it seemed to stand alone divested of any outward sensations by which to measure its duration. She, who could call up visions in the minds of others, who possessed the faculty of closing her bodily eyes in order to see distant places and persons in the state of trance, she, who expected no surprises in her own act, had seen something very vividly, which she could not believe had been a reality, and which she yet could not account for as a revelation of second sight. That dark, mysterious presence that had come bodily, yet without a body, between her and the man she loved was neither a real woman, nor the creation of her own brain, nor a dream seen in hypnotic state. She had not the least idea how long it had stood there; it seemed an hour, and it seemed but a second. But that incorporeal thing had a life and a power of its own. Never before had she felt that unearthly chill run through her, nor that strange sensation in her hair. It was a thing of evil omen, and the presage was already about to be fulfilled. The spirit of the dark woman had arisen at the sound of the words in which he denied her; she had risen and had come to claim her own, to rob Unorna of what seemed most worth coveting on earth--and she could take him, surely, to the place whence she came. How could Unorna tell that he was not already gone, that his spirit had not passed already, even when she was lifting his weight from the ground?
At the despairing thought she started and looked up. She had almost expected to see that shadow beside her again. But there was nothing. The lifeless bodies stood motionless in their mimicry of life under the bright light. The swarthy negro frowned, the face of the Malayan woman wore still its calm and gentle expression. Far in the background the rows of gleaming skulls grinned, as though at the memory of their four hundred lives; the skeleton of the orang-outang stretched out its long bony arms before it; the dead savages still squatted round the remains of their meal. The stillness was oppressive.
Unorna rose to her feet in sudden anxiety. She did not know how long she had been alone. She listened anxiously at the door for the sound of footsteps on the stairs, but all was silent. Surely, Keyork had not taken him elsewhere, to his lodgings, where he would not be cared for. That was impossible. She must have heard the sound of the wheels as the carriage drove away. She glanced at the windows and saw that the casements were covered with small, thick curtains which would muzzle the sound. She went to the nearest, thrust the curtain aside, opened the inner and the second glass and looked out. Though the street below was dim, she could see well enough that the carriage was no longer there. It was the bitterest night of the year and the air cut her like a knife, but she would not draw back. She strained her sight in both directions, searching in the gloom for the moving lights of a carriage, but she saw nothing. At last she shut the window and went back to the door. They must be on the stairs, or still below, perhaps, waiting for help to carry him up. The cold might kill him in his present state, a cold that would kill most things exposed to it. Furiously she shook the door. It was useless. She looked about for an instrument to help her strength. She could see nothing--no--yes--there was the iron-wood club of the black giant. She went and took it from his hand. The dead thing trembled all over, and rocked as though it would fall, and wagged its great head at her, but she was not afraid. She raised the heavy club and struck upon the door, upon the lock, upon the panels with all her might. The terrible blows sent echoes down the staircase, but the door did not yield, nor the lock either. Was the door of iron and the lock of granite? she asked herself. Then she heard a strange, sudden noise behind her. She turned and looked. The dead negro had fallen bodily from his pedestal to the floor, with a dull, heavy thud. She did not desist, but struck the oaken planks again and again with all her strength. Then her arms grew numb and she dropped the club. It was all in vain. Keyork had locked her in and had taken the Wanderer away.
She went back to her seat and fell into an attitude of despair. The reaction from the great physical efforts she had made overcame her. It seemed to her that Keyork’s only reason for taking him away must be that he was dead. Her head throbbed and her eyes began to burn. The great passion had its will of her and stabbed her through and through with such pain as she had never dreamed of. The horror of it all was too deep for tears, and tears were by nature very far from her eyes at all times. She pressed her hands to her breast and rocked herself gently backwards and forwards. There was no reason left in her. To her there was no reason left in anything if he were gone. And if Keyork Arabian could not cure him, who could? She knew now what that old prophecy had meant, when they had told her that love would come but once, and that the chief danger of her life lay in a mistake on that decisive day. Love had indeed come upon her like a whirlwind, he had flashed upon her like the lightning, she had tried to grasp him and keep him, and he was gone again--for ever. Gone through her own fault, through her senseless folly in trying to do by art what love would have done for himself. Blind, insensate, mad! She cursed herself with unholy curses, and her beautiful face was strained and distorted. With unconscious fingers she tore at her heavy hair until it fell about her like a curtain. In the raging thirst of a great grief for tears that would not flow she beat her bosom, she beat her face, she struck with her white forehead the heavy table before her, she grasped her own throat, as though she would tear the life out of herself. Then again her head fell forward and her body swayed regularly to and fro, and low words broke fiercely from her trembling lips now and then, bitter words of a wild, strong language in which it is easier to curse than to bless. As the sudden love that had in a few hours taken such complete possession of her was boundless, so its consequences were illimitable. In a nature strange to fear, the fear for another wrought a fearful revolution. Her anger against herself was as terrible as her fear for him she loved was paralysing. The instinct to act, the terror lest it should be too late, the impossibility of acting at all so long as she was imprisoned in the room, all three came over her at once.
The mechanical effort of rocking her body from side to side brought no rest; the blow she struck upon her breast in her frenzy she felt no more than the oaken door had felt those she had dealt it with the club. She could not find even the soothing antidote of bodily pain for her intense moral suffering. Again the time passed without her knowing or guessing of its passage.
Driven to desperation she sprang at last from her seat and cried aloud.
“I would give my soul to know that he is safe!”
The words had not died away when a low groan passed, as it were, round the room. The sound was distinctly that of a human voice, but it seemed to come from all sides at once. Unorna stood still and listened.
“Who is in this room?” she asked in loud clear tones.
Not a breath stirred. She glanced from one specimen to another, as though suspecting that among the dead some living being had taken a disguise. But she knew them all. There was nothing new to her there. She was not afraid. Her passion returned.
“My soul! --yes!” she cried again, leaning heavily on the table, “I would give it if I could know, and it would be little enough!”
Again that awful sound filled the room, and rose now almost to a wail and died away.
Unorna’s brow flushed angrily. In the direct line of her vision stood the head of the Malayan woman, its soft, embalmed eyes fixed on hers.
“If there are people hidden here,” cried Unorna fiercely, “let them show themselves! let them face me! I say it again--I would give my immortal soul!”
This time Unorna saw as well as heard. The groan came, and the wail followed it and rose to a shriek that deafened her. And she saw how the face of the Malayan woman changed; she saw it move in the bright lamp-light, she saw the mouth open. Horrified, she looked away. Her eyes fell upon the squatting savages--their heads were all turned towards her, she was sure that she could see their shrunken chests heave as they took breath to utter that terrible cry again and again; even the fallen body of the African stirred on the floor, not five paces from her. Would their shrieking never stop? All of them--every one--even to the white skulls high up in the case; not one skeleton, not one dead body that did not mouth at her and scream and moan and scream again.
Unorna covered her ears with her hands to shut out the hideous, unearthly noise. She closed her eyes lest she should see those dead things move. Then came another noise. Were they descending from their pedestals and cases and marching upon her, a heavy-footed company of corpses?
Fearless to the last, she dropped her hands and opened her eyes.
“In spite of you all,” she cried defiantly, “I will give my soul to have him safe!”
Something was close to her. She turned and saw Keyork Arabian at her elbow. There was an odd smile on his usually unexpressive face.
“Then give me that soul of yours, if you please,” he said. “He is quite safe and peacefully asleep. You must have grown a little nervous while I was away.”
|
{
"id": "3816"
}
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10
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Unorna let herself sink into a chair. She stared almost vacantly at Keyork, then glanced uneasily at the motionless specimens, then stared at him again.
“Yes,” she said at last. “Perhaps I was a little nervous. Why did you lock me in? I would have gone with you. I would have helped you.”
“An accident--quite an accident,” answered Keyork, divesting himself of his fur coat. “The lock is a peculiar one, and in my hurry I forgot to show you the trick of it.”
“I tried to get out,” said Unorna with a forced laugh. “I tried to break the door down with a club. I am afraid I have hurt one of your specimens.”
She looked about the room. Everything was in its usual position, except the body of the African. She was quite sure that when she had head that unearthly cry, the dead faces had all been turned towards her.
“It is no matter,” replied Keyork in a tone of indifference which was genuine. “I wish somebody would take my collection off my hands. I should have room to walk about without elbowing a failure at every step.”
“I wish you would bury them all,” suggested Unorna, with a slight shudder.
Keyork looked at her keenly.
“Do you mean to say that those dead things frightened you?” he asked incredulously.
“No; I do not. I am not easily frightened. But something odd happened--the second strange thing that has happened this evening. Is there any one concealed in this room?”
“Not a rat--much less a human being. Rats dislike creosote and corrosive sublimate, and as for human beings----” He shrugged his shoulders and smiled.
“Then I have been dreaming,” said Unorna, attempting to look relieved. “Tell me about him. Where is he?”
“In bed--at his hotel. He will be perfectly well to-morrow.”
“Did he wake?” she asked anxiously.
“Yes. We talked together.”
“And he was in his right mind?”
“Apparently. But he seems to have forgotten something.”
“Forgotten? What? That I had made him sleep?”
“Yes. He had forgotten that too.”
“In Heaven’s name, Keyork, tell me what you mean! Do not keep me--” “How impatient women are!” exclaimed Keyork with exasperating calm. “What is it that you most want him to forget?”
“You cannot mean----” “I can, and I do. He has forgotten Beatrice. For a witch--well, you are a very remarkable one, Unorna. As a woman of business----” He shook his head.
“What do you mean, this time? What did you say?” Her questions came in a strained tone and she seemed to have difficulty in concentrating her attention, or in controlling her emotions, or both.
“You paid a large price for the information,” observed Keyork.
“What price? What are you speaking of? I do not understand.”
“Your soul,” he answered, with a laugh. “That was what you offered to any one who would tell you that the Wanderer was safe. I immediately closed with your offer. It was an excellent one for me.”
Unorna tapped the table impatiently.
“It is odd that a man of your learning should never be serious,” she said.
“I supposed that you were serious,” he answered. “Besides, a bargain is a bargain, and there were numerous witnesses to the transaction,” he added, looking round the room at his dead specimens.
Unorna tried to laugh with him.
“Do you know, I was so nervous that I fancied all those creatures were groaning and shrieking and gibbering at me, when you came in.”
“Very likely they were,” said Keyork Arabian, his small eyes twinkling.
“And I imagined that the Malayan woman opened her mouth to scream, and that the Peruvian savages turned their heads; it was very strange--at first they groaned, and then they wailed, and then they howled and shrieked at me.”
“Under the circumstances, that is not extraordinary.”
Unorna stared at him rather angrily. He was jesting, of course, and she had been dreaming, or had been so overwrought by excitement as to have been made the victim of a vivid hallucination. Nevertheless there was something disagreeable in the matter-of-fact gravity of his jest.
“I am tired of your kind of wit,” she said.
“The kind of wit which is called wisdom is said to be fatiguing,” he retorted.
“I wish you would give me an opportunity of being wearied in that way.”
“Begin by opening your eyes to facts, then. It is you who are trying to jest. It is I who am in earnest. Did you, or did you not, offer your soul for a certain piece of information? Did you, or did you not, hear those dead things moan and cry? Did you, or did you not, see them move?”
“How absurd!” cried Unorna. “You might as well ask whether, when one is giddy, the room is really going round? Is there any practical difference, so far as sensation goes, between a mummy and a block of wood?”
“That, my dear lady, is precisely what we do not know, and what we most wish to know. Death is not the change which takes place at a moment which is generally clearly defined, when the heart stops beating, and the eye turns white, and the face changes colour. Death comes some time after that, and we do not know exactly when. It varies very much in different individuals. You can only define it as the total and final cessation of perception and apperception, both functions depending on the nerves. In ordinary cases Nature begins of herself to destroy the nerves by a sure process. But how do you know what happens when decay is not only arrested but prevented before it has begun? How can you foretell what may happen when a skilful hand has restored the tissues of the body to their original flexibility, or preserved them in the state in which they were last sensitive?”
“Nothing can ever make me believe that a mummy can suddenly hear and understand,” said Unorna. “Much less that it can move and produce a sound. I know that the idea has possessed you for many years, but nothing will make me believe it possible.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing short of seeing and hearing.”
“But you have seen and heard.”
“I was dreaming.”
“When you offered your soul?”
“Not then, perhaps. I was only mad then.”
“And on the ground of temporary insanity you would repudiate the bargain?”
Unorna shrugged her shoulders impatiently and did not answer. Keyork relinquished the fencing.
“It is of no importance,” he said, changing his tone. “Your dream--or whatever it was--seems to have been the second of your two experiences. You said there were two, did you not? What was the first?”
Unorna sat silent for some minutes, as though collecting her thoughts. Keyork, who never could have enough light, busied himself with another lamp. The room was now brighter than it generally was in the daytime.
Unorna watched him. She did not want to make confidences to him, and yet she felt irresistibly impelled to do so. He was a strange compound of wisdom and levity, in her opinion, and his light-hearted moods were those which she most resented. She was never sure whether he was in reality tactless, or frankly brutal. She inclined to the latter view of his character, because he always showed such masterly skill in excusing himself when he had gone too far. Neither his wisdom nor his love of jesting explained to her the powerful attraction he exercised over her whole nature, and of which she was, in a manner, ashamed. She could quarrel with him as often as they met, and yet she could not help being always glad to meet him again. She could not admit that she liked him because she dominated him; on the contrary, he was the only person she had ever met over whom she had no influence whatever, who did as he pleased without consulting her, and who laughed at her mysterious power so far as he himself was concerned. Nor was her liking founded upon any consciousness of obligation. If he had helped her to the best of his ability in the great experiment, it was also clear enough that he had the strongest personal interest in doing so. He loved life with a mad passion for its own sake, and the only object of his study was to find a means of living longer than other men. All the aims and desires and complex reasonings of his being tended to this simple expression--the wish to live. To what idolatrous self-worship Keyork Arabian might be capable of descending, if he ever succeeded in eliminating death from the equation of his immediate future, it was impossible to say. The wisdom of ages bids us beware of the man of one idea. He is to be feared for his ruthlessness, for his concentration, for the singular strength he has acquired in the centralization of his intellectual power, and because he has welded, as it were, the rough metal of many passions and of many talents into a single deadly weapon which he wields for a single purpose. Herein lay, perhaps, the secret of Unorna’s undefined fear of Keyork and of her still less definable liking for him.
She leaned one elbow on the table and shaded her eyes from the brilliant light.
“I do not know why I should tell you,” she said at last. “You will only laugh at me, and then I shall be angry, and we shall quarrel as usual.”
“I may be of use,” suggested the little man gravely. “Besides, I have made up my mind never to quarrel with you again, Unorna.”
“You are wise, my dear friend. It does no good. As for your being of use in this case, the most I can hope is that you may find me an explanation of something I cannot understand.”
“I am good at that. I am particularly good at explanations--and, generally, at all _post facto_ wisdom.”
“Keyork, do you believe that the souls of the dead can come back and be visible to us?”
Keyork Arabian was silent for a few seconds.
“I know nothing about it,” he answered.
“But what do you think?”
“Nothing. Either it is possible, or it is not, and until the one proposition or the other is proved I suspend my judgment. Have you seen a ghost?”
“I do not know. I have seen something----” She stopped, as though the recollections were unpleasant.
“Then” said Keyork, “the probability is that you saw a living person. Shall I sum up the question of ghosts for you?”
“I wish you would, in some way that I can understand.”
“We are, then, in precisely the same position with regard to the belief in ghosts which we occupy towards such questions as the abolition of death. The argument in both cases is inductive and all but conclusive. We do not know of any case, in the two hundred generations of men, more or less, with whose history we are in some degree acquainted, of any individual who has escaped death. We conclude that all men must die. Similarly, we do not know certainly--not from real, irrefutable evidence at least--that the soul of any man or woman dead has ever returned visibly to earth. We conclude, therefore, that none ever will. There is a difference in the two cases, which throws a slight balance of probability on the side of the ghost. Many persons have asserted that they have seen ghosts, though none have ever asserted that men do not die. For my own part, I have had a very wide, practical, and intimate acquaintance with dead people--sometimes in very queer places--but I have never seen anything even faintly suggestive of a ghost. Therefore, my dear lady, I advise you to take it for granted that you have seen a living person.”
“I never shivered with cold and felt my hair rise upon my head at the sight of any living thing,” said Unorna dreamily, and still shading her eyes with her hand.
“But might you not feel that if you chanced to see some one whom you particularly disliked?” asked Keyork, with a gentle laugh.
“Disliked?” repeated Unorna in a harsh voice. She changed her position and looked at him. “Yes, perhaps that is possible. I had not thought of that. And yet--I would rather it had been a ghost.”
“More interesting, certainly, and more novel,” observed Keyork, slowly polishing his smooth cranium with the palm of his hand. His head, and the perfect hemisphere of his nose, reflected the light like ivory balls of different sizes.
“I was standing before him,” said Unorna. “The place was lonely and it was already night. The stars shone on the snow, and I could see distinctly. Then she--that woman--passed softly between us. He cried out, calling her by name, and then fell forward. After that, the woman was gone. What was it that I saw?”
“You are quite sure that it was not really a woman?”
“Would a woman, and of all women that one, have come and gone without a word?”
“Not unless she is a very singularly reticent person,” answered Keyork, with a laugh. “But you need not go so far as the ghost theory for an explanation. You were hypnotised, my dear friend, and he made you see her. That is as simple as anything need be.”
“But that is impossible, because----” Unorna stopped and changed colour.
“Because you had hypnotised him already,” suggested Keyork gravely.
“The thing is not possible,” Unorna repeated, looking away from him.
“I believe it to be the only natural explanation. You had made him sleep. You tried to force his mind to something contrary to its firmest beliefs. I have seen you do it. He is a strong subject. His mind rebelled, yielded, then made a final and desperate effort, and then collapsed. That effort was so terrible that it momentarily forced your will back upon itself, and impressed his vision on your sight. There are no ghosts, my dear colleague. There are only souls and bodies. If the soul can be defined as anything it can be defined as Pure Being in the Mode of Individuality but quite removed from the Mode of Matter. As for the body--well, there it is before you, in a variety of shapes, and in various states of preservation, as incapable of producing a ghost as a picture or a statue. You are altogether in a very nervous condition to-day. It is really quite indifferent whether that good lady be alive or dead.”
“Indifferent!” exclaimed Unorna fiercely. Then she was silent.
“Indifferent to the validity of the theory. If she is dead, you did not see her ghost, and if she is alive you did not see her body, because, if she had been there in the flesh, she would have entered into an explanation--to say the least. Hypnosis will explain anything and everything, without causing you a moment’s anxiety for the future.”
“Then I did not hear shrieks and moans, nor see your specimens moving when I was here along just now?”
“Certainly not! Hypnosis again. Auto-hypnosis this time. You should really be less nervous. You probably stared at the lamp without realising the fact. You know that any shining object affects you in that way, if you are not careful. It is a very bright lamp, too. Instantaneous effect--bodies appear to move and you hear unearthly yells--you offer your soul for sale and I buy it, appearing in the nick of time? If your condition had lasted ten seconds longer you would have taken me for his majesty and lived, in imagination, through a dozen years or so of sulphurous purgatorial treatment under my personal supervision, to wake up and find yourself unscorched--and unredeemed, as ever.”
“You are a most comforting person, Keyork,” said Unorna, with a faint smile. “I only wish I could believe everything you tell me.”
“You must either believe me or renounce all claim to intelligence,” answered the little man, climbing from his chair and sitting upon the table at her elbow. His short, sturdy legs swung at a considerable height above the floor, and he planted his hands firmly upon the board on either side of him. The attitude was that of an idle boy, and was so oddly out of keeping with his age and expression that Unorna almost laughed as she looked at him.
“At all events,” he continued, “you cannot doubt my absolute sincerity. You come to me for an explanation. I give you the only sensible one that exists, and the only one which can have a really sedative effect upon your excitement. Of course, if you have any especial object in believing in ghosts--if it affords you any great and lasting pleasure to associate, in imagination, with spectres, wraiths, and airily-malicious shadows, I will not cross your fancy. To a person of solid nerves a banshee may be an entertaining companion, and an apparition in a well-worn winding-sheet may be a pretty toy. For all I know, it may be a delight to you to find your hair standing on end at the unexpected appearance of a dead woman in a black cloak between you and the person with whom you are engaged in animated conversation. All very well, as a mere pastime, I say. But if you find that you are reaching a point on which your judgment is clouded, you had better shut up the magic lantern and take the rational view of the case.”
“Perhaps you are right.”
“Will you allow me to say something very frank, Unorna?” asked Keyork with unusual diffidence.
“If you can manage to be frank without being brutal.”
“I will be short, at all events. It is this. I think you are becoming superstitious.” He watched her closely to see what effect the speech would produce. She looked up quickly.
“Am I? What is superstition?”
“Gratuitous belief in things not proved.”
“I expected a different definition from you.”
“What did you expect me to say?”
“That superstition is belief.”
“I am not a heathen,” observed Keyork sanctimoniously.
“Far from it,” laughed Unorna. “I have heard that devils believe and tremble.”
“And you class me with those interesting things, my dear friend?”
“Sometimes: when I am angry with you.”
“Two or three times a day, then? Not more than that?” inquired the sage, swinging his heels, and staring at the rows of skulls in the background.
“Whenever we quarrel. It is easy for you to count the occasions.”
“Easy, but endless. Seriously, Unorna, I am not the devil. I can prove it to you conclusively on theological grounds.”
“Can you? They say that his majesty is a lawyer, and a successful one, in good practice.”
“What caused Satan’s fall? Pride. Then pride is his chief characteristic. Am I proud, Unorna? The question is absurd, I have nothing to be proud of--a little old man with a gray beard, of whom nobody ever heard anything remarkable. No one ever accused me of pride. How could I be proud of anything? Except of your acquaintance, my dear lady,” he added gallantly, laying his hand on his heart, and leaning towards her as he sat.
Unorna laughed at the speech, and threw back her dishevelled hair with a graceful gesture. Keyork paused.
“You are very beautiful,” he said thoughtfully, gazing at her face and at the red gold lights that played in the tangled tresses.
“Worse and worse!” she exclaimed, still laughing. “Are you going to repeat the comedy you played so well this afternoon, and make love to me again?”
“If you like. But I do not need to win your affections now.”
“Why not?”
“Have I not bought your soul, with everything in it, like a furnished house?” he asked merrily.
“Then you are the devil after all?”
“Or an angel. Why should the evil one have a monopoly in the soul-market? But you remind me of my argument. You would have distracted Demosthenes in the heat of a peroration, or Socrates in the midst of his defence, if you had flashed that hair of yours before their old eyes. You have almost taken the life out of my argument. I was going to say that my peculiarity is not less exclusive than Lucifer’s, though it takes a different turn. I was going to confess with the utmost frankness and the most sincere truth that my only crime against Heaven is a most perfect, unswerving, devotional love for my own particular Self. In that attachment I have never wavered yet--but I really cannot say what may become of Keyork Arabian if he looks at you much longer.”
“He might become a human being,” suggested Unorna.
“How can you be so cruel as to suggest such a horrible possibility?” cried the gnome with a shudder, either real or extremely well feigned.
“You are betraying yourself, Keyork. You must control your feelings better, or I shall find out the truth about you.”
He glanced keenly at her, and was silent for a while. Unorna rose slowly to her feet, and standing beside him, began to twist her hair into a great coil upon her head.
“What made you let it down?” asked Keyork with some curiosity, as he watched her.
“I hardly know,” she answered, still busy with the braids. “I was nervous, I suppose, as you say, and so it got loose and came down.”
“Nervous about our friend?”
She did not reply, but turned from him with a shake of the head and took up her fur mantle.
“You are not going?” said Keyork quietly, in a tone of conviction.
She started slightly, dropped the sable, and sat down again.
“No,” she said, “I am not going yet. I do not know what made me take my cloak.”
“You have really no cause for nervousness now that it is all over,” remarked the sage, who had not descended from his perch on the table. “He is very well. It is one of those cases which are interesting as being new, or at least only partially investigated. We may as well speak in confidence, Unorna, for we really understand each other. Do you not think so?”
“That depends on what you have to say.”
“Not much--nothing that ought to offend you. You must consider, my dear,” he said, assuming an admirably paternal tone, “that I might be your father, and that I have your welfare very much at heart, as well as your happiness. You love this man--no, do not be angry, do not interrupt me. You could not do better for yourself, nor for him. I knew him years ago. He is a grand man--the sort of man I would like to be. Good. You find him suffering from a delusion, or a memory, whichever it be. Not only is this delusion--let us call it so--ruining his happiness and undermining his strength, but so long as it endures, it also completely excludes the possibility of his feeling for you what you feel for him. Your own interest coincides exactly with the promptings of real, human charity. And yours is in reality a charitable nature, dear Unorna, though you are sometimes a little hasty with poor old Keyork. Good again. You, being moved by a desire for this man’s welfare, most kindly and wisely take steps to cure him of his madness. The delusion is strong, but your will is stronger. The delusion yields after a violent struggle during which it has even impressed itself upon your own senses. The patient is brought home, properly cared for, and disposed to rest. Then he wakes, apparently of his own accord, and behold! he is completely cured. Everything has been successful, everything is perfect, everything has followed the usual course of such mental cures by means of hypnosis. The only thing I do not understand is the waking. That is the only thing which makes me uneasy for the future, until I can see it properly explained. He had no right to wake without your suggestion, if he was still in the hypnotic state; and if he had already come out of the hypnotic state by a natural reaction, it is to be feared that the cure may not be permanent.”
Unorna had listened attentively, as she always did when Keyork delivered himself of a serious opinion upon a psychiatric case. Her eyes gleamed with satisfaction as he finished.
“If that is all that troubles you,” she said, “you may set your mind at rest. After he had fallen, and while the watchman was getting the carriage, I repeated my suggestion and ordered him to wake without pain in an hour.”
“Perfect! Splendid!” cried Keyork, clapping his hands loudly together. “I did you an injustice, my dear Unorna. You are not so nervous as I thought, since you forgot nothing. What a woman! Ghost-proof, and able to think connectedly even at such a moment! But tell me, did you not take the opportunity of suggesting something else?” His eyes twinkled merrily, as he asked the question.
“What do you mean?” inquired Unorna, with sudden coldness.
“Oh, nothing so serious as you seem to think. I was only wondering whether a suggestion of reciprocation might not have been wise.”
She faced him fiercely.
“Hold your peace, Keyork Arabian!” she cried.
“Why?” he asked with a bland smile, swinging his little legs and stroking his long beard.
“There is a limit! Must you for ever be trying to suggest, and trying to guide me in everything I do? It is intolerable! I can hardly call my soul my own!”
“Hardly, considering my recent acquisition of it,” returned Keyork calmly.
“That wretched jest is threadbare.”
“A jest! Wretched? And threadbare, too? Poor Keyork! His wit is failing at last.”
He shook his head in mock melancholy over his supposed intellectual dotage. Unorna turned away, this time with the determination to leave him.
“I am sorry if I have offended you,” he said, very meekly. “Was what I said so very unpardonable?”
“If ignorance is unpardonable, as you always say, then your speech is past forgiveness,” said Unorna, relenting by force of habit, but gathering her fur around her. “If you know anything of women--” “Which I do not,” observed the gnome in a low-toned interruption.
“Which you do not--you would know how much such love as you advise me to manufacture by force of suggestion could be worth in a woman’s eyes. You would know that a woman will be loved for herself, for her beauty, for her wit, for her virtues, for her faults, for her own love, if you will, and by a man conscious of all his actions and free of his heart; not by a mere patient reduced to the proper state of sentiment by a trick of hypnotism, or psychiatry, or of whatever you choose to call the effect of this power of mine which neither you, nor I, nor any one can explain. I will be loved freely, for myself, or not at all.”
“I see, I see,” said Keyork thoughtfully, “something in the way Israel Kafka loves you.”
“Yes, as Israel Kafka loves me, I am not afraid to say it. As he loves me, of his own free will, and to his own destruction--as I should have loved him, had it been so fated.”
“So you are a fatalist, Unorna,” observed her companion, still stroking and twisting his beard. “It is strange that we should differ upon so many fundamental questions, you and I, and yet be such good friends. Is it not?”
“The strangest thing of all is that I should submit to your exasperating ways as I do.”
“It does not strike me that it is I who am quarrelling this time,” said Keyork.
“I confess, I would almost prefer that to your imperturbable coolness. What is this new phase? You used not to be like this. You are planning some wickedness. I am sure of it.”
“And that is all the credit I get for keeping my temper! Did I not say a while ago that I would never quarrel with you again?”
“You said so, but--” “But you did not expect me to keep my word,” said Keyork, slipping from his seat on the table with considerable agility and suddenly standing close before her. “And do you not yet know that when I say a thing I do it, and that when I have got a thing I keep it?”
“So far as the latter point is concerned, I have nothing to say. But you need not be so terribly impressive; and unless you are going to break your word, by which you seem to set such store, and quarrel with me, you need not look at me so fiercely.”
Keyork suddenly let his voice drop to its deepest and most vibrating key.
“I only want you to remember this,” he said. “You are not an ordinary woman, as I am not an ordinary man, and the experiment we are making together is an altogether extraordinary one. I have told you the truth. I care for nothing but my individual self, and I seek nothing but the prolongation of life. If you endanger the success of the great trial again, as you did to-day, and if it fails, I will never forgive you. You will make an enemy of me, and you will regret it while you live, and longer than that, perhaps. So long as you keep the compact there is nothing I will not do to help you--nothing within the bounds of your imagination. And I can do much. Do you understand?”
“I understand that you are afraid of losing my help.”
“That is it--of losing your help. I am not afraid of losing you--in the end.”
Unorna smiled rather scornfully at first, as she looked down upon the little man’s strange face and gazed fearlessly into his eyes. But as she looked, the smile faded, and the colour slowly sank from her face, until she was very pale. And as she felt herself losing courage before something which she could not understand, Keyork’s eyes grew brighter and brighter till they glowed like drops of molten metal. A sound as of many voices wailing in agony rose and trembled and quavered in the air. With a wild cry, Unorna pressed her hands to her ears and fled towards the entrance.
“You are very nervous to-night,” observed Keyork, as he opened the door.
Then he went silently down the stairs by her side and helped her into the carriage, which had been waiting since his return.
|
{
"id": "3816"
}
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11
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None
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A month had passed since the day on which Unorna had first seen the Wanderer, and since the evening when she had sat so long in conversation with Keyork Arabian. The snow lay heavily on all the rolling moorland about Prague, covering everything up to the very gates of the black city; and within, all things were as hard and dark and frozen as ever. The sun was still the sun, no doubt, high above the mist and the gloom which he had no power to pierce, but no man could say that he had seen him in that month. At long intervals indeed, a faint rose-coloured glow touched the high walls of the Hradschin and transfigured for an instant the short spires of the unfinished cathedral, hundreds of feet above the icebound river and the sepulchral capital; sometimes, in the dim afternoons, a little gold filtered through the heavy air and tinged the snow-steeples of the Teyn Kirche, and yellowed the stately tower of the town hall; but that was all, so far as the moving throngs of silent beings that filled the streets could see. The very air men breathed seemed to be stiffening with damp cold. For that is not the glorious winter of our own dear north, where the whole earth is a jewel of gleaming crystals hung between two heavens, between the heaven of the day, and the heaven of the night, beautiful alike in sunshine and in starlight, under the rays of the moon, at evening and again at dawn; where the pines and hemlocks are as forests of plumes powdered thick with dust of silver; where the black ice rings like a deep-toned bell beneath the heel of the sweeping skate--the ice that you may follow a hundred miles if you have breath and strength; where the harshest voice rings musically among the icicles and the snow-laden boughs; where the quick jingle of sleigh bells far off on the smooth, deep track brings to the listener the vision of our own merry Father Christmas, with snowy beard, and apple cheeks, and peaked fur cap, and mighty gauntlets, and hampers and sacks full of toys and good things and true northern jollity; where all is young and fresh and free; where eyes are bright and cheeks are red, and hands are strong and hearts are brave; where children laugh and tumble in the diamond dust of the dry, driven snow; where men and women know what happiness can mean; where the old are as the giant pines, green, silver-crowned landmarks in the human forest, rather than as dried, twisted, sapless trees fit only to be cut down and burned, in that dear north to which our hearts and memories still turn for refreshment, under the Indian suns, and out of the hot splendour of calm southern seas. The winter of the black city that spans the frozen Moldau is the winter of the grave, dim as a perpetual afternoon in a land where no lotus ever grew, cold with the unspeakable frigidness of a reeking air that thickens as oil but will not be frozen, melancholy as a stony island of death in a lifeless sea.
A month had gone by, and in that time the love that had so suddenly taken root in Unorna’s heart had grown to great proportions as love will when, being strong and real, it is thwarted and repulsed at every turn. For she was not loved. She had destroyed the idol and rooted out the memory of it, but she could not take its place. She had spoken the truth when she had told Keyork that she would be loved for herself, or not at all, and that she would use neither her secret arts nor her rare gifts to manufacture a semblance when she longed for a reality.
Almost daily she saw him. As in a dream he came to her and sat by her side, hour after hour, talking of many things, calm, apparently, and satisfied in her society, but strangely apathetic and indifferent. Never once in those many days had she seen his pale face light up with pleasure, nor his deep eyes show a gleam of interest; never had the tone of his voice been disturbed in its even monotony; never had the touch of his hand, when they met and parted, felt the communication of the thrill that ran through hers.
It was very bitter, for Unorna was proud with the scarcely reasoning pride of a lawless, highly gifted nature, accustomed to be obeyed and little used to bending under any influence. She brought all the skill she could command to her assistance; she talked to him, she told him of herself, she sought his confidence, she consulted him on every matter, she attempted to fascinate his imagination with tales of a life which even he could never have seen; she even sang to him old songs and snatches of wonderful melodies which, in her childhood, had still survived the advancing wave of silence that has overwhelmed the Bohemian people within the memory of living man, bringing a change into the daily life and temperament of a whole nation which is perhaps unparalleled in any history. He listened, he smiled, he showed a faint pleasure and a great understanding in all these things, and he came back day after day to talk and listen again. But that was all. She felt that she could amuse him without charming him.
And Unorna suffered terribly. Her cheek grew thinner and her eyes gleamed with sudden fires. She was restless, and her beautiful hands, from seeming to be carved in white marble, began to look as though they were chiselled out of delicate transparent alabaster. She slept little and thought much, and if she did not shed tears, it was because she was too strong to weep for pain and too proud to weep from anger and disappointment. And yet her resolution remained firm, for it was part and parcel of her inmost self, and was guarded by pride on the one hand and an unalterable belief in fate on the other.
To-day they sat together, as they had so often sat, among the flowers and the trees in the vast conservatory, she in her tall, carved chair and he upon a lower seat before her. They had been silent for some minutes. It was not yet noon, but it might have been early morning in a southern island, so soft was the light, so freshly scented the air, so peaceful the tinkle of the tiny fountain. Unorna’s expression was sad, as she gazed in silence at the man she loved. There was something gone from his face, she thought, since she had first seen him, and it was to bring that something back that she would give her life and her soul if she could.
Suddenly her lips moved and a sad melody trembled in the air. Unorna sang, almost as though singing to herself. The Wanderer’s deep eyes met hers and he listened.
“When in life’s heaviest hour Grief crowds upon the heart One wondrous prayer My memory repeats.
“The harmony of the living words Is full of strength to heal, There breathes in them a holy charm Past understanding.
“Then, as a burden from my soul, Doubt rolls away, And I believe--believe in tears, And all is light--so light!”
She ceased, and his eyes were still upon her, calm, thoughtful, dispassionate. The colour began to rise in her cheek. She looked down and tapped upon the carved arm of the chair with an impatient gesture familiar to her.
“And what is that one prayer?” asked the Wanderer. “I knew the song long ago, but I have never guessed what that magic prayer can be like.”
“It must be a woman’s prayer; I cannot tell you what it is.”
“And are you so sad to-day, Unorna? What makes you sing that song?”
“Sad? No, I am not sad,” she answered with an effort. “But the words rose to my lips and so I sang.”
“They are pretty words,” said her companion, almost indifferently. “And you have a very beautiful voice,” he added thoughtfully.
“Have I? I have been told so, sometimes.”
“Yes. I like to hear you sing, and talk, too. My life is a blank. I do not know what it would be without you.”
“I am little enough to--those who know me,” said Unorna, growing pale, and drawing a quick breath.
“You cannot say that. You are not little to me.”
There was a long silence. He gazed at the plants, and his glance wandered from one to the other, as though he did not see them, being lost in meditation. The voice had been calm and clear as ever, but it was the first time he had ever said so much, and Unorna’s heart stood still, half fire and half ice. She could not speak.
“You are very much to me,” he said again, at last. “Since I have been in this place a change has come over me. I seem to myself to be a man without an object, without so much as a real thought. Keyork tells me that there is something wanting, that the something is woman, and that I ought to love. I cannot tell. I do not know what love is, and I never knew. Perhaps it is the absence of it that makes me what I am--a body and an intelligence without a soul. Even the intelligence I begin to doubt. What sense has there ever been in all my wanderings? Why have I been in every place, in every city? What went I forth to see? Not even a reed shaken by the wind! I have spoken all languages, read thousands of books, known men in every land--and for what? It is as though I had once had an object in it all, though I know that there was none. But I have realised the worthlessness of my life since I have been here. Perhaps you have shown it to me, or helped me to see it. I cannot tell. I ask myself again and again what it was all for, and I ask in vain. I am lonely, indeed, in the world, but it has been my own choice. I remember that I had friends once, when I was younger, but I cannot tell what has become of one of them. They wearied me, perhaps, in those days, and the weariness drove me from my own home. For I have a home, Unorna, and I fancy that when old age gets me at last I shall go there to die, in one of those old towers by the northern sea. I was born there, and there my mother died and my father, before I knew them; it is a sad place! Meanwhile, I may have thirty years, or forty, or even more to live. Shall I go on living this wandering, aimless life? And if not what shall I do? Love, says Keyork Arabian--who never loved anything but himself, but to whom that suffices, for it passes the love of woman!”
“That is true, indeed,” said Unorna in a low voice.
“And what he says might be true also, if I were capable of loving. But I feel that I am not. I am as incapable of that as of anything else. I ought to despise myself, and yet I do not. I am perfectly contented, and if I am not happy I at least do not realise what unhappiness means. Am I not always of the same even temper?”
“Indeed you are.” She tried not to speak bitterly, but something in her tone struck him.
“Ah, I see! You despise me a little for my apathy. Yes, you are quite right. Man is not made to turn idleness into a fine art, nor to manufacture contentment out of his own culpable indifference! It is despicable--and yet, here I am.”
“I never meant that,” cried Unorna with sudden heat. “Even if I had, what right have I to make myself the judge of your life?”
“The right of friendship,” answered the Wanderer very quietly. “You are my best friend, Unorna.”
Unorna’s anger rose within her. She remembered how in that very place, and but a month earlier, she had offered Israel Kafka her friendship, and it was as though a heavy retribution were now meted out to her for her cruelty on that day. She remembered his wrath and his passionate denunciations of friendship, his scornful refusal, his savage attempt to conquer her will, his failure and his defeat. She remembered how she had taken her revenge, delivering him over in his sleep to Keyork Arabian’s will. She wished that, like him, she could escape from the wound of the word in a senseless lethargy of body and mind. She knew now what he had suffered, for she suffered it all herself. He, at least, had been free to speak his mind, to rage and storm and struggle. She must sit still and hide her agony, at the risk of losing all. She bit her white lips and turned her head away, and was silent.
“You are my best friend,” the Wanderer repeated in his calm voice, and every syllable pierced her like a glowing needle. “And does not friendship give rights which ought to be used? If, as I think, Unorna, you look upon me as an idler, as a worthless being, as a man without as much as the shadow of a purpose in the world, it is but natural that you should despise me a little, even though you may be very fond of me. Do you not see that?”
Unorna stared at him with an odd expression for a moment.
“Yes--I am fond of you!” she exclaimed, almost harshly. Then she laughed. He seemed not to notice her tone.
“I never knew what friendship was before,” he went on. “Of course, as I said, I had friends when I was little more than a boy, boys and young men like myself, and our friendship came to this, that we laughed, and feasted and hunted together, and sometimes even quarrelled, and caring little, thought even less. But in those days there seemed to be nothing between that and love, and love I never understood, that I can remember. But friendship like ours, Unorna, was never dreamed of among us. Such friendship as this, when I often think that I receive all and give nothing in return.”
Again Unorna laughed, so strangely that the sound of her own voice startled her.
“Why do you laugh like that?” he asked.
“Because what you say is so unjust to yourself,” she answered, nervously and scarcely seeing him where he sat. “You seem to think it is all on your side. And yet, I just told you that I was fond of you.”
“I think it is a fondness greater than friendship that we feel for each other,” he said, presently, thrusting the probe of a new hope into the tortured wound.
“Yes?” she spoke faintly, with averted face.
“Something more--a stronger tie, a closer bond. Unorna, do you believe in the migration of the soul throughout ages, from one body to another?”
“Sometimes,” she succeeded in saying.
“I do not believe in it,” he continued. “But I see well enough how men may, since I have known you. We have grown so intimate in these few weeks, we seem to understand each other so wholly, with so little effort, we spend such happy, peaceful hours together every day, that I can almost fancy our two selves having been together through a whole lifetime in some former state, living together, thinking together, inseparable from birth, and full of an instinctive, mutual understanding. I do not know whether that seems an exaggeration to you or not. Has the same idea ever crossed your mind?”
She said something, or tried to say something, but the words were inaudible; he interpreted them as expressive of assent, and went on, in a musing tone, as though talking quite as much to himself as to her.
“And that is the reason why it seems as though we must be more than friends, though we have known each other so short a time. Perhaps it is too much to say.”
He hesitated, and paused. Unorna breathed hard, not daring to think of what might be coming next. He talked so calmly, in such an easy tone, it was impossible that he could be making love. She remembered the vibrations in his voice when, a month ago, he had told her his story. She remembered the inflection of the passionate cry he had uttered when he had seen the shadow of Beatrice stealing between them, she knew the ring of his speech when he loved, for she had heard it. It was not there now. And yet, the effort not to believe would have been too great for her strength.
“Nothing that you could say would be--” she stopped herself--“would pain me,” she added, desperately, in the attempt to complete the sentence.
He looked somewhat surprised, and then smiled.
“No. I shall never say anything, nor do anything, which could give you pain. What I meant was this. I feel towards you, and with you, as I can fancy a man might feel to a dear sister. Can you understand that?”
In spite of herself she started. He had but just said that he would never give her pain. He did not guess what cruel wounds he was inflicting now.
“You are surprised,” he said, with intolerable self-possession. “I cannot wonder. I remember to have very often thought that there are few forms of sentimentality more absurd than that which deceives a man into the idea that he can with impunity play at being a brother to a young and beautiful woman. I have always thought so, and I suppose that in whatever remains of my indolent intelligence I think so still. But intelligence is not always so reliable as instinct. I am not young enough nor foolish enough either, to propose that we should swear eternal brother-and-sisterhood--or perhaps I am not old enough, who can tell? Yet I feel how perfectly safe it would be for either of us.”
The steel had been thrust home, and could go no farther. Unorna’s unquiet temper rose at his quiet declaration of his absolute security. The colour came again to her cheek, a little hotly, and though there was a slight tremor in her voice when she spoke, yet her eyes flashed beneath the drooping lids.
“Are you sure it would be safe?” she asked.
“For you, of course there can be no danger possible,” he said, in perfect simplicity of good faith. “For me--well, I have said it. I cannot imagine love coming near me in any shape, by degrees or unawares. It is a strange defect in my nature, but I am glad of it since it makes this pleasant life possible.”
“And why should you suppose that there is no danger for me?” asked Unorna, with a quick glance and a silvery laugh. She was recovering her self-possession.
“For you? Why should there be? How could there be? No woman ever loved me, then why should you? Besides--there are a thousand reasons, one better than the other.”
“I confess I would be glad to hear a few of them, my friend. You were good enough just now to call me young and beautiful. You are young too, and certainly not repulsive in appearance. You are gifted, you have led an interesting life--indeed, I cannot help laughing when I think how many reasons there are for my falling in love with you. But you are very reassuring, you tell me there is no danger. I am willing to believe.”
“It is safe to do that,” answered the Wanderer with a smile, “unless you can find at least one reason far stronger than those you give. Young and passably good-looking men are not rare, and as for men of genius who have led interesting lives, many thousands have been pointed out to me. Then why, by any conceivable chance, should your choice fall on me?”
“Perhaps because I am so fond of you already,” said Unorna, looking away lest her eyes should betray what was so far beyond fondness. “They say that the most enduring passions are either born in a single instant, or are the result of a treacherously increasing liking. Take the latter case. Why is it impossible, for you or for me? We are slipping from mere liking into friendship, and for all I know we may some day fall headlong from friendship into love. It would be very foolish no doubt, but it seems to me quite possible. Do you not see it?”
The Wanderer laughed lightly. It was years since he had laughed, until this friendship had begun.
“What can I say?” he asked. “If you, the woman, acknowledge yourself vulnerable, how can I, the man, be so discourteous as to assure you that I am proof? And yet, I feel that there is no danger for either of us.”
“You are still sure?”
“And if there were, what harm would be done?” he laughed again. “We have no plighted word to break, and I, at least, am singularly heart free. The world would not come to an untimely end if we loved each other. Indeed, the world would have nothing to say about it.”
“To me, it would not,” said Unorna, looking down at her clasped hands. “But to you--what would the world say, if it learned that you were in love with Unorna, that you were married to the Witch?”
“The world? What is the world to me, or what am I to it? What is my world? If it is anything, it consists of a score of men and women who chance to be spending their allotted time on earth in that corner of the globe in which I was born, who saw me grow to manhood, and who most inconsequently arrogate to themselves the privilege of criticising my actions, as they criticise each other’s; who say loudly that this is right and that is wrong, and who will be gathered in due time to their insignificant fathers with their own insignificance thick upon them, as is meet and just. If that is the world I am not afraid of its judgments in the very improbable case of my falling in love with you.”
Unorna shook her head. There was a momentary relief in discussing the consequences of a love not yet born in him.
“That would not be all,” she said. “You have a country, you have a home, you have obligations--you have all those things which I have not.”
“And not one of those which you have.”
She glanced at him again, for there was a truth in the words which hurt her. Love, at least, was hers in abundance, and he had it not.
“How foolish it is to talk like this!” she exclaimed. “After all, when people love, they care very little what the world says. If I loved any one”--she tried to laugh carelessly--“I am sure I should be indifferent to everything or every one else.”
“I am sure you would be,” assented the Wanderer.
“Why?” She turned rather suddenly upon him. “Why are you sure?”
“In the first place because you say so, and secondly because you have the kind of nature which is above common opinion.”
“And what kind of nature may that be?”
“Enthusiastic, passionate, brave.”
“Have I so many good qualities?”
“I am always telling you so.”
“Does it give you pleasure to tell me what you think of me?”
“Does it pain you to hear it?” asked the Wanderer, somewhat surprised at the uncertainty of her temper, and involuntarily curious as to the cause of the disturbance.
“Sometimes it does,” Unorna answered.
“I suppose I have grown awkward and tactless in my lonely life. You must forgive me if I do not understand my mistake. But since I have annoyed you, I am sorry for it. Perhaps you do not like such speeches because you think I am flattering you and turning compliments. You are wrong if you think that. I am sincerely attached to you, and I admire you very much. May I not say as much as that?”
“Does it do any good to say it?”
“If I may speak of you at all I may express myself with pleasant truths.”
“Truths are not always pleasant. Better not to speak of me at any time.”
“As you will,” answered the Wanderer bending his head as though in submission to her commands. But he did not continue the conversation, and a long silence ensued.
He wandered what was passing in her mind, and his reflections led to no very definite result. Even if the idea of her loving him had presented itself to his intelligence he would have scouted it, partly on the ground of its apparent improbability, and partly, perhaps, because he had of late grown really indolent, and would have resented any occurrence which threatened to disturb the peaceful, objectless course of his days. He put down her quick changes of mood to sudden caprice, which he excused readily enough.
“Why are you so silent?” Unorna asked, after a time.
“I was thinking of you,” he answered, with a smile. “And since you forbade me to speak of you, I said nothing.”
“How literal you are!” she exclaimed impatiently.
“I could see no figurative application of your words,” he retorted, beginning to be annoyed at her prolonged ill humour.
“Perhaps there was none.”
“In that case--” “Oh, do not argue! I detest argument in all shapes, and most of all when I am expected to answer it. You cannot understand me--you never will--” She broke off suddenly and looked at him.
She was angry with him, with herself, with everything, and in her anger she loved him tenfold better than before. Had he not been blinded by his own absolute coldness he must have read her heart in the look she gave him, for his eyes met hers. But he saw nothing. The glance had been involuntary, but Unorna was too thoroughly a woman not to know all that it had expressed and would have conveyed to the mind of any one not utterly incapable of love, all that it might have betrayed even to this man who was her friend and talked of being her brother. She realised with terrible vividness the extent of her own passion and the appalling indifference of its objet. A wave of despair rose and swept over her heart. Her sight grew dim and she was conscious of sharp physical pain. She did not even attempt to speak, for she had no thoughts which could take the shape of words. She leaned back in her chair, and tried to draw her breath, closing her eyes, and wishing she were alone.
“What is the matter?” asked the Wanderer, watching her in surprise.
She did not answer. He rose and stood beside her, and lightly touched her hand.
“Are you ill?” he asked again.
She pushed him away, almost roughly.
“No,” she answered shortly.
Then, all at once, as though repenting of her gesture, her hand sought his again, pressed it hard for a moment, and let it fall.
“It is nothing,” she said. “It will pass. Forgive me.”
“Did anything I said----” he began.
“No, no; how absurd!”
“Shall I go. Yes, you would rather be alone----” he hesitated.
“No--yes--yes, go away and come back later. It is the heat perhaps; is it not hot here?”
“I daresay,” he answered absently.
He took her hand and then left her, wondering exceedingly over a matter which was of the simplest.
It was some time before Unorna realised that he was gone. She had suffered a severe shock, not to be explained by any word or words which he had spoken, as much as by the revelation of her own utter powerlessness, of her total failure to touch his heart, but most directly of all the consequence of a sincere passion which was assuming dangerous proportions and which threatened to sweep away even her pride in its irresistible course.
She grew calmer when she found herself alone, but in a manner she grew also more desperate. A resolution began to form itself in her mind which she would have despised and driven out of her thoughts a few hours earlier; a resolution destined to lead to strange results. She began to think of resorting once more to a means other than natural in order to influence the man she loved.
In the first moments she had felt sure of herself, and the certainty that the Wanderer had forgotten Beatrice as completely as though she had never existed had seemed to Unorna a complete triumph. With little or no common vanity she had nevertheless felt sure that the man must love her for her own sake. She knew, when she thought of it, that she was beautiful, unlike other women, and born to charm all living things. She compared in her mind the powers she controlled at will, and the influence she exercised without effort over every one who came near her. It had always seemed to her enough to wish in order to see the realisation of her wishes. But she had herself never understood how closely the wish was allied with the despotic power of suggestion which she possessed. But in her love she had put a watch over her mysterious strength and had controlled it, saying that she would be loved for herself or not at all. She had been jealous of every glance, lest it should produce a result not natural. She had waited to be won, instead of trying to win. She had failed, and passion could be restrained no longer.
“What does it matter how, if only he is mine!” she exclaimed fiercely, as she rose from her carved chair an hour after he had left her.
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{
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}
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Israel Kafka found himself seated in the corner of a comfortable carriage with Keyork Arabian at his side. He opened his eyes quite naturally, and after looking out of the window stretched himself as far as the limits of the space would allow. He felt very weak and very tired. The bright colour had left his olive cheeks, his lips were pale and his eyes heavy.
“Travelling is very tiring,” he said, glancing at Keyork’s face.
The old man rubbed his hands briskly and laughed.
“I am as fresh as ever,” he answered. “It is true that I have the happy faculty of sleeping when I get a chance and that no preoccupation disturbs my appetite.”
Keyork Arabian was in a very cheerful frame of mind. He was conscious of having made a great stride towards the successful realisation of his dream. Israel Kafka’s ignorance, too, amused him, and gave him a fresh and encouraging proof of Unorna’s amazing powers.
By a mere exercise of superior will this man, in the very prime of youth and strength, had been deprived of a month of his life. Thirty days were gone, as in the flash of a second, and with them was gone also something less easily replaced, or at least more certainly missed. In Kafka’s mind the passage of time was accounted for in a way which would have seemed supernatural twenty years ago, but which at the present day is understood in practice if not in theory. For thirty days he had been stationary in one place, almost motionless, an instrument in Keyork’s skilful hands, a mere reservoir of vitality upon which the sage had ruthlessly drawn to the fullest extent of its capacities. He had been fed and tended in his unconsciousness, he had, unknown to himself, opened his eyes at regular intervals, and had absorbed through his ears a series of vivid impressions destined to disarm his suspicions, when he was at last allowed to wake and move about the world again. With unfailing forethought Keyork had planned the details of a whole series of artificial reminiscences, and at the moment when Kafka came to himself in the carriage the machinery of memory began to work as Keyork had intended that it should.
Israel Kafka leaned back against the cushions and reviewed his life during the past month. He remembered very well the afternoon when, after a stormy interview with Unorna, he had been persuaded by Keyork to accompany the latter upon a rapid southward journey. He remembered how he had hastily packed together a few necessaries for the expedition, while Keyork stood at his elbow advising him what to take and what to leave, with the sound good sense of an experienced traveller, and he could almost repeat the words of the message he had scrawled on a sheet of paper at the last minute to explain his sudden absence from his lodging--for the people of the house had all been away when he was packing his belongings. Then the hurry of the departure recalled itself to him, the crowds of people at the Franz Josef station, the sense of rest in finding himself alone with Keyork in a compartment of the express train; after that he had slept during most of the journey, waking to find himself in a city of the snow-driven Tyrol. With tolerable distinctness he remembered the sights he had seen, and fragments of conversation--then another departure, still southward, the crossing of the Alps, Italy, Venice--a dream of water and sun and beautiful buildings, in which the varied conversational powers of his companion found constant material. As a matter of fact the conversation was what was most clearly impressed upon Kafka’s mind, as he recalled the rapid passage from one city to another, and realised how many places he had visited in one short month. From Venice southwards, again, Florence, Rome, Naples, Sicily, by sea to Athens and on to Constantinople, familiar to him already from former visits--up the Bosphorus, by the Black Sea to Varna, and then, again, a long period of restful sleep during the endless railway journey--Pesth, Vienna, rapidly revisited and back at last to Prague, to the cold and the gray snow and the black sky. It was not strange, he thought, that his recollections of so many cities should be a little confused. A man would need a fine memory to catalogue the myriad sights which such a trip offers to the eye, the innumerable sounds, familiar and unfamiliar, which strike the ear, the countless sensations of comfort, discomfort, pleasure, annoyance and admiration, which occupy the nerves without intermission. There was something not wholly disagreeable in the hazy character of the retrospect, especially to a nature such as Kafka’s, full of undeveloped artistic instincts and of a passionate love of all sensuous beauty, animate and inanimate. The gorgeous pictures rose one after the other in his imagination, and satisfied a longing of which he felt that he had been vaguely aware before beginning the journey. None of these lacked reality, any more than Keyork himself, thought it seemed strange to the young man that he should actually have seen so much in so short a time.
But Keyork and Unorna understood their art and knew how much more easy it is to produce a fiction of continuity where an element of confusion is introduced by the multitude and variety of the quickly succeeding impressions and almost destitute of incident. One occurrence, indeed, he remembered with extraordinary distinctness, and could have affirmed under oath in all its details. It had taken place in Palermo. The heat had seemed intense by contrast with the bitter north he had left behind. Keyork had gone out and he had been alone in a strange hotel. His head swam in the stifling scirocco. He had sent for a local physician, and the old-fashioned doctor had then and there taken blood from his arm. He had lost so much that he had fainted. The doctor had been gone when Keyork returned, and the sage had been very angry, abusing in most violent terms the ignorance which could still apply such methods. Israel Kafka knew that the lancet had left a wound on his arm and that the scar was still visible. He remembered, too, that he had often felt tired since, and that Keyork had invariably reminded him of the circumstances, attributing to it the weariness from which he suffered, and indulging each time in fresh abuse of the benighted doctor.
Very skilfully had the whole story been put together in all its minutest details, carefully thought out and written down in the form of a journal before it had been impressed upon his sleeping mind with all the tyrannic force of Unorna’s strong will. And there was but little probability that Israel Kafka would ever learn what had actually been happening to him while he fancied that he had been travelling swiftly from place to place. He could still wonder, indeed, that he should have yielded so easily to Keyork’s pressing invitation to accompany the latter upon such an extraordinary flight, but he remembered then his last interview with Unorna and it seemed almost natural that in his despair he should have chosen to go away. Not that his passion for the woman was dead. Intentionally, or by an oversight, Unorna had not touched upon the question of his love for her, in the course of her otherwise well-considered suggestions. Possibly she had believed that the statement she had forced from his lips was enough and that he would forget her without any further action on her part. Possibly, too, Unorna was indifferent and was content to let him suffer, believing that his devotion might still be turned to some practical use. However that may be, when Israel Kafka opened his eyes in the carriage he still loved her, though he was conscious that in his manner of loving a change had taken place, of which he was destined to realise the consequences before another day had passed.
When Keyork answered his first remark, he turned and looked at the old man.
“I suppose you are tougher than I,” he said, languidly. “You will hardly believe it, but I have been dozing already, here, in the carriage, since we left the station.”
“No harm in that. Sleep is a great restorative,” laughed Keyork.
“Are you so glad to be in Prague again?” asked Kafka. “It is a melancholy place. But you laugh as though you actually liked the sight of the black houses and the gray snow and the silent people.”
“How can a place be melancholy? The seat of melancholy is the liver. Imagine a city with a liver--of brick and mortar, or stone and cement, a huge mass of masonry buried in its centre, like an enormous fetish, exercising a mysterious influence over the city’s health--then you may imagine a city as suffering from melancholy.”
“How absurd!”
“My dear boy, I rarely say absurd things,” answered Keyork imperturbably. “Besides, as a matter of fact, there is nothing absurd. But you suggested rather a fantastic idea to my imagination. The brick liver is not a bad conception. Far down in the bowels of the earth, in a black cavern hollowed beneath the lowest foundations of the oldest church, the brick liver was built by the cunning magicians of old, to last for ever, to purify the city’s blood, to regulate the city’s life, and in a measure to control its destinies by means of its passions. A few wise men have handed down the knowledge of the brick liver to each other from generation to generation, but the rest of the inhabitants are ignorant of its existence. They alone know that every vicissitude of the city’s condition is traceable to that source--its sadness, its merriment, its carnivals and its lents, its health and its disease, its prosperity and the hideous plagues which at distant intervals kill one in ten of the population. Is it not a pretty thought?”
“I do not understand you,” said Kafka, wearily.
“It is a very practical idea,” continued Keyork, amused with his own fancies, “and it will yet be carried out. The great cities of the next century will each have a liver of brick and mortar and iron and machinery, a huge mechanical purifier. You smile! Ah, my dear boy, truth and phantasm are very much the same to you! You are too young. How can you be expected to care for the great problem of problems, for the mighty question of prolonging life?”
Keyork laughed again, with a meaning in his laughter which escaped his companion altogether.
“How can you be expected to care?” he repeated. “And yet men used to say that it was the duty of strong youth to support the trembling weakness of feeble old age.”
His eyes twinkled with a diabolical mirth.
“No,” said Kafka. “I do not care. Life is meant to be short. Life is meant to be storm, broken with gleams of love’s sunshine. Why prolong it? If it is unhappy you would only draw out the unhappiness to greater lengths, and such joy as it has is joy only because it is quick, sudden, violent. I would concentrate a lifetime into an instant, if I could, and then die content in having suffered everything, enjoyed everything, dared everything in the flash of a great lightning between two total darknesses. But to drag on through slow sorrows, or to crawl through a century of contentment--never! Better be mad, or asleep, and unconscious of the time.”
“You are a very desperate person!” exclaimed Keyork. “If you had the management of this unstable world you would make it a very convulsive and nervous place. We should all turn into flaming ephemerides, fluttering about the crater of a perpetually active volcano. I prefer the system of the brick liver. There is more durability in it.”
The carriage stopped before the door of Kafka’s dwelling. Keyork got out with him and stood upon the pavement while the porter took the slender luggage into the house. He smiled as he glanced at the leathern portmanteau which was supposed to have made such a long journey while it had in reality lain a whole month in a corner of Keyork’s great room behind a group of specimens. He had opened it once or twice in that time, had disturbed the contents and had thrown in a few objects from his heterogeneous collection, as reminiscences of the places visited in imagination by Kafka, and of the acquisition of which the latter was only assured in his sleeping state. They would constitute a tangible proof of the journey’s reality in case the suggestion proved less thoroughly successful than was hoped, and Keyork prided himself upon this supreme touch.
“And now,” he said, taking Kafka’s hand, “I would advise you to rest as long as you can. I suppose that it must have been a fatiguing trip for you, though I myself am as fresh as a May morning. There is nothing wrong with you, but you are tired. Repose, my dear boy, repose, and plenty of it. That infernal Sicilian doctor! I shall never forgive him for bleeding you as he did. There is nothing so weakening. Good-bye--I shall hardly see you again to-day, I fancy.”
“I cannot tell,” answered the young man absently. “But let me thank you,” he added, with a sudden consciousness of obligation, “for your pleasant company, and for making me go with you. I daresay it has done me good, though I feel unaccountably tired--I feel almost old.”
His tired eyes and haggard face showed that this at least was no illusion. The fancied journey had added ten years to his age in thirty days, and those who knew him best would have found it hard to recognise the brilliantly vital personality of Israel Kafka in the pale and exhausted youth who painfully climbed the stairs with unsteady steps, panting for breath and clutching at the hand-rail for support.
“He will not die this time,” remarked Keyork Arabian to himself, as he sent the carriage away and began to walk towards his own home. “Not this time. But it was a sharp strain, and it would not be safe to try it again.”
He thrust his gloved hands into the pockets of his fur coat, so that the stick he held stood upright against his shoulder in a rather military fashion. The fur cap sat a little to one side on his strange head, his eyes twinkled, his long white beard waved in the cold wind, and his whole appearance was that of a jaunty gnome-king, well satisfied with the inspection of his treasure chamber.
And he had cause for satisfaction, as he knew well enough when he thought of the decided progress made in the great experiment. The cost at which that progress had been obtained was nothing. Had Israel Kafka perished altogether under the treatment he had received, Keyork Arabian would have bestowed no more attention upon the catastrophe than would have been barely necessary in order to conceal it and to protect himself and Unorna from the consequences of the crime. In the duel with death, the life of one man was of small consequence, and Keyork would have sacrificed thousands to his purposes with equal indifference to their intrinsic value and with a proportionately greater interest in the result to be attained. There was a terrible logic in his mental process. Life was a treasure literally inestimable in value. Death was the destroyer of this treasure, devised by the Supreme Power as a sure means of limiting man’s activity and intelligence. To conquer Death on his own ground was to win the great victory over that Power, and to drive back to an indefinite distance the boundaries of human supremacy.
It was assuredly not for the sake of benefiting mankind at large that he pursued his researches at all sacrifices and at all costs. The prime object of all his consideration was himself, as he unhesitatingly admitted on all occasions, conceiving perhaps that it was easier to defend such a position than to disclaim it. There could be no doubt that in the man’s enormous self-estimation, the Supreme Power occupied a place secondary to Keyork Arabian’s personality, and hostile to it. And he had taken up arms, as Lucifer, assuming his individual right to live in spite of God, Man and Nature, convinced that the secret could be discovered and determined to find it and to use it, no matter at what price. In him there was neither ambition, nor pride, nor vanity in the ordinary meaning of these words. For passion ceases with the cessation of comparison between man and his fellows, and Keyork Arabian acknowledged no ground for such a comparison in his own case. He had matched himself in a struggle with the Supreme Power, and, directly, with that Power’s only active representative on earth, with death. It was well said of him that he had no beliefs, for he knew of no intermediate position between total suspension of judgment, and the certainty of direct knowledge. And it was equally true that he was no atheist, as he had sanctimoniously declared of himself. He admitted the existence of the Power; he claimed the right to assail it, and he grappled with the greatest, the most terrible, the most universal and the most stupendous of Facts, which is the Fact that all men die. Unless he conquered, he must die also. He was past theories, as he was beyond most other human weaknesses, and facts had for him the enormous value they acquire in the minds of men cut off from all that is ideal.
In Unorna he had found the instrument he had sought throughout half a lifetime. With her he had tried the great experiment and pushed it to the very end; and when he conducted Israel Kafka to his home, he already knew that the experiment had succeeded. His plan was a simple one. He would wait a few months longer for the final result, he would select his victim, and with Unorna’s help he would himself grow young again.
“And who can tell,” he asked himself, “whether the life restored by such means may not be more resisting and stronger against deathly influences than before? Is it not true that the older we grow the more slowly we grow old? Is not the gulf which divides the infant from the man of twenty years far wider than that which lies between the twentieth and the fortieth years, and that again more full of rapid change than the third score? Take, too, the wisdom of my old age as against the folly of a scarce grown boy, shall not my knowledge and care and forethought avail to make the same material last longer on the second trial than on the first?”
No doubt of that, he thought, as he walked briskly along the pavement and entered his own house. In his great room he sat down by the table and fell into a long meditation upon the most immediate consequences of his success in the difficult undertaking he had so skilfully brought to a conclusion. His eyes wandered about the room from one specimen to another, and from time to time a short, scornful laugh made his white beard quiver. As he had said once to Unorna, the dead things reminded him of many failures; but he had never before been able to laugh at them and at the unsuccessful efforts they represented. It was different to-day. Without lifting his head he turned up his bright eyes, under the thick, finely-wrinkled lids, as though looking upward toward that Power against which he strove. The glance was malignant and defiant, human and yet half-devilish. Then he looked down again, and again fell into deep thought.
“And if it is to be so,” he said at last, rising suddenly and letting his open hand fall upon the table, “even then, I am provided. She cannot free herself from that bargain, at all events.”
Then he wrapped his furs around him and went out again. Scarce a hundred paces from Unorna’s door he met the Wanderer. He looked up into the cold, calm face, and put out his hand, with a greeting.
“You look as though you were in a very peaceful frame of mind,” observed Keyork.
“Why should I be anything but peaceful?” asked the other, “I have nothing to disturb me.”
“True, true. You possess a very fine organisation. I envy you your magnificent constitution, my dear friend. I would like to have some of it, and grow young again.”
“On your principle of embalming the living, I suppose.”
“Exactly,” answered the sage with a deep, rolling laugh. “By the bye, have you been with our friend Unorna? I suppose that is a legitimate question, though you always tell me I am tactless.”
“Perfectly legitimate, my dear Keyork. Yes, I have just left her. It is like a breath of spring morning to go there in these days.”
“You find it refreshing?”
“Yes. There is something about her that I could describe as soothing, if I were aware of ever being irritable, which I am not.”
Keyork smiled and looked down, trying to dislodge a bit of ice from the pavement with the point of his stick.
“Soothing--yes. That is just the expression. Not exactly the quality most young and beautiful women covet, eh? But a good quality in its way, and at the right time. How is she to-day?”
“She seemed to have a headache--or she was oppressed by the heat. Nothing serious, I fancy, but I came away, as I fancied I was tiring her.”
“Not likely,” observed Keyork. “Do you know Israel Kafka?” he asked suddenly.
“Israel Kafka,” repeated the Wanderer thoughtfully, as though searching in his memory.
“Then you do not,” said Keyork. “You could only have seen him since you have been here. He is one of Unorna’s most interesting patients, and mine as well. He is a little odd.”
Keyork tapped his ivory forehead significantly with one finger.
“Mad,” suggested the Wanderer.
“Mad, if you prefer the term. He has fixed ideas. In the first place, he imagines that he has just been travelling with me in Italy, and is always talking of our experiences. Humour him, if you meet him. He is in danger of being worse if contradicted.”
“Am I likely to meet him?”
“Yes. He is often here. His other fixed idea is that he loves Unorna to distraction. He has been dangerously ill during the last few weeks but is better now, and he may appear at any moment. Humour him a little if he wearies you with his stories. That is all I ask. Both Unorna and I are interested in the case.”
“And does not Unorna care for him at all?” inquired the other indifferently.
“No, indeed. On the contrary, she is annoyed at his insistance, but sees that it is a phase of insanity and hopes to cure it before long.”
“I see. What is he like? I suppose he is an Israelite.”
“From Moravia--yes. The wreck of a handsome boy,” said Keyork carelessly. “This insanity is an enemy of good looks. The nerves give way--then the vitality--the complexion goes--men of five and twenty years look old under it. But you will see for yourself before long. Good-bye. I will go in and see what is the matter with Unorna.”
They parted, the Wanderer continuing on his way along the street with the same calm, cold, peaceful expression which had elicited Keyork’s admiration, and Keyork himself going forward to Unorna’s door. His face was very grave. He entered the house by a small side door and ascended by a winding staircase directly to the room from which, an hour or two earlier, he had carried the still unconscious Israel Kafka. Everything was as he had left it, and he was glad to be certified that Unorna had not disturbed the aged sleeper in his absence. Instead of going to her at once he busied himself in making a few observations and in putting in order certain of his instruments and appliances. Then at last he went and found Unorna. She was walking up and down among the plants and he saw at a glance that something had happened. Indeed the few words spoken by the Wanderer had suggested to him the possibility of a crisis, and he had purposely lingered in the inner apartment, in order to give her time to recover her self-possession. She started slightly when he entered, and her brows contracted, but she immediately guessed from his expression that he was not in one of his aggressive moods.
“I have just rectified a mistake which might have had rather serious consequences,” he said, stopping before her and speaking earnestly and quietly.
“A mistake?”
“We remembered everything, except that our wandering friend and Kafka were very likely to meet, and that Kafka would in all probability refer to his delightful journey to the south in my company.”
“That is true!” exclaimed Unorna with an anxious glance. “Well? What have you done?”
“I met the Wanderer in the street. What could I do? I told him that Israel Kafka was a little mad, and that his harmless delusions referred to a journey he was supposed to have made with me, and to an equally imaginary passion which he fancies he feels for you.”
“That was wise,” said Unorna, still pale. “How came we to be so imprudent! One word, and he might have suspected--” “He could not have suspected all,” answered Keyork. “No man could suspect that.”
“Nevertheless, I suppose what we have done is not exactly--justifiable.”
“Hardly. It is true that criminal law has not yet adjusted itself to meet questions of suggestion and psychic influence, but it draws the line, most certainly, somewhere between these questions and the extremity to which we have gone. Happily the law is at an immeasurable distance from science, and here, as usual in such experiments, no one could prove anything, owing to the complete unconsciousness of the principal witnesses.”
“I do not like to think that we have been near to such trouble,” said Unorna.
“Nor I. It was fortunate that I met the Wanderer when I did.”
“And the other? Did he wake as I ordered him to do? Is all right? Is there no danger of his suspecting anything?”
It seemed as though Unorna had momentarily forgotten that such a contingency might be possible, and her anxiety returned with the recollection. Keyork’s rolling laughter reverberated among the plants and filled the whole wide hall with echoes.
“No danger there,” he answered. “Your witchcraft is above criticism. Nothing of that kind that you have ever undertaken has failed.”
“Except against you,” said Unorna, thoughtfully.
“Except against me, of course. How could you ever expect anything of the kind to succeed against me, my dear lady?”
“And why not? After all, in spite of our jesting, you are not a supernatural being.”
“That depends entirely on the interpretation you give to the word supernatural. But, my dear friend and colleague, let us not deceive each other, though we are able between us to deceive other people into believing almost anything. There is nothing in all this witchcraft of yours but a very powerful moral influence at work--I mean apart from the mere faculty of clairvoyance which is possessed by hundreds of common somnambulists, and which, in you, is a mere accident. The rest, this hypnotism, this suggestion, this direction of others’ wills, is a moral affair, a matter of direct impression produced by words. Mental suggestion may in rare cases succeed, when the person to be influenced is himself a natural clairvoyant. But these cases are not worth taking into consideration. Your influence is a direct one, chiefly exercised by means of your words and through the impression of power which you know how to convey in them. It is marvellous, I admit. But the very definition puts me beyond your power.”
“Why?”
“Because there is not a human being alive, and I do not believe that a human being ever lived, who had the sense of independent individuality which I have. Let a man have the very smallest doubt concerning his own independence--let that doubt be ever so transitory and produced by any accident whatsoever--and he is at your mercy.”
“And you are sure that no accident could shake your faith in yourself?”
“My consciousness of myself, you mean. No. I am not sure. But, my dear Unorna, I am very careful in guarding against accidents of all sorts, for I have attempted to resuscitate a great many dead people and I have never succeeded, and I know that a false step on a slippery staircase may be quite as fatal as a teaspoonful of prussic acid--or an unrequited passion. I avoid all these things and many others. If I did not, and if you had any object in getting me under your influence, you would succeed sooner or later. Perhaps the day is not far distant when I will voluntarily sleep under your hand.”
Unorna glanced quickly at him.
“And in that case,” he added, “I am sure you could make me believe anything you pleased.”
“What are you trying to make me understand?” she asked, suspiciously, for he had never before spoken of such a possibility.
“You look anxious and weary,” he said in a tone of sympathy in which Unorna could not detect the least false modulation, though she fancied from his fixed gaze that he meant her to understand something which he could not say. “You look tired,” he continued, “though it is becoming to your beauty to be pale--I always said so. I will not weary you. I was only going to say that if I were under your influence--you might easily make me believe that you were not yourself, but another woman--for the rest of my life.”
They stood looking at each other in silence during several seconds. Then Unorna seemed to understand what he meant.
“Do you really believe that is possible?” she asked earnestly.
“I know it. I know of a case in which it succeeded very well.”
“Perhaps,” she said, thoughtfully. “Let us go and look at him.”
She moved in the direction of the aged sleeper’s room and they both left the hall together.
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Unorna was superstitious, as Keyork Arabian had once told her. She did not thoroughly understand herself and she had very little real comprehension of the method by which she produced such remarkable results. She was gifted with a sensitive and active imagination, which supplied her with semi-mystic formulae of thought and speech in place of reasoned explanations, and she undoubtedly attributed much of her own power to supernatural influences. In this respect, at least, she was no farther advanced than the witches of older days, and if her inmost convictions took a shape which would have seemed incomprehensible to those predecessors of hers, this was to be attributed in part to the innate superiority of her nature, and partly, also, to the high degree of cultivation in which her mental faculties had reached development.
Keyork Arabian might spend hours in giving her learned explanations of what she did, but he never convinced her. Possibly he was not convinced himself, and he still hesitated, perhaps, between the two great theories advanced to explain the phenomena of hypnotism. He had told her that he considered her influence to be purely a moral one, exerted by means of language and supported by her extraordinary concentrated will. But it did not follow that he believed what he told her, and it was not improbable that he might have his own doubts on the subject--doubts which Unorna was not slow to suspect, and which destroyed for her the whole force of his reasoning. She fell back upon a sort of grossly unreasonable mysticism, combined with a blind belief in those hidden natural forces and secret virtues of privileged objects, which formed the nucleus of mediaeval scientific research. The field is a fertile one for the imagination and possesses a strange attraction for certain minds. There are men alive in our own time to whom the transmutation of metals does not seem an impossibility, nor the brewing of the elixir of life a matter to be scoffed at as a matter of course. The world is full of people who, in their inmost selves, put faith in the latent qualities of precious stones and amulets, who believe their fortunes, their happiness, and their lives to be directly influenced by some trifling object which they have always upon them. We do not know enough to state with assurance that the constant handling of any particular metal, or gem, may not produce a real and invariable corresponding effect upon the nerves. But we do know most positively that, when the belief in such talismans is once firmly established, the moral influence they exert upon men through the imagination is enormous. From this condition of mind to that in which auguries are drawn from outward and apparently accidental circumstances, is but a step. If Keyork Arabian inclined to the psychic rather than to the physical school in his view of Unorna’s witchcraft and in his study of hypnotism in general, his opinion resulted naturally from his great knowledge of mankind, and of the unacknowledged, often unsuspected, convictions which in reality direct mankind’s activity. It was this experience, too, and the certainty to which it had led him, that put him beyond the reach of Unorna’s power so long as he chose not to yield himself to her will. Her position was in reality diametrically opposed to his, and although he repeated his reasonings to her from time to time, he was quite indifferent to the nature of her views, and never gave himself any real trouble to make her change them. The important point was that she should not lose anything of the gifts she possessed, and Keyork was wise enough to see that the exercise of them depended in a great measure upon her own conviction regarding their exceptional nature.
Unorna herself believed in everything which strengthened and developed that conviction, and especially in the influences of time and place. It appeared to her a fortunate circumstance, when she at last determined to overcome her pride, that the resolution should have formed itself exactly a month after she had so successfully banished the memory of Beatrice from the mind of the man she loved. She felt sure of producing a result as effectual if, this time, she could work the second change in the same place and under the same circumstances as the first. And to this end everything was in her favour. She needed not to close her eyes to fancy that thirty days had not really passed between then and now, as she left her house in the afternoon with the Wanderer by her side.
He had come back and had found her once more herself, calm, collected, conscious of her own powers. No suspicion of the real cause of the disturbance he had witnessed crossed his mind, still less could he guess what thing she meditated as she directed their walk towards that lonely place by the river which had been the scene of her first great effort. She talked lightly as they went, and he, in that strange humour of peaceful, well-satisfied indifference which possessed him, answered her in the same strain. It was yet barely afternoon, but there was already a foretaste of coming evening in the chilly air.
“I have been thinking of what you said this morning,” she said, suddenly changing the current of the conversation. “Did I thank you for your kindness?” She smiled as she laid her hand gently upon his arm, to cross a crowded street, and she looked up into his quiet face.
“Thank me? For what? On the contrary--I fancied that I had annoyed you.”
“Perhaps I did not quite understand it all at first,” she answered thoughtfully. “It is hard for a woman like me to realise what it would be to have a brother--or a sister, or any one belonging to me. I needed to think of the idea. Do you know that I am quite alone in the world?”
The Wanderer had accepted her as he found her, strangely alone, indeed, and strangely independent of the world, a beautiful, singularly interesting woman, doing good, so far as he knew, in her own way, separated from ordinary existence by some unusual circumstances, and elevated above ordinary dangers by the strength and the pride of her own character. And yet, indolent and indifferent as he had grown of late, he was conscious of a vague curiosity in regard to her story. Keyork either really knew nothing, or pretended to know nothing of her origin.
“I see that you are alone,” said the Wanderer. “Have you always been so?”
“Always. I have had an odd life. You could not understand it, if I told you of it.”
“And yet I have been lonely too--and I believe I was once unhappy, though I cannot think of any reason for it.”
“You have been lonely--yes. But yours was another loneliness more limited, less fatal, more voluntary. It must seem strange to you--I do not even positively know of what nation I was born.”
Her companion looked at her in surprise, and his curiosity increased.
“I know nothing of myself,” she continued. “I remember neither father nor mother. I grew up in the forest, among people who did not love me, but who taught me, and respected me as though I were their superior, and who sometimes feared me. When I look back, I am amazed at their learning and their wisdom--and ashamed of having learned so little.”
“You are unjust to yourself.”
Unorna laughed.
“No one ever accused me of that,” she said. “Will you believe it? I do not even know where that place was. I cannot tell you even the name of the kingdom in which it lay. I learned a name for it and for the forest, but those names are in no map that has ever fallen into my hands. I sometimes feel that I would go to the place if I could find it.”
“It is very strange. And how came you here?”
“I was told the time had come. We started at night. It was a long journey, and I remember feeling tired as I was never tired before or since. They brought me here, they left me in a religious house among nuns. Then I was told that I was rich and free. My fortune was brought with me. That, at least, I know. But those who received it and who take care of it for me, know no more of its origin than I myself. Gold tells no tales, and the secret has been well kept. I would give much to know the truth--when I am in the humour.”
She sighed, and then laughed again.
“You see why it is that I find the idea of a brother so hard to understand,” she added, and then was silent.
“You have all the more need of understanding it, my dear friend,” the Wanderer answered, looking at her thoughtfully.
“Yes--perhaps so. I can see what friendship is. I can almost guess what it would be to have a brother.”
“And have you never thought of more than that?” He asked the question in his calmest and most friendly tone, somewhat deferentially as though fearing lest it should seem tactless and be unwelcome.
“Yes, I have thought of love also,” she answered, in a low voice. But she said nothing more, and they walked on for some time in silence.
They came out upon the open place by the river which she remembered so well. Unorna glanced about her and her face fell. The place was the same, but the solitude was disturbed. It was not Sunday as it had been on that day a month ago. All about the huge blocks of stone, groups of workmen were busy with great chisels and heavy hammers, hewing and chipping and fashioning the material that it might be ready for use in the early spring. Even the river was changed. Men were standing upon the ice, cutting it into long symmetrical strips, to be hauled ashore. Some of the great pieces were already separated from the main ice, and sturdy fellows, clad in dark woollen, were poling them over the dark water to the foot of the gently sloping road where heavy carts stood ready to receive the load when cut up into blocks. The dark city was taking in a great provision of its own coldness against the summer months.
Unorna looked about her. Everywhere there were people at work, and she was more disappointed than she would own to herself at the invasion of the solitude. The Wanderer looked from the stone-cutters to the ice-men with a show of curiosity.
“I have not seen so much life in Prague for many a day,” he observed.
“Let us go,” answered Unorna, nervously. “I do not like it. I cannot bear the sight of people to-day.”
They turned in a new direction, Unorna guiding her companion by a gesture. They were near to the Jewish quarter, and presently were threading their way through narrow and filthy streets thronged with eager Hebrew faces, and filled with the hum of low-pitched voices chattering together, not in the language of the country, but in a base dialect of German. They were in the heart of Prague, in that dim quarter which is one of the strongholds of the Israelite, whence he directs great enterprises and sets in motion huge financial schemes, in which Israel sits, as a great spider in the midst of a dark web, dominating the whole capital with his eagle’s glance and weaving the destiny of the Bohemian people to suit his intricate speculations. For throughout the length and breadth of Slavonic and German Austria the Jew rules, and rules alone.
Unorna gathered her furs more closely about her, in evident disgust at her surroundings, but still she kept on her way. Her companion, scarcely less familiar with the sights of Prague than she herself, walked by her side, glancing carelessly at the passing people, at the Hebrew signs, at the dark entrances that lead to courts within courts and into labyrinths of dismal lanes and passages, looking at everything with the same serene indifference, and idly wondering what made Unorna choose to walk that way. Then he saw that she was going towards the cemetery. They reached the door, were admitted and found themselves alone in the vast wilderness.
In the midst of the city lies the ancient burial ground, now long disused but still undisturbed, many acres of uneven land, covered so thickly with graves, and planted so closely with granite and sandstone slabs, that the paths will scarce allow two persons to walk side by side. The stones stand and lie in all conceivable positions, erect, slanting at every angle, prostrate upon the earth or upon others already fallen before them--two, three, and even four upon a grave, where generations of men have been buried one upon the other--stones large and small, covered with deep-cut inscriptions in the Hebrew character, bearing the sculpture of two uplifted hands, wherever the Kohns, the children of the tribe of Aaron, are laid to rest, or the gracefully chiselled ewer of the Levites. Here they lie, thousands upon thousands of dead Jews, great and small, rich and poor, wise and ignorant, neglected individually, but guarded as a whole with all the tenacious determination of the race to hold its own, and to preserve the sacredness of its dead. In the dim light of the winter’s afternoon it is as though a great army of men had fallen fighting there, and had been turned to stone as they fell. Rank upon rank they lie, with that irregularity which comes of symmetry destroyed, like columns and files of soldiers shot down in the act of advancing. And in winter, the gray light falling upon the untrodden snow throws a pale reflection upwards against each stone, as though from the myriad sepulchres a faintly luminous vapour were rising to the outer air. Over all, the rugged brushwood and the stunted trees intertwine their leafless branches and twigs in a thin, ghostly network of gray, that clouds the view of the farther distance without interrupting it, a forest of shadowy skeletons clasping fleshless, bony hands one with another, from grave to grave, as far as the eye can see.
The stillness in the place is intense. Not a murmur of distant life from the surrounding city disturbs the silence. At rare intervals a strong breath of icy wind stirs the dead branches and makes them crack and rattle against the gravestones and against each other as in a dance of death. It is a wild and dreary place. In the summer, indeed, the thick leafage lends it a transitory colour and softness, but in the depth of winter, when there is nothing to hide the nakedness of truth, when the snow lies thick upon the ground and the twined twigs and twisted trunks scarce cast a tracery of shadow under the sunless sky, the utter desolation and loneliness of the spot have a horror of their own, not to be described, but never to be forgotten.
Unorna walked forward in silence, choosing a path so narrow that her companion found himself obliged to drop behind and follow in her footsteps. In the wildest part of this wilderness of death there is a little rising of the ground. Here both the gravestones and the stunted trees are thickest, and the solitude is, if possible, even more complete than elsewhere. As she reached the highest point Unorna stood still, turned quickly towards the Wanderer and held out both her hands towards him.
“I have chosen this place, because it is quiet,” she said, with a soft smile.
Hardly knowing why he did so, he laid his hands in hers and looked kindly down to her upturned face.
“What is it?” he asked, meeting her eyes.
She was silent, and her fingers did not unclasp themselves. He looked at her, and saw for the hundredth time that she was very beautiful. There was a faint colour in her cheeks, and her full lips were just parted as though a loving word had escaped them which she would not willingly recall. Against the background of broken neutral tints, her figure stood out, an incarnation of youth and vitality. If she had often looked weary and pale of late, her strength and freshness had returned to her now in all their abundance. The Wanderer knew that he was watching her, and knew that he was thinking of her beauty and realising the whole extent of it more fully than ever before, but beyond this point his thoughts could not go. He was aware that he was becoming fascinated by her eyes, and he felt that with every moment it was growing harder for him to close his own, or to look away from her, and then, an instant later, he knew that it would be impossible. Yet he made no effort. He was passive, indifferent, will-less, and her gaze charmed him more and more. He was already in a dream, and he fancied that the beautiful figure shone with a soft, rosy light of its own in the midst of the gloomy waste. Looking into her sunlike eyes, he saw there twin images of himself, that drew him softly and surely into themselves until he was absorbed by them and felt that he was no longer a reality but a reflection. Then a deep unconsciousness stole over all his senses and he slept, or passed into that state which seems to lie between sleep and trance.
Unorna needed not to question him this time, for she saw that he was completely under her influence. Yet she hesitated at the supreme moment, and then, though to all real intents she was quite alone, a burning flush of shame rose to her face, and her heart sank within her. She felt that she could not do it.
She dropped his hands. They fell to his sides as though they had been of lead. Then she turned from him and pressed her aching forehead against a tall weather-worn stone that rose higher than her own height from the midst of the hillock.
Her woman’s nature rebelled against the trick. It was the truest thing in her and perhaps the best, which protested so violently against the thing she meant to do; it was the simple longing to be loved for her own sake, and of the man’s own free will, to be loved by him with the love she had despised in Israel Kafka. But would this be love at all, this artificial creation of her suggestion reacting upon his mind? Would it last? Would it be true, faithful, tender? Above all, would it be real, even for a moment? She asked herself a thousand questions in a second of time.
Then the ready excuse flashed upon her--the pretext which the heart will always find when it must have its way. Was it not possible, after all, that he was beginning to love her even now? Might not that outburst of friendship which had surprised her and wounded her so deeply, be the herald of a stronger passion? She looked up quickly and met his vacant stare.
“Do you love me?” she asked, almost before she knew what she was going to say.
“No.” The answer came in the far-off voice that told of his unconsciousness, a mere toneless monosyllable breathed upon the murky air. But it stabbed her like the thrust of a jagged knife. A long silence followed, and Unorna leaned against the great slab of carved sandstone.
Even to her there was something awful in his powerless, motionless presence. The noble face, pale and set as under a mask, the thoughtful brow, the dominating features, were not those of a man born to be a plaything to the will of a woman. The commanding figure towered in the grim surroundings like a dark statue, erect, unmoving, and in no way weak. And yet she knew that she had but to speak and the figure would move, the lips would form words, the voice would reach her ear. He would raise this hand or that, step forwards or backwards, at her command, affirm what she bid him affirm, and deny whatever she chose to hear denied. For a moment she wished that he had been as Keyork Arabian, stronger than she; then, with the half-conscious comparison the passion for the man himself surged up and drowned every other thought. She almost forgot that for the time he was not to be counted among the living. She went to him, and clasped her hands upon his shoulder, and looked up into his scarce-seeing eyes.
“You must love me,” she said, “you must love me because I love you so. Will you not love me, dear? I have waited so long for you!”
The soft words vibrated in his sleeping ear but drew forth neither acknowledgment nor response. Like a marble statue he stood still, and she leaned upon his shoulder.
“Do you not hear me?” she cried in a more passionate tone. “Do you not understand me? Why is it that your love is so hard to win? Look at me! Might not any man be proud to love me? Am I not beautiful enough for you? And yet I know that I am fair. Or are you ashamed because people call me a witch? Why then I will never be one again, for your sake! What do I care for it all? Can it be anything to me--can anything have worth that stands between me and you? Ah, love--be not so very hard!”
The Wanderer did not move. His face was as calm as a sculptured stone.
“Do you despise me for loving you?” she asked again, with a sudden flush.
“No. I do not despise you.” Something in her tone had pierced through his stupor and had found an answer. She started at the sound of his voice. It was as though he had been awake and had known the weight of what she had been saying, and her anger rose at the cold reply.
“No--you do not despise me, and you never shall!” she exclaimed passionately. “You shall love me, as I love you--I will it, with all my will! We are created to be all, one to the other, and you shall not break through the destiny of love. Love me, as I love you--love me with all your heart, love me with all your mind, love me with all your soul, love me as man never loved woman since the world began! I will it, I command it--it shall be as I say--you dare not disobey me--you cannot if you would.”
She paused, but this time no answer came. There was not even a contraction of the stony features.
“Do you hear all I say?” she asked.
“I hear.”
“Then understand and answer me,” she said.
“I do not understand. I cannot answer.”
“You must. You shall. I will have it so. You cannot resist my will, and I will it with all my might. You have no will--you are mine, your body, your soul, and your thoughts, and you must love me with them all from now until you die--until you die,” she repeated fiercely.
Again he was silent. She felt that she had no hold upon his heart or mind, seeing that he was not even disturbed by her repeated efforts.
“Are you a stone, that you do not know what love is?” she cried, grasping his hand in hers and looking with desperate eyes into his face.
“I do not know what love is,” he answered, slowly.
“Then I will tell you what love is,” she said, and she took his hand and pressed it upon her own brow.
The Wanderer started at the touch, as though he would have drawn back. But she held him fast, and so far, at least, he was utterly subject to her. His brow contracted darkly, and his face grew paler.
“Read it there,” she cried. “Enter into my soul and read what love is, in his own great writing. Read how he steals suddenly into the sacred place, and makes it his, and tears down the old gods and sets up his dear image in their stead--read how he sighs, and speaks, and weeps, and loves--and forgives not, but will be revenged at the last. Are you indeed of stone, and have you a stone for a heart? Love can melt even stones, being set in man as the great central fire in the earth to burn the hardest things to streams of liquid flame! And see, again, how very soft and gentle he can be! See how I love you--see how sweet it is--how very lovely a thing it is to love as woman can. There--have you felt it now? Have you seen into the depths of my soul and into the hiding-places of my heart? Let it be so in your own, then, and let it be so for ever. You understand now. You know what it all is--how wild, how passionate, how gentle and how great! Take to yourself this love of mine--is it not all yours? Take it, and plant it with strong roots and seeds of undying life in your own sleeping breast, and let it grow, and grow, till it is even greater than it was in me, till it takes us both into itself, together, fast bound in its immortal bonds, to be two in one, in life and beyond life, for ever and ever and ever to the end of ends!”
She ceased and she saw that his face was no longer expressionless and cold. A strange light was upon his features, the passing radiance of a supreme happiness seen in the vision of a dream. Again she laid her hands upon his shoulder clasped together, as she had done at first. She knew that her words had touched him and she was confident of the result, confident as one who loves beyond reason. Already in imagination she fancied him returning to consciousness, not knowing that he had slept, but waking with a gentle word just trembling upon his lips, the words she longed to hear.
One moment more, she thought. It was good to see that light upon his face, to fancy how that first word would sound, to feel that the struggle was past and that there was nothing but happiness in the future, full, overflowing, overwhelming, reaching from earth to heaven and through time to eternity. One moment, only, before she let him wake--it was such glory to be loved at last! Still the light was there, still that exquisite smile was on his lips. And they would be always there now, she thought.
At last she spoke.
“Then love, since you are mine, and I am yours, wake from the dream to life itself--wake, not knowing that you have slept, knowing only that you love me now and always--wake, love wake!”
She waved her delicate hand before his eyes and still resting the other upon his shoulder, watched the returning brightness in the dark pupils that had been glazed and fixed a moment before. And as she looked, her own beauty grew radiant in the splendour of a joy even greater than she had dreamed of. As it had seemed to him when he had lost himself in her gaze, so now she also fancied that the grim, gray wilderness was full of a soft rosy light. The place of the dead was become the place of life; the great solitude was peopled as the whole world could never be for her; the crumbling gravestones were turned to polished pillars in the temple of an immortal love, and the ghostly, leafless trees blossomed with the undying flowers of the earthly paradise.
One moment only, and then all was gone. The change came, sure, swift and cruel. As she looked, it came, gradual, in that it passed through every degree, but sudden also, as the fall of a fair and mighty building, which being undermined in its foundations passes in one short minute through the change from perfect completeness to hopeless and utter ruin.
All the radiance, all the light, all the glory were gone in an instant. Her own supremely loving look had not vanished, her lips still parted sweetly, as forming the word that was to answer his, and the calm indifferent face of the waking man was already before her.
“What is it?” he asked, in his kind and passionless voice. “What were you going to ask me, Unorna?”
It was gone. The terribly earnest appeal had been in vain. Not a trace of that short vision of love remained impressed upon his brain.
With a smothered cry of agony Unorna leaned against the great slab of stone behind her and covered her eyes. The darkness of night descended upon her, and with it the fire of a burning shame.
Then a loud and cruel laugh rang through the chilly air, such a laugh as the devils in hell bestow upon the shame of a proud soul that knows its own infinite bitterness. Unorna started and uncovered her eyes, her suffering changed in a single instant to ungovernable and destroying anger. She made a step forwards and then stopped short, breathing hard. The Wanderer, too, had turned, more quickly than she. Between two tall gravestones, not a dozen paces away, stood a man with haggard face and eyes on fire, his keen, worn features contorted by a smile in which unspeakable satisfaction struggled for expression with a profound despair.
The man was Israel Kafka.
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{
"id": "3816"
}
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14
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The Wanderer looked from Unorna to Kafka with profound surprise. He had never seen the man and had no means of knowing who he was, still less of guessing what had brought him to the lonely place, or why he had broken into a laugh, of which the harsh, wild tones still echoed through the wide cemetery. Totally unconscious of all that had happened to himself during the preceding quarter of an hour, the Wanderer was deprived of the key to the situation. He only understood that the stranger was for some reason or other deeply incensed against Unorna, and he realised that the intruder had, on the moment of appearance, no control over himself.
Israel Kafka remained where he stood, between the two tall stones, one hand resting on each, his body inclined a little forward, his dark, sunken eyes, bloodshot and full of a turbid, angry brightness, bent intently upon Unorna’s face. He looked as though he were about to move suddenly forwards, but it was impossible to foresee that he might not as suddenly retreat, as a lean and hungry tiger crouches for a moment in uncertainty whether to fight or fly, when after tracking down his man he finds him not alone and defenceless as he had anticipated, but well-armed and in company.
The Wanderer’s indolence was only mental, and was moreover transitory and artificial. When he saw Unorna advance, he quickly placed himself between her and Israel Kafka, and looked from one to the other.
“Who is this man?” he asked. “And what does he want of you?”
Unorna made as though she would pass him. But he laid his hand upon her arm with a gesture that betrayed his anxiety for her safety. At his touch, her face changed for a moment and a faint blush dyed her cheek.
“You may well ask who I am,” said the Moravian, speaking in a voice half-choked with passion and anger. “She will tell you she does not know me--she will deny my existence to my face. But she knows me very well. I am Israel Kafka.”
The Wanderer looked at him more curiously. He remembered what he had heard but a few hours earlier from Keyork concerning the young fellow’s madness. The situation now partially explained itself.
“I understand,” he said, looking at Unorna. “He seems to be dangerous. What shall I do with him?”
He asked the question as calmly as though it had referred to the disposal of an inanimate object, instead of to the taking into custody of a madman.
“Do with me?” cried Kafka, advancing suddenly a step forwards from between the slabs. “Do with me? Do you speak of me as though I were a dog--a dumb animal--but I will----” He choked and coughed, and could not finish the sentence. There was a hectic flush in his cheek and his thin, graceful frame shook violently from head to foot. Unable to speak for the moment, he waved his hand in a menacing gesture. The Wanderer shook his head rather sadly.
“He seems very ill,” he said, in a tone of compassion.
But Unorna was pitiless. She knew what her companion could not know, namely, that Kafka must have followed them through the streets to the cemetery and must have overheard Unorna’s passionate appeal and must have seen and understood the means she was using to win the Wanderer’s love. Her anger was terrible. She had suffered enough secret shame already in stooping to the use of her arts in such a course. It had cost her one of the greatest struggles of her life, and her disappointment at the result had been proportionately bitter. In that alone she had endured almost as much pain as she could bear. But to find suddenly that her humiliation, her hot speech, her failure, the look which she knew had been on her face until the moment when the Wanderer awoke, that all this had been seen and heard by Israel Kafka was intolerable. Even Keyork’s unexpected appearance could not have so fired her wrath. Keyork might have laughed at her afterwards, but her failure would have been no triumph to him. Was not Keyork enlisted on her side, ready to help her at all times, by word or deed, in accordance with the terms of their agreement? But of all men Kafka, whom she had so wronged, was the one man who should have been ignorant of her defeat and miserable shame.
“Go!” she cried, with a gesture of command. Her eyes flashed and her extended hand trembled.
There was such concentrated fury in a single word that the Wanderer started in surprise, ignorant as he was of the true state of things.
“You are uselessly unkind,” he said gravely. “The poor man is mad. Let me take him away.”
“Leave him to me,” she answered imperiously. “He will obey me.”
But Israel Kafka did not turn. He rested one hand upon the slab and faced her. As when many different forces act together at one point, producing after the first shock a resultant little expected, so the many passions that were at work in his face finally twisted his lips into a smile.
“Yes,” he said, in a low tone, which did not express submission. “Leave me to her! Leave me to the Witch and to her mercy. It will be the end this time. She is drunk with her love of you and mad with her hatred of me.”
Unorna grew suddenly pale, and would have again sprung forward. But the Wanderer stopped her and held her arm. At the same time he looked into Kafka’s eyes and raised one hand as though in warning.
“Be silent!” he exclaimed.
“And if I speak, what then?” asked the Moravian with his evil smile.
“I will silence you,” answered the Wanderer coldly. “Your madness excuses you, perhaps, but it does not justify me in allowing you to insult a woman.”
Kafka’s anger took a new direction. Even madmen are often calmed by the quiet opposition of a strong and self-possessed man. And Kafka was not mad. He was no coward either, but the subtlety of his race was in him. As oil dropped by the board in a wild tempest does not calm the waves, but momentarily prevents their angry crests from breaking, so the Israelite’s quick tact veiled the rough face of his dangerous humour.
“I insult no one,” he said, almost deferentially. “Least of all her whom I have worshipped long and lost at last. You accuse me unjustly of that, and though my speech may have been somewhat rude, yet may I be forgiven for the sake of what I have suffered. For I have suffered much.”
Seeing that he was taking a more courteous tone, the Wanderer folded his arms and left Unorna free to move, awaiting her commands, or the further development of events. He saw in her face that her anger was not subsiding, and he wondered less at it after hearing Kafka’s insulting speech. It was a pity, he thought, that any one should take so seriously a maniac’s words, but he was nevertheless resolved that they should not be repeated. After all, it would be an easy matter, if the man again overstepped the bounds of gentle speech, to take him bodily away from Unorna’s presence.
“And are you going to charm our ears with a story of your sufferings?” Unorna asked, in a tone so cruel, that the Wanderer expected a quick outburst of anger from Kafka, in reply. But he was disappointed in this. The smile still lingered on the Moravian’s face, when he answered, and his expressive voice, no longer choking with passion, grew very soft and musical.
“It is not mine to charm,” he said. “It is not given to me to make slaves of all living things with hand and eye and word. Such power Nature does not give to all, she has given none to me. I have no spell to win Unorna’s love--and if I had, I cannot say that I would take a love thus earned.”
He paused a moment and Unorna grew paler. She started, but then did not move again. His words had power to wound her, but she trembled lest the Wanderer should understand their hidden meaning, and she was silent, biding her time and curbing her passion.
“No,” continued Kafka, “I was not thus favoured in my nativity. The star of love was not in the ascendant, the lord of magic charms was not trembling upon my horizon, the sun of earthly happiness was not enthroned in my mid-heaven. How could it be? She had it all, this Unorna here, and Nature, generous in one mad moment, lavished upon her all there was to give. For she has all, and we have nothing, as I have learned and you will learn before you die.”
He looked at the Wanderer as he spoke. His hollow eyes seemed calm enough, and in his dejected attitude and subdued tone there was nothing that gave warning of a coming storm. The Wanderer listened, half-interested and yet half-annoyed by his persistence. Unorna herself was silent still.
“The nightingale was singing on that night,” continued Kafka. “It was a dewy night in early spring, and the air was very soft, when Unorna first breathed it. The world was not asleep but dreaming, when her eyes first opened to look upon it. Heaven had put on all its glories--across its silent breast was bound the milk-white ribband, its crest was crowned with God’s crown-jewels, the great northern stars, its mighty form was robed in the mantle of majesty set with the diamonds of suns and worlds, great and small, far and near--not one tiny spark of all the myriad million gems was darkened by a breath of wind-blown mist. The earth was very still, all wrapped in peace and lulled in love. The great trees pointed their dark spires upwards from the temple of the forest to the firmament of the greater temple on high. In the starlight the year’s first roses breathed out the perfume gathered from the departed sun, and every dewdrop in the short, sweet grass caught in its little self the reflection of heaven’s vast glory. Only, in the universal stillness, the nightingale sang the song of songs, and bound the angel of love with the chains of her linked melody and made him captive in bonds stronger than his own.”
Israel Kafka spoke dreamily, resting against the stone beside him, seemingly little conscious of the words that fell in oriental imagery from his lips. In other days Unorna had heard him speak like this to her, and she had loved the speech, though not the man, and sometimes for its sake she had wished her heart could find its fellow in his. And even now, the tone and the words had a momentary effect upon her. What would have sounded as folly, overwrought, sentimental, almost laughable, perhaps, to other women, found an echo in her own childish memories and a sympathy in her belief in her own mysterious nature. The Wanderer had heard men talk as Israel Kafka talked, in other lands, where speech is prized by men and women not for its tough strength but for its wealth of flowers.
“And love was her first captive,” said the Moravian, “and her first slave. Yes, I will tell you the story of Unorna’s life. She is angry with me now. Well, let it be. It is my fault--or hers. What matter? She cannot quite forget me out of mind--and I? Has Lucifer forgotten God?”
He sighed, and a momentary light flashed in his eyes. Something in the blasphemous strength of the words attracted the Wanderer’s attention. Utterly indifferent himself, he saw that there was something more than madness in the man before him. He found himself wondering what encouragement Unorna had given the seed of passion that it should have grown to such strength, and he traced the madness back to the love, instead of referring the love to the madness. But he said nothing.
“So she was born,” continued Kafka, dreaming on. “She was born amid the perfume of the roses, under the starlight, when the nightingale was singing. And all things that lived, loved her, and submitted to her voice and hand, and to her eyes and to her unspoken will, as running water follows the course men give it, winding and gliding, falling and rushing, full often of a roar of resistance that covers the deep, quick-moving stream, flowing in spite of itself through the channel that is dug for it to the determined end. And nothing resisted her. Neither man nor woman nor child had any strength to oppose against her magic. The wolf hounds licked her feet, the wolves themselves crouched fawning in her path. For she is without fear--as she is without mercy. Is that strange? What fear can there be for her who has the magic charm, who holds sleep in the one hand and death in the other, and between whose brows is set the knowledge of what shall be hereafter? Can any one harm her? Has any one the strength to harm her? Is there anything on earth which she covets and which shall not be hers?”
Though his voice was almost as soft as before, the evil smile flickered again about his drawn lips as he looked into Unorna’s face. He wondered why she did not face him and crush him and force him to sleep with her eyes as he knew she could do. But he himself was past fear. He had suffered too much and cared not what chanced to him now. But she should know that he knew all, if he told her so with his latest breath. Despair had given him a strange control of his anger and of his words, and jealousy had taught him the art of wounding swiftly, surely and with a light touch. Sooner or later she would turn upon him and annihilate him in a dream of unconsciousness; he knew that, and he knew that such faint power of resisting her as he had ever possessed was gone. But so long as she was willing to listen to him, so long would he torture her with the sting of her own shame, and when her patience ended, or her caprice changed, he would find some bitter word to cast at her in the moment before losing his consciousness of thought and his power to speak. This one chance of wounding was given to him and he would use it to the utmost, with all subtlety, with all cruelty, with all determination to torture.
“Whatsoever she covets is hers to take. No one escapes the spell in the end, no one resists the charm. And yet it is written in the book of her fate that she shall one day taste the fruit of ashes, and drink of the bitter water. It is written that whosoever slays with the sword shall die by the sword also. She has killed with love, and by love she shall perish. I loved her once. I know what I am saying.”
Again he paused, lingering thoughtfully upon the words. The Wanderer glanced at Unorna as though asking her whether he should not put a sudden end to the strange monologue. She was pale and her eyes were bright; but she shook her head.
“Let him say what he will say,” she answered, taking the question as though it had been spoken. “Let him say all he will. Perhaps it is the last time.”
“And so you give me your gracious leave to speak,” said Israel Kafka. “And you will let me say all that is in my heart to say to you--before this other man. And then you will make an end of me. I see. I accept the offer. I can even thank you for your patience. You are kind to-day--I have known you harder. Well, then, I will speak out. I will tell my story, not that any one may judge between you and me. There is neither judge nor justice for those who love in vain. So I loved you. That is the whole story. Do you understand me, sir? I loved this woman, but she would not love me. That is all. And what of it, and what then? Look at her, and look at me--the beginning and the end.”
In a manner familiar to Orientals the unhappy man laid one finger upon his own breast, and with the other hand pointed at Unorna’s fair young face. The Wanderer’s eyes obeyed the guiding gesture, and he looked from one to the other, and again the belief crossed his thoughts that there was less of madness about Israel Kafka than Keyork would have had him think. Trying to read the truth from Unorna’s eyes, he saw that they avoided his, and he fancied he detected symptoms of distress in her pallor and contracted lips. And yet he argued that if it were all true she would silence the speaker, and that the only reason for her patience must be sought in her willingness to humour the diseased brain in its wanderings. In either case he pitied Israel Kafka profoundly, and his compassion increased from one moment to another.
“I loved her. There is a history in those three words which neither the eloquent tongue nor the skilled pen can tell. See how coldly I speak. I command my speech, I may pick and choose among ten thousand words and phrases, and describe love at my leisure. She grants me time; she is very merciful to-day. What would you have me say? You know what love is. Think of such love as yours can have been, and take twice that, and three times over, and a hundred thousand times, and cram it, burning, flaming, melting into your bursting heart--then you would know a tenth of what I have known. Love, indeed! Who can have known love but me? I stand alone. Since the dull, unlovely world first jarred and trembled and began to move, there has not been another of my kind, nor has man suffered as I have suffered, and been crushed and torn and thrown aside to die, without even the mercy of a death-wound. Describe it? Tell it? Look at me! I am both love’s description and the epitaph on his gravestone. In me he lived, me he tortured, with me he dies never to live again as he has lived this once. There is no justice and no mercy! Think not that it is enough to love and that you will be loved in return. Do not think that--do not dream that. Do you not know that the fiercest drought is as a spring rain to the rocks, which thirst not and need no refreshment?”
Again he fixed his eyes on Unorna’s face and faintly smiled. Apparently she was displeased.
“What is it that you would say?” she asked coldly. “What is this that you tell us of rocks and rain, and death-wounds, and the rest? You say you loved me once--that was a madness. You say that I never loved you--that, at least, is truth. Is that your story? It is indeed short enough, and I marvel at the many words in which you have put so little!”
She laughed in a hard tone. But Israel Kafka’s eyes grew dark and the sombre fire beamed in them as he spoke again. The weary, tortured smile left his wan lips, and his pale face grew stern.
“Laugh, laugh, Unorna!” he cried. “You do not laugh alone. And yet--I love you still, I love you so well in spite of all that I cannot laugh at you as I would, even though I were to see you again clinging to the rock and imploring it to take pity on your thirst. And he who dies for you, Unorna--of him you ask nothing, save that he will crawl away and die alone, and not disturb your delicate life with such an unseemly sight.”
“You talk of death!” exclaimed Unorna scornfully. “You talk of dying for me because you are ill to-day. To-morrow, Keyork Arabian will have cured you, and then, for aught I know, you will talk of killing me instead. This is child’s talk, boy’s talk. If we are to listen to you, you must be more eloquent. You must give us such a tale of woe as shall draw tears from our eyes and sobs from our breasts--then we will applaud you and let you go. That shall be your reward.”
The Wanderer glanced at her in surprise. There was a bitterness in her tone of which he had not believed her soft voice capable.
“Why do you hate him so if he is mad?” he asked.
“The reason is not far to seek,” said Kafka. “This woman here--God made her crooked-hearted! Love her, and she will hate you as only she has learned how to hate. Show her that cold face of yours, and she will love you so that she will make a carpet of her pride for you to walk on--ay, or spit on either, if you deign to be so kind. She has a wonderful kind of heart, for it freezes when you burn it, and melts when you freeze it.”
“Are you mad, indeed?” asked the Wanderer, suddenly planting himself in front of Kafka. “They told me so--I can almost believe it.”
“No--I am not mad yet,” answered the younger man, facing him fearlessly. “You need not come between me and her. She can protect herself. You would know that if you knew what I saw her do with you, first when I came here.”
“What did she do?” The Wanderer turned quickly as he stood, and looked at Unorna.
“Do not listen to his ravings,” she said. The words seemed weak and poorly chosen, and there was a strange look in her face as though she were either afraid or desperate, or both.
“She loves you,” said Israel Kafka calmly. “And you do not know it. She has power over you, as she has over me, but the power to make you love her she has not. She will destroy you, and your state will be no better than mine to-day. We shall have moved on a step, for I shall be dead and you will be the madman, and she will have found another to love and to torture. The world is full of them. Her altar will never lack sacrifices.”
The Wanderer’s face was grave.
“You may be mad or not,” he said. “I cannot tell. But you say monstrous things, and you shall not repeat them.”
“Did she not say that I might speak?” asked Kafka with a bitter laugh.
“I will keep my word,” said Unorna. “You seek your own destruction. Find it in your own way. It will not be the less sure. Speak--say what you will. You shall not be interrupted.”
The Wanderer drew back, not understanding what was passing, nor why Unorna was so long-suffering.
“Say all you have to say,” she repeated, coming forward so that she stood directly in front of Israel Kafka. “And you,” she added, speaking to the Wanderer, “leave him to me. He is quite right--I can protect myself if I need any protection.”
“You remember how we parted, Unorna?” said Kafka. “It is a month to-day. I did not expect a greeting of you when I came back, or, if I did expect it, I was foolish and unthinking. I should have known you better. I should have known that there is one half of your word which you never break--the cruel half, and one thing which you cannot forgive, and which is my love for you. And yet that is the very thing which I cannot forget. I have come back to tell you so. You may as well know it.”
Unorna’s expression grew cold, as she saw that he abandoned the strain of reproach and spoke once more of his love for her.
“Yes, I see what you mean,” he said, very quietly. “You mean to show me by your face that you give me no hope. I should have known that by other things I have seen here. God knows, I have seen enough! But I meant to find you alone. I went to your home, I saw you go out, I followed you, I entered here--I heard all--and I understood, for I know your power, as this man cannot know it. Do you wonder that I followed you? Do you despise me? Do you think I still care, because you do? Love is stronger than the woman loved and for her we do deeds of baseness, unblushingly, which she would forbid our doing, and for which she despises us when she hates us, and loves us the more dearly when she loves us at all. You hate me--then despise me, too, if you will. It is too late to care. I followed you like a spy, I saw what I expected to see, I have suffered what I knew I should suffer. You know that I have been away during this whole month, and that I have travelled thousands of leagues in the hope of forgetting you.”
“And yet I fancied I had seen you within the month,” Unorna said, with a cruel smile.
“They say that ghosts haunt the places they have loved,” answered Kafka unmoved. “If that be true I may have troubled your dreams and you may have seen me. I have come back broken in body and in heart. I think I have come back to die here. The life is going out of me, but before it is quite gone I can say two things. I can tell you that I know you at last, and that, in spite of the horror of knowing what you are, I love you still.”
“Am I so very horrible?” she asked scornfully.
“You know what you are, better than I can tell you, but not better than I know. I know even the secret meaning of your moods and caprices. I know why you are willing to listen to me, this last time, so patiently, with only now and then a sneer and a cutting laugh.”
“Why?”
“In order to make me suffer the more. You will never forgive me now, for you know that I know, and that alone is a sin past all forgiveness, and over and above that I am guilty of the crime of loving when you have no love for me.”
“And as a last resource you come to me and recapitulate your misdeeds. The plan is certainly original, though it lacks wit.”
“There is least wit where there is most love, Unorna. I take no account of the height of my folly when I see the depth of my love, which has swallowed up myself and all my life. In the last hour I have known its depth and breadth and strength, for I have seen what it can bear. And why should I complain of it? Have I not many times said that I would die for you willingly--and is it not dying for you to die of love for you? To prove my faith it were too easy a death. When I look into your face I know that there is in me the heart that made true Christian martyrs----” Unorna laughed.
“Would you be a martyr?” she asked.
“Nor for your Faith--but for the faith I once had in you, and for the love that no martyrdom could kill. Ay--to prove that love I would die a hundred deaths--and to gain yours I would die the death eternal.”
“And you would have deserved it. Have you not deserved enough already, enough of martyrdom, for tracking me to-day, following me stealthily, like a thief and a spy, to find out my ends and my doings?”
“I love you, Unorna.”
“And therefore you suspect me of unimaginable evil--and therefore you come out of your hiding-place and accuse me of things I have neither done nor thought of doing, building up falsehood upon lie, and lie upon falsehood in the attempt to ruin me in the eyes of one who has my friendship and who is my friend. You are foolish to throw yourself upon my mercy, Israel Kafka.”
“Foolish? Yes, and mad, too! And my madness is all you have left me--take it--it is yours! You cannot kill my love. Deny my words, deny your deeds! Let all be false in you--it is but one pain more, and my heart is not broken yet. It will bear another. Tell me that what I saw had no reality--that you did not make him sleep--here, on this spot, before my eyes--that you did not pour your love into his sleeping ears, that you did not command, implore, entreat--and fail! What is it all to me, whether you speak truth or not? Tell me it is not true that I would die a thousand martyrdoms for your sake, as you are, and if you were a thousand times worse than you are! Your wrong, your right, your truth, your falsehood, you yourself are swallowed up in the love I bear you! I love you always, and I will say it, and say it again--ah, your eyes! I love them, too! Take me into them, Unorna--whether in hate or love--but in love--yes--love--Unorna--golden Unorna!”
With the cry on his lips--the name he had given her in other days--he made one mad step forwards, throwing out his arms as though to clasp her to him. But it was too late. Even while he had been speaking her mysterious influence had overpowered him, as he had known that it would, when she so pleased.
She caught his two hands in the air, and pressed him back and held him against the tall slab. The whole pitilessness of her nature gleamed like a cold light in her white face.
“There was a martyr of your race once,” she said in cruel tones. “His name was Simon Abeles. You talk of martyrdom! You shall know what it means--though it be too good for you, who spy upon the woman whom you say you love.”
The hectic flush of passion sank from Israel Kafka’s cheek. Rigid, with outstretched arms and bent head, he stood against the ancient gravestone. Above him, as though raised to heaven in silent supplication, were the sculptured hands that marked the last resting-place of a Kohn.
“You shall know now,” said Unorna. “You shall suffer indeed.”
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[*] The deeds here described were done in Prague on the twenty-first day of February in the year 1694. Lazarus and his accomplice Levi Kurtzhandel, or Brevimanus, or “the short-handed,” were betrayed by their own people. Lazarus hanged himself in prison, and Levi suffered death by the wheel--repentant, it is said, and himself baptized. A full account of the trial, written in Latin, was printed, and a copy of it may be seen in the State Museum in Prague. The body of Simon Abeles was exhumed and rests in the Teyn Kirche, in the chapel on the left of the high altar. The slight extension of certain scenes not fully described in the Latin volume will be pardoned in a work of fiction.
Unorna’s voice sank from the tone of anger to a lower pitch. She spoke quietly and very distinctly as though to impress every word upon the ear of the man who was in her power. The Wanderer listened, too, scarcely comprehending at first, but slowly yielding to the influence she exerted until the vision rose before him also with all its moving scenes, in all its truth and in all its horror. As in a dream the deeds that had been passed before him, the desolate burial-ground was peopled with forms and faces of other days, the gravestones rose from the earth and piled themselves into gloomy houses and remote courts and dim streets and venerable churches, the dry and twisted trees shrank down, and broadened and swung their branches as arms, and drew up their roots out of the ground as feet under them and moved hither and thither. And the knots and bosses and gnarls upon them became faces, dark, eagle-like and keen, and the creaking and crackling of the boughs and twigs under the piercing blast that swept by, became articulate and like the voices of old men talking angrily together. There were sudden changes from day to night and from night to day. In dark chambers crouching men took counsel of blood together under the feeble rays of a flickering lamp. In the uncertain twilight of winter, muffled figures lurked at the corner of streets, waiting for some one to pass, who must not escape them. As the Wanderer gazed and listened, Israel Kafka was transformed. He no longer stood with outstretched arms, his back against a crumbling slab, his filmy eyes fixed on Unorna’s face. He grew younger; his features were those of a boy of scarcely thirteen years, pale, earnest and brightened by a soft light which followed him hither and thither, and he was not alone. He moved with others through the old familiar streets of the city, clothed in a fashion of other times, speaking in accents comprehensible but unlike the speech of to-day, acting in a dim and far-off life that had once been.
The Wanderer looked, and, as in dreams, he knew that what he saw was unreal, he knew that the changing walls and streets and houses and public places were built up of gravestones which in truth were deeply planted in the ground, immovable and incapable of spontaneous motion; he knew that the crowds of men and women were not human beings but gnarled and twisted trees rooted in the earth, and that the hum of voices which reached his ears was but the sound of dried branches bending in the wind; he knew that Israel Kafka was not the pale-faced boy who glided from place to place followed everywhere by a soft radiance; he knew that Unorna was the source and origin of the vision, and that the mingling speeches of the actors, now shrill in angry altercation, now hissing in low, fierce whisper, were really formed upon Unorna’s lips and made audible through her tones, as the chorus of indistinct speech proceeded from the swaying trees. It was to him an illusion of which he understood the key and penetrated the secret, but it was marvellous in its way, and he was held enthralled from the first moment when it began to unfold itself. He understood further that Israel Kafka was in a state different from this, that he was suffering all the reality of another life, which to the Wanderer was but a dream. For the moment all his faculties had a double perception of things and sounds, distinguishing clearly between the fact and the mirage that distorted and obscured it. For the moment he was aware that his reason was awake though his eyes and his ears might be sleeping. Then the unequal contest between the senses and the intellect ceased, and while still retaining the dim consciousness that the source of all he saw and heard lay in Unorna’s brain, he allowed himself to be led quickly from one scene to another, absorbed and taken out of himself by the horror of the deeds done before him.
At first, indeed, the vision, though vivid, seemed objectless and of uncertain meaning. The dark depths of the Jews’ quarter of the city were opened, and it was towards evening. Throngs of gowned men, crooked, bearded, filthy, vulture-eyed, crowded upon each other in a narrow public place, talking in quick, shrill accents, gesticulating, with hands and arms and heads and bodies, laughing, chuckling, chattering, hook-nosed and loose-lipped, grasping fat purses in lean fingers, shaking greasy curls that straggled out under caps of greasy fur, glancing to right and left with quick, gleaming looks that pierced the gloom like fitful flashes of lightning, plucking at each other by the sleeve and pointing long fingers and crooked nails, two, three and four at a time, as markers, in their ready reckoning, a writhing mass of humanity, intoxicated by the smell of gold, mad for its possession, half hysteric with the fear of losing it, timid, yet dangerous, poisoned to the core by the sweet sting of money, terrible in intelligence, vile in heart, contemptible in body, irresistible in the unity of their greed--the Jews of Prague, two hundred years ago.
In one corner of the dusky place there was a little light. A boy stood there, beside a veiled woman, and the light that seemed to cling about him was not the reflection of gold. He was very young. His pale face had in it all the lost beauty of the Jewish race, the lips were clearly cut, even, pure in outline and firm, the forehead broad with thought, the features noble, aquiline--not vulture-like. Such a face might holy Stephen, Deacon and Protomartyr, have turned upon the young men who laid their garments at the fee of the unconverted Saul.
He stood there, looking on at the scene in the market-place, not wondering, for nothing of it was new to him, not scorning, for he felt no hate, not wrathful, for he dreamed of peace. He would have had it otherwise--that was all. He would have had the stream flow back upon its source and take a new channel for itself, he would have seen the strength of his people wielded in cleaner deeds for nobler aims. The gold he hated, the race for it he despised, the poison of it he loathed, but he had neither loathing nor contempt nor hatred for the men themselves. He looked upon them and he loved to think that the carrion vulture might once again be purified and lifted on strong wings and become, as in old days, the eagle of the mountains.
For many minutes he gazed in silence. Then he sighed and turned away. He held certain books in his hand, for he had come from the school of the synagogue where, throughout the short winter days, the rabbis taught him and his companions the mysteries of the sacred tongue. The woman by his side was a servant in his father’s house, and it was her duty to attend him through the streets, until the day when, being judged a man, he should be suddenly freed from the bondage of childish things.
“Let us go,” he said in a low voice. “The air is full of gold and heavy. I cannot breathe it.”
“Whither?” asked the woman.
“Thou knowest,” he answered. And suddenly the faint radiance that was always about him grew brighter, and spread out arms behind him, to the right and left, in the figure of a cross.
They walked together, side by side, quickly and often glancing behind them as though to see whether they were followed. And yet it seemed as though it was not they who moved, but the city about them which changed. The throng of busy Jews grew shadowy and disappeared, their shrill voices were lost in the distance. There were other people in the street, of other features and in different garbs, of prouder bearing and hot, restless manner, broad-shouldered, erect, manly, with spur on heel and sword at side. The outline of the old synagogue melted into the murky air and changed its shape, and stood out again in other and ever-changing forms. Now they were passing before the walls of a noble palace, now beneath long, low galleries of arches, now again across the open space of the Great Ring in the midst of the city--then all at once they were standing before the richly carved doorway of the Teyn Kirche, the very doorway out of which the Wanderer had followed the fleeting shadow of Beatrice’s figure but a month ago. And then they paused, and looked again to the right and left, and searched the dark corners with piercing glances.
“Thy life is in thine hand,” said the woman, speaking close to the boy’s ear. “It is yet time. Turn with me and let us go back.”
The mysterious radiance lit up the youth’s beautiful face in the dark street and showed the fearless yet gentle smile that was on his lips.
“What is there to fear?” he asked.
“Death,” answered the woman in a trembling tone. “They will kill thee, and it shall be upon my head.”
“And what is Death?” he asked again, and the smile was still upon his face as he led the way up the steps.
The woman bowed her head and drew her veil more closely about her and followed him. Then they were within the church, darker, more ghostly, less rich in those days than now. The boy stood beside the hewn stone basin wherein was the blessed water, and he touched the frozen surface with his fingers, and held them out to his companion.
“Is it thus?” he asked. And the heavenly smile grew more radiant as he made the sign of the Cross.
Again the woman inclined her head.
“Be it not upon me!” she exclaimed earnestly. “Though I would it might be for ever so with thee.”
“It is for ever,” the boy answered.
He went forward and prostrated himself before the high altar, and the soft light hovered above him. The woman knelt at a little distance from him, with clasped hands and upturned eyes. The church was very dark and silent.
An old man in a monk’s robe came forward out of the shadow of the choir and stood behind the marble rails and looked down at the boy’s prostrate figure, wonderingly. Then the low gateway was opened and he descended the three steps and bent down to the young head.
“What wouldest thou?” he asked.
Simon Abeles rose until he knelt, and looked up into the old man’s face.
“I am a Jew. I would be a Christian. I would be baptized.”
“Fearest thou not thy people?” the monk asked.
“I fear not death,” answered the boy simply.
“Come with me.”
Trembling, the woman followed them both, and all were lost in the gloom of the church. They were not to be seen, and all was still for a space. Suddenly a clear voice broke the silence.
“_Ego baptizo te in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. _” Then the woman and the boy were standing again without the entrance in the chilly air, and the ancient monk was upon the threshold under the carved arch; his thin hands, white in the darkness, were lifted high, and he blessed them, and they went their way.
In the moving vision the radiance was brighter still and illuminated the streets as they moved on. Then a cloud descended over all, and certain days and weeks passed, and again the boy was walking swiftly toward the church. But the woman was not with him, and he believed that he was alone, though the messengers of evil were upon him. Two dark figures moved in the shadow, silent, noiseless in their walk, muffled in long garments. He went on, no longer deigning to look back, beyond fear as he had ever been, and beyond even the expectation of a danger. He went into the church, and the two men made gestures, and spoke in low tones, and hid themselves in the shade of the buttresses outside.
The vision grew darker and a terrible stillness was over everything, for the church was not opened to the sight this time. There was a horror of long waiting with the certainty of what was to come. The narrow street was empty to the eye, and yet there was the knowledge of evil presence, of two strong men waiting in the dark to take their victim to the place of expiation. And the horror grew in the silence and the emptiness, until it was unbearable.
The door opened and the boy was with the monk under the black arch. The old man embraced him and blessed him and stood still for a moment watching him as he went down. Then he, also, turned and went back, and the door was closed.
Swiftly the two men glided from their hiding-place and sped along the uneven pavement. The boy paused and faced them, for he felt that he was taken. They grasped him by the arms on each side, Lazarus his father, and Levi, surnamed the Short-handed, the strongest and the cruellest and the most relentless of the younger rabbis. Their grip was rough, and the older man held a coarse woollen cloth in his hand with which to smother the boy’s cries if he should call out for help. But he was very calm and did not resist them.
“What would you?” he asked.
“And what doest thou in a Christian church?” asked Lazarus in low fierce tones.
“What Christians do, since I am one of them,” answered the youth, unmoved.
Lazarus said nothing, but he struck the boy on the mouth with his hard hand so that the blood ran down.
“Not here!” exclaimed Levi, anxiously looking about.
And they hurried him away through dark and narrow lanes. He opposed no resistance to Levi’s rough strength, not only suffering himself to be dragged along but doing his best to keep pace with the man’s long strides, nor did he murmur at the blows and thrusts dealt him from time to time by his father from the other side. During some minutes they were still traversing the Christian part of the city. A single loud cry for help would have brought a rescue, a few words to the rescuers would have roused a mob of fierce men and the two Jews would have paid with their lives for the deeds they had not yet committed. But Simon Abeles uttered no cry and offered no resistance. He had said that he feared not death, and he had spoken the truth, not knowing what manner of death was to be his. Onward they sped, and in the vision the way they traversed seemed to sweep past them, so that they remained always in sight though always hurrying on. The Christian quarter was passed; before them hung the chain of one of those gates which gave access to the city of the Jews. With a jeer and an oath the bearded sentry watched them pass--the martyr and his torturers. One word to him, even then, and the butt of his heavy halberd would have broken Levi’s arm and laid the boy’s father in the dust. The word was not spoken. On through the filthy ways, on and on, through narrow courts and tortuous passages to a dark low doorway. Then, again, the vision showed but an empty street and there was silence for a space, and a horror of long waiting in the falling night.
Lights moved within the house, and then one window after another was bolted and barred from within. Still the silence endured until the ear was grown used to it and could hear sounds very far off, from deep down below the house itself, but the walls did not open and the scene did not change. A dull noise, bad to hear, resounded as from beneath a vault, and then another and another--the sound of cruel blows upon a human body. Then a pause.
“Wilt thou renounce it?” asked the voice of Lazarus.
“_Kyrie eleison, Christie eleison! _” came the answer, brave and clear.
“Lay on, Levi, and let thy arm be strong!”
And again the sound of blows, regular, merciless, came up from the bowels of the earth.
“Dost thou repent? Dost thou renounce? Dost thou deny?”
“I repent of my sins--I renounce your ways--I believe in the Lord--” The sacred name was not heard. A smothered groan as of one losing consciousness in extreme torture was all that came up from below.
“Lay on, Levi, lay on!”
“Nay,” answered the strong rabbi, “the boy will die. Let us leave him here for this night. Perchance cold and hunger will be more potent than stripes, when he shall come to himself.”
“As though sayest,” answered the father in angry reluctance.
Again all was silent. Soon the rays of light ceased to shine through the crevices of the outer shutters, and sleep descended upon the quarter of the Jews. Still the scene in the vision changed not. After a long stillness a clear young voice was heard speaking.
“Lord, if it be Thy will that I die, grant that I may bear all in Thy name, grant that I, unworthy, may endure in this body the punishments due to me in spirit for my sins. And if it be Thy will that I live, let my life be used also for Thy glory.”
The voice ceased and the cloud of passing time descended upon the vision and was lifted again and again. And each time the same voice was heard and the sound of torturing blows, but the voice of the boy was weaker every night, though it was not less brave.
“I believe,” it said, always. “Do what you will, you have power over the body, but I have the Faith over which you have no power.”
So the days and the nights passed, and though the prayer came up in feeble tones, it was born of a mighty spirit and it rang in the ears of the tormentors as the voice of an angel which they had no power to silence, appealing from them to the tribunal of the Throne of God Most High.
Day by day, also, the rabbis and the elders began to congregate together at evening before the house of Lazarus and to talk with him and with each other, debating how they might break the endurance of his son and bring him again into the synagogue as one of themselves. Chief among them in their councils was Levi, the Short-handed, devising new tortures for the frail body to bear and boasting how he would conquer the stubborn boy by the might of his hands to hurt. Some of the rabbis shook their heads.
“He is possessed of a devil,” they said. “He will die and repent not.”
But others nodded approvingly and wagged their filthy heads and said that when the fool had been chastised the evil spirit would depart from him.
Once more the cloud of passing time descended and was lifted. Then the walls of the house were opened and in a low arched chamber the rabbis sat about a black table. It was night and a single smoking lamp was lighted, a mere wick projecting out of a three-cornered vessel of copper which was full of oil and was hung from the vault with blackened wires. Seven rabbis sat at the board, and at the head sat Lazarus. Their crooked hands and claw-like nails moved uneasily and there was a lurid fire in their vulture’s eyes. They bent forward, speaking to each other in low tones, and from beneath their greasy caps their anointed side curls dangled and swung as they moved their heads. But Levi the Short-handed was not among them. Their muffled talk was interrupted from time to time by the sound of sharp, loud blows, as of a hammer striking upon nails, and as though a carpenter were at work not far from the room in which they sat.
“He has not repented,” said Lazarus, from his place. “Neither many stripes, nor cold, nor hunger, nor thirst, have moved him to righteousness. It is written that he shall be cut off from his people.”
“He shall be cut off,” answered the rabbis with one voice.
“It is right and just that he should die,” continued the father. “Shall we give him over to the Christians that he may dwell among them and become one of them, and be shown before the world to our shame?”
“We will not let him go,” said the dark man, and an evil smile flickered from one face to another as a firefly flutters from tree to tree in the night--as though the spirit of evil had touched each one in turn.
“We will not let him go,” said each again.
Lazarus also smiled as though in assent, and bowed his head a little before he spoke.
“I am obedient to your judgment. It is yours to command and mine to obey. If you say that he must die, let him die. He is my son. Take him. Did not our father Abraham lay Isaac upon the altar and offer him as a burnt sacrifice before the Lord?”
“Let him die,” said the rabbis.
“Then let him die,” answered Lazarus. “I am your servant. It is mine to obey.”
“His blood be on our heads,” they said. And again, the evil smile went round.
“It is then expedient that we determine of what manner his death shall be,” continued the father, inclining his body to signify his submission.
“It is not lawful to shed his blood,” said the rabbis. “And we cannot stone him, lest we be brought to judgment of the Christians. Determine thou the manner of his death.”
“My masters, if you will it, let him be brought once more before us. Let us all hear with our ears his denial, and if he repent at the last, it is well, let him live. But if he harden his heart against our entreaties, let him die. Levi hath brought certain pieces of wood hither to my house, and is even now at work. If the youth is still stubborn in his unbelief, let him die even as the Unbeliever died--by the righteous judgment of the Romans.”
“Let it be so. Let him be crucified!” said the rabbis with one voice.
Then Lazarus rose and went out, and, in the vision, the rabbis remained seated, motionless in their places awaiting his return. The noise of Levi’s hammer echoed through the low vaulted chamber, and at each blow the smoking lamp quivered a little, casting strange shadows upon the evil faces beneath its light. At last footsteps, slow and uncertain, were heard without, the low door opened, and Lazarus entered, holding up the body of his son before him.
“I have brought him before you for the last time,” he said. “Question him and hear his condemnation out of his own mouth. He repents not, though I have done my utmost to bring him back to the paths of righteousness. Question him, my masters, and let us see what he will say.”
White and exhausted with long hunger and thirst, his body broken by torture, scarcely any longer sensible to bodily pain, Simon Abeles would have fallen to the ground had his father not held him under the arms. His head hung forward and the pale and noble face was inclined towards the breast, but the deep, dark eyes were open and gazed calmly upon those who sat in judgment at the table. A rough piece of linen cloth was wrapped about the boy’s shoulders and body, but his thin arms were bare.
“Hearest thou, Simon, son of Lazarus?” asked the rabbis. “Knowest thou in whose presence thou standest?”
“I hear you and I know you all.” There was no fear in the voice though it trembled from weakness.
“Renounce then thy errors, and having suffered the chastisement of thy folly, return to the ways of thy father and of thy father’s house and of all thy people.”
“I renounce my sins, and whatsoever is yet left for me to suffer, I will, by God’s help, so bear it as to be not unworthy of Christ’s mercy.”
The rabbis gazed at the brave young face, and smiled and wagged their beards, talking one with another in low tones.
“It is as we feared,” they said. “He is unrepentant and he is worthy of death. It is not expedient that the young adder should live. There is poison under his tongue, and he speaks things not lawful for an Israelite to hear. Let him die, that we may see him no more, and that our children be not corrupted by his false teachings.”
“Hearest thou? Thou shalt die.” It was Lazarus who spoke, while holding up the boy before the table and hissing the words into his ear.
“I hear. I am ready. Lead me forth.”
“There is yet time to repent. If thou wilt but deny what thou hast said these many days, and return to us, thou shalt be forgiven and thy days shall be long among us, and thy children’s days after thee, and the Lord shall perchance have mercy and increase thy goods among thy fellows.”
“Let him alone,” said the rabbis. “He is unrepentant.”
“Lead me forth,” said Simon Abeles.
“Lead him forth,” repeated the rabbis. “Perchance, when he sees the manner of his death before his eyes, he will repent at the last.”
The boy’s fearless eyes looked from one to the other.
“Whatsoever it be,” he said, “I have but one life. Take it as you will. I die in the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ, and into His hands I commend my spirit--which you cannot take.”
“Lead him forth! Let him be crucified!” cried the rabbis together. “We will hear him no longer.”
Then Lazarus led his son away from them, and left them talking together and shaking their heads and wagging their filthy beards. And in the vision the scene changed. The chamber with its flickering lamp and its black table and all the men who were in it grew dim and faded away, and in its place there was a dim inner court between high houses, upon which only the windows of the house of Lazarus opened. There, upon the ground, stood a lantern of horn, and the soft yellow light of it fell upon two pieces of wood, nailed one upon the other to form a small cross--small, indeed, but yet tall enough and broad enough and strong enough to bear the slight burden of the boy’s frail body. And beside it stood Lazarus and Levi, the Short-handed, the strong rabbi, holding Simon Abeles between them. On the ground lay pieces of cord, ready, wherewith to bind him to the cross, for they held it unlawful to shed his blood.
It was soon done. The two men took up the cross and set it, with the body hanging thereon, against the wall of the narrow court, over against the house of Lazarus.
“Thou mayest still repent--during this night,” said the father, holding up the horn lantern and looking into his son’s tortured face.
“Ay--there is yet time,” said Levi, brutally. “He will not die so soon.”
“Lord, into Thy hands I commend my spirit,” said the weak voice once more.
Then Lazarus raised his hand and struck him once more on the mouth, as he had done on that first night when he had seized him near the church. But Levi, the Short-handed, as though in wrath at seeing all his torments fail, dealt him one heavy blow just where the ear joins the neck, and it was over at last. A radiant smile of peace flickered over the pale face, the eyelids quivered and closed, the head fell forward upon the breast and the martyrdom of Simon Abeles was consummated.
Into the dark court came the rabbis one by one from the inner chamber, and each as he came took up the horn lantern and held it to the dead face and smiled and spoke a few low words in the Hebrew tongue and then went out into the street, until only Lazarus and Levi were left alone with the dead body. Then they debated what they should do, and for a time they went into the house and refreshed themselves with food and wine, and comforted each other, well knowing that they had done an evil deed. And they came back when it was late and wrapped the body in the coarse cloth and carried it out stealthily and buried it in the Jewish cemetery, and departed again to their own houses.
“And there he lay,” said Unorna, “the boy of your race who was faithful to death. Have you suffered? Have you for one short hour known the meaning of such great words as you dared to speak to me? Do you know now what it means to be a martyr, to suffer for standing on the very spot where he lay, you have felt in some small degree a part of what he must have felt. You live. Be warned. If again you anger me, your life shall not be spared you.”
The visions had all vanished. Again the wilderness of gravestones and lean, crooked trees appeared, wild and desolate as before. The Wanderer roused himself and saw Unorna standing before Israel Kafka’s prostrate body. As though suddenly released from a spell he sprang forward and knelt down, trying to revive the unconscious man by rubbing his hands and chafing his temples.
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The Wanderer glanced at Unorna’s face and saw the expression of relentless hatred which had settled upon her features. He neither understood it nor attempted to account for it. So far as he knew, Israel Kafka was mad, a man to be pitied, to be cared for, to be controlled perhaps, but assuredly not to be maltreated. Though the memories of the last half hour were confused and distorted, the Wanderer began to be aware that the young Hebrew had been made to suffer almost beyond the bounds of human endurance. So far as it was possible to judge, Israel Kafka’s fault consisted in loving a woman who did not return his love, and his worst misdeed had been his sudden intrusion upon an interview in which the Wanderer could recall nothing which might not have been repeated to the whole world with impunity.
During the last month he had lived a life of bodily and mental indolence, in which all his keenest perceptions and strongest instincts had been lulled into a semi-dormant state. Unknown to himself, the mainspring of all thought and action had been taken out of his existence together with the very memory of it. For years he had lived and moved and wandered over the earth in obedience to one dominant idea. By a magic of which he knew nothing that idea had been annihilated, temporarily, if not for ever, and the immediate consequence had been the cessation of all interest and of all desire for individual action. The suspension of all anxiety, restlessness and mental suffering had benefited the physical man though it had reduced the intelligence to a state bordering upon total apathy.
But organisations, mental or physical, of great natural strength, are never reduced to weakness by a period of inactivity. It is those minds and bodies which have been artificially developed by a long course of training to a degree of power they were never intended to possess, which lose that force almost immediately in idleness. The really very strong man has no need of constant gymnastic exercise; he will be stronger than other men whatever he does. The strong character needs not be constantly struggling against terrible odds in the most difficult situations in order to be sure of its own solidity, nor must the deep intellect be ever plodding through the mazes of intricate theories and problems that it may feel itself superior to minds of less compass. There is much natural inborn strength of body and mind in the world, and on the whole those who possess either accomplish more than those in whom either is the result of long and well-regulated training.
The belief in a great cruelty and a greater injustice roused the man who throughout so many days had lived in calm indifference to every aspect of the humanity around him. Seeing that Israel Kafka could not be immediately restored to consciousness, he rose to his feet again and stood between the prostrate victim and Unorna.
“You are killing this man instead of saving him,” he said. “His crime, you say, is that he loves you. Is that a reason for using all your powers to destroy him in body and mind?”
“Perhaps,” answered Unorna calmly, though there was still a dangerous light in her eyes.
“No. It is no reason,” answered the Wanderer with a decision to which Unorna was not accustomed. “Keyork tells me that the man is mad. He may be. But he loves you and deserves mercy of you.”
“Mercy!” exclaimed Unorna with a cruel laugh. “You heard what he said--you were for silencing him yourself. You could not have done it. I have--and most effectually.”
“Whatever your art really may be, you use it badly and cruelly. A moment ago I was blinded myself. If I had understood clearly while you were speaking that you were making this poor fellow suffer in himself the hideous agony you described I would have stopped you. You blinded me, as you dominated him. But I am not blind now. You shall not torment him any longer.
“And how would you have stopped me? How can you hinder me now?” asked Unorna.
The Wanderer gazed at her in silence for some moments. There was an expression in his face which she had never seen there. Towering above her he looked down. The massive brows were drawn together, the eyes were cold and impenetrable, every feature expressed strength.
“By force, if need be,” he answered very quietly.
The woman before him was not of those who fear or yield. She met his glance boldly. Scarcely half an hour earlier she had been able to steal away his senses and make him subject to her. She was ready to renew the contest, though she realised that a change had taken place in him.
“You talk of force to a woman!” she exclaimed, contemptuously. “You are indeed brave!”
“You are not a woman. You are the incarnation of cruelty. I have seen it.”
His eyes were cold and his voice was stern. Unorna felt a very sharp pain and shivered as though she were cold. Whatever else was bad and cruel and untrue in her wild nature, her love for him was true and passionate and enduring. And she loved him the more for the strength he was beginning to show, and for his determined opposition. The words he had spoken had hurt her as he little guessed they could, not knowing that he alone of men had power to wound her.
“You do not know,” she answered. “How should you?” Her glance fell and her voice trembled.
“I know enough,” he said. He turned coldly from her and knelt again beside Israel Kafka.
He raised the pale head and supported it upon his knee, and gazed anxiously into the face, raising the lids with his finger as though to convince himself that the man was not dead. Indeed there seemed to be but little life left in him as he lay there with outstretched arms and twisted fingers, scarcely breathing. In such a place, without so much as the commonest restorative to aid him, the Wanderer saw that he had but little chance of success.
Unorna stood aside, not looking at the two men. It was nothing to her whether Kafka lived or died. She was suffering herself, more than she had ever suffered in her life. He had said that she was not a woman--she whose whole woman’s nature worshiped him. He had said that she was the incarnation of cruelty--and it was true, though it was her love for him that made her cruel to the other. Could he know what she had felt, when she had understood that Israel Kafka had heard her passionate words and seen her eager face, and had laughed her to scorn? Could any woman at such a time be less than cruel? Was not her hate for the man who loved her as great as her love for the man who loved her not? Even if she possessed instruments of torture for the soul more terrible than those invented in darker ages to rack the human body, was she not justified in using them all? Was not Israel Kafka guilty of the greatest of all crimes, of loving when he was not loved, and of witnessing her shame and discomfiture? She could not bear to look at him, lest she should lose herself and try to thrust the Wanderer aside and kill the man with her hands.
Then she heard footsteps on the frozen path, and turning quickly she saw that the Wanderer had lifted Kafka’s body from the ground and was moving rapidly away, towards the entrance of the cemetery. He was leaving her in anger, without a word. She turned very pale and hesitated. Then she ran forward to overtake him, but he, hearing her approach, quickened his stride, seeming but little hampered in his pace by the burden he bore. But Unorna, too, was fleet of foot and strong.
“Stop!” she cried, laying her hand upon his arm. “Stop! Hear me! Do not leave me so!”
But he would not pause, and hurried onward towards the gate, while she hung upon his arm, trying to hinder him and speaking in desperate agitation. She felt that if she let him go now, he would leave her for ever. In that moment even her hatred of Kafka sank into insignificance. She would do anything, bear anything, promise anything rather than lose what she loved so wildly.
“Stop!” she cried again. “I will save him--I will obey you--I will be kind to him--he will die in your arms if you do not let me help you--oh! for the love of Heaven, wait one moment! Only one moment!”
She so thrust herself in the Wanderer’s path, hanging upon him and trying to tear Kafka from his arms, that he was forced to stand still and face her.
“Let me pass!” he exclaimed, making another effort to advance. But she clung to him and he could not move.
“No,--I will not let you go,” she murmured. “You can do nothing without me, you will only kill him, as I would have done a moment ago--” “And as you will do now,” he said sternly, “if I let you have your way.”
“By all that is Holy in Heaven, I will save him--he shall not even remember--” “Do not swear. I shall not believe you.”
“You will believe when you see--you will forgive me--you will understand.”
Without answering he exerted his strength and clasping the insensible man more firmly in his arms he made one or two steps forward. Unorna’s foot slipped on the frozen ground and she would have fallen to the earth, but she clung to him with desperate energy. Seeing that she was in danger of some bodily hurt if he used greater force, the Wanderer stopped again, uncertain how to act; Unorna stood before him, panting a little from the struggle, her face as white as death.
“Unless you kill me,” she said, “you shall not take him away so. Hold him in your arms, if you will, but let me speak to him.”
“And how shall I know that you will not hurt him, you who hate him as you do?”
“Am I not at your mercy?” asked Unorna. “If I deceive you, can you not do what you will with me, even if I try to resist you, which I will not? Hold me, if you choose, lest I should escape you, and if Israel Kafka does not recover his strength and his consciousness, then take me with you and deliver me up to justice as a witch--as a murderess, if you will.”
The Wanderer was silent for a moment. Then he realised that what she said was true. She was in his power.
“Restore him if you can,” he said.
Unorna laid her hands upon Kafka’s forehead and bending down whispered into his ear words which were inaudible even to the man who held him. The mysterious change from sleep to consciousness was almost instantaneous. He opened his eyes and looked first at Unorna and then at the Wanderer. There was neither pain nor passion in his face, but only wonder. A moment more and his limbs regained their strength, he stood upright and passed his hand over his eyes as though trying to remember what had happened.
“How came I here?” he asked in surprise. “What has happened to me?”
“You fainted,” said Unorna quietly. “You remember that you were very tired after your journey. The walk was too much for you. We will take you home.”
“Yes--yes--I must have fainted. Forgive me--it comes over me sometimes.”
He evidently had complete control of his faculties at the present moment, when he glanced curiously from the one to the other of his two companions, as they all three began to walk towards the gate. Unorna avoided his eyes, and seemed to be looking at the irregular slabs they passed on their way.
The Wanderer had intended to free himself from her as soon as Kafka regained his senses, but he had not been prepared for such a sudden change. He saw, now, that he could not exchange a word with her without exciting the man’s suspicion, and he was by no means sure that the first emotion might not produce a sudden and dangerous effect. He did not even know how great the change might be, which Unorna’s words had brought about. That Kafka had forgotten at once his own conduct and the fearful vision which Unorna had imposed upon him was clear, but it did not follow that he had ceased to love her. Indeed, to one only partially acquainted with the laws which govern hypnotics, such a transition seemed very far removed from possibility. He who in one moment had himself been made to forget utterly the dominant passion and love of his life, was so completely ignorant of the fact that he could not believe such a thing possible in any case whatsoever.
In the dilemma in which he found himself there was nothing to be done but to be guided by circumstances. He was not willing to leave Kafka alone with the woman who hated him, and he saw no means of escaping her society so long as she chose to impose it upon them both. He supposed, too, that Unorna realized this as well as he did, and he tried to be prepared for all events by revolving all the possibilities in his mind.
But Unorna was absorbed by very different thoughts. From time to time she stole a glance at his face, and she saw that it was stern and cold as ever. She had kept her word, but he did not relent. A terrible anxiety overwhelmed her. It was possible, even probable, that he would henceforth avoid her. She had gone too far. She had not reckoned upon such a nature as his, capable of being roused to implacable anger by mere sympathy for the suffering of another. Then, understanding it at last, she had thought it would be enough that those sufferings should be forgotten by him upon whom they had been inflicted. She could not comprehend the horror he felt for herself and for her hideous cruelty. She had entered the cemetery in the consciousness of her strong will and of her mysterious powers certain of victory, sure that having once sacrificed her pride and stooped so low as to command what should have come of itself, she should see his face change and hear the ring of passion in that passionless voice. She had failed in that, and utterly. She had been surprised by her worst enemy. She had been laughed to scorn in the moment of her deepest humiliation, and she had lost the foundations of friendship in the attempt to build upon them the hanging gardens of an artificial love. In that moment, as they reached the gate, Unorna was not far from despair.
A Jewish boy, with puffed red lips and curving nostrils, was loitering at the entrance. The Wanderer told him to find a carriage.
“Two carriages,” said Unorna, quickly. The boy ran out. “I will go home alone,” she added. “You two can drive together.”
The Wanderer inclined his head in assent, but said nothing. Israel Kafka’s dark eyes rested upon hers for a moment.
“Why not go together?” he asked.
Unorna started slightly and turned as though about to make a sharp answer. But she checked herself, for the Wanderer was looking at her. She spoke to him instead of answering Kafka.
“It is the best arrangement--do you not think so?” she asked.
“Quite the best.”
“I shall be gratified if you will bring me word of him,” she said, glancing at Kafka.
The Wanderer was silent as though he had not heard.
“Have you been in pain? Do you feel as though you had been suffering?” she asked of the younger man, in a tone of sympathy and solicitude.
“No. Why do you ask?”
Unorna smiled and looked at the Wanderer, with intention. He did not heed her. At that moment two carriages appeared and drew up at the end of the narrow alley which leads from the street to the entrance of the cemetery. All three walked forward together. Kafka went forward and opened the door of one of the conveyances for Unorna to get in. The Wanderer, still anxious for the man’s safety, would have taken his place, but Kafka turned upon him almost defiantly.
“Permit me,” he said. “I was before you here.”
The Wanderer stood civilly aside and lifted his hat. Unorna held out her hand, and he took it coldly, not being able to do otherwise.
“You will let me know, will you not?” she said. “I am anxious about him.”
He raised his eyebrows a little and dropped her hand.
“You shall be informed,” he said.
Kafka helped her to get into the carriage. She drew him by the hand so that his head was inside the door and the other man could not hear her words.
“I am anxious about you,” she said very kindly. “Make him come himself to me and tell me how you are.”
“Surely--if you have asked him--” “He hates me,” whispered Unorna quickly. “Unless you make him come he will send no message.”
“Then let me come myself--I am perfectly well--” “Hush--no!” she answered hurriedly. “Do as I say--it will be best for you--and for me. Good-bye.”
“Your word is my law,” said Kafka, drawing back. His eyes were bright and his thin cheek was flushed. It was long since she had spoken so kindly to him. A ray of hope entered his life.
The Wanderer saw the look and interpreted it rightly. He understood that in that brief moment Unorna had found time to do some mischief. Her carriage drove on, and left the two men free to enter the one intended for them. Kafka gave the driver the address of his lodgings. Then he sank back into the corner, exhausted and conscious of his extreme weakness. A short silence followed.
“You are in need of rest,” said the Wanderer, watching him curiously.
“Indeed, I am very tired, if not actually ill.”
“You have suffered enough to tire the strongest.”
“In what way?” asked Kafka. “I have forgotten what happened. I know that I followed Unorna to the cemetery. I had been to her house, and I saw you afterwards together. I had not spoken to her since I came back from my long journey this morning. Tell me what occurred. Did she make me sleep? I feel as I have felt before when I have fancied that she has hypnotised me.”
The Wanderer looked at him in surprise. The question was asked as naturally as though it referred to an everyday occurrence of little or no weight.
“Yes,” he answered. “She made you sleep.”
“Why? Do you know? If she has made me dream something, I have forgotten it.”
The Wanderer hesitated a moment.
“I cannot answer your question,” he said, at length.
“Ah--she told me that you hated her,” said Kafka, turning his dark eyes to his companion. “But, yet,” he added, “that is hardly a reason why you should not tell me what happened.”
“I could not tell you the truth without saying something which I have no right to say to a stranger--which I could not easily say to a friend.”
“You need not spare me--” “It might save you.”
“Then say it--though I do not know from what danger I am to be saved. But I can guess, perhaps. You would advise me to give up the attempt to win her.”
“Precisely. I need say no more.”
“On the contrary,” said Kafka with sudden energy, “when a man gives such advice as that to a stranger he is bound to give also his reasons.”
The Wanderer looked at him calmly as he answered.
“One man need hardly give a reason for saving another man’s life. Yours is in danger.”
“I see that you hate her, as she said you did.”
“You and she are both mistaken in that. I am not in love with her and I have ceased to be her friend. As for my interest in you, it does not even pretend to be friendly--it is that which any man may feel for a fellow-being, and what any man would feel who had seen what I have seen this afternoon.”
The calm bearing and speech of the experienced man of the world carried weight with it in the eyes of the young Moravian, whose hot blood knew little of restraint and less of caution; with the keen instinct of his race in the reading of character he suddenly understood that his companion was at once generous and disinterested. A burst of confidence followed close upon the conviction.
“If I am to lose her love, I would rather lose my life also, and by her hand,” he said hotly. “You are warning me against her. I feel that you are honest and I see that you are in earnest. I thank you. If I am in danger, do not try to save me. I saw her face a few moments ago, and she spoke to me. I cannot believe that she is plotting my destruction.”
The Wanderer was silent. He wondered whether it was his duty to do or say more. Unorna was a changeable woman. She might love the man to-morrow. But Israel Kafka was too young to let the conversation drop. Boy-like he expected confidence for confidence, and was surprised at his companion’s taciturnity.
“What did she say to me when I was asleep?” he asked, after a short pause.
“Did you ever hear the story of Simon Abeles?” the Wanderer inquired by way of answer.
Kafka frowned and looked round sharply.
“Simon Abeles? He was a renegade Hebrew boy. His father killed him. He is buried in the Teyn Kirche. What of him? What has he to do with Unorna, or with me? I am myself a Jew. The time has gone by when we Jews hid our heads. I am proud of what I am, and I will never be a Christian. What can Simon Abeles have to do with me?”
“Little enough, now that you are awake.”
“And when I was asleep, what then? She made me see him, perhaps?”
“She made you live his life. She made you suffer all that he suffered--” “What?” cried Israel Kafka in a loud and angry tone.
“What I say,” returned the other quietly.
“And you did not interfere? You did not stop her? No, of course, I forgot that you are a Christian.”
The Wanderer looked at him in surprise. It had not struck him that Israel Kafka might be a man of the deepest religious convictions, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, and that what he would resent most would be the fact that in his sleep Unorna had made him play the part and suffer the martyrdom of a convert to Christianity. This was exactly what took place. He would have suffered anything at Unorna’s hands, and without complaint, even to bodily death, but his wrath rose furiously at the thought that she had been playing with what he held most sacred, that she had forced from his lips the denial of the faith of his people and the confession of the Christian belief, perhaps the very words of the hated Creed. The modern Hebrew of Western Europe might be indifferent in such a case, as though he had spoken in the delirium of a fever, but the Jew of the less civilised East is a different being, and in some ways a stronger. Israel Kafka represented the best type of his race, and his blood boiled at the insult that had been put upon him. The Wanderer saw, and understood, and at once began to respect him, as men who believe firmly in opposite creeds have been known to respect each other even in a life and death struggle.
“I would have stopped her if I could,” he said.
“Were you sleeping, too?” asked Kafka hotly.
“I cannot tell. I was powerless though I was conscious. I saw only Simon Abeles in it all, though I seemed to be aware that you and he were one person. I did interfere--so soon as I was free to move. I think I saved your life. I was carrying you away in my arms when she waked you.”
“I thank you--I suppose it is as you tell me. You could not move--but you saw it all, you say. You saw me play the part of the apostate, you heard me confess the Christian’s faith?”
“Yes--I saw you die in agony, confessing it still.”
Israel Kafka ground his teeth and turned his face away. The Wanderer was silent. A few moments later the carriage stopped at the door of Kafka’s lodging. The latter turned to his companion, who was startled by the change in the young face. The mouth was now closely set, the features seemed bolder, the eyes harder and more manly, a look of greater dignity and strength was in the whole.
“You do not love her?” he asked. “Do you give me your word that you do not love her?”
“If you need so much to assure you of it, I give you my word. I do not love her.”
“Will you come with me for a few moments? I live here.”
The Wanderer made a gesture of assent. In a few moments they found themselves in a large room furnished almost in Eastern fashion, with few objects, but those of great value. Israel Kafka was alone in the world and was rich. There were two or three divans, a few low, octagonal, inlaid tables, a dozen or more splendid weapons hung upon the wall, and the polished wooden floor was partly covered with extremely rich carpets.
“Do you know what she said to me, when I helped her into the carriage?” asked Kafka.
“No, I did not attempt to hear.”
“She did not mean that you should hear her. She made me promise to send you to her with news of myself. She said that you hated her and would not go to her unless I begged you to do so. Is that true?”
“I have told you that I do not hate her. I hate her cruelty. I will certainly not go to her of my own choice.”
“She said that I had fainted. That was a lie. She invented it as an excuse to attract you, on the ground of her interest in my condition.”
“Evidently.”
“She hates me with an extreme hatred. Her real interest lay in showing you how terrible that hatred could be. It is not possible to conceive of anything more diabolically bad than what she did to me. She made me her sport--yours, too, perhaps, or she would at least have wished it. On that holy ground where my people lie in peace she made me deny my faith, she made me, in your eyes and her own, personate a renegade of my race, she made me confess in the Christian creed, she made me seem to die for a belief I abhor. Can you conceive of anything more devilish? A moment later she smiles upon me and presses my hand, and is anxious to know of my good health. And but for you, I should never have known what she had done to me. I owe you gratitude, though it be for the worst pain I have ever suffered. But do you think I will forgive her?”
“You would be very forgiving if you could,” said the Wanderer, his own anger rising again at the remembrance of what he had seen.
“And do you think that I can love still?”
“No.”
Israel Kafka walked the length of the room and then came back and stood before the Wanderer and looked into his eyes. His face was very calm and resolute, the flush had vanished from his thin cheeks, and the features were set in an expression of irrevocable determination. Then he spoke, slowly and distinctly.
“You are mistaken. I love her with all my heart. I will therefore kill her.”
The Wanderer had seen many men in many lands and had witnessed the effects of many passions. He gazed earnestly into Israel Kafka’s face, searching in vain for some manifestation of madness. But he was disappointed. The Moravian had formed his resolution in cold blood and intended to carry it out. His only folly appeared to lie in the announcement of his intention. But his next words explained even that.
“She made me promise to send you to her if you would go,” he said. “Will you go to her now?”
“What shall I tell her? I warn you that since--” “You need not warn me. I know what you would say. But I will be no common murderer. I will not kill her as she would have killed me. Warn her, not me. Go to her and say, ‘Israel Kafka has promised before God that he will take your blood in expiation, and there is no escape from the man who is himself ready to die.’ Tell her to fly for her life, and that quickly.”
“And what will you gain by doing this murder?” asked the Wanderer, calmly. He was revolving schemes for Unorna’s safety, and half amazed to find himself forced in common humanity to take her part.
“I shall free myself of my shame in loving her, at the price of her blood and mine. Will you go?”
“And what is to prevent me from delivering you over to safe keeping before you do this deed?”
“You have no witness,” answered Kafka with a smile. “You are a stranger in the city and in this country, and I am rich. I shall easily prove that you love Unorna, and that you wish to get rid of me out of jealousy.”
“That is true,” said the Wanderer, thoughtfully. “I will go.”
“Go quickly, then,” said Israel Kafka, “for I shall follow soon.”
As the Wanderer left the room he saw the Moravian turn toward the place where the keen, splendid Eastern weapons hung upon the wall.
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The Wanderer knew that the case was urgent and the danger great. There was no mistaking the tone of Israel Kafka’s voice nor the look in his face. Nor did the savage resolution seem altogether unnatural in a man of the Moravian’s breeding. The Wanderer had no time and but little inclination to blame himself for the part he had played in disclosing to the principal actor the nature of the scene which had taken place in the cemetery, and the immediate consequences of that disclosure, though wholly unexpected, did not seem utterly illogical. Israel Kafka’s nature was eastern, violently passionate and, at the same time, long-suffering in certain directions as only the fatalist can be. He could have loved for a lifetime faithfully, without requital; he would have suffered in patience Unorna’s anger, scorn, pity or caprice; he had long before now resigned his free will into the keeping of a passion which was degrading as it enslaved all his thoughts and actions, but which had something noble in it, inasmuch as it fitted him for the most heroic self-sacrifice.
Unorna’s act had brought the several seemingly contradictory elements of his character to bear upon one point. He had realised in the same moment that it was impossible for her to love him; that her changing treatment of him was not the result of caprice but of a fixed plan of her own, in the execution of which she would spare him neither falsehood nor insult; that to love such a woman was the lowest degradation; that he could nevertheless not destroy that love; and, finally, that the only escape from his shame lay in her destruction, and that this must in all probability involve his own death also. At the same time he felt that there was something solemn in the expiation he was about to exact, something that accorded well with the fierce traditions of ancient Israel, and the deed should not be done stealthily or in the dark. Unorna must know that she was to die by his hand, and why. He had no object in concealment, for his own life was already ended by the certainty that his love was hopeless, and on the other hand, fatalist as he was, he believed that Unorna could not escape him and that no warning could save her.
The Wanderer understood most of these things as he hastened towards her house through the darkening streets. Not a carriage was to be seen, and he was obliged to traverse the distance on foot, as often happens at supreme moments, when everything might be gained by the saving of a few minutes in conveying a warning.
He saw himself in a very strange position. Half an hour had not elapsed since he had watched Unorna driving away from the cemetery and had inwardly determined that he would never, if possible, set eyes on her again. Scarcely two hours earlier, he had been speaking to her of the sincere friendship which he felt was growing up for her in his heart. Since then he had learned, almost beyond the possibility of a doubt, that she loved him, and he had learned, too, to despise her, he had left her meaning that the parting should be final, and now he was hurrying to her house to give her the warning which alone could save her from destruction. And yet, he found it impossible to detect any inconsistency in his own conduct. As he had been conscious of doing his utmost to save Israel Kafka from her, so now he knew that he was doing all he could to save Unorna from the Moravian, and he recognised the fact that no man with the commonest feelings of humanity could have done less in either case. But he was conscious, also, of a change in himself which he did not attempt to analyse. His indolent, self-satisfied apathy was gone, the strong interests of human life and death stirred him, mind and body together acquired their activity and he was at all points once more a man. He was ignorant, indeed, of what had been taken from him. The memory of Beatrice was gone, and he fancied himself one who had never loved woman. He looked back with horror and amazement upon the emptiness of his past life, wondering how such an existence as he had led, or fancied he had led, could have been possible.
But there was scant time for reflection upon the problem of his own mission in the world as he hastened towards Unorna’s house. His present mission was clear enough and simple enough, though by no means easy of accomplishment. What Israel Kafka had told him was very true. Should he attempt a denunciation, he would have little chance of being believed. It would be easy enough for Kafka to bring witnesses to prove his own love for Unorna and the Wanderer’s intimacy with her during the past month, and the latter’s consequent interest in disposing summarily of his Moravian rival. A stranger in the land would have small hope of success against a man whose antecedents were known, whose fortune was reputed great, and who had at his back the whole gigantic strength of the Jewish interest in Prague, if he chose to invoke the assistance of his people. The matter would end in a few days in the Wanderer being driven from the country, while Israel Kafka would be left behind to work his will as might seem best in his own eyes.
There was Keyork Arabian. So far as it was possible to believe in the sincerity of any of the strange persons among whom the Wanderer found himself, it seemed certain that the sage was attached to Unorna by some bond of mutual interests which he would be loth to break. Keyork had many acquaintances and seemed to posses everywhere a certain amount of respect, whether because he was perhaps a member of some widespread, mysterious society of which the Wanderer knew nothing, or whether this importance of his was due to his personal superiority of mind and wide experience of travel, no one could say. But it seemed certain that if Unorna could be placed for the time being in a safe refuge, it would be best to apply to Keyork to insure her further protection. Meanwhile that refuge must be found and Unorna must be conveyed to it without delay.
The Wanderer was admitted without question. He found Unorna in her accustomed place. She had thrown aside her furs and was sitting in an attitude of deep thought. Her dress was black, and in the soft light of the shaded lamps she was like a dark, marble statue set in the midst of thick shrubbery in a garden. Her elbow rested on her knee, her chin upon her beautiful, heavy hand; only in her hair there was bright colour.
She knew the Wanderer’s footstep, but she neither moved her body nor turned her head. She felt that she grew paler than before, and she could hear her heart beating strongly.
“I come from Israel Kafka,” said the Wanderer, standing still before her.
She knew from his tone how hard his face must be, and she would not look up.
“What of him?” she asked in a voice without expression. “Is he well?”
“He bids me say to you that he has promised before Heaven to take your life, and that there is no escape from a man who is ready to lay down his own.”
Unorna turned her head slowly towards him, and a very soft look stole over her strange face.
“And you have brought me his message--this warning--to save me?” she said.
“As I tried to save him from you an hour ago. But there is little time. The man is desperate, whether mad or sane, I cannot tell. Make haste. Determine where to go for safety, and I will take you there.”
But Unorna did not move. She only looked at him, with an expression he could no longer misunderstand. He was cold and impassive.
“I fancy it will not be safe to hesitate long,” he said. “He is in earnest.”
“I do not fear Israel Kafka, and I fear death less,” answered Unorna deliberately. “Why does he mean to kill me?”
“I think that in his place most every human men would feel as he does, though religion, or prudence, or fear, or all three together, might prevent them from doing what they would wish to do.”
“You too? And which of the three would prevent you from murdering me?”
“None, perhaps--though pity might.”
“I want no pity, least of all from you. What I have done, I have done for you, and for you only.”
The Wanderer’s face showed only a cold disgust. He said nothing.
“You do not seem surprised,” said Unorna. “You know that I love you?”
“I know it.”
A silence followed, during which Unorna returned to her former attitude, turning her eyes away and resting her chin upon her hand. The Wanderer began to grow impatient.
“I must repeat that, in my opinion, you have not much time to spare,” he said. “If you are not in a place of safety in half an hour, I cannot answer for the consequences.”
“No time? There is all eternity. What is eternity, or time, or life to me? I will wait for him here. Why did you tell him what I did, if you wished me to live?”
“Why--since there are to be questions--why did you exercise your cruelty upon an innocent man who loves you?”
“Why? There are reasons enough!” Unorna’s voice trembled slightly. “You do not know what happened. How should you? You were asleep. You may as well know, since I may be beyond telling you an hour from now. You may as well know how I love you, and to what depths I have gone down to win your love.”
“I would rather not receive your confidence,” the Wanderer answered haughtily. “I came here to save your life, not to hear your confessions.”
“And when you have heard, you will no longer wish to save me. If you choose to leave me here, I will wait for Israel Kafka alone. He may kill me if he pleases. I do not care. But if you stay you shall hear what I have to say.”
She glanced at his face. He folded his arms and stood still. Whatever she had done, he would not leave her alone at the mercy of the desperate man whom he expected every moment to enter the room. If she would not save herself, he might nevertheless disarm Kafka and prevent the deed. As his long sleeping energy revived in him the thought of a struggle was not disagreeable.
“I loved you from the moment when I first saw you,” said Unorna, trying to speak calmly. “But you loved another woman. Do you remember her? Her name was Beatrice, and she was very dark, as I am fair. You had lost her and you had sought her for years. You entered my house, thinking that she had gone in before you. Do you remember that morning? It was a month ago to-day. You told me the story.”
“You have dreamed it,” said the Wanderer in cold surprise. “I never loved any woman yet.”
Unorna laughed bitterly.
“How perfect it all was at first!” she exclaimed. “How smooth it seemed! How easy! You slept before me, out there by the river that very afternoon. And in your sleep I bade you forget. And you forgot wholly, your love, the woman, her very name, even as Israel Kafka forgot to-day what he had suffered in the person of the martyr. You told him the story, and he believes you, because he knows me, and knows what I can do. You can believe me or not; as you will. I did it.”
“You are dreaming,” the Wanderer repeated, wondering whether she were not out of her mind.
“I did it. I said to myself that if I could destroy your old love, root it out from your heart and from your memory and make you as one who had never loved at all, then you would love me as you had once loved her, with your whole free soul. I said that I was beautiful--it is true, is it not? And young I am, and I loved as no woman ever loved. And I said that it was enough, and that soon you would love me, too. A month has passed away since then. You are of ice--of stone--I do not know of what you are. This morning you hurt me. I thought it was the last hurt and that I should die then--instead of to-night. Do you remember? You thought I was ill, and you went away. When you were gone I fought with myself. My dreams--yes, I had dreamed of all that can make earth Heaven, and you had waked me. You said that you would be a brother to me--you talked of friendship. The sting of it! It is no wonder that I grew faint with pain. Had you struck me in the face, I would have kissed your hand. But your friendship! Rather be dead than, loving, be held a friend! And I had dreamed of being dear to you for my own sake, of being dearest, and first, and alone beloved, since that other was gone and I had burned her memory. That pride I had still, until that moment. I fancied that it was in my power, if I would stoop so low, to make you sleep again as you had slept before, and to make you at my bidding feel all I felt. I fought with myself. I would not go down to that depth. And then I said that even that were better than your friendship, even a false semblance of love inspired by my will, preserved by my suggestion. And so I fell. You came back to me and I led you to that lonely place, and made you sleep, and then I told you what was in my heart and poured out the fire of my soul into your ears. A look came into your face--I shall not forget it. My folly was upon me, and I thought it was for me. I know the truth now. Sleeping, the old memory revived in you of her whom waking you will never remember again. But the look was there, and I bade you awake. My soul rose in my eyes. I hung upon your lips. The loving word I longed for seemed already to tremble in the air. Then came the truth. You awoke, and your face was stone, calm, smiling, indifferent, unloving. And all this Israel Kafka had seen, hiding like a thief almost beside us. He saw it all, he heard it all, my words of love, my agony of waiting, my utter humiliation, my burning shame. Was I cruel to him? He had made me suffer, and he suffered in his turn. All this you did not know. You know it now. There is nothing more to tell. Will you wait here until he comes? Will you look on, and be glad to see me die? Will you remember in the years to come with satisfaction that you saw the witch killed for her many misdeeds, and for the chief of them all--for loving you?”
The Wanderer had listened to her words, but the tale they told was beyond the power of his belief. He stood still in his place, with folded arms, debating what he should do to save her. One thing alone was clear. She loved him to distraction. Possibly, he thought, her story was but an invention to excuse her cruelty and to win his commiseration. It failed to do either at first, but yet he would not leave her to her fate.
“You shall not die if I can help it,” he said simply.
“And if you save me, do you think that I will leave you?” she asked with sudden agitation, turning and half rising from her seat. “Think what you will be doing, if you save me. Think well. You say that Israel Kafka is desperate. I am worse than desperate, worse than mad with my love.”
She sank back again and hid her face for a moment. He, on his part, began to see the terrible reality and strength of her passion, and silently wondered what the end would be. He, too, was human, and pity for her began at last to touch his heart.
“You shall not die, if I can save you,” he said again.
She sprang to her feet very suddenly and stood before him.
“You pity me!” she cried. “What lie is that which says that there is a kinship between pity and love? Think well--beware--be warned. I have told you much, but you do not know me yet. If you save me, you save me but to love you more than I do already. Look at me. For me there is neither God, nor hell, nor pride, nor shame. There is nothing that I will not do, nothing I shall be ashamed or afraid of doing. If you save me, you save me that I may follow you as long as I live. I will never leave you. You shall never escape my presence, your whole life shall be full of me--you do not love me, and I can threaten you with nothing more intolerable than myself. Your eyes will weary of the sight of me and your ears at the sound of my voice. Do you think I have no hope? A moment ago I had none. But I see it now. Whether you will, or not, I shall be yours. You may make a prisoner of me--I shall be in your keeping then, and shall know it, and feel it, and love my prison for your sake, even if you will not let me see you. If you would escape from me, you must kill me, as Israel Kafka means to kill me now--and then, I shall die by your hand and my life will have been yours and given to you. How can you think that I have no hope! I have hope--and certainty, for I shall be near you always to the end--always, always, always! I will cling to you--as I do now--and say, I love you, I love you--yes, and you will cast me off, but I will not go--I will clasp your feet, and say again, I love you, and you may spurn me--man, god, wanderer, devil,--whatever you are--beloved always! Tread upon me, trample on me, crush me--you cannot save yourself, you cannot kill my love!”
She had tried to take his hand and he had withdrawn his, she had fallen upon her knees, and as he tried to free himself had fallen almost to her length upon the marble floor, clinging to his very feet, so that he could make no step without doing her some hurt. He looked down, amazed and silent, and as he looked she cast one glance upward to his stern face, the bright tears streaming like falling gems from her unlike eyes, her face pale and quivering, her rich hair all loosened and falling about her.
And then, neither body, nor heart, nor soul, could bear the enormous strain that was laid upon them. A low cry broke from her lips, a stormy sob, another and another, like quick short waves breaking over the bar when the tide is low and the wind is rising suddenly.
The Wanderer was in sore straits, for the minutes were passing quickly and he remembered the last look on Kafka’s face, and how he had left the Moravian standing before the weapons on the wall. And nothing had been done yet, not so much as an order given not to admit him if he came to the house. At any moment he might be upon them. And the storm showed no signs of being spent. Her wild, convulsive sobbing was painful to hear. If he tried to move, she dragged herself frantically at his feet so that he feared lest he should tread upon her hands. He pitied her now most truly, though he guessed rightly that to show his pity would be but to add fuel to the blazing flame.
Then, in the interval of a second, as she drew breath to weep afresh, he fancied that he heard sounds below as of the great door being opened and closed again. With a quick, strong movement, stooping low he put his arms about her and raised her from the floor. At his touch, her sobbing ceased for a moment, as though she had wanted only that to soothe her. In spite of him she let her head rest upon his shoulder, letting him still feel that if he did not support her weight with his arm she would fall again. In the midst of the most passionate and real outburst of despairing love there was no artifice which she would not use to be nearer to him, to extort even the semblance of a caress.
“I heard some one come in below,” he said, hurriedly. “It must be he. Decide quickly what to do. Either stay or fly--you have not ten seconds for your choice.”
She turned her imploring eyes to his.
“Let me stay here and end it all--” “That you shall not!” he exclaimed, dragging her towards the end of the hall opposite to the usual entrance, and where he knew that there must be a door behind the screen of plants. His hold tightened upon her yielding waist. Her head fell back and her full lips parted in an ecstasy of delight as she felt herself hurried along in his arms, scarcely touching the floor with her feet.
“Ah--now--now! Let it come now!” she sighed.
“It must be now--or never,” he said almost roughly. “If you will leave this house with me now, very well. But leave this room you shall. If I am to meet that man and stop him, I will meet him alone.”
“Leave you alone? Ah no--not that----” They had reached the exit now. At the same instant both heard some one enter at the other end and rapid footsteps on the marble pavement.
“Which is it to be?” asked the Wanderer, pale and calm. He had pushed her through before him and seemed ready to go back alone.
With violent strength she drew him to her, closed the door and slipped the strong steel bolt across below the lock. There was a dim light in the passage.
“Together, then,” she said. “I shall at least be with you--a little longer.”
“Is there another way out of the house?” asked the Wanderer anxiously.
“More than one. Come with me.”
As they disappeared in the corridor, they heard behind them the noise of the door-lock as some one tried to force it open. Then a heavy sound as though a man’s shoulder struck against the solid panel. Unorna led the way through a narrow, winding passage, illuminated here and there by small lamps with shades of soft colours, blown in Bohemian glass.
Pushing aside a curtain they came out into a small room. The Wanderer uttered an involuntary exclamation of surprise as he recognised the vestibule and saw before him the door of the great conservatory, open as Israel Kafka had left it. That the latter was still trying to pursue them through the opposite exit was clear enough, for the blows he was striking on the panel echoed loudly out into the hall. Swiftly and silently Unorna closed the entrance and locked it securely.
“He is safe for a little while,” she said. “Keyork will find him there when he comes, an hour hence, and Keyork will perhaps bring him to his senses.”
She had regained control of herself, to all appearances, and she spoke with perfect calm and self-possession. The Wanderer looked at her in surprise and with some suspicion. Her hair was all falling about her shoulders, but saving this sign, there was no trace of the recent storm, nor the least indication of passion. If she had been acting a part throughout before an audience, she would have seemed less indifferent when the curtain fell. The Wanderer, having little cause to trust her, found it hard to believe that she had not been counterfeiting. It seemed impossible that she should be the same woman who but a moment earlier had been dragging herself at his feet, in wild tears and wilder protestations of her love.
“If you are sufficiently rested,” he said with a touch of sarcasm which he could not restrain, “I would suggest that we do not wait any longer here.”
She turned and faced him, and he saw now how very white she was.
“So you think that even now I have been deceiving you? That is what you think. I see it in your face.”
Before he could prevent her she had opened the door wide again and was advancing calmly into the conservatory.
“Israel Kafka!” she cried in loud clear tones. “I am here--I am waiting--come!”
The Wanderer ran forward. He caught sight in the distance of a pair of fiery eyes and of something long and thin and sharp-gleaming under the soft lamps. He knew then that all was deadly earnest. Swift as thought he caught Unorna and bore her from the hall, locking the door again and setting his broad shoulders against it, as he put her down. The daring act she had done appealed to him, in spite of himself.
“I beg your pardon,” he said almost deferentially. “I misjudged you.”
“It is that,” she answered. “Either I will be with you or I will die, by his hand, by yours, by my own--it will matter little when it is done. You need not lean against the door. It is very strong. Your furs are hanging there, and here are mine. Let us be going.”
Quietly, as though nothing unusual had happened, they descended the stairs together. The porter came forward with all due ceremony, to open the shut door. Unorna told him that if Keyork Arabian came while she was out, he was to be shown directly into the conservatory. A moment later she and her companion were standing together in the small irregular square before the Clementinum.
“Where will you go?” asked the Wanderer.
“With you,” she answered, laying her hand upon his arm and looking into his face as though waiting to see what direction he would choose. “Unless you send me back to him,” she added, glancing quickly at the house and making as though she would withdraw her hand once more. “If it is to be that, I will go alone.”
There seemed to be no way out of the terrible dilemma, and the Wanderer stood still in deep thought. He knew that if he could but free himself from her for half an hour, he could get help from the right quarter and take Israel Kafka red-handed and armed as he was. For the man was caught as in a trap and must stay there until he was released, and there would be little doubt from his manner, when taken, that he was either mad or consciously attempting some crime. There was no longer any necessity, he thought, for Unorna to take refuge anywhere for more than an hour. In that time Israel Kafka would be in safe custody, and she could re-enter her house with nothing to fear. But he counted without Unorna’s unyielding obstinacy. She threatened if he left her for a moment to go back to Israel Kafka. A few minutes earlier she had carried out her threat and the consequence had been almost fatal.
“If you are in your right mind,” he said at last, beginning to walk towards the corner, “you will see that what you wish to do is utterly against reason. I will not allow you to run the risk of meeting Israel Kafka to-night, but I cannot take you with me. No--I will hold you, if you try to escape me, and I will bring you to a place of safety by force, if need be.”
“And you will leave me there, and I shall never see you again. I will not go, and you will find it hard to take me anywhere in the crowded city by force. You are not Israel Kafka, with the whole Jews’ quarter at your command in which to hide me.”
The Wanderer was perplexed. He saw, however, that if he would yield the point and give his word to return to her, she might be induced to follow his advice.
“If I promise to come back to you, will you do what I ask?” he inquired.
“Will you promise truly?”
“I have never broken a promise yet.”
“Did you promise that other woman that you would never love again, I wonder? If so, you are faithful indeed. But you have forgotten that. Will you come back to me if I let you take me where I shall be safe to-night?”
“I will come back whenever you send for me.”
“If you fail, my blood is on your head.”
“Yes--on my head be it.”
“Very well. I will go to that house where I first stayed when I came here. Take me there quickly--no--not quickly either--let it be very long! I shall not see you until to-morrow.”
A carriage was passing at a foot pace. The Wanderer stopped it, and helped Unorna to get in. The place was very near, and neither spoke, though he could feel her hand upon his arm. He made no attempt to shake her off. At the gate they both got out, and he rang a bell that echoed through vaulted passages far away in the interior.
“To-morrow,” said Unorna, touching his hand.
He could see even in the dark the look of love she turned upon him.
“Good-night,” he said, and in the next moment she had disappeared within.
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Having made the necessary explanations to account for her sudden appearance, Unorna found herself installed in two rooms of modest dimensions, and very simply though comfortably furnished. It was quite a common thing for ladies to seek retreat and quiet in the convent during two or three weeks of the year, and there was plenty of available space at the disposal of those who wished to do so. Such visits were indeed most commonly made during the lenten season, and on the day when Unorna sought refuge among the nuns it chanced that there was but one other stranger within the walls. She was glad to find that this was the case. Her peculiar position would have made it hard for her to bear with equanimity the quiet observation of a number of woman, most of whom would probably have been to some extent acquainted with the story of her life, and some of whom would certainly have wished out of curiosity to enter into nearer acquaintance with her while within the convent, while not intending to prolong their intercourse with her any further. It could not be expected, indeed, that in a city like Prague such a woman as Unorna could escape notice, and the fact that little or nothing was known of her true history had left a very wide field for the imaginations of those who chose to invent one for her. The common story, and the one which on the whole was nearest to the truth, told that she was the daughter of a noble of eastern Bohemia who had died soon after her birth, the last of his family, having converted his ancestral possessions into money for Unorna’s benefit, in order to destroy all trace of her relationship to him. The secret must, of course, have been confided to some one, but it had been kept faithfully, and Unorna herself was no wiser than those who mused themselves with fruitless speculations regarding her origin. If from the first, from the moment when, as a young girl, she left the convent to enter into possession of her fortune she had chosen to assert some right to a footing in the most exclusive aristocracy in the world, it is not impossible that the protection of the Abbess might have helped her to obtain it. The secret of her birth would, however, have rendered a marriage with a man of that class all but impossible, and would have entirely excluded her from the only other position considered dignified for a well-born woman of fortune, unmarried and wholly without living relations or connections--that of a lady-canoness on the Crown foundation. Moreover, her wild bringing-up, and the singular natural gifts she possessed, and which she could not resist the impulse to exercise, had in a few months placed her in a position from which no escape was possible so long as she continued to live in Prague; and against those few--chiefly men--who for her beauty’s sake, or out of curiosity, would gladly have made her acquaintance, she raised an impassable barrier of pride and reserve. Nor was her reputation altogether an evil one. She lived in a strange fashion, it is true, but the very fact of her extreme seclusion had kept her name free from stain. If people spoke of her as the Witch, it was more from habit and half in jest than in earnest. In strong contradiction to the cruelty which she could exercise ruthlessly when roused to anger, was her well-known kindness to the poor, and her charities to institutions founded for their benefit were in reality considerable, and were said to be boundless. These explanations seem necessary in order to account for the readiness with which she turned to the convent when she was in danger, and for the facilities which were then at once offered her for a stay long or short, as she should please to make it. Some of the more suspicious nuns looked grave when they heard that she was under their roof; others, again, had been attached to her during the time she had formerly spent among them; and there were not lacking those who, disapproving of her presence, held their peace, in the anticipation that the rich and eccentric lady would on departing present a gift of value to their order.
The rooms which were kept at the disposal of ladies desiring to make a religious retreat for a short time were situated on the first floor of one wing of the convent overlooking a garden which was not within the cloistered precincts, but which was cultivated for the convenience of the nuns, who themselves never entered it. The windows on this side were not latticed, and the ladies who occupied the apartments were at liberty to look out upon the small square of land, their view of the street beyond being cut off however by a wall in which there was one iron gate for the convenience of the gardeners, who were thus not obliged to pass through the main entrance of the convent in order to reach their work. Within the rooms all opened out upon a broad vaulted corridor, lighted in the day-time by a huge arched window looking upon an inner court, and at night by a single lamp suspended in the middle of the passage by a strong iron chain. The pavement of this passage was of broad stones, once smooth and even but now worn and made irregular by long use. The rooms for the guests were carpeted with sober colours and warmed by high stoves built up of glazed white tiles. The furniture, as has been said, was simple, but afforded all that was strictly necessary for ordinary comfort, each apartment consisting of a bedroom and sitting-room, small in lateral dimensions but relatively very high. The walls were thick and not easily penetrated by any sounds from without, and, as in many religious houses, the entrances from the corridor were all closed by double doors, the outer one of strong oak with a lock and a solid bolt, the inner one of lighter material, but thickly padded to exclude sound as well as currents of cold air. Each sitting-room contained a table, a sofa, three or four chairs, a small book-shelf, and a praying-stool provided with a hard and well-worn cushion for the knees. Over this a brown wooden crucifix was hung upon the gray wall.
In the majority of convents it is not usual, nor even permissible, for ladies in retreat to descend to the nuns’ refectory. When there are many guests they are usually served by lay sisters in a hall set apart for the purpose; when there are few, their simple meals are brought to them in their rooms. Moreover they of course put on no religious robe, though they dress themselves in black. In the church, or chapel, as the case may be, they do not take places within the latticed choir with the sisters, but either sit in the body of the building, or occupy a side chapel reserved for their use, or else perform their devotions kneeling at high windows above the choir, which communicate within with rooms accessible from the convent. It is usual for them to attend Mass, Vespers, the Benediction and Complines, but when there are midnight services they are not expected to be present.
Unorna was familiar with convent life and was aware that the Benediction was over, and that the hour for the evening meal was approaching. A fire had been lighted in her sitting-room, but the air was still very cold and she sat wrapped in her furs as when she had arrived, leaning back in a corner of the sofa, her head inclined forward, and one white hand resting on the green baize cloth which covered the table.
She was very tired, and the absolute stillness was refreshing and restoring after the long-drawn-out emotions of the stormy day. Never, in her short and passionate life, had so many events been crowded into the space of a few hours. Since the morning she had felt almost everything that her wild, high-strung nature was capable of feeling--love, triumph, failure, humiliation--anger, hate, despair, and danger of sudden death. She was amazed when, looking back, she remembered that at noon on that day her life and all its interests had been stationary at the point familiar to her during a whole month, the point that still lay within the boundaries of hope’s kingdom, the point at which the man she loved had wounded her by speaking of brotherly affection and sisterly regard. She could almost believe, when she thought of it all, that some one had done to her as she had done to others, that she had been cast into a state of sleep, and had been forced against her will to live through the storms of years in the lethargy of an hour. And yet, despite all, her memory was distinct, her faculties were awake, her intellect had lost none of its clearness, even in the last and worst hour of all. She could recall each look on the Wanderer’s face, each tone of his cold speech, each intonation of her own passionate outpourings. Her strong memory had retained all, and there was not the slightest break in the continuity of her recollections. But there was little comfort to be derived from the certainty that she had not been dreaming, and that everything had really taken place precisely as she remembered it. She would have given all she possessed, which was much, to return to the hour of noon on that same day.
In so far as a very unruly nature can understand itself, Unorna understood the springs of the actions, she regretted and confessed that in all likelihood she would do again as she had done at each successive stage. Indeed, since the last great outbreak of her heart, she realised more than ever the great proportions which her love had of late assumed; and she saw that she was indeed ready, as she had said, to dare everything and risk everything for the sake of obtaining the very least show of passion in return. It was quite clear to her, since she had failed so totally, that she should have had patience, that she ought to have accepted gratefully the man’s offer of brotherly devotion, and trusted in time to bring about a further and less platonic development. But she was equally sure that she could never have found the patience, and that if she had restrained herself to-day she would have given way to-morrow. She possessed all the blind indifference to consequences which is a chief characteristic of the Slav nature when dominated by passion. She had shone it in her rash readiness to face Israel Kafka at the moment of leaving her own home. If she could not have what she longed for, she cared as little what became of her as she cared for Kafka’s own fate. She had but one object, one passion, one desire, and to all else her indifference was supreme. Life and death, in this world or the next, were less weighty than feathers in a scale that measures hundreds of tons. The very idea of balance was for the moment beyond her imagination. For a while indeed the pride of a woman at once young, beautiful, and accustomed to authority, had kept her firm in the determination to be loved for herself, as she believed that she deserved to be loved; and just so long as that remained, she had held her head high, confidently expecting that the mask of indifference would soon be shivered, that the eyes she adored would soften with warm light, that the hand she worshipped would tremble suddenly, as though waking to life within her own. But that pride was gone, and from its disappearance there had been but one step to the most utter degradation of soul to which a woman can descend, and from that again but one step more to a resolution almost stupid in its hardened obstinacy. But as though to show how completely she was dominated by the man whom she could not win even her last determination had yielded under the slightest pressure from his will. She had left her house beside him with the mad resolve never again to be parted from him, cost what it might, reputation, fortune, life itself. And yet ten minutes had not elapsed before she found herself alone, trusting to a mere word of his for the hope of ever seeing him again. She seemed to have no individuality left. He had spoken and she had obeyed. He had commanded and she had done his bidding. She was even more ashamed of this than of having wept, and sobbed, and dragged herself at his feet. In the first moment she had submitted, deluding herself with the idea she had expressed, that he was consigning her to a prison and that her freedom was dependent on his will. The foolish delusion vanished. She saw that she was free, when she chose, to descend the steps she had just mounted, to go out through the gate she had lately entered, and to go whithersoever she would, at the mere risk of meeting Israel Kafka. And that risk she heartily despised, being thoroughly brave by nature, and utterly indifferent to death by force of circumstance.
She comforted herself with the thought that the Wanderer would come to her, once at least, when she was pleased to send for him. She had that loyal belief inseparable from true love until violently overthrown by irrefutable evidence, and which sometimes has such power as to return even then, overthrowing the evidence of the senses themselves. Are there not men who trust women, and women who trust men, in spite of the vilest betrayals? Love is indeed often the inspirer of subjective visions, creating in the beloved object the qualities it admires and the virtues it adores, powerless to accept what it is not willing to see, dwelling in a fortress guarded by intangible, and therefore indestructible, fiction and proof against the artillery of facts. Unorna’s confidence was, however, not misplaced. The man whose promise she had received had told the truth when he had said that he had never broken any promise whatsoever.
In this, at least, there was therefore comfort. On the morrow she would see him again. The moment of complete despair had passed when she had received that assurance from his lips, and as she thought of it, sitting in the absolute stillness of her room, the proportions of the storm grew less, and possible dimensions of a future hope greater--just as the seafarer when his ship lies in a flat calm of the oily harbour thinks half incredulously of the danger past, despises himself for the anxiety he felt, and vows that on the morrow he will face the waves again, though the winds blow ever so fiercely. In Unorna the master passion was as strong as ever. In a dim vision the wreck of her pride floated still in the stormy distance, but she turned her eyes away, for it was no longer a part of her. The spectre of her humiliation rose up and tried to taunt her with her shame--she almost smiled at the thought that she could still remember it. He lived, she lived, and he should yet be hers. As her physical weariness began to disappear in the absolute quiet and rest, her determination revived. Her power was not all gone yet. On the morrow she would see him again. She might still fix her eyes on his, and in an unguarded moment cast him into a deep sleep. She remembered that look on his face in the old cemetery. She had guessed rightly; it had been for the faint memory of Beatrice. But she would bring it back again, and it should be for her, for he should never wake again. Had she not done as much with the ancient scholar who for long years had lain in her home in that mysterious state, who obeyed when she commanded him to rise, and walk, to eat, to speak? Why not the Wanderer, then? To outward eyes he would be alive and awake, calm, natural, happy. And yet he would be sleeping. In that condition, at least, she could command his actions, his thoughts, and his words. How long could it be made to last? She did not know. Nature might rebel in the end and throw off the yoke of the heavily-imposed will. An interval might follow, full again of storm and passion and despair; but it would pass, and he would again fall under her influence. She had read, and Keyork Arabian had told her, of the marvels done every day by physicians of common power in the great hospitals and universities of the Empire, and elsewhere throughout Europe. None of them appeared to be men of extraordinary natural gifts. Their powers were but weakness compared with hers. Even with miserable, hysteric women they often had to try again and again before they could produce the hypnotic sleep for the first time. When they had got as far as that, indeed, they could bring their learning, their science, and their experience to bear--and they could make foolish experiments, familiar to Unorna from her childhood as the sights and sounds of her daily life. Few, if any of them, had even the power necessary to hypnotise an ordinarily strong man in health. She, on the contrary, had never failed in that, and at the first trial, except with Keyork Arabian, a man of whom she said in her heart, half in jest and half superstitiously, that he was not a man at all, but a devil or a monster over whom earthly influences had no control.
All her energy returned. The colour came back to her face, her eyes sparkled, her strong white hands contracted and opened, and closed again, as though she would grasp something. The room, too, had become warmer and she had forgotten to lay aside her furs. She longed for more air and, rising, walked across the room. It occurred to her that the great corridor would be deserted and as quiet as her own apartment, and she went out and began to pace the stone flags, her head high, looking straight before her.
She wished that she had him there now, and she was angry at the thought that she had not seen earlier how easily it could all be done. However strong he might be, having twice been under her influence before he could not escape it again. In those moments when they had stood together before the great dark buildings of the Clementinum, it might all have been accomplished; and now, she must wait until the morning. But her mind was determined. It mattered not how, it mattered not in what state, he should be hers. No one would know what she had done. It was nothing to her that he would be wholly unconscious of his past life--had she not already made him forget the most important part of it? He would still be himself, and yet he would love her, and speak lovingly to her, and act as she would have him act. Everything could be done, and she would risk nothing, for she would marry him and make him her lawful husband, and they would spend their lives together, in peace, in the house wherein she had so abased herself before him, foolishly believing that, as a mere woman, she could win him.
She paced the corridor, passing and repassing beneath the light of the single lamp that hung in the middle, walking quickly, with a sensation of pleasure in the movement and in the cold draught that fanned her cheek.
Then she heard footsteps distinct from the echo of her own and she stood still. Two women were coming towards her through the gloom. She waited near her own door, supposing that they would pass her. As they came near, she saw that the one was a nun, habited in the plain gray robe and black and white head-dress of the order. The other was a lady dressed, like herself, in black. The light burned so badly that as the two stopped and stood for a moment conversing together, Unorna could not clearly distinguish their faces. Then the lady entered one of the rooms, the third or the fourth from Unorna’s, and the nun remained standing outside, apparently hesitating whether to turn to the right or to the left, or asking herself in which direction her occupations called her. Unorna made a movement, and at the sound of her foot the nun came towards her.
“Sister Paul!” Unorna exclaimed, recognising her as her face came under the glare of the lamp, and holding out her hands.
“Unorna!” cried the nun, with an intonation of surprise and pleasure. “I did not know that you were here. What brings you back to us?”
“A caprice, Sister Paul--nothing but a caprice. I shall perhaps be gone to-morrow.”
“I am sorry,” answered the sister. “One night is but a short retreat from the world.” She shook her head rather sadly.
“Much may happen in a night,” replied Unorna with a smile. “You used to tell me that the soul knew nothing of time. Have you changed your mind? Come into my room and let us talk. I have not forgotten your hours. You can have nothing to do for the moment, unless it is supper-time.”
“We have just finished,” said Sister Paul, entering readily enough. “The other lady who is staying here insisted upon supping in the guests’ refectory--out of curiosity perhaps, poor thing--and I met her on the stairs as she was coming up.”
“Are she and I the only ones here?” Unorna asked carelessly.
“Yes. There is no one else, and she only came this morning. You see it is still the carnival season in the world. It is in Lent that the great ladies come to us, and then we have often not a room free.”
The nun smiled sadly, shaking her head again, in a way that seemed habitual with her.
“After all,” she added, as Unorna said nothing, “it is better that they should come then, rather than not at all, though I often think it would be better still if they spent carnival in the convent and Lent in the world.”
“The world you speak of would be a gloomy place if you had the ordering of it, Sister Paul!” observed Unorna with a little laugh.
“Ah, well! I daresay it would seem so to you. I know little enough of the world as you understand it, save for what our guests tell me--and, indeed, I am glad that I do not know more.”
“You know almost as much as I do.”
The sister looked long and earnestly into Unorna’s face as though searching for something. She was a thin, pale woman over forty years of age. Not a wrinkle marked her waxen skin, and her hair was entirely concealed under the smooth head-dress, but her age was in her eyes.
“What is your life, Unorna?” she asked suddenly. “We hear strange tales of it sometimes, though we know also that you do great works of charity. But we hear strange tales and strange words.”
“Do you?” Unorna suppressed a smile of scorn. “What do people say of me? I never asked.”
“Strange things, strange things,” repeated the nun with a shake of the head.
“What are they? Tell me one of them, as an instance.”
“I should fear to offend you--indeed I am sure I should, though we were good friends once.”
“And are still. The more reason why you should tell me what is said. Of course I am alone in the world, and people will always tell vile tales of women who have no one to protect them.”
“No, no,” Sister Paul hastened to assure her. “As a woman, no word has reached us that touches your fair name. On the contrary, I have heard worldly women say much more that is good of you in that respect than they will say of each other. But there are other things, Unorna--other things which fill me with fear for you. They call you by a name that makes me shudder when I hear it.”
“A name?” repeated Unorna in surprise and with considerable curiosity.
“A name--a word--what you will--no, I cannot tell you, and besides, it must be untrue.”
Unorna was silent for a moment and then understood. She laughed aloud with perfect unconcern.
“I know!” she cried. “How foolish of me! They call me the Witch--of course.”
Sister Paul’s face grew very grave, and she immediately crossed herself devoutly, looking askance at Unorna as she did so. But Unorna only laughed again.
“Perhaps it is very foolish,” said the nun, “but I cannot bear to hear such a thing said of you.”
“It is not said in earnest. Do you know why they call me the Witch? It is very simple. It is because I can make people sleep--people who are suffering or mad or in great sorrow, and then they rest. That is all my magic.”
“You can put people to sleep? Anybody?” Sister Paul opened her faded eyes very wide. “But that is not natural,” she added in a perplexed tone. “And what is not natural cannot be right.”
“And is all right that is natural?” asked Unorna thoughtfully.
“It is not natural,” repeated the other. “How do you do it? Do you use strange words and herbs and incantations?”
Unorna laughed again, but the nun seemed shocked by her levity and she forced herself to be grave.
“No, indeed!” she answered. “I look into their eyes and tell them to sleep--and they do. Poor Sister Paul! You are behind the age in the dear old convent here. The thing is done in half of the great hospitals of Europe every day, and men and women are cured in that way of diseases that paralyse them in body as well as in mind. Men study to learn how it is done; it is as common to-day, as a means of healing, as the medicines you know by name and taste. It is called hypnotism.”
Again the sister crossed herself.
“I have heard the word, I think,” she said, as though she thought there might be something diabolical in it. “And do you heal the sick in this way by means of this--thing?”
“Sometimes,” Unorna answered. “There is an old man, for instance, whom I have kept alive for many years by making him sleep--a great deal.” Unorna smiled a little.
“But you have no words with it? Nothing?”
“Nothing. It is my will. That is all.”
“But if it is of good, and not of the Evil One, there should be a prayer with it. Could you not say a prayer with it, Unorna?”
“I daresay I could,” replied the other, trying not to laugh. “But that would be doing two things at once; my will would be weakened.”
“It cannot be of good,” said the nun. “It is not natural, and it is not true that the prayer can distract the will from the performance of a good deed.” She shook her head more energetically than usual. “And it is not good either that you should be called a witch, you who have lived here amongst us.”
“It is not my fault!” exclaimed Unorna, somewhat annoyed by her persistence. “And besides, Sister Paul, even if the devil is in it, it would be right all the same.”
The nun held up her hands in holy horror, and her jaw dropped.
“My child! My child! How can you say such things to me!”
“It is very true,” Unorna answered, quietly smiling at her amazement. “If people who are ill are made well, is it not a real good, even if the Evil One does it? Is it not good to make him do good, if one can, even against his will?”
“No, no!” cried Sister Paul, in great distress. “Do not talk like that--let us not talk of it at all! Whatever it is, it is bad, and I do not understand it, and I am sure that none of us here could, no matter how well you explained it. But if you will do it, Unorna, my dear child, then say a prayer each time, against temptation and the devil’s works.”
With that the good nun crossed herself a third time, and unconsciously, from force of habit, began to tell her beads with one hand, mechanically smoothing her broad, starched collar with the other. Unorna was silent for a few minutes, plucking at the sable lining of the cloak which lay beside her upon the sofa where she had dropped it.
“Let us talk of other things,” she said at last. “Talk of the other lady who is here. Who is she? What brings her into retreat at this time of year?”
“Poor thing--yes, she is very unhappy,” answered Sister Paul. “It is a sad story, so far as I have heard it. Her father is just dead, and she is alone in the world. The Abbess received a letter yesterday from the Cardinal Archbishop, requesting that we would receive her, and this morning she came. His eminence knew her father, it appears. She is only to be here for a short time, I believe, until her relations come to take her home to her own country. Her father was taken ill in a country place near the city, which he had hired for the shooting season, and the poor girl was left all alone out there. The Cardinal thought she would be safer and perhaps less unhappy with us while she is waiting.”
“Of course,” said Unorna, with a faint interest. “How old is she, poor child?”
“She is not a child, she must be five and twenty years old, though perhaps her sorrow makes her look older than she is.”
“And what is her name?”
“Beatrice. I cannot remember the name of the family.”
Unorna started.
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{
"id": "3816"
}
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What is it?” asked the nun, noticing Unorna’s sudden movement.
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“Nothing; the name of Beatrice is familiar to me, that is all. It suggested something.”
Though Sister Paul was as unworldly as five and twenty years of cloistered life can make a woman who is naturally simple in mind and devout in thought, she possessed that faculty of quick observation which is learned as readily, and exercised perhaps as constantly, in the midst of a small community, where each member is in some measure dependent upon all the rest for the daily pittance of ideas, as in wider spheres of life.
“You may have seen this lady, or you may have heard of her,” she said.
“I would like to see her,” Unorna answered thoughtfully.
She was thinking of all the possibilities in the case. She remembered the clearness and precision of the Wanderer’s first impression, when he first told her how he had seen Beatrice in the Teyn Kirche, and she reflected that the name was a very uncommon one. The Beatrice of his story too had a father and no other relation, and was supposed to be travelling with him. By the uncertain light in the corridor Unorna had not been able to distinguish the lady’s features, but the impression she had received had been that she was dark, as Beatrice was. There was no reason in the nature of things why this should not be the woman whom the Wanderer loved. It was natural enough that, being left alone in a strange city at such a moment, she should have sought refuge in a convent, and this being admitted it followed that she would naturally have been advised to retire to the one in which Unorna found herself, it being the one in which ladies were most frequently received as guests. Unorna could hardly trust herself to speak. She was conscious that Sister Paul was watching her, and she turned her face from the lamp.
“There can be no difficulty about your seeing her, or talking with her, if you wish it,” said the nun. “She told me that she would be at Compline at nine o’clock. If you will be there yourself you can see her come in, and watch her when she goes out. Do you think you have ever seen her?”
“No,” answered Unorna in an odd tone. “I am sure that I have not.”
Sister Paul concluded from Unorna’s manner that she must have reason to believe that the guest was identical with some one of whom she had heard very often. Her manner was abstracted and she seemed ill at ease. But that might be the result of fatigue.
“Are you not hungry?” asked the nun. “You have had nothing since you came, I am sure.”
“No--yes--it is true,” answered Unorna. “I had forgotten. It would be very kind of you to send me something.”
Sister Paul rose with alacrity, to Unorna’s great relief.
“I will see to it,” she said, holding out her hand. “We shall meet in the morning. Good-night.”
“Good-night, dear Sister Paul. Will you say a prayer for me?” She added the question suddenly, by an impulse of which she was hardly conscious.
“Indeed I will--with all my heart, my dear child,” answered the nun looking earnestly into her face. “You are not happy in your life,” she added, with a slow, sad movement of her head.
“No--I am not happy. But I will be.”
“I fear not,” said Sister Paul, almost under her breath, as she went out softly.
Unorna was left alone. She could not sit still in her extreme anxiety. It was agonising to think that the woman she longed to see was so near her, but that she could not, upon any reasonable pretext, go and knock at her door and see her and speak to her. She felt also a terrible doubt as to whether she would recognise her, at first sight, as the same woman whose shadow had passed between herself and the Wanderer on that eventful day a month ago. The shadow had been veiled, but she had a prescient consciousness of the features beneath the veil. Nevertheless, she might be mistaken. It would be necessary to seek her acquaintance by some excuse and endeavour to draw from her some portion of her story, enough to confirm Unorna’s suspicions, or to prove conclusively that they were unfounded. To do this, Unorna herself needed all her strength and coolness, and she was glad when a lay sister entered the room bringing her evening meal.
There were moments when Unorna, in favourable circumstances, was able to sink into the so-called state of second sight, by an act of volition, and she wished now that she could close her eyes and see the face of the woman who was only separated from her by two or three walls. But that was not possible in this case. To be successful she would have needed some sort of guiding thread, or she must have already known the person she wished to see. She could not command that inexplicable condition as she could dispose of her other powers, at all times and in almost all moods. She felt that if she were at present capable of falling into the trance state at all, her mind would wander uncontrolled in some other direction. There was nothing to be done but to have patience.
The lay sister went out. Unorna ate mechanically what had been set before her and waited. She felt that a crisis perhaps more terrible than that through which she had lately passed was at hand, if the stranger should prove to be indeed the Beatrice whom the Wanderer loved. Her brain was in a whirl when she thought of being brought face to face with the woman who had been before her, and every cruel and ruthless instinct of her nature rose and took shape in plans for her rival’s destruction.
She opened her door, careless of the draught of frozen air that rushed in from the corridor. She wished to hear the lady’s footstep when she left her room to go to the church, and she sat down and remained motionless, fearing lest her own footfall should prevent the sound from reaching her. The heavy-toned bells began to ring, far off in the night.
At last it came, the opening of a door, the slight noise made by a light tread upon the pavement. She rose quietly and went out, following in the same direction. She could see nothing but a dark shadow moving before her towards the opposite end of the passage, farther and farther from the hanging lamp. Unorna could hear her own heart beating as she followed, first to the right, then to the left. There was another light at this point. The lady had noticed that some one was coming behind her and turned her head to look back. The delicate, dark profile stood out clearly. Unorna held her breath, walking swiftly forward. But in a moment the lady went on, and entered the chapel-like room from which a great balconied window looked down into the church above the choir. As Unorna went in, she saw her kneeling upon one of the stools, her hands folded, her head inclined, her eyes closed, a black veil loosely thrown over her still blacker hair and falling down upon her shoulder without hiding her face.
Unorna sank upon her knees, compressing her lips to restrain the incoherent exclamation that almost broke from them in spite of her, clasping her hands desperately, so that the faint blue veins stood out upon the marble surface.
Below, hundreds of candles blazed upon the altar in the choir and sent their full yellow radiance up to the faces of the two women, as they knelt there almost side by side, both young, both beautiful, but utterly unlike. In a single glance Unorna had understood that it was true. An arm’s length separated her from the rival whose very existence made her own happiness an utter impossibility. With unchanging, unwilling gaze she examined every detail of that beauty which the Wanderer had so loved, that even when forgotten there was no sight in his eyes for other women.
It was indeed such a face as a man would find it hard to forget. Unorna, seeing the reflection of it in the Wanderer’s mind, had fancied it otherwise, though she could not but recognise the reality from the impression she had received. She had imagined it more ethereal, more faint, more sexless, more angelic, as she had seen it in her thoughts. Divine it was, but womanly beyond Unorna’s own. Dark, delicately aquiline, tall and noble, the purity it expressed was of earth and not of heaven. It was not transparent, for there was life in every feature; it was sad indeed almost beyond human sadness, but it was sad with the mortal sorrows of this world, not with the unfathomable melancholy of the suffering saint. The lips were human, womanly, pure and tender, but not formed for speech of prayer alone. The drooping lids, not drawn, but darkened with faint, uneven shadows by the flow of many tears, were slowly lifted now and again, disclosing a vision of black eyes not meant for endless weeping, nor made so deep and warm only to strain their sight towards heaven above, forgetting earth below. Unorna knew that those same eyes could gleam, and flash, and blaze, with love and hate and anger, that under the rich, pale skin, the blood could rise and ebb with the changing tide of the heart, that the warm lips could part with passion and, moving, form words of love. She saw pride in the wide sensitive nostrils, strength in the even brow, and queenly dignity in the perfect poise of the head upon the slender throat. And the clasped hands were womanly, too, neither full and white and heavy like those of a marble statue, as Unorna’s were, nor thin and over-sensitive like those of holy women in old pictures, but real and living, delicate in outline, but not without nervous strength, hands that might linger in another’s, not wholly passive, but all responsive to the thrill of a loving touch.
It was very hard to bear. A better woman than Unorna might have felt something evil and cruel and hating in her heart, at the sight of so much beauty in one who held her place, in the queen of the kingdom where she longed to reign. Unorna’s cheek grew very pale, and her unlike eyes were fierce and dangerous. It was well for her that she could not speak to Beatrice then, for she wore no mask, and the dark beauty would have seen the danger of death in the face of the fair, and would have turned and defended herself in time.
But the sweet singing of the nuns came softly up from below, echoing to the groined roof, rising and falling, high and low; and the full radiance of the many waxen tapers shone steadily from the great altar, gilding and warming statue and cornice and ancient moulding, and casting deep shadows into all the places that it could not reach. And still the two women knelt in their high balcony, the one rapt in fervent prayer, the other wondering that the presence of such hatred as hers should have no power to kill, and all the time making a supreme effort to compose her own features into the expression of friendly sympathy and interest which she knew she would need so soon as the singing ceased and it was time to leave the church again.
The psalms were finished. There was a pause, and then the words of the ancient hymn floated up to Unorna’s ears, familiar in years gone by. Almost unconsciously she herself, by force of old habit, joined in the first verse. Then, suddenly, she stopped, not realising, indeed, the horrible gulf that lay between the words that passed her lips, and the thoughts that were at work in her heart, but silenced by the near sound of a voice less rich and full, but far more exquisite and tender than her own. Beatrice was singing, too, with joined hands, and parted lips, and upturned face.
“Let dreams be far, and phantasms of the night--bind Thou our Foe,” sang Beatrice in long, sweet notes.
Unorna heard no more. The light dazzled her, and the blood beat in her heart. It seemed as though no prayer that was ever prayed could be offered up more directly against herself, and the voice that sang it, though not loud, had the rare power of carrying every syllable distinctly in its magic tones, even to a great distance. As she knelt, it was as if Beatrice had been even nearer, and had breathed the words into her very ear. Afraid to look round, lest her face should betray her emotion, Unorna glanced down at the kneeling nuns. She started. Sister Paul, alone of them all, was looking up, her faded eyes fixed on Unorna’s with a look that implored and yet despaired, her clasped hands a little raised from the low desk before her, most evidently offering up the words with the whole fervent intention of her pure soul, as an intercession for Unorna’s sins.
For one moment the strong, cruel heart almost wavered, not through fear, but under the nameless impression that sometimes takes hold of men and women. The divine voice beside her seemed to dominate the hundred voices below; the nun’s despairing look chilled for one instant all her love and all her hatred, so that she longed to be alone, away from it all, and for ever. But the hymn ended, the voice was silent, and Sister Paul’s glance turned again towards the altar. The moment was passed and Unorna was again what she had been before.
Then followed the canticle, the voice of the prioress in the versicles after that, and the voices of the nuns, no longer singing, as they made the responses; the Creed, a few more versicles and responses, the short, final prayers, and all was over. From the church below came up the soft sound that many women make when they move silently together. The nuns were passing out in their appointed order.
Beatrice remained kneeling a few moments longer, crossed herself and then rose. At the same moment Unorna was on her feet. The necessity for immediate action at all costs restored the calm to her face and the tactful skill to her actions. She reached the door first, and then, half turning her head, stood aside, as though to give Beatrice precedence in passing. Beatrice glanced at her face for the first time, and then by a courteous movement of the head signified that Unorna should go out first. Unorna appeared to hesitate, Beatrice to protest. Both women smiled a little, and Unorna, with a gesture of submission, passed through the doorway. She had managed it so well that it was almost impossible to avoid speaking as they threaded the long corridors together. Unorna allowed a moment to pass, as though to let her companion understand the slight awkwardness of the situation, and then addressed her in a tone of quiet and natural civility.
“We seem to be the only ladies in retreat,” she said.
“Yes,” Beatrice answered. Even in that one syllable something of the quality of her thrilling voice vibrated for an instant. They walked a few steps farther in silence.
“I am not exactly in retreat,” she said presently, either because she felt that it would be almost rude to say nothing, or because she wished her position to be clearly understood. “I am waiting here for some one who is to come for me.”
“It is a very quiet place to rest in,” said Unorna. “I am fond of it.”
“You often come here, perhaps.”
“Not now,” answered Unorna. “But I was here for a long time when I was very young.”
By a common instinct, as they fell into conversation, they began to walk more slowly, side by side.
“Indeed,” said Beatrice, with a slight increase of interest. “Then you were brought up here by the nuns?”
“Not exactly. It was a sort of refuge for me when I was almost a child. I was left here alone, until I was thought old enough to take care of myself.”
There was a little bitterness in her tone, intentional, but masterly in its truth to nature.
“Left by your parents?” Beatrice asked. The question seemed almost inevitable.
“I had none. I never knew a father or a mother.” Unorna’s voice grew sad with each syllable.
They had entered the great corridor in which their apartments were situated, and were approaching Beatrice’s door. They walked more and more slowly, in silence during the last few moments, after Unorna had spoken. Unorna sighed. The passing breath traveling on the air of the lonely place seemed both to invite and to offer sympathy.
“My father died last week,” Beatrice said in a very low tone, that was not quite steady. “I am quite alone--here and in the world.”
She laid her hand upon the latch and her deep black eyes rested upon Unorna’s, as though almost, but not quite, conveying an invitation, hungry for human comfort, yet too proud to ask it.
“I am very lonely, too,” said Unorna. “May I sit with you for a while?”
She had but just time to make the bold stroke that was necessary. In another moment she knew that Beatrice would have disappeared within. Her heart beat violently until the answer came. She had been successful.
“Will you, indeed?” Beatrice exclaimed. “I am poor company, but I shall be very glad if you will come in.”
She opened her door, and Unorna entered. The apartment was almost exactly like her own in size and shape and furniture, but it already had the air of being inhabited. There were books upon the table, and a square jewel-case, and an old silver frame containing a large photograph of a stern, dark man in middle age--Beatrice’s father, as Unorna at once understood. Cloaks and furs lay in some confusion upon the chairs, a large box stood with the lid raised, against the wall, displaying a quantity of lace, among which lay silks and ribbons of soft colours.
“I only came this morning,” Beatrice said, as though to apologise for the disorder.
Unorna sank down in a corner of the sofa, shading her eyes from the bright lamp with her hand. She could not help looking at Beatrice, but she felt that she must not let her scrutiny be too apparent, nor her conversation too eager. Beatrice was proud and strong, and could doubtless be very cold and forbidding when she chose.
“And do you expect to be here long?” Unorna asked, as Beatrice established herself at the other end of the sofa.
“I cannot tell,” was the answer. “I may be here but a few days, or I may have to stay a month.
“I lived here for years,” said Unorna thoughtfully. “I suppose it would be impossible now--I should die of apathy and inanition.” She laughed in a subdued way, as though respecting Beatrice’s mourning. “But I was young then,” she added, suddenly withdrawing her hand from her eyes, so that the full light of the lamp fell upon her.
She chose to show that she, too, was beautiful, and she knew that Beatrice had as yet hardly seen her face as they passed through the gloomy corridors. It was an instinct of vanity, and yet, for her purpose, it was the right one. The effect was sudden and unexpected, and Beatrice looked at her almost fixedly, in undisguised admiration.
“Young then!” she exclaimed. “You are young now!”
“Less young than I was then,” Unorna answered with a little sigh, followed instantly by a smile.
“I am five and twenty,” said Beatrice, woman enough to try and force a confession from her new acquaintance.
“Are you? I would not have thought it--we are nearly of an age--quite, perhaps, for I am not yet twenty-six. But then, it is not the years--” She stopped suddenly.
Beatrice wondered whether Unorna were married or not. Considering the age she admitted and her extreme beauty it seemed probable that she must be. It occurred to her that the acquaintance had been made without any presentation, and that neither knew the other’s name.
“Since I am a little the younger,” she said, “I should tell you who I am.”
Unorna made a slight movement. She was on the point of saying that she knew already--and too well.
“I am Beatrice Varanger.”
“I am Unorna.” She could not help a sort of cold defiance that sounded in her tone as she pronounced the only name she could call hers.
“Unorna?” Beatrice repeated, courteously enough, but with an air of surprise.
“Yes--that is all. It seems strange to you? They called me so because I was born in February, in the month we call Unor. Indeed it is strange, and so is my story--though it would have little interest for you.”
“Forgive me, you are wrong, It would interest me immensely--if you would tell me a little of it; but I am such a stranger to you----” “I do not feel as though you are that,” Unorna answered with a very gentle smile.
“You are very kind to say so,” said Beatrice quietly.
Unorna was perfectly well aware that it must seem strange, to say the least of it, that she should tell Beatrice the wild story of her life, when they had as yet exchanged barely a hundred words. But she cared little what Beatrice thought, provided that she could interest her. She had a distinct intention in making the time slip by unnoticed, until it should be late.
She related her history, so far as it was known to herself, simply and graphically, substantially as it has been already set forth, but with an abundance of anecdote and comment which enhanced the interest and at the same time extended its limits, interspersing her monologues with remarks which called for an answer and which served as tests of her companion’s attention. She hinted but lightly at her possession of unusual power over animals, and spoke not at all of the influence she could exert upon people. Beatrice listened eagerly. She could have told, on her part, that for years her own life had been dull and empty, and that it was long since she had talked with any one who had so roused her interest.
At last Unorna was silent. She had reached the period of her life which had begun a month before that time, and at that point her story ended.
“Then you are not married?” Beatrice’s tone expressed an interrogation and a certain surprise.
“No,” said Unorna, “I am not married. And you, if I may ask?”
Beatrice started visibly. It had not occurred to her that the question might seem a natural one for Unorna to ask, although she had said that she was alone in the world. Unorna might have supposed her to have lost her husband. But Unorna could see that it was not surprise alone that had startled her. The question, as she knew it must, had roused a deep and painful train of thought.
“No,” said Beatrice, in an altered voice. “I am not married. I shall never marry.”
A short silence followed, during which she turned her face away.
“I have pained you,” said Unorna with profound sympathy and regret. “Forgive me! How could I be so tactless!”
“How could you know?” Beatrice asked simply, not attempting to deny the suggestion.
But Unorna was suffering too. She had allowed herself to imagine that in the long years which had passed Beatrice might perhaps have forgotten. It had even crossed her mind that she might indeed be married. But in the few words, and in the tremor that accompanied them, as well as in the increased pallor of Beatrice’s face, she detected a love not less deep and constant and unforgotten than the Wanderer’s own.
“Forgive me,” Unorna repeated. “I might have guessed. I have loved too.”
She knew that here, at least, she could not feign and she could not control her voice, but with supreme judgment of the effect she allowed herself to be carried beyond all reserve. In the one short sentence her whole passion expressed itself, genuine, deep, strong, ruthless. She let the words come as they would, and Beatrice was startled by the passionate cry that burst from the heart, so wholly unrestrained.
For a long time neither spoke again, and neither looked at the other. To all appearances Beatrice was the first to regain her self-possession. And then, all at once the words came to her lips which could be restrained no longer. For years she had kept silence, for there had been no one to whom she could speak. For years she had sought him, as best she could, as he had sought her, fruitlessly and at last hopelessly. And she had known that her father was seeking him also, everywhere, that he might drag her to the ends of the earth at the mere suspicion of the Wanderer’s presence in the same country. It had amounted to a madness with him of the kind not seldom seen. Beatrice might marry whom she pleased, but not the one man she loved. Day by day and year by year their two strong wills had been silently opposed, and neither the one nor the other had ever been unconscious of the struggle, nor had either yielded a hair’s-breadth. But Beatrice had been at her father’s mercy, for he could take her whither he would, and in that she could not resist him. Never in that time had she lost faith in the devotion of the man she sought, and at last it was only in the belief that he was dead that she could discover an explanation of his failure to find her. Still she would not change, and still, through the years, she loved more and more truly, and passionately, and unchangingly.
The feeling that she was in the presence of a passion as great, as unhappy, and as masterful as her own, unloosed her tongue. Such things happen in this strange world. Men and women of deep and strong feedings, outwardly cold, reserved, taciturn and proud, have been known, once in their lives, to pour out the secrets of their hearts to a stranger or a mere acquaintance, as they could never have done to a friend.
Beatrice seemed scarcely conscious of what she was saying, or of Unorna’s presence. The words, long kept back and sternly restrained, fell with a strange strength from her lips, and there was not one of them from first to last that did not sheathe itself like a sharp knife in Unorna’s heart. The enormous jealousy of Beatrice which had been growing within her beside her love during the last month was reaching the climax of its overwhelming magnitude. She hardly knew when Beatrice ceased speaking, for the words were still all ringing in her ears, and clashing madly in her own breast, and prompting her fierce nature to do some violent deed. But Beatrice looked for no sympathy and did not see Unorna’s face. She had forgotten Unorna herself at the last, as she sat staring at the opposite wall.
Then she rose quickly, and taking something from the jewel-box, thrust it into Unorna’s hands.
“I cannot tell why I have told you--but I have. You shall see him too. What does it matter? We have both loved, we are both unhappy--we shall never meet again.”
“What is it?” Unorna tried to ask, holding the closed case in her hands. She knew what was within it well enough, and her self-command was forsaking her. It was almost more than she could bear. It was as though Beatrice were wreaking vengeance on her, instead of her destroying her rival as she had meant to do, sooner or later.
Beatrice took the thing from her, opened it, gazed at it a moment, and put it again into Unorna’s hands. “It was like him,” she said, watching her companion as though to see what effect the portrait would produce. Then she shrank back.
Unorna was looking at her. Her face was livid and unnaturally drawn, and the extraordinary contrast in the colour of her two eyes was horribly apparent. The one seemed to freeze, the other to be on fire. The strongest and worst passions that can play upon the human soul were all expressed with awful force in the distorted mask, and not a trace of the magnificent beauty so lately there was visible. Beatrice shrank back in horror.
“You know him!” she cried, half guessing at the truth.
“I know him--and I love him,” said Unorna slowly and fiercely, her eyes fixed on her enemy, and gradually leaning towards her so as to bring her face nearer and nearer to Beatrice.
The dark woman tried to rise, and could not. There was worse than anger, or hatred, or the intent to kill, in those dreadful eyes. There was a fascination from which no living thing could escape. She tried to scream, to shut out the vision, to raise her hand as a screen before it. Nearer and nearer it came, and she could feel the warm breath of it upon her cheek. Then her brain reeled, her limbs relaxed, and her head fell back against the wall.
“I know him, and I love him,” were the last words Beatrice heard.
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[*] The deeds here recounted are not imaginary. Not very long ago the sacrilege which Unorna attempted was actually committed at night in a Catholic church in London, under circumstances that clearly proved the intention of some person or persons to defile the consecrated wafers. A case of hypnotic suggestion to the committal of a crime in a convent occurred in Hungary not many years since, with a different object, namely, a daring robbery, but precisely as here described. A complete account of the case will be found, with authority and evidence, in a pamphlet entitled _Eine experimentale Studie auf dem Gebiete des Hypnotismus_, by Dr. R. von Krafft-Ebing, Professor of Psychiatry and for nervous diseases, in the University of Gratz. Second Edition, Stuttgart, Ferdinand Enke, 1889. It is not possible, in a work of fiction, to quote learned authorities at every chapter, but it may be said here, and once for all, that all the most important situations have been taken from cases which have come under medical observation within the last few years.
Unorna was hardly conscious of what she had done. She had not had the intention of making Beatrice sleep, for she had no distinct intention whatever at that moment. Her words and her look had been but the natural results of overstrained passion, and she repeated what she had said again and again, and gazed long and fiercely into Beatrice’s face before she realised that she had unintentionally thrown her rival and enemy into the intermediate state. It is rarely that the first stage of hypnotism produces the same consequences in two different individuals. In Beatrice it took the form of total unconsciousness, as though she had merely fainted away.
Unorna gradually regained her self-possession. After all, Beatrice had told her nothing which she did not either wholly know or partly guess, and her anger was not the result of the revelation but of the way in which the story had been told. Word after word, phrase after phrase had cut her and stabbed her to the quick, and when Beatrice had thrust the miniature into her hands her wrath had risen in spite of herself. But now that she had returned to a state in which she could think connectedly, and now that she saw Beatrice asleep before her, she did not regret what she had unwittingly done. From the first moment when, in the balcony over the church, she had realised that she was in the presence of the woman she hated, she had determined to destroy her. To accomplish this she would in any case have used her especial weapons, and though she had intended to steal by degrees upon her enemy, lulling her to sleep by a more gentle fascination, at an hour when the whole convent should be quiet, yet since the first step had been made unexpectedly and without her will, she did not regret it.
She leaned back and looked at Beatrice during several minutes, smiling to herself from time to time, scornfully and cruelly. Then she rose and locked the outer door and closed the inner one carefully. She knew from long ago that no sound could then find its way to the corridor without. She came back and sat down again, and again looked at the sleeping face, and she admitted for the hundredth time that evening, that Beatrice was very beautiful.
“If he could see us now!” she exclaimed aloud.
The thought suggested something to her. She would like to see herself beside this other woman and compare the beauty he loved with the beauty that could not touch him. It was very easy. She found a small mirror, and set it up upon the back of the sofa, on a level with Beatrice’s head. Then she changed the position of the lamp and looked at herself, and touched her hair, and smoothed her brow, and loosened the black lace about her white throat. And she looked from herself to Beatrice, and back to herself again, many times.
“It is strange that black should suit us both so well--she so dark and I so fair!” she said. “She will look well when she is dead.”
She gazed again for many seconds at the sleeping woman.
“But he will not see her, then,” she added, rising to her feet and laying the mirror on the table.
She began to walk up and down the room as was her habit when in deep thought, turning over in her mind the deed to be done and the surest and best way of doing it. It never occurred to her that Beatrice could be allowed to live beyond that night. If the woman had been but an unconscious obstacle in her path Unorna would have spared her life, but as matters stood, she had no inclination to be merciful.
There was nothing to prevent the possibility of a meeting between Beatrice and the Wanderer, if Beatrice remained alive. They were in the same city together, and their paths might cross at any moment. The Wanderer had forgotten, but it was not sure that the artificial forgetfulness would be proof against an actual sight of the woman once so dearly loved. The same consideration was true of Beatrice. She, too, might be made to forget, though it was always an experiment of uncertain issue and of more than uncertain result, even when successful, so far as duration was concerned. Unorna reasoned coldly with herself, recalling all that Keyork Arabian had told her and all that she had read. She tried to admit that Beatrice might be disposed of in some other way, but the difficulties seemed to be insurmountable. To effect such a disappearance Unorna must find some safe place in which the wretched woman might drag out her existence undiscovered. But Beatrice was not like the old beggar who in his hundredth year had leaned against Unorna’s door, unnoticed and uncared for, and had been taken in and had never been seen again. The case was different. The aged scholar, too, had been cared for as he could not have been cared for elsewhere, and, in the event of an inquiry being made, he could be produced at any moment, and would even afford a brilliant example of Unorna’s charitable doings. But Beatrice was a stranger and a person of some importance in the world. The Cardinal Archbishop himself had directed the nuns to receive her, and they were responsible for her safety. To spirit her away in the night would be a dangerous thing. Wherever she was to be taken, Unorna would have to lead her there alone. Unorna would herself be missed. Sister Paul already suspected that the name of Witch was more than a mere appellation. There would be a search made, and suspicion might easily fall upon Unorna, who would have been obliged, of course, to conceal her enemy in her own house for lack of any other convenient place.
There was no escape from the deed. Beatrice must die. Unorna could produce death in a form which could leave no trace, and it would be attributed to a weakness of the heart. Does any one account otherwise for those sudden deaths which are no longer unfrequent in the world? A man, a woman, is to all appearances in perfect health. He or she was last seen by a friend, who describes the conversation accurately, and expresses astonishment at the catastrophe which followed so closely upon the visit. He, or she, is found alone by a servant, or a third person, in a profound lethargy from which neither restoratives nor violent shocks upon the nerves can produce any awakening. In one hour, or a few hours, it is over. There is an examination, and the authorities pronounce an ambiguous verdict--death from a syncope of the heart. Such things happen, they say, with a shake of the head. And, indeed, they know that such things really do happen, and they suspect that they do not happen naturally; but there is no evidence, not even so much as may be detected in a clever case of vegetable poisoning. The heart has stopped beating, and death has followed. There are wise men by the score to-day who do not ask “What made it stop?” but “Who made it stop?” But they have no evidence to bring, and the new jurisprudence, which in some countries covers the cases of thefts and frauds committed under hypnotic suggestion, cannot as yet lay down the law for cases where a man has been told to die, and dies--from “weakness of the heart.” And yet it is known, and well known, that by hypnotic suggestion the pulse can be made to fall to the lowest number of beatings consistent with life, and that the temperature of the body can be commanded beforehand to stand at a certain degree and fraction of a degree at a certain hour, high or low, as may be desired. Let those who do not believe read the accounts of what is done from day to day in the great European seats of learning, accounts of which every one bears the name of some man speaking with authority and responsible to the world of science for every word he speaks, and doubly so for every word he writes. A few believe in the antiquated doctrine of electric animal currents, the vast majority are firm in the belief that the influence is a moral one--all admit that whatever force, or influence, lies at the root of hypnotism, the effects it can produce are practically unlimited, terrible in their comprehensiveness, and almost entirely unprovided for in the scheme of modern criminal law.
Unorna was sure of herself, and of her strength to perform what she contemplated. There lay the dark beauty in the corner of the sofa, where she had sat and talked so long, and told her last story, the story of her life which was now to end. A few determined words spoken in her ear, a pressure of the hand upon the brow and the heart, and she would never wake again. She would lie there still, until they found her, hour after hour, the pulse growing weaker and weaker, the delicate hands colder, the face more set. At the last, there would be a convulsive shiver of the queenly form, and that would be the end. The physicians and the authorities would come and would speak of a weakness of the heart, and there would be masses sung for her soul, and she would rest in peace.
Her soul? In peace? Unorna stood still. Was that to be all her vengeance upon the woman who stood between her and happiness? Was there to be nothing but that, nothing but the painless passing of the pure young spirit from earth to heaven? Was no one to suffer for all Unorna’s pain? It was not enough. There must be more than that. And yet, what more? That was the question. What imaginable wealth of agony would be a just retribution for her existence? Unorna could lead her, as she had led Israel Kafka, through the life and death of a martyr, through a life of wretchedness and a death of shame, but then, the moment must come at last, since this was to be death indeed, and her spotless soul would be beyond Unorna’s reach forever. No, that was not enough. Since she could not be allowed to live to be tormented, vengeance must follow her beyond the end of life.
Unorna stood still and an awful light of evil came into her face. A thought of which the enormity would have terrified a common being had entered her mind and taken possession of it. Beatrice was in her power. Beatrice should die in mortal sin, and her soul would be lost for ever.
For a long time she did not move, but stood looking down at the calm and lovely face of her sleeping enemy, devising a crime to be imposed upon her for her eternal destruction. Unorna was very superstitious, or the hideous scheme could never have presented itself to her. To her mind the deed was everything, whatever it was to be, and the intention or the unconsciousness in doing it could have nothing to do with the consequences to the soul of the doer. She made no theological distinctions. Beatrice should commit some terrible crime and should die in committing it. Then she would be lost, and devils would do in hell the worst torment which Unorna could not do on earth. A crime--a robbery, a murder--it must be done in the convent. Unorna hesitated, bending her brows and poring in imagination over the dark catalogue of all imaginable evil.
A momentary and vague terror cast its shadow on her thoughts. By some accident of connection between two ideas, her mind went back a month, and reviewed as in a flash of light all that she had thought and done since that day. She had greatly changed since then. She could think calmly now of deeds which even she would not have dared then. She thought of the evening when she had cried aloud that she would give her soul to know the Wanderer safe, of the quick answer that had followed, and of Keyork Arabian’s face. Was he a devil, indeed, as she sometimes fancied, and had there been a reality and a binding meaning in that contract?
Keyork Arabian! He, indeed, possessed the key to all evil. What would he have done with Beatrice? Would he make her rob the church--murder the abbess in her sleep? Bad, but not bad enough.
Unorna started. A deed suggested itself so hellish, so horrible in its enormity, so far beyond all conceivable human sin, that for one moment her brain reeled. She shuddered again and again, and groped for support and leaned against the wall in a bodily weakness of terror. For one moment she, who feared nothing, was shaken by fear from head to foot, her face turned white, her knees shook, her sight failed her, her teeth chattered, her lips moved hysterically.
But she was strong still. The thing she had sought had come to her suddenly. She set her teeth, and thought of it again and again, till she could face the horror of it without quaking. Is there any limit to the hardening of the human heart?
The distant bells rang out the call to midnight prayer. Unorna stopped and listened. She had not known how quickly time was passing. But it was better so. She was glad it was so late, and she said so to herself, but the evil smile that was sometimes in her face was not there now. She had thought a thought that left a mark on her forehead. Was there any reality in that jesting contract with Keyork Arabian?
She must wait before she did the deed. The nuns would go down into the lighted church, and kneel and pray before the altar. It would last some time, the midnight lessons, the psalms, the prayers--and she must be sure that all was quiet, for the deed could not be done in the room where Beatrice was sleeping.
She was conscious of the time now, and every minute seemed an hour, and every second was full of that one deed, done over and over again before her eyes, until every awful detail of the awful whole was stamped indelibly upon her brain. She had sat down now, and leaning forwards, was watching the innocent woman and wondering how she would look when she was doing it. But she was calm now, as she felt that she had never been in her life. Her breath came evenly, her heart beat naturally, she thought connectedly of what she was about to do. But the time seemed endless.
The distant clocks chimed the half hour, three-quarters, past midnight. Still she waited. At the stroke of one she rose from her seat, and standing beside Beatrice laid her hand upon the dark brow.
A few questions, a few answers followed. She must assure herself that her victim was in the right state to execute minutely all her commands. Then she opened the door upon the corridor and listened. Not a sound broke the intense stillness, and all was dark. The hanging lamp had been extinguished and the nuns had all returned from the midnight service to their cells. No one would be stirring now until four o’clock, and half an hour was all that Unorna needed.
She took Beatrice’s hand. The dark woman rose with half-closed eyes and set features. Unorna led her out into the dark passage.
“It is light here,” Unorna said. “You can see your way. But I am blind. Take my hand--so--and now lead me to the church by the nun’s staircase. Make no noise.”
“I do not know the staircase,” said the sleeper in drowsy tones.
Unorna knew the way well enough, but not wishing to take a light with her, she was obliged to trust herself to her victim, for whose vision there was no such thing as darkness unless Unorna willed it.
“Go as you went to-day, to the room where the balcony is, but do not enter it. The staircase is on the right of the door, and leads into the choir. Go!”
Without hesitation Beatrice led her out into the impenetrable gloom, with swift, noiseless footsteps in the direction commanded, never wavering nor hesitating whether to turn to the right or the left, but walking as confidently as though in broad daylight. Unorna counted the turnings and knew that there was no mistake. Beatrice was leading her unerringly towards the staircase. They reached it, and began to descend the winding steps. Unorna, holding her leader by one hand, steadied herself with the other against the smooth, curved wall, fearing at every moment lest she should stumble and fall in the total darkness. But Beatrice never faltered. To her the way was as bright as though the noonday sun had shone before her.
The stairs ended abruptly against a door. Beatrice stood still. She had received no further commands and the impulse ceased.
“Draw back the bolt and take me into the church,” said Unorna, who could see nothing, but who knew that the nuns fastened the door behind them when they returned into the convent. Beatrice obeyed without hesitation and led her forward.
They came out between the high carved seats of the choir, behind the high altar. The church was not quite as dark as the staircase and passages had been, and Unorna stood still for a moment. In some of the chapels hanging lamps of silver were lighted, and their tiny flames spread a faint radiance upwards and sideways, though not downwards, sufficient to break the total obscurity to eyes accustomed for some minutes to no light at all. The church stood, too, on a little eminence in the city, where the air without was less murky and impenetrable with the night mists, and though there was no moon the high upper windows of the nave were distinctly visible in the gloomy height like great lancet-shaped patches of gray upon a black ground.
In the dimness, all objects took vast and mysterious proportions. A huge giant reared his height against one of the pillars, crowned with a high, pointed crown, stretching out one great shadowy hand into the gloom--the tall pulpit was there, as Unorna knew, and the hand was the wooden crucifix standing out in its extended socket. The black confessionals, too, took shape, like monster nuns, kneeling in their heavy hoods and veils, with heads inclined, behind the fluted pilasters, just within the circle of the feeble chapel lights. Within the choir, the deep shadows seemed to fill the carved stalls with the black ghosts of long dead sisters, returned to their familiar seats out of the damp crypt below. The great lectern in the midst of the half circle behind the high altar became a hideous skeleton, headless, its straight arms folded on its bony breast. The back of the high altar itself was a great throne whereon sat in judgment a misty being of awful form, judging the dead women all through the lonely night. The stillness was appalling. Not a rat stirred.
Unorna shuddered, not at what she saw, but at what she felt. She had reached the place, and the doing of the deed was at hand. Beatrice stood beside her erect, asleep, motionless, her dark face just outlined in the surrounding dusk.
Unorna took her hand and led her forwards. She could see now, and the moment had come. She brought Beatrice before the high altar and made her stand in front of it. Then she herself went back and groped for something in the dark. It was the pair of small wooden steps upon which the priest mounts in order to open the golden door of the high tabernacle above the altar, when it is necessary to take therefrom the Sacred Host for the Benediction, or other consecrated wafers for the administration of the Communion. To all Christians, of all denominations whatsoever, the bread-wafer when once consecrated is a holy thing. To Catholics and Lutherans there is there, substantially, the Presence of God. No imaginable act of sacrilege can be more unpardonable than the desecration of the tabernacle and the wilful defilement and destruction of the Sacred Host.
This was Unorna’s determination. Beatrice should commit this crime against Heaven, and then die with the whole weight of it upon her soul, and thus should her soul itself be tormented for ever and ever to ages of ages.
Considering what she believed, it is no wonder that she should have shuddered at the tremendous thought. And yet, in the distortion of her reasoning, the sin would be upon Beatrice who did the act, and not upon herself who commanded it. There was no diminution of her own faith in the sacredness of the place and the holiness of the consecrated object--had she been one whit less sure of that, her vengeance would have been vain and her whole scheme meaningless.
She came back out of the darkness and set the wooden steps in their place before the altar at Beatrice’s feet. Then, as though to save herself from all participation in the guilt of the sacrilege which was to follow, she withdrew outside the Communion rail, and closed the gate behind her.
Beatrice, obedient to her smallest command, and powerless to move or act without her suggestion, stood still as she had been placed, with her back to the church and her face to the altar. Above her head the richly wrought door of the tabernacle caught what little light there was and reflected it from its own uneven surface.
Unorna paused a moment, looked at the shadowy figure, and then glanced behind her into the body of the church, not out of any ghostly fear, but to assure herself that she was alone with her victim. She saw that all was quite ready, and then she calmly knelt down just upon one side of the gate and rested her folded hands upon the marble railing. A moment of intense stillness followed. Again the thought of Keyork Arabian flashed across her mind. Had there been any reality, she vaguely wondered, in that compact made with him? What was she doing now? But the crime was to be Beatrice’s, not hers. Her heart beat fast for a moment, and then she grew very calm again.
The clock in the church tower chimed the first quarter past one. She was able to count the strokes and was glad to find that she had lost no time. As soon as the long, singing echo of the bells had died away, she spoke, not loudly, but clearly and distinctly.
“Beatrice Varanger, go forward and mount the steps I have placed for you.”
The dark figure moved obediently, and Unorna heard the slight sound of Beatrice’s foot upon the wood. The shadowy form rose higher and higher in the gloom, and stood upon the altar itself.
“Now do as I command you. Open wide the door of the tabernacle.”
Unorna watched the black form intently. It seemed to stretch out its hand as though searching for something, and then the arm fell again to the side.
“Do as I command you,” Unorna repeated with the angry and dominant intonation that always came into her voice when she was not obeyed.
Again the hand was raised for a moment, groped in the darkness and sank down into the shadow.
“Beatrice Varanger, you must do my will. I order you to open the door of the tabernacle, to take out what is within and to throw it to the ground!” Her voice rang clearly through the church. “And may the crime be on your soul for ever and ever,” she added in a low voice.
A third time the figure moved. A strange flash of light played for a moment upon the tabernacle, the effect, Unorna thought, of the golden door being suddenly opened.
But she was wrong. The figure moved, indeed, and stretched out a hand and moved again. A sudden crash of something very heavy, falling upon stone, broke the great stillness--the dark form tottered, reeled and fell to its length upon the great altar. Unorna saw that the golden door was still closed, and that Beatrice had fallen. Unable to move or act by her own free judgment, and compelled by Unorna’s determined command, she had made a desperate effort to obey. Unorna had forgotten that there was a raised step upon the altar itself, and that there were other obstacles in the way, including heavy candlesticks and the framed Canon of the Mass, all of which are usually set aside before the tabernacle is opened by the priest. In attempting to do as she was told, the sleeping woman had stumbled, had overbalanced herself, had clutched one of the great silver candlesticks so that it fell heavily beside her, and then, having no further support, she had fallen herself.
Unorna sprang to her feet and hastily opened the gate of the railing. In a moment she was standing by the altar at Beatrice’s head. She could see that the dark eyes were open now. The great shock had recalled her to consciousness.
“Where am I?” she asked in great distress, seeing nothing in the darkness now, and groping with her hands.
“Sleep--be silent and sleep!” said Unorna in low, firm tones, pressing her palm upon the forehead.
“No--no!” cried the startled woman in a voice of horror. “No--I will not sleep--no, do not touch me! Oh, where am I--help! Help!”
She was not hurt. With one strong, lithe movement, she sprang to the ground and stood with her back to the altar, her hands stretched out to defend herself from Unorna. But Unorna knew what extreme danger she was in if Beatrice left the church awake and conscious of what had happened. She seized the moving arms and tried to hold them down, pressing her face forward so as to look into the dark eyes she could but faintly distinguish. It was no easy matter, however, for Beatrice was young and strong and active. Then all at once she began to see Unorna’s eyes, as Unorna could see hers, and she felt the terrible influence stealing over her again.
“No--no--no!” she cried, struggling desperately. “You shall not make me sleep. I will not--I will not!”
There was a flash of light again in the church, this time from behind the high altar, and the noise of quick footsteps. But neither Unorna nor Beatrice noticed the light or the sound. Then the full glow of a strong lamp fell upon the faces of both and dazzled them, and Unorna felt a cool thin hand upon her own. Sister Paul was beside them, her face very white and her faded eyes turning from the one to the other.
It was very simple. Soon after Compline was over the nun had gone to Unorna’s room, had knocked and had entered. To her surprise Unorna was not there, but Sister Paul imagined that she had lingered over her prayers and would soon return. The good nun had sat down to wait for her, and telling her beads had fallen asleep. The unaccustomed warmth and comfort of the guest’s room had been too much for the weariness that constantly oppressed a constitution broken with ascetic practices. Accustomed by long habit to awake at midnight to attend the service, her eyes opened of themselves, indeed, but a full hour later than usual. She heard the clock strike one, and for a moment could not believe her senses. Then she understood that she had been asleep, and was amazed to find that Unorna had not come back. She went out hastily into the corridor. The lay sister had long ago extinguished the hanging lamp, but Sister Paul saw the light streaming from Beatrice’s open door. She went in and called aloud. The bed had not been touched. Beatrice was not there. Sister Paul began to think that both the ladies must have gone to the midnight service. The corridors were dark and they might have lost their way. She took the lamp from the table and went to the balcony at which the guests performed their devotion. It had been her light that had flashed across the door of the tabernacle. She had looked down into the choir, and far below her had seen a figure, unrecognisable from that height in the dusk of the church, but clearly the figure of a woman standing upon the altar. Visions of horror rose before her eyes of the sacrilegious practices of witchcraft, for she had thought of nothing else during the whole evening. Lamp in hand she descended the stairs to the choir and reached the altar, providentially, just in time to save Beatrice from falling a victim again to the evil fascination of the enemy who had planned the destruction of her soul as well as of her body.
“What is this? What are you doing in this holy place and at this hour?” asked Sister Paul, solemnly and sternly.
Unorna folded her arms and was silent. No possible explanation of the struggle presented itself even to her quick intellect. She fixed her eyes on the nun’s face, concentrating all her will, for she knew that unless she could control her also, she herself was lost. Beatrice answered the question, drawing herself up proudly against the great altar and pointing at Unorna with her outstretched hand, her dark eyes flashing indignantly.
“We were talking together, this woman and I. She looked at me--she was angry--and then I fainted, or fell asleep, I cannot tell which. I awoke in the dark to find myself lying upon the altar here. Then she took hold of me and tried to make me sleep again. But I would not. Let her explain, herself, what she has done, and why she brought me here!”
Sister Paul turned to Unorna and met the full glare of the unlike eyes, with her own calm, half heavenly look of innocence.
“What have you done, Unorna? What have you done?” she asked very sadly.
But Unorna did not answer. She only looked at the nun more fixedly and savagely. She felt that she might as well have looked upon some ancient picture of a saint in heaven, and bid it close its eyes. But she would not give up the attempt, for her only safety lay in its success. For a long time Sister Paul returned her gaze steadily.
“Sleep!” said Unorna, putting up her hand. “Sleep, I command you!”
But Sister Paul’s eyes did not waver. A sad smile played for a moment upon her waxen features.
“You have no power over me--for your power is not of good,” she said, slowly and softly.
Then she quietly turned to Beatrice, and took her hand.
“Come with me, my daughter,” she said. “I have a light and will take you to a place where you will be safe. She will not trouble you any more to-night. Say a prayer, my child, and do not be afraid.”
“I am not afraid,” said Beatrice. “But where is she?” she asked suddenly.
Unorna had glided away while they were speaking. Sister Paul held the lamp high and looked in all directions. Then she heard the heavy door of the sacristy swing upon its hinges and strike with a soft thud against the small leathern cushion. Both women followed her, but as they opened the door again a blast of cold air almost extinguished the lamp. The night wind was blowing in from the street.
“She is gone out,” said Sister Paul. “Alone and at this hour--Heaven help her!” It was as she said, Unorna had escaped.
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{
"id": "3816"
}
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21
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After leaving Unorna at the convent, the Wanderer had not hesitated as to the course he should pursue. It was quite clear that the only person to whom he could apply at the present juncture was Keyork Arabian. Had he been at liberty to act in the most natural and simple way, he would have applied to the authorities for a sufficient force with which to take Israel Kafka into custody as a dangerous lunatic. He was well aware, however, that such a proceeding must lead to an inquiry of a more or less public nature, of which the consequences might be serious, or at least extremely annoying, to Unorna. Of the inconvenience to which he might himself be exposed, he would have taken little account, though his position would have been as difficult to explain as any situation could be. The important point was to prevent the possibility of Unorna’s name being connected with an open scandal. Every present circumstance in the case was directly or indirectly the result of Unorna’s unreasoning passion for himself, and it was clearly his duty, as a man of honour, to shield her from the consequences of her own acts, as far as lay in his power.
He did not indeed believe literally all that she had told him in her mad confession. Much of that, he was convinced, was but a delusion. It might be possible, indeed, for Unorna to produce forgetfulness of such a dream as she impressed upon Kafka’s mind in the cemetery that same afternoon, or even, perhaps, of some real circumstance of merely relative importance in a man’s life; but the Wanderer could not believe that it was in her power to destroy the memory of the great passion through which she pretended that he himself had passed. He smiled at the idea, for he had always trusted his own senses and his own memory. Unorna’s own mind was clearly wandering, or else she had invented the story, supposing him credulous enough to believe it. In either case it did not deserve a moment’s consideration except as showing to what lengths her foolish and ill-bestowed love could lead her.
Meanwhile she was in danger. She had aroused the violent and deadly resentment of Israel Kafka, a man who, if not positively insane, as Keyork Arabian had hinted, was by no means in a normal state of mind or body, a man beside himself with love and anger, and absolutely reckless of life for the time being, a man who, for the security of all concerned, must be at least temporarily confined in a place of safety, until a proper treatment and the lapse of a certain length of time should bring him to his senses. For the present, he was wholly untractable, being at the mercy of the most uncontrolled passions and of one of those intermittent phases of blind fatalism to which the Semitic races are peculiarly subject.
There were two reasons which determined the Wanderer to turn to Keyork Arabian for assistance, besides his wish to see the bad business end quickly and without publicity. Keyork, so far as the Wanderer was aware, was himself treating Israel Kafka’s case, and would therefore know what to do, if any one knew at all. Secondly, it was clear from the message which Unorna had left with the porter of her own house that she expected Keyork to come at any moment. He was then in immediate danger of being brought face to face with Israel Kafka without having received the least warning of his present condition, and it was impossible to say what the infuriated youth might do at such a moment. He had been shut up, caught in his own trap, as it were, for some time, and his anger and madness might reasonably be supposed to have been aggravated rather than cooled by his unexpected confinement. It was as likely as not that he would use the weapon he carried upon the first person with whom he found himself face to face, especially if that person made any attempt to overpower and disarm him.
The Wanderer drove to Keyork Arabian’s house, and leaving his carriage to wait in case of need, ascended the stairs and knocked at the door. For some reason or other Keyork would not have a bell in his dwelling, whether because, like Mahomet, he regarded the bell as the devil’s instrument, or because he was really nervously sensitive to the sound of one, nobody had ever discovered. The Wanderer knocked therefore, and Keyork answered the knock in person.
“My dear friend!” he exclaimed in his richest and deepest voice, as he recognised the Wanderer. “Come in. I am delighted to see you. You will join me at supper. This is good indeed!”
He took his visitor by the arm and led him in. Upon one of the tables stood a round brass platter covered, so far as it was visible, with Arabic inscriptions, and highly polished--one of those commonly used all over the East at the present day for the same purpose. Upon this were placed at random several silver bowls, mere hemispheres without feet, remaining in a convenient position by their own weight. One of these contained snowy rice, in that perfectly dry but tender state dear to the taste of Orientals, in another there was a savoury, steaming mess of tender capon, chopped in pieces with spices and aromatic herbs, a third contained a pure white curd of milk, and a fourth was heaped up with rare fruits. A flagon of Bohemian glass, clear and bright as rock-crystal, and covered with very beautiful traceries of black and gold, with a drinking-vessel of the same design, stood upon the table beside the platter.
“My simple meal,” said Keyork, spreading out his hands, and smiling pleasantly. “You will share it with me. There will be enough for two.”
“So far as I am concerned, I should say so,” the Wanderer answered with a smile. “But my business is rather urgent.”
Suddenly he saw that there was a third person in the room, and glanced at Keyork in surprise.
“I want to speak a few words with you alone,” he said. “I would not trouble you but----” “Not in the least, not in the least, my dear friend!” asseverated Keyork, motioning him to a chair beside the board.
“But we are not alone,” observed the Wanderer, still standing and looking at the stranger. Keyork saw the glance and understood. He broke into peals of laughter.
“That!” he exclaimed, presently. “That is only the Individual. He will not disturb us. Pray be seated.”
“I assure you that my business is very private--” the Wanderer objected.
“Quite so--of course. But there is nothing to fear. The Individual is my servant--a most excellent creature who has been with me for many years. He cooks for me, cleans the specimens, and takes care of me in all ways. A most reliable man, I assure you.”
“Of course, if you can answer for his discretion----” The Individual was standing at a little distance from the table observing the two men intently but respectfully with his keen little black eyes. The rest of his square, dark face expressed nothing. He had perfectly straight, jet-black hair which hung evenly all around his head and flat against his cheeks. He was dressed entirely in a black robe of the nature of a kaftan, gathered closely round his waist by a black girdle, and fitting tightly over his stalwart shoulders.
“His discretion is beyond all doubt,” Keyork answered, “and for the best of all reasons. He is totally deaf and dumb and absolutely illiterate. I brought him years ago in Astrakhan, of a Russian friend. He is very clever with his fingers. It is he who stole for me the Malayan lady’s head over there, after she was executed. And now, my dear friend, let us have supper.”
There were neither plates nor knives nor forks upon the table, and at a sign from Keyork the Individual retired to procure those Western incumbrances to eating. The Wanderer, acquainted as he had long been with his host’s eccentricities, showed little surprise, but understood that whatever he said would not be overheard, any more than if they had been alone. He hesitated a moment, however, for he had not determined exactly how far it was necessary to acquaint Keyork with the circumstances, and he was anxious to avoid all reference to Unorna’s folly in regard to himself. The Individual returned, bringing, with other things, a drinking-glass for the Wanderer. Keyork filled it and then filled his own. It was clear that ascetic practices formed no part of his scheme for the prolongation of life. As he raised his glass to his lips, his bright eyes twinkled.
“To Keyork’s long life and happiness,” he said calmly, and then sipped the wine. “And now for your story,” he added, brushing the brown drops from his white moustache with a small damask napkin which the Individual presented to him and immediately received again, to throw it aside as unfit for a second use.
“I hardly think that we can afford to linger over supper,” the Wanderer said, noticing Keyork’s coolness with some anxiety. “The case is urgent. Israel Kafka has lost his head completely. He has sworn to kill Unorna, and is at the present moment confined in the conservatory in her house.”
The effect of the announcement upon Keyork was so extraordinary that the Wanderer started, not being prepared for any manifestation of what seemed to be the deepest emotion. The gnome sprang from the table with a cry that would have been like the roar of a wounded wild beast if it had not articulated a terrific blasphemy.
“Unorna is quite safe,” the Wanderer hastened to say.
“Safe--where?” shouted the little man, his hands already on his furs. The Individual, too, had sprung across the room like a cat and was helping him. In five seconds Keyork would have been out of the house.
“In a convent. I took her there, and saw the gate close behind her.”
Keyork dropped his furs and stood still a moment. The Individual, always unmoved, rearranged the coat and cap neatly in their place, following all his master’s movements, however, with his small eyes. Then the sage broke out in a different strain. He flung his arms round the Wanderer’s body and attempted to embrace him.
“You have saved my life! --the curse of the three black angels on you for not saying so first!” he cried in an agony of ecstasy. “Preserver! What can I do for you? --Saviour of my existence, how can I repay you! You shall live forever, as I will; you shall have all my secrets; the gold spider shall spin her web in your dwelling; the Part of Fortune shall shine on your path, it shall rain jewels on your roof; and your winter shall have snows of pearls--you shall--” “Good Heavens! Keyork,” interrupted the Wanderer. “Are you mad? What is the matter with you?”
“Mad? The matter? I love you! I worship you! I adore you! You have saved her life, and you have saved mine; you have almost killed me with fright and joy in two moments, you have--” “Be sensible, Keyork. Unorna is quite safe, but we must do something about Kafka and--” The rest of his speech was drowned in another shout from the gnome, ending in a portentous peal of laughter. He had taken his glass again and was toasting himself.
“To Keyork, to his long life, to his happiness!” he cried. Then he wet his lips again in the golden juice, and the Individual, unmoved, presented him with a second napkin.
The wine seemed to steady him, and he sat down again in his place.
“Come!” he said. “Let us eat first. I have an amazing appetite, and Israel Kafka can wait.”
“Do you think so? Is it safe?” the Wanderer asked.
“Perfectly,” returned Keyork, growing quite calm again. “The locks are very good on those doors. I saw to them myself.”
“But some one else--” “There is no some one else,” interrupted the sage sharply. “Only three persons can enter the house without question--you, I, and Kafka. You and I are here, and Kafka is there already. When we have eaten we will go to him, and I flatter myself that the last state of the young man will be so immeasurably worse than the first, that he will not recognise himself when I have done with him.”
He had helped his friend and began eating. Somewhat reassured the Wanderer followed his example. Under the circumstances it was as well to take advantage of the opportunity for refreshment. No one could tell what might happen before morning.
“It just occurs to me,” said Keyork, fixing his keen eyes on his companion’s face, “that you have told me absolutely nothing, except that Kafka is mad and that Unorna is safe.”
“Those are the most important points,” observed the Wanderer.
“Precisely. But I am sure that you will not think me indiscreet if I wish to know a little more. For instance, what was the immediate cause of Kafka’s extremely theatrical and unreasonable rage? That would interest me very much. Of course, he is mad, poor boy! But I take delight in following out the workings of an insane intellect. Now there are no phases of insanity more curious than those in which the patient is possessed with a desire to destroy what he loves best. These cases are especially worthy of study because they happen so often in our day.”
The Wanderer saw that some explanation was necessary and he determined to give one in as few words as possible.
“Unorna and I had strolled into the Jewish Cemetery,” he said. “While we were talking there, Israel Kafka suddenly came upon us and spoke and acted very wildly. He is madly in love with her. She became very angry and would not let me interfere. Then, by way of punishment for his intrusion I suppose, she hypnotised him and made him believe that he was Simon Abeles, and brought the whole of the poor boy’s life so vividly before me, as I listened, that I actually seemed to see the scenes. I was quite unable to stop her or to move from where I stood, though I was quite awake. But I realised what was going on and I was disgusted at her cruelty to the unfortunate man. He fainted at the end, but when he came to himself he seemed to remember nothing. I took him home and Unorna went away by herself. Then he questioned me so closely as to what had happened that I was weak enough to tell him the truth. Of course, as a fervent Hebrew, which he seems to be, he did not relish the idea of having played the Christian martyr for Unorna’s amusement, and amidst the graves of his own people. He there and then impressed me that he intended to take Unorna’s life without delay, but insisted that I should warn her of her danger, saying that he would not be a common murderer. Seeing that he was mad and in earnest I went to her. There was some delay, which proved fortunate, as it turned out, for we left the conservatory by the small door just as he was entering from the other end. We locked it behind us, and going round by the passages locked the other door upon him also, so that he was caught in a trap. And there he is, unless some one has let him out.”
“And then you took Unorna to the convent?” Keyork had listened attentively.
“I took her to the convent, promising to come to her when she should send for me. Then I saw that I must consult you before doing anything more. It will not do to make a scandal of the matter.”
“No,” answered Keyork thoughtfully. “It will not do.”
The Wanderer had told his story with perfect truth and yet in a way which entirely concealed the very important part Unorna’s passion for him had played in the sequence of events. Seeing that Keyork asked no further questions he felt satisfied that he had accomplished his purpose as he had intended, and that the sage suspected nothing. He would have been very much disconcerted had he known that the latter had long been aware of Unorna’s love, and was quite able to guess at the cause of Kafka’s sudden appearance and extreme excitement. Indeed, so soon as he had finished the short narrative, his mind reverted with curiosity to Keyork himself, and he wondered what the little man had meant by his amazing outburst of gratitude on hearing of Unorna’s safety. Perhaps he loved her. More impossible things than that had occurred in the Wanderer’s experience. Or, possibly, he had an object to gain in exaggerating his thankfulness to Unorna’s preserver. He knew that Keyork rarely did anything without an object, and that, although he was occasionally very odd and excitable, he was always in reality perfectly well aware of what he was doing. He was roused from his speculations by Keyork’s voice.
“There will be no difficulty in securing Kafka,” he said. “The real question is, what shall we do with him? He is very much in the way at present, and he must be disposed of at once, or we shall have more trouble. How infinitely more to the purpose it would have been if he had wisely determined to cut his own throat instead of Unorna’s! But young men are so thoughtless!”
“I will only say one thing,” said the Wanderer, “and then I will leave the direction to you. The poor fellow has been driven mad by Unorna’s caprice and cruelty. I am determined that he shall not be made to suffer gratuitously anything more.”
“Do you think that Unorna was intentionally cruel to him?” inquired Keyork. “I can hardly believe that. She has not a cruel nature.”
“You would have changed your mind, if you had seen her this afternoon. But that is not the question. I will not allow him to be ill-treated.”
“No, no! of course not!” Keyork answered with eager assent. “But of course you will understand that we have to deal with a dangerous lunatic, and that it may be necessary to use whatever means are most sure and certain.”
“I shall not quarrel with your means,” the Wanderer said quietly, “provided that there is no unnecessary brutality. If I see anything of the kind I will take the matter into my own hands.”
“Certainly, certainly!” said the other, eyeing with curiosity the man who spoke so confidently of taking out of Keyork Arabian’s grasp whatever had once found its way into it.
“He shall be treated with every consideration,” the Wanderer continued. “Of course, if he is very violent, we shall have to use force.”
“We will take the Individual with us,” said Keyork. “He is very strong. He has a trick of breaking silver florins with his thumbs and fingers which is very pretty.”
“I fancy that you and I could manage him. It is a pity that neither of us has the faculty of hypnotising. This would be the proper time to use it.”
“A great pity. But there are other things that will do almost as well.”
“What, for instance?”
“A little ether in a sponge. He would only struggle a moment, and then he would be much more really unconscious than if he had been hypnotised.”
“Is it quite painless?”
“Quite, if you give it gradually. If you hurry the thing, the man feels as though he were being smothered. But the real difficulty is what to do with him, as I said before.”
“Take him home and get a keeper from the lunatic asylum,” the Wanderer suggested.
“Then comes the whole question of an inquiry into his sanity,” objected Keyork. “We come back to the starting-point. We must settle all this before we go to him. A lunatic asylum is not a club in this country. There is a great deal of formality connected with getting into it, and a great deal more connected with getting out. Now, I could not get a keeper for Kafka without going to the physician in charge and making a statement, and demanding an examination, and all the rest of it. And Israel Kafka is a person of importance among his own people. He comes of great Jews in Moravia, and we should have the whole Jews’ quarter--which means nearly the whole of Prague, in a broad sense--about our ears in twenty-four hours. No, no, my friend. To avoid an enormous scandal things must be done very quietly indeed.”
“I cannot see anything to be done, then, unless we bring him here,” said the Wanderer, falling into the trap from sheer perplexity. Everything that Keyork had said was undeniably true.
“He would be a nuisance in the house,” answered the sage, not wishing, for reasons of his own, to appear to accept the proposition too eagerly. “Not but that the Individual would make a capital keeper. He is as gentle as he is strong, and as quick as a tiger-cat.”
“So far as that is concerned,” said the Wanderer coolly, “I could take charge of him myself, if you did not object to my presence.”
“You do not trust me,” said the other, with a sharp glance.
“My dear Keyork, we are old acquaintances, and I trust you implicitly to do whatever you have predetermined to do for the advantage of your studies, unless some one interferes with you. You have no more respect for human life or sympathy for human suffering than you have belief in the importance of anything not conducive to your researches. I am perfectly well aware that if you thought you could learn something by making experiments upon the body of Israel Kafka, you would not scruple to make a living mummy of him, you would do it without the least hesitation. I should expect to find him with his head cut off, living by means of a glass heart and thinking through a rabbit’s brain. That is the reason why I do not trust you. Before I could deliver him into your hands, I would require of you a contract to give him back unhurt--and a contract of the kind you would consider binding.”
Keyork Arabian wondered whether Unorna, in the recklessness of her passion, had betrayed the nature of the experiment they had been making together, but a moment’s reflection told him that he need have no anxiety on this score. He understood the Wanderer’s nature too well to suspect him of wishing to convey a covert hint instead of saying openly what was in his mind.
“Taste one of these oranges,” he said, by way of avoiding an answer. “they have just come from Smyrna.” The Wanderer smiled as he took the proffered fruit.
“So that unless you have a serious objection to my presence,” he said, continuing his former speech, “you will have me as a guest so long as Israel Kafka is here.”
Keyork Arabian saw no immediate escape.
“My dear friend!” he exclaimed with alacrity. “If you are really in earnest, I am as really delighted. So far from taking your distrust ill, I regard it as a providentially fortunate bias of your mind, since it will keep us together for a time. You will be the only loser. You see how simply I live.”
“There is a simplicity which is the extremest development of refined sybarism,” the Wanderer said, smiling again. “I know your simplicity of old. It consists of getting precisely what you want, and in producing local earthquakes and revolutions when you cannot get it. Moreover you want what is good--to the taste, at least.”
“There is something in that,” answered Keyork with a merry twinkle in his eye. “Happiness is a matter of speculation. Comfort is a matter of fact. Most men are uncomfortable, because they do not know what they want. If you have tastes, study them. If you have intelligence, apply it to the question of gratifying your tastes. Consult yourself first--and nobody second. Consider this orange--I am fond of oranges and they suit my constitution admirably. Consider the difficulty I have had in procuring it at this time of year--not in the wretched condition in which they are sold in the market, plucked half green in Spain or Italy and ripened on the voyage in the fermenting heat of the decay of those which are already rotten--but ripe from the tree and brought to me directly by the shortest and quickest means possible. Consider this orange, I say. Do you vainly imagine that if I had but two or three like it I would offer you one?”
“I would not be so rash as to imagine anything of the kind, my dear Keyork. I know you very well. If you offer me one it is because you have a week’s supply at least.”
“Exactly,” said Keyork. “And a few to spare, because they will only keep a week as I like them, and because I would no more run the risk of missing my orange a week hence for your sake, than I would deprive myself of it to-day.”
“And that is your simplicity.”
“That is my simplicity. It is indeed a perfectly simple matter, for there is only one idea in it, and in all things I carry that one idea out to its ultimate expression. That one idea, as you very well put it, is to have exactly what I want in this world.”
“And will you be getting what you want in having me quartered upon you as poor Israel Kafka’s keeper?” asked the Wanderer, with an expression of amusement. But Keyork did not wince.
“Precisely,” he answered without hesitation. “In the first place you will relieve me of much trouble and responsibility, and the Individual will not be so often called away from his manifold and important household duties. In the second place I shall have a most agreeable and intelligent companion with whom I can talk as long as I like. In the third place I shall undoubtedly satisfy my curiosity.”
“In what respect, if you please?”
“I shall discover the secret of your wonderful interest in Israel Kafka’s welfare. I always like to follow the workings of a brain essentially different from my own, philanthropic, of course. How could it be anything else? Philanthropy deals with a class of ideas wholly unfamiliar to me. I shall learn much in your society.”
“And possibly I shall learn something from you,” the Wanderer answered. “There is certainly much to be learnt. I wonder whether your ideas upon all subjects are as simple as those you hold about oranges.”
“Absolutely. I make no secret of my principles. Everything I do is for my own advantage.”
“Then,” observed the Wanderer, “the advantage of Unorna’s life must be an enormous one to you, to judge by your satisfaction at her safety.”
Keyork stared at him a moment and then laughed, but less heartily and loudly than usual his companion fancied.
“Very good!” he exclaimed. “Excellent! I fell into the trap like a rat into a basin of water. You are indeed an interesting companion, my dear friend--so interesting that I hope we shall never part again.” There was a rather savage intonation in the last words.
They looked at each other intently, neither wincing nor lowering his gaze. The Wanderer saw that he had touched upon Keyork’s greatest and most important secret, and Keyork fancied that his companion knew more than he actually did. But nothing further was said, for Keyork was far too wise to enter into explanation, and the Wanderer knew well enough that if he was to learn anything it must be by observation and not by questioning. Keyork filled both glasses in silence and both men drank before speaking again.
“And now that we have refreshed ourselves,” he said, returning naturally to his former manner, “we will go and find Israel Kafka. It is as well that we should have given him a little time to himself. He may have returned to his senses without any trouble on our part. Shall we take the Individual?”
“As you please,” the Wanderer answered indifferently as he rose from his place.
“It is very well for you not to care,” observed Keyork. “You are big and strong and young, whereas I am a little man and very old at that. I shall take him for my own protection. I confess that I value my life very highly. It is a part of that simplicity which you despise. That devil of a Jew is armed, you say?”
“I saw something like a knife in his hand, as we shut him in,” said the Wanderer with the same indifference as before.
“Then I will take the Individual,” Keyork answered promptly. “A man’s bare hands must be strong and clever to take a man’s life in a scuffle, and few men can use a pistol to any purpose. But a knife is a weapon of precision. I will take the Individual, decidedly.”
He made a few rapid signs, and the Individual disappeared, coming back a moment later attired in a long coat not unlike his master’s except that the fur of the great collar was of common fox instead of being of sable. Keyork drew his peaked cape comfortably down over the tips of his ears.
“The ether!” he exclaimed. “How forgetful I am growing! Your charming conversation had almost made me forget the object of our visit!”
He went back and took the various things he needed. Then the three men went out together.
|
{
"id": "3816"
}
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22
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More than an hour had elapsed since the Wanderer and Unorna had finally turned the key upon Israel Kafka, leaving him to his own reflections. During the first moments he made desperate efforts to get out of the conservatory, throwing himself with all his weight and strength against the doors and thrusting the point of his long knife into the small apertures of the locks. Then, seeing that every attempt was fruitless, he desisted and sat down, in a state of complete exhaustion. A reaction began to set in after the furious excitement of the afternoon, and he felt all at once that it would be impossible for him to make another step or raise his arm to strike. A man less sound originally in bodily constitution would have broken down sooner, and it was a proof of Israel Kafka’s extraordinary vigour and energy that he did not lose his senses in a delirious fever at the moment when he felt that his strength could bear no further strain.
But his thoughts, such as they were, did not lack clearness. He saw that his opportunity was gone, and he began to think of the future, wondering what would take place next. Assuredly when he had come to Unorna’s house with the fixed determination to take her life, the last thing that he had expected had been to be taken prisoner and left to his own meditations. It was clear that the Wanderer’s warning had been conveyed without loss of time and had saved Unorna from her immediate fate. Nevertheless, he did not regret having given her the opportunity of defending herself. He had not meant that there should be any secret about the deed, for he was ready to sacrifice his own life in executing it.
Yet he was not altogether brave. He had neither Unorna’s innate indifference to physical danger, nor the Wanderer’s calm superiority to fear. He would not have made a good soldier, and he could not have faced another man’s pistol at fifteen paces without experiencing a mental and bodily commotion not unlike terror, which he might or might not have concealed from others, but which would in any case have been painfully apparent to himself.
It is a noticeable fact in human nature that a man of even ordinary courage will at any time, when under excitement, risk his life rather than his happiness. Moreover, an immense number of individuals, naturally far from brave, destroy their own lives yearly in the moment when all chances of happiness are temporarily eclipsed. The inference seems to be that mankind, on the whole, values happiness more highly than life. The proportion of suicides from so-called “honourable motives” is small as compared with the many committed out of despair.
Israel Kafka’s case was by no means a rare one. The fact of having been made to play a part which to him seemed at once blasphemous and ignoble had indeed turned the scale, but was not the motive. In all things, the final touch which destroys the balance is commonly mistaken for the force which has originally produced a state of unstable equilibrium, whereas there is very often no connection between the one and the other. The Moravian himself believed that the sacrifice of Unorna, and of himself afterwards, was to be an expiation of the outrage Unorna had put upon his faith in his own person. He had merely seized upon the first excuse which presented itself for ending all, because he was in reality past hope.
We have, as yet, no absolute test of sanity, as we have of fever in the body and of many other unnatural conditions of the human organism. The only approximately accurate judgments in the patient’s favour are obtained from examinations into the relative consecutiveness and consistency of thought in the individual examined, when the whole tendency of that thought is towards an end conceivably approvable by a majority of men. A great many philosophers and thinkers have accordingly been pronounced insane at one period of history and have been held up as models of sanity at another. The most immediately destructive consequences of individual reasoning on a limited scale, murder and suicide, have been successively regarded as heroic acts, as criminal deeds, and as the deplorable but explicable actions of irresponsible beings in consecutive ages of violence, strict law and humanitarianism. It seems to be believed that the combination of murder and suicide is more commonly observed under the last of the three reigns than it was under the first; it was undoubtedly least common under the second. In other words it appears probable that the practice of considering certain crimes as the result of insanity has a tendency to make those crimes increase in number, as they undoubtedly increase in barbarity, from year to year. Meanwhile, however, no definite conclusion has been reached as to the state of mind of a man who murders the woman he loves and then ends his own life.
Israel Kafka may therefore be regarded as mad or sane. In favour of the theory of his madness the total uselessness of the deed he contemplated may be adduced; on the other hand the extremely consecutive and consistent nature of his thoughts and actions gives evidence of his sanity.
When he found himself a prisoner in Unorna’s conservatory, his intention underwent no change though his body was broken with fatigue and his nerves with the long continued strain of a terrible excitement. His determination was as cool and as fixed as ever.
These somewhat dry reflections seem necessary to the understanding of what followed.
The key turned in the lock and the bolt was slipped back. Instantly Israel Kafka’s energy returned. He rose quickly and hid himself in the shrubbery, in a position from which he could observe the door. He had seen Unorna enter before and had of course heard her cry before the Wanderer had carried her away, and he had believed that she had wished to face him, either with the intention of throwing herself upon his mercy or in the hope of dominating him with her eyes as she had so often done before. Of course, he had no means of knowing that she had already left the house. He imagined that the Wanderer had gone and that Unorna, being freed from his restraint, was about to enter the place again. The door opened and the three men came in. Kafka’s first idea, on seeing himself disappointed, was that they had come to take him into custody, and his first impulse was to elude them.
The Wanderer entered first, tall, stately, indifferent, the quick glance of his deep eyes alone betraying that he was looking for some one. Next came Keyork Arabian, muffled still in his furs, turning his head sharply from side to side in the midst of the sable collar that half buried it, and evidently nervous. Last of all the Individual, who had divested himself of his outer coat and whose powerful proportions did not escape Israel Kafka’s observation. It was clear that if there were a struggle it could have but one issue. Kafka would be overpowered. His knowledge of the disposition of the plants and trees offered him a hope of escape. The three men had entered the conservatory, and if he could reach the door before they noticed him, he could lock it upon them, as it had been locked upon himself. He could hear their footsteps on the marble pavement very near him, and he caught glimpses of their moving figures through the thick leaves.
With cat-like tread he glided along in the shadows of the foliage until he could see the door. From the entrance an open way was left in a straight line towards the middle of the hall, down which his pursuers were still slowly walking. He must cross an open space in the line of their vision in order to get out, and he calculated the distance to be traversed, while listening to their movements, until he felt sure that they were so far from the door as not to be able to reach him. Then he made his attempt, darting across the smooth pavement with his knife in his hand. There was no one in the way.
Then came a violent shock and he was held as in a vice, so tightly that he could not believe himself in the arms of a human being. His captors had anticipated that he would try to escape and has posted the Individual in the shadow of a tree near the doorway. The deaf and dumb man had received his instructions by means of a couple of quick signs, and not a whisper had betrayed the measures taken. Kafka struggled desperately, for he was within three feet of the door and still believed an escape possible. He tried to strike behind him with his sharp blade of which a single touch would have severed muscle and sinew like silk threads, but the bear-like embrace seemed to confine his whole body, his arms and even his wrists. Then he felt himself turned round and the Individual pushed him towards the middle of the hall. The Wanderer was advancing quickly, and Keyork Arabian, who had again fallen behind, peered at Kafka from behind his tall companion with a grotesque expression in which bodily fear and a desire to laugh at the captive were strongly intermingled.
“It is of no use to resist,” said the Wanderer quietly. “We are too strong for you.”
Kafka said nothing, but his bloodshot eyes glared up angrily at the tall man’s face.
“He looks dangerous, and he still has that thing in his hand,” said Keyork Arabian. “I think I will give him ether at once while the Individual holds him. Perhaps you could do it.”
“You will do nothing of the kind,” the Wanderer answered. “What a coward you are, Keyork!” he added contemptuously.
Going to Kafka’s side he took him by the wrist of the hand which held the knife. But Kafka still clutched it firmly.
“You had better give it up,” he said.
Kafka shook his head angrily and set his teeth, but the Wanderer unclasped the fingers by quiet force and took the weapon away. He handed it to Keyork, who breathed a sigh of relief as he looked at it, smiling at last, and holding his head on one side.
“To think,” he soliloquised, “that an inch of such pretty stuff as Damascus steel, in the right place, can draw the sharp red line between time and eternity!”
He put the knife tenderly away in the bosom of his fur coat. His whole manner changed and he came forward with his usual, almost jaunty step.
“And now that you are quite harmless, my dear friend,” he said, addressing Israel Kafka, “I hope to make you see the folly of your ways. I suppose you know that you are quite mad and that the proper place for you is a lunatic asylum.”
The Wanderer laid his hand heavily upon Keyork’s shoulder.
“Remember what I told you,” he said sternly. “He will be reasonable now. Make your fellow understand that he is to let him go.”
“Better shut the door first,” said Keyork, suiting the action to the word and then coming back.
“Make haste!” said the Wanderer with impatience. “The man is ill, whether he is mad or not.”
Released at last from the Individual’s iron grip, Israel Kafka staggered a little. The Wanderer took him kindly by the arm, supporting his steps and leading him to a seat. Kafka glanced suspiciously at him and at the other two, but seemed unable to make any further effort and sank back with a low groan. His face grew pale and his eyelids drooped.
“Get some wine--something to restore him,” the Wanderer said.
Keyork looked at the Moravian critically for a moment.
“Yes,” he assented, “he is more exhausted than I thought. He is not very dangerous now.” Then he went in search of what was needed. The Individual retired to a distance and stood looking on with folded arms.
“Do you hear me?” asked the Wanderer, speaking gently. “Do you understand what I say?”
Israel Kafka nodded, but said nothing.
“You are very ill. This foolish idea that has possessed you this evening comes from your illness. Will you go away quietly with me, and make no resistance, so that I may take care of you?”
This time there was not even a movement of the head.
“This is merely a passing thing,” the Wanderer continued in a tone of quiet encouragement. “You have been feverish and excited, and I daresay you have been too much alone of late. If you will come with me, I will take care of you, and see that all is well.”
“I told you that I would kill her--and I will,” said Israel Kafka, faintly but distinctly.
“You will not kill her,” answered his companion. “I will prevent you from attempting it, and as soon as you are well you will see the absurdity of the idea.”
Israel Kafka made an impatient gesture, feeble but sufficiently expressive. Then all at once his limbs relaxed, and his head fell forward upon his breast. The Wanderer started to his feet and moved him into a more comfortable position. There were one or two quickly drawn breaths and the breathing ceased altogether. At that moment Keyork returned carrying a bottle of wine and a glass.
“It is too late,” said the Wanderer gravely. “Israel Kafka is dead.”
“Dead!” exclaimed Keyork, setting down what he had in his hands, and hastening to examine the unfortunate man’s face and eyes. “The Individual squeezed him a little too hard, I suppose,” he added, applying his ear to the region of the heart, and moving his head about a little as he did so.
“I hate men who make statements about things they do not understand,” he said viciously, looking up as he spoke, but without any expression of satisfaction. “He is no more dead than you are--the greater pity! It would have been so convenient. It is nothing but a slight syncope--probably the result of poorness of blood and an over-excited state of the nervous system. Help me to lay him on his back. You ought to have known that was the only thing to do. Put a cushion under his head. There--he will come to himself presently, but he will not be so dangerous as he was.”
The Wanderer drew a long breath of relief as he helped Keyork to make the necessary arrangements.
“How long will it last?” he inquired.
“How can I tell?” returned Keyork sharply. “Have you never heard of a syncope? Do you know nothing about anything?”
He had produced a bottle containing some very strong salt and was applying it to the unconscious man’s nostrils. The Wanderer paid no attention to his irritable temper and stood looking on. A long time passed and yet the Moravian gave no further signs of consciousness.
“It is clear that he cannot stay here if he is to be seriously ill,” the Wanderer said.
“And it is equally clear that he cannot be taken away,” retorted Keyork.
“You seem to be in a very combative frame of mind,” the other answered, sitting down and looking at his watch. “If you cannot revive him, he ought to be brought to more comfortable quarters for the night.”
“In his present condition--of course,” said Keyork with a sneer.
“Do you think he would be in danger on the way?”
“I never think--I know,” snarled the sage.
The Wanderer showed a slight surprise at the roughness of the answer, but said nothing, contenting himself with watching the proceedings keenly. He was by no means past suspecting that Keyork might apply some medicine the very reverse of reviving, if left to himself. For the present there seemed to be no danger. The pungent smell of salts of ammonia pervaded the place; but the Wanderer knew that Keyork had a bottle of ether in the pocket of his coat, and he rightly judged that a very little of that would put an end to the life that was hanging in the balance. Nearly half an hour passed before either spoke again. Then Keyork looked up. This time his voice was smooth and persuasive. His irritability had all disappeared.
“You must be tired,” he said. “Why do you not go home? Or else go to my house and wait for us. The Individual and I can take care of him very well.”
“Thanks,” replied the Wanderer with a slight smile. “I am not in the least tired, and I prefer to stay where I am. I am not hindering you, I believe.”
Now Keyork Arabian had no interest in allowing Israel Kafka to die, though the Wanderer half believed that he had, though he could not imagine what that interest might be. The little man was in reality on the track of an experiment, and he knew very well that so long as he was so narrowly watched it would be quite impossible to try it. In spite of his sneers at his companion’s ignorance, he was aware that the latter knew enough to make every effort conducive to reviving the patient if left to himself, and he submitted with a bad grace to doing what he would rather have left undone.
He would have wished to let the flame of life sink yet lower before making it brighten again, for he had with him a preparation which he had been carrying in his pocket for months in the hope of accidentally happening upon just such a case as the present, and he longed for an opportunity of trying it. But to give it a fair trial he wished to apply it at the precise point when, according to all previous experience, the moment of death was past--the moment when the physician usually puts his watch in his pocket and looks about for his hat. Possibly if Kafka, being left without any assistance, had shown no further signs of sinking, Keyork would have helped him to sink a little lower. To produce this much-desired result, he had nothing with him but the ether, of which the Wanderer of course knew the smell and understood the effects. He saw the chances of making the experiment upon an excellent subject slipping away before his eyes and he grew more angry in proportion as they seemed farther removed.
“He is a little better,” he said discontentedly, after another long interval of silence.
The Wanderer bent down and saw that the eyelids were quivering and that the face was less deathly livid than before. Then the eyes opened and stared dreamily at the glass roof.
“And I will,” said the faint, weak voice, as though completing a sentence.
“I think not,” observed Keyork, as though answering. “The people who do what they mean to do are not always talking about will.” But Kafka had closed his eyes again.
This time, however, his breathing was apparent and he was evidently returning to a conscious state. The Wanderer arranged the pillow more comfortably under his head and covered him with his own furs. Keyork, relinquishing all hopes of trying the experiment at present, poured a little wine down his throat.
“Do you think we can take him home to-night?” inquired the Wanderer.
He was prepared for an ill-tempered answer, but not for what Keyork actually said. The little man got upon his feet and coolly buttoned his coat.
“I think not,” he replied. “There is nothing to be done but to keep him quiet. Good-night. I am tired of all this nonsense, and I do not mean to lose my night’s rest for all the Israels in Jewry--or all the Jews in Israel. You can stay with him if you please.”
Thereupon he turned on his heel, making a sign to the Individual, who had not moved from his place since Kafka had lost consciousness, and who immediately followed his master.
“I will come and see to him in the morning,” said Keyork carelessly, as he disappeared from sight among the plants.
The Wanderer’s long-suffering temper was roused and his eyes gleamed angrily as he looked after the departing sage.
“Hound!” he exclaimed in a very audible voice.
He hardly knew why he was so angry with the man who called himself his friend. Keyork had behaved no worse than an ordinary doctor, for he had stayed until the danger was over and had promised to come again in the morning. It was his cool way of disclaiming all further responsibility and of avoiding all further trouble which elicited the Wanderer’s resentment, as well as the unpleasant position in which the latter found himself.
He had certainly not anticipated being left in charge of a sick man--and that sick man Israel Kafka--in Unorna’s house for the whole night, and he did not enjoy the prospect. The mere detail of having to give some explanation to the servants, who would doubtless come before long to extinguish the lights, was far from pleasant. Moreover, though Keyork had declared the patient out of danger, there seemed no absolute certainty that a relapse would not take place before morning, and Kafka might actually lay in the certainty--delusive enough--that Unorna could not return until the following day.
He did not dare to take upon himself the responsibility of calling some one to help him and of removing the Moravian in his present condition. The man was still very weak and either altogether unconscious, or sleeping the sleep of exhaustion. The weather, too, was bitterly cold, and the exposure to the night air might bring on immediate and fatal consequences. He examined Kafka closely and came to the conclusion that he was really asleep. To wake him would be absolutely cruel as well as dangerous. He looked kindly at the weary face and then began to walk up and down between the plants, coming back at the end of every turn to look again and assure himself that no change had taken place.
After some time he began to wonder at the total silence in the house, or, rather, the silence which was carefully provided for in the conservatory impressed itself upon him for the first time. It was strange, he thought, that no one came to put out the lamps. He thought of looking out into the vestibule beyond, to see whether the lights were still burning there. To his great surprise he found the door securely fastened. Keyork Arabian had undoubtedly locked him in, and to all intents and purposes he was a prisoner. He suspected some treachery, but in this he was mistaken. Keyork’s sole intention had been to insure himself from being disturbed in the course of the night by a second visit from the Wanderer, accompanied perhaps by Kafka. It immediately occurred to the Wanderer that he could ring the bell. But disliking the idea of entering into an explanation, he reserved that for an emergency. Had he attempted it he would have been still further surprised to find that it would have produced no result. In going through the vestibule Keyork had used Kafka’s sharp knife to cut one of the slender silk-covered copper wires which passed out of the conservatory on that side, communicating with the servants’ quarters. He was perfectly acquainted with all such details of the household arrangement.
Keyork’s precautions were in reality useless and they merely illustrate the ruthlessly selfish character of the man. The Wanderer would in all probability neither have attempted to leave the house with Kafka that night, nor to communicate with the servants, even if he had been left free to do either, and if no one had disturbed him in his watch. He was disturbed, however, and very unexpectedly, between half-past one and a quarter to two in the morning.
More than once he had remained seated for a long time, but his eyes were growing heavy and he roused himself and walked again until he was thoroughly awake. It was certainly true that of all the persons concerned in the events of the day, except Keyork, he had undergone the least bodily fatigue and mental excitement. But even to the strongest, the hours of the night spent in watching by a sick person seem endless when there is no really strong personal anxiety felt. He was undoubtedly interested in Kafka’s fate, and was resolved to protect him as well as to hinder him from committing any act of folly. But he had only met him for the first time that very afternoon, and under circumstances which had not in the first instance suggested even the possibility of a friendship between the two. His position towards Israel Kafka was altogether unexpected, and what he felt was no more than pity for his sufferings and indignation against those who had caused them.
When the door was suddenly opened, he stood still in his walk and faced it. He hardly recognised Unorna in the pale, dishevelled woman with circled eyes who came towards him under the bright light. She, too, stood still when she saw him, starting suddenly. She seemed to be very cold, for she shivered visibly and her teeth were chattering. Without the least protection against the bitter night air she had fled bareheaded and cloakless through the open streets from the church to her home.
“You here!” she exclaimed, in an unsteady voice.
“Yes, I am still here,” answered the Wanderer. “But I hardly expected you to come back to-night,” he added.
At the sound of his voice a strange smile came into her wan face and lingered there. She had not thought to hear him speak again, kindly or unkindly, for she had come with the fixed determination to meet her death at Israel Kafka’s hands and to let that be the end. Amid all the wild thoughts that had whirled through her brain as she ran home in the dark, that one had not once changed.
“And Israel Kafka?” she asked, almost timidly.
“He is there--asleep.”
Unorna came forward and the Wanderer showed her where the man lay upon a thick carpet, wrapped in furs, his pale head supported by a cushion.
“He is very ill,” she said, almost under her breath. “Tell me what has happened.”
It was like a dream to her. The tremendous excitement of what had happened in the convent had cut her off from the realisation of what had gone before. Strange as it seemed even to herself, she scarcely comprehended the intimate connection between the two series of events, nor the bearing of the one upon the other. Israel Kafka sank into such insignificance that she had began to pity his condition, and it was hard to remember that the Wanderer was the man whom Beatrice had loved, and of whom she had spoken so long and so passionately. She found, too, an unreasoned joy in being once more by his side, no matter under what conditions. In that happiness, one-sided and unshared, she forgot everything else. Beatrice had been a dream, a vision, an unreal shadow. Kafka was nothing to her, and yet everything, as she suddenly saw, since he constituted a bond between her and the man she loved, which would at least outlast the night. In a flash she saw that the Wanderer would not leave her alone with the Moravian, and that the latter could not be moved for the present without danger to his life. They must watch together by his side through the long hours. Who could tell what the night would bring forth?
As the new development of the situation presented itself, the colour rose again to her cheeks. The warmth of the conservatory, too, dispelled the chill that had penetrated her, and the familiar odours of the flowers contributed to restore the lost equilibrium of mind and body.
“Tell me what has happened,” she said again.
In the fewest possible words the Wanderer told her all that had occurred up to the moment of her coming, not omitting the detail of the locked door.
“And for what reason do you suppose that Keyork shut you in?” she asked.
“I do not know,” the Wanderer answered. “I do not trust him, though I have known him so long.”
“It was mere selfishness,” said Unorna scornfully. “I know him better than you do. He was afraid you would disturb him again in the night.”
The Wanderer said nothing, wondering how any man could be so elaborately thoughtful of his own comfort.
“There is no help for it,” Unorna said, “we must watch together.”
“I see no other way,” the Wanderer answered indifferently.
He placed a chair for her to sit in, within sight of the sick man, and took one himself, wondering at the strange situation, and yet not caring to ask Unorna what had brought her back, so breathless and so pale, at such an hour. He believed, not unnaturally, that her motive had been either anxiety for himself, or the irresistible longing to see him again, coupled with a distrust of his promise to return when she should send for him. It seemed best to accept her appearance without question, lest an inquiry should lead to a fresh outburst, more unbearable now than before, since there seemed to be no way of leaving the house without exposing her to danger. A nervous man like Israel Kafka might spring up at any moment and do something dangerous.
After they had taken their places the silence lasted some moments.
“You did not believe all I told you this evening?” said Unorna softly, with an interrogation in her voice.
“No,” the Wanderer answered quietly, “I did not.”
“I am glad of that--I was mad when I spoke.”
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The Wanderer was not inclined to deny the statement which accorded well enough with his total disbelief of the story Unorna had told him. But he did not answer her immediately, for he found himself in a very difficult position. He would neither do anything in the least discourteous beyond admitting frankly that he had not believed her, when she taxed him with incredulity; nor would say anything which might serve her as a stepping-stone for returning to the original situation. He was, perhaps, inclined to blame her somewhat less than at first, and her changed manner in speaking of Kafka somewhat encouraged his leniency. A man will forgive, or at least condone, much harshness to others when he is thoroughly aware that it has been exhibited out of love for himself; and a man of the Wanderer’s character cannot help feeling a sort of chivalrous respect and delicate forbearance for a woman who loves him sincerely, though against his will, while he will avoid with an almost exaggerated prudence the least word which could be interpreted as an expression of reciprocal tenderness. He runs the risk, at the same time, of being thrust into the ridiculous position of the man who, though young, assumes the manner and speech of age and delivers himself of grave, paternal advice to one who looks upon him, not as an elder, but as her chosen mate.
After Unorna had spoken, the Wanderer, therefore, held his peace. He inclined his head a little, as though to admit that her plea of madness might not be wholly imaginary; but he said nothing. He sat looking at Israel Kafka’s sleeping face and outstretched form, inwardly wondering whether the hours would seem very long before Keyork Arabian returned in the morning and put an end to the situation. Unorna waited in vain for some response, and at last spoke again.
“Yes,” she said, “I was mad. You cannot understand it. I daresay you cannot even understand how I can speak of it now, and yet I cannot help speaking.”
Her manner was more natural and quiet than it had been since the moment of Kafka’s appearance in the cemetery. The Wanderer noticed the tone. There was an element of real sadness in it, with a leaven of bitter disappointment and a savour of heartfelt contrition. She was in earnest now, as she had been before, but in a different way. He could hardly refuse her a word in answer.
“Unorna,” he said gravely, “remember that you are leaving me no choice. I cannot leave you alone with that poor fellow, and so, whatever you wish to say, I must hear. But it would be much better to say nothing about what has happened this evening--better for you and for me. Neither men nor women always mean exactly what they say. We are not angels. Is it not best to let the matter drop?”
Unorna listened quietly, her eyes upon his face.
“You are not so hard with me as you were,” she said thoughtfully, after a moment’s hesitation, and there was a touch of gratitude in her voice. As she felt the dim possibility of a return to her former relations of friendship with him, Beatrice and the scene in the church seemed to be very far away. Again the Wanderer found it difficult to answer.
“It is not for me to be hard, as you call it,” he said quietly. There was a scarcely perceptible smile on his face, brought there not by any feeling of satisfaction, but by his sense of his own almost laughable perplexity. He saw that he was very near being driven to the ridiculous necessity of giving her some advice of the paternal kind. “It is not for me, either, to talk to you of what you have done to Israel Kafka to-day,” he confessed. “Do not oblige me to say anything about it. It will be much safer. You know it all better than I do, and you understand your own reasons, as I never can. If you are sorry for him now, so much the better--you will not hurt him any more if you can help it. If you will say that much about the future I shall be very glad, I confess.”
“Do you think that there is anything which I will not do--if you ask it?” Unorna asked very earnestly.
“I do not know,” the Wanderer answered, trying to seem to ignore the meaning conveyed by her tone. “Some things are harder to do than others----” “Ask me the hardest!” she exclaimed. “Ask me to tell you the whole truth----” “No,” he said firmly, in the hope of checking an outburst of passionate speech. “What you have thought and done is no concern of mine. If you have done anything that you are sorry for, without my knowledge, I do not wish to know of it. I have seen you do many good and kind acts during the last month, and I would rather leave those memories untouched as far as possible. You may have had an object in doing them which in itself was bad. I do not care. The deeds were good. Take credit for them and let me give you credit for them. That will do neither of us any harm.”
“I could tell you--if you would let me--” “Do not tell me,” he interrupted. “I repeat that I do not wish to know. The one thing that I have seen is bad enough. Let that be all. Do you not see that? Besides, I am myself the cause of it in a measure--unwilling enough, Heaven knows!”
“The only cause,” said Unorna bitterly.
“Then I am in some way responsible. I am not quite without blame--we men never are in such cases. If I reproach you, I must reproach myself as well--” “Reproach yourself! --ah no! What can you say against yourself?” she could not keep the love out of her voice, if she would; her bitterness had been for herself.
“I will not go into that,” he answered. “I am to blame in one way or another. Let us say no more about it. Will you let the matter rest?”
“And let bygones be bygones, and be friends to each other, as we were this morning?” she asked, with a ray of hope.
The Wanderer was silent for a few seconds. His difficulties were increasing. A while ago he had told her, as an excuse for herself, that men and women did not always mean exactly what they said, and even now he did not set himself up in his own mind as an exception to the rule. Very honourable and truthful men do not act upon any set of principles in regard to truth and honour. Their instinctively brave actions and naturally noble truthfulness make those principles which are held up to the unworthy for imitation, by those whose business is the teaching of what is good. The Wanderer’s only hesitation lay between answering the question or not answering it.
“Shall we be friends again?” Unorna asked a second time, in a low tone. “Shall we go back to the beginning?”
“I do not see how that is possible,” he answered slowly.
Unorna was not like him, and did not understand such a nature as his as she understood Keyork Arabian. She had believed that he would at least hold out some hope.
“You might have spared me that!” she said, turning her face away. There were tears in her voice.
A few hours earlier his answer would have brought fire to her eyes and anger to her voice. But a real change had come over her, not lasting, perhaps, but strong in its immediate effects.
“Not even a little friendship left?” she said, breaking the silence that followed.
“I cannot change myself,” he answered, almost wishing that he could. “I ought, perhaps,” he added, as though speaking to himself. “I have done enough harm as it is.”
“Harm? To whom?” She looked round suddenly and he saw the moisture in her eyes.
“To him,” he replied, glancing at Kafka, “and to you. You loved him once. I have ruined his life.”
“Loved him? No--I never loved him.” She shook her head, wondering whether she spoke the truth.
“You must have made him think so.”
“I? No--he is mad.” But she shrank before his honest look, and suddenly broke down. “No--I will not lie to you--you are too true--yes, I loved him, or I thought I did, until you came, and I saw that there was no one----” But she checked herself, as she felt the blood rising to her cheeks. She could blush still, and still be ashamed. Even she was not all bad, now that she was calm and that the change had come over her.
“You see,” the Wanderer said gently, “I am to blame for it all.”
“For it all? No--not for the thousandth part of it all. What blame have you in being what you are? Blame God in Heaven--for making such a man. Blame me for what you know; blame me for all that you will not let me tell you. Blame Kafka for his mad belief in me and Keyork Arabian for the rest--but do not blame yourself--oh, no! Not that!”
“Do not talk like that, Unorna,” he said. “Be just first.”
“What is justice?” she asked. Then she turned her head away again. “If you knew what justice means for me--you would not ask me to be just. You would be more merciful.”
“You exaggerate----” He spoke kindly, but she interrupted him.
“No. You do not know, that is all. And you can never guess. There is only one man living who could imagine such things as I have done--and tried to do. He is Keyork Arabian. But he would have been wiser than I, perhaps.”
She relapsed into silence. Before her rose the dim altar in the church, the shadowy figure of Beatrice standing up in the dark, the horrible sacrilege that was to have been done. Her face grew dark with fear of her own soul. The Wanderer went so far as to try and distract her from her gloomy thoughts, out of pure kindness of heart.
“I am no theologian,” he said, “but I fancy that in the long reckoning the intention goes for more than the act.”
“The intention!” she cried, looking back with a start. “If that be true----” With a shudder she buried her face in her two hands, pressing them to her eyes as though to blind them to some awful sight. Then, with a short struggle, she turned to him again.
“There is no forgiveness for me in Heaven,” she said. “Shall there be none on earth! Not even a little, from you to me?”
“There is no question of forgiveness between you and me. You have not injured me, but Israel Kafka. Judge for yourself which of us two, he or I, has anything to forgive. I am to-day what I was yesterday and may be to-morrow. He lies there, dying of his love for you, if ever a man died for love. And as though that were not enough, you have tortured him--well, I will not speak of it. But that is all. I know nothing of the deeds, or intentions, of which you accuse yourself. You are tired, overwrought, worn out with all this--what shall I say? It is natural enough, I suppose--” “You say there is no question of forgiveness,” she said, interrupting him, but speaking more calmly. “What is it then? What is the real question? If you have nothing to forgive why can we not be friends as we were before?”
“There is something besides that needed. It is not enough that of two people neither should have injured the other. You have broken something, destroyed something--I cannot mend it. I wish I could.”
“You wish you could?” she repeated earnestly.
“I wish that the thing had not been done. I wish that I had not seen what I saw to-day. We should be where we were this morning--and he perhaps would not be here.”
“It must have come some day,” Unorna said. “He must have seen that I loved--that I loved you. Is there any use in not speaking plainly now? Then at some other time, in some other place, he would have done what he did, and I should have been angry and cruel--for it is my nature to be cruel when I am angry, and to be angry easily, at that. Men talk so easily of self-control, and self-command and dignity, and self-respect! They have not loved--that is all. I am not angry now, nor cruel. I am sorry for what I did, and I would undo it, if deeds were knots and wishes deeds. I am sorry, beyond all words to tell you. How poor it sounds now that I have said it! You do not even believe me.”
“You are wrong. I know that you are in earnest.”
“How do you know?” she asked bitterly. “Have I never lied to you? If you believed me, you would forgive me. If you forgave me, your friendship would come back. I cannot even swear to you that I am telling the truth. Heaven would not be my witness now if I told a thousand truths, each truer than the last.”
“I have nothing to forgive,” the Wanderer said, almost wearily. “I have told you so, you have not injured me, but him.”
“But if it meant a whole world to me--no, for I am nothing to you--but if it cost you nothing, but the little breath that can carry the three words--would you say it? Is it much to say? Is it like saying, I love you, or, I honour you, respect you? It is so little, and would mean so much.”
“To me it can mean nothing, unless you ask me to forgive you deeds of which I know nothing. And then it means still less to me.”
“Will you say it, only say the three words once?”
“I forgive you,” said the Wanderer quietly. It cost him nothing, and, to him, meant less.
Unorna bent her head and was silent. It was something to have heard him say it though he could not guess the least of the sins which she made it include. She herself hardly knew why she had so insisted. Perhaps it was only the longing to hear words kind in themselves, if not in tone, nor in his meaning of them. Possibly, too, she felt a dim presentiment of her coming end, and would take with her that infinitesimal grain of pardon to the state in which she hoped for no other forgiveness.
“It was good of you to say it,” she said at last.
A long silence followed during which the thoughts of each went their own way. Suddenly Israel Kafka stirred in his sleep. The Wanderer went quickly forward and knelt down beside him and arranged the silken pillow as best he could. Unorna was on the other side almost as soon. With a tenderness of expression and touch which nothing can describe she moved the sleeping head into a comfortable position and smoothed the cushion, and drew up the furs disturbed by the nervous hands. The Wanderer let her have her way. When she had finished their eyes met. He could not tell whether she was asking his approval and a word of encouragement, but he withheld neither.
“You are very gentle with him. He would thank you if he could.”
“Did you not tell me to be kind to him?” she said. “I am keeping my word. But he would not thank me. He would kill me if he were awake.”
The Wanderer shook his head.
“He was ill and mad with pain,” he answered. “He did not know what he was doing. When he wakes, it will be different.”
Unorna rose, and the Wanderer followed her.
“You cannot believe that I care,” she said, as she resumed her seat. “He is not you. My soul would not be the nearer to peace for a word of his.”
For a long time she sat quite still, her hands lying idly in her lap, her head bent wearily as though she bore a heavy burden.
“Can you not rest?” the Wanderer asked at length. “I can watch alone.”
“No. I cannot rest. I shall never rest again.”
The words came slowly, as though spoken to herself.
“Do you bid me go?” she asked after a time, looking up and seeing his eyes fixed on her.
“Bid you go? In your own house?” The tone was one of ordinary courtesy. Unorna smiled sadly.
“I would rather you struck me than that you spoke to me like that!” she exclaimed. “You have no need of such civil forbearance with me. If you bid me go, I will go. If you bid me stay, I will not move. Only speak frankly. Say which you would prefer.”
“Then stay,” said the Wanderer simply.
She bowed her head slightly and was silent again. A distant clock chimed the hour. The morning was slowly drawing near.
“And you,” said Unorna, looking up at the sound. “Will you not rest? Why should you not sleep?”
“I am not tired.”
“You do not trust me, I think,” she answered sadly. “And yet you might--you might.” Her voice died away dreamily.
“Trust you to watch that poor man? Indeed I do. You were not acting just now, when you touched him so tenderly. You are in earnest. You will be kind to him, and I thank you for it.”
“And you yourself? Do you fear nothing from me, if you should sleep before my eyes? Do you not fear that in your unconsciousness I might touch you and make you more unconscious still and make you dream dreams and see visions?”
The Wanderer looked at her and smiled incredulously, partly out of scorn for the imaginary danger, and partly because something told him that she had changed and would not attempt any of her witchcraft upon him.
“No,” he answered. “I am not afraid of that.”
“You are right,” she said gravely. “My sins are enough already. The evil is sufficient. Do as you will. If you can sleep, then sleep in peace. If you will watch, watch with me.”
Then neither spoke again. Unorna bent her head as she had done before. The Wanderer leaned back resting comfortably against the cushion of the high carved chair, his eyes directed towards the place where Israel Kafka lay. The air was warm, the scent of the flowers sweet but not heavy. The silence was intense, for even the little fountain was still. He had watched almost all night and his eyelids drooped. He forgot Unorna and thought only of the sick man, trying to fix his attention on the pale head as it lay under the bright light.
When Unorna looked up at last she saw that he was asleep. At first she was surprised, in spite of what she had said to him half an hour earlier, for she herself could not have closed her eyes, and felt that she could never close them again. Then she sighed. It was but one proof more of his supreme indifference. He had not even cared to speak to her, and if she had not constantly spoken to him throughout the hours they had passed together he would perhaps have been sleeping long before now.
And yet she feared to wake him and was almost glad that he was unconscious. In the solitude she could gaze on him to her heart’s desire, she could let her eyes look their fill, and no one could say her nay. He must be very tired, she thought, and she vaguely wondered why she felt no bodily weariness, when her soul was so heavy.
She sat still and watched him. It might be the last time, she thought, for who could tell what would happen to-morrow? She shuddered as she thought of it all. What would Beatrice do? What would Sister Paul say? How much would she tell of what she had seen? How much had she really seen which she could tell clearly? There were terrible possibilities in the future if all were known. Such deeds, and even the attempt at such deeds as she had tried to do, could be judged by the laws of the land, she might be brought to trial, if she lived, as a common prisoner, and held up to the execration of the world in all her shame and guilt. But death would be worse than that. As she thought of that other Judgment, she grew dizzy with horror as she had been when the idea had first entered her brain.
Then she was conscious that she was again looking at the Wanderer as he lay back asleep in his tall chair. The pale and noble face expressed the stainless soul and the manly character. She saw in it the peace she had lost, and yet knew that through him she had lost her peace for ever.
It was perhaps the last time. Never again, perhaps, after the morning had broken, should she look on what she loved best on earth. She would be gone, ruined, dead perhaps. And he? He would be still himself. He would remember her half carelessly, half in wonder, as a woman who had once been almost his friend. That would be all that would be left in him of her, beyond a memory of the repulsion he had felt for her deeds.
She fancied she could have met the worst in the future less hopelessly if he could have remembered her a little more kindly when all was over. Even now, it might be in her power to cast a veil upon the pictures in his mind. But the mere thought was horrible to her, though a few hours before she had hardly trembled at the doing of a frightful sacrilege. In that short time the humiliation of failure, the realisation of what she had almost done, above all the ever-rising tide of a real and passionate love, had swept away many familiar landmarks in her thoughts, and had turned much to lead which had once seemed brighter than gold. She hated the very idea of using again those arts which had so directly wrought her utter destruction. But she longed to know that in the world whither he would doubtless go to-morrow he would bear with him one kind memory of her, one natural friendly thought not grafted upon his mind by her power, but growing of its own self in his inmost heart. Only a friendly memory--nothing more than that.
She rose noiselessly and came to his side and looked down into his face. Very long she stood there, motionless as a statue, beautiful as a mourning angel.
It was so little that she asked. It was so little compared with all she had hoped, or in comparison with all she had demanded, so little in respect of what she had given. For she had given her soul. And in return she asked only for one small kindly thought when all should be over.
She bent down as she stood and touched his cool forehead with her lips.
“Sleep on, my beloved,” she said in a voice that murmured softly and sadly.
She started a little at what she had done, and drew back, half afraid, like an innocent girl. But as though he had obeyed her words, he seemed to sleep more deeply still. He must be very tired, she thought, to sleep like that, but she was thankful that the soft kiss, the first and last, had not waked him.
“Sleep on,” she said again in a whisper scarcely audible to herself. “Forget Unorna, if you cannot think of her mercifully and kindly. Sleep on, you have the right to rest, and I can never rest again. You have forgiven--forget, too, then, unless you can remember better things of me than I have deserved in your memory. Let her take her kingdom back. It was never mine--remember what you will, forget at least the wrong I did, and forgive the wrong you never knew--for you will know it surely some day. Ah, love--I love you so--dream but one dream, and let me think I take her place. She never loved you more than I, she never can. She would not have done what I have done. Dream only that I am Beatrice for this once. Then when you wake you will not think so cruelly of me. Oh, that I might be she--and you your loving self--that I might be she for one day in thought and word, in deed and voice, in face and soul! Dear love--you would never know it, yet I should know that you had had one loving thought for me. You would forget. It would not matter then to you, for you would have only dreamed, and I should have the certainty--for ever, to take with me always!”
As though the words carried a meaning with them to his sleeping senses, a look of supreme and almost heavenly happiness stole over his sleeping face. But Unorna could not see it. She had turned suddenly away, burying her face in her hands upon the back of her own chair.
“Are there no miracles left in Heaven?” she moaned, half whispering lest she should wake him. “Is there no miracle of deeds undone again and of forgiveness given--for me? God! God! That we should be for ever what we make ourselves!”
There were no tears in her eyes now, as there had been twice that night. In her despair, that fountain of relief, shallow always and not apt to overflow, was dried up and scorched with pain. And, for the time at least, worse things were gone from her, though she suffered more. As though some portion of her passionate wish had been fulfilled, she felt that she could never do again what she had done; she felt that she was truthful now as he was, and that she knew evil from good even as Beatrice knew it. The horror of her sins took new growth in her changed vision.
“Was I lost from the first beginning?” she asked passionately. “Was I born to be all I am, and fore-destined to do all I have done? Was she born an angel and I a devil from hell? What is it all? What is this life, and what is that other beyond it?”
Behind her, in his chair, the Wanderer still slept. Still his face wore the radiant look of joy that had so suddenly come into it as she turned away. He scarcely breathed, so calmly he slept. But Unorna did not raise her head nor look at him, and on the carpet near her feet Israel Kafka lay as still and as deeply unconscious as the Wanderer himself. By a strange destiny she sat there, between the two men in whom her whole life had been wrecked, and she alone was waking.
When she at last raised her eyes the dawn was breaking. Through the transparent roof of glass a cold gray light began to descend upon the warm, still brightness of the lamps. The shadows changed, the colours grew more cold, the dark nooks among the heavy foliage less black. Israel Kafka’s face was ghostly and livid--the Wanderer’s had the alabaster transparency that comes upon some strong men in sleep. Still, neither stirred. Unorna turned from the one and looked upon the other. For the first time she saw how he had changed, and wondered.
“How peacefully he sleeps!” she thought. “He is dreaming of her.”
The dawn came stealing on, not soft and blushing as in southern lands, but cold, resistless and grim as ancient fate; not the maiden herald of the sun with rose-tipped fingers and grey, liquid eyes, but hard, cruel, sullen, and less darkness following upon a greater and going before a dull, sunless and heavy day.
The door opened somewhat noisily and a brisk step fell upon the marble pavement. Unorna rose noiselessly to her feet and hastening along the open space came face to face with Keyork Arabian. He stopped and looked up at her from beneath his heavy brows, with surprise and suspicion. She raised one finger to her lips.
“You here already?” he asked, obeying her gesture and speaking in a low voice.
“Hush! Hush!” she whispered, not satisfied. “They are asleep. You will wake them.”
Keyork came forward. He could move quietly enough when he chose. He glanced at the Wanderer.
“He looks comfortable enough,” he whispered, half contemptuously.
Then he bent down over Israel Kafka and carefully examined his face. To him the ghastly pallor meant nothing. It was but the natural result of excessive exhaustion.
“Put him into a lethargy,” said he under his breath, but with authority in his manner.
Unorna shook her head. Keyork’s small eyes brightened angrily.
“Do it,” he said. “What is this caprice? Are you mad? I want to take his temperature without waking him.”
Unorna folded her arms.
“Do you want him to suffer more?” asked Keyork with a diabolical smile. “If so I will wake him by all means; I am always at your service, you know.”
“Will he suffer, if he wakes naturally?”
“Horribly--in the head.”
Unorna knelt down and let her hand rest a few seconds on Kafka’s brow. The features, drawn with pain, immediately relaxed.
“You have hypnotised the one,” grumbled Keyork as he bent down again. “I cannot imagine why you should object to doing the same for the other.”
“The other?” Unorna repeated in surprise.
“Our friend there, in the arm chair.”
“It is not true. He fell asleep of himself.”
Keyork smiled again, incredulously this time. He had already applied his pocket-thermometer and looked at his watch. Unorna had risen to her feet, disdaining to defend herself against the imputation expressed in his face. Some minutes passed in silence.
“He has no fever,” said Keyork looking at the little instrument. “I will call the Individual and we will take him away.”
“Where?”
“To his lodging, of course. Where else?” He turned and went towards the door.
In a moment, Unorna was kneeling again by Kafka’s side, her hand upon his forehead, her lips close to his ear.
“This is the last time that I will use my power on you or upon any one,” she said quickly, for the time was short. “Obey me, as you must. Do you understand me? Will you obey?”
“Yes,” came the faint answer as from very far off.
“You will wake two hours from now. You will not forget all that has happened, but you will never love me again. I forbid you ever to love me again! Do you understand?”
“I understand.”
“You will only forget that I have told you this, though you will obey. You will see me again, and if you can forgive me of your own free will, forgive me then. That must be of your own free will. Wake in two hours of yourself, without pain or sickness.”
Again she touched his forehead and then sprang to her feet. Keyork was coming back with his dumb servant. At a sign, the Individual lifted Kafka from the floor, taking from him the Wanderer’s furs and wrapping him in others which Keyork had brought. The strong man walked away with his burden as though he were carrying a child. Keyork Arabian lingered a moment.
“What made you come back so early?” he asked.
“I will not tell you,” she answered, drawing back.
“No? Well, I am not curious. You have an excellent opportunity now.”
“An opportunity?” Unorna repeated with a cold interrogative.
“Excellent,” said the little man, standing on tiptoe to reach her ear, for she would not bend her head. “You have only to whisper into his ear that you are Beatrice and he will believe you for the rest of his life.”
“Go!” said Unorna.
Though the word was not spoken above her breath it was fierce and commanding. Keyork Arabian smiled in an evil way, shrugged his shoulders and left her.
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Unorna was left alone with the Wanderer. His attitude did not change, his eyes did not open, as she stood before him. Still he wore the look which had at first attracted Keyork Arabian’s attention and which had amazed Unorna herself. It was the expression that had come into his face in the old cemetery when in his sleep she had spoken to him of love.
“He is dreaming of her,” Unorna said to herself again, as she turned sadly away.
But since Keyork had been with her a doubt had assailed her which painfully disturbed her thoughts, so that her brow contracted with anxiety and from time to time she drew a quick hard breath. Keyork had taken it for granted that the Wanderer’s sleep was not natural.
She tried to recall what had happened shortly before dawn but it was no wonder that her memory served her ill and refused to bring back distinctly the words she had spoken. Her whole being was unsettled and shaken, so that she found it hard to recognise herself. The stormy hours through which she had lived since yesterday had left their trace; the lack of rest, instead of producing physical exhaustion, had brought about an excessive mental weariness, and it was not easy for her now to find all the connecting links between her actions. Then, above all else, there was the great revulsion that had swept over her after her last and greatest plan of evil had failed, causing in her such a change as could hardly have seemed natural or even possible to a calm person watching her inmost thoughts.
And yet such sudden changes take place daily in the world of crime and passion. In one uncalled-for confession, of which it is hard to trace the smallest reasonable cause, the intricate wickednesses of a lifetime are revealed and repeated; in the mysterious impulse of a moment the murderer turns back and delivers himself to justice; under an influence for which there is often no accounting, the woman who has sinned securely through long years lays bare her guilt and throws herself upon the mercy of the man whom she has so skilfully and consistently deceived. We know the fact. The reason we cannot know. Perhaps, to natures not wholly bad, sin is a poison of which the moral organization can only bear a certain fixed amount, great or small, before rejecting it altogether and with loathing. We do not know. We speak of the workings of conscience, not understanding what we mean. It is like that subtle something which we call electricity; we can play with it, command it, lead it, neutralise it and die of it, make light and heat with it, or language and sound, kill with it and cure with it, while absolutely ignorant of its nature. We are no nearer to a definition of it than the Greek who rubbed a bit of amber and lifted with it a tiny straw, and from amber, Elektron called the something electricity. Are we even as near as that to a definition of the human conscience?
The change that had come over Unorna, whether it was to be lasting or not, was profound. The circumstances under which it took place are plain enough. The reasons must be left to themselves--it remains only to tell the consequences which thereon followed.
The first of these was a hatred of that extraordinary power with which nature had endowed her, which brought with it a determination never again to make use of it for any evil purpose, and, if possible, never even for good.
But as though her unhappy fate were for ever fighting against her good impulses, that power of hers had exerted itself unconsciously, since her resolution had been formed. Keyork Arabian’s words, and his evident though unspoken disbelief in her denial, showed that he at least was convinced of the fact that the Wanderer was not sleeping a natural sleep. Unorna tried to recall what she had done and said, but all was vague and indistinct. Of one thing she was sure. She had not laid her hand upon his forehead, and she had not intentionally done any of those things which she had always believed necessary for producing the results of hypnotism. She had not willed him to do anything, she thought and she felt sure that she had pronounced no words of the nature of a command. Step by step she tried to reconstruct for her comfort a detailed recollection of what had passed, but every effort in that direction was fruitless. Like many men far wiser than herself, she believed in the mechanics of hypnotic science, in the touches, in the passes, in the fixed look, in the will to fascinate. More than once Keyork Arabian had scoffed at what he called her superstitions, and had maintained that all the varying phenomena of hypnotism, all the witchcraft of the darker ages, all the visions undoubtedly shown to wondering eyes by mediaeval sorcerers, were traceable to moral influence, and to no other cause. Unorna could not accept his reasoning. For her there was a deeper and yet a more material mystery in it, as in her own life, a mystery which she cherished as an inheritance, which impressed her with a sense of her own strange destiny and of the gulf which separated her from other women. She could not detach herself from the idea that the supernatural played a part in all her doings, and she clung to the use of gestures and passes and words in the exercise of her art, in which she fancied a hidden and secret meaning to exist. Certain things had especially impressed her. The not uncommon answer of hypnotics to the question concerning their identity, “I am the image in your eyes,” is undoubtedly elicited by the fact that their extraordinarily acute and, perhaps, magnifying vision, perceives the image of themselves in the eyes of the operator with abnormal distinctness, and, not impossibly, of a size quite incompatible with the dimensions of the pupil. To Unorna the answer meant something more. It suggested the actual presence of the person she was influencing, in her own brain, and whenever she was undertaking anything especially difficult, she endeavoured to obtain the reply relating to the image as soon as possible.
In the present case, she was sure that she had done none of the things which she considered necessary to produce a definite result. She was totally unconscious of having impressed upon the sleeper any suggestion of her will. Whatever she had said, she had addressed the words to herself without any intention that they should be heard and understood.
These reflections comforted her as she paced the marble floor, and yet Keyork’s remark rang in her ears and disturbed her. She knew how vast his experience was and how much he could tell by a single glance at a human face. He had been familiar with every phase of hypnotism long before she had known him, and might reasonably be supposed to know by inspection whether the sleep were natural or not. That a person hypnotised may appear to sleep as naturally as one not under the influence is certain, but the condition of rest is also very often different, to a practised eye, from that of ordinary slumber. There is a fixity in the expression of the face, and in the attitude of the body, which cannot continue under ordinary circumstances. He had perhaps noticed both signs in the Wanderer.
She went back to his side and looked at him intently. She had scarcely dared to do so before, and she felt that she might have been mistaken. The light, too, had changed, for it was broad day, though the lamps were still burning. Yet, even now, she could not tell. Her judgment of what she saw was disturbed by many intertwining thoughts.
At least, he was happy. Whatever she had done, if she had done anything, it had not hurt him. There was no possibility of misinterpreting the sleeping man’s expression.
She wished that he would wake, though she knew how the smile would fade, how the features would grow cold and indifferent, and how the grey eyes she loved would open with a look of annoyance at seeing her before him. It was like a vision of happiness in a house of sorrow to see him lying there, so happy in his sleep, so loving, so peaceful. She could make it all to last, too, if she would, and she realised that with a sudden pang. The woman of whom he dreamed, whom he had loved so faithfully and sought so long, was very near him. A word from Unorna and Beatrice could come and find him as he lay asleep, and herself open the dear eyes.
Was that sacrifice to be asked of her before she was taken away to the expiation of her sins? Fate could not be so very cruel--and yet the mere idea was an added suffering. The longer she looked at him the more the possibility grew and tortured her.
After all, it was almost certain that they would meet now, and at the meeting she felt sure that all his memory would return. Why should she do anything, why should she raise her hand, to bring them to each other? It was too much to ask. Was it not enough that both were free, and both in the same city together, and that she had vowed neither to hurt nor hinder them? If it was their destiny to be joined together it would so happen surely in the natural course; if not, was it her part to join them? The punishment of her sins, whatever it should be, she could bear; but this thing she could not do.
She passed her hand across her eyes as though to drive it away, and her thoughts came back to the point from which they had started. The suspense became unbearable when she realised that she did not know in what condition the Wanderer would wake, nor whether, if left to nature, he would wake at all. She could not endure it any longer. She touched his sleeve, lightly at first, and then more heavily. She moved his arm. It was passive in her hand and lay where she placed it. Yet she would not believe that she had made him sleep. She drew back and looked at him. Then her anxiety overcame her.
“Wake!” she cried, aloud. “For God’s sake, wake! I cannot bear it!”
His eyes opened at the sound of her voice, naturally and quietly. Then they grew wide and deep and fixed themselves in a great wonder of many seconds. Then Unorna saw no more.
Strong arms lifted her suddenly from her feet and pressed her fiercely and carried her, and she hid her face. A voice she knew sounded, as she had never heard it sound, nor hoped to hear it.
“Beatrice!” it cried, and nothing more.
In the presence of that strength, in the ringing of that cry, Unorna was helpless. She had no power of thought left in her, as she felt herself borne along, body and soul, in the rush of a passion more masterful than her own.
Then she was on her feet again, but his arms were round her still, and hers, whether she would or not, were clasped about his neck. Dreams, truth, faith kept or broken, hell and Heaven itself were swept away, all wrecked together in the tide of love. And through it all his voice was in her ear.
“Love, love, at last! From all the years, you have come back--at last--at last!”
Broken and almost void of sense the words came then, through the storm of his kisses and the tempest of her tears. She could no more resist him nor draw herself away than the frail ship, wind-driven through crashing waves, can turn and face the blast; no more than the long dry grass can turn and quench the roaring flame; no more than the drooping willow bough can dam the torrent and force it backwards up the steep mountain side.
In those short, false moments, Unorna knew what happiness could mean. Torn from herself, lifted high above the misery and the darkness of her real life, it was all true to her. There was no other Beatrice but herself, no other woman whom he had ever loved. An enchantment greater than her own was upon her and held her in bonds she could neither bend nor break.
She was sitting in her own chair now and he was kneeling before her, holding her hands and looking up to her. For him the world held nothing else. For him her hair was black as night; for him the unlike eyes were dark and fathomless; for him the heavy marble hand was light, responsive, delicate; for him her face was the face of Beatrice, as he had last seen it long ago. The years had passed, indeed, and he had sought her through many lands, but she had come back to him the same, in the glory of her youth, in the strength of her love, in the divinity of her dark beauty, his always, through it all, his now--for ever.
For a long time he did not speak. The words rose to his lips and failed of utterance, as the first mist of early morning is drawn heavenwards to vanish in the rising sun. The long-drawn breath could have made no sound of sweeter meaning than the unspoken speech that rose in the deep gray eyes. Nature’s grand organ, touched by hands divine, can yield no chord more moving than a lover’s sigh.
Words came at last, as after the welcome shower in summer’s heat the song of birds rings through the woods, and out across the fields, upon the clear, earth-scented air--words fresh from their long rest within his heart, unused in years of loneliness but unforgotten and familiar still--untarnished jewels from the inmost depths; rich treasures from the storehouse of a deathless faith; diamonds of truth, rubies of passion, pearls of devotion studding the golden links of the chain of love.
“At last--at last--at last! Life of my life, the day is come that is not day without you, and now it will always be day for us two--day without end and sun for ever! And yet, I have seen you always in my night, just as I see you now. As I hold your dear hands, I have held them--day by day and year by year--and I have smoothed that black hair of yours that I love, and kissed those dark eyes of yours many and many a thousand times. It has been so long, love, so very long! But I knew it would come some day. I knew I should find you, for you have been always with me, dear--always and everywhere. The world is all full of you, for I have wandered through it all and taken you with me and made every place yours with the thought of you, and the love of you and the worship of you. For me, there is not an ocean nor a sea nor a river, nor rock nor island nor broad continent of earth, that has not known Beatrice and loved her name. Heart of my heart, soul of my soul--the nights and the days without you, the lands and the oceans where you were not, the endlessness of this little world that hid you somewhere, the littleness of the whole universe without you--how can you ever know what it has been to me? And so it is gone at last--gone as a dream of sickness in the morning of health; gone as the blackness of storm-clouds in the sweep of the clear west wind; gone as the shadow of evil before the face of an angel of light! And I know it all. I see it all in your eyes. You knew I was true, and you knew I sought you, and would find you at last--and you have waited--and there has been no other, not the thought of another, not the passing image of another between us. For I know there has not been that and I should have known it anywhere in all these years, the chill of it would have found me, the sharpness of it would have been in my heart--no matter where, no matter how far--yet say it, say it once--say that you have loved me, too--” “God knows how I have loved you--how I love you now!” Unorna said in a low, unsteady voice.
The light that had been in his face grew brighter still as she spoke, while she looked at him, wondering, her head thrown back against the high chair, her eyelids wet and drooping, her lips still parted, her hand in his. Small wonder if he had loved her for herself, she was so beautiful. Small wonder it would have been if she had taken Beatrice’s place in his heart during those weeks of close and daily converse. But that first great love had left no fertile ground in which to plant another seed, no warmth of kindness under which the tender shoot might grow to strength, no room beneath its heaven for other branches than its own. Alone it had stood in majesty as a lordly tree, straight, tall, and ever green, on a silent mountain top. Alone it had borne the burden of grief’s heavy snows; unbent, for all its loneliness, it had stood against the raging tempest; and green still, in all its giant strength of stem and branch, in all its kingly robe of unwithered foliage. Unscathed, unshaken, it yet stood. Neither storm nor lightning, wind nor rain, sun nor snow had prevailed against it to dry it up and cast it down that another might grow in its place.
Yet this love was not for her to whom he spoke, and she knew it as she answered him, though she answered truly, from the fulness of her heart. She had cast an enchantment over him unwittingly, and she was taken in the toils of her own magic even as she had sworn that she would never again put forth her powers. She shuddered as she realised it all. In a few short moments she had felt his kisses, and heard his words, and been clasped to his heart, as she had many a time madly hoped. But in those moments, too, she had known the truth of her woman’s instinct when it had told her that love must be for herself and for her own sake, or not be love at all.
The falseness, the fathomless untruth of it, would have been bad enough alone. But the truth that was so strong made it horrible. Had she but inspired in him a burning love for herself, however much against his will, it would have been very different. She would have heard her name from his lips, she would have known that all, however false, however artificial, was for herself, while it might last. To know that it was real, and not for her, was intolerable. To see this love of his break out at last--this other love which she had dreaded, against which she had fought, which she had met with a jealousy as strong as itself, and struggled with and buried under an imposed forgetfulness--to feel its great waves surging around her and beating up against her heart, was more than she could bear. Her face grew whiter and her hands were cold. She dreaded each moment lest he should call her Beatrice again, and say that her fair hair was black and that he loved those deep dark eyes of hers.
There had been one moment of happiness, in that first kiss, in the first pressure of those strong arms. Then night descended. The hands that held her had not been yet unclasped, the kiss was not cold upon her cheek, the first great cry of his love had hardly died away in a softened echo, and her punishment was upon her. His words were lashes, his touch poison, his eyes avenging fires. As in nature’s great alchemy the diamond and the blackened coal are one, as nature with the same elements pours life and death from the same vial with the same hand, so now the love which would have been life to Unorna was made worse than death because it was not for her.
Yet the disguise was terribly perfect. The unconscious spell had done its work thoroughly. He took her for Beatrice, and her voice for Beatrice’s there in the broad light, in the familiar place where he had so often talked with her for hours and known her for Unorna. But a few paces away was the very spot where she had fallen at his feet last night and wept and abused herself before him. There was the carpet on which Israel Kafka had lain throughout the long hours while they had watched together. Upon that table at her side a book lay which they had read together but two days ago. In her own chair she sat, Unorna still, unchanged, unaltered save for him. She doubted her own senses as she heard him speak, and ever and again the name of Beatrice rang in her ears. He looked at her hands, and knew them; at her black dress, and knew it for her own, and yet he poured out the eloquence of his love--kneeling, then standing, then sitting at her side, drawing her head to his shoulder and smoothing her fair hair--so black to him--with a gentle hand. She was passive through it all, as yet. There seemed to be no other way. He paused sometimes, then spoke again. Perhaps, in the dream that possessed him, he heard her speak. Possibly, he was unconscious of her silence, borne along by the torrent of his own long pent-up speech. She could not tell, she did not care to know. Of one thing alone she thought, of how to escape from it all and be alone.
She feared to move, still more to rise, not knowing what he would do. As he was now, she could not tell what effect her words would have if she spoke. It might be but a passing state after all. What would the awakening be? Would his forgetfulness of Beatrice and his coldness to herself return with the subsidence of his passion? Far better that than to see him and hear him as he was now.
And yet there were moments now and then when he pronounced no name, when he recalled no memory of the past, when there was only the tenderness of love itself in his words, and then, as she listened, she could almost think it was for her. It was bitter joy, unreal and fantastic, but it was a relief. Had she loved him less, such a conflict between sense and senses would have been impossible even in imagination. But she loved him greatly and the deep desire to be loved in turn was in her still, shaming her better thoughts, but sometimes ruling her in spite of herself and of the pain she suffered with each word self-applied. All the vast contradictions, all the measureless inconsistency, all the enormous selfishness of which human hearts are capable, had met in hers as in a battle-ground, fighting each other, rending what they found of herself amongst them, sometimes uniting to throw their whole weight together against the deep-rooted passion, sometimes taking side with it to drive out every other rival.
It was shameful, base, despicable, and she knew it. A moment ago she had longed to tear herself away, to silence him, to stop her ears, anything not to hear those words that cut like whips and stung like scorpions. And now again she was listening for the next, eagerly, breathlessly, drunk with their sound and revelling almost in the unreality of the happiness they brought. More and more she despised herself as the intervals between one pang of suffering and the next grew longer, and the illusion deeper and more like reality.
After all, it was he, and no other. It was the man she loved who was pouring out his own love into her ears, and smoothing her hair and pressing the hand he held. Had he not said it once, and more than once? What matter where, what matter how, provided that he loved? She had received the fulfilment of her wish. He loved her now. Under another name, in a vision, with another face and another voice, yet, still, she was herself.
As in a storm the thunder-claps came crashing through the air, deafening and appalling at first, then rolling swiftly into a far distance, fainter and fainter, till all is still and only the plash of the fast-falling rain is heard, so, as she listened, the tempest of her pain was passing away. Easier and easier it became to hear herself called Beatrice, easier and easier it grew to take the other’s place, to accept the kiss, the touch, the word, the pressure of the hand that were all another’s due, and given to herself only for the mask she wore in his dream.
And the tide of the great temptation rose, and fell a little, and rose higher again each time, till it washed the fragile feet of the last good thought that lingered, taking refuge on the highest point above the waves. On and on it came, receding and coming back, higher and higher, surer and surer. Had she drawn back in time it would have been so easy. Had she turned and fled when the first moment of senseless joy was over, when she could still feel all the shame, and blush for all the abasement, it would have been over now, and she would have been safe. But she had learned to look upon the advancing water, and the sound of it had no more terror for her. It was very high now. Presently it would climb higher and close above her head.
There were long intervals of silence now. The first rush of his speech had spent itself, for he had told her much and she had heard it all, even through the mists of her changing moods. And now that he was silent she longed to hear him speak again. She could never weary of that voice. It had been music to her in the days when it had been full of cold indifference--now each vibration roused high harmonies in her heart, each note was a full chord, and all the chords made but one great progression. She longed to hear it all again, wondering greatly how it could never have been not good to hear.
Then with the greater temptation came the less, enclosed within it, suddenly revealed to her. There was but one thing she hated in it all. That was the name. Would he not give her another--her own perhaps? She trembled as she thought of speaking. Would she still have Beatrice’s voice? Might not her own break down the spell and destroy all at once? Yet she had spoken once before. She had told him that she loved him and he had not been undeceived.
“Beloved--” she said at last, lingering on the single word and then hesitating.
He looked into her face as he drew her to him, with happy eyes. She might speak, then, for he would hear tones not hers.
“Beloved, I am tired of my name. Will you not call me by another?” She spoke very softly.
“By another name?” he exclaimed, surprised, but smiling at what seemed a strange caprice.
“Yes. It is a sad name to me. It reminds me of many things--of a time that is better forgotten since it is gone. Will you do it for me? It will make it seem as though that time had never been.”
“And yet I love your own name,” he said, thoughtfully. “It is so much--or has been so much in all these years, when I had nothing but your name to love.”
“Will you not do it? It is all I ask.”
“Indeed I will, if you would rather have it so. Do you think there is anything that I would not do if you asked it of me?”
They were almost the words she had spoken to him that night when they were watching together by Israel Kafka’s side. She recognised them and a strange thrill of triumph ran through her. What matter how? What matter where? The old reckless questions came to her mind again. If he loved her, and if he would but call her Unorna, what could it matter, indeed? Was she not herself? She smiled unconsciously.
“I see it pleases you,” he said tenderly. “Let it be as you wish. What name will you choose for your dear self?”
She hesitated. She could not tell how far he might remember what was past. And yet, if he had remembered he would have seen where he was in the long time that had passed since his awakening.
“Did you ever--in your long travels--hear the name Unorna?” she asked with a smile and a little hesitation.
“Unorna? No. I cannot remember. It is a Bohemian word--it means ‘she of February.’ It has a pretty sound--half familiar to me. I wonder where I have heard it.”
“Call me Unorna, then. It will remind us that you found me in February.”
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{
"id": "3816"
}
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25
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After carefully locking and bolting the door of the sacristy Sister Paul turned to Beatrice. She had set down her lamp upon the broad, polished shelf which ran all round the place, forming the top of a continuous series of cupboards, as in most sacristies, used for the vestments of the church. At the back of these high presses rose half way to the spring of the vault.
The nun seemed a little nervous and her voice quavered oddly as she spoke. If she had tried to take up her lamp her hand would have shaken. In the moment of danger she had been brave and determined, but now that all was over her enfeebled strength felt the reaction from the strain. She turned to Beatrice and met her flashing black eyes. The young girl’s delicate nostrils quivered and her lips curled fiercely.
“You are angry, my dear child,” said Sister Paul. “So am I, and it seems to me that our anger is just enough. ‘Be angry and sin not.’ I think we can apply that to ourselves.”
“Who is that woman?” Beatrice asked. She was certainly angry, as the nun had said, but she felt by no means sure that she could resist the temptation of sinning if it presented itself as the possibility of tearing Unorna to pieces.
“She was once with us,” the nun answered. “I knew her when she was a mere girl--and I loved her then, in spite of her strange ways. But she has changed. They call her a Witch--and indeed I think it is the only name for her.”
“I do not believe in witches,” said Beatrice, a little scornfully. “But whatever she is, she is bad. I do not know what it was that she wanted me to do in the church, upon the altar there--it was something horrible. Thank God you came in time! What could it have been, I wonder?”
Sister Paul shook her head sorrowfully, but said nothing. She knew no more than Beatrice of Unorna’s intention, but she believed in the existence of a Black Art, full of sacrilegious practices, and credited Unorna vaguely with the worst designs which she could think of, though in her goodness she was not able to imagine anything much worse than the saying of a _Pater Noster_ backwards in a consecrated place. But she preferred to say nothing, lest she should judge Unorna unjustly. After all, she did not know. What she had seen had seemed bad enough and strange enough, but apart from the fact that Beatrice had been found upon the altar, where she certainly had no business to be, and that Unorna had acted like a guilty woman, there was little to lay hold of in the way of fact.
“My child,” she said at last, “until we know more of the truth, and have better advice than we can give each other, let us not speak of it to any one of the sisters. In the morning I will tell all I have seen in confession, and then I shall get advice. Perhaps you should do the same. I know nothing of what happened before you left your room. Perhaps you have something to reproach yourself with. It is not for me to ask. Think it over.”
“I will tell you the whole truth,” Beatrice answered, resting her elbow upon the polished shelf and supporting her head in her hand, while she looked earnestly into Sister Paul’s faded eyes.
“Think well, my daughter. I have no right to any confession from you. If there is anything----” “Sister Paul--you are a woman, and I must have a woman’s help. I have learned something to-night which will change my whole life. No--do not be afraid--I have done nothing wrong. At least, I hope not. While my father lived, I submitted. I hoped, but I gave no sign. I did not even write, as I once might have done. I have often wished that I had--was that wrong?”
“But you have told me nothing, dear child. How can I answer you?” The nun was perplexed.
“True. I will tell you. Sister Paul--I am five-and-twenty years old, I am a grown woman and this is no mere girl’s love story. Seven years ago--I was only eighteen then--I was with my father as I have been ever since. My mother had not been dead long then--perhaps that is the reason why I seemed to be everything to my father. But they had not been happy together, and I had loved her best. We were travelling--no matter where--and then I met the man I have loved. He was not of our country--that is, of my father’s. He was of the same people as my mother. Well--I loved him. How dearly you must guess, and try to understand. I could not tell you that. No one could. It began gradually, for he was often with us in those days. My father liked him for his wit, his learning, though he was young; for his strength and manliness--for a hundred reasons which were nothing to me. I would have loved him had he been a cripple, poor, ignorant, despised, instead of being what he was--the grandest, noblest man God ever made. For I did not love him for his face, nor for his courtly ways, nor for such gifts as other men might have, but for himself and for his heart--do you understand?”
“For his goodness,” said Sister Paul, nodding in approval. “I understand.”
“No,” Beatrice answered, half impatiently. “Not for his goodness either. Many men are good, and so was he--he must have been, of course. No matter. I loved him. That is enough. He loved me, too. And one day we were alone, in the broad spring sun, upon a terrace. There were lemon trees there--I can see the place. Then we told each other that we loved--but neither of us could find the words--they must be somewhere, those strong beautiful words that could tell how we loved. We told each other--” “Without your father’s consent?” asked the nun almost severely.
Beatrice’s eyes flashed. “Is a woman’s heart a dog that must follow at heel?” she asked fiercely. “We loved. That was enough. My father had the power, but not the heart, to come between. We told him, then, for we were not cowards. We told him boldly that it must be. He was a thoughtful man, who spoke little. He said that we must part at once, before we loved each other better--and that we should soon forget. We looked at each other, the man I loved and I. We knew that we should love better yet, parted or together, though we could not tell how that could be. But we knew also that such love as there was between us was enough. My father gave no reasons, but I knew that he hated the name of my mother’s nation. Of course we met again. I remember that I could cry in those days. My father had not learned to part us then. Perhaps he was not quite sure himself, at all events the parting did not come so soon. We told him that we would wait, for ever if it must be. He may have been touched, though little touched him at the best. Then, one day, suddenly and without warning, he took me away to another city. And what of him? I asked. He told me that there was an evil fever in the city and that it had seized him--the man I loved. ‘He is free to follow us if he pleases,’ said my father. But he never came. Then followed a journey, and another, and another, until I knew that my father was travelling to avoid him. When I saw that I grew silent, and never spoke his name again. Farther and farther, longer and longer, to the ends of the earth. We saw many people, many asked for my hand. Sometimes I heard of him, from men who had seen him lately. I waited patiently, for I knew that he was on our track, and sometimes I felt that he was near.”
Beatrice paused.
“It is a strange story,” said Sister Paul, who had rarely heard a tale of love.
“The strange thing is this,” Beatrice answered. “That woman--what is her name? Unorna? She loves him, and she knows where he is.”
“Unorna?” repeated the nun in bewilderment.
“Yes. She met me after Compline to-night. I could not but speak to her, and then I was deceived. I cannot tell whether she knew what I am to him, but she deceived me utterly. She told me a strange story of her own life. I was lonely. In all those years I have never spoken of what has filled me. I cannot tell how it was. I began to speak, and then I forgot that she was there, and told all.”
“She made you tell her, by her secret arts,” said Sister Paul in a low voice.
“No--I was lonely and I believed that she was good, and I felt that I must speak. Then--I cannot think how I could have been so mad--but I thought that we should never meet again, and I showed her a likeness of him. She turned on me. I shall not forget her face. I heard her say that she knew him and loved him too. When I awoke I was lying on the altar. That is all I know.”
“Her evil arts, her evil arts,” repeated the nun, shaking her head. “Come, my dear child, let us see if all is in order there, upon the altar. If these things are to be known they must be told in the right quarter. The sacristan must not see that any one has been in the church.”
Sister Paul took up the lamp, but Beatrice laid a hand upon her arm.
“You must help me to find him,” she said firmly. “He is not far away.”
Her companion looked at her in astonishment.
“Help you to find him?” she stammered. “But I cannot--I do not know--I am afraid it is not right--an affair of love--” “An affair of life, Sister Paul, and of death too, perhaps. This woman lives in Prague. She is rich and must be well known--” “Well known, indeed. Too well known--the Witch they call her.”
“Then there are those who know her. Tell me the name of one person only--it is impossible that you should not remember some one who is acquainted with her, who has talked with you of her--perhaps one of the ladies who have been here in retreat.”
The nun was silent for a moment, gathering her recollections.
“There is one, at least, who knows her,” she said at length. “A great lady here--it is said that she, too, meddles with forbidden practices and that Unorna has often been with her--that together they have called up the spirits of the dead with strange rappings and writings. She knows her, I am sure, for I have talked with her and she says it is all natural, and that there is a learned man with them sometimes, who explains how all such things may happen in the course of nature--a man--let me see, let me see--it is George, I think, but not as we call it, not Jirgi, nor Jegor--no--it sounds harder--Ke-Keyrgi--no, Keyork--Keyork Aribi----” “Keyork Arabian!” exclaimed Beatrice. “Is he here?”
“You know him?” Sister Paul looked almost suspiciously at the young girl.
“Indeed I do. He was with us in Egypt once. He showed us wonderful things among the tombs. A strange little man, who knew everything, but very amusing.”
“I do not know. But that is his name. He lives in Prague.”
“How can I find him? I must see him at once--he will help me.”
The nun shook her head with disapproval.
“I should be sorry that you should talk with him,” she said. “I fear he is no better than Unorna, and perhaps worse.”
“You need not fear,” Beatrice answered, with a scornful smile. “I am not in the least afraid. Only tell me how I am to find him. He lives here, you say--is there no directory in the convent?”
“I believe the portress keeps such a book,” said Sister Paul still shaking her head uneasily. “But you must wait until the morning, my dear child, if you will do this thing. Of the two, I should say that you would do better to write to the lady. Come, we must be going. It is very late.”
She had taken the lamp again and was moving slowly towards the door. Beatrice had no choice but to submit. It was evident that nothing more could be done at present. The two women went back into the church, and going round the high altar began to examine everything carefully. The only trace of disorder they could discover was the fallen candlestick, so massive and strong that it was not even bent or injured. They climbed the short wooden steps, and uniting their strength, set it up again, carefully and in its place, restoring the thick candle to the socket. Though broken in the middle by the fall, the heavy wax supported itself easily enough. Then they got down again and Sister Paul took away the steps. For a few moments both women knelt down before the altar.
They left the church by the nuns’ staircase, bolting the door behind them, and ascended to the corridors and reached Beatrice’s room. Unorna’s door was open, as the nun had left it, and the yellow light streamed upon the pavement. She went in and extinguished the lamp, and then came back to Beatrice.
“Are you not afraid to be alone after what has happened?” she asked.
“Afraid? Of what? No, indeed.” Then she thanked her companion again and kissed Sister Paul’s waxen cheek.
“Say a prayer, my daughter--and may all be well with you, now and ever!” said the good sister as she went away through the darkness. She needed no light in the familiar way to her cell.
Beatrice searched among her numerous belongings and at last brought out a writing-case. Then she sat down to her table by the light of the lamp that had illuminated so many strange sights that night.
She wrote the name of the convent clearly upon the paper, and then wrote a plain message in the fewest possible words. Something of her strong, devoted nature showed itself in her handwriting.
“Beatrice Varanger begs that Keyork Arabian will meet her in the parlour of the convent as soon after receiving this as possible. The matter is very important.”
She had reasons of her own for believing that Keyork had not forgotten her in the five years or more since they had been in Egypt together. Apart from the fact that his memory had always been surprisingly good, he had at that time professed the most unbounded admiration for her, and she remembered with a smile his quaint devotion, his fantastic courtesy, and his gnome-like attempts at grace.
She folded the note, to wait for the address which she could not ascertain until the morning. She could do nothing more. It was nearly two o’clock and there was evidently nothing to be done but to sleep.
As she laid her head upon the pillow a few minutes later she was amazed at her own calm. Strong natures, in great tests, often surprise themselves far more than they surprise others. Others see the results, always simpler in proportion as they are greater. But the actors themselves alone know how hard the great and simple can seem.
Beatrice’s calmness was not only of the outward kind at the present moment. She felt that she was alone in the world, and that she had taken her life into her own hands. Fate had lent her the clue of her happiness at last and she would hold it firmly to the end. It would be time enough then to open the flood-gates. It would have been unlike her to dwell long upon the thought of Unorna or to give way to any passionate outbreak of hatred. Why should Unorna not love him? The whole world loved him, and small wonder. She feared no rival.
But he was near her now. Her heart leaped as she realised how very near he might well be, then sank again to its calm beating. He had been near her a score of times in the past years, and yet they had not met. But she had not been free, then, as she was now. There was more hope than before, but she could not delude herself with any belief in a certainty.
So thinking, and so saying to herself, she fell asleep, and slept soundly without dreaming as most people do who are young and strong, and who are clear-headed and active when they are awake.
It was late when she opened her eyes, and the broad cold light filled the room. She lost no time in thinking over the events of the night, for everything was fresh in her memory. Half dressed, she wrapped about her a cloak that came down to her feet, and throwing a black veil over her hair she went down to the portress’s lodge. In five minutes she had found Keyork’s address and had despatched one of the convent gardeners with the note. Then she leisurely returned to her room and set about completing her toilet. She naturally supposed that an hour or two must elapse before she received an answer, certainly before Keyork appeared in person, a fact which showed that she had forgotten something of the man’s characteristics.
Twenty minutes had scarcely passed, and she had not finished dressing when Sister Paul entered the room, evidently in a state of considerable anxiety. As has been seen, it chanced to be her turn to superintend the guest’s quarters at that time, and the portress had of course informed her immediately of Keyork’s coming, in order that she might tell Beatrice.
“He is there!” she said, as she came in.
Beatrice was standing before the little mirror that hung upon the wall, trying, under no small difficulties, to arrange her hair. He turned her head quickly.
“Who is there? Keyork Arabian?”
Sister Paul nodded, glad that she was not obliged to pronounce the name that had for her such an unChristian sound.
“Where is he? I did not think he could come so soon. Oh, Sister Paul, do help me with my hair! I cannot make it stay.”
“He is in the parlour, down stairs,” answered the nun, coming to her assistance. “Indeed, child, I do not see how I can help you.” She touched the black coils ineffectually. “There! Is that better?” she asked in a timid way. “I do not know how to do it--” “No, no!” Beatrice exclaimed. “Hold that end--so--now turn it that way--no, the other way--it is in the glass--so--now keep it there while I put in a pin--no, no--in the same place, but the other way--oh, Sister Paul! Did you never do your hair when you were a girl?”
“That was so long ago,” answered the nun meekly. “Let me try again.”
The result was passably satisfactory at last, and assuredly not wanting in the element of novelty.
“Are you not afraid to go alone?” asked Sister Paul with evident preoccupation, as Beatrice put a few more touches to her toilet.
But the young girl only laughed and made the more haste. Sister Paul walked with her to the head of the stairs, wishing that the rules would allow her to accompany Beatrice into the parlour. Then as the latter went down the nun stood at the top looking after her and audibly repeating prayers for her preservation.
The convent parlour was a large, bare room, lighted by a high and grated window. Plain, straight, modern chairs were ranged against the wall at regular intervals. There was no table, but a square piece of green carpet lay upon the middle of the stone pavement. A richly ornamented glazed earthenware stove, in which a fire had just been lighted, occupied one corner, a remnant of former aesthetic taste and strangely out of place since the old carved furniture was gone. A crucifix of inferior workmanship and realistically painted hung opposite the door. The place was reserved for the use of ladies in retreat and was situated outside the constantly closed door which shut off the cloistered part of the convent from the small portion accessible to outsiders.
Keyork Arabian was standing in the middle of the parlour waiting for Beatrice. When she entered at last he made two steps forward, bowing profoundly, and then smiled in a deferential manner.
“My dear lady,” he said, “I am here. I have lost no time. It so happened that I received your note just as I was leaving my carriage after a morning drive. I had no idea that you were in Bohemia.”
“Thanks. It was good of you to come so soon.”
She sat down upon one of the stiff chairs and motioned to him to follow her example.
“And your dear father--how is he?” inquired Keyork with suave politeness, as he took his seat.
“My father died a week ago,” said Beatrice gravely.
Keyork’s face assumed all the expression of which it was capable. “I am deeply grieved,” he said, moderating his huge voice to a soft and purring sub-bass. “He was an old and valued friend.”
There was a moment’s silence. Keyork, who knew many things, was well aware that a silent feud, of which he also knew the cause, had existed between father and daughter when he had last been with them, and he rightly judged from his knowledge of their obstinate characters that it had lasted to the end. He thought therefore that his expression of sympathy had been sufficient and could pass muster.
“I asked you to come,” said Beatrice at last, “because I wanted your help in a matter of importance to myself. I understand that you know a person who calls herself Unorna, and who lives here.”
Keyork’s bright blue eyes scrutinized her face. He wondered how much she knew.
“Very well indeed,” he answered, as though not at all surprised.
“You know something of her life, then. I suppose you see her very often, do you not?”
“Daily, I can almost say.”
“Have you any objection to answering one question about her?”
“Twenty if you ask them, and if I know the answers,” said Keyork, wondering what form the question would take, and preparing to meet a surprise with indifference.
“But will you answer me truly?”
“My dear lady, I pledge you my sacred word of honour,” Keyork answered with immense gravity, meeting her eyes and laying his hand upon his heart.
“Does she love that man--or not?” Beatrice asked, suddenly showing him the little miniature of the Wanderer, which she had taken from its case and had hitherto concealed in her hand.
She watched every line of his face for she knew something of him, and in reality put very little more faith in his word of honour than he did himself, which was not saying much. But she had counted upon surprising him, and she succeeded, to a certain extent. His answer did not come as glibly as he could have wished, though his plan was soon formed.
“Who is it! Ah, dear me! My old friend. We call him the Wanderer. Well, Unorna certainly knew him when he was here.”
“Then he is gone?”
“Indeed, I am not quite sure,” said Keyork, regaining all his self-possession. “Of course I can find out for you, if you wish to know. But as regards Unorna, I can tell you nothing. They were a good deal together at one time. I fancy he was consulting her. You have heard that she is a clairvoyant, I daresay.”
He made the last remark quite carelessly, as though he attached no importance to the fact.
“Then you do not know whether she loves him?”
Keyork indulged himself with a little discreet laughter, deep and musical.
“Love is a very vague word,” he said presently.
“Is it?” Beatrice asked, with some coldness.
“To me, at least,” Keyork hastened to say, as though somewhat confused. “But, of course, I can know very little about it in myself, and nothing about it in others.”
Not knowing how matters might turn out, he was willing to leave Beatrice with a suspicion of the truth, while denying all knowledge of it.
“You know him yourself, of course,” Beatrice suggested.
“I have known him for years--oh, yes, for him, I can answer. He was not in the least in love.”
“I did not ask that question,” said Beatrice rather haughtily. “I knew he was not.”
“Of course, of course. I beg your pardon!”
Keyork was learning more from her than she from him. It was true that she took no trouble to conceal her interest in the Wanderer and his doings.
“Are you sure that he has left the city?” Beatrice asked.
“No, I am not positive. I could not say with certainty.”
“When did you see him last?”
“Within the week, I am quite sure,” Keyork answered with alacrity.
“Do you know where he was staying?”
“I have not the least idea,” the little man replied, without the slightest hesitation. “We met at first by chance in the Teyn Kirche, one afternoon--it was a Sunday, I remember, about a month ago.”
“A month ago--on a Sunday,” Beatrice repeated thoughtfully.
“Yes--I think it was New Year’s Day, too.”
“Strange,” she said. “I was in the church that very morning, with my maid. I had been ill for several days--I remember how cold it was. Strange--the same day.”
“Yes,” said Keyork, noting the words, but appearing to take no notice of them. “I was looking at Tycho Brahe’s monument. You know how it annoys me to forget anything--there was a word in the inscription which I could not recall. I turned round and saw him sitting just at the end of the pew nearest to the monument.”
“The old red slab with a figure on it, by the last pillar?” Beatrice asked eagerly.
“Exactly. I daresay you know the church very well. You remember that the pew runs very near to the monument so that there is hardly room to pass.”
“I know--yes.”
She was thinking that it could hardly have been a mere accident which had led the Wanderer to take the very seat she had occupied on the morning of that day. He must have seen her during the Mass, but she could not imagine how he could have missed her. They had been very near then. And now, a whole month had passed, and Keyork Arabian professed not to know whether the Wanderer was still in the city or not.
“Then you wish to be informed of our friend’s movements, as I understand it?” said Keyork going back to the main point.
“Yes--what happened on that day?” Beatrice asked, for she wished to hear more.
“Oh, on that day? Yes. Well, nothing happened worth mentioning. We talked a little and went out of the church and walked a little way together. I forget when we met next, but I have seen him at least a dozen times since then, I am sure.”
Beatrice began to understand that Keyork had no intention of giving her any further information. She reflected that she had learned much in this interview. The Wanderer had been, and perhaps still was, in Prague. Unorna loved him and they had been frequently together. He had been in the Teyn Kirche on the day she had last been there herself, and in all probability he had seen her, since he had chosen the very seat in which she had sat. Further, she gathered that Keyork had some interest in not speaking more frankly. She gave up the idea of examining him any further. He was a man not easily surprised, and it was only by means of a surprise that he could be induced to betray even by a passing expression what he meant to conceal. Her means of attack were exhausted for the present. She determined at least to repeat her request clearly before dismissing him, in the hope that it might suit his plans to fulfil it, but without the least trust in his sincerity.
“Will you be so kind as to make some inquiry, and let me know the result to-day?” she asked.
“I will do everything to give you an early answer,” said Keyork. “And I shall be the more anxious to obtain one without delay in order that I may have the very great pleasure of visiting you again. There is much that I would like to ask you, if you would allow me. For old friends, as I trust I may say that we are, you must admit that we have exchanged few--very few--confidences this morning. May I come again to-day? It would be an immense privilege to talk of old times with you, of our friends in Egypt and of our many journeys. For you have no doubt travelled much since then. Your dear father,” he lowered his voice reverentially, “was a great traveller, as well as a very learned man. Ah, well, my dear lady--we must all make up our minds to undertake that great journey one of these days. But I pain you. I was very much attached to your dear father. Command all my service. I will come again in the course of the day.”
With many sympathetic smiles and half-comic inclinations of his short, broad body, the little man bowed himself out.
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{
"id": "3816"
}
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26
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Unorna drew one deep breath when she first heard her name fall with a loving accent from the Wanderer’s lips. Surely the bitterness of despair was past since she was loved and not called Beatrice. The sigh that came then was of relief already felt, the forerunner, as she fancied, too, of a happiness no longer dimmed by shadows of fear and mists of rising remorse. Gazing into his eyes, she seemed to be watching in their reflection a magic change. She had been Beatrice to him, Unorna to herself, but now the transformation was at hand--now it was to come. For him she loved, and who loved her, she was Unorna even to the name, in her own thoughts she had taken the dark woman’s face. She had risked all upon the chances of one throw and she had won. So long as he had called her by another’s name the bitterness had been as gall mingled in the wine of love. But now that too was gone. She felt that it was complete at last. Her golden head sank peacefully upon his shoulder in the morning light.
“You have been long in coming, love,” she said, only half consciously, “but you have come as I dreamed--it is perfect now. There is nothing wanting any more.”
“It is all full, all real, all perfect,” he answered, softly.
“And there is to be no more parting, now----” “Neither here, nor afterwards, beloved.”
“Then this is afterwards. Heaven has nothing more to give. What is Heaven? The meeting of those who love--as we have met. I have forgotten what it was to live before you came----” “For me, there is nothing to remember between that day and this.”
“That day when you fell ill,” Unorna said, “the loneliness, the fear for you----” Unorna scarcely knew that it had not been she who had parted from him so long ago. Yet she was playing a part, and in the semi-consciousness of her deep self-illusion it all seemed as real as a vision in a dream so often dreamed that it has become part of the dreamer’s life. Those who fall by slow degrees under the power of the all-destroying opium remember yesterday as being very far, very long past, and recall faint memories of last year as though a century had lived and perished since then, seeing confusedly in their own lives the lives of others, and other existences in their own, until identity is almost gone in the endless transmigration of their souls from the shadow in one dream-tale to the wraith of themselves that dreams the next. So, in that hour, Unorna drifted through the changing scenes that a word had power to call up, scarce able, and wholly unwilling, to distinguish between her real and her imaginary self. What matter how? What matter where? The very questions which at first she had asked herself came now but faintly as out of an immeasurable distance, and always more faintly still. They died away in her ears, as when, after long waiting, and false starts, and turnings back and anxious words exchanged, the great race is at last begun, the swift long limbs are gathered and stretched and strained and gathered again, the thunder of flying hoofs is in the air, and the rider, with low hands, and head inclined and eyes bent forward, hears the last anxious word of parting counsel tremble and die in the rush of the wind behind.
She had really loved him throughout all those years; she had really sought him and mourned for him and longed for a sight of his face; they had really parted and had really found each other but a short hour since; there was no Beatrice but Unorna and no Unorna but Beatrice, for they were one and indivisible and interchangeable as the glance of a man’s two eyes that look on one fair sight; each sees alone, the same--but seeing together, the sight grows doubly fair.
“And all the sadness, where is it now?” she asked. “And all the emptiness of that long time? It never was, my love--it was yesterday we met. We parted yesterday, to meet to-day. Say it was yesterday--the little word can undo seven years.”
“It seems like yesterday,” he answered.
“Indeed, I can almost think so, now, for it was all night between. But not quite dark, as night is sometimes. It was a night full of stars--each star was a thought of you, that burned softly and showed me where heaven was. And darkest night, they say, means coming morning--so when the stars went out I knew the sun must rise.”
The words fell from her lips naturally. To her it seemed true that she had indeed waited long and hoped and thought of him. And it was not all false. Ever since her childhood she had been told to wait, for her love would come and would come only once. And so it was true, and the dream grew sweeter and the illusion of the enchantment more enchanting still. For it was an enchantment and a spell that bound them together there, among the flowers, the drooping palms, the graceful tropic plants and the shadowy leaves. And still the day rose higher, but still the lamps burned on, fed by the silent, mysterious current that never tires, blending a real light with an unreal one, an emblem of Unorna’s self, mixing and blending, too, with a self not hers.
“And the sun is risen, indeed,” she added presently.
“Am I the sun, dear?” he asked, foretasting the delight of listening to her simple answer.
“You are the sun, beloved, and when you shine, my eyes can see nothing else in heaven.”
“And what are you yourself--Beatrice--no, Unorna--is that the name you chose? It is so hard to remember anything when I look at you.”
“Beatrice--Unorna--anything,” came the answer, softly murmuring. “Anything, dear, any name, any face, any voice, if only I am I, and you are you, and we two love! Both, neither, anything--do the blessed souls in Paradise know their own names?”
“You are right--what does it matter? Why should you need a name at all, since I have you with me always? It was well once--it served me when I prayed for you--and it served to tell me that my heart was gold while you were there, as the goldsmith’s mark upon his jewel stamps the pure metal, that all men may know it.”
“You need no sign like that to show me what you are,” said she, with a long glance.
“Nor I to tell me you are in my heart,” he answered. “It was a foolish speech. Would you have me wise now?”
“If wisdom is love--yes. If not----” She laughed softly.
“Then folly?”
“Then folly, madness, anything--so that this last, as last it must, or I shall die!”
“And why should it not last? Is there any reason, in earth or Heaven, why we two should part? If there is--I will make that reason itself folly, and madness, and unreason. Dear, do not speak of this not lasting. Die, you say? Worse, far worse; as much as eternal death is worse than bodily dying. Last? Does any one know what for ever means, if we do not? Die, we must, in these dying bodies of ours, but part--no. Love has burned the cruel sense out of that word, and bleached its blackness white. We wounded the devil, parting, with one kiss, we killed him with the next--this buries him--ah, love, how sweet----” There was neither resistance nor the thought of resisting. Their lips met and were withdrawn only that their eyes might drink again the draught the lips had tasted, long draughts of sweetness and liquid light and love unfathomable. And in the interval of speech half false, the truth of what was all true welled up from the clear depths and overflowed the falseness, till it grew falser and more fleeting still--as a thing lying deep in a bright water casts up a distorted image on refracted rays.
Glance and kiss, when two love, are as body and soul, supremely human and transcendently divine. The look alone, when the lips cannot meet, is but the disembodied spirit, beautiful even in its sorrow, sad, despairing, saying “ever,” and yet sighing “never,” tasting and knowing all the bitterness of both. The kiss without the glance? The body without the soul? The mortal thing without the undying thought? Draw down the thick veil and hide the sight, lest devils sicken at it, and lest man should loathe himself for what man can be.
Truth or untruth, their love was real, hers as much as his. She remembered only what her heart had been without it. What her goal might be, now that it had come, she guessed even then, but she would not ask. Was there never a martyr in old times, more human than the rest, who turned back, for love perhaps, if not for fear, and said that for love’s sake life still was sweet, and brought a milk-white dove to Aphrodite’s altar, or dropped a rose before Demeter’s feet? There must have been, for man is man, and woman, woman. And if in the next month, or even the next year, or after many years, that youth or maid took heart to bear a Christian’s death, was there then no forgiveness, no sign of holy cross upon the sandstone in the deep labyrinth of graves, no crown, no sainthood, and no reverent memory of his name or hers among those of men and women worthier, perhaps, but not more suffering?
No one can kill Self. No one can be altogether another, save in the passing passion of a moment’s acting. I--in that syllable lies the whole history of each human life; in that history lives the individuality; in the clear and true conception of that individuality dwells such joint foreknowledge of the future as we can have, such vague solution as to us is possible of that vast equation in which all quantities are unknown save that alone, that I which we know as we can know nothing else.
“Bury it!” she said. “Bury that parting--the thing, the word, and the thought--bury it with all others of its kind, with change, and old age, and stealing indifference, and growing coldness, and all that cankers love--bury them all, together, in one wide deep grave--then build on it the house of what we are--” “Change? Indifference? I do not know those words,” the Wanderer said. “Have they been in your dreams, love? They have never been in mine.”
He spoke tenderly, but with the faintest echo of sadness in his voice. The mere suggestion that such thoughts could have been near her was enough to pain him. She was silent, and again her head lay upon his shoulder. She found there still the rest and the peace. Knowing her own life, the immensity of his faith and trust in that other woman were made clear by the simple, heartfelt words. If she had been indeed Beatrice, would he have loved her so? If it had all been true, the parting, the seven years’ separation, the utter loneliness, the hopelessness, the despair, could she have been as true as he? In the stillness that followed she asked herself the question which was so near a greater and a deadlier one. But the answer came quickly. That, at least, she could have done. She could have been true to him, even to death. It must be so easy to be faithful when life was but one faith. In that chord at least no note rang false.
“Change in love--indifference to you!” she cried, all at once, hiding her lovely face in his breast and twining her arms about his neck. “No, no! I never meant that such things could be--they are but empty words, words one hears spoken lightly by lips that never spoke the truth, by men and women who never had such truth to speak as you and I.” “And as for old age,” he said, dwelling upon her speech, “what is that to us? Let it come, since come it must. It is good to be young and fair and strong, but would not you or I give up all that for love’s sake, each of us of our own free will, rather than lose the other’s love?”
“Indeed, indeed I would!” Unorna answered.
“Then what of age? What is it after all? A few gray hairs, a wrinkle here and there, a slower step, perhaps a dimmer glance. That is all it is--the quiet, sunny channel between the sea of earthly joy and the ocean of heavenly happiness. The breeze of love still fills the sails, wafting us softly onward through the narrows, never failing, though it be softer and softer, till we glide out, scarce knowing it, upon the broader water and are borne swiftly away from the lost land by the first breath of heaven.”
His words brought peace and the mirage of a far-off rest, that soothed again the little half-born doubt.
“Yes,” she said. “It is better to think so. Then we need think of no other change.”
“There is no other possible,” he answered, gently pressing the shoulder upon which his hand was resting. “We have not waited and believed, and trusted and loved, for seven years, to wake at last--face to face as we are to-day--and to find that we have trusted vainly and loved two shadows, I yours, and you mine, to find at the great moment of all that we are not ourselves, the selves we knew, but others of like passions but of less endurance. Have we, beloved? And if we could love, and trust, and believe without each other, each alone, is it not all the more sure that we shall be unchanging together? It must be so. The whole is greater than its parts, two loves together are greater and stronger than each could be of itself. The strength of two strands close twined together is more than twice the strength of each.”
She said nothing. By merest chance he had said words that had waked the doubt again, so that it grew a little and took a firmer hold in her unwilling heart. To love a shadow, he had said, to wake and find self not self at all. That was what might come, would come, must come, sooner or later, said the doubt. What matter where, or when, or how? The question came again, vaguely, faintly as a mere memory, but confidently as though knowing its own answer. Had she not rested in his arms, and felt his kisses and heard his voice? What matter how, indeed? It matters greatly, said the growing doubt, rearing its head and finding speech at last. It matters greatly, it said, for love lies not alone in voice, and kiss, and gentle touch, but in things more enduring, which to endure must be sound and whole and not cankered to the core by a living lie. Then came the old reckless reasoning again: Am I not I? Is he not he? Do I not love him with my whole strength? Does he not love this very self of mine, here as it is, my head upon his shoulder, my hand within his hand? And if he once loved another, have I not her place, to have and hold, that I may be loved in her stead? Go, said the doubt, growing black and strong; go, for you are nothing to him but a figure in his dream, disguised in the lines of one he really loved and loves; go quickly, before it is too late, before that real Beatrice comes and wakes him and drives you out of the kingdom you usurp.
But she knew it was only a doubt, and had it been the truth, and had Beatrice’s foot been on the threshold, she would not have been driven away by fear. But the fight had begun.
“Speak to me, dear,” she said. “I must hear your voice--it makes me know that it is all real.”
“How the minutes fly!” he exclaimed, smoothing her hair with his hand. “It seems to me that I was but just speaking when you spoke.”
“It seems so long--” She checked herself, wondering whether an hour had passed or but a second.
Though love be swifter than the fleeting hours, doubt can outrun a lifetime in one beating of the heart.
“Then how divinely long it all may seem,” he answered. “But can we not begin to think, and to make plans for to-morrow, and the next day, and for the years before us? That will make more time for us, for with the present we shall have the future, too. No--that is foolish again. And yet it is so hard to say which I would have. Shall the moment linger because it is so sweet? Or shall it be gone quickly, because the next is to be sweeter still? Love, where is your father?”
Unorna started. The question was suggested, perhaps, by his inclination to speak of what was to be done, but it fell suddenly upon her ears, as a peal of thunder when the sky has no clouds. Must she lie now, or break the spell? One word, at least, she could yet speak with truth.
“Dead.”
“Dead!” the Wanderer repeated, thoughtfully and with a faint surprise. “Is it long ago, beloved?” he asked presently, in a subdued tone as though fearing to wake some painful memory.
“Yes,” she answered. The great doubt was taking her heart in its strong hands now and tearing it, and twisting it.
“And whose house is this in which I have found you, darling? Was it his?”
“It is mine,” Unorna said.
How long would he ask questions to which she could find true answers? What question would come next? There were so many he might ask and few to which she could reply so truthfully even in that narrow sense of truth which found its only meaning in a whim of chance. But for a moment he asked nothing more.
“Not mine,” she said. “It is yours. You cannot take me and yet call anything mine.”
“Ours, then, beloved. What does it matter? So he died long ago--poor man! And yet, it seems but a little while since some one told me--but that was a mistake, of course. He did not know. How many years may it be, dear one? I see you still wear mourning for him.”
“No--that was but a fancy--to-day. He died--he died more than two years ago.”
She bent her head. It was but a poor attempt at truth, a miserable lying truth to deceive herself with, but it seemed better than to lie the whole truth outright, and say that her father--Beatrice’s father--had been dead but just a week. The blood burned in her face. Brave natures, good and bad alike, hate falsehood, not for its wickedness, perhaps, but for its cowardice. She could do things as bad, far worse. She could lay her hand upon the forehead of a sleeping man and inspire in him a deep, unchangeable belief in something utterly untrue; but now, as it was, she was ashamed and hid her face.
“It is strange,” he said, “how little men know of each other’s lives or deaths. They told me he was alive last year. But it has hurt you to speak of it. Forgive me, dear, it was thoughtless of me.”
He tried to lift her head, but she held it obstinately down.
“Have I pained you, Beatrice?” he asked, forgetting to call her by the other name that was so new to him.
“No--oh, no!” she exclaimed without looking up.
“What is it then?”
“Nothing--it is nothing--no, I will not look at you--I am ashamed.” That at least was true.
“Ashamed, dear heart! Of what?”
He had seen her face in spite of herself. Lie, or lose all, said a voice within.
“Ashamed of being glad that--that I am free,” she stammered, struggling on the very verge of the precipice.
“You may be glad of that, and yet be very sorry he is dead,” the Wanderer said, stroking her hair.
It was true, and seemed quite simple. She wondered that she had not thought of that. Yet she felt that the man she loved, in all his nobility and honesty, was playing the tempter to her, though he could not know it. Deeper and deeper she sank, yet ever more conscious that she was sinking. Before him she felt no longer as loving woman to loving man--she was beginning to feel as a guilty prisoner before his judge.
He thought to turn the subject to a lighter strain. By chance he glanced at his own hand.
“Do you know this ring?” he asked, holding it before her, with a smile.
“Indeed, I know it,” she answered, trembling again.
“You gave it to me, love, do you remember? And I gave you a likeness of myself, because you asked for it, though I would rather have given you something better. Have you it still?”
She was silent. Something was rising in her throat. Then she choked it down.
“I had it in my hand last night,” she said in a breaking voice. True, once more.
“What is it, darling? Are you crying? This is no day for tears.”
“I little thought that I should have yourself to-day,” she tried to say.
Then the tears came, tears of shame, big, hot, slow. They fell upon his hand. She was weeping for joy, he thought. What else could any man think in such a case? He drew her to him, and pressed her cheek with his hand as her head nestled on his shoulder.
“When you put this ring on my finger, dear--so long ago----” She sobbed aloud.
“No, darling--no, dear heart,” he said, comforting her, “you must not cry--that long ago is over now and gone for ever. Do you remember that day, sweetheart, in the broad spring sun upon the terrace among the lemon trees. No, dear--your tears hurt me always, even when they are shed in happiness--no, dear, no. Rest there, let me dry your dear eyes--so and so. Again? For ever, if you will. While you have tears, I have kisses to dry them--it was so then, on that very day. I can remember. I can see it all--and you. You have not changed, love, in all those years, more than a blossom changes in one hour of a summer’s day! You took this ring and put it on my finger. Do you remember what I said? I know the very words. I promised you--it needed no promise either--that it should never leave its place until you took it back--and you--how well I remember your face--you said that you would take it from my hand some day, when all was well, when you should be free to give me another in its stead, and to take one in return. I have kept my word, beloved. Keep yours--I have brought you back the ring. Take it, sweetheart. It is heavy with the burden of lonely years. Take it and give me that other which I claim.”
She did not speak, for she was fighting down the choking sobs, struggling to keep back the burning drops that scalded her cheeks, striving to gather strength for the weight of a greater shame. Lie, or lose all, the voice said.
Very slowly she raised her head. She knew that his hand was close to hers, held there that she might fulfil Beatrice’s promise. Was she not free? Could she not give him what he asked? No matter how--she tried to say it to herself and could not. She felt his breath upon her hair. He was waiting. If she did not act soon or speak he would wonder what held her back--wonder--suspicion next and then? She put out her hand to touch his fingers, half blinded, groping as though she could not see. He made it easy for her. He fancied she was trembling, as she was weeping, with the joy of it all.
She felt the ring, though she dared not look at it. She drew it a little and felt that it would come off easily. She felt the fingers she loved so well, straight, strong and nervous, and she touched them lovingly. The ring was not tight, it would pass easily over the joint that alone kept it in its place.
“Take it, beloved,” he said. “It has waited long enough.”
He was beginning to wonder at her hesitation as she knew he would. After wonder would come suspicion--and then? Very slowly--it was just upon the joint of his finger now. Should she do it? What would happen? He would have broken his vow--unwittingly. How quickly and gladly Beatrice would have taken it. What would she say, if they lived and met--why should they not meet? Would the spell endure that shock--who would Beatrice be then? The woman who had given him this ring? Or another, whom he would no longer know? But she must be quick. He was waiting and Beatrice would not have made him wait.
Her hand was like stone, numb, motionless, immovable, as though some unseen being had taken it in an iron grasp and held it there, in mid-air, just touching his. Yes--no--yes--she could not move--a hand was clasped upon her wrist, a hand smaller than his, but strong as fate, fixed in its grip as an iron vice.
Unorna felt a cold breath, that was not his, upon her forehead, and she felt as though her heavy hair were rising of itself upon her head. She knew that horror, for she had been overtaken by it once before. She was not afraid, but she knew what it was. There was a shadow, too, and a dark woman, tall, queenly, with deep flashing eyes was standing beside her. She knew, before she looked; she looked, and it was there. Her own face was whiter than that other woman’s.
“Have you come already?” she asked of the shadow, in a low despairing tone.
“Beatrice--what has happened?” cried the Wanderer. To him, she seemed to be speaking to the empty air and her white face startled him.
“Yes,” she said, staring still, in the same hopeless voice. “It is Beatrice. She has come for you.”
“Beatrice--beloved--do not speak like that! For God’s sake--what do you see? There is nothing there.”
“Beatrice is there. I am Unorna.”
“Unorna, Beatrice--have we not said it should be all the same! Sweetheart--look at me! Rest here--shut those dear eyes of yours. It is gone now whatever it was--you are tired, dear--you must rest.”
Her eyes closed and her head sank. It was gone, as he said, and she knew what it had been--a mere vision called up by her own over-tortured brain. Keyork Arabian had a name for it.
Frightened by your own nerves, laughed the voice, when, if you had not been a coward, you might have faced it down and lied again, and all would have been well. But you shall have another chance, and lying is very easy, even when the nerves are over-wrought. You will do better the next time.
The voice was like Keyork Arabian’s. Unstrung, almost forgetting all, she wondered vaguely at the sound, for it was a real sound and a real voice to her. Was her soul his, indeed, and was he drawing it on slowly, surely to the end? Had he been behind her last night? Had he left an hour’s liberty only to come back again and take at last what was his?
There is time yet, you have not lost him, for he thinks you mad. The voice spoke once more.
And at the same moment the strong dear arms were again around her, again her head was on that restful shoulder of his, again her pale face was turned up to his, and kisses were raining on her tired eyes, while broken words of love and tenderness made music through the tempest.
Again the vast temptation rose. How could he ever know? Who was to undeceive him, if he was not yet undeceived? Who should ever make him understand the truth so long as the spell lasted? Why not then take what was given her, and when the end came, if it came, then tell all boldly? Even then, he would not understand. Had he understood last night, when she had confessed all that she had done before? He had not believed one word of it, except that she loved him. Could she make him believe it now, when he was clasping her so fiercely to his breast, half mad with love for her himself?
So easy, too. She had but to forget that passing vision, to put her arms about his neck, to give kiss for kiss, and loving word for loving word. Not even that. She had but to lie there, passive, silent if she could not speak, and it would be still the same. No power on earth could undo what she had done, unless she willed it. Neither man nor woman could make his clasping hands let go of her and give her up.
Be still and wait, whispered the voice, you have lost nothing yet.
But Unorna would not. She had spoken and acted her last lie. It was over.
|
{
"id": "3816"
}
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27
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Unorna struggled for a moment. The Wanderer did not understand, but loosed his arms, so that she was free. She rose to her feet and stood before him.
“You have dreamed all this,” she said. “I am not Beatrice.”
“Dreamed? Not Beatrice?” she heard him cry in his bewilderment.
Something more he said, but she could not catch the words. She was already gone, through the labyrinth of the many plants, to the door through which twelve hours earlier she had fled from Israel Kafka. She ran the faster as she left him behind. She passed the entrance and the passage and the vestibule beyond, not thinking whither she was going, or not caring. She found herself in that large, well-lighted room in which the ancient sleeper lay alone. Perhaps her instinct led her there as to a retreat safer even than her own chamber. She knew that if she would there was something there which she could use.
She sank into a chair and covered her face, trembling from head to foot. For many minutes after that she could neither see nor hear--she would hardly have felt a wound or a blow. And yet she knew that she meant to end her life, since all that made it life was ended.
After a time, her hands fell in a despairing gesture upon her knees and she stared about the room. Her eyes rested on the sleeper, then upon his couch, lying as a prophet in state, the massive head raised upon a silken pillow, the vast limbs just outlined beneath the snow-white robe, the hoary beard flowing down over the great breast that slowly rose and fell.
To her there was a dreadful irony in that useless life, prolonged in sleep beyond the limits of human age. Yet she had thought it worth the labour and care and endless watchfulness it had cost for years. And now her own, strong, young and fresh, seemed not only useless but fit only to be cut off and cast away, as an existence that offended God and man and most of all herself.
But if she died then, there, in that secret chamber where she and her companion had sought the secret of life for years, if she died now--how would all end? Was it an expiation--or a flight? Would one short moment of half-conscious suffering pay half her debt?
She stared at the old man’s face with wide, despairing eyes. Many a time, unknown to Keyork and once to his knowledge, she had roused the sleeper to speak, and on the whole he had spoken truly, wisely, and well. She lacked neither the less courage to die, nor the greater to live. She longed but to hear one honest word, not of hope, but of encouragement, but one word in contrast to those hideous whispered promptings that had come to her in Keyork Arabian’s voice. How could she trust herself alone? Her evil deeds were many--so many, that, although she had turned at last against them, she could not tell where to strike.
“If you would only tell me!” she cried leaning over the unconscious head. “If you would only help me. You are so old that you must be wise, and if so very wise, then you are good! Wake, but this once, and tell me what is right!”
The deep eyes opened and looked up to hers. The great limbs stirred, the bony hands unclasped. There was something awe-inspiring in the ancient strength renewed and filled with a new life.
“Who calls me?” asked the clear, deep voice.
“I, Unorna----” “What do you ask of me?”
He had risen from his couch and stood before her, towering far above her head. Even the Wanderer would have seemed but of common stature beside this man of other years, of a forgotten generation, who now stood erect and filled with a mysterious youth.
“Tell me what I should do----” “Tell me what you have done.”
Then in one great confession, with bowed head and folded hands, she poured out the story of her life.
“And I am lost!” she cried at last. “One holds my soul, and one my heart! May not my body die? Oh, say that it is right--that I may die!”
“Die? Die--when you may yet undo?”
“Undo?”
“Undo and do. Undo the wrong and do the right.”
“I cannot. The wrong is past undoing--and I am past doing right.”
“Do not blaspheme--go! Do it.”
“What?”
“Call her--that other woman--Beatrice. Bring her to him, and him to her.”
“And see them meet!”
She covered her face with her hands, and one short moan escaped her lips.
“May I not die?” she cried despairingly. “May I not die--for him--for her, for both? Would that not be enough? Would they not meet? Would they not then be free?”
“Do you love him still?”
“With all my broken heart----” “Then do not leave his happiness to chance alone, but go at once. There is one little act of Heaven’s work still in your power. Make it all yours.”
His great hands rested on her shoulders and his eyes looked down to hers.
“Is it so bitter to do right?” he asked.
“It is very bitter,” she answered.
Very slowly she turned, and as she moved he went beside her, gently urging her and seeming to support her. Slowly, through vestibule and passage, they went on and entered together the great hall of the flowers. The Wanderer was there alone.
He uttered a short cry and sprang to meet her, but stepped back in awe of the great white-robed figure that towered by her side.
“Beatrice!” he cried, as they passed.
“I am not Beatrice,” she answered, her downcast eyes not raised to look at him, moving still forward under the gentle guidance of the giant’s hand.
“Not Beatrice--no--you are not she--you are Unorna! Have I dreamed all this?”
She had passed him now, and still she would not turn her head. But her voice came back to him as she walked on.
“You have dreamed what will very soon be true,” she said. “Wait here, and Beatrice will soon be with you.”
“I know that I am mad,” the Wanderer cried, making one step to follow her, then stopping short. Unorna was already at the door. The ancient sleeper laid one hand upon her head.
“You will do it now,” he said.
“I will do it--to the end,” she answered. “Thank God that I have made you live to tell me how.”
So she went out, alone, to undo what she had done so evilly well.
The old man turned and went towards the Wanderer, who stood still in the middle of the hall, confused, not knowing whether he had dreamed or was really mad.
“What man are you?” he asked, as the white-robed figure approached.
“A man, as you are, for I was once young--not as you are, for I am very old, and yet like you, for I am young again.”
“You speak in riddles. What are you doing here, and where have you sent Unorna?”
“When I was old, in that long time between, she took me in, and I have slept beneath her roof these many years. She came to me to-day. She told me all her story and all yours, waking me from my sleep, and asking me what she should do. And she is gone to do that thing of which I told her. Wait and you will see. She loves you well.”
“And you would help her to get my love, as she had tried to get it before?” the Wanderer asked with rising anger. “What am I to you, or you to me, that you would meddle in my life?”
“You to me? Nothing. A man.”
“Therefore an enemy--and you would help Unorna--let me go! This home is cursed. I will not stay in it.” The hoary giant took his arm, and the Wanderer started at the weight and strength of the touch.
“You shall bless this house before you leave it. In this place, here where you stand, you shall find the happiness you have sought through all the years.”
“In Unorna?” the question was asked scornfully.
“By Unorna.”
“I do not believe you. You are mad, as I am. Would you play the prophet?”
The door opened in the distance, and from behind the screen of plants Keyork Arabian came forward into the hall, his small eyes bright, his ivory face set and expressionless, his long beard waving in the swing of his walk. The Wanderer saw him first and called to him.
“Keyork--come here!” he said. “Who is this man?”
For a moment Keyork seemed speechless with amazement. But it was anger that choked his words. Then he came on quickly.
“Who waked him?” he cried in fury. “What is this? Why is he here?”
“Unorna waked me,” answered the ancient sleeper very calmly.
“Unorna? Again? The curse of The Three Black Angels on her! Mad again? Sleep, go back! It is not ready yet, and you will die, and I shall lose it all--all--all! Oh, she shall pay for this with her soul in hell!”
He threw himself upon the giant, in an insane frenzy, clasping his arms round the huge limbs and trying to force him backwards.
“Go! go!” he cried frantically. “It may not be too late! You may yet sleep and live! Oh, my Experiment, my great Experiment! All lost----” “What is this madness?” asked the Wanderer. “You cannot carry him, and he will not go. Let him alone.”
“Madness?” yelled Keyork, turning on him. “You are the madman, you the fool, who cannot understand! Help me to move him--you are strong and young--together we can take him back--he may yet sleep and live--he must and shall! I say it! Lay your hands on him--you will not help me? Then I will curse you till you do----” “Poor Keyork!” exclaimed the Wanderer, half pitying him. “Your big thoughts have cracked your little brain at last.”
“Poor Keyork? You call me poor Keyork? You boy! You puppet! You ball, that we have bandied to and fro, half sleeping, half awake! It drives me mad to see you standing there, scoffing instead of helping me!”
“You are past my help, I fear.”
“Will you not move? Are you dead already, standing on your feet and staring at me?”
Again Keyork threw himself upon the huge old man, and stamped and struggled and tried to move him backwards. He might as well have spent his strength against a rock. Breathless but furious still, he desisted at last, too much beside himself to see that he whose sudden death he feared was stronger than he, because the great experiment had succeeded far beyond all hope.
“Unorna has done this!” he cried, beating his forehead in impotent rage. “Unorna has ruined me, and all,--and everything--so she has paid me for my help! Trust a woman when she loves? Trust angels to curse God, or Hell to save a sinner! But she shall pay, too--I have her still. Why do you stare at me? Wait, fool! You shall be happy now. What are you to me that I should even hate you? You shall have what you want. I will bring you the woman you love, the Beatrice you have seen in dreams--and then Unorna’s heart will break and she will die, and her soul--her soul----” Keyork broke into a peal of laughter, deep, rolling, diabolical in its despairing, frantic mirth. He was still laughing as he reached the door.
“Her soul, her soul!” they heard him cry, between one burst and another as he went out, and from the echoing vestibule, and from the staircase beyond, the great laughter rolled back to them when they were left alone.
“What is it all? I cannot understand,” the Wanderer said, looking up to the grand calm face.
“It is not always given to evil to do good, even for evil’s sake,” said the old man. “The thing that he would is done already. The wound that he would make is already bleeding; the heart he is gone to break is broken; the soul that he would torture is beyond all his torments.”
“Is Unorna dead?” the Wanderer asked, turning, he knew now why, with a sort of reverence to his companion.
“She is not dead.”
Unorna waited in the parlour of the convent. Then Beatrice came in, and stood before her. Neither feared the other, and each looked into the other’s eyes.
“I have come to undo what I have done,” Unorna said, not waiting for the cold inquiry which she knew would come if she were silent.
“That will be hard, indeed,” Beatrice answered.
“Yes. It is very hard. Make it still harder if you can, I could still do it.”
“And do you think I will believe you, or trust you?” asked the dark woman.
“I know that you will when you know how I have loved him.”
“Have you come here to tell me of your love?”
“Yes. And when I have told you, you will forgive me.”
“I am no saint,” said Beatrice, coldly. “I do not find forgiveness in such abundance as you need.”
“You will find it for me. You are not bad, as I am, but you can understand what I have done, nevertheless, for you know what you yourself would do for the sake of him we love. No--do not be angry with me yet--I love him and I tell you so--that you may understand.”
“At that price, I would rather not have the understanding. I do not care to hear you say it. It is not good to hear.”
“Yet, if I did not love him as I do, I should not be here, of my own free will, to take you to him. I came for that.”
“I do not believe you,” Beatrice answered in tones like ice.
“And yet you will, and very soon. Whether you forgive or not--that is another matter. I cannot ask it. God knows how much easier it would have been to die than to come here. But if I were dead you might never have found him, nor he you, though you are so very near together. Do you think it is easier for me to come to you, whom he loves, than it is for you to hear me say I love him, when I come to give him to you? If you had found it all, not as it is, but otherwise--if you had found that in these years he had known me and loved me, as he once loved you, if he turned from you coldly and bid you forget him, because he would be happy with me, and because he had utterly forgotten you--would it be easy for you to give him up?”
“He loved me then--he loves me still,” Beatrice said. “It is another case.”
“A much more bitter case. Even then you would have the memory of his love, which I can never have--in true reality, though I have much to remember, in his dreams of you.”
Beatrice started a little, and her brow grew dark and angry.
“Then you have tried to get what was not yours by your bad powers!” she cried. “And you have made him sleep--and dream--what?”
“Of you.”
“And he talked of love?”
“Of love for you.”
“To you?”
“To me.”
“And dreamed that you were I? That too?”
“That I was you.”
“Is there more to tell?” Beatrice asked, growing white. “He kissed you in that dream of his--do not tell me he did that--no, tell me--tell me all!”
“He kissed the thing he saw, believing the lips yours.”
“More--more--is it not done yet? Can you sting again? What else?”
“Nothing--save that last night I tried to kill you, body and soul.”
“And why did you not kill me?”
“Because you woke. Then the nun saved you. If she had not come, you would have slept again, and slept for ever. And I would have let his dreams last, and made it last--for him, I should have been the only Beatrice.”
“You have done all this, and you ask me to forgive you?”
“I ask nothing. If you will not go to him, I will bring him to you--” Beatrice turned away and walked across the room.
“Loved her,” she said aloud, “and talked to her of love, and kissed--” She stopped suddenly. Then she came back again with swift steps and grasped Unorna’s arm fiercely.
“Tell me more still--this dream has lasted long--you are man and wife!”
“We might have been. He would still have thought me you, for months and years. He would have had me take from his finger that ring you put there. I tried--I tell you the whole truth--but I could not. I saw you there beside me and you held my hand. I broke away and left him.”
“Left him of your free will?”
“I could not lie again. It was too much. He would have broken a promise if I had stayed. I love him--so I left him.”
“Is all this true?”
“Every word.”
“Swear it to me.”
“How can I? By what shall I swear to you? Heaven itself would laugh at any oath of mine. With my life I will answer for every word. With my soul--no--it is not mine to answer with. Will you have my life? My last breath shall tell you that I tell the truth. The dying do not lie.”
“You tell me that you love that man. You tell me that you made him think in dreams that he loved you. You tell me that you might be man and wife. And you ask me to believe that you turned back from such happiness as would make an angel sin? If you had done this--but it is not possible--no woman could! His words in your ear, and yet turn back? His lips on yours, and leave him? Who could do that?”
“One who loves him.”
“What made you do it?”
“Love.”
“No--fear--nothing else----” “Fear? And what have I to fear? My body is beyond the fear of death, as my soul is beyond the hope of life. If it were to be done again I should be weak. I know I should. If you could know half of what the doing cost! But let that alone. I did it, and he is waiting for you. Will you come?”
“If I only knew it to be true----” “How hard you make it. Yet, it was hard enough.”
Beatrice touched her arm, more gently than before, and gazed into her eyes.
“If I could believe it all I would not make it hard. I would forgive you--and you would deserve better than that, better than anything that is mine to give.”
“I deserve nothing and ask nothing. If you will come, you will see, and, seeing, you will believe. And if you then forgive--well then, you will have done far more than I could do.”
“I would forgive you freely----” “Are you afraid to go with me?”
“No. I am afraid of something worse. You have put something here--a hope----” “A hope? Then you believe. There is no hope without a little belief in it. Will you come?”
“To him?”
“To him.”
“It can but be untrue,” said Beatrice, still hesitating. “I can but go. What of him!” she asked suddenly. “If he were living--would you take me to him? Could you?”
She turned very pale, and her eyes stared madly at Unorna.
“If he were dead,” Unorna answered, “I should not be here.”
Something in her tone and look moved Beatrice’s heart at last.
“I will go with you,” she said. “And if I find him--and if all is well with him--then God in Heaven repay you, for you have been braver than the bravest I ever knew.”
“Can love save a soul as well as lose it?” Unorna asked.
Then they went away together.
They were scarcely out of sight of the convent gate when another carriage drove up. Almost before it had stopped, the door opened and Keyork Arabian’s short, heavy form emerged and descended hastily to the pavement. He rang the bell furiously, and the old portress set the gate ajar and looked out cautiously, fearing that the noisy peal meant trouble or disturbance.
“The lady Beatrice Varanger--I must see her instantly!” cried the little man in terrible excitement.
“She is gone out,” the portress replied.
“Gone out? Where? Alone?”
“With a lady who was here last night--a lady with unlike eyes--” “Where? Where? Where are they gone?” asked Keyork hardly able to find breath.
“The lady bade the coachman drive her home--but where she lives--” “Home? To Unorna’s home? It is not true! I see it in your eyes. Witch! Hag! Let me in! Let me in, I say! May vampires get your body and the Three Black Angels cast lots upon your soul!”
In the storm of curses that followed, the convent door was violently shut in his face. Within, the portress stood shaking with fear, crossing herself again and again, and verily believing that the devil himself had tried to force an entrance into the sacred place.
In fearful anger Keyork drew back. He hesitated one moment and then regained his carriage.
“To Unorna’s house!” he shouted, as he shut the door with a crash.
“This is my house, and he is here,” Unorna said, as Beatrice passed before her, under the deep arch of the entrance.
Then she lead the way up the broad staircase, and through the small outer hall to the door of the great conservatory.
“You will find him there,” she said. “Go on alone.”
But Beatrice took her hand to draw her in.
“Must I see it all?” Unorna asked, hopelessly.
Then from among the plants and trees a great white-robed figure came out and stood between them. Joining their hands he gently pushed them forward to the middle of the hall where the Wanderer stood alone.
“It is done!” Unorna cried, as her heart broke.
She saw the scene she had acted so short a time before. She heard the passionate cry, the rain of kisses, the tempest of tears. The expiation was complete. Not a sight, not a sound was spared her. The strong arms of the ancient sleeper held her upright on her feet. She could not fall, she could not close her eyes, she could not stop her ears, no merciful stupor overcame her.
“Is it so bitter to do right?” the old man asked, bending low and speaking softly.
“It is the bitterness of death,” she said.
“It is well done,” he answered.
Then came a noise of hurried steps and a loud, deep voice, calling, “Unorna! Unorna!”
Keyork Arabian was there. He glanced at Beatrice and the Wanderer, locked in each other’s arms, then turned to Unorna and looked into her face.
“It has killed her,” he said. “Who did it?”
His low-spoken words echoed like angry thunder.
“Give her to me,” he said again. “She is mine--body and soul.”
But the great strong arms were around her and would not let her go.
“Save me!” she cried in failing tones. “Save me from him!”
“You have saved yourself,” said the solemn voice of the old man.
“Saved?” Keyork laughed. “From me?” He laid his hand upon her arm. Then his face changed again, and his laughter died dismally away, and he hung back.
“Can you forgive her?” asked the other voice.
The Wanderer stood close to them now, drawing Beatrice to his side. The question was for them.
“Can you forgive me?” asked Unorna faintly, turning her eyes towards them.
“As we hope to find forgiveness and trust in a life to come,” they answered.
There was a low sound in the air, unearthly, muffled, desperate as of a strong being groaning in awful agony. When they looked, they saw that Keyork Arabian was gone.
The dawn of a coming day rose in Unorna’s face as she sank back.
“It is over,” she sighed, as her eyes closed.
Her question was answered; her love had saved her.
|
{
"id": "3816"
}
|
1
|
SWEET ANTICIPATIONS
|
Having decided on a long tour, we went first to Paris; the necessary preparations required time, and we took a furnished apartment for one month. The decision to leave France had changed everything: joy, hope, confidence, all returned; no more sorrow, no more grief over approaching separation. We had now nothing but dreams of happiness and vows of eternal love; I wished, once for all, to make my dear mistress forget all the suffering I had caused her. How had I been able to resist such proof of tender affection and courageous resignation? Not only did Brigitte pardon me, but she was willing to make a still greater sacrifice and leave everything for me. As I felt myself unworthy of the devotion she exhibited, I wished to requite her by my love; at last my good angel had triumphed, and admiration and love resumed their sway in my heart. Brigitte and I examined a map to determine where we should go and bury ourselves from the world. We had not yet decided, and we found pleasure in that very uncertainty; while glancing over the map we said "Where shall we go? What shall we do? Where shall we begin life anew?" How shall I tell how deeply I repented my cruelty when I looked upon her smiling face, a face that laughed at the future, although still pale from the sorrows of the past! Blissful projects of future joy, you are perhaps the only true happiness known to man! For eight days we spent our time making purchases and preparing for our departure; then a young man presented himself at our apartments: he brought letters to Brigitte. After their interview I found her sad and distraught; but I could not guess the cause unless the letters were from N------, that village where I had confessed my love and where Brigitte's only relatives lived. Nevertheless, our preparations progressed rapidly and I became impatient to get away; at the same time I was so happy that I could hardly rest. When I arose in the morning and the sun was shining through our windows, I experienced such transports of joy that I was almost intoxicated with happiness. So anxious was I to prove the sincerity of my love for Brigitte that I hardly dared kiss the hem of her skirt. Her lightest words made me tremble as if her voice were strange to me; I alternated between tears and laughter, and I never spoke of the past except with horror and disgust. Our room was full of personal effects scattered about in disorder--albums, pictures, books, and the dear map we loved so much. We went to and fro about the little apartment; at brief intervals I would stop and kneel before Brigitte who would call me an idler, saying that she had to do all the work, and that I was good for nothing; and all sorts of projects flitted through our minds. Sicily was far away, but the winters are so delightful there! Genoa is very pretty with its painted houses, its green gardens, and the Apennines in the background! But what noise! What crowds! Among every three men on the street, one is a monk and another a soldier. Florence is sad, it is the Middle Ages living in the midst of modern life. How can any one endure those grilled windows and that horrible brown color with which all the houses are tinted?
What could we do at Rome? We were not travelling in order to forget ourselves, much less for the sake of instruction. To the Rhine? But the season was over, and although we did not care for the world of fashion, still it is sad to visit its haunts when it has fled. But Spain? Too many restrictions there; one travels like an army on the march, and may expect everything except repose. Switzerland? Too many people go there, and most of them are deceived as to the nature of its attractions; but in that land are unfolded the three most beautiful colors on God's earth: the azure of the sky, the verdure of the plains, and the whiteness of the snows on the summits of glaciers.
"Let us go, let us go!" cried Brigitte, "let us fly away like two birds. Let us pretend, my dear Octave, that we met each other only yesterday. You met me at a ball, I pleased you and I love you; you tell me that some leagues distant, in a certain little town, you loved a certain Madame Pierson; what passed between you and her I do not know. You will not tell me the story of your love for another! And I will whisper to you that not long since I loved a terrible fellow who made me very unhappy; you will reprove me and close my mouth, and we will agree never to speak of such things."
When Brigitte spoke thus I experienced a feeling that resembled avarice; I caught her in my arms and cried: "Oh, God! I know not whether it is with joy or with fear that I tremble. I am about to carry off my treasure. Die, my youth; die, all memories of the past; die, all cares and regrets! Oh, my, good, my brave Brigitte! You have made a man out of a child. If I lose you now, I shall never love again. Perhaps, before I knew you, another woman might have cured me; but now you alone, of all the world, have power to destroy me or to save me, for I bear in my heart the wound of all the evil I have done you. I have been an ingrate, blind and cruel. God be praised! You love me still. If you ever return to that home under whose lindens I first met you, look carefully about that deserted house; you will find a phantom there, for the man who left it, and went away with you, is not the man who entered it."
"Is it true?" said Brigitte, and her face, all radiant with love, was raised to heaven; "is it true that I am yours? Yes, far from this odious world in which you have grown old before your time, yes, my child, you shall really love. I shall have you as you are, and, wherever we go you will make me forget the possibility of a day when you will no longer love me. My mission will have been accomplished, and I shall always be thankful for it."
Finally we decided to go to Geneva and then choose some resting place in the Alps. Brigitte was enthusiastic about the lake; I thought I could already breathe the air which floats over its surface, and the odor of the verdure-clad valley; already I beheld Lausanne, Vevey, Oberland, and in the distance the summits of Monte Rosa and the immense plain of Lombardy. Already oblivion, repose, travel, all the delights of happy solitude invited us; already, when in the evening with joined hands, we looked at each other in silence, we felt rising within us that sentiment of strange grandeur which takes possession of the heart on the eve of a long journey, the mysterious and indescribable vertigo which has in it something of the terrors of exile and the hopes of pilgrimage. Are there not in the human mind wings that flutter and sonorous chords that vibrate? How shall I describe it? Is there not a world of meaning in the simple words: "All is ready, we are about to go"?
Suddenly Brigitte became languid; she bowed her head in silence. When I asked her whether she was in pain, she said "No!" in a voice that was scarcely audible; when I spoke of our departure, she arose, cold and resigned, and continued her preparations; when I swore to her that she was going to be happy, and that I would consecrate my life to her, she shut herself up in her room and wept; when I kissed her she turned pale, and averted her eyes as my lips approached hers; when I told her that nothing had yet been done, that it was not too late to renounce our plans, she frowned severely; when I begged her to open her heart to me and told her I would die rather than cause her one regret, she threw her arms about my neck, then stopped and repulsed me as if involuntarily. Finally, I entered her room holding in my hand a ticket on which our places were marked for the carriage to Besancon. I approached her and placed it in her lap; she stretched out her hand, screamed, and fell unconscious at my feet.
|
{
"id": "3941"
}
|
2
|
THE DEMON OF DOUBT
|
All my efforts to divine the cause of so unexpected a change were as vain as the questions I had first asked. Brigitte was ill, and remained obstinately silent. After an entire day passed in supplication and conjecture, I went out without knowing where I was going. Passing the Opera, I entered it from mere force of habit.
I could pay no attention to what was going on in the theatre, I was so overwhelmed with grief, so stupefied, that I did not live, so to speak, except in myself, and exterior objects made no impression on my senses. All my powers were centred on a single thought, and the more I turned it over in my head, the less clearly could I distinguish its meaning.
What obstacle was this that had so suddenly come between us and the realization of our fondest hopes? If it was merely some ordinary event or even an actual misfortune, such as an accident or the loss of a friend, why that obstinate silence? After all that Brigitte had done, when our dreams seemed about to be realized, what could be the nature of a secret that destroyed our happiness and could not be confided to me? What! to conceal it from me! And yet I could not find it in my heart to suspect her. The appearance of suspicion revolted me and filled me with horror. On the other hand, how could I conceive of inconstancy or of caprice in that woman, as I knew her? I was lost in an abyss of doubt, and I could not discover a gleam of light, the smallest point, on which to base conjecture.
In front of me in the gallery sat a young man whose face was not unknown to me. As often happens when one is preoccupied, I looked at him without thinking of him as a personal identity or trying to fit a name on him. Suddenly I recognized him: it was he who had brought letters to Brigitte from N------. I arose and started to accost him without thinking what I was doing. He occupied a place that I could not reach without disturbing a large number of spectators, and I was forced to await the entr'acte.
My first thought was that if any one could enlighten me it was this young man. He had had several interviews with Madame Pierson in the last few days, and I recalled the fact that she was always much depressed after his visits. He had seen her the morning of the day she was taken ill.
The letters he brought Brigitte had not been shown me; it was possible that he knew the reason why our departure was delayed. Perhaps he did not know all the circumstances, but he could doubtless enlighten me as to the contents of those letters, and there was no reason why I should hesitate to question him. When the curtain fell, I followed him to the foyer; I do not know that he saw me coming, but he hastened away and entered a box. I determined to wait until he should come out, and stood looking at the box for fifteen minutes. At last he appeared. I bowed and approached him. He hesitated a moment, then turned and disappeared down a stairway.
My desire to speak to him had been too evident to admit of any other explanation than deliberate intention on his part to avoid me. He surely knew my face, and, whether he knew it or not, a man who sees another approaching him ought, at least, to wait for him. We were the only persons in the corridor at the time, and there could be no doubt he did not wish to speak to me. I did not dream of such impertinent treatment from a man whom I had cordially received at my apartments; why should he insult me? He could have no other excuse than a desire to avoid an awkward interview, during which questions might be asked which he did not care to answer. But why? This second mystery troubled me almost as much as the first. Although I tried to drive the thought from my head, that young man's action in avoiding me seemed to have some connection with Brigitte's obstinate silence.
Of all torments uncertainty is the most difficult to endure, and during my life I have exposed myself to many dangers because I could not wait patiently. When I returned to my apartments I found Brigitte reading those same fateful letters from N------. I told her that I could not remain longer in suspense, and that I wished to be relieved from it at any cost; that I desired to know the cause of the sudden change which had taken place in her, and that, if she refused to speak, I should look upon her silence as a positive refusal to go abroad with me and an order for me to leave her forever.
She reluctantly handed me the letters she was reading. Her relatives had written her that her departure had disgraced them, that every one knew the circumstances, and that they felt it their duty to warn her of the consequences; that she was living openly as my mistress, and that, although she was a widow and free to do as she chose, she ought to think of the name she bore; that neither they nor her old friends would ever see her again if she persisted in her course; finally, by all sorts of threats and entreaties, they urged her to return.
The tone of the letter angered me, and at first I took it as an insult.
"And that young man who brings you these remonstrances," I cried, "doubtless has orders to deliver them personally, and does not fail to do his own part to the best of his ability. Am I not right?"
Brigitte's dejection made me reflect and calm my wrath.
"You will do as you wish, and achieve my ruin," she said. "My fate rests with you; you have been for a long time my master. Avenge as you please the last effort my old friends have made to recall me to reason, to the world that I formerly respected, to the honor that I have lost. I have not a word to say, and if you wish to dictate my reply, I will obey you."
"I care to know nothing," I replied, "but your intentions; it is for me to comply with your wishes, and I assure you I am ready to do it. Tell me, do you desire to remain, to go away, or shall I go alone?"
"Why that question?" asked Brigitte; "have I said that I had changed my mind? I am suffering, and can not travel in my present condition, but when I recover we will go to Geneva as we have planned."
We separated at these words, and the coldness with which she had expressed her resolution saddened me more than usual. It was not the first time our liaison had been threatened by her relatives; but up to this time whatever letters Brigitte had received she had never taken them so much to heart. How could I bring myself to believe that Brigitte had been so affected by protests which in less happy moments had had no effect on her? Could it be merely the weakness of a woman who recoils from an act of final significance? "I will do as you please," she had said. No, it does not please me to demand patience, and rather than look at that sorrowful face even a week longer, unless she speaks I will set out alone.
Fool that I was! Had I the strength to do it? I did not close my eyes that night, and the next morning I resolved to call on that young man I had seen at the opera. I do not know whether it was wrath or curiosity that impelled me to this course, nor did I know just what I desired to learn of him; but I reflected that he could not avoid me this time, and that was all I desired.
As I did not know his address, I asked Brigitte for it, pretending that I felt under an obligation to call on him after all the visits he had made us; I had not said a word about my experience at the opera. Brigitte's eyes betrayed signs of tears. When I entered her room she held out her hand and said: "What do you wish?"
Her voice was sad but tender. We exchanged a few kind words, and I set out less unhappy.
The name of the young man I was going to see was Smith; he was living near us. When I knocked at his door, I experienced a strange sensation of uneasiness; I was dazed as though by a sudden flash of light. His first gesture froze my blood. He was in bed, and with the same accent Brigitte had employed, with a face as pale and haggard as hers, he held out his hand and said: "What do you wish?"
Say what you please, there are things in a man's life which reason can not explain. I sat as still as if awakened from a dream, and began to repeat his questions. Why, in fact, had I come to see him? How could I tell him what had brought me there? Even if he had anything to tell me, how did I know he would speak? He had brought letters from N------, and knew those who had written them. But it cost me an effort to question him, and I feared he would suspect what was in my mind. Our first words were polite and insignificant. I thanked him for his kindness in bringing letters to Madame Pierson; I told him that upon leaving France we would ask him to do the same favor for us; and then we were silent, surprised to find ourselves vis-a-vis.
I looked about me in embarrassment. His room was on the fourth floor; everything indicated honest and industrious poverty. Some books, musical instruments, papers, a table and a few chairs, that was all, but everything was well cared for and presented an agreeable ensemble.
As for him, his frank and animated face predisposed me in his favor. On the mantel I observed a picture of an old lady. I stepped up to look at it, and he said it was his mother.
I then recalled that Brigitte had often spoken of him; she had known him since childhood. Before I came to the country she used to see him occasionally at N------, but at the time of her last visit there he was away. It was, therefore, only by chance that I had learned some particulars of his life, which now came to mind. He had an honest employment that enabled him to support his mother and sister.
His treatment of these two women deserved the highest praise; he deprived himself of everything for them, and although he possessed musical talents that would have enabled him to make a fortune, the immediate needs of those dependent on him, and an extreme reserve, had always led him to prefer an assured income to the uncertain chances of success in larger ventures.
In a word, he belonged to that small class who live quietly, and who are worth more to the world than those who do not appreciate them. I had learned of certain traits in his character which will serve to paint the man he had fallen in love with a beautiful girl in the neighborhood, and, after a year of devotion to her, had secured her parents' consent to their union. She was as poor as he. The contract was ready to be signed, the preparations for the wedding were complete, when his mother said: "And your sister? Who will marry her?"
That simple remark made him understand that if he married he would spend all his money in the household expenses and his sister would have no dowry. He broke off the engagement, bravely renouncing his happy prospects; he then came to Paris.
When I heard that story I wished to see the hero. That simple, unassuming act of devotion seemed to me more admirable than all the glories of war.
The more I examined that young man, the less I felt inclined to broach the subject nearest my heart. The idea which had first occurred to me, that he would harm me in Brigitte's eyes, vanished at once. Gradually my thoughts took another course; I looked at him attentively, and it seemed to me that he was also examining me with curiosity.
We were both twenty-one years of age, but what a difference between us! He, accustomed to an existence regulated by the graduated tick of the clock; never having seen anything of life, except that part of it which lies between an obscure room on the fourth floor and a dingy government office; sending his mother all his savings, that farthing of human joy which the hand of toil clasps so greedily; having no thought except for the happiness of others, and that since his childhood, since he had been a babe in arms! And I, during that precious time, so swift, so inexorable, during the time that with him had been a round of toil, what had I done? Was I a man? Which of us had lived?
What I have said in a page can be comprehended in a moment. He spoke to me of our journey and the countries we were going to visit.
"When do you go?" he asked.
"I do not know; Madame Pierson is indisposed, and has been confined to her bed for three days."
"For three days!" he repeated, in surprise.
"Yes; why are you astonished?"
He arose and threw himself on me, his arms extended, his eyes fixed. He was trembling violently.
"Are you ill?" I asked, taking him by the hand. He pressed his hand to his head and burst into tears. When he had recovered sufficiently to speak, he said: "Pardon me; be good enough to leave me. I fear I am not well; when I have sufficiently recovered I will return your visit."
|
{
"id": "3941"
}
|
3
|
THE QUESTION OF SMITH
|
Brigitte was better. She had told me that she desired to go away as soon as she was well enough to travel. But I insisted that she ought to rest at least fifteen days before undertaking a long journey.
Whenever I attempted to persuade her to speak frankly, she assured me that the letter was the only cause of her melancholy, and begged me to say nothing more about it. Then I tried in vain to guess what was passing in her heart. We went to the theatre every night in order to avoid embarrassing interviews. There we sometimes pressed each other's hands at some fine bit of acting or beautiful strain of music, or exchanged, perhaps, a friendly glance, but going and returning we were mute, absorbed in our thoughts.
Smith came almost every day. Although his presence in the house had been the cause of all my sorrow, and although my visit to him had left singular suspicions in my mind, still his apparent good faith and his simplicity reassured me. I had spoken to him of the letters he had brought, and he did not appear offended, but saddened. He was ignorant of the contents, and his friendship for Brigitte led him to censure them severely. He would have refused to carry them, he said, had he known what they contained. On account of Brigitte's tone of reserve in his presence, I did not think he was in her confidence.
I therefore welcomed him with pleasure, although there was always a sort of awkward embarrassment in our meeting. He was asked to act as intermediary between Brigitte and her relatives after our departure. When we three were together he noticed a certain coldness and restraint which he endeavored to banish by cheerful good-humor. If he spoke of our liaison it was with respect and as a man who looks upon love as a sacred bond; in fact, he was a kind friend, and inspired me with full confidence.
But despite all this, despite all his efforts, he was sad, and I could not get rid of strange thoughts that came to my mind. The tears I had seen that young man shed, his illness coming on at the same time as Brigitte's, I know not what melancholy sympathy I thought I discovered between them, troubled and disquieted me. Not over a month ago I would have become violently jealous; but now, of what could I suspect Brigitte? Whatever the secret she was concealing from me, was she not going away with me? Even were it possible that Smith could share some secret of which I knew nothing, what could be the nature of the mystery? What was there to be censured in their sadness and in their friendship?
She had known him as a child; she met him again after long years just as she was about to leave France; she chanced to be in an unfortunate situation, and fate decreed that he should be the instrument of adding to her sorrow. Was it not natural that they should exchange sorrowful glances, that the sight of this young man should awaken memories and regrets? Could he, on the other hand, see her start off on a long journey, proscribed and almost abandoned, without grave apprehensions? I felt this that must be the explanation, and that it was my duty to assure them that I was capable of protecting the one from all dangers, and of requiting the other for the services he had rendered. And yet a deadly chill oppressed me, and I could not determine what course to pursue.
When Smith left us in the evening, we either were silent or talked of him. I do not know what fatal attraction led me to ask about him continually. She, however, told me just what I have told my reader; Smith's life had never been other than it was now--poor, obscure, and honest. I made her repeat the story of his life a number of times, without knowing why I took such an interest in it.
There was in my heart a secret cause of sorrow which I would not confess. If that young man had arrived at the time of our greatest happiness, had he brought an insignificant letter to Brigitte, had he pressed her hand while assisting her into the carriage, would I have paid the least attention to it? Had he recognized me at the opera or had he not--had he shed tears for some unknown reason, what would it matter so long as I was happy? But while unable to divine the cause of Brigitte's sorrow, I saw that my past conduct, whatever she might say of it, had something to do with her present state. If I had been what I ought to have been for the last six months that we had lived together, nothing in the world, I was persuaded, could have troubled our love.
Smith was only an ordinary man, but he was good and devoted; his simple and modest qualities resembled the large, pure lines which the eye seizes at the first glance; one could know him in a quarter of an hour, and he inspired confidence if not admiration. I could not help thinking that if he were Brigitte's lover, she would cheerfully go with him to the ends of the earth.
I had deferred our departure purposely, but now I began to regret it. Brigitte, too, at times urged me to hasten the day.
"Why do you wait?" she asked. "Here I am recovered and everything is ready."
Why did we wait, indeed? I do not know.
Seated near the fire, my eyes wandered from Smith to my loved one. I saw that they were both pale, serious, silent. I did not know why, and I could not help thinking that there was but one cause, or one secret to learn. This was not one of those vague, sickly suspicions, such as had formerly tormented me, but an instinct, persistent and fatal. What strange creatures are we! It pleased me to leave them alone before the fire, and to go out on the quay to dream, leaning on the parapet and looking at the water. When they spoke of their life at N------, and when Brigitte, almost cheerful, assumed a motherly air to recall some incident of their childhood days, it seemed to me that I suffered, and yet took pleasure in it. I asked questions; I spoke to Smith of his mother, of his plans and his prospects; I gave him an opportunity to show himself in a favorable light, and forced his modesty to reveal his merit.
"You love your sister very much, do you not?" I asked. "When do you expect to marry her off?"
He blushed, and replied that his expenses were rather heavy and that it would probably be within two years, perhaps sooner, if his health would permit him to do some extra work which would bring in enough to provide her dowry; that there was a well-to-do family in the country, whose eldest son was her sweetheart; that they were almost agreed on it, and that fortune would one day come, like sleep, without thinking of it; that he had set aside for his sister a part of the money left by their father; that their mother was opposed to it, but that he would insist on it; that a young man can live from hand to mouth, but that the fate of a young girl is fixed on the day of her marriage. Thus, little by little, he expressed what was in his heart, and I watched Brigitte listening to him. Then, when he arose to leave us, I accompanied him to the door, and stood there, pensively listening to the sound of his footsteps on the stairs.
Upon examining our trunks we found that there were still a few things needed before we could start; Smith was asked to purchase them. He was remarkably active, and enjoyed attending to matters of this kind. When I returned to my apartments, I found him on the floor, strapping a trunk. Brigitte was at the piano we had rented by the week during our stay. She was playing one of those old airs into which she put so much expression, and which were so dear to us. I stopped in the hall; every note reached my ear distinctly; never had she sung so sadly, so divinely.
Smith was listening with pleasure; he was on his knees holding the buckle of the strap in his hands. He fastened it, then looked about the room at the other goods he had packed and covered with a linen cloth. Satisfied with his work, he still remained kneeling in the same spot; Brigitte, her hands on the keys, was looking out at the horizon. For the second time I saw tears fall from the young man's eyes; I was ready to shed tears myself, and not knowing what was passing in me, I held out my hand to him.
"Were you there?" asked Brigitte. She trembled and seemed surprised.
"Yes, I was there," I replied. "Sing, my dear, I beg of you. Let me hear your sweet voice."
She continued her song without a word; she noticed my emotion as well as Smith's; her voice faltered. With the last notes she arose, and came to me and kissed me.
On another occasion I had brought an album containing views of Switzerland. We were looking at them, all three of us, and when Brigitte found a scene that pleased her, she would stop to examine it. There was one view that seemed to attract her more than the others; it was a certain spot in the canton of Vaud, some distance from Brigues; some trees with cows grazing in the shade; in the distance a village consisting of some dozen houses, scattered here and there. In the foreground a young girl with a large straw hat, seated under a tree, and a farmer's boy standing before her, apparently pointing out, with his iron-tipped stick, the route over which he had come; he was directing her attention to a winding path that led to the mountain. Above them were the Alps, and the picture was crowned by three snow-capped summits. Nothing could be more simple or more beautiful than this landscape. The valley resembled a lake of verdure, and the eye followed its contour with delight.
"Shall we go there?" I asked Brigitte. I took a pencil and traced some figures on the picture.
"What are you doing?" she asked.
"I am trying to see if I can not change that face slightly and make it resemble yours. The pretty hat would become you, and can I not, if I am skilful, give that fine mountaineer some resemblance to me?"
The whim seemed to please her and she set about rubbing out the two faces. When I had painted her portrait, she wished to try mine. The faces were very small, hence not very difficult; it was agreed that the likenesses were striking. While we were laughing at it, the door opened and I was called away by the servant.
When I returned, Smith was leaning on the table and looking at the picture with interest. He was absorbed in a profound revery, and was not aware of my presence; I sat down near the fire, and it was not until I spoke to Brigitte that he raised his head. He looked at us a moment, then hastily took his leave and, as he approached the door, I saw him strike his forehead with his hand.
When I saw these signs of grief, I said to myself "What does it mean?" Then I clasped my hands to plead with--whom? I do not know; perhaps my good angel, perhaps my evil fate.
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{
"id": "3941"
}
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4
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IN THE FURNACE
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My heart yearned to set out and yet I delayed; some secret influence rooted me to the spot.
When Smith came I knew no repose from the time he entered the room. How is it that sometimes we seem to enjoy unhappiness?
One day a word, a flush, a glance, made me shudder; another day, another glance, another word, threw me into uncertainty. Why were they both so sad? Why was I as motionless as a statue where I had formerly been violent? Every evening in bed I said to myself: "Let me see; let me think that over." Then I would spring up, crying: "Impossible!" The next day I did the same thing.
In Smith's presence, Brigitte treated me with more tenderness than when we were alone. It happened one evening that some hard words escaped us; when she heard his voice in the hall she came and sat on my knees. As for him, it seemed to me he was always making an effort to control himself. His gestures were carefully regulated; he spoke slowly and prudently, so that his occasional moments of forgetfulness seemed all the more striking.
Was it curiosity that tormented me? I remember that one day I saw a man drowning near the Pont Royal. It was midsummer and we were rowing on the river; some thirty boats were crowded together under the bridge, when suddenly one of the occupants of a boat near mine threw up his hands and fell overboard. We immediately began diving for him, but in vain; some hours later the body was found under a raft.
I shall never forget my experience as I was diving for that man. I opened my eyes under the water and searched painfully here and there in the dark corners about the pier; then I returned to the surface for breath, then resumed my horrible search. I was filled with hope and terror; the thought that I might feel myself seized by convulsive arms allured me, and at the same time thrilled me with horror; when I was exhausted with fatigue, I climbed back into my boat.
Unless a man is brutalized by debauchery, eager curiosity is one of his marked traits. I have already remarked that I felt it on the occasion of my first visit to Desgenais. I will explain my meaning.
The truth, that skeleton of appearances, ordains that every man, whatsoever he be, shall come, in his day and hour, to touch the bones that lie forever at the bottom of some chance experience. It is called "knowing the world," and experience is purchased at that price. Some recoil in terror before that test; others, feeble and affrighted, vacillate. like shadows. Some, the best perhaps, die at once. The large number forget, and thus all float on to death.
But there are some men, who, at the fell stroke of chance, neither die nor forget; when it comes their turn to touch misfortune, otherwise called truth, they approach it with a firm step and outstretched hand, and, horrible to say! they mistake love for the livid corpse they have found at the bottom of the river. They seize it, feel it, clasp it in their arms; they are drunk with the desire to know; they no longer look with interest upon things, except to see them pass; they do nothing except doubt and test; they ransack the world as though they were God's spies; they sharpen their thoughts into arrows, and give birth to a monster.
Roues, more than all others, are exposed to that fury, and the reason is very simple: ordinary life is the limpid surface, that of the roue is the rapid current swirling over and over, and at times touching the bottom. Coming from a ball, for instance, where they have danced with a modest girl, they seek the company of bad characters, and spend the night in riotous feasting. The last words they addressed to a beautiful and virtuous woman are still on their lips; they repeat them and burst into laughter. Shall I say it? Do they not raise, for some pieces of silver, the vesture of chastity, that robe so full of mystery, which respects the being it embellishes and engirds her without touching? What idea can they have of the world? They are like comedians in the greenroom. Who, more than they, is skilled in that delving to the bottom of things, in that groping at once profound and impious? See how they speak of everything; always in terms the most barren, crude, and abject; such words appear true to them; the rest is only parade, convention, prejudice. Let them tell a story, let them recount some experience, they will always use the same dirty and material expressions. They do not say "That woman loved me;" they say: "I betrayed that woman;" they do not say: "I love;" they say, "I desire;" they never say: "If God wills;" they say: "If I will." I do not know what they think of themselves and of such monologues as these.
Hence, of a necessity, either from idleness or curiosity, while they strive to find evil in everything, they do not comprehend that others still believe in the good. Therefore they have to be so nonchalant as to stop their ears, lest the hum of the busy world should suddenly startle them from sleep. The father allows his son to go where so many others go, where Cato himself went; he says that youth is but fleeting. But when he returns, the youth looks upon his sister; and see what has taken place in him during an hour passed in the society of brutal reality! He says to himself: "My sister is not like that creature I have just left!" And from that day he is disturbed and uneasy.
Sinful curiosity is a vile malady born of impure contact. It is the prowling instinct of phantoms who raise the lids of tombs; it is an inexplicable torture with which God punishes those who have sinned; they wish to believe that all sin as they have done, and would be disappointed perhaps to find that it was not so. But they inquire, they search, they dispute; they wag their heads from side to side as does an architect who adjusts a column, and thus strive to find what they desire to find. Given proof of evil, they laugh at it; doubtful of evil, they swear that it exists; the good they refuse to recognize. "Who knows?" Behold the grand formula, the first words that Satan spoke when he saw heaven closing against him. Alas! for how many evils are those words responsible? How many disasters and deaths, how many strokes of fateful scythes in the ripening harvest of humanity! How many hearts, how many families where there is naught but ruin, since that word was first heard! "Who knows! Who knows!" Loathsome words! Rather than pronounce them one should be as sheep who graze about the slaughter-house and know it not. That is better than to be called a strong spirit, and to read La Rochefoucauld.
What better illustration could I present than the one I have just given? My mistress was ready to set out and I had but to say the word. Why did I delay? What would have been the result if I had started at once on our trip? Nothing but a moment of apprehension that would have been forgotten after travelling three days. When with me, she had no thought but of me; why should I care to solve a mystery that did not threaten my happiness?
She would have consented, and that would have been the end of it. A kiss on her lips and all would be well; instead of that, see what I did.
One evening when Smith had dined with us, I retired at an early hour and left them together. As I closed my door I heard Brigitte order some tea. In the morning I happened to approach her table, and, sitting beside the teapot, I saw but one cup. No one had been in that room before me that morning, so the servant could not have carried away anything that had been used the night before. I searched everywhere for a second cup but could find none.
"Did Smith stay late?" I asked of Brigitte.
"He left about midnight."
"Did you retire alone or did you call some one to assist you?"
"I retired alone; every one in the house was asleep."
I continued my search and my hands trembled. In what burlesque comedy is there a jealous lover so stupid as to inquire what has become of a cup? Why seek to discover whether Smith and Madame Pierson had drunk from the same cup? What a brilliant idea that!
Nevertheless I found the cup and I burst into laughter, and threw it on the floor with such violence that it broke into a thousand pieces. I ground the pieces under my feet.
Brigitte looked at me without saying a word. During the two succeeding days she treated me with a coldness that had something of contempt in it, and I saw that she treated Smith with more deference and kindness than usual. She called him Henri and smiled on him sweetly.
"I feel that the air would do me good," she said after dinner; "shall we go to the opera, Octave? I would enjoy walking that far."
"No, I will stay here; go without me." She took Smith's arm and went out. I remained alone all evening; I had paper before me, and was trying to collect my thoughts in order to write, but in vain.
As a lonely lover draws from his bosom a letter from his mistress, and loses himself in delightful revery, thus I shut myself up in solitude and yielded to the sweet allurement of doubt. Before me were the two empty seats which Brigitte and Smith had just occupied; I scrutinized them anxiously as if they could tell me something. I revolved in my mind all the things I had heard and seen; from time to time I went to the door and cast my eyes over our trunks which had been piled against the wall for a month; I opened them and examined the contents so carefully packed away by those delicate little hands; I listened to the sound of passing carriages; the slightest noise made me tremble. I spread out on the table our map of Europe, and there, in the very presence of all my hopes, in that room where I had conceived and had so nearly realized them, I abandoned myself to the most frightful presentiments.
But, strange as it may seem, I felt neither anger nor jealousy, but a terrible sense of sorrow and foreboding. I did not suspect, and yet I doubted. The mind of man is so strangely formed that, with what he sees and in spite of what he sees, he can conjure up a hundred objects of woe. In truth his brain resembles the dungeons of the Inquisition, where the walls are covered with so many instruments of torture that one is dazed, and asks whether these horrible contrivances he sees before him are pincers or playthings. Tell me, I say, what difference is there in saying to my mistress: "All women deceive," or, "You deceive me?"
What passed through my mind was perhaps as subtle as the finest sophistry; it was a sort of dialogue between the mind and the conscience. "If I should lose Brigitte?" I said to the mind." She departs with you," said the conscience." If she deceives me?" --"How can she deceive you? Has she not made out her will asking for prayers for you?" --"If Smith loves her?" --"Fool! What does it matter so long as you know that she loves you?" --"If she loves me why is she sad?" --"That is her secret, respect it." --"If I take her away with me, will she be happy?" --"Love her and she will be." --" Why, when that man looks at her, does she seem to fear to meet his glance?" --" Because she is a woman and he is young." -- "Why does that young man turn pale when she looks at him?" --"Because he is a man and she is beautiful." --"Why, when I went to see him did he throw himself into my arms, and why did he weep and beat his head with his hands?" --"Do not seek to know what you must remain ignorant of." -- "Why can I not know these things?" --" Because you are miserable and weak, and all mystery is of God."
"But why is it that I suffer? Why is it that my soul recoils in terror?" --"Think of your father and do good." --"But why am I unable to do as he did? Why does evil attract me to itself?" --"Get down on your knees and confess; if you believe in evil it is because your ways have been evil." --"If my ways were evil, was it my fault? Why did the good betray me?" -- "Because you are in the shadow, would you deny the existence of light? If there are traitors, why are you one of them?" --"Because I am afraid of becoming the dupe." --"Why do you spend your nights in watching? Why are you alone now?" --"Because I think, I doubt, and I fear." --"When will you offer your prayer?" --"When I believe. Why have they lied to me?" -- "Why do you lie, coward! at this very moment? Why not die if you can not suffer?"
Thus spoke and groaned within me two voices, voices that were defiant and terrible; and then a third voice cried out! "Alas! Alas! my innocence! Alas! Alas! the days that were!"
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{
"id": "3941"
}
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5
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TRUTH AT LAST
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What a frightful weapon is human thought! It is our defense and our safeguard, the most precious gift that God has made us. It is ours and it obeys us; we may launch it forth into space, but, once outside of our feeble brains, it is gone; we can no longer control it.
While I was deferring the time of our departure from day to day I was gradually losing strength, and, although I did not perceive it, my vital forces were slowly wasting away. When I sat at table I experienced a violent distaste for food; at night two pale faces, those of Brigitte and Smith, pursued me through frightful dreams. When they went to the theatre in the evening I refused to go with them; then I went alone, concealed myself in the parquet, and watched them. I pretended that I had some business to attend to in a neighboring room and sat there an hour and listened to them. The idea occurred to me to seek a quarrel with Smith and force him to fight with me; I turned my back on him while he was talking; then he came to me with a look of surprise on his face, holding out his hand. When I was alone in the night and every one slept, I felt a strong desire to go to Brigitte's desk and take from it her papers. On one occasion I was obliged to go out of the house in order to resist the temptation. One day I felt like arming myself with a knife and threatening to kill them if they did not tell me why they were so sad; another day I turned all this fury against myself. With what shame do I write it! And if any one should ask me why I acted thus, I could not reply.
To see, to doubt, to search, to torture myself and make myself miserable, to pass entire days with my ear at the keyhole, and the night in a flood of tears, to repeat over and over that I should die of sorrow, to feel isolation and feebleness uprooting hope in my heart, to imagine that I was spying when I was only listening to the feverish beating of my own pulse; to con over stupid phrases, such as: "Life is a dream, there is nothing stable here below;" to curse and blaspheme God through misery and through caprice: that was my joy, the precious occupation for which I renounced love, the air of heaven, and liberty!
Eternal God, liberty! Yes, there were certain moments when, in spite of all, I still thought of it. In the midst of my madness, eccentricity, and stupidity, there were within me certain impulses that at times brought me to myself. It was a breath of air which struck my face as I came from my dungeon; it was a page of a book I read when, in my bitter days, I happened to read something besides those modern sycophants called pamphleteers, who, out of regard for the public health, ought to be prevented from indulging in their crude philosophizings. Since I have referred to these good moments, let me mention one of them, they were so rare. One evening I was reading the Memoirs of Constant; I came to the following lines: "Salsdorf, a Saxon surgeon attached to Prince Christian, had his leg broken by a shell in the battle of Wagram. He lay almost lifeless on the dusty field. Fifteen paces distant, Amedee of Kerbourg, aide-de-camp (I have forgotten to whom), wounded in the breast by a bullet, fell to the ground vomiting blood. Salsdorf saw that if that young man was not cared for he would die of suffusion; summoning all his powers, he painfully dragged himself to the side of the wounded man, attended to him and saved his life. Salsdorf himself died four days later from the effects of amputation."
When I read these words I threw down my book, and melted into tears.
I do not regret those tears, for they were such as I could shed only when my heart was right; I do not speak merely of Salsdorf, and do not care for that particular instance. I am sure, however, that I did not suspect any one that day. Poor dreamer! Ought I to remember that I have been other than I am? What good will it do me as I stretch out my arms in anguish to heaven and wait for the bolt that will deliver me forever? Alas! it was only a gleam that flashed across the night of my life.
Like those dervish fanatics who find ecstasy in vertigo, so thought, turning on itself, exhausted by the stress of introspection and tired of vain effort, falls terror-stricken. So it would seem that man must be a void and that by dint of delving unto himself he reaches the last turn of a spiral. There, as on the summits of mountains and at the bottom of mines, air fails, and God forbids man to go farther. Then, struck with a mortal chill, the heart, as if impaired by oblivion, seeks to escape into a new birth; it demands life of that which environs it, it eagerly drinks in the air; but it finds round about only its own chimeras, which have exhausted its failing powers and which, self-created, surround it like pitiless spectres.
This could not last long. Tired of uncertainty, I resolved to resort to a test that would discover the truth.
I ordered post-horses for ten in the evening. We had hired a caleche and I gave directions that all should be ready at the hour indicated. At the same time I asked that nothing be said to Madame Pierson. Smith came to dinner; at the table I affected unusual cheerfulness, and without a word about my plans, I turned the conversation to our journey. I would renounce all idea of going away, I said, if I thought Brigitte did not care to go; I was so well satisfied with Paris that I asked nothing better than to remain as long as she pleased. I made much of all the pleasures of the city; I spoke of the balls, the theatres, of the many opportunities for diversion on every hand. In short, since we were happy I did not see why we should make a change; and I did not think of going away at present.
I was expecting her to insist that we carry out our plan of going to Geneva, and was not disappointed. However, she insisted but feebly; but, after a few words, I pretended to yield, and then changing the subject I spoke of other things, as though it was all settled.
"And why will not Smith go with us?" I asked. "It is very true that he has duties here, but can he not obtain leave of absence? Moreover, will not the talents he possesses and which he is unwilling to use, assure him an honorable living anywhere? Let him come along with us; the carriage is large and we offer him a place in it. A young man should see the world, and there is nothing so irksome for a man of his age as confinement in an office and restriction to a narrow circle. Is it not true?" I asked, turning to Brigitte. "Come, my dear, let your wiles obtain from him what he might refuse me; urge him to give us six weeks of his time. We will travel together, and after a tour of Switzerland he will return to his duties with new life."
Brigitte joined her entreaties to mine, although she knew it was only a joke on my part. Smith could not leave Paris without danger of losing his position, and replied that he regretted being obliged to deny himself the pleasure of accompanying us. Nevertheless I continued to press him, and, ordering another bottle of wine, I repeated my invitation. After dinner I went out to assure myself that my orders were carried out; then I returned in high spirits, and seating myself at the piano I proposed some music.
"Let us pass the evening here," I said; "believe me, it is better than going to the theatre; I can not take part myself, but I can listen. We will make Smith play if he tires of our company, and the time will pass pleasantly."
Brigitte consented with good grace and began singing for us; Smith accompanied her on the violoncello. The materials for a bowl of punch were brought and the flame of burning rum soon cheered us with varied lights. The piano was abandoned for the table; then we had cards; everything passed off as I wished and we succeeded in diverting ourselves to my heart's content.
I had my eyes fixed on the clock and waited impatiently for the hands to mark the hour of ten. I was tormented with anxiety, but allowed them to see nothing. Finally the hour arrived; I heard the postilion's whip as the horses entered the court. Brigitte was seated near me; I took her by the hand and asked her if she was ready to depart. She looked at me with surprise, doubtless wondering if I was not joking. I told her that at dinner she had appeared so anxious to go that I had felt justified in sending for the horses, and that I went out for that purpose when I left the table.
"Are you serious?" asked Brigitte; "do you wish to set out to-night?"
"Why not?" I replied, "since we have agreed that we ought to leave Paris?"
"What! now? At this very moment?"
"Certainly; have we not been ready for a month? You see there is nothing to do but load our trunks on the carriage; as we have decided to go, ought we not go at once? I believe it is better to go now and put off nothing until tomorrow. You are in the humor to travel to-night and I hasten to profit by it. Why wait longer and continue to put it off? I can not endure this life. You wish to go, do you not? Very well, let us go and be done with it."
Profound silence ensued. Brigitte stepped to the window and satisfied herself that the carriage was there. Moreover, the tone in which I spoke would admit of no doubt, and, however hasty my action may appear to her, it was due to her own expressed desire. She could not deny her own words, nor find any pretext for further delay. Her decision was made promptly; she asked a few questions as though to assure herself that all the preparations had been made; seeing that nothing had been omitted, she began to search here and there. She found her hat and shawl, then continued her search.
"I am ready," she said; "shall we go? We are really going?"
She took a light, went to my room, to her own, opened lockers and closets. She asked for the key to her secretary which she said she had lost. Where could that key be? She had it in her possession not an hour ago.
"Come, come! I am ready," she repeated in extreme agitation; "let us go, Octave, let us set out at once."
While speaking she continued her search and then came and sat down near us.
I was seated on the sofa watching Smith, who stood before me. He had not changed countenance and seemed neither troubled nor surprised; but two drops of sweat trickled down his forehead, and I heard an ivory counter crack between his fingers, the pieces falling to the floor. He held out both hands to us.
"Bon voyage, my friends!" he said.
Again silence; I was still watching him, waiting for him to add a word. "If there is some secret here," thought I, "when shall I learn it, if not now? It must be on the lips of both of them. Let it but come out into the light and I will seize it."
"My dear Octave," said Brigitte, "where are we to stop? You will write to us, Henri, will you not? You will not forget my relatives and will do what you can for me?" He replied in a voice that trembled slightly that he would do all in his power to serve her.
"I can answer for nothing," he said, "and, judging from the letters you have received, there is not much hope. But it will not be my fault if I do not send you good news. Count on me, I am devoted to you."
After a few more kind words he made ready to take his departure. I arose and left the room before him; I wished to leave them together a moment for the last time and, as soon as I had closed the door behind me, in a perfect rage of jealousy, I pressed my ear to the keyhole.
"When shall I see you again?" he asked.
"Never," replied Brigitte; "adieu, Henri." She held out her hand. He bent over it, pressed it to his lips and I had barely time to slip into a corner as he passed out without seeing me.
Alone with Brigitte, my heart sank within me. She was waiting for me, her shawl on her arm, and emotion plainly marked on her face. She had found the key she had been looking for and her desk was open. I returned and sat down near the fire. "Listen to me," I said, without daring to look at her; "I have been so culpable in my treatment of you that I ought to wait and suffer without a word of complaint. The change which has taken place in you has thrown me into such despair that I have not been able to refrain from asking you the cause; but to-day I ask nothing more. Does it cost you an effort to depart? Tell me, and if so I am resigned."
"Let us go, let us go!" she replied.
"As you please, but be frank; whatever blow I may receive, I ought not to ask whence it comes; I should submit without a murmur. But if I lose you, do not speak to me of hope, for God knows I will not survive the loss."
She turned on me like a flash.
"Speak to me of your love," she said, "not of your grief."
"Very well, I love you more than life. Beside my love, my grief is but a dream. Come with me to the end of the world, I will die or I will live with you."
With these words I advanced toward her; she turned pale and recoiled. She made a vain effort to force a smile on her contracted lips, and sitting down before her desk she said: "One moment; I have some papers here I want to burn."
She showed me the letters from N------, tore them up and threw them into the fire; she then took out other papers which she reread and then spread out on the table. They were bills of purchases she had made and some of them were still unpaid. While examining them she began to talk rapidly, while her cheeks burned as if with fever. Then she begged my pardon for her obstinate silence and her conduct since our arrival.
She gave evidence of more tenderness, more confidence than ever. She clapped her hands gleefully at the prospect of a happy journey; in short, she was all love, or at least apparently all love. I can not tell how I suffered at the sight of that factitious joy; there was in that grief which crazed her something more sad than tears and more bitter than reproaches. I would have preferred to have her cold and indifferent rather than thus excited; it seemed to me a parody of our happiest moments. There were the same words, the same woman, the same caresses; and that which, fifteen days before would have intoxicated me with love and happiness, repeated thus, filled me with horror.
"Brigitte," I suddenly inquired, "what secret are you concealing from me? If you love me, what horrible comedy is this you are enacting before me?"
"I!" said she, almost offended. "What makes you think I am acting?"
"What makes me think so? Tell me, my dear, that you have death in your soul and that you are suffering martyrdom. Behold my arms are ready to receive you; lean your head on me and weep. Then I will take you away, perhaps; but in truth, not thus."
"Let us go, let us go!" she again repeated.
"No, on my soul! No, not at present; no, not while there is between us a lie or a mask. I like unhappiness better than such cheerfulness as yours."
She was silent, astonished to see that I had not been deceived by her words and manner and that I saw through them both.
"Why should we delude ourselves?" I continued.
"Have I fallen so low in your esteem that you can dissimulate before me? That unfortunate journey, you think you are condemned to it, do you? Am I a tyrant, an absolute master? Am I an executioner who drags you to punishment? How much do you fear my wrath when you come before me with such mimicry? What terror impels you to lie thus?"
"You are wrong," she replied; "I beg of you, not a word more."
"Why so little sincerity? If I am not your confidant, may I not at least be your friend? If I am denied all knowledge of the source of your tears, may I not at least see them flow? Have you not enough confidence in me to believe that I will respect your sorrow? What have I done that I should be ignorant of it? Might not the remedy lie right there?"
"No," she replied, "you are wrong; you will achieve your own unhappiness as well as mine if you press me farther. Is it not enough that we are going away?"
"And do you expect me to drag you away against your will? Is it not evident that you have consented reluctantly, and that you already begin to repent? Great God! What is it you are concealing from me? What is the use of playing with words when your thoughts are as clear as that glass before which you stand? Should I not be the meanest of men to accept at your hands what is yielded with so much regret? And yet how can I refuse it? What can I do if you refuse to speak?"
"No, I do not oppose you, you are mistaken; I love you, Octave; cease tormenting me thus."
She threw so much tenderness into these words that I fell down on my knees before her. Who could resist her glance and her voice?
"My God!" I cried, "you love me, Brigitte? My dear mistress, you love me?"
"Yes, I love you; yes. I belong to you; do with me what you will. I will follow you, let us go away together; come, Octave, the carriage is waiting."
She pressed my hand in hers, and kissed my forehead.
"Yes, it must be," she murmured, "it must be."
"It must be," I repeated to myself. I arose.
On the table there remained only one piece of paper that Brigitte was examining. She picked it up, then allowed it to drop to the floor.
"Is that all?" I asked.
"Yes, that is all."
When I ordered the horses I had no idea that we would really go, I wished merely to make a trial, but circumstances bid fair to force me to carry my plans farther than I at first intended. I opened the door.
"It must be!" I said to myself. "It must be!" I repeated aloud.
"What do you mean by that, Brigitte? What is there in those words that I do not understand? Explain yourself, or I will not go. Why must you love me?"
She fell on the sofa and wrung her hands in grief.
"Ah! Unhappy man!" she cried, "you will never know how to love!"
"Yes, I think you are right, but, before God, I know how to suffer. You must love me, must you not? Very well, then you must answer me. Were I to lose you forever, were these walls to crumble over my head, I will not leave this spot until I have solved the mystery that has been torturing me for more than a month. Speak, or I will leave you. I may be a fool who destroys his own happiness; I may be demanding something that is not for me to possess; it may be that an explanation will separate us and raise before me an insurmountable barrier, which will render our tour, on which I have set my heart, impossible; whatever it may cost you and me, you shall speak or I will renounce everything."
"No, I will not speak."
"You will speak! Do you fondly imagine I am the dupe of your lies? When I see you change between morning and evening until you differ more from your natural self than does night from day, do you think I am deceived? When you give me as a cause some letters that are not worth the trouble of reading, do you imagine that I am to be put off with the first pretext that comes to hand because you do not choose to seek another? Is your face made of plaster, that it is difficult to see what is passing in your heart? What is your opinion of me? I do not deceive myself as much as you suppose, and take care lest in default of words your silence discloses what you so obstinately conceal."
"What do you imagine I am concealing?"
"What do I imagine? You ask me that! Is it to brave me you ask such a question! Do you think to make me desperate and thus get rid of me? Yes, I admit it, offended pride is capable of driving me to extremes. If I should explain myself freely, you would have at your service all feminine hypocrisy; you hope that I will accuse you, so that you can reply that such a woman as you does not stoop to justify herself. How skilfully the most guilty and treacherous of your sex contrive to use proud disdain as a shield! Your great weapon is silence; I did not learn that yesterday. You wish to be insulted and you hold your tongue until it comes to that. Come, struggle against my heart--where yours beats you will find it; but do not struggle against my head, it is harder than iron, and it has served me as long as yours!"
"Poor boy!" murmured Brigitte; "you do not want to go?"
"No, I shall not go except with my beloved, and you are not that now. I have struggled, I have suffered, I have eaten my own heart long enough. It is time for day to break, I have loved long enough in the night. Yes or no, will you answer me?"
"No."
"As you please; I will wait."
I sat down on the other side of the room, determined not to rise until I had learned what I wished to know. She appeared to be reflecting, and walked back and forth before me.
I followed her with an eager eye, while her silence gradually increased my anger. I was unwilling to have her perceive it and was undecided what to do. I opened the window.
"You may drive off," I called to those below, "and I will see that you are paid. I shall not start to-night."
"Poor boy!" repeated Brigitte. I quietly closed the window and sat down as if I had not heard her; but I was so furious with rage that I could hardly restrain myself. That cold silence, that negative force, exasperated me to the last point. Had I been really deceived and convinced of the guilt of a woman I loved I could not have suffered more. As I had condemned myself to remain in Paris, I reflected that I must compel Brigitte to speak at any price. In vain I tried to think of some means of forcing her to enlighten me; for such power I would have given all I possessed. What could I do or say? She sat there calm and unruffled, looking at me with sadness. I heard the sound of the horses' hoofs on the paving as the carriage drew out of the court. I had merely to turn my hand to call them back, but it seemed to me that there was something irrevocable about their departure. I slipped the bolt on the door; something whispered in my ear: "You are face to face with the woman who must give you life or death."
While thus buried in thought I tried to invent some expedient that would lead to the truth. I recalled one of Diderot's romances in which a woman, jealous of her lover, resorted to a novel plan, for the purpose of clearing away her doubts. She told him that she no longer loved him and that she wished to leave him. The Marquis des Arcis (the name of the lover) falls into the trap, and confesses that he himself has tired of the liaison. That piece of strategy, which I had read at too early an age, had struck me as being very skilful, and the recollection of it at this moment made me smile. "Who knows?" said I to myself. "If I should try this with Brigitte, she might be deceived and tell me her secret."
My anger had become furious when the idea of resorting to such trickery occurred to me. Was it so difficult to make a woman speak in spite of herself? This woman was my mistress; I must be very weak if I could not gain my point. I turned over on the sofa with an air of indifference.
"Very well, my dear," said I, gayly, "this is not a time for confidences, then?"
She looked at me in astonishment.
"And yet," I continued, "we must some day come to the truth. Now I believe it would be well to begin at once; that will make you confiding, and there is nothing like an understanding between friends."
Doubtless my face betrayed me as I spoke these words; Brigitte did not appear to understand and kept on walking up and down.
"Do you know," I resumed, "that we have been together now six months? The life we are leading together is not one to be laughed at. You are young, I also; if this kind of life should become distasteful to you, are you the woman to tell me of it? In truth, if it were so, I would confess it to you frankly. And why not? Is it a crime to love? If not, it is not a crime to love less or to cease to love at all. Would it be astonishing if at our age we should feel the need of change?"
She stopped me.
"At our age!" said she. "Are you addressing me? What comedy are you now playing, yourself?"
Blood mounted to my face. I seized her hand. "Sit down here," I said, "and listen to me."
"What is the use? It is not you who speak."
I felt ashamed of my own strategy and abandoned it.
"Listen to me," I repeated, "and come, I beg of you, sit down near me. If you wish to remain silent yourself, at least hear what I have to say."
"I am listening, what have you to say to me?"
"If some one should say to me: 'You are a coward!' I, who am twenty-two years of age and have fought on the field of honor, would throw the taunt back in the teeth of my accuser. Have I not within me the consciousness of what I am? It would be necessary for me to meet my accuser on the field, and play my life against his; why? In order to prove that I am not a coward; otherwise the world would believe it. That single word demands that reply every time it is spoken, and it matters not by whom."
"It is true; what is your meaning?"
"Women do not fight; but as society is constituted there is no being, of whatever sex, who ought to submit to the indignity involved in an aspersion on all his or her past life, be that life regulated as by a pendulum. Reflect; who escapes that law? There are some, I admit; but what happens? If it is a man, dishonor; if it is a woman, what? Forgiveness? Every one who loves ought to give some evidence of life, some proof of existence. There is, then, for woman as well as for man, a time when an attack must be resented. If she is brave, she rises, announces that she is present and sits down again. A stroke of the sword is not for her. She must not only avenge herself, but she must forge her own arms. Someone suspects her; who? An outsider? She may hold him in contempt--her lover whom she loves? If so, it is her life that is in question, and she may not despise him."
"Her only recourse is silence."
"You are wrong; the lover who suspects her casts an aspersion on her entire life. I know it. Her plea is in her tears, her past life, her devotion and her patience. What will happen if she remains silent? Her lover will lose her by her own act and time will justify her. Is not that your thought?"
"Perhaps; silence before all."
"Perhaps, you say? Assuredly I will lose you if you do not speak; my resolution is made: I am going away alone."
"But, Octave--" "But," I cried, "time will justify you! Let us put an end to it; yes or no?"
"Yes, I hope so."
"You hope so! Will you answer me definitely? This is doubtless the last time you will have the opportunity. You tell me that you love me, and I believe it. I suspect you; is it your intention to allow me to go away and rely on time to justify you?"
"Of what do you suspect me?"
"I do not choose to say, for I see that it would be useless. But, after all, misery for misery, at your leisure; I am as well pleased. You deceive me, you love another; that is your secret and mine."
"Who is it?" she asked.
"Smith."
She placed her hand on her lips and turned aside. I could say no more; we were both pensive, our eyes fixed on the floor.
"Listen to me," she began with an effort, "I have suffered much. I call heaven to bear me witness that I would give my life for you. So long as the faintest gleam of hope remains, I am ready to suffer anything; but, although I may rouse your anger in saying to you that I am a woman, I am nevertheless a woman, my friend. We can not go beyond the limits of human endurance. Beyond a certain point I will not answer for the consequences. All I can do at this moment is to get down on my knees before you and beseech you not to go away."
She knelt down as she spoke. I arose.
"Fool that I am!" I muttered, bitterly; "fool, to try to get the truth from a woman! He who undertakes such a task will earn naught but derision and will deserve it! Truth! Only he who consorts with chambermaids knows it, only he who steals to their pillow and listens to the unconscious utterance of a dream, hears it. He alone knows it who makes a woman of himself, and initiates himself into the secrets of her cult of inconstancy! But man, who asks for it openly, he who opens a loyal hand to receive that frightful alms, he will never obtain it! They are on guard with him; for reply he receives a shrug of the shoulders, and, if he rouses himself in his impatience, they rise in righteous indignation like an outraged vestal, while there falls from their lips the great feminine oracle that suspicion destroys love, and they refuse to pardon an accusation which they are unable to meet. Ah! just God! How weary I am! When will all this cease?"
"Whenever you please," said she, coldly; "I am as tired of it as you."
"At this very moment; I leave you forever, and may time justify you! Time! Time! Oh! what a cold lover! Remember this adieu. Time! and thy beauty, and thy love, and thy happiness, where will they be? Is it thus, without regret, you allow me to go? Ah! the day when the jealous lover will know that he has been unjust, the day when he shall see proofs, he will understand what a heart he has wounded, is it not so? He will bewail his shame, he will know neither joy nor sleep; he will live only in the memory of the time when he might have been happy. But, on that day, his proud mistress will turn pale as she sees herself avenged; she will say to herself: 'If I had only done it sooner!' And believe me, if she loves him, pride will not console her."
I tried to be calm, but I was no longer master of myself, and I began to pace the floor as she had done. There are certain glances that resemble the clashing of drawn swords; such glances Brigitte and I exchanged at that moment. I looked at her as the prisoner looks on her at the door of his dungeon. In order to break her sealed lips and force her to speak I would give my life and hers.
"What do you mean?" she asked. "What do you wish me to tell you?"
"What you have on your heart. Are you cruel enough to make me repeat it?"
"And you, you," she cried, "are you not a hundred times more cruel? Ah! fool, as you say, who would know the truth! Fool that I should be if I expected you to believe it! You would know my secret, and my secret is that I love you. Fool that I am! you will seek another. That pallor of which you are the cause, you accuse it, you question it. Like a fool, I have tried to suffer in silence, to consecrate to you my resignation; I have tried to conceal my tears; you have played the spy, and you have counted them as witnesses against me. Fool that I am! I have thought of crossing seas, of exiling myself from France with you, of dying far from all who have loved me, leaning for sole support on a heart that doubts me. Fool that I am! I thought that truth had a glance, an accent, that could not be mistaken, that would be respected! Ah! when I think of it, tears choke me. Why, if it must ever be thus, induce me to take a step that will forever destroy my peace? My head is confused, I do not know where I am!"
She leaned on me weeping. "Fool! Fool!" she repeated, in a heartrending voice.
"And what is it you ask?" she continued, "what can I do to meet those suspicions that are ever born anew, that alter with your moods? I must justify myself, you say! For what? For loving, for dying, for despairing? And if I assume a forced cheerfulness, even that cheerfulness offends you. I sacrifice everything to follow you and you have not gone a league before you look back. Always, everywhere, whatever I may do, insults and anger!"
"Ah! dear child, if you knew what a mortal chill comes over me, what suffering I endure in seeing my simplest words this taken up and hurled back at me with suspicion and sarcasm! By that course you deprive yourself of the only happiness there is in the world--perfect love. You kill all delicate and lofty sentiment in the hearts of those who love you; soon you will believe in nothing except the material and the gross; of love there will remain for you only that which is visible and can be touched with the finger. You are young, Octave, and you have still a long life before you; you will have other mistresses. Yes, as you say, pride is a little thing and it is not to it I look for consolation; but God wills that your tears shall one day pay me for those which I now shed for you!"
She arose.
"Must it be said? Must you know that for six months I have not sought repose without repeating to myself that it was all in vain, that you would never be cured; that I have never risen in the morning without saying that another effort must be made; that after every word you have spoken I have felt that I ought to leave you, and that you have not given me a caress that I would rather die than endure; that, day by day, minute by minute, hesitating between hope and fear, I have vainly tried to conquer either my love or my grief; that, when I opened my heart to you, you pierced it with a mocking glance, and that, when I closed it, it seemed to me I felt within it a treasure that none but you could dispense? Shall I speak of all the frailty and all the mysteries which seem puerile to those who do not respect them? Shall I tell you that when you left me in anger I shut myself up to read your first letters; that there is a favorite waltz that I never played in vain when I felt too keenly the suffering caused by your presence? Ah! wretch that I am! How dearly all these unnumbered tears, all these follies, so sweet to the feeble, are purchased! Weep now; not even this punishment, this sorrow, will avail you."
I tried to interrupt her.
"Allow me to continue," she said; "the time has come when I must speak. Let us see, why do you doubt me? For six months, in thought, in body, and in soul, I have belonged to no one but you. Of what do you dare suspect me? Do you wish to set out for Switzerland? I am ready, as you see. Do you think you have a rival? Send him a letter that I will sign and you will direct. What are we doing? Where are we going? Let us decide. Are we not always together? Very well then, why would you leave me? I can not be near you and separated from you at the same moment. It is necessary to have confidence in those we love. Love is either good or bad: if good, we must believe in it; if evil, we must cure ourselves of it. All this, you see, is a game we are playing; but our hearts and our lives are the stakes, and it is horrible! Do you wish to die? That would perhaps be better. Who am I that you should doubt me?"
She stopped before the glass.
"Who am I?" she repeated, "who am I? Think of it. Look at this face of mine."
"Doubt thee!" she cried, addressing her own image; "poor, pale face, thou art suspected! poor, thin cheeks, poor, tired eyes, thou and thy tears are in disgrace. Very well, put an end to thy suffering; let those kisses that have wasted thee close thy lids! Descend into the cold earth, poor trembling body that can no longer support its own weight. When thou art there, perchance thou wilt be believed, if doubt believes in death. O sorrowful spectre! On the banks of what stream wilt thou wander and groan? What fires devour thee? Thou dreamest of a long journey and thou hast one foot in the grave!
"Die! God is thy witness that thou hast tried to love. Ah! what wealth of love has been awakened in thy heart! Ah! what dreams thou hast had, what poisons thou hast drunk! What evil hast thou committed that there should be placed in thy breast a fever that consumes! What fury animates that blind creature who pushes thee into the grave with his foot, while his lips speak to thee of love? What will become of you if you live? Is it not time to end it all? Is it not enough? What proof canst thou give that will satisfy when thou, poor, living proof, art not believed? To what torture canst thou submit that thou hast not already endured? By what torments, what sacrifices, wilt thou appease insatiable love? Thou wilt be only an object of ridicule, a thing to excite laughter; thou wilt vainly seek a deserted street to avoid the finger of scorn. Thou wilt lose all shame and even that appearance of virtue which has been so dear to you; and the man for whom you have disgraced yourself will be the first to punish you. He will reproach you for living for him alone, for braving the world for him, and while your friends are whispering about you, he will listen to assure himself that no word of pity is spoken; he will accuse you of deceiving him if another hand even then presses yours, and if, in the desert of life, you find some one who can spare you a word of pity in passing.
"O God! dost thou remember a day when a wreath of roses was placed on my head? Was it this brow on which that crown rested? Ah! the hand that hung it on the wall of the oratory has now fallen, like it, to dust! Oh, my native valley! Oh, my old aunt, who now sleeps in peace! Oh, my lindens, my little white goat, my dear peasants who loved me so much! You remember when I was happy, proud, and respected? Who threw in my path that stranger who took me away from all this? Who gave him the right to enter my life? Ah! wretch! why didst thou turn the first day he followed you? Why didst thou receive him as a brother? Why didst thou open thy door, and why didst thou hold out thy hand? Octave, Octave, why have you loved me if all is to end thus?"
She was about to faint as I led her to a chair where she sank down and her head fell on my shoulder. The terrible effort she had made in speaking to me so bitterly had broken her down. Instead of an outraged woman I found now only a suffering child. Her eyes closed and she was motionless.
When she regained consciousness she complained of extreme languor, and begged to be left alone that she might rest. She could hardly walk; I carried her gently to her room and placed her on the bed. There was no mark of suffering on her face: she was resting from her sorrow as from great fatigue, and seemed not even to remember it. Her feeble and delicate body yielded without a struggle; the strain had been too great. She held my hand in hers; I kissed her; our lips met in loving union, and after the cruel scene through which she had passed, she slept smilingly on my heart as on the first day.
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{
"id": "3941"
}
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6
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SELF-SACRIFICE THE SOLUTION
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Brigitte slept. Silent, motionless, I sat near her. As a husbandman, when the storm has passed, counts the sheaves that remain in his devastated field, thus I began to estimate the evil I had done.
The more I thought of it, the more irreparable I felt it to be. Certain sorrows, by their very excess, warn us of their limits, and the more shame and remorse I experienced, the more I felt that after such a scene, nothing remained for us to do but to say adieu. Whatever courage Brigitte had shown, she had drunk to the dregs the bitter cup of her sad love; unless I wished to see her die, I must give her repose. She had often addressed cruel reproaches to me, and had, perhaps, on certain other occasions shown more anger than in this scene; but what she had said this time was not dictated by offended pride; it was the truth, which, hidden closely in her heart, had broken it in escaping.
Our present relations, and the fact that I had refused to go away with her, destroyed all hope; she desired to pardon me, but she had not the power. This slumber even, this deathlike sleep of one who could suffer no more, was conclusive evidence; this sudden silence, the tenderness she had shown in the final moments, that pale face, and that kiss, confirmed me in the belief that all was over, and that I had broken forever whatever bond had united us. As surely as she slept now, as soon as I gave her cause for further suffering she would sleep in eternal rest. The clock struck and I felt that the last hour had carried away my life with hers.
Unwilling to call any one, I lighted Brigitte's lamp; I watched its feeble flame and my thoughts seemed to flicker in the darkness like its uncertain rays.
Whatever I had said or done, the idea of losing Brigitte had never occurred to me up to this time. A hundred times I wished to leave her, but who has loved and is ready to say just what is in his heart? That was in times of despair or of anger. So long as I knew that she loved me, I was sure of loving her; stern necessity had just arisen between us for the first time. I experienced a dull languor and could distinguish nothing clearly. What my mind understood, my soul recoiled from accepting. "Come," I said to myself, "I have desired it and I have done it; there is not the slightest hope that we can live together; I am unwilling to kill this woman, so I have no alternative but to leave her. It is all over; I shall go away tomorrow."
And all the while I was thinking neither of my responsibility, nor of the past, nor future; I thought neither of Smith nor his connection with the affair; I could not say who had led me there, or what I had done during the last hour. I looked at the walls of the room and thought that all I had to do was to wait until to-morrow and decide what carriage I would take.
I remained for a long time in this strange calm, just as the man who receives a thrust from a poignard feels at first only the cold steel and can often travel some distance ere he becomes weak, and his eyes start from their sockets and he realizes what has happened. But drop by drop the blood flows, the ground under his feet becomes red, death comes; the man, at its approach, shudders with horror and falls as though struck by a thunderbolt. Thus, apparently calm, I awaited the coming of misfortune; I repeated in a low voice what Brigitte had said, and I placed near her all that I supposed she would need for the night; then I looked at her, then went to the window and pressed my forehead against the pane peering out at a sombre and lowering sky; then I returned to the bedside. That I was going away tomorrow was the only thought in my mind, and little by little the word "depart" became intelligible to me. "Ah! God!" I suddenly cried, "my poor mistress, I am about to lose you, and I have not known how to love you!"
I trembled at these words as if it had been another who had pronounced them; they resounded through all my being as resounds the string of the harp that has been plucked to the point of breaking. In an instant two years of suffering again racked my breast, and after them as their consequence and as their last expression, the present seized me. How shall I describe such woe? By a single word, perhaps, for those who have loved. I had taken Brigitte's hand, and, in a dream, doubtless, she had pronounced my name.
I arose and went to my room; a torrent of tears flowed from my eyes. I held out my arms as if to seize the past which was escaping me. "Is it possible," I repeated, "that I am going to lose you? I can love no one but you. What! you are going away? And forever? What! you, my life, my adored mistress, you flee me, I shall never see you more? Never! never!" I said aloud; and, addressing myself to the slumbering Brigitte as if she could hear me, I added: "Never, never; do not think of it; I will never consent to it. And why so much pride? Are there no means of atoning for the offense I have committed? I beg of you, let us seek some expiation. Have you not pardoned me a thousand times? But you love me, you will not be able to go, for courage will fail you. What shall we do?"
A horrible madness seized me; I began to run here and there in search of some instrument of death. At last I fell on my knees and beat my head against the bed. Brigitte stirred, and I remained quiet, fearing I should waken her.
"Let her sleep until to-morrow," I said to myself; "I have all night to watch her."
I resumed my place; I was so frightened at the idea of waking Brigitte, that I scarcely dared breathe. Gradually I became more calm and less bitter tears began to course gently down my cheeks. Tenderness succeeded fury. I leaned over Brigitte and looked at her as if, for the last time, my better angel were urging me to grave on my soul the lines of that dear face!
How pale she was! Her large eyes, surrounded by a bluish circle, were moist with tears; her form, once so lithe, was bent as if beneath a burden; her cheek, wasted and leaden, rested on a hand that was spare and feeble; her brow seemed to bear the marks of that crown of thorns which is the diadem of resignation. I thought of the cottage. How young she was six months ago! How cheerful, how free, how careless! What had I done with all that? It seemed to me that a strange voice repeated an old romance that I had long since forgotten: Altra volta gieri biele, Blanch' e rossa com' un flore, Ma ora no. Non son piu biele Consumatis dal' amore.
My sorrow was too great; I sprang to my feet and once more began to walk the floor. "Yes," I continued, "look at her; think of those who are consumed by a grief that is not shared with another. The evils you endure others have suffered, and nothing is singular or peculiar to you. Think of those who have no mother, no relatives, no friends; of those who seek and do not find, of those who love in vain, of those who die and are forgotten."
"Before thee, there on that bed, lies a being that nature, perchance, formed for thee. From the highest circles of intelligence to the deepest and most impenetrable mysteries of matter and of form, that soul and that body are thy affinities; for six months thy mouth has not spoken, thy heart has not beat, without a responsive word and heart-beat from her; and that woman, whom God has sent thee as He sends the rose to the field, is about to glide from thy heart. While rejoicing in each other's presence, while the angels of eternal love were singing before you, you were farther apart than two exiles at the two ends of the earth. Look at her, but be silent. Thou hast still one night to see her, if thy sobs do not awaken her."
Little by little, my thoughts mounted and became more sombre, until I recoiled in terror.
"To do evil! Such was the role imposed upon me by Providence. I, to do evil! I, to whom my conscience, even in the midst of my wildest follies, said that I was good! I, whom a pitiless destiny was dragging swiftly toward the abyss and whom a secret horror unceasingly warned of the awful fate to come! I, who, if I had shed blood with these hands, could yet repeat that my heart was not guilty; that I was deceived, that it was not I who did it, but my destiny, my evil genius, some unknown being who dwelt within me, but who was not born there!
"I do evil! For six months I had been engaged in that task, not a day had passed that I had not worked at that impious occupation, and I had at that moment the proof before my eyes. The man who had loved Brigitte, who had offended her, then insulted her, then abandoned her only to take her back again, trembling with fear, beset with suspicion, finally thrown on that bed of sorrow, where she now lay extended, was I!"
I beat my breast, and, although looking at her, I could not believe it. I touched her as if to assure myself that it was not a dream. My face, as I saw it in the glass, regarded me with astonishment. Who was that creature who appeared before me bearing my features? Who was that pitiless man who blasphemed with my mouth and tortured with my hands? Was it he whom my mother called Octave? Was it he who, at fifteen, leaning over the crystal waters of a fountain, had a heart not less pure than they? I closed my eyes and thought of my childhood days. As a ray of light pierces a cloud, a gleam from the past pierced my heart.
"No," I mused, "I did not do that. These things are but an absurd dream."
I recalled the time when I was ignorant of life, when I was taking my first steps in experience. I remembered an old beggar who used to sit on a stone bench before the farm gate, to whom I was sometimes sent with the remains of our morning meal. Holding out his feeble, wrinkled hands he would bless me as he smiled upon me. I felt the morning wind blowing on my brow and a freshness as of the rose descending from heaven into my soul. Then I opened my eyes and, by the light of the lamp, saw the reality before me.
"And you do not believe yourself guilty?" I demanded, with horror. "O novice of yesterday, how corrupt art thou today! Because you weep, you fondly imagine yourself innocent? What you consider the evidence of your conscience is only remorse; and what murderer does not experience it? If your virtue cries out, is it not because it feels the approach of death? O wretch! those far-off voices that you hear groaning in your heart, do you think they are sobs? They are perhaps only the cry of the sea-mew, that funereal bird of the tempest, whose presence portends shipwreck. Who has ever told the story of the childhood of those who have died stained with human blood? They, also, have been good in their day; they sometimes bury their faces in their hands and think of those happy days. You do evil, and you repent? Nero did the same when he killed his mother. Who has told you that tears can wash away the stains of guilt?
"And even if it were true that a part of your soul is not devoted to evil forever, what will you do with the other part that is not yours? You will touch with your left hand the wounds that you inflict with your right; you will make a shroud of your virtue in which to bury your crimes; you will strike, and like Brutus you will engrave on your sword the prattle of Plato! Into the heart of the being who opens her arms to you, you will plunge that blood-stained but repentant arm; you will follow to the cemetery the victim of your passion, and you will plant on her grave the sterile flower of your pity. You will say to those who see you 'What could you expect? I have learned how to kill, and observe that I already, weep; learn that God made me better than you see me.' You will speak of your youth, and you will persuade yourself that heaven ought to pardon you, that your misfortunes are involuntary, and you will implore sleepless nights to grant you a little repose.
"But who knows? You are still young. The more you trust in your heart, the farther astray you will be led by your pride. To-day you stand before the first ruin you are going to leave on your route. If Brigitte dies to-morrow you will weep on her tomb; where will you go when you leave her? You will go away for three months perhaps, and you will travel in Italy; you will wrap your cloak about you like a splenetic Englishman, and you will say some beautiful morning, sitting in your inn with your glasses before you, that it is time to forget in order to live again.
"You who weep too late, take care lest you weep more than one day. Who knows? When the present which makes you shudder shall have become the past, an old story, a confused memory, may it not happen some night of debauchery that you will overturn your chair and recount, with a smile on your lips, what you witnessed with tears in your eyes? It is thus that one drinks away shame. You have begun by being good, you will become weak, and you will become a monster.
"My poor friend," said I, from the bottom of my heart, "I have a word of advice for you, and it is this: I believe that you must die. While there is still some virtue left, profit by it in order that you may not become altogether bad; while a woman you love lies there dying on that bed, and while you have a horror of yourself, strike the decisive blow; she still lives; that is enough; do not attend her funeral obsequies for fear that on the morrow you will not be consoled; turn the poignard against your own heart while that heart yet loves the God who made it. Is it your youth that gives you pause? And would you spare those youthful locks? Never allow them to whiten if they are not white to-night.
"And then what would you do in the world? If you go away, where will you go? What can you hope for if you remain? Ah! in looking at that woman you seem to have a treasure buried in your heart. It is not merely that you lose her; it is less what has been than what might have been. When the hands of the clock indicated such and such an hour, you might have been happy. If you suffer why do you not open your heart? If you love, why do you not say so? Why do you die of hunger, clasping a priceless treasure in your hands? You have closed the door, you miser; you debate with yourself behind locks and bolts. Shake them, for it was your hand that forged them.
"O fool! who desired and have possessed your desire, you have not thought of God! You play with happiness as a child plays with a rattle, and you do not reflect how rare and fragile a thing you hold in your hands; you treat it with disdain, you smile at it and you continue to amuse yourself with it, forgetting how many prayers it has cost your good angel to preserve for you that shadow of daylight! Ah! if there is in heaven one who watches over you, what is he doing at this moment? He is seated before an organ; his wings are half-folded, his hands extended over the ivory keys; he begins an eternal hymn; the hymn of love and immortal rest, but his wings droop, his head falls over the keys; the angel of death has touched him on the shoulder, he disappears into the Nirvana.
"And you, at the age of twenty-two, when a noble and exalted passion, when the strength of youth might perhaps have made something of you when after so many sorrows and bitter disappointments, a youth so dissipated, you saw a better time shining in the future; when your life, consecrated to the object of your adoration, gave promise of new strength, at that moment the abyss yawns before you! You no longer experience vague desires, but real regrets; your heart is no longer hungry, it is broken! And you hesitate? What do you expect? Since she no longer cares for your life, it counts for nothing! Since she abandons you, abandon yourself!
"Let those who have loved you in your youth weep for you! They are not many. If you would live, you must not only forget love, but you must deny that it exists; not only deny what there has been of good in you, but kill all that may be good in the future; for what will you do if you remember? Life for you would be one ceaseless regret. No, no, you must choose between your soul and your body; you must kill one or the other. The memory of the good drives you to the evil, make a corpse of yourself unless you wish to become your own spectre. O child, child! die while you can! May tears be shed over your grave!"
I threw myself on the foot of the bed in such a frightful state of despair that my reason fled and I no longer knew where I was or what I was doing. Brigitte sighed.
My senses stirred within me. Was it grief or despair? I do not know. Suddenly a horrible idea occurred to me.
"What!" I muttered, "leave that for another! Die, descend into the ground, while that bosom heaves with the air of heaven? Just God! another hand than mine on that fine, transparent skin! Another mouth on those lips, another love in that heart! Brigitte happy, loving, adored, and I in a corner of the cemetery, crumbling into dust in a ditch! How long will it take her to forget me if I cease to exist to-morrow? How many tears will she shed? None, perhaps! Not a friend who speaks to her but will say that my death was a good thing, who will not hasten to console her, who will not urge her to forget me! If she weeps, they will seek to distract her attention from her loss; if memory haunts her, they will take her away; if her love for me survives me, they will seek to cure her as if she had been poisoned; and she herself, who will perhaps at first say that she desires to follow me, will a month later turn aside to avoid the weeping-willow planted over my grave!
"How could it be otherwise? Who, as beautiful as she, wastes life in idle regrets? If she should think of dying of grief, that beautiful bosom would urge her to live, and her mirror would persuade her; and the day when her exhausted tears give place to the first smile, who will not congratulate her on her recovery? When, after eight days of silence, she consents to hear my name pronounced in her presence, then she will speak of it herself as if to say: 'Console me;' then little by little she will no longer refuse to think of the past but will speak of it, and she will open her window some beautiful spring morning when the birds are singing in the garden; she will become pensive and say: 'I have loved!' Who will be there at her side? Who will dare to tell her that she must continue to love?
"Ah! then I shall be no more! You will listen to him, faithless one! You will blush as does the budding rose, and the blood of youth will mount to your face. While saying that your heart is sealed, you will allow it to escape through that fresh aureole of beauty, each ray of which allures a kiss. How much they desire to be loved who say they love no more! And why should that astonish you? You are a woman; that body, that spotless bosom, you know what they are worth; when you conceal them under your dress you do not believe, as do the virgins, that all are alike, and you know the price of your modesty. How can a woman who has been praised resolve to be praised no more? Does she think she is living when she remains in the shadow and there is silence round about her beauty? Her beauty itself is the admiring glance of her lover. No, no, there can be no doubt of it; she who has loved, can not live without love; she who has seen death clings to life. Brigitte loves me and will perhaps die of love; I will kill myself and another will have her.
"Another, another!" I repeated, bending over her until my head touched her shoulder. "Is she not a widow? Has she not already seen death? Have not these little hands prepared the dead for burial? Her tears for the second will not flow as long as those shed for the first. Ah! God forgive me! While she sleeps why should I not kill her? If I should awaken her now and tell her that her hour had come, and that we were going to die with a last kiss, she would consent. What does it matter? Is it certain that all does not end with that?"
I found a knife on the table and I picked it up.
"Fear, cowardice, superstition! What do they know about it who talk of something else beyond? It is for the ignorant common people that a future life has been invented, but who really believes in it? What watcher in the cemetery has seen Death leave his tomb and hold consultation with a priest? In olden times there were phantoms; they are interdicted by the police in civilized cities, and no cries are now heard issuing from the earth except from those buried in haste. Who has silenced death, if it has ever spoken? Because funeral processions are no longer permitted to encumber our streets, does the celestial spirit languish?
"To die, that is the final purpose, the end. God has established it, man discusses it; but over every door is written: 'Do what thou wilt, thou shalt die.' What will be said if I kill Brigitte? Neither of us will hear. In to-morrow's journal would appear the intelligence that Octave de T----- had killed his mistress, and the day after no one would speak of it. Who would follow us to the grave? No one who, upon returning to his home, could not enjoy a hearty dinner; and when we were extended side by side in our narrow, bed, the world could walk over our graves without disturbing us.
"Is it not true, my well-beloved, is it not true that it would be well with us? It is a soft bed, that bed of earth; no suffering can reach us there; the occupants of the neighboring tombs will not gossip about us; our bones will embrace in peace and without pride, for death is solace, and that which binds does not also separate. Why should annihilation frighten thee, poor body, destined to corruption? Every hour that strikes drags thee on to thy doom, every step breaks the round on which thou hast just rested; thou art nourished by the dead; the air of heaven weighs upon and crushes thee, the earth on which thou treadest attracts thee by the soles of thy feet.
"Down with thee! Why art thou affrighted? Dost thou tremble at a word? Merely say: 'We will not live.' Is not life a burden that we long to lay down? Why hesitate when it is merely a question of a little sooner or a little later? Matter is indestructible, and the physicists, we are told, grind to infinity the smallest speck of dust without being able to annihilate it. If matter is the property of chance, what harm can it do to change its form since it can not cease to be matter? Why should God care what form I have received and with what livery I invest my grief? Suffering lives in my brain; it belongs to me, I kill it; but my bones do not belong to me and I return them to Him who lent them to me: may some poet make a cup of my skull from which to drink his new wine!
"What reproach can I incur and what harm can that reproach do me? What stern judge will tell me that I have done wrong? What does he know about it?
"Was he such as I? If every creature has his task to perform, and if it is a crime to shirk it, what culprits are the babes who die on the nurse's breast! Why should they be spared? Who will be instructed by the lessons which are taught after death? Must heaven be a desert in order that man may be punished for having lived? Is it not enough to have lived? I do not know who asked that question, unless it were Voltaire on his death-bed; it is a cry of despair worthy of the helpless old atheist.
"But to what purpose? Why so many struggles? Who is there above us who delights in so much agony? Who amuses himself and wiles away an idle hour watching this spectacle of creation, always renewed and always dying, seeing the work of man's hands rising, the grass growing; looking upon the planting of the seed and the fall of the thunderbolt; beholding man walking about upon his earth until he meets the beckoning finger of death; counting tears and watching them dry upon the cheek of pain; noting the pure profile of love and the wrinkled face of age; seeing hands stretched up to him in supplication, bodies prostrate before him, and not a blade of wheat more in the harvest!
"Who is it, then, that has made so much for the pleasure of knowing that it all amounts to nothing! The earth is dying--Herschel says it is of cold; who holds in his hand the drop of condensed vapor and watches it as it dries up, as a fisher watches a grain of sand in his hand? That mighty law of attraction that suspends the world in space, torments it-- and consumes it in endless desire--every planet that carries its load of misery and groans on its axle--calls to each other across the abyss, and each wonders which will stop first. God controls them; they accomplish assiduously and eternally their appointed and useless task; they whirl about, they suffer, they burn, they become extinct and they light up with new flame; they descend and they reascend, they follow and yet they avoid one another, they interlace like rings; they carry on their surface thousands of beings who are ceaselessly renewed; the beings move about, cross one another's paths, clasp one another for an hour, and then fall, and others rise in their place.
"Where life fails, life hastens to the spot; where air is wanting, air rushes; no disorder, everything is regulated, marked out, written down in lines of gold and parables of fire; everything keeps step with the celestial music along the pitiless paths of life; and all for nothing! And we, poor nameless dreams, pale and sorrowful apparitions, helpless ephemera, we who are animated by the breath of a second in order that death may exist, we exhaust ourselves with fatigue in order to prove that we are living for a purpose, and that something indefinable is stirring within us.
"We hesitate to turn against our breasts a little piece of steel, or to blow out our brains with a little instrument no larger than our hands; it seems to us that chaos would return again; we have written and revised the laws both human and divine, and we are afraid of our catechisms; we suffer thirty years without murmuring and imagine that we are struggling; finally suffering becomes the stronger, we send a pinch of powder into the sanctuary of intelligence, and a flower pierces the soil above our grave."
As I finished these words I directed the knife I held in my hand against Brigitte's bosom. I was no longer master of myself, and in my delirious condition I know not what might have happened; I threw back the bed- clothing to uncover the heart, when I discovered on her white bosom a little ebony crucifix.
I recoiled, seized with sudden fear; my hand relaxed, my weapon fell to the floor. It was Brigitte's aunt who had given her that little crucifix on her deathbed. I did not remember ever having seen it before; doubtless, at the moment of setting out, she had suspended it about her neck as a preserving charm against the dangers of the journey. Suddenly I joined my hands and knelt on the floor.
"O Lord, my God," I said, in trembling tones, "Lord, my God, thou art there!"
Let those who do not believe in Christ read this page; I no longer believed in Him. Neither as a child, nor at school, nor as a man, have I frequented churches; my religion, if I had any, had neither rite nor symbol, and I believed in a God without form, without a cult, and without revelation. Poisoned, from youth, by all the writings of the last century, I had sucked, at an early hour, the sterile milk of impiety. Human pride, that God of the egoist, closed my mouth against prayer, while my affrighted soul took refuge in the hope of nothingness. I was as if drunken or insensate when I saw that effigy of Christ on Brigitte's bosom; while not believing in Him myself, I recoiled, knowing that she believed in Him.
It was not vain terror that arrested my hand. Who saw me? I was alone and it was night. Was it prejudice? What prevented me from hurling out of my sight that little piece of black wood? I could have thrown it into the fire, but it was my weapon I threw there. Ah! what an experience that was and still is for my soul! What miserable wretches are men who mock at that which can save a human being! What matters the name, the form, the belief? Is not all that is good sacred? How dare any one touch God?
As at a glance from the sun the snows descend the mountains, and the glaciers that threatened heaven melt into streams in the valley, so there descended into my heart a stream that overflowed its banks. Repentance is a pure incense; it exhaled from all my suffering. Although I had almost committed a crime when my hand was arrested, I felt that my heart was innocent. In an instant, calm, self-possession, reason returned; I again approached the bed; I leaned over my idol and kissed the crucifix.
"Sleep in peace," I said to her, "God watches over you! While your lips were parting in a smile, you were in greater danger than you have ever known before. But the hand that threatened you will harm no one; I swear by the faith you profess I will not kill either you or myself! I am a fool, a madman, a child who thinks himself a man. God be praised! You are young and beautiful. You live and you will forget me. You will recover from the evil I have done you, if you can forgive me. Sleep in peace until day, Brigitte, and then decide our fate; to whatever sentence you pronounce I will submit without complaint.
"And thou, Lord, who hast saved me, grant me pardon. I was born in an impious century, and I have many crimes to expiate. Thou Son of God, whom men forget, I have not been taught to love Thee. I have never worshipped in Thy temples, but I thank heaven that where I find Thee, I tremble and bow in reverence. I have at least kissed with my lips a heart that is full of Thee. Protect that heart so long as life lasts; dwell within it, Thou Holy One; a poor unfortunate has been brave enough to defy death at the sight of Thy suffering and Thy death; though impious, Thou hast saved him from evil; if he had believed, Thou wouldst have consoled him.
"Pardon those who have made him incredulous since Thou hast made him repentant; pardon those who blaspheme! When they were in despair they did not see Thee! Human joys are a mockery; they are scornful and pitiless; O Lord! the happy of this world think they have no need of Thee! Pardon them. Although their pride may outrage Thee, they will be, sooner or later, baptized in tears; grant that they may cease to believe in any other shelter from the tempest than Thy love, and spare them the severe lessons of unhappiness. Our wisdom and scepticism are in our hands but children's toys; forgive us for dreaming that we can defy Thee, Thou who smilest at Golgotha. The worst result of all our vain misery is that it tempts us to forget Thee.
"But Thou knowest that it is all but a shadow which a glance from Thee can dissipate. Hast not Thou Thyself been a man? It was sorrow that made Thee God; sorrow is an instrument of torture by which Thou hast mounted to the very throne of God, Thy Father, and it is sorrow that leads us to Thee with our crown of thorns to kneel before Thy mercy-seat; we touch Thy bleeding feet with our bloodstained hands, for Thou hast suffered martyrdom to be loved by the unfortunate."
The first rays of dawn began to appear: man and nature were rousing themselves from sleep and the air. was filled with the confusion of distant sounds. Weak and exhausted, I was about to leave Brigitte, and seek a little repose. As I was passing out of the room, a dress thrown on a chair slipped to the floor near me, and in its folds I spied a piece of paper. I picked it up; it was a letter, and I recognized Brigitte's hand. The envelope was not sealed. I opened it and read as follows: 23 December, 18-- "When you receive this letter I shall be far away from you, and shall perhaps never see you again. My destiny is bound up with that of a man for whom I have sacrificed everything; he can not live without me, and I am going to try to die for him. I love you; adieu, and pity us."
I turned the letter over when I had read it, and saw that it was addressed to "M. Henri Smith, N------, poste restante."
On the morrow, a clear December day, a young man and a woman who rested on his arm, passed through the garden of the Palais-Royal. They entered a jeweler's store where they chose two similar rings which they smilingly exchanged. After a short walk they took breakfast at the Freres- Provencaux, in one of those little rooms which are, all things considered, the most beautiful spots in the world. There, when the garcon had left them, they sat near the windows hand in hand.
The young man was in travelling dress; to see the joy which shone on his face, one would have taken him for a young husband showing his young wife the beauties and pleasures of Parisian life. His happiness was calm and subdued, as true happiness always is. The experienced would have recognized in him the youth who merges into manhood. From time to time he looked up at the sky, then at his companion, and tears glittered in his eyes, but he heeded them not, but smiled as he wept. The woman was pale and thoughtful, her eyes were fixed on the man. On her face were traces of sorrow which she could not conceal, although evidently touched by the exalted joy of her companion.
When he smiled, she smiled too, but never alone; when he spoke, she replied, and she ate what he served her; but there was about her a silence which was only broken at his instance. In her languor could be clearly distinguished that gentleness of soul, that lethargy of the weaker of two beings who love, one of whom exists only in the other and responds to him as does the echo. The young man was conscious of it, and seemed proud of it and grateful for it; but it could be seen even by his pride that his happiness was new to him.
When the woman became sad and her eyes fell, he cheered her with his glance; but he could not always succeed, and seemed troubled himself. That mingling of strength and weakness, of joy and sorrow, of anxiety and serenity, could not have been understood by an indifferent spectator; at times they appeared the most happy of living creatures, and the next moment the most unhappy; but, although ignorant of their secret, one would have felt that they were suffering together, and, whatever their mysterious trouble, it could be seen that they had placed on their sorrow a seal more powerful than love itself-friendship. While their hands were clasped their glances were chaste; although they were alone they spoke in low tones. As if overcome by their feelings, they sat face to face, although their lips did not touch. They looked at each other tenderly and solemnly. When the clock struck one, the woman heaved a sigh and said: "Octave, are you sure of yourself?"
"Yes, my friend, I am resolved. I shall suffer much, a long time, perhaps forever; but we will cure ourselves, you with time, I with God."
"Octave, Octave," repeated the woman, "are you sure you are not deceiving yourself?"
"I do not believe we can forget each other; but I believe that we can forgive, and that is what I desire even at the price of separation."
"Why could we not meet again? Why not some day--you are so young!"
Then she added, with a smile: "We could see each other without danger."
"No, my friend, for you must know that I could never see you again without loving you. May he to whom I bequeath you be worthy of you! Smith is brave, good, and honest, but however much you may love him, you see very well that you still love me, for if I should decide to remain, or to take you away with me, you would consent."
"It is true," replied the woman.
"True! true!" repeated the young man, looking into her eyes with all his soul. "Is it true that if I wished it you would go with me?"
Then he continued, softly: "That is the reason why I must never see you again. There are certain loves in life that overturn the head, the senses, the mind, the heart; there is among them all but one that does not disturb, that penetrates, and that dies only with the being in which it has taken root."
"But you will write to me?"
"Yes, at first, for what I have to suffer is so keen that the absence of the habitual object of my love would kill me. When I was unknown to you, I gradually approached closer and closer to you, until--but let us not go into the past. Little by little my letters will become less frequent until they cease altogether. I shall thus descend the hill that I have been climbing for the past year. When one stands before a fresh grave, over which are engraved two cherished names, one experiences a mysterious sense of grief, which causes tears to trickle down one's cheeks; it is thus that I wish to remember having once lived."
At these words the woman threw herself on the couch and burst into tears. The young man wept with her, but he did not move and seemed anxious to appear unconscious of her emotion. When her tears ceased to flow, he approached her, took her hand in his and kissed it.
"Believe me," said he, "to be loved by you, whatever the name of the place I occupy in your heart, will give me strength and courage. Rest assured, Brigitte, no one will ever understand you better than I; another will love you more worthily, no one will love you more truly. Another will be considerate of those feelings that I offend, he will surround you with his love; you will have a better lover, you will not have a better brother. Give me your hand and let the world laugh at a sentence that it does not understand: Let us be friends, and part forever. Before we became such intimate friends there was something within that told us we were destined to mingle our lives. Let our souls never know that we have parted upon earth; let not the paltry chance of a moment undo our eternal happiness!"
He held the woman's hand; she arose, tears streaming from her eyes, and, stepping up to the mirror with a strange smile on her face, she cut from her head a long tress of hair; then she looked at herself thus disfigured and deprived of a part of her beautiful crown, and gave it to her lover.
The clock struck again; it was time to go; when they passed out they seemed as joyful as when they entered.
"What a beautiful sun!" said the young man.
"And a beautiful day," said Brigitte, "the memory of which shall never fade."
They hastened away and disappeared in the crowd.
Some time later a carriage passed over a little hill behind Fontainebleau. The young man was the only occupant; he looked for the last time upon his native town as it disappeared in the distance, and thanked God that, of the three beings who had suffered through his fault, there remained but one of them still unhappy.
ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: Because you weep, you fondly imagine yourself innocent Cold silence, that negative force Contrive to use proud disdain as a shield Fool who destroys his own happiness Funeral processions are no longer permitted How much they desire to be loved who say they love no more I can not be near you and separated from you at the same moment Is it not enough to have lived? Make a shroud of your virtue in which to bury your crimes Reading the Memoirs of Constant Sometimes we seem to enjoy unhappiness Speak to me of your love, she said, "not of your grief Suffered, and yet took pleasure in it Suspicions that are ever born anew "Unhappy man!" she cried, "you will never know how to love" Who has told you that tears can wash away the stains of guilt You play with happiness as a child plays with a rattle Your great weapon is silence
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{
"id": "3941"
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1
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MY RECEPTION ABOARD
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IT WAS the middle of a bright tropical afternoon that we made good our escape from the bay. The vessel we sought lay with her main-topsail aback about a league from the land, and was the only object that broke the broad expanse of the ocean.
On approaching, she turned out to be a small, slatternly-looking craft, her hull and spars a dingy black, rigging all slack and bleached nearly white, and everything denoting an ill state of affairs aboard. The four boats hanging from her sides proclaimed her a whaler. Leaning carelessly over the bulwarks were the sailors, wild, haggard-looking fellows in Scotch caps and faded blue frocks; some of them with cheeks of a mottled bronze, to which sickness soon changes the rich berry-brown of a seaman's complexion in the tropics.
On the quarter-deck was one whom I took for the chief mate. He wore a broad-brimmed Panama hat, and his spy-glass was levelled as we advanced.
When we came alongside, a low cry ran fore and aft the deck, and everybody gazed at us with inquiring eyes. And well they might. To say nothing of the savage boat's crew, panting with excitement, all gesture and vociferation, my own appearance was calculated to excite curiosity. A robe of the native cloth was thrown over my shoulders, my hair and beard were uncut, and I betrayed other evidences of my recent adventure. Immediately on gaining the deck, they beset me on all sides with questions, the half of which I could not answer, so incessantly were they put.
As an instance of the curious coincidences which often befall the sailor, I must here mention that two countenances before me were familiar. One was that of an old man-of-war's-man, whose acquaintance I had made in Rio de Janeiro, at which place touched the ship in which I sailed from home. The other was a young man whom, four years previous, I had frequently met in a sailor boarding-house in Liverpool. I remembered parting with him at Prince's Dock Gates, in the midst of a swarm of police-officers, trackmen, stevedores, beggars, and the like. And here we were again:--years had rolled by, many a league of ocean had been traversed, and we were thrown together under circumstances which almost made me doubt my own existence.
But a few moments passed ere I was sent for into the cabin by the captain.
He was quite a young man, pale and slender, more like a sickly counting-house clerk than a bluff sea-captain. Bidding me be seated, he ordered the steward to hand me a glass of Pisco. In the state I was, this stimulus almost made me delirious; so that of all I then went on to relate concerning my residence on the island I can scarcely remember a word. After this I was asked whether I desired to "ship"; of course I said yes; that is, if he would allow me to enter for one cruise, engaging to discharge me, if I so desired, at the next port. In this way men are frequently shipped on board whalemen in the South Seas. My stipulation was acceded to, and the ship's articles handed me to sign.
The mate was now called below, and charged to make a "well man" of me; not, let it be borne in mind, that the captain felt any great compassion for me, he only desired to have the benefit of my services as soon as possible.
Helping me on deck, the mate stretched me out on the windlass and commenced examining my limb; and then doctoring it after a fashion with something from the medicine-chest, rolled it up in a piece of an old sail, making so big a bundle that, with my feet resting on the windlass, I might have been taken for a sailor with the gout. While this was going on, someone removing my tappa cloak slipped on a blue frock in its place, and another, actuated by the same desire to make a civilized mortal of me, flourished about my head a great pair lie imminent jeopardy of both ears, and the certain destruction of hair and beard.
The day was now drawing to a close, and, as the land faded from my sight, I was all alive to the change in my condition. But how far short of our expectations is oftentimes the fulfilment of the most ardent hopes. Safe aboard of a ship--so long my earnest prayer--with home and friends once more in prospect, I nevertheless felt weighed down by a melancholy that could not be shaken off. It was the thought of never more seeing those who, notwithstanding their desire to retain me a captive, had, upon the whole, treated me so kindly. I was leaving them for ever.
So unforeseen and sudden had been my escape, so excited had I been through it all, and so great the contrast between the luxurious repose of the valley, and the wild noise and motion of a ship at sea, that at times my recent adventures had all the strangeness of a dream; and I could scarcely believe that the same sun now setting over a waste of waters, had that very morning risen above the mountains and peered in upon me as I lay on my mat in Typee.
Going below into the forecastle just after dark, I was inducted into a wretched "bunk" or sleeping-box built over another. The rickety bottoms of both were spread with several pieces of a blanket. A battered tin can was then handed me, containing about half a pint of "tea"--so called by courtesy, though whether the juice of such stalks as one finds floating therein deserves that title, is a matter all shipowners must settle with their consciences. A cube of salt beef, on a hard round biscuit by way of platter, was also handed up; and without more ado, I made a meal, the salt flavour of which, after the Nebuchadnezzar fare of the valley, was positively delicious.
While thus engaged, an old sailor on a chest just under me was puffing out volumes of tobacco smoke. My supper finished, he brushed the stem of his sooty pipe against the sleeve of his frock, and politely waved it toward me. The attention was sailor-like; as for the nicety of the thing, no man who has lived in forecastles is at all fastidious; and so, after a few vigorous whiffs to induce repose, I turned over and tried my best to forget myself. But in vain. My crib, instead of extending fore and aft, as it should have done, was placed athwart ships, that is, at right angles to the keel, and the vessel, going before the wind, rolled to such a degree, that-every time my heels went up and my head went down, I thought I was on the point of turning a somerset. Beside this, there were still more annoying causes of inquietude; and every once in a while a splash of water came down the open scuttle, and flung the spray in my face.
At last, after a sleepless night, broken twice by the merciless call of the watch, a peep of daylight struggled into view from above, and someone came below. It was my old friend with the pipe.
"Here, shipmate," said I, "help me out of this place, and let me go on deck."
"Halloa, who's that croaking?" was the rejoinder, as he peered into the obscurity where I lay. "Ay, Typee, my king of the cannibals, is it you I But I say, my lad, how's that spar of your'n? the mate says it's in a devil of a way; and last night set the steward to sharpening the handsaw: hope he won't have the carving of ye."
Long before daylight we arrived off the bay of Nukuheva, and making short tacks until morning, we then ran in and sent a boat ashore with the natives who had brought me to the ship. Upon its return, we made sail again, and stood off from the land. There was a fine breeze; and notwithstanding my bad night's rest, the cool, fresh air of a morning at sea was so bracing, mat, as soon as I breathed it, my spirits rose at once.
Seated upon the windlass the greater portion of the day, and chatting freely with the men, I learned the history of the voyage thus far, and everything respecting the ship and its present condition.
These matters I will now throw together in the next chapter.
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{
"id": "4045"
}
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2
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SOME ACCOUNT OF THE SHIP
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FIRST AND foremost, I must give some account of the Julia herself; or "Little Jule," as the sailors familiarly styled her.
She was a small barque of a beautiful model, something more than two hundred tons, Yankee-built and very old. Fitted for a privateer out of a New England port during the war of 1812, she had been captured at sea by a British cruiser, and, after seeing all sorts of service, was at last employed as a government packet in the Australian seas. Being condemned, however, about two years previous, she was purchased at auction by a house in Sydney, who, after some slight repairs, dispatched her on the present voyage.
Notwithstanding the repairs, she was still in a miserable plight. The lower masts were said to be unsound; the standing rigging was much worn; and, in some places, even the bulwarks were quite rotten. Still, she was tolerably tight, and but little more than the ordinary pumping of a morning served to keep her free.
But all this had nothing to do with her sailing; at that, brave Little Jule, plump Little Jule, was a witch. Blow high, or blow low, she was always ready for the breeze; and when she dashed the waves from her prow, and pranced, and pawed the sea, you never thought of her patched sails and blistered hull. How the fleet creature would fly before the wind! rolling, now and then, to be sure, but in very playfulness. Sailing to windward, no gale could bow her over: with spars erect, she looked right up into the wind's eye, and so she went.
But after all, Little Jule was not to be confided in. Lively enough, and playful she was, but on that very account the more to be distrusted. Who knew, but that like some vivacious old mortal all at once sinking into a decline, she might, some dark night, spring a leak and carry us all to the bottom. However, she played us no such ugly trick, and therefore, I wrong Little Jule in supposing it.
She had a free roving commission. According to her papers she might go whither she pleased--whaling, sealing, or anything else. Sperm whaling, however, was what she relied upon; though, as yet, only two fish had been brought alongside.
The day they sailed out of Sydney Heads, the ship's company, all told, numbered some thirty-two souls; now, they mustered about twenty; the rest had deserted. Even the three junior mates who had headed the whaleboats were gone: and of the four harpooners, only one was left, a wild New Zealander, or "Mowree" as his countrymen are more commonly called in the Pacific. But this was not all. More than half the seamen remaining were more or less unwell from a long sojourn in a dissipated port; some of them wholly unfit for duty, one or two dangerously ill, and the rest managing to stand their watch though they could do but little.
The captain was a young cockney, who, a few years before, had emigrated to Australia, and, by some favouritism or other, had procured the command of the vessel, though in no wise competent. He was essentially a landsman, and though a man of education, no more meant for the sea than a hairdresser. Hence everybody made fun of him. They called him "The Cabin Boy," "Paper Jack," and half a dozen other undignified names. In truth, the men made no secret of the derision in which they held him; and as for the slender gentleman himself, he knew it all very well, and bore himself with becoming meekness. Holding as little intercourse with them as possible, he left everything to the chief mate, who, as the story went, had been given his captain in charge. Yet, despite his apparent unobtrusiveness, the silent captain had more to do with the men than they thought. In short, although one of your sheepish-looking fellows, he had a sort of still, timid cunning, which no one would have suspected, and which, for that very reason, was all the more active. So the bluff mate, who always thought he did what he pleased, was occasionally made a fool of; and some obnoxious measures which he carried out, in spite of all growlings, were little thought to originate with the dapper little fellow in nankeen jacket and white canvas pumps. But, to all appearance, at least, the mate had everything his own way; indeed, in most things this was actually the case; and it was quite plain that the captain stood in awe of him.
So far as courage, seamanship, and a natural aptitude for keeping riotous spirits in subjection were concerned, no man was better qualified for his vocation than John Jermin. He was the very beau-ideal of the efficient race of short, thick-set men. His hair curled in little rings of iron gray all over his round bullet head. As for his countenance, it was strongly marked, deeply pitted with the small-pox. For the rest, there was a fierce little squint out of one eye; the nose had a rakish twist to one side; while his large mouth, and great white teeth, looked absolutely sharkish when he laughed. In a word, no one, after getting a fair look at him, would ever think of improving the shape of his nose, wanting in symmetry as it was. Notwithstanding his pugnacious looks, however, Jermin had a heart as big as a bullock's; that you saw at a glance.
Such was our mate; but he had one failing: he abhorred all weak infusions, and cleaved manfully to strong drink. . At all times he was more or less under the influence of it. Taken in moderate quantities, I believe, in my soul, it did a man like him good; brightened his eyes, swept the cobwebs out of his brain, and regulated his pulse. But the worst of it was, that sometimes he drank too much, and a more obstreperous fellow than Jermin in his cups, you seldom came across. He was always for having a fight; but the very men he flogged loved him as a brother, for he had such an irresistibly good-natured way of knocking them down, that no one could find it in his heart to bear malice against him. So much for stout little Jermin.
All English whalemen are bound by-law to carry a physician, who, of course, is rated a gentleman, and lives in the cabin, with nothing but his professional duties to attend to; but incidentally he drinks "flip" and plays cards with the captain. There was such a worthy aboard of the Julia; but, curious to tell, he lived in the forecastle with the men. And this was the way it happened.
In the early part of the voyage the doctor and the captain lived together as pleasantly as could be. To say nothing of many a can they drank over the cabin transom, both of them had read books, and one of them had travelled; so their stories never flagged. But once on a time they got into a dispute about politics, and the doctor, moreover, getting into a rage, drove home an argument with his fist, and left the captain on the floor literally silenced. This was carrying it with a high hand; so he was shut up in his state-room for ten days, and left to meditate on bread and water, and the impropriety of flying into a passion. Smarting under his disgrace, he undertook, a short time after his liberation, to leave the vessel clandestinely at one of the islands, but was brought back ignominiously, and again shut up. Being set at large for the second time, he vowed he would not live any longer with the captain, and went forward with his chests among the sailors, where he was received with open arms as a good fellow and an injured man.
I must give some further account of him, for he figures largely in the narrative. His early history, like that of many other heroes, was enveloped in the profoundest obscurity; though he threw out hints of a patrimonial estate, a nabob uncle, and an unfortunate affair which sent him a-roving. All that was known, however, was this. He had gone out to Sydney as assistant-surgeon of an emigrant ship. On his arrival there, he went back into the country, and after a few months' wanderings, returned to Sydney penniless, and entered as doctor aboard of the Julia.
His personal appearance was remarkable. He was over six feet high--a tower of bones, with a complexion absolutely colourless, fair hair, and a light unscrupulous gray eye, twinkling occasionally at the very devil of mischief. Among the crew, he went by the name of the Long Doctor, or more frequently still, Doctor Long Ghost. And from whatever high estate Doctor Long Ghost might have fallen, he had certainly at some time or other spent money, drunk Burgundy, and associated with gentlemen.
As for his learning, he quoted Virgil, and talked of Hobbs of Malmsbury, beside repeating poetry by the canto, especially Hudibras. He was, moreover, a man who had seen the world. In the easiest way imaginable, he could refer to an amour he had in Palermo, his lion-hunting before breakfast among the Caffres, and the quality of the coffee to be drunk in Muscat; and about these places, and a hundred others, he had more anecdotes than I can tell of. Then such mellow old songs as he sang, in a voice so round and racy, the real juice of sound. How such notes came forth from his lank body was a constant marvel.
Upon the whole, Long Ghost was as entertaining a companion as one could wish; and to me in the Julia, an absolute godsend.
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{
"id": "4045"
}
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3
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FURTHER ACCOUNT OF THE JULIA
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OWING to the absence of anything like regular discipline, the vessel was in a state of the greatest uproar. The captain, having for some time past been more or less confined to the cabin from sickness, was seldom seen. The mate, however, was as hearty as a young lion, and ran about the decks making himself heard at all hours. Bembo, the New Zealand harpooner, held little intercourse with anybody but the mate, who could talk to him freely in his own lingo. Part of his time he spent out on the bowsprit, fishing for albicores with a bone hook; and occasionally he waked all hands up of a dark night dancing some cannibal fandango all by himself on the forecastle. But, upon the whole, he was remarkably quiet, though something in his eye showed he was far from being harmless.
Doctor Long Ghost, having sent in a written resignation as the ship's doctor, gave himself out as a passenger for Sydney, and took the world quite easy. As for the crew, those who were sick seemed marvellously contented for men in their condition; and the rest, not displeased with the general licence, gave themselves little thought of the morrow.
The Julia's provisions were very poor. When opened, the barrels of pork looked as if preserved in iron rust, and diffused an odour like a stale ragout. The beef was worse yet; a mahogany-coloured fibrous substance, so tough and tasteless, that I almost believed the cook's story of a horse's hoof with the shoe on having been fished up out of the pickle of one of the casks. Nor was the biscuit much better; nearly all of it was broken into hard, little gunflints, honeycombed through and through, as if the worms usually infesting this article in long tropical voyages had, in boring after nutriment, come out at the antipodes without finding anything.
Of what sailors call "small stores," we had but little. "Tea," however, we had in abundance; though, I dare say, the Hong merchants never had the shipping of it. Beside this, every other day we had what English seamen call "shot soup"--great round peas, polishing themselves like pebbles by rolling about in tepid water.
It was afterward told me, that all our provisions had been purchased by the owners at an auction sale of condemned navy stores in Sydney.
But notwithstanding the wateriness of the first course of soup, and the saline flavour of the beef and pork, a sailor might have made a satisfactory meal aboard of the Julia had there been any side dishes--a potato or two, a yam, or a plantain. But there was nothing of the kind. Still, there was something else, which, in the estimation of the men, made up for all deficiencies; and that was the regular allowance of Pisco.
It may seem strange that in such a state of affairs the captain should be willing to keep the sea with his ship. But the truth was, that by lying in harbour, he ran the risk of losing the remainder of his men by desertion; and as it was, he still feared that, in some outlandish bay or other, he might one day find his anchor down, and no crew to weigh it.
With judicious officers the most unruly seamen can at sea be kept in some sort of subjection; but once get them within a cable's length of the land, and it is hard restraining them. It is for this reason that many South Sea whalemen do not come to anchor for eighteen or twenty months on a stretch. When fresh provisions are needed, they run for the nearest land--heave to eight or ten miles off, and send a boat ashore to trade. The crews manning vessels like these are for the most part villains of all nations and dyes; picked up in the lawless ports of the Spanish Main, and among the savages of the islands. Like galley-slaves, they are only to be governed by scourges and chains. Their officers go among them with dirk and pistol--concealed, but ready at a grasp.
Not a few of our own crew were men of this stamp; but, riotous at times as they were, the bluff drunken energies of Jennin were just the thing to hold them in some sort of noisy subjection. Upon an emergency, he flew in among them, showering his kicks and cuffs right and left, and "creating a sensation" in every direction. And as hinted before, they bore this knock-down authority with great good-humour. A sober, discreet, dignified officer could have done nothing with them; such a set would have thrown him and his dignity overboard.
Matters being thus, there was nothing for the ship but to keep the sea. Nor was the captain without hope that the invalid portion of his crew, as well as himself, would soon recover; and then there was no telling what luck in the fishery might yet be in store for us. At any rate, at the time of my coming aboard, the report was, that Captain Guy was resolved upon retrieving the past and filling the vessel with oil in the shortest space possible.
With this intention, we were now shaping our course for Hytyhoo, a village on the island of St. Christina--one of the Marquesas, and so named by Mendanna--for the purpose of obtaining eight seamen, who, some weeks before, had stepped ashore there from the Julia. It was supposed that, by this time, they must have recreated themselves sufficiently, and would be glad to return to their duty.
So to Hytyhoo, with all our canvas spread, and coquetting with the warm, breezy Trades, we bowled along; gliding up and down the long, slow swells, the bonettas and albicores frolicking round us.
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{
"id": "4045"
}
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4
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A SCENE IN THE FORECASTLE
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I HAD scarcely been aboard of the ship twenty-four hours, when a circumstance occurred, which, although noways picturesque, is so significant of the state of affairs that I cannot forbear relating it.
In the first place, however, it must be known, that among the crew was a man so excessively ugly, that he went by the ironical appellation of "Beauty." He was the ship's carpenter; and for that reason was sometimes known by his nautical cognomen of "Chips." There was no absolute deformity about the man; he was symmetrically ugly. But ill favoured as he was in person, Beauty was none the less ugly in temper; but no one could blame him; his countenance had soured his heart. Now Jermin and Beauty were always at swords' points. The truth was, the latter was the only man in the ship whom the mate had never decidedly got the better of; and hence the grudge he bore him. As for Beauty, he prided himself upon talking up to the mate, as we shall soon see.
Toward evening there was something to be done on deck, and the carpenter who belonged to the watch was missing. "Where's that skulk, Chips?" shouted Jermin down the forecastle scuttle.
"Taking his ease, d'ye see, down here on a chest, if you want to know," replied that worthy himself, quietly withdrawing his pipe from his mouth. This insolence flung the fiery little mate into a mighty rage; but Beauty said nothing, puffing away with all the tranquillity imaginable. Here it must be remembered that, never mind what may be the provocation, no prudent officer ever dreams of entering a ship's forecastle on a hostile visit. If he wants to see anybody who happens to be there, and refuses to come up, why he must wait patiently until the sailor is willing. The reason is this. The place is very dark: and nothing is easier than to knock one descending on the head, before he knows where he is, and a very long while before he ever finds out who did it.
Nobody knew this better than Jermin, and so he contented himself with looking down the scuttle and storming. At last Beauty made some cool observation which set him half wild.
"Tumble on deck," he then bellowed--"come, up with you, or I'll jump down and make you." The carpenter begged him to go about it at once.
No sooner said than done: prudence forgotten, Jermin was there; and by a sort of instinct, had his man by the throat before he could well see him. One of the men now made a rush at him, but the rest dragged him off, protesting that they should have fair play.
"Now come on deck," shouted the mate, struggling like a good fellow to hold the carpenter fast.
"Take me there," was the dogged answer, and Beauty wriggled about in the nervous grasp of the other like a couple of yards of boa-constrictor.
His assailant now undertook to make him up into a compact bundle, the more easily to transport him. While thus occupied, Beauty got his arms loose, and threw him over backward. But Jermin quickly recovered himself, when for a time they had it every way, dragging each other about, bumping their heads against the projecting beams, and returning each other's blows the first favourable opportunity that offered. Unfortunately, Jermin at last slipped and fell; his foe seating himself on his chest, and keeping him down. Now this was one of those situations in which the voice of counsel, or reproof, comes with peculiar unction. Nor did Beauty let the opportunity slip. But the mate said nothing in reply, only foaming at the mouth and struggling to rise.
Just then a thin tremor of a voice was heard from above. It was the captain; who, happening to ascend to the quarter-deck at the commencement of the scuffle, would gladly have returned to the cabin, but was prevented by the fear of ridicule. As the din increased, and it became evident that his officer was in serious trouble, he thought it would never do to stand leaning over the bulwarks, so he made his appearance on the forecastle, resolved, as his best policy, to treat the matter lightly.
"Why, why," he begun, speaking pettishly, and very fast, "what's all this about? --Mr. Jermin, Mr. Jermin--carpenter, carpenter; what are you doing down there? Come on deck; come on deck."
Whereupon Doctor Long Ghost cries out in a squeak, "Ah! Miss Guy, is that you? Now, my dear, go right home, or you'll get hurt."
"Pooh, pooh! you, sir, whoever you are, I was not speaking to you; none of your nonsense. Mr. Jermin, I was talking to you; have the kindness to come on deck, sir; I want to see you."
"And how, in the devil's name, am I to get there?" cried the mate, furiously. "Jump down here, Captain Guy, and show yourself a man. Let me up, you Chips! unhand me, I say! Oh! I'll pay you for this, some day! Come on, Captain Guy!"
At this appeal, the poor man was seized with a perfect spasm of fidgets. "Pooh, pooh, carpenter; have done with your nonsense! Let him up, sir; let him up! Do you hear? Let Mr. Jermm come on deck!"
"Go along with you, Paper Jack," replied Beauty; "this quarrel's between the mate and me; so go aft, where you belong!"
As the captain once more dipped his head down the scuttle to make answer, from an unseen hand he received, full in the face, the contents of a tin can of soaked biscuit and tea-leaves. The doctor was not far off just then. Without waiting for anything more, the discomfited gentleman, with both hands to his streaming face, retreated to the quarter-deck.
A few moments more, and Jermin, forced to a compromise, followed after, in his torn frock and scarred face, looking for all the world as if he had just disentangled himself from some intricate piece of machinery. For about half an hour both remained in the cabin, where the mate's rough tones were heard high above the low, smooth voice of the captain.
Of all his conflicts with the men, this was the first in which Jermin had been worsted; and he was proportionably enraged. Upon going below--as the steward afterward told us--he bluntly informed Guy that, for the future, he might look out for his ship himself; for his part, he had done with her, if that was the way he allowed his officers to be treated. After many high words, the captain finally assured him that, the first fitting opportunity, the carpenter should be cordially flogged; though, as matters stood, the experiment would be a hazardous one. Upon this Jermin reluctantly consented to drop the matter for the present; and he soon drowned all thoughts of it in a can of flip, which Guy had previously instructed the steward to prepare, as a sop to allay his wrath.
Nothing more ever came of this.
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{
"id": "4045"
}
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5
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WHAT HAPPENED AT HYTYHOO
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LESS than forty-eight hours after leaving Nukuheva, the blue, looming island of St. Christina greeted us from afar. Drawing near the shore, the grim, black spars and waspish hull of a small man-of-war craft crept into view; the masts and yards lined distinctly against the sky. She was riding to her anchor in the bay, and proved to be a French corvette.
This pleased our captain exceedingly, and, coming on deck, he examined her from the mizzen rigging with his glass. His original intention was not to let go an anchor; but, counting upon the assistance of the corvette in case of any difficulty, he now changed his mind, and anchored alongside of her. As soon as a boat could be lowered, he then went off to pay his respects to the commander, and, moreover, as we supposed, to concert measures for the apprehension of the runaways.
Returning in the course of twenty minutes, he brought along with him two officers in undress and whiskers, and three or four drunken obstreperous old chiefs; one with his legs thrust into the armholes of a scarlet vest, another with a pair of spurs on his heels, and a third in a cocked hat and feather. In addition to these articles, they merely wore the ordinary costume of their race--a slip of native cloth about the loins. Indecorous as their behaviour was, these worthies turned out to be a deputation from the reverend the clergy of the island; and the object of their visit was to put our ship under a rigorous "Taboo," to prevent the disorderly scenes and facilities for desertion which would ensue, were the natives--men and women--allowed to come off to us freely.
There was little ceremony about the matter. The priests went aside for a moment, laid their shaven old crowns together, and went over a little mummery. Whereupon, their leader tore a long strip from his girdle of white tappa, and handed it to one of the French officers, who, after explaining what was to be done, gave it to Jermin. The mate at once went out to the end of the flying jib boom, and fastened there the mystic symbol of the ban. This put to flight a party of girls who had been observed swimming toward us. Tossing their arms about, and splashing the water like porpoises, with loud cries of "taboo! taboo!" they turned about and made for the shore.
The night of our arrival, the mate and the Mowree were to stand "watch and watch," relieving each other every four hours; the crew, as is sometimes customary when lying at an anchor, being allowed to remain all night below. A distrust of the men, however, was, in the present instance, the principal reason for this proceeding. Indeed, it was all but certain, that some kind of attempt would be made at desertion; and therefore, when Jermin's first watch came on at eight bells (midnight)--by which time all was quiet--he mounted to the deck with a flask of spirits in one hand, and the other in readiness to assail the first countenance that showed itself above the forecastle scuttle.
Thus prepared, he doubtless meant to stay awake; but for all that, he before long fell asleep; and slept with such hearty good-will too, that the men who left us that night might have been waked up by his snoring. Certain it was, the mate snored most strangely; and no wonder, with that crooked bugle of his. When he came to himself it was just dawn, but quite light enough to show two boats gone from the side. In an instant he knew what had happened.
Dragging the Mowree out of an old sail where he was napping, he ordered him to clear away another boat, and then darted into the cabin to tell the captain the news. Springing on deck again, he drove down into the forecastle for a couple of oarsmen, but hardly got there before there was a cry, and a loud splash heard over the side. It was the Mowree and the boat--into which he had just leaped to get ready for lowering--rolling over and over in the water.
The boat having at nightfall been hoisted up to its place over the starboard quarter, someone had so cut the tackles which held it there, that a moderate strain would at once part them. Bembo's weight had answered the purpose, showing that the deserters must have ascertained his specific gravity to a fibre of hemp. There was another boat remaining; but it was as well to examine it before attempting to lower. And it was well they did; for there was a hole in the bottom large enough to drop a barrel through: she had been scuttled most ruthlessly.
Jermin was frantic. Dashing his hat upon deck, he was about to plunge overboard and swim to the corvette for a cutter, when Captain Guy made his appearance and begged him to stay where he was. By this time the officer of the deck aboard the Frenchman had noticed our movements, and hailed to know what had happened. Guy informed him through his trumpet, and men to go in pursuit were instantly promised. There was a whistling of a boatswain's pipe, an order or two, and then a large cutter pulled out from the man-of-war's stern, and in half a dozen strokes was alongside. The mate leaped into her, and they pulled rapidly ashore.
Another cutter, carrying an armed crew, soon followed.
In an hour's time the first returned, towing the two whale-boats, which had been found turned up like tortoises on the beach.
Noon came, and nothing more was heard from the deserters. Meanwhile Doctor Long Ghost and myself lounged about, cultivating an acquaintance, and gazing upon the shore scenery. The bay was as calm as death; the sun high and hot; and occasionally a still gliding canoe stole out from behind the headlands, and shot across the water.
And all the morning long our sick men limped about the deck, casting wistful glances inland, where the palm-trees waved and beckoned them into their reviving shades. Poor invalid rascals! How conducive to the restoration of their shattered health would have been those delicious groves! But hard-hearted Jermin assured them, with an oath, that foot of theirs should never touch the beach.
Toward sunset a crowd was seen coming down to the water. In advance of all were the fugitives--bareheaded--their frocks and trousers hanging in tatters, every face covered with blood and dust, and their arms pinioned behind them with green thongs. Following them up, was a shouting rabble of islanders, pricking them with the points of their long spears, the party from the corvette menacing them in flank with their naked cutlasses.
The bonus of a musket to the King of the Bay, and the promise of a tumblerful of powder for every man caught, had set the whole population on their track; and so successful was the hunt, that not only were that morning's deserters brought back, but five of those left behind on a former visit. The natives, however, were the mere hounds of the chase, raising the game in their coverts, but leaving the securing of it to the Frenchmen. Here, as elsewhere, the islanders have no idea of taking part in such a scuffle as ensues upon the capture of a party of desperate seamen.
The runaways were at once brought aboard, and, though they looked rather sulky, soon came round, and treated the whole affair as a frolicsome adventure.
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{
"id": "4045"
}
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6
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WE TOUCH AT LA DOMINICA
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FEARFUL of spending another night at Hytyhoo, Captain Guy caused the ship to be got under way shortly after dark.
The next morning, when all supposed that we were fairly embarked for a long cruise, our course was suddenly altered for La Dominica, or Hivarhoo, an island just north of the one we had quitted. The object of this, as we learned, was to procure, if possible, several English sailors, who, according to the commander of the corvette, had recently gone ashore there from an American whaler, and were desirous of shipping aboard one of their own country vessels.
We made the land in the afternoon, coming abreast of a shady glen opening from a deep bay, and winding by green denies far out of sight. "Hands by the weather-main-brace!" roared the mate, jumping up on the bulwarks; and in a moment the prancing Julia, suddenly arrested in her course, bridled her head like a steed reined in, while the foam flaked under her bows.
This was the place where we expected to obtain the men; so a boat was at once got in readiness to go ashore. Now it was necessary to provide a picked crew--men the least likely to abscond. After considerable deliberation on the part of the captain and mate, four of the seamen were pitched upon as the most trustworthy; or rather they were selected from a choice assortment of suspicious characters as being of an inferior order of rascality.
Armed with cutlasses all round--the natives were said to be an ugly set--they were followed over the side by the invalid captain, who, on this occasion, it seems, was determined to signalize himself. Accordingly, in addition to his cutlass, he wore an old boarding belt, in which was thrust a brace of pistols. They at once shoved off.
My friend Long Ghost had, among other things which looked somewhat strange in a ship's forecastle, a capital spy-glass, and on the present occasion we had it in use.
When the boat neared the head of the inlet, though invisible to the naked eye, it was plainly revealed by the glass; looking no bigger than an egg-shell, and the men diminished to pigmies.
At last, borne on what seemed a long flake of foam, the tiny craft shot up the beach amid a shower of sparkles. Not a soul was there. Leaving one of their number by the water, the rest of the pigmies stepped ashore, looking about them very circumspectly, pausing now and then hand to ear, and peering under a dense grove which swept down within a few paces of the sea. No one came, and to all appearances everything was as still as the grave. Presently he with the pistols, followed by the rest flourishing their bodkins, entered the wood and were soon lost to view. They did not stay long; probably anticipating some inhospitable ambush were they to stray any distance up the glen.
In a few moments they embarked again, and were soon riding pertly over the waves of the bay. All of a sudden the captain started to his feet--the boat spun round, and again made for the shore. Some twenty or thirty natives armed with spears which through the glass looked like reeds, had just come out of the grove, and were apparently shouting to the strangers not to be in such a hurry, but return and be sociable. But they were somewhat distrusted, for the boat paused about its length from the beach, when the captain standing up in its head delivered an address in pantomime, the object of which seemed to be, that the islanders should draw near. One of them stepped forward and made answer, seemingly again urging the strangers not to be diffident, but beach their boat. The captain declined, tossing his arms about in another pantomime. In the end he said something which made them shake their spears; whereupon he fired a pistol among them, which set the whole party running; while one poor little fellow, dropping his spear and clapping his hand behind him, limped away in a manner which almost made me itch to get a shot at his assailant.
Wanton acts of cruelty like this are not unusual on the part of sea captains landing at islands comparatively unknown. Even at the Pomotu group, but a day's sail from Tahiti, the islanders coming down to the shore have several times been fired at by trading schooners passing through their narrow channels; and this too as a mere amusement on the part of the ruffians.
Indeed, it is almost incredible, the light in which many sailors regard these naked heathens. They hardly consider them human. But it is a curious fact, that the more ignorant and degraded men are, the more contemptuously they look upon those whom they deem their inferiors.
All powers of persuasion being thus lost upon these foolish savages, and no hope left of holding further intercourse, the boat returned to the ship.
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{
"id": "4045"
}
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7
|
WHAT HAPPENED AT HANNAMANOO
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ON the other side of the island was the large and populous bay of Hannamanoo, where the men sought might yet be found. But as the sun was setting by the time the boat came alongside, we got our offshore tacks aboard and stood away for an offing. About daybreak we wore, and ran in, and by the time the sun was well up, entered the long, narrow channel dividing the islands of La Dominica and St. Christina.
On one hand was a range of steep green bluffs hundreds of feet high, the white huts of the natives here and there nestling like birds' nests in deep clefts gushing with verdure. Across the water, the land rolled away in bright hillsides, so warm and undulating that they seemed almost to palpitate in the sun. On we swept, past bluff and grove, wooded glen and valley, and dark ravines lighted up far inland with wild falls of water. A fresh land-breeze filled our sails, the embayed waters were gentle as a lake, and every wave broke with a tinkle against our coppered prow.
On gaining the end of the channel we rounded a point, and came full upon the bay of Hannamanoo. This is the only harbour of any note about the island, though as far as a safe anchorage is concerned it hardly deserves the title.
Before we held any communication with the shore, an incident occurred which may convey some further idea of the character of our crew.
Having approached as near the land as we could prudently, our headway was stopped, and we awaited the arrival of a canoe which was coming out of the bay. All at once we got into a strong current, which swept us rapidly toward a rocky promontory forming one side of the harbour. The wind had died away; so two boats were at once lowered for the purpose of pulling the ship's head round. Before this could be done, the eddies were whirling upon all sides, and the rock so near that it seemed as if one might leap upon it from the masthead. Notwithstanding the speechless fright of the captain, and the hoarse shouts of the unappalled Jennin, the men handled the ropes as deliberately as possible, some of them chuckling at the prospect of going ashore, and others so eager for the vessel to strike, that they could hardly contain themselves. Unexpectedly a countercurrent befriended us, and assisted by the boats we were soon out of danger.
What a disappointment for our crew! All their little plans for swimming ashore from the wreck, and having a fine time of it for the rest of their days, thus cruelly nipped in the bud.
Soon after, the canoe came alongside. In it were eight or ten natives, comely, vivacious-looking youths, all gesture and exclamation; the red feathers in their head-bands perpetually nodding. With them also came a stranger, a renegade from Christendom and humanity--a white man, in the South Sea girdle, and tattooed in the face. A broad blue band stretched across his face from ear to ear, and on his forehead was the taper figure of a blue shark, nothing but fins from head to tail.
Some of us gazed upon this man with a feeling akin to horror, no ways abated when informed that he had voluntarily submitted to this embellishment of his countenance. What an impress! Far worse than Cain's--his was perhaps a wrinkle, or a freckle, which some of our modern cosmetics might have effaced; but the blue shark was a mark indelible, which all the waters of Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, could never wash out. He was an Englishman, Lem Hardy he called himself, who had deserted from a trading brig touching at the island for wood and water some ten years previous. He had gone ashore as a sovereign power armed with a musket and a bag of ammunition, and ready if need were, to prosecute war on his own account. The country was divided by the hostile kings of several large valleys. With one of them, from whom he first received overtures, he formed an alliance, and became what he now was, the military leader of the tribe, and war-god of the entire island.
His campaigns beat Napoleon's. In one night attack, his invincible musket, backed by the light infantry of spears and javelins, vanquished two clans, and the next morning brought all the others to the feet of his royal ally.
Nor was the rise of his domestic fortunes at all behind the Corsican's: three days after landing, the exquisitely tattooed hand of a princess was his; receiving along with the damsel as her portion, one thousand fathoms of fine tappa, fifty double-braided mats of split grass, four hundred hogs, ten houses in different parts of her native valley, and the sacred protection of an express edict of the Taboo, declaring his person inviolable for ever.
Now, this man was settled for life, perfectly satisfied with his circumstances, and feeling no desire to return to his friends.
"Friends," indeed, he had none. He told me his history. Thrown upon the world a foundling, his paternal origin was as much a mystery to him as the genealogy of Odin; and, scorned by everybody, he fled the parish workhouse when a boy, and launched upon the sea. He had followed it for several years, a dog before the mast, and now he had thrown it up for ever.
And for the most part, it is just this sort of men--so many of whom are found among sailors--uncared for by a single soul, without ties, reckless, and impatient of the restraints of civilization, who are occasionally found quite at home upon the savage islands of the Pacific. And, glancing at their hard lot in their own country, what marvel at their choice?
According to the renegado, there was no other white man on the island; and as the captain could have no reason to suppose that Hardy intended to deceive us, he concluded that the Frenchmen were in some way or other mistaken in what they had told us. However, when our errand was made known to the rest of our visitors, one of them, a fine, stalwart fellow, his face all eyes and expression, volunteered for a cruise. All the wages he asked was a red shirt, a pair of trousers, and a hat, which were to be put on there and then; besides a plug of tobacco and a pipe. The bargain was struck directly; but Wymontoo afterward came in with a codicil, to the effect that a friend of his, who had come along with him, should be given ten whole sea-biscuits, without crack or flaw, twenty perfectly new and symmetrically straight nails, and one jack-knife. This being agreed to, the articles were at once handed over; the native receiving them with great avidity, and in the absence of clothing, using his mouth as a pocket to put the nails in. Two of them, however, were first made to take the place of a pair of ear-ornaments, curiously fashioned out of bits of whitened wood.
It now began breezing strongly from seaward, and no time was to be lost in getting away from the land; so after an affecting rubbing of noses between our new shipmate and his countrymen, we sailed away with him.
To our surprise, the farewell shouts from the canoe, as we dashed along under bellied royals, were heard unmoved by our islander; but it was not long thus. That very evening, when the dark blue of his native hills sunk in the horizon, the poor savage leaned over the bulwarks, dropped his head upon his chest, and gave way to irrepressible emotions. The ship was plunging hard, and Wymontoo, sad to tell, in addition to his other pangs, was terribly sea-sick.
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{
"id": "4045"
}
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8
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THE TATTOOERS OF LA DOMINICA
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FOR a while leaving Little Jule to sail away by herself, I will here put down some curious information obtained from Hardy.
The renegado had lived so long on the island that its customs were quite familiar; and I much lamented that, from the shortness of our stay, he could not tell us more than he did.
From the little intelligence gathered, however, I learned to my surprise that, in some things, the people of Hivarhoo, though of the same group of islands, differed considerably from my tropical friends in the valley of Typee.
As his tattooing attracted so much remark, Hardy had a good deal to say concerning the manner in which that art was practised upon the island.
Throughout the entire cluster the tattooers of Hivarhoo enjoyed no small reputation. They had carried their art to the highest perfection, and the profession was esteemed most honourable. No wonder, then, that like genteel tailors, they rated their services very high; so much so that none but those belonging to the higher classes could afford to employ them. So true was this, that the elegance of one's tattooing was in most cases a sure indication of birth and riches.
Professors in large practice lived in spacious houses, divided by screens of tappa into numerous little apartments, where subjects were waited upon in private. The arrangement chiefly grew out of a singular ordinance of the Taboo, which enjoined the strictest privacy upon all men, high and low, while under the hands of a tattooer. For the time, the slightest intercourse with others is prohibited, and the small portion of food allowed is pushed under the curtain by an unseen hand. The restriction with regard to food, is intended to reduce the blood, so as to diminish the inflammation consequent upon puncturing the skin. As it is, this comes on very soon, and takes some time to heal; so that the period of seclusion generally embraces many days, sometimes several weeks.
All traces of soreness vanished, the subject goes abroad; but only again to return; for, on account of the pain, only a small surface can be operated upon at once; and as the whole body is to be more or less embellished by a process so slow, the studios alluded to are constantly filled. Indeed, with a vanity elsewhere unheard of, many spend no small portion of their days thus sitting to an artist.
To begin the work, the period of adolescence is esteemed the most suitable. After casting about for some eminent tattooer, the friends of the youth take him to his house to have the outlines of the general plan laid out. It behoves the professor to have a nice eye, for a suit to be worn for life should be well cut.
Some tattooers, yearning after perfection, employ, at large wages, one or two men of the commonest order--vile fellows, utterly regardless of appearances, upon whom they first try their patterns and practise generally. Their backs remorselessly scrawled over, and no more canvas remaining, they are dismissed and ever after go about, the scorn of their countrymen.
Hapless wights! thus martyred in the cause of the Fine Arts.
Beside the regular practitioners, there are a parcel of shabby, itinerant tattooers, who, by virtue of their calling, stroll unmolested from one hostile bay to another, doing their work dog-cheap for the multitude. They always repair to the various religious festivals, which gather great crowds. When these are concluded, and the places where they are held vacated even by the tattooers, scores of little tents of coarse tappa are left standing, each with a solitary inmate, who, forbidden to talk to his unseen neighbours, is obliged to stay there till completely healed. The itinerants are a reproach to their profession, mere cobblers, dealing in nothing but jagged lines and clumsy patches, and utterly incapable of soaring to those heights of fancy attained by the gentlemen of the faculty.
All professors of the arts love to fraternize; and so, in Hannamanoo, the tattooers came together in the chapters of their worshipful order. In this society, duly organized, and conferring degrees, Hardy, from his influence as a white, was a sort of honorary Grand Master. The blue shark, and a sort of Urim and Thummim engraven upon his chest, were the seal of his initiation. All over Hivarhoo are established these orders of tattooers. The way in which the renegado's came to be founded is this. A year or two after his landing there happened to be a season of scarcity, owing to the partial failure of the breadfruit harvest for several consecutive seasons. This brought about such a falling off in the number of subjects for tattooing that the profession became quite needy. The royal ally of Hardy, however, hit upon a benevolent expedient to provide for their wants, at the same time conferring a boon upon many of his subjects.
By sound of conch-shell it was proclaimed before the palace, on the beach, and at the head of the valley, that Noomai, King of Hannamanoo, and friend of Hardee-Hardee, the white, kept open heart and table for all tattooers whatsoever; but to entitle themselves to this hospitality, they were commanded to practise without fee upon the meanest native soliciting their services.
Numbers at once flocked to the royal abode, both artists and sitters. It was a famous time; and the buildings of the palace being "taboo" to all but the tattooers and chiefs, the sitters bivouacked on the common, and formed an extensive encampment.
The "Lora Tattoo," or the Time of Tattooing, will be long remembered. An enthusiastic sitter celebrated the event in verse. Several lines were repeated to us by Hardy, some of which, in a sort of colloquial chant he translated nearly thus: "Where is that sound? In Hannamanoo. And wherefore that sound? The sound of a hundred hammers, Tapping, tapping, tapping The shark teeth."
"Where is that light? Round about the king's house, And the small laughter? The small, merry laughter it is Of the sons and daughters of the tattooed."
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{
"id": "4045"
}
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9
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WE STEER TO THE WESTWARD--STATE OF AFFAIRS
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THE night we left Hannamanoo was bright and starry, and so warm that, when the watches were relieved, most of the men, instead of going below, flung themselves around the foremast.
Toward morning, finding the heat of the forecastle unpleasant, I ascended to the deck where everything was noiseless. The Trades were blowing with a mild, steady strain upon the canvas, and the ship heading right out into the immense blank of the Western Pacific. The watch were asleep. With one foot resting on the rudder, even the man at the helm nodded, and the mate himself, with arms folded, was leaning against the capstan.
On such a night, and all alone, reverie was inevitable. I leaned over the side, and could not help thinking of the strange objects we might be sailing over.
But my meditations were soon interrupted by a gray, spectral shadow cast over the heaving billows. It was the dawn, soon followed by the first rays of the morning. They flashed into view at one end of the arched night, like--to compare great things with small--the gleamings of Guy Fawkes's lantern in the vaults of the Parliament House. Before long, what seemed a live ember rested for a moment on the rim of the ocean, and at last the blood-red sun stood full and round in the level East, and the long sea-day began.
Breakfast over, the first thing attended to was the formal baptism of Wymontoo, who, after thinking over his affairs during the night, looked dismal enough.
There were various opinions as to a suitable appellation. Some maintained that we ought to call him "Sunday," that being the day we caught him; others, "Eighteen Forty-two," the then year of our Lord; while Doctor Long Ghost remarked that he ought, by all means, to retain his original name,--Wymontoo-Hee, meaning (as he maintained), in the figurative language of the island, something analogous to one who had got himself into a scrape. The mate put an end to the discussion by sousing the poor fellow with a bucket of salt water, and bestowing upon him the nautical appellation of "Luff."
Though a certain mirthfulness succeeded his first pangs at leaving home, Wymontoo--we will call him thus--gradually relapsed into his former mood, and became very melancholy. Often I noticed him crouching apart in the forecastle, his strange eyes gleaming restlessly, and watching the slightest movement of the men. Many a time he must have been thinking of his bamboo hut, when they were talking of Sydney and its dance-houses.
We were now fairly at sea, though to what particular cruising-ground we were going, no one knew; and, to all appearances, few cared. The men, after a fashion of their own, began to settle down into the routine of sea-life, as if everything was going on prosperously. Blown along over a smooth sea, there was nothing to do but steer the ship, and relieve the "look-outs" at the mast-heads. As for the sick, they had two or three more added to their number--the air of the island having disagreed with the constitutions of several of the runaways. To crown all, the captain again relapsed, and became quite ill.
The men fit for duty were divided into two small watches, headed respectively by the mate and the Mowree; the latter by virtue of his being a harpooner, succeeding to the place of the second mate, who had absconded.
In this state of things whaling was out of the question; but in the face of everything, Jermin maintained that the invalids would soon be well. However that might be, with the same pale Hue sky overhead, we kept running steadily to the westward. Forever advancing, we seemed always in the same place, and every day was the former lived over again. We saw no ships, expected to see none. No sign of life was perceptible but the porpoises and other fish sporting under the bows like pups ashore. But, at intervals, the gray albatross, peculiar to these seas, came flapping his immense wings over us, and then skimmed away silently as if from a plague-ship. Or flights of the tropic bird, known among seamen as the "boatswain," wheeled round and round us, whistling shrilly as they flew.
The uncertainty hanging over our destination at this time, and the fact that we were abroad upon waters comparatively little traversed, lent an interest to this portion of the cruise which I shall never forget.
From obvious prudential considerations the Pacific has been principally sailed over in known tracts, and this is the reason why new islands are still occasionally discovered by exploring ships and adventurous whalers notwithstanding the great number of vessels of all kinds of late navigating this vast ocean. Indeed, considerable portions still remain wholly unexplored; and there is doubt as to the actual existence of certain shoals, and reefs, and small clusters of islands vaguely laid down in the charts. The mere circumstance, therefore, of a ship like ours penetrating into these regions, was sufficient to cause any reflecting mind to feel at least a little uneasy. For my own part, the many stories I had heard of ships striking at midnight upon unknown rocks, with all sail set, and a slumbering crew, often recurred to me, especially, as from the absence of discipline, and our being so shorthanded, the watches at night were careless in the extreme.
But no thoughts like these were entertained by my reckless shipmates; and along we went, the sun every evening setting right ahead of our jib boom.
For what reason the mate was so reserved with regard to our precise destination was never made known. The stories he told us, I, for one, did not believe; deeming them all a mere device to lull the crew.
He said we were bound to a fine cruising ground, scarcely known to other whalemen, which he had himself discovered when commanding a small brig upon a former voyage. Here, the sea was alive with large whales, so tame that all you had to do was to go up and kill them: they were too frightened to resist. A little to leeward of this was a small cluster of islands, where we were going to refit, abounding with delicious fruits, and peopled by a race almost wholly unsophisticated by intercourse with strangers.
In order, perhaps, to guard against the possibility of anyone finding out the precise latitude and longitude of the spot we were going to, Jermin never revealed to us the ship's place at noon, though such is the custom aboard of most vessels.
Meanwhile, he was very assiduous in his attention to the invalids. Doctor Long Ghost having given up the keys of the medicine-chest, they were handed over to him; and, as physician, he discharged his duties to the satisfaction of all. Pills and powders, in most cases, were thrown to the fish, and in place thereof, the contents of a mysterious little quarter cask were produced, diluted with water from the "butt." His draughts were mixed on the capstan, in cocoa-nut shells marked with the patients' names. Like shore doctors, he did not eschew his own medicines, for his professional calls in the forecastle were sometimes made when he was comfortably tipsy: nor did he omit keeping his invalids in good-humour, spinning his yarns to them, by the hour, whenever he went to see them.
Owing to my lameness, from which I soon began to recover, I did no active duty, except standing an occasional "trick" at the helm. It was in the forecastle chiefly, that I spent my time, in company with the Long Doctor, who was at great pains to make himself agreeable. His books, though sadly torn and tattered, were an invaluable resource. I read them through again and again, including a learned treatise on the yellow fever. In addition to these, he had an old file of Sydney papers, and I soon became intimately acquainted with the localities of all the advertising tradesmen there. In particular, the rhetorical flourishes of Stubbs, the real-estate auctioneer, diverted me exceedingly, and I set him down as no other than a pupil of Robins the Londoner.
Aside from the pleasure of his society, my intimacy with Long Ghost was of great service to me in other respects. His disgrace in the cabin only confirmed the good-will of the democracy in the forecastle; and they not only treated him in the most friendly manner, but looked up to him with the utmost deference, besides laughing heartily at all his jokes. As his chosen associate, this feeling for him extended to me, and gradually we came to be regarded in the light of distinguished guests. At meal-times we were always first served, and otherwise were treated with much respect.
Among other devices to kill time, during the frequent calms, Long Ghost hit upon the game of chess. With a jack-knife, we carved the pieces quite tastefully out of bits of wood, and our board was the middle of a chest-lid, chalked into squares, which, in playing, we straddled at either end. Having no other suitable way of distinguishing the sets, I marked mine by tying round them little scarfs of black silk, torn from an old neck-handkerchief. Putting them in mourning this way, the doctor said, was quite appropriate, seeing that they had reason to feel sad three games out of four. Of chess, the men never could make head nor tail; indeed, their wonder rose to such a pitch that they at last regarded the mysterious movements of the game with something more than perplexity; and after puzzling over them through several long engagements, they came to the conclusion that we must be a couple of necromancers.
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{
"id": "4045"
}
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10
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A SEA-PARLOUR DESCRIBED, WITH SOME OF ITS TENANTS
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I MIGHT as well give some idea of the place in which the doctor and I lived together so sociably.
Most persons know that a ship's forecastle embraces the forward part of the deck about the bowsprit: the same term, however, is generally bestowed upon the sailors' sleeping-quarters, which occupy a space immediately beneath, and are partitioned off by a bulkhead.
Planted right in the bows, or, as sailors say, in the very eyes of the ship, this delightful apartment is of a triangular shape, and is generally fitted with two tiers of rude bunks. Those of the Julia were in a most deplorable condition, mere wrecks, some having been torn down altogether to patch up others; and on one side there were but two standing. But with most of the men it made little difference whether they had a bunk or not, since, having no bedding, they had nothing to put in it but themselves.
Upon the boards of my own crib I spread all the old canvas and old clothes I could pick up. For a pillow, I wrapped an old jacket round a log. This helped a little the wear and tear of one's bones when the ship rolled.
Rude hammocks made out of old sails were in many cases used as substitutes for the demolished bunks; but the space they swung in was so confined that they were far from being agreeable.
The general aspect of the forecastle was dungeon-like and dingy in the extreme. In the first place, it was not five feet from deck to deck and even this space was encroached upon by two outlandish cross-timbers bracing the vessel, and by the sailors' chests, over which you must needs crawl in getting about. At meal-times, and especially when we indulged in after-dinner chat, we sat about the chests like a parcel of tailors.
In the middle of all were two square, wooden columns, denominated in marine architecture "Bowsprit Bitts." They were about a foot apart, and between them, by a rusty chain, swung the forecastle lamp, burning day and night, and forever casting two long black shadows. Lower down, between the bitts, was a locker, or sailors' pantry, kept in abominable disorder, and sometimes requiring a vigorous cleaning and fumigation.
All over, the ship was in a most dilapidated condition; but in the forecastle it looked like the hollow of an old tree going to decay. In every direction the wood was damp and discoloured, and here and there soft and porous. Moreover, it was hacked and hewed without mercy, the cook frequently helping himself to splinters for kindling-wood from the bitts and beams. Overhead, every carline was sooty, and here and there deep holes were burned in them, a freak of some drunken sailors on a voyage long previous.
From above, you entered by a plank, with two elects, slanting down from the scuttle, which was a mere hole in the deck. There being no slide to draw over in case of emergency, the tarpaulin temporarily placed there was little protection from the spray heaved over the bows; so that in anything of a breeze the place was miserably wet. In a squall, the water fairly poured down in sheets like a cascade, swashing about, and afterward spirting up between the chests like the jets of a fountain.
Such were our accommodations aboard of the Julia; but bad as they were, we had not the undisputed possession of them. Myriads of cockroaches, and regiments of rats disputed the place with us. A greater calamity than this can scarcely befall a vessel in the South Seas.
So warm is the climate that it is almost impossible to get rid of them. You may seal up every hatchway, and fumigate the hull till the smoke forces itself out at the seams, and enough will survive to repeople the ship in an incredibly short period. In some vessels, the crews of which after a hard fight have given themselves up, as it were, for lost, the vermin seem to take actual possession, the sailors being mere tenants by sufferance. With Sperm Whalemen, hanging about the Line, as many of them do for a couple of years on a stretch, it is infinitely worse than with other vessels.
As for the Julia, these creatures never had such free and easy times as they did in her crazy old hull; every chink and cranny swarmed with them; they did not live among you, but you among them. So true was this, that the business of eating and drinking was better done in the dark than in the light of day.
Concerning the cockroaches, there was an extraordinary phenomenon, for which none of us could ever account.
Every night they had a jubilee. The first symptom was an unusual clustering and humming among the swarms lining the beams overhead, and the inside of the sleeping-places. This was succeeded by a prodigious coming and going on the part of those living out of sight Presently they all came forth; the larger sort racing over the chests and planks; winged monsters darting to and fro in the air; and the small fry buzzing in heaps almost in a state of fusion.
On the first alarm, all who were able darted on deck; while some of the sick who were too feeble, lay perfectly quiet--the distracted vermin running over them at pleasure. The performance lasted some ten minutes, during which no hive ever hummed louder. Often it was lamented by us that the time of the visitation could never be predicted; it was liable to come upon us at any hour of the night, and what a relief it was, when it happened to fall in the early part of the evening.
Nor must I forget the rats: they did not forget me. Tame as Trenck's mouse, they stood in their holes peering at you like old grandfathers in a doorway. Often they darted in upon us at meal-times, and nibbled our food. The first time they approached Wymontoo, he was actually frightened; but becoming accustomed to it, he soon got along with them much better than the rest. With curious dexterity he seized the animals by their legs, and flung them up the scuttle to find a watery grave.
But I have a story of my own to tell about these rats. One day the cabin steward made me a present of some molasses, which I was so choice of that I kept it hid away in a tin can in the farthest corner of my bunk. . Faring as we did, this molasses dropped upon a biscuit was a positive luxury, which I shared with none but the doctor, and then only in private. And sweet as the treacle was, how could bread thus prepared and eaten in secret be otherwise than pleasant?
One night our precious can ran low, and in canting it over in the dark, something beside the molasses slipped out. How long it had been there, kind Providence never revealed; nor were we over anxious to know; for we hushed up the bare thought as quickly as possible. The creature certainly died a luscious death, quite equal to Clarence's in the butt of Malmsey.
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{
"id": "4045"
}
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11
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DOCTOR LONG GHOST A WAG--ONE OF HIS CAPERS
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GRAVE though he was at times, Doctor Long Ghost was a decided wag.
Everyone knows what lovers of fun sailors are ashore--afloat, they are absolutely mad after it. So his pranks were duly appreciated.
The poor old black cook! Unlashing his hammock for the night, and finding a wet log fast asleep in it; and then waking in the morning with his woolly head tarred. Opening his coppers, and finding an old boot boiling away as saucy as could be, and sometimes cakes of pitch candying in his oven.
Baltimore's tribulations were indeed sore; there was no peace for him day nor night. Poor fellow! he was altogether too good-natured. Say what they will about easy-tempered people, it is far better, on some accounts, to have the temper of a wolf. Whoever thought of taking liberties with gruff Black Dan?
The most curious of the doctor's jokes, was hoisting the men aloft by the foot or shoulder, when they fell asleep on deck during the night-watches.
Ascending from the forecastle on one occasion, he found every soul napping, and forthwith went about his capers. Fastening a rope's end to each sleeper, he rove the lines through a number of blocks, and conducted them all to the windlass; then, by heaving round cheerily, in spite of cries and struggles, he soon had them dangling aloft in all directions by arms and legs. Waked by the uproar, we rushed up from below, and found the poor fellows swinging in the moonlight from the tops and lower yard-arms, like a parcel of pirates gibbeted at sea by a cruiser.
Connected with this sort of diversion was another prank of his. During the night some of those on deck would come below to light a pipe, or take a mouthful of beef and biscuit. Sometimes they fell asleep; and being missed directly that anything was to be done, their shipmates often amused themselves by running them aloft with a pulley dropped down the scuttle from the fore-top.
One night, when all was perfectly still, I lay awake in the forecastle; the lamp was burning low and thick, and swinging from its blackened beam; and with the uniform motion of the ship, the men in the bunks rolled slowly from side to side; the hammocks swaying in unison.
Presently I heard a foot upon the ladder, and looking up, saw a wide trousers' leg. Immediately, Navy Bob, a stout old Triton, stealthily descended, and at once went to groping in the locker after something to eat.
Supper ended, he proceeded to load his pipe. Now, for a good comfortable smoke at sea, there never was a better place than the Julia's forecastle at midnight. To enjoy the luxury, one wants to fall into a kind of dreamy reverie, only known to the children of the weed. And the very atmosphere of the place, laden as it was with the snores of the sleepers, was inducive of this. No wonder, then, that after a while Bob's head sunk upon his breast; presently his hat fell off, the extinguished pipe dropped from his mouth, and the next moment he lay out on the chest as tranquil as an infant.
Suddenly an order was heard on deck, followed by the trampling of feet and the hauling of rigging. The yards were being braced, and soon after the sleeper was missed: for there was a whispered conference over the scuttle.
Directly a shadow glided across the forecastle and noiselessly approached the unsuspecting Bob. It was one of the watch with the end of a rope leading out of sight up the scuttle. Pausing an instant, the sailor pressed softly the chest of his victim, sounding his slumbers; and then hitching the cord to his ankle, returned to the deck.
Hardly was his back turned, when a long limb was thrust from a hammock opposite, and Doctor Long Ghost, leaping forth warily, whipped the rope from Bob's ankle, and fastened it like lightning to a great lumbering chest, the property of the man who had just disappeared.
Scarcely was the thing done, when lo! with a thundering bound, the clumsy box was torn from its fastenings, and banging from side to side, flew toward the scuttle. Here it jammed; and thinking that Bob, who was as strong as a windlass, was grappling a beam and trying to cut the line, the jokers on deck strained away furiously. On a sudden, the chest went aloft, and striking against the mast, flew open, raining down on the heads of a party the merciless shower of things too numerous to mention.
Of course the uproar roused all hands, and when we hurried on deck, there was the owner of the box, looking aghast at its scattered contents, and with one wandering hand taking the altitude of a bump on his head.
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{
"id": "4045"
}
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12
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DEATH AND BURIAL OF TWO OF THE CREW
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THE mirthfulness which at times reigned among us was in strange and shocking contrast with the situation of some of the invalids. Thus at least did it seem to me, though not to others.
But an event occurred about this period, which, in removing by far the most pitiable cases of suffering, tended to make less grating to my feelings the subsequent conduct of the crew.
We had been at sea about twenty days, when two of the sick who had rapidly grown worse, died one night within an hour of each other.
One occupied a bunk right next to mine, and for several days had not risen from it. During this period he was often delirious, starting up and glaring around him, and sometimes wildly tossing his arms.
On the night of his decease, I retired shortly after the middle watch began, and waking from a vague dream of horrors, felt something clammy resting on me. It was the sick man's hand. Two or three times during the evening previous, he had thrust it into my bunk, and I had quietly removed it; but now I started and flung it from me. The arm fell stark and stiff, and I knew that he was dead.
Waking the men, the corpse was immediately rolled up in the strips of blanketing upon which it lay, and carried on deck. The mate was then called, and preparations made for an instantaneous' burial. Laying the body out on the forehatch, it was stitched up in one of the hammocks, some "kentledge" being placed at the feet instead of shot. This done, it was borne to the gangway, and placed on a plank laid across the bulwarks. Two men supported the inside end. By way of solemnity, the ship's headway was then stopped by hauling aback the main-top-sail.
The mate, who was far from being sober, then staggered up, and holding on to a shroud, gave the word. As the plank tipped, the body slid off slowly, and fell with a splash into the sea. A bubble or two, and nothing more was seen.
"Brace forward!" The main-yard swung round to its place, and the ship glided on, whilst the corpse, perhaps, was still sinking.
We had tossed a shipmate to the sharks, but no one would have thought it, to have gone among the crew immediately after. The dead man had been a churlish, unsocial fellow, while alive, and no favourite; and now that he was no more, little thought was bestowed upon him. All that was said was concerning the disposal of his chest, which, having been always kept locked, was supposed to contain money. Someone volunteered to break it open, and distribute its contents, clothing and all, before the captain should demand it.
While myself and others were endeavouring to dissuade them from this, all started at a cry from the forecastle. There could be no one there but two of the sick, unable to crawl on deck. We went below, and found one of them dying on a chest. He had fallen out of his hammock in a fit, and was insensible. The eyes were open and fixed, and his breath coming and going convulsively. The men shrunk from him; but the doctor, taking his hand, held it a few moments in his, and suddenly letting it fall, exclaimed, "He's gone!" The body was instantly borne up the ladder.
Another hammock was soon prepared, and the dead sailor stitched up as before. Some additional ceremony, however, was now insisted upon, and a Bible was called for. But none was to be had, not even a Prayer Book. When this was made known, Antone, a Portuguese, from the Cape-de-Verd Islands, stepped up, muttering something over the corpse of his countryman, and, with his finger, described upon the back of the hammock the figure of a large cross; whereupon it received the death-launch.
These two men both perished from the proverbial indiscretions of seamen, heightened by circumstances apparent; but had either of them been ashore under proper treatment, he would, in all human probability, have recovered.
Behold here the fate of a sailor! They give him the last toss, and no one asks whose child he was.
For the rest of that night there was no more sleep. Many stayed on deck until broad morning, relating to each other those marvellous tales of the sea which the occasion was calculated to call forth. Little as I believed in such things, I could not listen to some of these stories unaffected. Above all was I struck by one of the carpenter's.
On a voyage to India, they had a fever aboard, which carried off nearly half the crew in the space of a few days. After this the men never went aloft in the night-time, except in couples. When topsails were to be reefed, phantoms were seen at the yard-arm ends; and in tacking ship, voices called aloud from the tops. The carpenter himself, going with another man to furl the main-top-gallant-sail in a squall, was nearly pushed from the rigging by an unseen hand; and his shipmate swore that a wet hammock was flirted in his face.
Stories like these were related as gospel truths, by those who declared themselves eye-witnesses.
It is a circumstance not generally known, perhaps, that among ignorant seamen, Philanders, or Finns, as they are more commonly called, are regarded with peculiar superstition. For some reason or other, which I never could get at, they are supposed to possess the gift of second sight, and the power to wreak supernatural vengeance upon those who offend them. On this account they have great influence among sailors, and two or three with whom I have sailed at different times were persons well calculated to produce this sort of impression, at least upon minds disposed to believe in such things.
Now, we had one of these sea-prophets aboard; an old, yellow-haired fellow, who always wore a rude seal-skin cap of his own make, and carried his tobacco in a large pouch made of the same stuff. Van, as we called him, was a quiet, inoffensive man, to look at, and, among such a set, his occasional peculiarities had hitherto passed for nothing. At this time, however, he came out with a prediction, which was none the less remarkable from its absolute fulfilment, though not exactly in the spirit in which it was given out.
The night of the burial he laid his hand on the old horseshoe nailed as a charm to the foremast, and solemnly told us that, in less than three weeks, not one quarter of our number would remain aboard the ship--by that time they would have left her for ever.
Some laughed; Flash Jack called him an old fool; but among the men generally it produced a marked effect. For several days a degree of quiet reigned among us, and allusions of such a kind were made to recent events, as could be attributed to no other cause than the Finn's omen.
For my own part, what had lately come to pass was not without its influence. It forcibly brought to mind our really critical condition. Doctor Long Ghost, too, frequently revealed his apprehensions, and once assured me that he would give much to be safely landed upon any island around us.
Where we were, exactly, no one but the mate seemed to know, nor whither we were going. The captain--a mere cipher--was an invalid in his cabin; to say nothing more of so many of his men languishing in the forecastle.
Our keeping the sea under these circumstances, a matter strange enough at first, now seemed wholly unwarranted; and added to all was the thought that our fate was absolutely in the hand of the reckless Jermin. Were anything to happen to him, we would be left without a navigator, for, according to Jermin himself, he had, from the commencement of the voyage, always kept the ship's reckoning, the captain's nautical knowledge being insufficient.
But considerations like these, strange as it may seem, seldom or never occurred to the crew. They were alive only to superstitious fears; and when, in apparent contradiction to the Finn's prophecy, the sick men rallied a little, they began to recover their former spirits, and the recollection of what had occurred insensibly faded from their minds. In a week's time, the unworthiness of Little Jule as a sea vessel, always a subject of jest, now became more so than ever. In the forecastle, Flash Jack, with his knife, often dug into the dank, rotten planks ribbed between us and death, and flung away the splinters with some sea joke.
As to the remaining invalids, they were hardly ill enough to occasion any serious apprehension, at least for the present, in the breasts of such thoughtless beings as themselves. And even those who suffered the most, studiously refrained from any expression of pain.
The truth is, that among sailors as a class, sickness at sea is so heartily detested, and the sick so little cared for, that the greatest invalid generally strives to mask his sufferings. He has given no sympathy to others, and he expects none in return. Their conduct, in this respect, so opposed to their generous-hearted behaviour ashore, painfully affects the landsman on his first intercourse with them as a sailor.
Sometimes, but seldom, our invalids inveighed against their being kept at sea, where they could be of no service, when they ought to be ashore and in the way of recovery. But--"Oh! cheer up--cheer up, my hearties!" --the mate would say. And after this fashion he put a stop to their murmurings.
But there was one circumstance, to which heretofore I have but barely alluded, that tended more than anything else to reconcile many to their situation. This was the receiving regularly, twice every day, a certain portion of Pisco, which was served out at the capstan, by the steward, in little tin measures called "tots."
The lively affection seamen have for strong drink is well known; but in the South Seas, where it is so seldom to be had, a thoroughbred sailor deems scarcely any price too dear which will purchase his darling "tot." Nowadays, American whalemen in the Pacific never think of carrying spirits as a ration; and aboard of most of them, it is never served out even in times of the greatest hardships. All Sydney whalemen, however, still cling to the old custom, and carry it as a part of the regular supplies for the voyage.
In port, the allowance of Pisco was suspended; with a view, undoubtedly, of heightening the attractions of being out of sight of land.
Now, owing to the absence of proper discipline, our sick, in addition to what they took medicinally, often came in for their respective "tots" convivially; and, added to all this, the evening of the last day of the week was always celebrated by what is styled on board of English vessels "The Saturday-night bottles." Two of these were sent down into the forecastle, just after dark; one for the starboard watch, and the other for the larboard.
By prescription, the oldest seaman in each claims the treat as his, and, accordingly, pours out the good cheer and passes it round like a lord doing the honours of his table. But the Saturday-night bottles were not all. The carpenter and cooper, in sea parlance, Chips and Bungs, who were the "Cods," or leaders of the forecastle, in some way or other, managed to obtain an extra supply, which perpetually kept them in fine after-dinner spirits, and, moreover, disposed them to look favourably upon a state of affairs like the present.
But where were the sperm whales all this time? In good sooth, it made little matter where they were, since we were in no condition to capture them. About this time, indeed, the men came down from the mast-heads, where, until now, they had kept up the form of relieving each other every two hours. They swore they would go there no more. Upon this, the mate carelessly observed that they would soon be where look-outs were entirely unnecessary, the whales he had in his eye (though Flash Jack said they were all in his) being so tame that they made a practice of coming round ships, and scratching their backs against them.
Thus went the world of waters with us, some four weeks or more after leaving Hannamanoo.
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{
"id": "4045"
}
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13
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OUR DESTINATION CHANGED
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IT was not long after the death of the two men, that Captain Guy was reported as fast declining, and in a day or two more, as dying. The doctor, who previously had refused to enter the cabin upon any consideration, now relented, and paid his old enemy a professional visit.
He prescribed a warm bath, which was thus prepared. The skylight being removed, a cask was lowered down into the cabin, and then filled with buckets of water from the ship's coppers. The cries of the patient, when dipped into his rude bath, were most painful to hear. They at last laid him on the transom, more dead than alive.
That evening, the mate was perfectly sober, and coming forward to the windlass, where we were lounging, summoned aft the doctor, myself, and two or three others of his favourites; when, in the presence of Bembo the Mowree, he spoke to us thus: "I have something to say to ye, men. There's none but Bembo here as belongs aft, so I've picked ye out as the best men for'ard to take counsel with, d'ye see, consarning the ship. The captain's anchor is pretty nigh atrip; I shouldn't wonder if he croaked afore morning. So what's to be done? If we have to sew him up, some of those pirates there for'ard may take it into their heads to run off with the ship, because there's no one at the tiller. Now, I've detarmined what's best to be done; but I don't want to do it unless I've good men to back me, and make things all fair and square if ever we get home again."
We all asked what his plan was.
"I'll tell ye what it is, men. If the skipper dies, all agree to obey my orders, and in less than three weeks I'll engage to have five hundred barrels of sperm oil under hatches: enough to give every mother's son of ye a handful of dollars when we get to Sydney. If ye don't agree to this, ye won't have a farthing coming to ye."
Doctor Long Ghost at once broke in. He said that such a thing was not to be dreamt of; that if the captain died, the mate was in duty bound to navigate the ship to the nearest civilized port, and deliver her up into an English consul's hands; when, in all probability, after a run ashore, the crew would be sent home. Everything forbade the mate's plan. "Still," said he, assuming an air of indifference, "if the men say stick it out, stick it out say I; but in that case, the sooner we get to those islands of yours the better."
Something more he went on to say; and from the manner in which the rest regarded him, it was plain that our fate was in his hands. It was finally resolved upon, that if Captain Guy was no better in twenty-four hours, the ship's head should be pointed for the island of Tahiti.
This announcement produced a strong sensation--the sick rallied--and the rest speculated as to what was next to befall us; while the doctor, without alluding to Guy, congratulated me upon the prospect of soon beholding a place so famous as the island in question.
The night after the holding of the council, I happened to go on deck in the middle watch, and found the yards braced sharp up on the larboard tack, with the South East Trades strong on our bow. The captain was no better; and we were off for Tahiti.
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{
"id": "4045"
}
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14
|
ROPE YARN
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WHILE gliding along on our way, I cannot well omit some account of a poor devil we had among us, who went by the name of Rope Yarn, or Ropey.
He was a nondescript who had joined the ship as a landsman. Being so excessively timid and awkward, it was thought useless to try and make a sailor of him; so he was translated into the cabin as steward; the man previously filling that post, a good seaman, going among the crew and taking his place. But poor Ropey proved quite as clumsy among the crockery as in the rigging; and one day when the ship was pitching, having stumbled into the cabin with a wooden tureen of soup, he scalded the officers so that they didn't get over it in a week. Upon which, he was dismissed, and returned to the forecastle.
Now, nobody is so heartily despised as a pusillanimous, lazy, good-for-nothing land-lubber; a sailor has no bowels of compassion for him. Yet, useless as such a character may be in many respects, a ship's company is by no means disposed to let him reap any benefit from his deficiencies. Regarded in the light of a mechanical power, whenever there is any plain, hard work to be done, he is put to it like a lever; everyone giving him a pry.
Then, again, he is set about all the vilest work. Is there a heavy job at tarring to be done, he is pitched neck and shoulders into a tar-barrel, and set to work at it. Moreover, he is made to fetch and carry like a dog. Like as not, if the mate sends him after his quadrant, on the way he is met by the captain, who orders him to pick some oakum; and while he is hunting up a bit of rope, a sailor comes along and wants to know what the deuce he's after, and bids him be off to the forecastle.
"Obey the last order," is a precept inviolable at sea. So the land-lubber, afraid to refuse to do anything, rushes about distracted, and does nothing: in the end receiving a shower of kicks and cuffs from all quarters.
Added to his other hardships, he is seldom permitted to open his mouth unless spoken to; and then, he might better keep silent. Alas for him! if he should happen to be anything of a droll; for in an evil hour should he perpetrate a joke, he would never know the last of it.
The witticisms of others, however, upon himself, must be received in the greatest good-humour.
Woe be unto him, if at meal-times he so much as look sideways at the beef-kid before the rest are helped.
Then he is obliged to plead guilty to every piece of mischief which the real perpetrator refuses to acknowledge; thus taking the place of that sneaking rascal nobody, ashore. In short, there is no end to his tribulations.
The land-lubber's spirits often sink, and the first result of his being moody and miserable is naturally enough an utter neglect of his toilet.
The sailors perhaps ought to make allowances; but heartless as they are, they do not. No sooner is his cleanliness questioned than they rise upon him like a mob of the Middle Ages upon a Jew; drag him into the lee-scuppers, and strip him to the buff. In vain he bawls for mercy; in vain calls upon the captain to save him.
Alas! I say again, for the land-lubber at sea. He is the veriest wretch the watery world over. And such was Bope Tarn; of all landlubbers, the most lubberly and most miserable. A forlorn, stunted, hook-visaged mortal he was too; one of those whom you know at a glance to have been tried hard and long in the furnace of affliction. His face was an absolute puzzle; though sharp and sallow, it had neither the wrinkles of age nor the smoothness of youth; so that for the soul of me, I could hardly tell whether he was twenty-five or fifty.
But to his history. In his better days, it seems he had been a journeyman baker in London, somewhere about Holborn; and on Sundays wore a Hue coat and metal buttons, and spent his afternoons in a tavern, smoking his pipe and drinking his ale like a free and easy journeyman baker that he was. But this did not last long; for an intermeddling old fool was the ruin of him. He was told that London might do very well for elderly gentlemen and invalids; but for a lad of spirit, Australia was the Land of Promise. In a dark day Ropey wound up his affairs and embarked.
Arriving in Sydney with a small capital, and after a while waxing snug and comfortable by dint of hard kneading, he took unto himself a wife; and so far as she was concerned, might then have gone into the country and retired; for she effectually did his business. In short, the lady worked him woe in heart and pocket; and in the end, ran off with his till and his foreman. Ropey went to the sign of the Pipe and Tankard; got fuddled; and over his fifth pot meditated suicide--an intention carried out; for the next day he shipped as landsman aboard the Julia, South Seaman.
The ex-baker would have fared far better, had it not been for his heart, which was soft and underdone. A kind word made a fool of him; and hence most of the scrapes he got into. Two or three wags, aware of his infirmity, used to "draw him out" in conversation whenever the most crabbed and choleric old seamen were present.
To give an instance. The watch below, just waked from their sleep, are all at breakfast; and Ropey, in one corner, is disconsolately partaking of its delicacies. "Now, sailors newly waked are no cherubs; and therefore not a word is spoken, everybody munching his biscuit, grim and unshaven. At this juncture an affable-looking scamp--Flash Jack--crosses the forecastle, tin can in hand, and seats himself beside the land-lubber.
"Hard fare this, Ropey," he begins; "hard enough, too, for them that's known better and lived in Lun'nun. I say now, Ropey, s'posing you were back to Holborn this morning, what would you have for breakfast, eh?"
"Have for breakfast!" cried Ropey in a rapture. "Don't speak of it!"
"What ails that fellow?" here growled an old sea-bear, turning round savagely.
"Oh, nothing, nothing," said Jack; and then, leaning over to Rope Yarn, he bade him go on, but speak lower.
"Well, then," said he, in a smuggled tone, his eyes lighting up like two lanterns, "well, then, I'd go to Mother Moll's that makes the great muffins: I'd go there, you know, and cock my foot on the 'ob, and call for a noggin o' somethink to begin with."
"What then, Ropey?"
"Why then, Flashy," continued the poor victim, unconsciously warming with his theme: "why then, I'd draw my chair up and call for Betty, the gal wot tends to customers. Betty, my dear, says I, you looks charmin' this mornin'; give me a nice rasher of bacon and h'eggs, Betty my love; and I wants a pint of h'ale, and three nice h'ot muffins and butter--and a slice of Cheshire; and Betty, I wants--" "A shark-steak, and be hanged to you!" roared Black Dan, with an oath. Whereupon, dragged over the chests, the ill-starred fellow is pummelled on deck.
I always made a point of befriending poor Ropey when I could; and, for this reason, was a great favourite of his.
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{
"id": "4045"
}
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15
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CHIPS AND BUNGS
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BOUND into port, Chips and Bungs increased their devotion to the bottle; and, to the unspeakable envy of the rest, these jolly companions--or "the Partners," as the men called them--rolled about deck, day after day, in the merriest mood imaginable.
But jolly as they were in the main, two more discreet tipplers it would be hard to find. No one ever saw them take anything, except when the regular allowance was served out by the steward; and to make them quite sober and sensible, you had only to ask them how they contrived to keep otherwise. Some time after, however, their secret leaked out.
The casks of Pisco were kept down the after-hatchway, which, for this reason, was secured with bar and padlock. The cooper, nevertheless, from time to time, effected a burglarious entry, by descending into the fore-hold; and then, at the risk of being jammed to death, crawling along over a thousand obstructions, to where the casks were stowed.
On the first expedition, the only one to be got at lay among others, upon its bilge with the bung-hole well over. With a bit of iron hoop, suitably bent, and a good deal of prying and punching, the bung was forced in; and then the cooper's neck-handkerchief, attached to the end of the hoop, was drawn in and out--the absorbed liquor being deliberately squeezed into a small bucket.
Bungs was a man after a barkeeper's own heart. Drinking steadily, until just manageably tipsy, he contrived to continue so; getting neither more nor less inebriated, but, to use his own phrase, remaining "just about right." When in this interesting state, he had a free lurch in his gait, a queer way of hitching up his waistbands, looked unnecessarily steady at you when speaking, and for the rest, was in very tolerable spirits. At these times, moreover, he was exceedingly patriotic; and in a most amusing way, frequently showed his patriotism whenever he happened to encounter Dunk, a good-natured, square-faced Dane, aboard.
It must be known here, by the bye, that the cooper had a true sailor admiration for Lord Nelson. But he entertained a very erroneous idea of the personal appearance of the hero. Not content with depriving him of an eye and an arm, he stoutly maintained that he had also lost a leg in one of his battles. Under this impression, he sometimes hopped up to Dunk with one leg curiously locked behind him into his right arm, at the same time closing an eye.
In this attitude he would call upon him to look up, and behold the man who gave his countrymen such a thrashing at Copenhagen. "Look you, Dunk," says he, staggering about, and winking hard with one eye to keep the other shut, "Look you; one man--hang me, half a man--with one leg, one arm, one eye--hang me, with only a piece of a carcase, flogged your whole shabby nation. Do you deny it you lubber?"
The Dane was a mule of a man, and understanding but little English, seldom made anything of a reply; so the cooper generally dropped his leg, and marched off, with the air of a man who despised saying anything further.
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{
"id": "4045"
}
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16
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WE ENCOUNTER A GALE
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THE mild blue weather we enjoyed after leaving the Marquesas gradually changed as we ran farther south and approached Tahiti. In these generally tranquil seas, the wind sometimes blows with great violence; though, as every sailor knows, a spicy gale in the tropic latitudes of the Pacific is far different from a tempest in the howling North Atlantic. We soon found ourselves battling with the waves, while the before mild Trades, like a woman roused, blew fiercely, but still warmly, in our face.
For all this, the mate carried sail without stint; and as for brave little Jule, she stood up to it well; and though once in a while floored in the trough of a sea, sprang to her keel again and showed play. Every old timber groaned--every spar buckled--every chafed cord strained; and yet, spite of all, she plunged on her way like a racer. Jermin, sea-jockey that he was, sometimes stood in the fore-chains, with the spray every now and then dashing over him, and shouting out, "Well done, Jule--dive into it, sweetheart. Hurrah!"
One afternoon there was a mighty queer noise aloft, which set the men running in every direction. It was the main-t'-gallant-mast. Crash! it broke off just above the cap, and held there by the rigging, dashed with every roll from side to side, with all the hamper that belonged to it. The yard hung by a hair, and at every pitch, thumped against the cross-trees; while the sail streamed in ribbons, and the loose ropes coiled, and thrashed the air, like whip-lashes. "Stand from under!" and down came the rattling blocks, like so many shot. The yard, with a snap and a plunge, went hissing into the sea, disappeared, and shot its full length out again. The crest of a great wave then broke over it--the ship rushed by--and we saw the stick no more.
While this lively breeze continued, Baltimore, our old black cook, was in great tribulation.
Like most South Seamen, the Julia's "caboose," or cook-house, was planted on the larboard side of the forecastle. Under such a press of canvas, and with the heavy sea running the barque, diving her bows under, now and then shipped green glassy waves, which, breaking over the head-rails, fairly deluged that part of the ship, and washed clean aft. The caboose-house--thought to be fairly lashed down to its place--served as a sort of breakwater to the inundation.
About these times, Baltimore always wore what he called his "gale suit," among other things comprising a Sou'-wester and a huge pair of well-anointed sea-boots, reaching almost to his knees. Thus equipped for a ducking or a drowning, as the case might be, our culinary high-priest drew to the slides of his temple, and performed his sooty rites in secret.
So afraid was the old man of being washed overboard that he actually fastened one end of a small line to his waistbands, and coiling the rest about him, made use of it as occasion required. When engaged outside, he unwound the cord, and secured one end to a ringbolt in the deck; so that if a chance sea washed him off his feet, it could do nothing more.
One evening just as he was getting supper, the Julia reared up on her stern like a vicious colt, and when she settled again forward, fairly dished a tremendous sea. Nothing could withstand it. One side of the rotten head-bulwarks came in with a crash; it smote the caboose, tore it from its moorings, and after boxing it about, dashed it against the windlass, where it stranded. The water then poured along the deck like a flood rolling over and over, pots, pans, and kettles, and even old Baltimore himself, who went breaching along like a porpoise.
Striking the taffrail, the wave subsided, and washing from side to side, left the drowning cook high and dry on the after-hatch: his extinguished pipe still between his teeth, and almost bitten in two.
The few men on deck having sprung into the main-rigging, sailor-like, did nothing but roar at his calamity.
The same night, our flying-jib-boom snapped off like a pipe-stem, and our spanker-gaff came down by the run.
By the following morning, the wind in a great measure had gone down; the sea with it; and by noon we had repaired our damages as well as we could, and were sailing along as pleasantly as ever.
But there was no help for the demolished bulwarks; we had nothing to replace them; and so, whenever it breezed again, our dauntless craft went along with her splintered prow dripping, but kicking up her fleet heels just as high as before.
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{
"id": "4045"
}
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17
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THE CORAL ISLANDS
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HOW far we sailed to the westward after leaving the Marquesas, or what might have been our latitude and longitude at any particular time, or how many leagues we voyaged on our passage to Tahiti, are matters about which, I am sorry to say, I cannot with any accuracy enlighten the reader. Jermin, as navigator, kept our reckoning; and, as hinted before, kept it all to himself. At noon, he brought out his quadrant, a rusty old thing, so odd-looking that it might have belonged to an astrologer.
Sometimes, when rather flustered from his potations, he went staggering about deck, instrument to eye, looking all over for the sun--a phenomenon which any sober observer might have seen right overhead. How upon earth he contrived, on some occasions, to settle his latitude, is more than I can tell. The longitude he must either have obtained by the Rule of Three, or else by special revelation. Not that the chronometer in the cabin was seldom to be relied on, or was any ways fidgety; quite the contrary; it stood stock-still; and by that means, no doubt, the true Greenwich time--at the period of stopping, at least--was preserved to a second.
The mate, however, in addition to his "Dead Reckoning," pretended to ascertain his meridian distance from Bow Bells by an occasional lunar observation. This, I believe, consists in obtaining with the proper instruments the angular distance between the moon and some one of the stars. The operation generally requires two observers to take sights, and at one and the same time.
Now, though the mate alone might have been thought well calculated for this, inasmuch as he generally saw things double, the doctor was usually called upon to play a sort of second quadrant to Jermin's first; and what with the capers of both, they used to furnish a good deal of diversion. The mate's tremulous attempts to level his instrument at the star he was after, were comical enough. For my own part, when he did catch sight of it, I hardly knew how he managed to separate it from the astral host revolving in his own brain.
However, by hook or by crook, he piloted us along; and before many days, a fellow sent aloft to darn a rent in the fore-top-sail, threw his hat into the air, and bawled out "Land, ho!"
Land it was; but in what part of the South Seas, Jermin alone knew, and some doubted whether even he did. But no sooner was the announcement made, than he came running on deck, spy-glass in hand, and clapping it to his eye, turned round with the air of a man receiving indubitable assurance of something he was quite certain of before. The land was precisely that for which he had been steering; and, with a wind, in less than twenty-four hours we would sight Tahiti. What he said was verified.
The island turned out to be one of the Pomotu or Low Group--sometimes called the Coral Islands--perhaps the most remarkable and interesting in the Pacific. Lying to the east of Tahiti, the nearest are within a day's sail of that place.
They are very numerous; mostly small, low, and level; sometimes wooded, but always covered with verdure. Many are crescent-shaped; others resemble a horse-shoe in figure. These last are nothing more than narrow circles of land surrounding a smooth lagoon, connected by a single opening with the sea. Some of the lagoons, said to have subterranean outlets, have no visible ones; the inclosing island, in such cases, being a complete zone of emerald. Other lagoons still, are girdled by numbers of small, green islets, very near to each other.
The origin of the entire group is generally ascribed to the coral insect.
According to some naturalists, this wonderful little creature, commencing its erections at the bottom of the sea, after the lapse of centuries, carries them up to the surface, where its labours cease. Here, the inequalities of the coral collect all floating bodies; forming, after a time, a soil, in which the seeds carried thither by birds germinate, and cover the whole with vegetation. Here and there, all over this archipelago, numberless naked, detached coral formations are seen, just emerging, as it were from the ocean. These would appear to be islands in the very process of creation--at any rate, one involuntarily concludes so, on beholding them.
As far as I know, there are but few bread-fruit trees in any part of the Pomotu group. In many places the cocoa-nut even does not grow; though, in others, it largely flourishes. Consequently, some of the islands are altogether uninhabited; others support but a single family; and in no place is the population very large. In some respects the natives resemble the Tahitians: their language, too, is very similar. The people of the southeasterly clusters--concerning whom, however, but little is known--have a bad name as cannibals; and for that reason their hospitality is seldom taxed by the mariner.
Within a few years past, missionaries from the Society group have settled among the Leeward Islands, where the natives have treated them kindly. Indeed, nominally, many of these people are now Christians; and, through the political influence of their instructors, no doubt, a short time since came tinder the allegiance of Pomaree, the Queen of Tahiti; with which island they always carried on considerable intercourse.
The Coral Islands are principally visited by the pearl-shell fishermen, who arrive in small schooners, carrying not more than five or six men.
For a long while the business was engrossed by Merenhout, the French Consul at Tahiti, but a Dutchman by birth, who, in one year, is said to have sent to France fifty thousand dollars' worth of shells. The oysters are found in the lagoons, and about the reefs; and, for half-a-dozen nails a day, or a compensation still less, the natives are hired to dive after them.
A great deal of cocoa-nut oil is also obtained in various places. Some of the uninhabited islands are covered with dense groves; and the ungathered nuts which have fallen year after year, lie upon the ground in incredible quantities. Two or three men, provided with the necessary apparatus for trying out the oil, will, in the course of a week or two, obtain enough to load one of the large sea-canoes.
Cocoa-nut oil is now manufactured in different parts of the South Seas, and forms no small part of the traffic carried on with trading vessels. A considerable quantity is annually exported from the Society Islands to Sydney. It is used in lamps and for machinery, being much cheaper than the sperm, and, for both purposes, better than the right-whale oil. They bottle it up in large bamboos, six or eight feet long; and these form part of the circulating medium of Tahiti.
To return to the ship. The wind dying away, evening came on before we drew near the island. But we had it in view during the whole afternoon.
It was small and round, presenting one enamelled level, free from trees, and did not seem four feet above the water. Beyond it was another and larger island, about which a tropical sunset was throwing its glories; flushing all that part of the heavens, and making it flame like a vast dyed oriel illuminated.
The Trades scarce filled our swooning sails; the air was languid with the aroma of a thousand strange, flowering shrubs. Upon inhaling it, one of the sick, who had recently shown symptoms of scurvy, cried out in pain, and was carried below. This is no unusual effect in such instances.
On we glided, within less than a cable's length of the shore which was margined with foam that sparkled all round. Within, nestled the still, blue lagoon. No living thing was seen, and, for aught we knew, we might have been the first mortals who had ever beheld the spot. The thought was quickening to the fancy; nor could I help dreaming of the endless grottoes and galleries, far below the reach of the mariner's lead.
And what strange shapes were lurking there! Think of those arch creatures, the mermaids, chasing each other in and out of the coral cells, and catching their long hair in the coral twigs!
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{
"id": "4045"
}
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18
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TAHITI
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AT early dawn of the following morning we saw the Peaks of Tahiti. In clear weather they may be seen at the distance of ninety miles.
"Hivarhoo!" shouted Wymontoo, overjoyed, and running out upon the bowsprit when the land was first faintly descried in the distance. But when the clouds floated away, and showed the three peaks standing like obelisks against the sky; and the bold shore undulating along the horizon, the tears gushed from his eyes. Poor fellow! It was not Hivarhoo. Green Hivarhoo was many a long league off.
Tahiti is by far the most famous island in the South Seas; indeed, a variety of causes has made it almost classic. Its natural features alone distinguish it from the surrounding groups. Two round and lofty promontories, whose mountains rise nine thousand feet above the level of the ocean, are connected by a low, narrow isthmus; the whole being some one hundred miles in circuit. From the great central peaks of the larger peninsula--Orohena, Aorai, and Pirohitee--the land radiates on all sides to the sea in sloping green ridges. Between these are broad and shadowy valleys--in aspect, each a Tempe--watered with fine streams, and thickly wooded. Unlike many of the other islands, there extends nearly all round Tahiti a belt of low, alluvial soil, teeming with the richest vegetation. Here, chiefly, the natives dwell.
Seen from the sea, the prospect is magnificent. It is one mass of shaded tints of green, from beach to mountain top; endlessly diversified with valleys, ridges, glens, and cascades. Over the ridges, here and there, the loftier peaks fling their shadows, and far down the valleys. At the head of these, the waterfalls flash out into the sunlight, as if pouring through vertical bowers of verdure. Such enchantment, too, breathes over the whole, that it seems a fairy world, all fresh and blooming from the hand of the Creator.
Upon a near approach, the picture loses not its attractions. It is no exaggeration to say that, to a European of any sensibility, who, for the first time, wanders back into these valleys--away from the haunts of the natives--the ineffable repose and beauty of the landscape is such, that every object strikes him like something seen in a dream; and for a time he almost refuses to believe that scenes like these should have a commonplace existence. No wonder that the French bestowed upon the island the appellation of the New Cytherea. "Often," says De Bourgainville, "I thought I was walking in the Garden of Eden."
Nor, when first discovered, did the inhabitants of this charming country at all diminish the wonder and admiration of the voyager. Their physical beauty and amiable dispositions harmonized completely with the softness of their clime. In truth, everything about them was calculated to awaken the liveliest interest. Glance at their civil and religious institutions. To their king, divine rights were paid; while for poetry, their mythology rivalled that of ancient Greece.
Of Tahiti, earlier and more full accounts were given, than of any other island in Polynesia; and this is the reason why it still retains so strong a hold on the sympathies of all readers of South Sea voyages. The journals of its first visitors, containing, as they did, such romantic descriptions of a country and people before unheard of, produced a marked sensation throughout Europe; and when the first Tahitiana were carried thither, Omai in London, and Aotooroo in Paris, were caressed by nobles, scholars, and ladies.
In addition to all this, several eventful occurrences, more or less connected with Tahiti, have tended to increase its celebrity. Over two centuries ago, Quiros, the Spaniard, is supposed to have touched at the island; and at intervals, Wallis, Byron, Cook, De Bourgainville, Vancouver, Le Perouse, and other illustrious navigators refitted their vessels in its harbours. Here the famous Transit of Venus was observed, in 1769. Here the memorable mutiny of the Bounty afterwards had its origin. It was to the pagans of Tahiti that the first regularly constituted Protestant missionaries were sent; and from their shores also, have sailed successive missions to the neighbouring islands.
These, with other events which might be mentioned, have united in keeping up the first interest which the place awakened; and the recent proceedings of the French have more than ever called forth the sympathies of the public.
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{
"id": "4045"
}
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19
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A SURPRISE--MORE ABOUT BEMBO
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THE sight of the island was right welcome. Going into harbour after a cruise is always joyous enough, and the sailor is apt to indulge in all sorts of pleasant anticipations. But to us, the occasion was heightened by many things peculiar to our situation.
Since steering for the land, our prospects had been much talked over. By many it was supposed that, should the captain leave the ship, the crew were no longer bound by her articles. This was the opinion of our forecastle Cokes; though, probably, it would not have been sanctioned by the Marine Courts of Law. At any rate, such was the state of both vessel and crew that, whatever might be the event, a long stay, and many holidays in Tahiti, were confidently predicted.
Everybody was in high spirits. The sick, who had been improving day by day since the change in our destination, were on deck, and leaning over the bulwarks; some all animation, and others silently admiring an object unrivalled for its stately beauty--Tahiti from the sea.
The quarter-deck, however, furnished a marked contrast to what was going on at the other end of the ship. The Mowree was there, as usual, scowling by himself; and Jermin walked to and fro in deep thought, every now and then looking to windward, or darting into the cabin and quickly returning.
With all our light sails wooingly spread, we held on our way, until, with the doctor's glass, Papeetee, the village metropolis of Tahiti, came into view. Several ships were descried lying in the harbour, and among them, one which loomed up black and large; her two rows of teeth proclaiming a frigate. This was the Reine Blanche, last from the Marquesas, and carrying at the fore the flag of Rear-Admiral Du Petit Thouars. Hardly had we made her out, when the booming of her guns came over the water. She was firing a salute, which afterwards turned out to be in honour of a treaty; or rather--as far as the natives were concerned--a forced cession of Tahiti to the French, that morning concluded.
The cannonading had hardly died away, when Jermin's voice was heard giving an order so unexpected that everyone started. "Stand by to haul back the main-yard!"
"What's that mean?" shouted the men, "are we not going into port?"
"Tumble after here, and no words!" cried the mate; and in a moment the main-yard swung round, when, with her jib-boom pointing out to sea, the Julia lay as quiet as a duck. We all looked blank--what was to come next?
Presently the steward made his appearance, carrying a mattress, which he spread out in the stern-sheets of the captain's boat; two or three chests, and other things belonging to his master, were similarly disposed of.
This was enough. A slight hint suffices for a sailor.
Still adhering to his resolution to keep the ship at sea in spite of everything, the captain, doubtless, intended to set himself ashore, leaving the vessel, under the mate, to resume her voyage at once; but after a certain period agreed upon, to touch at the island, and take him off. All this, of course, could easily be done without approaching any nearer the land with the Julia than we now were. Invalid whaling captains often adopt a plan like this; but, in the present instance, it was wholly unwarranted; and, everything considered, at war with the commonest principles of prudence and humanity. And, although, on Guy's part, this resolution showed more hardihood than he had ever been given credit for, it, at the same time, argued an unaccountable simplicity, in supposing that such a crew would, in any way, submit to the outrage.
It was soon made plain that we were right in our suspicions; and the men became furious. The cooper and carpenter volunteered to head a mutiny forthwith; and while Jermin was below, four or five rushed aft to fasten down the cabin scuttle; others, throwing down the main-braces, called out to the rest to lend a hand, and fill away for the land. All this was done in an instant; and things were looking critical, when Doctor Long Ghost and myself prevailed upon them to wait a while, and do nothing hastily; there was plenty of time, and the ship was completely in our power.
While the preparations were still going on in the cabin, we mustered the men together, and went into counsel upon the forecastle.
It was with much difficulty that we could bring these rash spirits to a calm consideration of the case. But the doctor's influence at last began to tell; and, with a few exceptions, they agreed to be guided by him; assured that, if they did so, the ship would eventually be brought to her anchors without anyone getting into trouble. Still they told us, up and down, that if peaceable means failed, they would seize Little Jule, and carry her into Papeetee, if they all swung for it; but, for the present, the captain should have his own way.
By this time everything was ready; the boat was lowered and brought to the gangway; and the captain was helped on deck by the mate and steward. It was the first time we had seen him in more than two weeks, and he was greatly altered. As if anxious to elude every eye, a broad-brimmed Payata hat was pulled down over his brow; so that his face was only visible when the brim flapped aside. By a sling, rigged from the main-yard, the cook and Bembo now assisted in lowering him into the boat. As he went moaning over the side, he must have heard the whispered maledictions of his crew.
While the steward was busy adjusting matters in the boat, the mate, after a private interview with the Mowree, turned round abruptly, and told us that he was going ashore with the captain, to return as soon as possible. In his absence, Bembo, as next in rank, would command; there being nothing to do but keep the ship at a safe distance from the land. He then sprang into the boat, and, with only the cook and steward as oarsmen, steered for the shore.
Guy's thus leaving the ship in the men's hands, contrary to the mate's advice, was another evidence of his simplicity; for at this particular juncture, had neither the doctor nor myself been aboard, there is no telling what they might have done.
For the nonce, Bembo was captain; and, so far as mere seamanship was concerned, he was as competent to command as anyone. In truth, a better seaman never swore. This accomplishment, by the bye, together with a surprising familiarity with most nautical names and phrases, comprised about all the English he knew.
Being a harpooner, and, as such, having access to the cabin, this man, though not yet civilized, was, according to sea usages, which know no exceptions, held superior to the sailors; and therefore nothing was said against his being left in charge of the ship; nor did it occasion any surprise.
Some additional account must be given of Bembo. In the first place, he was far from being liked. A dark, moody savage, everybody but the mate more or less distrusted or feared him. Nor were these feelings unreciprocated. Unless duty called, he seldom went among the crew. Hard stories too were told about him; something, in particular, concerning an hereditary propensity to kill men and eat them. True, he came from a race of cannibals; but that was all that was known to a certainty.
Whatever unpleasant ideas were connected with the Mowree, his personal appearance no way lessened them. Unlike most of his countrymen, he was, if anything, below the ordinary height; but then, he was all compact, and under his swart, tattooed skin, the muscles worked like steel rods. Hair, crisp and coal-black, curled over shaggy brows, and ambushed small, intense eyes, always on the glare. In short, he was none of your effeminate barbarians.
Previous to this, he had been two or three voyages in Sydney whalemen; always, however, as in the present instance, shipping at the Bay of Islands, and receiving his discharge there on the homeward-bound passage. In this way, his countrymen frequently enter on board the colonial whaling vessels.
There was a man among us who had sailed with the Mowree on his first voyage, and he told me that he had not changed a particle since then.
Some queer things this fellow told me. The following is one of his stories. I give it for what it is worth; premising, however, that from what I know of Bembo, and the foolhardy, dare-devil feats sometimes performed in the sperm-whale fishery, I believe in its substantial truth.
As may be believed, Bembo was a wild one after a fish; indeed, all New Zealanders engaged in this business are; it seems to harmonize sweetly with their blood-thirsty propensities. At sea, the best English they speak is the South Seaman's slogan in lowering away, "A dead whale, or a stove boat!" Game to the marrow, these fellows are generally selected for harpooners; a post in which a nervous, timid man would be rather out of his element.
In darting, the harpooner, of course, stands erect in the head of the boat, one knee braced against a support. But Bembo disdained this; and was always pulled up to his fish, balancing himself right on the gunwale.
But to my story. One morning, at daybreak, they brought him up to a large, long whale. He darted his harpoon, and missed; and the fish sounded. After a while, the monster rose again, about a mile off, and they made after him. But he was frightened, or "gallied," as they call it; and noon came, and the boat was still chasing him. In whaling, as long as the fish is in sight, and no matter what may have been previously undergone, there is no giving up, except when night comes; and nowadays, when whales are so hard to be got, frequently not even then. At last, Bembo's whale was alongside for the second time. He darted both harpoons; but, as sometimes happens to the best men, by some unaccountable chance, once more missed. Though it is well known that such failures will happen at times, they, nevertheless, occasion the bitterest disappointment to a boat's crew, generally expressed in curses both loud and deep. And no wonder. Let any man pull with might and main for hours and hours together, under a burning sun; and if it do not make him a little peevish, he is no sailor.
The taunts of the seamen may have maddened the Mowree; however it was, no sooner was he brought up again, than, harpoon in hand, he bounded upon the whale's back, and for one dizzy second was seen there. The next, all was foam and fury, and both were out of sight. The men sheered off, flinging overboard the line as fast as they could; while ahead, nothing was seen but a red whirlpool of blood and brine.
Presently, a dark object swam out; the line began to straighten; then smoked round the loggerhead, and, quick as thought, the boat sped like an arrow through the water. They were "fast," and the whale was running.
Where was the Mowree? His brown hand was on the boat's gunwale; and he was hauled aboard in the very midst of the mad bubbles that burst under the bows.
Such a man, or devil, if you will, was Bembo.
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{
"id": "4045"
}
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20
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THE ROUND ROBIN--VISITORS FROM SHORE
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AFTER the captain left, the land-breeze died away; and, as is usual about these islands, toward noon it fell a dead calm. There was nothing to do but haul up the courses, run down the jib, and lay and roll upon the swells. The repose of the elements seemed to communicate itself to the men; and for a time there was a lull.
Early in the afternoon, the mate, having left the captain at Papeetee, returned to the ship. According to the steward, they were to go ashore again right after dinner with the remainder of Guy's effects.
On gaining the deck, Jermin purposely avoided us and went below without saying a word. Meanwhile, Long Ghost and I laboured hard to diffuse the right spirit among the crew; impressing upon them that a little patience and management would, in the end, accomplish all that their violence could; and that, too, without making a serious matter of it.
For my own part, I felt that I was under a foreign flag; that an English consul was close at hand, and that sailors seldom obtain justice. It was best to be prudent. Still, so much did I sympathize with the men, so far, at least, as their real grievances were concerned; and so convinced was I of the cruelty and injustice of what Captain Guy seemed bent upon, that if need were, I stood ready to raise a hand.
In spite of all we could do, some of them again became most refractory, breathing nothing but downright mutiny. When we went below to dinner these fellows stirred up such a prodigious tumult that the old hull fairly echoed. Many, and fierce too, were the speeches delivered, and uproarious the comments of the sailors. Among others Long Jim, or--as the doctor afterwards called him--Lacedaemonian Jim, rose in his place, and addressed the forecastle parliament in the following strain: "Look ye, Britons! if after what's happened, this here craft goes to sea with us, we are no men; and that's the way to say it. Speak the word, my livelies, and I'll pilot her in. I've been to Tahiti before and I can do it." Whereupon, he sat down amid a universal pounding of chest-lids, and cymbaling of tin pans; the few invalids, who, as yet, had not been actively engaged with the rest, now taking part in the applause, creaking their bunk-boards and swinging their hammocks. Cries also were heard, of "Handspikes and a shindy!" "Out stun-sails!" "Hurrah!"
Several now ran on deck, and, for the moment, I thought it was all over with us; but we finally succeeded in restoring some degree of quiet.
At last, by way of diverting their thoughts, I proposed that a "Round Robin" should be prepared and sent ashore to the consul by Baltimore, the cook. The idea took mightily, and I was told to set about it at once. On turning to the doctor for the requisite materials, he told me he had none; there was not a fly-leaf, even in any of his books. So, after great search, a damp, musty volume, entitled "A History of the most Atrocious and Bloody Piracies," was produced, and its two remaining blank leaves being torn out, were by help of a little pitch lengthened into one sheet. For ink, some of the soot over the lamp was then mixed with water, by a fellow of a literary turn; and an immense quill, plucked from a distended albatross' wing, which, nailed against the bowsprit bitts, had long formed an ornament of the forecastle, supplied a pen.
Making use of the stationery thus provided, I indited, upon a chest-lid, a concise statement of our grievances; concluding with the earnest hope that the consul would at once come off, and see how matters stood for himself. Eight beneath the note was described the circle about which the names were to be written; the great object of a Round Robin being to arrange the signatures in such a way that, although they are all found in a ring, no man can be picked out as the leader of it.
Few among them had any regular names; many answering to some familiar title, expressive of a personal trait; or oftener still, to the name of the place from which they hailed; and in one or two cases were known by a handy syllable or two, significant of nothing in particular but the men who bore them. Some, to be sure, had, for the sake of formality, shipped under a feigned cognomen, or "Purser's name"; these, however, were almost forgotten by themselves; and so, to give the document an air of genuineness, it was decided that every man's name should be put down as it went among the crew.
It is due to the doctor to say that the circumscribed device was his.
Folded, and sealed with a drop of tar, the Round Robin was directed to "The English Consul, Tahiti"; and, handed to the cook, was by him delivered into that gentleman's hands as soon as the mate went ashore.
On the return of the boat, sometime after dark, we learned a good deal from old Baltimore, who, having been allowed to run about as much as he pleased, had spent his time gossiping.
Owing to the proceedings of the French, everything in Tahiti was in an uproar. Pritchard, the missionary consul, was absent in England; but his place was temporarily filled by one Wilson, an educated white man, born on the island, and the son of an old missionary of that name still living.
With natives and foreigners alike, Wilson the younger was exceedingly unpopular, being held an unprincipled and dissipated man, a character verified by his subsequent conduct. Pritchard's selecting a man like this to attend to the duties of his office, had occasioned general dissatisfaction ashore.
Though never in Europe or America, the acting consul had been several voyages to Sydney in a schooner belonging to the mission; and therefore our surprise was lessened, when Baltimore told us, that he and Captain Guy were as sociable as could be--old acquaintances, in fact; and that the latter had taken up his quarters at Wilson's house. For us this boded ill.
The mate was now assailed by a hundred questions as to what was going to be done with us. His only reply was, that in the morning the consul would pay us a visit, and settle everything.
After holding our ground off the harbour during the night, in the morning a shore boat, manned by natives, was seen coming off. In it were Wilson and another white man, who proved to be a Doctor Johnson, an Englishman, and a resident physician of Papeetee.
Stopping our headway as they approached, Jermin advanced to the gangway to receive them. No sooner did the consul touch the deck, than he gave us a specimen of what he was.
"Mr. Jermin," he cried loftily, and not deigning to notice the respectful salutation of the person addressed, "Mr. Jermin, tack ship, and stand off from the land."
Upon this, the men looked hard at him, anxious to see what sort of a looking "cove" he was. Upon inspection, he turned out to be an exceedingly minute "cove," with a viciously pugged nose, and a decidedly thin pair of legs. There was nothing else noticeable about him. Jermin, with ill-assumed suavity, at once obeyed the order, and the ship's head soon pointed out to sea.
Now, contempt is as frequently produced at first sight as love; and thus was it with respect to Wilson. No one could look at him without conceiving a strong dislike, or a cordial desire to entertain such a feeling the first favourable opportunity. There was such an intolerable air of conceit about this man that it was almost as much as one could do to refrain from running up and affronting him.
"So the counsellor is come," exclaimed Navy Bob, who, like all the rest, invariably styled him thus, much to mine and the doctor's diversion. "Ay," said another, "and for no good, I'll be bound."
Such were some of the observations made, as Wilson and the mate went below conversing.
But no one exceeded the cooper in the violence with which he inveighed against the ship and everything connected with her. Swearing like a trooper, he called the main-mast to witness that, if he (Bungs) ever again went out of sight of land in the Julia, he prayed Heaven that a fate might be his--altogether too remarkable to be here related.
Much had he to say also concerning the vileness of what we had to eat--not fit for a dog; besides enlarging upon the imprudence of intrusting the vessel longer to a man of the mate's intemperate habits. With so many sick, too, what could we expect to do in the fishery? It was no use talking; come what come might, the ship must let go her anchor.
Now, as Bungs, besides being an able seaman, a "Cod" in the forecastle, and about the oldest man in it, was, moreover, thus deeply imbued with feelings so warmly responded to by the rest, he was all at once selected to officiate as spokesman, as soon as the consul should see fit to address us. The selection was made contrary to mine and the doctor's advice; however, all assured us they would keep quiet, and hear everything Wilson had to say, before doing anything decisive.
We were not kept long in suspense; for very soon he was seen standing in the cabin gangway, with the tarnished tin case containing the ship's papers; and Jennin at once sung out for the ship's company to muster on the quarter-deck.
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{
"id": "4045"
}
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21
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE CONSUL
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THE order was instantly obeyed, and the sailors ranged themselves, facing the consul.
They were a wild company; men of many climes--not at all precise in their toilet arrangements, but picturesque in their very tatters. My friend, the Long Doctor, was there too; and with a view, perhaps, of enlisting the sympathies of the consul for a gentleman in distress, had taken more than ordinary pains with his appearance. But among the sailors, he looked like a land-crane blown off to sea, and consorting with petrels.
The forlorn Rope Yarn, however, was by far the most remarkable figure. Land-lubber that he was, his outfit of sea-clothing had long since been confiscated; and he was now fain to go about in whatever he could pick up. His upper garment--an unsailor-like article of dress which he persisted in wearing, though torn from his back twenty times in the day--was an old "claw-hammer jacket," or swallow-tail coat, formerly belonging to Captain Guy, and which had formed one of his perquisites when steward.
By the side of Wilson was the mate, bareheaded, his gray locks lying in rings upon his bronzed brow, and his keen eye scanning the crowd as if he knew their every thought. His frock hung loosely, exposing his round throat, mossy chest, and short and nervous arm embossed with pugilistic bruises, and quaint with many a device in India ink.
In the midst of a portentous silence, the consul unrolled his papers, evidently intending to produce an effect by the exceeding bigness of his looks.
"Mr. Jermin, call off their names;" and he handed him a list of the ship's company.
All answered but the deserters and the two mariners at the bottom of the sea.
It was now supposed that the Round Robin would be produced, and something said about it. But not so. Among the consul's papers that unique document was thought to be perceived; but, if there, it was too much despised to be made a subject of comment. Some present, very justly regarding it as an uncommon literary production, had been anticipating all sorts of miracles therefrom; and were, therefore, much touched at this neglect.
"Well, men," began Wilson again after a short pause, "although you all look hearty enough, I'm told there are some sick among you. Now then, Mr. Jermin, call off the names on that sick-list of yours, and let them go over to the other side of the deck--I should like to see who they are."
"So, then," said he, after we had all passed over, "you are the sick fellows, are you? Very good: I shall have you seen to. You will go down into the cabin one by one, to Doctor Johnson, who will report your respective cases to me. Such as he pronounces in a dying state I shall have sent ashore; the rest will be provided with everything needful, and remain aboard."
At this announcement, we gazed strangely at each other, anxious to see who it was that looked like dying, and pretty nearly deciding to stay aboard and get well, rather than go ashore and be buried. There were some, nevertheless, who saw very plainly what Wilson was at, and they acted accordingly. For my own part, I resolved to assume as dying an expression as possible; hoping that, on the strength of it, I might be sent ashore, and so get rid of the ship without any further trouble.
With this intention, I determined to take no part in anything that might happen until my case was decided upon. As for the doctor, he had all along pretended to be more or less unwell; and by a significant look now given me, it was plain that he was becoming decidedly worse.
The invalids disposed of for the present, and one of them having gone below to be examined, the consul turned round to the rest, and addressed them as follows:-- "Men, I'm going to ask you two or three questions--let one of you answer yes or no, and the rest keep silent. Now then: Have you anything to say against your mate, Mr. Jermin?" And he looked sharply among the sailors, and, at last, right into the eye of the cooper, whom everybody was eyeing.
"Well, sir," faltered Bungs, "we can't say anything against Mr. Jermin's seamanship, but--" "I want no buts," cried the consul, breaking in: "answer me yes or no--have you anything to say against Mr. Jermin?"
"I was going on to say, sir; Mr. Jermin's a very good man; but then--" Here the mate looked marlinespikes at Bungs; and Bungs, after stammering out something, looked straight down to a seam in the deck, and stopped short.
A rather assuming fellow heretofore, the cooper had sported many feathers in his cap; he was now showing the white one.
"So much then for that part of the business," exclaimed Wilson, smartly; "you have nothing to say against him, I see."
Upon this, several seemed to be on the point of saying a good deal; but disconcerted by the cooper's conduct, checked themselves, and the consul proceeded.
"Have you enough to eat, aboard? answer me, you man who spoke before."
"Well, I don't know as to that," said the cooper, looking excessively uneasy, and trying to edge back, but pushed forward again. "Some of that salt horse ain't as sweet as it might be."
"That's not what I asked you," shouted the consul, growing brave quite fast; "answer my questions as I put them, or I'll find a way to make you."
This was going a little too far. The ferment, into which the cooper's poltroonery had thrown the sailors, now brooked no restraint; and one of them--a young American who went by the name of Salem--dashed out from among the rest, and fetching the cooper a blow that sent him humming over toward the consul, flourished a naked sheath-knife in the air, and burst forth with "I'm the little fellow that can answer your questions; just put them to me once, counsellor." But the "counsellor" had no more questions to ask just then; for at the alarming apparition of Salem's knife, and the extraordinary effect produced upon Bungs, he had popped his head down the companion-way, and was holding it there.
Upon the mate's assuring him, however, that it was all over, he looked up, quite flustered, if not frightened, but evidently determined to put as fierce a face on the matter as practicable. Speaking sharply, he warned all present to "look out"; and then repeated the question, whether there was enough to eat aboard. Everyone now turned spokesman; and he was assailed by a perfect hurricane of yells, in which the oaths fell like hailstones.
"How's this! what d'ye mean?" he cried, upon the first lull; "who told you all to speak at once? Here, you man with the knife, you'll be putting someone's eyes out yet; d'ye hear, you sir? You seem to have a good deal to say, who are you, pray; where did you ship?"
"I'm nothing more nor a bloody beach-comber," retorted Salem, stepping forward piratically and eyeing him; "and if you want to know, I shipped at the Islands about four months ago."
"Only four months ago? And here you have more to say than men who have been aboard the whole voyage;" and the consul made a dash at looking furious, but failed. "Let me hear no more from you, sir. Where's that respectable, gray-headed man, the cooper? he's the one to answer my questions."
"There's no 'spectable, gray-headed men aboard," returned Salem; "we're all a parcel of mutineers and pirates!"
All this time, the mate was holding his peace; and Wilson, now completely abashed, and at a loss what to do, took him by the arm, and walked across the deck. Returning to the cabin-scuttle, after a close conversation, he abruptly addressed the sailors, without taking any further notice of what had just happened.
"For reasons you all know, men, this ship has been placed in my hands. As Captain Guy will remain ashore for the present, your mate, Mr. Jermin, will command until his recovery. According to my judgment, there is no reason why the voyage should not be at once resumed; especially, as I shall see that you have two more harpooners, and enough good men to man three boats. As for the sick, neither you nor I have anything to do with them; they will be attended to by Doctor Johnson; but I've explained that matter before. As soon as things can be arranged--in a day or two, at farthest--you will go to sea for a three months' cruise, touching here, at the end of it, for your captain. Let me hear a good report of you, now, when you come back. At present, you will continue lying off and on the harbour. I will send you fresh provisions as soon as I can get them. There: I've nothing more to say; go forward to your stations."
And, without another word, he wheeled round to descend into the cabin. But hardly had he concluded before the incensed men were dancing about him on every side, and calling upon him to lend an ear. Each one for himself denied the legality of what he proposed to do; insisted upon the necessity for taking the ship in; and finally gave him to understand, roughly and roundly, that go to sea in her they would not.
In the midst of this mutinous uproar, the alarmed consul stood fast by the scuttle. His tactics had been decided upon beforehand; indeed, they must have been concerted ashore, between him and the captain; for all he said, as he now hurried below, was, "Go forward, men; I'm through with you: you should have mentioned these matters before: my arrangements are concluded: go forward, I say; I've nothing more to say to you." And, drawing over the slide of the scuttle, he disappeared. Upon the very point of following him down, the attention of the exasperated seamen was called off to a party who had just then taken the recreant Bungs in hand. Amid a shower of kicks and cuffs, the traitor was borne along to the forecastle, where--I forbear to relate what followed.
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{
"id": "4045"
}
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22
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THE CONSUL'S DEPARTURE
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DURING THE scenes just described, Doctor Johnson was engaged in examining the sick, of whom, as it turned out, all but two were to remain in the ship. He had evidently received his cue from Wilson.
One of the last called below into the cabin, just as the quarter-deck gathering dispersed, I came on deck quite incensed. My lameness, which, to tell the truth, was now much better, was put down as, in a great measure, affected; and my name was on the list of those who would be fit for any duty in a day or two. This was enough. As for Doctor Long Ghost, the shore physician, instead of extending to him any professional sympathy, had treated him very cavalierly. To a certain extent, therefore, we were now both bent on making common cause with the sailors.
I must explain myself here. All we wanted was to have the ship snugly anchored in Papeetee Bay; entertaining no doubt that, could this be done, it would in some way or other peaceably lead to our emancipation. Without a downright mutiny, there was but one way to accomplish this: to induce the men to refuse all further duty, unless it were to work the vessel in. The only difficulty lay in restraining them within proper bounds. Nor was it without certain misgivings, that I found myself so situated, that I must necessarily link myself, however guardedly, with such a desperate company; and in an enterprise, too, of which it was hard to conjecture what might be the result. But anything like neutrality was out of the question; and unconditional submission was equally so.
On going forward, we found them ten times more tumultuous than ever. After again restoring some degree of tranquillity, we once more urged our plan of quietly refusing duty, and awaiting the result. At first, few would hear of it; but in the end, a good number were convinced by our representations. Others held out. Nor were those who thought with us in all things to be controlled.
Upon Wilson's coming on deck to enter his boat, he was beset on all sides; and, for a moment, I thought the ship would be seized before his very eyes.
"Nothing more to say to you, men: my arrangements are made. Go forward, where you belong. I'll take no insolence;" and, in a tremor, Wilson hurried over the side in the midst of a volley of execrations.
Shortly after his departure, the mate ordered the cook and steward into his boat; and saying that he was going to see how the captain did, left us, as before, under the charge of Bembo.
At this time we were lying becalmed, pretty close in with the land (having gone about again), our main-topsail flapping against the mast with every roll.
The departure of the consul and Jermin was followed by a scene absolutely indescribable. The sailors ran about deck like madmen; Bembo, all the while leaning against the taff-rail by himself, smoking his heathenish stone pipe, and never interfering.
The cooper, who that morning had got himself into a fluid of an exceedingly high temperature, now did his best to regain the favour of the crew. "Without distinction of party," he called upon all hands to step up, and partake of the contents of his bucket.
But it was quite plain that, before offering to intoxicate others, he had taken the wise precaution of getting well tipsy himself. He was now once more happy in the affection of his shipmates, who, one and all, pronounced him sound to the kelson.
The Pisco soon told; and, with great difficulty, we restrained a party in the very act of breaking into the after-hold in pursuit of more. All manner of pranks were now played.
"Mast-head, there! what d'ye see?" bawled Beauty, hailing the main-truck through an enormous copper funnel. "Stand by for stays," roared Flash Jack, bawling off with the cook's axe, at the fastening of the main-stay. "Looky out for 'quails!" shrieked the Portuguese, Antone, darting a handspike through the cabin skylight. And "Heave round cheerly, men," sung out Navy Bob, dancing a hornpipe on the forecastle.
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{
"id": "4045"
}
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23
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THE SECOND NIGHT OFF PAPEETEE
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TOWARD sunset, the mate came off, singing merrily, in the stern of his boat; and in attempting to climb up the side, succeeded in going plump into the water. He was rescued by the steward, and carried across the deck with many moving expressions of love for his bearer. Tumbled into the quarter-boat, he soon fell asleep, and waking about midnight, somewhat sobered, went forward among the men. Here, to prepare for what follows, we must leave him for a moment.
It was now plain enough that Jermin was by no means unwilling to take the Julia to sea; indeed, there was nothing he so much desired; though what his reasons were, seeing our situation, we could only conjecture. Nevertheless, so it was; and having counted much upon his rough popularity with the men to reconcile them to a short cruise under him, he had consequently been disappointed in their behaviour. Still, thinking that they would take a different view of the matter, when they came to know what fine times he had in store for them, he resolved upon trying a little persuasion.
So on going forward, he put his head down the forecastle scuttle, and hailed us quite cordially, inviting us down into the cabin; where, he said, he had something to make merry withal. Nothing loth, we went; and throwing ourselves along the transom, waited for the steward to serve us.
As the can circulated, Jermin, leaning on the table and occupying the captain's arm-chair secured to the deck, opened his mind as bluntly and freely as ever. He was by no means yet sober.
He told us we were acting very foolishly; that if we only stuck to the ship, he would lead us all a jovial life of it; enumerating the casks still remaining untapped in the Julia's wooden cellar. It was even hinted vaguely that such a thing might happen as our not coming back for the captain; whom he spoke of but lightly; asserting, what he had often said before, that he was no sailor.
Moreover, and perhaps with special reference to Doctor Long Ghost and myself, he assured us generally that, if there were any among us studiously inclined, he would take great pleasure in teaching such the whole art and mystery of navigation, including the gratuitous use of his quadrant.
I should have mentioned that, previous to this, he had taken the doctor aside, and said something about reinstating him in the cabin with augmented dignity; beside throwing out a hint that I myself was in some way or other to be promoted. But it was all to no purpose; bent the men were upon going ashore, and there was no moving them.
At last he flew into a rage--much increased by the frequency of his potations--and with many imprecations, concluded by driving everybody out of the cabin. We tumbled up the gangway in high good-humour.
Upon deck everything looked so quiet that some of the most pugnacious spirits actually lamented that there was so little prospect of an exhilarating disturbance before morning. It was not five minutes, however, ere these fellows were gratified.
Sydney Ben--said to be a runaway Ticket-of-Leave-Man, and for reasons of his own, one of the few who still remained on duty--had, for the sake of the fun, gone down with the rest into the cabin; where Bembo, who meanwhile was left in charge of the deck, had frequently called out for him. At first, Ben pretended not to hear; but on being sung out for again and again, bluntly refused; at the same time, casting some illiberal reflections on the Mowree's maternal origin, which the latter had been long enough among the sailors to understand as in the highest degree offensive. So just after the men came up from below, Bembo singled him out, and gave him such a cursing in his broken lingo that it was enough to frighten one. The convict was the worse for liquor; indeed the Mowree had been tippling also, and before we knew it, a blow was struck by Ben, and the two men came together like magnets.
The Ticket-of-Leave-Man was a practised bruiser; but the savage knew nothing of the art pugilistic: and so they were even. It was clear hugging and wrenching till both came to the deck. Here they rolled over and over in the middle of a ring which seemed to form of itself. At last the white man's head fell back, and his face grew purple. Bembo's teeth were at his throat. Rushing in all round, they hauled the savage off, but not until repeatedly struck on the head would he let go.
His rage was now absolutely demoniac; he lay glaring and writhing on the deck, without attempting to rise. Cowed, as they supposed he was, from his attitude, the men, rejoiced at seeing him thus humbled, left him; after rating him, in sailor style, for a cannibal and a coward.
Ben was attended to, and led below.
Soon after this, the rest also, with but few exceptions, retired into the forecastle; and having been up nearly all the previous night, they quickly dropped about the chests and rolled into the hammocks. In an hour's time, not a sound could be heard in that part of the ship.
Before Bembo was dragged away, the mate had in vain endeavoured to separate the combatants, repeatedly striking the Mowree; but the seamen interposing, at last kept him off.
And intoxicated as he was, when they dispersed, he knew enough to charge the steward--a steady seaman be it remembered--with the present safety of the ship; and then went below, when he fell directly into another drunken sleep.
Having remained upon deck with the doctor some time after the rest had gone below, I was just on the point of following him down, when I saw the Mowree rise, draw a bucket of water, and holding it high above his head, pour its contents right over him. This he repeated several times. There was nothing very peculiar in the act, but something else about him struck me. However, I thought no more of it, but descended the scuttle.
After a restless nap, I found the atmosphere of the forecastle so close, from nearly all the men being down at the same time, that I hunted up an old pea-jacket and went on deck; intending to sleep it out there till morning. Here I found the cook and steward, Wymontoo, Hope Yarn, and the Dane; who, being all quiet, manageable fellows, and holding aloof from the rest since the captain's departure, had been ordered by the mate not to go below until sunrise. They were lying under the lee of the bulwarks; two or three fast asleep, and the others smoking their pipes, and conversing.
To my surprise, Bembo was at the helm; but there being so few to stand there now, they told me, he had offered to take his turn with the rest, at the same time heading the watch; and to this, of course, they made no objection.
It was a fine, bright night; all moon and stars, and white crests of waves. The breeze was light, but freshening; and close-hauled, poor little Jule, as if nothing had happened, was heading in for the land, which rose high and hazy in the distance.
After the day's uproar, the tranquillity of the scene was soothing, and I leaned over the side to enjoy it.
More than ever did I now lament my situation--but it was useless to repine, and I could not upbraid myself. So at last, becoming drowsy, I made a bed with my jacket under the windlass, and tried to forget myself.
How long I lay there, I cannot tell; but as I rose, the first object that met my eye was Bembo at the helm; his dark figure slowly rising and falling with the ship's motion against the spangled heavens behind. He seemed all impatience and expectation; standing at arm's length from the spokes, with one foot advanced, and his bare head thrust forward. Where I was, the watch were out of sight; and no one else was stirring; the deserted decks and broad white sails were gleaming in the moonlight.
Presently, a swelling, dashing sound came upon my ear, and I had a sort of vague consciousness that I had been hearing it before. The next instant I was broad awake and on my feet. Eight ahead, and so near that my heart stood still, was a long line of breakers, heaving and frothing. It was the coral reef girdling the island. Behind it, and almost casting their shadows upon the deck, were the sleeping mountains, about whose hazy peaks the gray dawn was just breaking. The breeze had freshened, and with a steady, gliding motion, we were running straight for the reef.
All was taken in at a glance; the fell purpose of Bembo was obvious, and with a frenzied shout to wake the watch, I rushed aft. They sprang to their feet bewildered; and after a short, but desperate scuffle, we tore him from the helm. In wrestling with him, the wheel--left for a moment unguarded--flew to leeward, thus, fortunately, bringing the ship's head to the wind, and so retarding her progress. Previous to this, she had been kept three or four points free, so as to close with the breakers. Her headway now shortened, I steadied the helm, keeping the sails just lifting, while we glided obliquely toward the land. To have run off before the wind--an easy thing--would have been almost instant destruction, owing to a curve of the reef in that direction. At this time, the Dane and the steward were still struggling with the furious Mowree, and the others were running about irresolute and shouting.
But darting forward the instant I had the helm, the old cook thundered on the forecastle with a handspike, "Breakers! breakers close aboard! --'bout ship! 'bout ship!"
Up came the sailors, staring about them in stupid horror.
"Haul back the head-yards!" "Let go the lee fore-brace!" "Beady about! about!" were now shouted on all sides; while distracted by a thousand orders, they ran hither and thither, fairly panic-stricken.
It seemed all over with us; and I was just upon the point of throwing the ship full into the wind (a step, which, saving us for the instant, would have sealed our fate in the end), when a sharp cry shot by my ear like the flight of an arrow.
It was Salem: "All ready for'ard; hard down!"
Round and round went the spokes--the Julia, with her short keel, spinning to windward like a top. Soon, the jib-sheets lashed the stays, and the men, more self-possessed, flew to the braces.
"Main-sail haul!" was now heard, as the fresh breeze streamed fore and aft the deck; and directly the after-yards were whirled round.
In a half-a-minute more, we were sailing away from the land on the other tack, with every sail distended.
Turning on her heel within little more than a biscuit's toss of the reef, no earthly power could have saved us, were it not that, up to the very brink of the coral rampart, there are no soundings.
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{
"id": "4045"
}
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24
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OUTBREAK OF THE CREW
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THE purpose of Bembo had been made known to the men generally by the watch; and now that our salvation was certain, by an instinctive impulse they raised a cry, and rushed toward him.
Just before liberated by Dunk and the steward, he was standing doggedly by the mizzen-mast; and, as the infuriated sailors came on, his bloodshot eye rolled, and his sheath-knife glittered over his head.
"Down with him!" "Strike him down!" "Hang him at the main-yard!" such were the shouts now raised. But he stood unmoved, and, for a single instant, they absolutely faltered.
"Cowards!" cried Salem, and he flung himself upon him. The steel descended like a ray of light; but did no harm; for the sailor's heart was beating against the Mowree's before he was aware.
They both fell to the deck, when the knife was instantly seized, and Bembo secured.
"For'ard! for'ard with him!" was again the cry; "give him a sea-toss!" "Overboard with him!" and he was dragged along the deck, struggling and fighting with tooth and nail.
All this uproar immediately over the mate's head at last roused him from his drunken nap, and he came staggering on deck.
"What's this?" he shouted, running right in among them.
"It's the Mowree, zur; they are going to murder him, zur," here sobbed poor Rope Yarn, crawling close up to him.
"Avast! avast!" roared Jermin, making a spring toward Bembo, and dashing two or three of the sailors aside. At this moment the wretch was partly flung over the bulwarks, which shook with his frantic struggles. In vain the doctor and others tried to save him: the men listened to nothing.
"Murder and mutiny, by the salt sea!" shouted the mate; and dashing his arms right and left, he planted his iron hand upon the Mowree's shoulder.
"There are two of us now; and as you serve him, you serve me," he cried, turning fiercely round.
"Over with them together, then," exclaimed the carpenter, springing forward; but the rest fell back before the courageous front of Jermin, and, with the speed of thought, Bembo, unharmed, stood upon deck.
"Aft with ye!" cried his deliverer; and he pushed him right among the men, taking care to follow him up close. Giving the sailors no time to recover, he pushed the Mowree before him, till they came to the cabin scuttle, when he drew the slide over him, and stood still. Throughout, Bembo never spoke one word.
"Now for'ard where ye belong!" cried the mate, addressing the seamen, who by this time, rallying again, had no idea of losing their victim.
"The Mowree! the Mowree!" they shouted.
Here the doctor, in answer to the mate's repeated questions, stepped forward, and related what Bembo had been doing; a matter which the mate but dimly understood from the violent threatenings he had been hearing.
For a moment he seemed to waver; but at last, turning the key of the padlock of the slide, he breathed through his set teeth--"Ye can't have him; I'll hand him over to the consul; so for'ard with ye, I say: when there's any drowning to be done, I'll pass the word; so away with ye, ye blood-thirsty pirates."
It was to no purpose that they begged or threatened: Jermin, although by no means sober, stood his ground manfully, and before long they dispersed, soon to forget everything that had happened.
Though we had no opportunity to hear him confess it, Bembo's intention to destroy us was beyond all question. His only motive could have been a desire to revenge the contumely heaped upon him the night previous, operating upon a heart irreclaimably savage, and at no time fraternally disposed toward the crew.
During the whole of this scene the doctor did his best to save him. But well knowing that all I could do would have been equally useless, I maintained my place at the wheel. Indeed, no one but Jermin could have prevented this murder.
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{
"id": "4045"
}
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25
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JERMIN ENCOUNTERS AN OLD SHIPMATE
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DURING the morning of the day which dawned upon the events just recounted, we remained a little to leeward of the harbour, waiting the appearance of the consul, who had promised the mate to come off in a shore boat for the purpose of seeing him.
By this time the men had forced his secret from the cooper, and the consequence was that they kept him continually coming and going from the after-hold. The mate must have known this; but he said nothing, notwithstanding all the dancing and singing, and occasional fighting which announced the flow of the Pisco.
The peaceable influence which the doctor and myself had heretofore been exerting, was now very nearly at an end.
Confident, from the aspect of matters, that the ship, after all, would be obliged to go in; and learning, moreover, that the mate had said so, the sailors, for the present, seemed in no hurry about it; especially as the bucket of Bungs gave such generous cheer.
As for Bembo, we were told that, after putting him in double irons, the mate had locked him up in the captain's state-room, taking the additional precaution of keeping the cabin scuttle secured. From this time forward we never saw the Mowree again, a circumstance which will explain itself as the narrative proceeds.
Noon came, and no consul; and as the afternoon advanced without any word even from the shore, the mate was justly incensed; more especially as he had taken great pains to keep perfectly sober against Wilson's arrival.
Two or three hours before sundown, a small schooner came out of the harbour, and headed over for the adjoining island of Imeeo, or Moreea, in plain sight, about fifteen miles distant. The wind failing, the current swept her down under our bows, where we had a fair glimpse of the natives on her decks.
There were a score of them, perhaps, lounging upon spread mats, and smoking their pipes. On floating so near, and hearing the maudlin cries of our crew, and beholding their antics, they must have taken us for a pirate; at any rate, they got out their sweeps, and pulled away as fast as they could; the sight of our two six-pounders, which, by way of a joke, were now run out of the side-ports, giving a fresh impetus to their efforts. But they had not gone far, when a white man, with a red sash about his waist, made his appearance on deck, the natives immediately desisting.
Hailing us loudly, he said he was coming aboard; and after some confusion on the schooner's decks, a small canoe was launched over-hoard, and, in a minute or two, he was with us. He turned out to be an old shipmate of Jermin's, one Viner, long supposed dead, but now resident on the island.
The meeting of these men, under the circumstances, is one of a thousand occurrences appearing exaggerated in fiction; but, nevertheless, frequently realized in actual lives of adventure.
Some fifteen years previous, they had sailed together as officers of the barque Jane, of London, a South Seaman. Somewhere near the New Hebrides, they struck one night upon an unknown reef; and, in a few hours, the Jane went to pieces. The boats, however, were saved; some provisions also, a quadrant, and a few other articles. But several of the men were lost before they got clear of the wreck.
The three boats, commanded respectively by the captain, Jermin, and the third mate, then set sail for a small English settlement at the Bay of Islands in New Zealand. Of course they kept together as much as possible. After being at sea about a week, a Lascar in the captain's boat went crazy; and, it being dangerous to keep him, they tried to throw him overboard. In the confusion that ensued the boat capsized from the sail's "jibing"; and a considerable sea running at the time, and the other boats being separated more than usual, only one man was picked up. The very next night it blew a heavy gale; and the remaining boats taking in all sail, made bundles of their oars, flung them overboard, and rode to them with plenty of line. When morning broke, Jermin and his men were alone upon the ocean: the third mate's boat, in all probability, having gone down.
After great hardships, the survivors caught sight of a brig, which took them on board, and eventually landed them at Sydney.
Ever since then our mate had sailed from that port, never once hearing of his lost shipmates, whom, by this time, of course, he had long given up. Judge, then, his feelings when Viner, the lost third mate, the instant he touched the deck, rushed up and wrung him by the hand.
During the gale his line had parted; so that the boat, drifting fast to leeward, was out of sight by morning. Reduced, after this, to great extremities, the boat touched, for fruit, at an island of which they knew nothing. The natives, at first, received them kindly; but one of the men getting into a quarrel on account of a woman, and the rest taking his part, they were all massacred but Viner, who, at the time, was in an adjoining village. After staying on the island more than two years, he finally escaped in the boat of an American whaler, which landed him at Valparaiso. From this period he had continued to follow the seas, as a man before the mast, until about eighteen months previous, when he went ashore at Tahiti, where he now owned the schooner we saw, in which he traded among the neighbouring islands.
The breeze springing up again just after nightfall, Viner left us, promising his old shipmate to see him again, three days hence, in Papeetee harbour.
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{
"id": "4045"
}
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26
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WE ENTER THE HARBOUR--JIM THE PILOT
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EXHAUSTED by the day's wassail, most of the men went below at an early hour, leaving the deck to the steward and two of the men remaining on duty; the mate, with Baltimore and the Dane, engaging to relieve them at midnight. At that hour, the ship--now standing off shore, under short sail--was to be tacked.
It was not long after midnight, when we were wakened in the forecastle by the lion roar of Jermin's voice, ordering a pull at the jib-halyards; and soon afterwards, a handspike struck the scuttle, and all hands were called to take the ship into port.
This was wholly unexpected; but we learned directly that the mate, no longer relying upon the consul, and renouncing all thought of inducing the men to change their minds, had suddenly made up his own. He was going to beat up to the entrance of the harbour, so as to show a signal for a pilot before sunrise.
Notwithstanding this, the sailors absolutely refused to assist in working the ship under any circumstances whatever: to all mine and the doctor's entreaties lending a deaf ear. Sink or strike, they swore they would have nothing more to do with her. This perverse-ness was to be attributed, in a great measure, to the effects of their late debauch.
With a strong breeze, all sail set, and the ship in the hands of four or five men, exhausted by two nights' watching, our situation was bad enough; especially as the mate seemed more reckless than ever, and we were now to tack ship several times close under the land.
Well knowing that if anything untoward happened to the vessel before morning, it would be imputed to the conduct of the crew, and so lead to serious results, should they ever be brought to trial; I called together those on deck to witness my declaration;--that now that the Julia was destined for the harbour (the only object for which I, at least, had been struggling), I was willing to do what I could toward carrying her in safely. In this step I was followed by the doctor.
The hours passed anxiously until morning; when, being well to windward of the mouth of the harbour, we bore up for it, with the union-jack at the fore. No sign, however, of boat or pilot was seen; and after running close in several times, the ensign was set at the mizzen-peak, union down in distress. But it was of no avail.
Attributing to Wilson this unaccountable remissness on the part of those ashore, Jermin, quite enraged, now determined to stand boldly in upon his own responsibility; trusting solely to what he remembered of the harbour on a visit there many years previous.
This resolution was characteristic. Even with a competent pilot, Papeetee Bay, is considered a ticklish, one to enter. Formed by a bold sweep of the shore, it is protected seaward by the coral reef, upon which the rollers break with great violence. After stretching across the bay, the barrier extends on toward Point Venus, in the district of Matavia, eight or nine miles distant. Here there is an opening, by which ships enter, and glide down the smooth, deep canal, between the reef and the shore, to the harbour. But, by seamen generally, the leeward entrance is preferred, as the wind is extremely variable inside the reef. This latter entrance is a break in the barrier directly facing the bay and village of Papeetee. It is very narrow; and from the baffling winds, currents, and sunken rocks, ships now and then grate their keels against the coral.
But the mate was not to be daunted; so, stationing what men he had at the braces, he sprang upon the bulwarks, and, bidding everybody keep wide awake, ordered the helm up. In a few moments, we were running in. Being toward noon, the wind was fast leaving us, and, by the time the breakers were roaring on either hand, little more than steerage-way was left. But on we glided--smoothly and deftly; avoiding the green, darkling objects here and there strewn in our path; Jermin occasionally looking down in the water, and then about him, with the utmost calmness, and not a word spoken. Just fanned along thus, it was not many minutes ere we were past all danger, and floated into the placid basin within. This was the cleverest specimen of his seamanship that he ever gave us.
As we held on toward the frigate and shipping, a canoe, coming out from among them, approached. In it were a boy and an old man--both islanders; the former nearly naked, and the latter dressed in an old naval frock-coat. Both were paddling with might and main; the old man, once in a while, tearing his paddle out of the water; and, after rapping his companion over the head, both fell to with fresh vigour. As they came within hail, the old fellow, springing to his feet and flourishing his paddle, cut some of the queerest capers; all the while jabbering something which at first we could not understand.
Presently we made out the following:--"Ah! you pemi, ah! --you come! --What for you come? --You be fine for come no pilot. --I say, you hear? --I say, you ita maitui (no good). --You hear? --You no pilot. --Yes, you d---- me, you no pilot 't all; I d---- you; you hear?"
This tirade, which showed plainly that, whatever the profane old rascal was at, he was in right good earnest, produced peals of laughter from the ship. Upon which, he seemed to get beside himself; and the boy, who, with suspended paddle, was staring about him, received a sound box over the head, which set him to work in a twinkling, and brought the canoe quite near. The orator now opening afresh, it turned out that his vehement rhetoric was all addressed to the mate, still standing conspicuously on the bulwarks.
But Jermin was in no humour for nonsense; so, with a sailor's blessing, he ordered him off. The old fellow then flew into a regular frenzy, cursing and swearing worse than any civilized being I ever heard.
"You sabbee me?" he shouted. "You know me, ah? Well; me Jim, me pilot--been pilot now long time."
"Ay," cried Jermin, quite surprised, as indeed we all were, "you are the pilot, then, you old pagan. Why didn't you come off before this?"
"Ah! me scibbee,--me know--you piratee (pirate)--see you long time, but no me come--I sabbee you--you ita maitai nuee (superlatively bad)."
"Paddle away with ye," roared Jermin, in a rage; "be off! or I'll dart a harpoon at ye!"
But, instead of obeying the order, Jim, seizing his paddle, darted the canoe right up to the gangway, and, in two bounds, stood on deck.
Pulling a greasy silk handkerchief still lower over his brow, and improving the sit of his frock-coat with a vigorous jerk, he then strode up to the mate; and, in a more flowery style than ever, gave him to understand that the redoubtable "Jim," himself, was before him; that the ship was his until the anchor was down; and he should like to hear what anyone had to say to it.
As there now seemed little doubt that he was all he claimed to be, the Julia was at last surrendered.
Our gentleman now proceeded to bring us to an anchor, jumping up between the knight-heads, and bawling out "Luff! luff! keepy off! leeepy off!" and insisting upon each time being respectfully responded to by the man at the helm. At this time our steerage-way was almost gone; and yet, in giving his orders, the passionate old man made as much fuss as a white squall aboard the Flying Dutchman.
Jim turned out to be the regular pilot of the harbour; a post, be it known, of no small profit; and, in his eyes, at least, invested with immense importance. Our unceremonious entrance, therefore, was regarded as highly insulting, and tending to depreciate both the dignity and lucrativeness of his office.
The old man is something of a wizard. Having an understanding with the elements, certain phenomena of theirs are exhibited for his particular benefit. Unusually clear weather, with a fine steady breeze, is a certain sign that a merchantman is at hand; whale-spouts seen from the harbour are tokens of a whaling vessel's approach; and thunder and lightning, happening so seldom as they do, are proof positive that a man-of-war is drawing near.
In short, Jim, the pilot, is quite a character in his way; and no one visits Tahiti without hearing some curious story about him.
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{
"id": "4045"
}
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27
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A GLANCE AT PAPEETEE--WE ARE SENT ABOARD THE FRIGATE
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THE village of Papeetee struck us all very pleasantly. Lying in a semicircle round the bay, the tasteful mansions of the chiefs and foreign residents impart an air of tropical elegance, heightened by the palm-trees waving here and there, and the deep-green groves of the Bread-Fruit in the background. The squalid huts of the common people are out of sight, and there is nothing to mar the prospect.
All round the water extends a wide, smooth beach of mixed pebbles and fragments of coral. This forms the thoroughfare of the village; the handsomest houses all facing it--the fluctuation of the tides being so inconsiderable that they cause no inconvenience.
The Pritchard residence--a fine large building--occupies a site on one side of the bay: a green lawn slopes off to the sea: and in front waves the English flag. Across the water, the tricolour also, and the stars and stripes, distinguish the residences of the other consuls.
What greatly added to the picturesqueness of the bay at this time was the condemned hull of a large ship, which, at the farther end of the harbour, lay bilged upon the beach, its stern settled low in the water, and the other end high and dry. From where we lay, the trees behind seemed to lock their leafy boughs over its bowsprit; which, from its position, looked nearly upright.
She was an American whaler, a very old craft. Having sprung a leak at sea, she had made all sail for the island, to heave down for repairs. Found utterly unseaworthy, however, her oil was taken out and sent home in another vessel; the hull was then stripped and sold for a trifle.
Before leaving Tahiti, I had the curiosity to go over this poor old ship, thus stranded on a strange shore. What were my emotions, when I saw upon her stern the name of a small town on the river Hudson! She was from the noble stream on whose banks I was born; in whose waters I had a hundred times bathed. In an instant, palm-trees and elms--canoes and skiffs--church spires and bamboos--all mingled in one vision of the present and the past.
But we must not leave little Jule.
At last the wishes of many were gratified; and like an aeronaut's grapnel, her rusty little anchor was caught in the coral groves at the bottom of Papeetee Bay. This must have been more than forty days after leaving the Marquesas.
The sails were yet unfurled, when a boat came alongside with our esteemed friend Wilson, the consul.
"How's this, how's this, Mr. Jermin?" he began, looking very savage as he touched the deck. "What brings you in without orders?"
"You did not come off to us, as you promised, sir; and there was no hanging on longer with nobody to work the ship," was the blunt reply.
"So the infernal scoundrels held out--did they? Very good; I'll make them sweat for it," and he eyed the scowling men with unwonted intrepidity. The truth was, he felt safer now, than when outside the reef.
"Muster the mutineers on the quarter-deck," he continued. "Drive them aft, sir, sick and well: I have a word to say to them."
"Now, men," said he, "you think it's all well with you, I suppose. You wished the ship in, and here she is. Captain Guy's ashore, and you think you must go too: but we'll see about that--I'll miserably disappoint you." (These last were his very words.) "Mr. Jermin, call off the names of those who did not refuse duty, and let them go over to the starboard side."
This done, a list was made out of the "mutineers," as he was pleased to call the rest. Among these, the doctor and myself were included; though the former stepped forward, and boldly pleaded the office held by him when the vessel left Sydney. The mate also--who had always been friendly--stated the service rendered by myself two nights previous, as well as my conduct when he announced his intention to enter the harbour. For myself, I stoutly maintained that, according to the tenor of the agreement made with Captain Guy, my time aboard the ship had expired--the cruise being virtually at an end, however it had been brought about--and I claimed my discharge.
But Wilson would hear nothing. Marking something in my manner, nevertheless, he asked my name and country; and then observed with a sneer, "Ah, you are the lad, I see, that wrote the Round Robin; I'll take good care of you, my fine fellow--step back, sir."
As for poor Long Ghost, he denounced him as a "Sydney Flash-Gorger"; though what under heaven he meant by that euphonious title is more than I can tell. Upon this, the doctor gave him such a piece of his mind that the consul furiously commanded him to hold his peace, or he would instantly have him seized into the rigging and flogged. There was no help for either of us--we were judged by the company we kept.
All were now sent forward; not a word being said as to what he intended doing with us.
After a talk with the mate, the consul withdrew, going aboard the French frigate, which lay within a cable's length. We now suspected his object; and since matters had come to this pass, were rejoiced at it. In a day or two the Frenchman was to sail for Valparaiso, the usual place of rendezvous for the English squadron in the Pacific; and doubtless, Wilson meant to put us on board, and send us thither to be delivered up. Should our conjecture prove correct, all we had to expect, according to our most experienced shipmates, was the fag end of a cruise in one of her majesty's ships, and a discharge before long at Portsmouth.
We now proceeded to put on all the clothes we could--frock over frock, and trousers over trousers--so as to be in readiness for removal at a moment's warning. Armed ships allow nothing superfluous to litter up the deck; and therefore, should we go aboard the frigate, our chests and their contents would have to be left behind.
In an hour's time, the first cutter of the Reine Blanche came alongside, manned by eighteen or twenty sailors, armed with cutlasses and boarding pistols--the officers, of course, wearing their side-arms, and the consul in an official cocked hat borrowed for the occasion. The boat was painted a "pirate black," its crew were a dark, grim-looking set, and the officers uncommonly fierce-looking little Frenchmen. On the whole they were calculated to intimidate--the consul's object, doubtless, in bringing them.
Summoned aft again, everyone's name was called separately; and being solemnly reminded that it was his last chance to escape punishment, was asked if he still refused duty. The response was instantaneous: "Ay, sir, I do." In some cases followed up by divers explanatory observations, cut short by Wilson's ordering the delinquent to the cutter. As a general thing, the order was promptly obeyed--some taking a sequence of hops, skips, and jumps, by way of showing not only their unimpaired activity of body, but their alacrity in complying with all reasonable requests.
Having avowed their resolution not to pull another rope of the Julia's--even if at once restored to perfect health--all the invalids, with the exception of the two to be set ashore, accompanied us into the cutter: They were in high spirits; so much so that something was insinuated about their not having been quite as ill as pretended.
The cooper's name was the last called; we did not hear what he answered, but he stayed behind. Nothing was done about the Mowree.
Shoving clear from the ship, three loud cheers were raised; Flash Jack and others receiving a sharp reprimand for it from the consul.
"Good-bye, Little Jule," cried Navy Bob, as we swept under the bows. "Don't fall overboard, Ropey," said another to the poor landlubber, who, with Wymontoo, the Dane, and others left behind, was looking over at us from the forecastle.
"Give her three more!" cried Salem, springing to his feet and whirling his hat round. "You sacre dam raakeel," shouted the lieutenant of the party, bringing the flat of his sabre across his shoulders, "you now keepy steel."
The doctor and myself, more discreet, sat quietly in the bow of the cutter; and for my own part, though I did not repent what I had done, my reflections were far from being enviable.
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{
"id": "4045"
}
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28
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RECEPTION FROM THE FRENCHMAN
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IN a few moments, we were paraded in the frigate's gangway; the first lieutenant--an elderly yellow-faced officer, in an ill-cut coat and tarnished gold lace--coming up, and frowning upon us.
This gentleman's head was a mere bald spot; his legs, sticks; in short, his whole physical vigour seemed exhausted in the production of one enormous moustache. Old Gamboge, as he was forthwith christened, now received a paper from the consul; and, opening it, proceeded to compare the goods delivered with the invoice.
After being thoroughly counted, a meek little midshipman was called, and we were soon after given in custody to half-a-dozen sailor-soldiers--fellows with tarpaulins and muskets. Preceded by a pompous functionary (whom we took for one of the ship's corporals, from his ratan and the gold lace on his sleeve), we were now escorted down the ladders to the berth-deck.
Here we were politely handcuffed, all round; the man with the bamboo evincing the utmost solicitude in giving us a good fit from a large basket of the articles of assorted sizes.
Taken by surprise at such an uncivil reception, a few of the party demurred; but all coyness was, at last, overcome; and finally our feet were inserted into heavy anklets of iron, running along a great bar bolted down to the deck. After this, we considered ourselves permanently established in our new quarters.
"The deuce take their old iron!" exclaimed the doctor; "if I'd known this, I'd stayed behind."
"Ha, ha!" cried Flash Jack, "you're in for it, Doctor Long Ghost."
"My hands and feet are, any way," was the reply.
They placed a sentry over us; a great lubber of a fellow, who marched up and down with a dilapidated old cutlass of most extraordinary dimensions. From its length, we had some idea that it was expressly intended to keep a crowd in order--reaching over the heads of half-a-dozen, say, so as to get a cut at somebody behind.
"Mercy!" ejaculated the doctor with a shudder, "what a sensation it must be to be killed by such a tool."
We fasted till night, when one of the boys came along with a couple of "kids" containing a thin, saffron-coloured fluid, with oily particles floating on top. The young wag told us this was soup: it turned out to be nothing more than oleaginous warm water. Such as it was, nevertheless, we were fain to make a meal of it, our sentry being attentive enough to undo our bracelets. The "kids" passed from mouth to mouth, and were soon emptied.
The next morning, when the sentry's back was turned, someone, whom we took for an English sailor, tossed over a few oranges, the rinds of which we afterward used for cups.
On the second day nothing happened worthy of record. On the third, we were amused by the following scene.
A man, whom we supposed a boatswain's mate, from the silver whistle hanging from his neck, came below, driving before him a couple of blubbering boys, and followed by a whole troop of youngsters in tears. The pair, it seemed, were sent down to be punished by command of an officer; the rest had accompanied them out of sympathy.
The boatswain's mate went to work without delay, seizing the poor little culprits by their loose frocks, and using a ratan without mercy. The other boys wept, clasped their hands, and fell on their knees; but in vain; the boatswain's mate only hit out at them; once in a while making them yell ten times louder than ever.
In the midst of the tumult, down comes a midshipman, who, with a great air, orders the man on deck, and running in among the bows, sets them to scampering in all directions.
The whole of this proceeding was regarded with infinite scorn by Navy Bob, who, years before, had been captain of the foretop on board a line-of-battle ship. In his estimation, it was a lubberly piece of business throughout: they did things differently in the English navy.
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{
"id": "4045"
}
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29
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THE REINE BLANCHE
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I CANNOT forbear a brief reflection upon the scene ending the last chapter.
The ratanning of the young culprits, although significant of the imperfect discipline of a French man-of-war, may also be considered as in some measure characteristic of the nation.
In an American or English ship, a boy when flogged is either lashed to the breech of a gun, or brought right up to the gratings, the same way the men are. But as a general rule, he is never punished beyond his strength. You seldom or never draw a cry from the young rogue. He bites his tongue and stands up to it like a hero. If practicable (which is not always the case), he makes a point of smiling under the operation. And so far from his companions taking any compassion on him, they always make merry over his misfortunes. Should he turn baby and cry, they are pretty sure to give him afterward a sly pounding in some dark corner.
This tough training produces its legitimate results. The boy becomes, in time, a thoroughbred tar, equally ready to strip and take a dozen on board his own ship, or, cutlass in hand, dash pell-mell on board the enemy's. Whereas the young Frenchman, as all the world knows, makes but an indifferent seaman; and though, for the most part, he fights well enough, somehow or other he seldom fights well enough to beat.
How few sea-battles have the French ever won! But more: how few ships have they ever carried by the board--that true criterion of naval courage! But not a word against French bravery--there is plenty of it; but not of the right sort. A Yankee's, or an Englishman's, is the downright Waterloo "game." The French fight better on land; and not being essentially a maritime people, they ought to stay there. The best of shipwrights, they are no sailors.
And this carries me back to the Reine Blanche, as noble a specimen of what wood and iron can make as ever floated.
She was a new ship: the present her maiden cruise. The greatest pains having been taken in her construction, she was accounted the "crack" craft in the French navy. She is one of the heavy sixty-gun frigates now in vogue all over the world, and which we Yankees were the first to introduce. In action these are the most murderous vessels ever launched.
The model of the Reine Blanche has all that warlike comeliness only to be seen in a fine fighting ship. Still, there is a good deal of French flummery about her--brass plates and other gewgaws stuck on all over, like baubles on a handsome woman.
Among other things, she carries a stern gallery resting on the uplifted hands of two Caryatides, larger than life. You step out upon this from the commodore's cabin. To behold the rich hangings, and mirrors, and mahogany within, one is almost prepared to see a bevy of ladies trip forth on the balcony for an airing.
But come to tread the gun-deck, and all thoughts like these are put to flight. Such batteries of thunderbolt hurlers! with a sixty-eight-pounder or two thrown in as make-weights. On the spar-deck, also, are carronades of enormous calibre.
Recently built, this vessel, of course, had the benefit of the latest improvements. I was quite amazed to see on what high principles of art some exceedingly simple things were done. But your Gaul is scientific about everything; what other people accomplish by a few hard knocks, he delights in achieving by a complex arrangement of the pulley, lever, and screw.
What demi-semi-quavers in a French air! In exchanging naval courtesies, I have known a French band play "Yankee Doodle" with such a string of variations that no one but a "pretty 'cute" Yankee could tell what they were at.
In the French navy they have no marines; their men, taking turns at carrying the musket, are sailors one moment, and soldiers the next; a fellow running aloft in his line frock to-day, to-morrow stands sentry at the admiral's cabin door. This is fatal to anything like proper sailor pride. To make a man a seaman, he should be put to no other duty. Indeed, a thorough tar is unfit for anything else; and what is more, this fact is the best evidence of his being a true sailor.
On board the Reine Blanche, they did not have enough to eat; and what they did have was not of the right sort. Instead of letting the sailors file their teeth against the rim of a hard sea-biscuit, they baked their bread daily in pitiful little rolls. Then they had no "grog"; as a substitute, they drugged the poor fellows with a thin, sour wine--the juice of a few grapes, perhaps, to a pint of the juice of water-faucets. Moreover, the sailors asked for meat, and they gave them soup; a rascally substitute, as they well knew.
Ever since leaving home, they had been on "short allowance." At the present time, those belonging to the boats--and thus getting an occasional opportunity to run ashore--frequently sold their rations of bread to some less fortunate shipmate for sixfold its real value.
Another thing tending to promote dissatisfaction among the crew was their having such a devil of a fellow for a captain. He was one of those horrid naval bores--a great disciplinarian. In port, he kept them constantly exercising yards and sails, and maneuvering with the boats; and at sea, they were forever at quarters; running in and out the enormous guns, as if their arms were made for nothing else. Then there was the admiral aboard, also; and, no doubt, he too had a paternal eye over them.
In the ordinary routine of duty, we could not but be struck with the listless, slovenly behaviour of these men; there was nothing of the national vivacity in their movements; nothing of the quick precision perceptible on the deck of a thoroughly-disciplined armed vessel.
All this, however, when we came to know the reason, was no matter of surprise; three-fourths of them were pressed men. Some old merchant sailors had been seized the very day they landed from distant voyages; while the landsmen, of whom there were many, had been driven down from the country in herds, and so sent to sea.
At the time, I was quite amazed to hear of press-gangs in a day of comparative peace; but the anomaly is accounted for by the fact that, of late, the French have been building up a great military marine, to take the place of that which Nelson gave to the waves of the sea at Trafalgar. But it is to be hoped that they are not building their ships for the people across the channel to take. In case of a war, what a fluttering of French ensigns there would be!
Though I say the French are no sailors, I am far from seeking to underrate them as a people. They are an ingenious and right gallant nation. And, as an American, I take pride in asserting it.
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{
"id": "4045"
}
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30
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THEY TAKE US ASHORE--WHAT HAPPENED THERE
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FIVE days and nights, if I remember right, we were aboard the frigate. On the afternoon of the fifth, we were told that the next morning she sailed for Valparaiso. Rejoiced at this, we prayed for a speedy passage. But, as it turned out, the consul had no idea of letting us off so easily. To our no small surprise, an officer came along toward night, and ordered us out of irons. Being then mustered in the gangway, we were escorted into a cutter alongside, and pulled ashore.
Accosted by Wilson as we struck the beach, he delivered us up to a numerous guard of natives, who at once conducted us to a house near by. Here we were made to sit down under a shade without; and the consul and two elderly European residents passed by us, and entered.
After some delay, during which we were much diverted by the hilarious good-nature of our guard--one of our number was called out for, followed by an order for him to enter the house alone.
On returning a moment after, he told us we had little to encounter. It had simply been asked whether he still continued of the same mind; on replying yes, something was put down upon a piece of paper, and he was waved outside. All being summoned in rotation, my own turn came at last.
Within, Wilson and his two friends were seated magisterially at a table--an inkstand, a pen, and a sheet of paper lending quite a business-like air to the apartment. These three gentlemen, being arrayed in coats and pantaloons, looked respectable, at least in a country where complete suits of garments are so seldom met with. One present essayed a solemn aspect; but having a short neck and full face, only made out to look stupid.
It was this individual who condescended to take a paternal interest in myself. After declaring my resolution with respect to the ship unalterable, I was proceeding to withdraw, in compliance with a sign from the consul, when the stranger turned round to him, saying, "Wait a minute, if you please, Mr. Wilson; let me talk to that youth. Come here, my young friend: I'm extremely sorry to see you associated with these bad men; do you know what it will end in?"
"Oh, that's the lad that wrote the Round Robin," interposed the consul. "He and that rascally doctor are at the bottom of the whole affair--go outside, sir."
I retired as from the presence of royalty; backing out with many bows.
The evident prejudice of Wilson against both the doctor and myself was by no means inexplicable. A man of any education before the mast is always looked upon with dislike by his captain; and, never mind how peaceable he may be, should any disturbance arise, from his intellectual superiority, he is deemed to exert an underhand influence against the officers.
Little as I had seen of Captain Guy, the few glances cast upon me after being on board a week or so were sufficient to reveal his enmity--a feeling quickened by my undisguised companionship with Long Ghost, whom he both feared and cordially hated. Guy's relations with the consul readily explains the latter's hostility.
The examination over, Wilson and his friends advanced to the doorway; when the former, assuming a severe expression, pronounced our perverseness infatuation in the extreme. Nor was there any hope left: our last chance for pardon was gone. Even were we to become contrite and crave permission to return to duty, it would not now be permitted.
"Oh! get along with your gammon, counsellor," exclaimed Black Dan, absolutely indignant that his understanding should be thus insulted.
Quite enraged, Wilson bade him hold his peace; and then, summoning a fat old native to his side, addressed him in Tahitian, giving directions for leading us away to a place of safe keeping.
Hereupon, being marshalled in order, with the old man at our head, we were put in motion, with loud shouts, along a fine pathway, running far on through wide groves of the cocoa-nut and bread-fruit.
The rest of our escort trotted on beside us in high good-humour; jabbering broken English, and in a hundred ways giving us to understand that Wilson was no favourite of theirs, and that we were prime, good fellows for holding out as we did. They seemed to know our whole history.
The scenery around was delightful. The tropical day was fast drawing to a close; and from where we were, the sun looked like a vast red fire burning in the woodlands--its rays falling aslant through the endless ranks of trees, and every leaf fringed with flame. Escaped from the confined decks of the frigate, the air breathed spices to us; streams were heard flowing; green boughs were rocking; and far inland, all sunset flushed, rose the still, steep peaks of the island.
As we proceeded, I was more and more struck by the picturesqueness of the wide, shaded road. In several places, durable bridges of wood were thrown over large water-courses; others were spanned by a single arch of stone. In any part of the road, three horsemen might have ridden abreast.
This beautiful avenue--by far the best thing which civilization has done for the island--is called by foreigners "the Broom Road," though for what reason I do not know. Originally planned for the convenience of the missionaries journeying from one station to another, it almost completely encompasses the larger peninsula; skirting for a distance of at least sixty miles along the low, fertile lands bordering the sea. But on the side next Taiarboo, or the lesser peninsula, it sweeps through a narrow, secluded valley, and thus crosses the island in that direction.
The uninhabited interior, being almost impenetrable from the densely-wooded glens, frightful precipices, and sharp mountain ridges absolutely inaccessible, is but little known, even to the natives themselves; and so, instead of striking directly across from one village to another, they follow the Broom Road round and round.
It is by no means, however, altogether travelled on foot; horses being now quite plentiful. They were introduced from Chili; and possessing all the gaiety, fleetness, and docility of the Spanish breed, are admirably adapted to the tastes of the higher classes, who as equestrians have become very expert. The missionaries and chiefs never think of journeying except in the saddle; and at all hours of the day you see the latter galloping along at full speed. Like the Sandwich Islanders, they ride like Pawnee-Loups.
For miles and miles I have travelled the Broom Road, and never wearied of the continual change of scenery. But wherever it leads you--whether through level woods, across grassy glens, or over hills waving with palms--the bright blue sea on one side, and the green mountain pinnacles on the other, are always in sight.
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{
"id": "4045"
}
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31
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THE CALABOOZA BERETANEE
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ABOUT a mile from the village we came to a halt.
It was a beautiful spot. A mountain stream here flowed at the foot of a verdant slope; on one hand, it murmured along until the waters, spreading themselves upon a beach of small, sparkling shells, trickled into the sea; on the other was a long defile, where the eye pursued a gleaming, sinuous thread, lost in shade and verdure.
The ground next the road was walled in by a low, rude parapet of stones; and, upon the summit of the slope beyond, was a large, native house, the thatch dazzling white, and in shape an oval.
"Calabooza! Calabooza Beretanee!" (the English Jail), cried our conductor, pointing to the building.
For a few months past, having been used by the consul as a house of confinement for his refractory sailors, it was thus styled to distinguish it from similar places in and about Papeetee.
Though extremely romantic in appearance, on a near approach it proved hut ill adapted to domestic comfort. In short, it was a mere shell, recently built, and still unfinished. It was open all round, and tufts of grass were growing here and there under the very roof. The only piece of furniture was the "stocks," a clumsy machine for keeping people in one place, which, I believe, is pretty much out of date in most countries. It is still in use, however, among the Spaniards in South America; from whom, it seems, the Tahitians have borrowed the contrivance, as well as the name by which all places of confinement are known among them.
The stocks were nothing more than two stout timbers, about twenty feet in length, and precisely alike. One was placed edgeways on the ground, and the other, resting on top, left, at regular intervals along the seam, several round holes, the object of which was evident at a glance.
By this time, our guide had informed us that he went by the name of "Capin Bob" (Captain Bob); and a hearty old Bob he proved. It was just the name for him. From the first, so pleased were we with the old man that we cheerfully acquiesced in his authority.
Entering the building, he set us about fetching heaps of dry leaves to spread behind the stocks for a couch. A trunk of a small cocoa-nut tree was then placed for a bolster--rather a hard one, but the natives are used to it. For a pillow, they use a little billet of wood, scooped out, and standing on four short legs--a sort of head-stool.
These arrangements completed, Captain Bob proceeded to "hanna-par," or secure us, for the night. The upper timber of the machine being lifted at one end, and our ankles placed in the semicircular spaces of the lower one, the other beam was then, dropped; both being finally secured together by an old iron hoop at either extremity. This initiation was performed to the boisterous mirth of the natives, and diverted ourselves not a little.
Captain Bob now bustled about, like an old woman seeing the children to bed. A basket of baked "taro," or Indian turnip, was brought in, and we were given a piece all round. Then a great counterpane of coarse, brown "tappa," was stretched over the whole party; and, after sundry injunctions to "moee-moee," and be "maitai"--in other words, to go to sleep, and be good boys--we were left to ourselves, fairly put to bed and tucked in.
Much talk was now had concerning our prospects in life; but the doctor and I, who lay side by side, thinking the occasion better adapted to meditation, kept pretty silent; and, before long, the rest ceased conversing, and, wearied with loss of rest on board the frigate, were soon sound asleep.
After sliding from one reverie into another, I started, and gave the doctor a pinch. He was dreaming, however; and, resolved to follow his example, I troubled him no more.
How the rest managed, I know not; but for my own part, I found it very hard to get to sleep. The consciousness of having one's foot pinned; and the impossibility of getting it anywhere else than just where it was, was most distressing.
But this was not all: there was no way of lying but straight on your back; unless, to be sure, one's limb went round and round in the ankle, like a swivel. Upon getting into a sort of doze, it was no wonder this uneasy posture gave me the nightmare. Under the delusion that I was about some gymnastics or other, I gave my unfortunate member such a twitch that I started up with the idea that someone was dragging the stocks away.
Captain Bob and his friends lived in a little hamlet hard by; and when morning showed in the East, the old gentleman came forth from that direction likewise, emerging from a grove, and saluting us loudly as he approached.
Finding everybody awake, he set us at liberty; and, leading us down to the stream, ordered every man to strip and bathe.
"All han's, my boy, hanna-hanna, wash!" he cried. Bob was a linguist, and had been to sea in his day, as he many a time afterwards told us.
At this moment, we were all alone with him; and it would have been the easiest thing in the world to have given him the slip; but he seemed to have no idea of such a thing; treating us so frankly and cordially, indeed, that even had we thought of running, we should have been ashamed of attempting it. He very well knew, nevertheless (as we ourselves were not slow in finding out), that, for various reasons, any attempt of the kind, without some previously arranged plan for leaving the island, would be certain to fail.
As Bob was a rare one every way, I must give some account of him. There was a good deal of "personal appearance" about him; in short, he was a corpulent giant, over six feet in height, and literally as big round as a hogshead. The enormous bulk of some of the Tahitians has been frequently spoken of by voyagers.
Beside being the English consul's jailer, as it were, he carried on a little Tahitian farming; that is to say, he owned several groves of the bread-fruit and palm, and never hindered their growing. Close by was a "taro" patch of his which he occasionally visited.
Bob seldom disposed of the produce of his lands; it was all needed for domestic consumption. Indeed, for gormandizing, I would have matched him against any three common-council men at a civic feast.
A friend of Bob's told me that, owing to his voraciousness, his visits to other parts of the island were much dreaded; for, according to Tahitian customs, hospitality without charge is enjoined upon everyone; and though it is reciprocal in most cases, in Bob's it was almost out of the question. The damage done to a native larder in one of his morning calls was more than could be made good by his entertainer's spending the holidays with them.
The old man, as I have hinted, had, once upon a time, been a cruise or two in a whaling-vessel; and, therefore, he prided himself upon his English. Having acquired what he knew of it in the forecastle, he talked little else than sailor phrases, which sounded whimsically enough.
I asked him one day how old he was. "Olee?" he exclaimed, looking very profound in consequence of thoroughly understanding so subtile a question--"Oh! very olee--'tousand 'ear--more--big man when Capin Tootee (Captain Cook) heavey in sight." (In sea parlance, came into view.)
This was a thing impossible; but adapting my discourse to the man, I rejoined--"Ah! you see Capin Tootee--well, how you like him?"
"Oh! he maitai: (good) friend of me, and know my wife."
On my assuring him strongly that he could not have been born at the time, he explained himself by saying that he was speaking of his father, all the while. This, indeed, might very well have been.
It is a curious fact that all these people, young and old, will tell you that they have enjoyed the honour of a personal acquaintance with the great navigator; and if you listen to them, they will go on and tell anecdotes without end. This springs from nothing but their great desire to please; well knowing that a more agreeable topic for a white man could not be selected. As for the anachronism of the thing, they seem to have no idea of it: days and years are all the same to them.
After our sunrise bath, Bob once more placed us in the stocks, almost moved to tears at subjecting us to so great a hardship; but he could not treat us otherwise, he said, on pain of the consul's displeasure. How long we were to be confined, he did not know; nor what was to be done with us in the end.
As noon advanced, and no signs of a meal were visible, someone inquired whether we were to be boarded, as well as lodged, at the Hotel de Calabooza?
"Vast heavey" (avast heaving, or wait a bit)--said Bob--"kow-kow" (food) "come ship by by."
And, sure enough, along comes Rope Tarn with a wooden bucket of the Julia's villainous biscuit. With a grin, he said it was a present from Wilson: it was all we were to get that day. A great cry was now raised; and well was it for the land-lubber that lie had a pair of legs, and the men could not use theirs. One and all, we resolved not to touch the bread, come what come might; and so we told the natives.
Being extravagantly fond of ship-biscuit--the harder the better--they were quite overjoyed; and offered to give us, every day, a small quantity of baked bread-fruit and Indian turnip in exchange for the bread. This we agreed to; and every morning afterward, when the bucket came, its contents were at once handed over to Bob and his friends, who never ceased munching until nightfall.
Our exceedingly frugal meal of bread-fruit over, Captain Bob waddled up to us with a couple of long poles hooked at one end, and several large baskets of woven cocoa-nut branches.
Not far off was an extensive grove of orange-trees in full bearing; and myself and another were selected to go with him, and gather a supply for the party. When we went in among the trees, the sumptuousness of the orchard was unlike anything I had ever seen; while the fragrance shaken from the gently waving boughs regaled our senses most delightfully.
In many places the trees formed a dense shade, spreading overhead a dark, rustling vault, groined with boughs, and studded here and there with the ripened spheres, like gilded balls. In several places, the overladen branches were borne to the earth, hiding the trunk in a tent of foliage. Once fairly in the grove, we could see nothing else; it was oranges all round.
To preserve the fruit from bruising, Bob, hooking the twigs with his pole, let them fall into his basket. But this would not do for us. Seizing hold of a bough, we brought such a shower to the ground that our old friend was fain to run from under. Heedless of remonstrance, we then reclined in the shade, and feasted to our heart's content. Heaping up the baskets afterwards, we returned to our comrades, by whom our arrival was hailed with loud plaudits; and in a marvellously short time, nothing was left of the oranges we brought but the rinds.
While inmates of the Calabooza, we had as much of the fruit as we wanted; and to this cause, and others that might be mentioned, may be ascribed the speedy restoration of our sick to comparative health.
The orange of Tahiti is delicious--small and sweet, with a thin, dry rind. Though now abounding, it was unknown before Cook's time, to whom the natives are indebted for so great a blessing. He likewise introduced several other kinds of fruit; among these were the fig, pineapple, and lemon, now seldom met with. The lime still grows, and some of the poorer natives express the juice to sell to the shipping. It is highly valued as an anti-scorbutic. Nor was the variety of foreign fruits and vegetables which were introduced the only benefit conferred by the first visitors to the Society group. Cattle and sheep were left at various places. More of them anon.
Thus, after all that of late years has been done for these islanders, Cook and Vancouver may, in one sense at least, be considered their greatest benefactors.
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{
"id": "4045"
}
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32
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE FRENCH AT TAHITI
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AS I happened to arrive at the island at a very interesting period in its political affairs, it may be well to give some little account here of the proceedings of the French, by way of episode to the narrative. My information was obtained at the time from the general reports then rife among the natives, as well as from what I learned upon a subsequent visit, and reliable accounts which I have seen since reaching home.
It seems that for some time back the French had been making repeated ineffectual attempts to plant a Roman Catholic mission here. But, invariably treated with contumely, they sometimes met with open violence; and, in every case, those directly concerned in the enterprise were ultimately forced to depart. In one instance, two priests, Laval and Caset, after enduring a series of persecutions, were set upon by the natives, maltreated, and finally carried aboard a small trading schooner, which eventually put them ashore at Wallis' island--a savage place--some two thousand miles to the westward.
Now, that the resident English missionaries authorized the banishment of these priests is a fact undenied by themselves. I was also repeatedly informed that by their inflammatory harangues they instigated the riots which preceded the sailing of the schooner. At all events, it is certain that their unbounded influence with the natives would easily have enabled them to prevent everything that took place on this occasion, had they felt so inclined.
Melancholy as such an example of intolerance on the part of Protestant missionaries must appear, it is not the only one, and by no means the most flagrant, which might be presented. But I forbear to mention any others; since they have been more than hinted at by recent voyagers, and their repetition here would perhaps be attended with no good effect. Besides, the conduct of the Sandwich Island missionaries in particular has latterly much amended in this respect.
The treatment of the two priests formed the principal ground (and the only justifiable one) upon which Du Petit Thouars demanded satisfaction; and which subsequently led to his seizure of the island. In addition to other things, he also charged that the flag of Merenhout, the consul, had been repeatedly insulted, and the property of a certain French resident violently appropriated by the government. In the latter instance, the natives were perfectly in the right. At that time, the law against the traffic in ardent spirits (every now and then suspended and revived) happened to be in force; and finding a large quantity on the premises of Victor, a low, knavish adventurer from Marseilles, the Tahitians pronounced it forfeit.
For these, and similar alleged outrages, a large pecuniary restitution was demanded (10,000 dollars), which there being no exchequer to supply, the island was forthwith seized, under cover of a mock treaty, dictated to the chiefs on the gun-deck of Du Petit Thouars' frigate.
But, notwithstanding this formality, there seems now little doubt that the downfall of the Pomarees was decided upon at the Tuilleries.
After establishing the Protectorate, so called, the rear-admiral sailed; leaving M. Bruat governor, assisted by Reine and Carpegne, civilians, named members of the Council of Government, and Merenhout, the consul, now made Commissioner Royal. No soldiers, however, were landed until several months afterward. As men, Reine and Carpegne were not disliked by the natives; but Bruat and Merenhout they bitterly detested. In several interviews with the poor queen, the unfeeling governor sought to terrify her into compliance with his demands; clapping his hand upon his sword, shaking his fist in her face, and swearing violently. "Oh, king of a great nation," said Pomaree, in her letter to Louis Philippe, "fetch away this man; I and my people cannot endure his evil doings. He is a shameless man."
Although the excitement among the natives did not wholly subside upon the rear-admiral's departure, no overt act of violence immediately followed. The queen had fled to Imeeo; and the dissensions among the chiefs, together with the ill-advised conduct of the missionaries, prevented a union upon some common plan of resistance. But the great body of the people, as well as their queen, confidently relied upon the speedy interposition of England--a nation bound to them by many ties, and which, more than once, had solemnly guaranteed their independence.
As for the missionaries, they openly defied the French governor, childishly predicting fleets and armies from Britain. But what is the welfare of a spot like Tahiti to the mighty interests of France and England! There was a remonstrance on one side, and a reply on the other; and there the matter rested. For once in their brawling lives, St. George and St. Denis were hand and glove; and they were not going to cross sabres about Tahiti.
During my stay upon the island, so far as I could see, there was little to denote that any change had taken place in the government.
Such laws as they had were administered the same as ever; the missionaries went about unmolested, and comparative tranquillity everywhere prevailed. Nevertheless, I sometimes heard the natives inveighing against the French (no favourites, by the bye, throughout Polynesia), and bitterly regretting that the queen had not, at the outset, made a stand.
In the house of the chief Adeea, frequent discussions took place concerning the ability of the island to cope with the French: the number of fighting men and muskets among the natives were talked of, as well as the propriety of fortifying several heights overlooking Papeetee. Imputing these symptoms to the mere resentment of a recent outrage, and not to any determined spirit of resistance, I little anticipated the gallant, though useless warfare, so soon to follow my departure.
At a period subsequent to my first visit, the island, which before was divided into nineteen districts, with a native chief over each, in capacity of governor and judge, was, by Bruat, divided into four. Over these he set as many recreant chiefs, Kitoti, Tati, Utamai, and Paraita; to whom he paid 1000 dollars each, to secure their assistance in carrying out his evil designs.
The first blood shed, in any regular conflict, was at Mahanar, upon the peninsula of Taraiboo. The fight originated in the seizure of a number of women from the shore by men belonging to one of the French vessels of war. In this affair, the islanders fought desperately, killing about fifty of the enemy, and losing ninety of their own number. The French sailors and marines, who, at the time, were reported to be infuriated with liquor, gave no quarter; and the survivors only saved themselves by fleeing to the mountains. Subsequently, the battles of Hararparpi and Fararar were fought, in which the invaders met with indifferent success.
Shortly after the engagement at Hararparpi, three Frenchmen were waylaid in a pass of the valleys, and murdered by the incensed natives. One was Lefevre, a notorious scoundrel, and a spy, whom Bruat had sent to conduct a certain Major Fergus (said to be a Pole) to the hiding-place of four chiefs, whom the governor wished to seize and execute. This circumstance violently inflamed the hostility of both parties.
About this time, Kitoti, a depraved chief, and the pliant tool of Bruat, was induced by him to give a great feast in the Vale of Paree, to which all his countrymen were invited. The governor's object was to gain over all he could to his interests; he supplied an abundance of wine and brandy, and a scene of bestial intoxication was the natural consequence. Before it came to this, however, several speeches were made by the islanders. One of these, delivered by an aged warrior, who had formerly been at the head of the celebrated Aeorai Society, was characteristic. "This is a very good feast," said the reeling old man, "and the wine also is very good; but you evil-minded Wee-Wees (French), and you false-hearted men of Tahiti, are all very bad."
By the latest accounts, most of the islanders still refuse to submit to the French; and what turn events may hereafter take, it is hard to predict. At any rate, these disorders must accelerate the final extinction of their race.
Along with the few officers left by Du Petit Thouars were several French priests, for whose unobstructed exertions in the dissemination of their faith, the strongest guarantees were provided by an article of the treaty. But no one was bound to offer them facilities; much less a luncheon, the first day they went ashore. True, they had plenty of gold; but to the natives it was anathema--taboo--and, for several hours and some odd minutes, they would not touch it. Emissaries of the Pope and the devil, as the strangers were considered--the smell of sulphur hardly yet shaken out of their canonicals--what islander would venture to jeopardize his soul, and call down a blight on his breadfruit, by holding any intercourse with them! That morning the priests actually picknicked in grove of cocoa-nut trees; but, before night, Christian hospitality--in exchange for a commercial equivalent of hard dollars--was given them in an adjoining house.
Wanting in civility, as the conduct of the English missionaries may be thought, in withholding a decent reception to these persons, the latter were certainly to blame in needlessly placing themselves in so unpleasant a predicament. Under far better auspices, they might have settled upon some one of the thousand unconverted isles of the Pacific, rather than have forced themselves thus upon a people already professedly Christians.
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{
"id": "4045"
}
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33
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WE RECEIVE CALLS AT THE HOTEL DE CALABOOZA
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OUR place of confinement being open all round, and so near the Broom Road, of course we were in plain sight of everybody passing; and, therefore, we had no lack of visitors among such an idle, inquisitive set as the Tahitians. For a few days, they were coming and going continually; while, thus ignobly fast by the foot, we were fain to give passive audience.
During this period, we were the lions of the neighbourhood; and, no doubt, strangers from the distant villages were taken to see the "Karhowrees" (white men), in the same way that countrymen, in a city, are gallanted to the Zoological Gardens.
All this gave us a fine opportunity of making observations. I was painfully struck by the considerable number of sickly or deformed persons; undoubtedly made so by a virulent complaint, which, under native treatment, almost invariably affects, in the end, the muscles and bones of the body. In particular, there is a distortion of the back, most unsightly to behold, originating in a horrible form of the malady.
Although this, and other bodily afflictions, were unknown before the discovery of the islands by the whites, there are several cases found of the Pa-Fa, or Elephantiasis--a native disease, which seems to have prevailed among them from the earliest antiquity. Affecting the legs and feet alone, it swells them, in some instances, to the girth of a man's body, covering the skin with scales. It might be supposed that one, thus afflicted, would be incapable of walking; but, to all appearance, they seem to be nearly as active as anybody; apparently suffering no pain, and bearing the calamity with a degree of cheerfulness truly marvellous.
The Fa-Fa is very gradual in its approaches, and years elapse before the limb is fully swollen. Its origin is ascribed by the natives to various causes; but the general impression seems to be that it arises, in most cases, from the eating of unripe bread-fruit and Indian turnip. So far as I could find out, it is not hereditary. In no stage do they attempt a cure; the complaint being held incurable.
Speaking of the Fa-Fa reminds me of a poor fellow, a sailor, whom I afterward saw at Roorootoo, a lone island, some two days' sail from Tahiti.
The island is very small, and its inhabitants nearly extinct. We sent a boat off to see whether any yams were to be had, as, formerly, the yams of Roorootoo were as famous among the islands round about, as Sicily oranges in the Mediterranean. Going ashore, to my surprise, I was accosted, near a little shanty of a church, by a white man, who limped forth from a wretched hut. His hair and beard were unshorn, his face deadly pale and haggard, and one limb swelled with the Fa-Fa to an incredible bigness. This was the first instance of a foreigner suffering from it that I had ever seen, or heard of; and the spectacle shocked me accordingly.
He had been there for years. From the first symptoms, he could not believe his complaint to be what it really was, and trusted it would soon disappear. But when it became plain that his only chance for recovery was a speedy change of climate, no ship would receive him as a sailor: to think of being taken as a passenger was idle. This speaks little for the humanity of sea captains; but the truth is that those in the Pacific have little enough of the virtue; and, nowadays, when so many charitable appeals are made to them, they have become callous.
I pitied the poor fellow from the bottom of my heart; but nothing could I do, as our captain was inexorable. "Why," said he, "here we are--started on a six months' cruise--I can't put back; and he is better off on the island than at sea. So on Roorootoo he must die." And probably he did.
I afterwards heard of this melancholy object, from two seamen. His attempts to leave were still unavailing, and his hard fate was fast closing in.
Notwithstanding the physical degeneracy of the Tahitians as a people, among the chiefs, individuals of personable figures are still frequently met with; and, occasionally, majestic-looking men, and diminutive women as lovely as the nymphs who, nearly a century ago, swam round the ships of Wallis. In these instances, Tahitian beauty is quite as seducing as it proved to the crew of the Bounty; the young girls being just such creatures as a poet would picture in the tropics--soft, plump, and dreamy-eyed.
The natural complexion of both sexes is quite light; but the males appear much darker, from their exposure to the sun. A dark complexion, however, in a man, is highly esteemed, as indicating strength of both body and soul. Hence there is a saying, of great antiquity among them.
"If dark the cheek of the mother, The son will sound the war-conch; If strong her frame, he will give laws."
With this idea of manliness, no wonder the Tahitians regarded all pale and tepid-looking Europeans as weak and feminine; whereas, a sailor, with a cheek like the breast of a roast turkey, is held a lad of brawn: to use their own phrase, a "taata tona," or man of bones.
Speaking of bones recalls an ugly custom of theirs, now obsolete--that of making fish-hooks and gimlets out of those of their enemies. This beats the Scandinavians turning people's skulls into cups and saucers.
But to return to the Calabooza Beretanee. Immense was the interest we excited among the throngs that called there; they would stand talking about us by the hour, growing most unnecessarily excited too, and dancing up and down with all the vivacity of their race. They invariably sided with us; flying out against the consul, and denouncing him as "Ita maitai nuee," or very bad exceedingly. They must have borne him some grudge or other.
Nor were the women, sweet souls, at all backward in visiting. Indeed, they manifested even more interest than the men; gazing at us with eyes full of a thousand meanings, and conversing with marvellous rapidity. But, alas! inquisitive though they were, and, doubtless, taking some passing compassion on us, there was little real feeling in them after all, and still less sentimental sympathy. Many of them laughed outright at us, noting only what was ridiculous in our plight.
I think it was the second day of our confinement that a wild, beautiful girl burst into the Calabooza, and, throwing herself into an arch attitude, stood afar off, and gazed at us. She was a heartless one:--tickled to death with Black Dan's nursing his chafed ankle, and indulging in certain moral reflections on the consul and Captain Guy. After laughing her fill at him, she condescended to notice the rest; glancing from one to another in the most methodical and provoking manner imaginable. Whenever anything struck her comically, you saw it like a flash--her finger levelled instantaneously, and, flinging herself back, she gave loose to strange, hollow little notes of laughter, that sounded like the bass of a music-box, playing a lively air with the lid down.
Now, I knew not that there was anything in my own appearance calculated to disarm ridicule; and indeed, to have looked at all heroic, under the circumstances, would have been rather difficult. Still, I could not but feel exceedingly annoyed at the prospect of being screamed at, in turn, by this mischievous young witch, even though she were but an islander. And, to tell a secret, her beauty had something to do with this sort of feeling; and, pinioned as I was to a log, and clad most unbecomingly, I began to grow sentimental.
Ere her glance fell upon me, I had, unconsciously, thrown myself into the most graceful attitude I could assume, leaned my head upon my hand, and summoned up as abstracted an expression as possible. Though my face was averted, I soon felt it flush, and knew that the glance was on me; deeper and deeper grew the flush, and not a sound of laughter.
Delicious thought! she was moved at the sight of me. I could stand it no longer, but started up. Lo! there she was; her great hazel eyes rounding and rounding in her head, like two stars, her whole frame in a merry quiver, and an expression about the mouth that was sudden and violent death to anything like sentiment.
The next moment she spun round, and, bursting from peal to peal of laughter, went racing out of the Calabooza; and, in mercy to me, never returned.
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{
"id": "4045"
}
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34
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LIFE AT THE CALABOOZA
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A FEW days passed; and, at last, our docility was rewarded by some indulgence on the part of Captain Bob.
He allowed the entire party to be at large during the day; only enjoining upon us always to keep within hail. This, to be sure, was in positive disobedience to Wilson's orders; and so, care had to be taken that he should not hear of it. There was little fear of the natives telling him; but strangers travelling the Broom Road might. By way of precaution, boys were stationed as scouts along the road. At sight of a white man, they sounded the alarm! when we all made for our respective holes (the stocks being purposely left open): the beam then descended, and we were prisoners. As soon as the traveller was out of sight, of course, we were liberated.
Notwithstanding the regular supply of food which we obtained from Captain Bob and his friends, it was so small that we often felt most intolerably hungry. We could not blame them for not bringing us more, for we soon became aware that they had to pinch themselves in order to give us what they did; besides, they received nothing for their kindness but the daily bucket of bread.
Among a people like the Tahitians, what we call "hard times" can only be experienced in the scarcity of edibles; yet, so destitute are many of the common people that this most distressing consequence of civilization may be said, with them, to be ever present. To be sure, the natives about the Calabooza had abundance of limes and oranges; but what were these good for, except to impart a still keener edge to appetites which there was so little else to gratify? During the height of the bread-fruit season, they fare better; but, at other times, the demands of the shipping exhaust the uncultivated resources of the island; and the lands being mostly owned by the chiefs, the inferior orders have to suffer for their cupidity. Deprived of their nets, many of them would starve.
As Captain Bob insensibly remitted his watchfulness, and we began to stroll farther and farther from the Calabooza, we managed, by a systematic foraging upon the country round about, to make up some of our deficiencies. And fortunate it was that the houses of the wealthier natives were just as open to us as those of the most destitute; we were treated as kindly in one as the other.
Once in a while, we came in at the death of a chiefs pig; the noise of whose slaughtering was generally to be heard at a great distance. An occasion like this gathers the neighbours together, and they have a bit of a feast, where a stranger is always welcome. A good loud squeal, therefore, was music in our ears. It showed something going on in that direction.
Breaking in upon the party tumultuously, as we did, we always created a sensation. Sometimes, we found the animal still alive and struggling; in which case, it was generally dropped at our approach.
To provide for these emergencies, Flash Jack generally repaired to the scene of operations with a sheath-knife between his teeth, and a club in his hand. Others were exceedingly officious in singeing off the bristles, and disembowelling. Doctor Long Ghost and myself, however, never meddled with these preliminaries, but came to the feast itself with unimpaired energies.
Like all lank men, my long friend had an appetite of his own. Others occasionally went about seeking what they might devour, but he was always on the alert.
He had an ingenious way of obviating an inconvenience which we all experienced at times. The islanders seldom use salt with their food; so he begged Rope Yarn to bring him some from the ship; also a little pepper, if he could; which, accordingly, was done. This he placed in a small leather wallet--a "monkey bag" (so called by sailors)--usually worn as a purse about the neck.
"In my opinion," said Long Ghost, as he tucked the wallet out of sight, "it behooves a stranger, in Tahiti, to have his knife in readiness, and his castor slung."
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{
"id": "4045"
}
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35
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VISIT FROM AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE
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WE had not been many days ashore, when Doctor Johnson was espied coming along the Broom Road.
We had heard that he meditated a visit, and suspected what he was after. Being upon the consul's hands, all our expenses were of course payable by him in his official capacity; and, therefore, as a friend of Wilson, and sure of good pay, the shore doctor had some idea of allowing us to run up a bill with him. True, it was rather awkward to ask us to take medicines which, on board the ship, he told us were not needed. However, he resolved to put a bold face on the matter, and give us a call.
His approach was announced by one of the scouts, upon which someone suggested that we should let him enter, and then put him in the stocks. But Long Ghost proposed better sport. What it was, we shall presently see.
Very bland and amiable, Doctor Johnson advanced, and, resting his cane on the stocks, glanced to right and left, as we lay before him. "Well, my lads"--he began--"how do you find yourselves to-day?"
Looking very demure, the men made some rejoinder; and he went on.
"Those poor fellows I saw the other day--the sick, I mean--how are they?" and he scrutinized the company. At last, he singled out one who was assuming a most unearthly appearance, and remarked that he looked as if he were extremely ill. "Yes," said the sailor dolefully, "I'm afeard, doctor, I'll soon be losing the number of my mess!" (a sea phrase, for departing this life) and he closed his eyes, and moaned.
"What does he say?" said Johnson, turning round eagerly.
"Why," exclaimed Flash Jack, who volunteered as interpreter, "he means he's going to croak" (die).
"Croak! and what does that mean, applied to a patient?"
"Oh! I understand," said he, when the word was explained; and he stepped over the stocks, and felt the man's pulse.
"What's his name?" he asked, turning this time to old Navy Bob.
"We calls him Jingling Joe," replied that worthy.
"Well then, men, you must take good care of poor Joseph; and I will send him a powder, which must be taken according to the directions. Some of you know how to read, I presume?"
"That ere young cove does," replied Bob, pointing toward the place where I lay, as if he were directing attention to a sail at sea.
After examining the rest--some of whom were really invalids, but convalescent, and others only pretending to be labouring under divers maladies, Johnson turned round, and addressed the party.
"Men," said he, "if any more of you are ailing, speak up, and let me know. By order of the consul, I'm to call every day; so if any of you are at all sick, it's my duty to prescribe for you. This sudden change from ship fare to shore living plays the deuce with you sailors, so be cautious about eating fruit. Good-day! I'll send you the medicines the first thing in the morning."
Now, I am inclined to suspect that with all his want of understanding, Johnson must have had some idea that we were quizzing him. Still, that was nothing, so long as it answered his purpose; and therefore, if he did see through us, he never showed it.
Sure enough, at the time appointed, along came a native lad with a small basket of cocoa-nut stalks, filled with powders, pill-boxes, and-vials, each with names and directions written in a large, round hand. The sailors, one and all, made a snatch at the collection, under the strange impression that some of the vials were seasoned with spirits. But, asserting his privilege as physician to the first reading of the labels, Doctor Long Ghost was at last permitted to take possession of the basket.
The first thing lighted upon was a large vial, labelled--"For William--rub well in."
This vial certainly had a spirituous smell; and upon handing it to the patient, he made a summary internal application of its contents. The doctor looked aghast.
There was now a mighty commotion. Powders and pills were voted mere drugs in the market, and the holders of vials were pronounced lucky dogs. Johnson must have known enough of sailors to make some of his medicines palatable--this, at least, Long Ghost suspected. Certain it was, everyone took to the vials; if at all spicy, directions were unheeded, their contents all going one road.
The largest one of all, quite a bottle indeed, and having a sort of burnt brandy odour, was labelled--"For Daniel, drink freely, and until relieved." This Black Dan proceeded to do; and would have made an end of it at once, had not the bottle, after a hard struggle, been snatched from his hands, and passed round, like a jovial decanter. The old tar had complained of the effects of an immoderate eating of fruit.
Upon calling the following morning, our physician found his precious row of patients reclining behind the stocks, and doing "as well as could be expected."
But the pills and powders were found to have been perfectly inactive: probably because none had been taken. To make them efficacious, it was suggested that, for the future, a bottle of Pisco should be sent along with them. According to Flash Jack's notions, unmitigated medical compounds were but dry stuff at the best, and needed something good to wash them down.
Thus far, our own M.D., Doctor Long Ghost, after starting the frolic, had taken no further part in it; but on the physician's third visit, he took him to one side, and had a private confabulation. What it was, exactly, we could not tell; but from certain illustrative signs and gestures, I fancied that he was describing the symptoms of some mysterious disorganization of the vitals, which must have come on within the hour. Assisted by his familiarity with medical terms, he seemed to produce a marked impression. At last, Johnson went his way, promising aloud that he would send Long Ghost what he desired.
When the medicine boy came along the following morning, the doctor was the first to accost him, walking off with a small purple vial. This time, there was little else in the basket but a case-bottle of the burnt brandy cordial, which, after much debate, was finally disposed of by someone pouring the contents, little by little, into the half of a cocoa-nut shell, and so giving all who desired a glass. No further medicinal cheer remaining, the men dispersed.
An hour or two passed, when Flash Jack directed attention to my long friend, who, since the medicine boy left, had not been noticed till now. With eyes closed, he was lying behind the stocks, and Jack was lifting his arm and letting it fall as if life were extinct. On running up with the rest, I at once connected the phenomenon with the mysterious vial. Searching his pocket, I found it, and holding it up, it proved to be laudanum. Flash Jack, snatching it from my hand in a rapture, quickly informed all present what it was; and with much glee, proposed a nap for the company. Some of them not comprehending him exactly, the apparently defunct Long Ghost--who lay so still that I a little suspected the genuineness of his sleep--was rolled about as an illustration of the virtues of the vial's contents. The idea tickled everybody mightily; and throwing themselves down, the magic draught was passed from hand to hand. Thinking that, as a matter of course, they must at once become insensible, each man, upon taking his sip, fell back, and closed his eyes.
There was little fear of the result, since the narcotic was equally distributed. But, curious to see how it would operate, I raised myself gently after a while, and looked around. It was about noon, and perfectly still; and as we all daily took the siesta, I was not much surprised to find everyone quiet. Still, in one or two instances, I thought I detected a little peeping.
Presently, I heard a footstep, and saw Doctor Johnson approaching.
And perplexed enough did he look at the sight of his prostrate file of patients, plunged, apparently, in such unaccountable slumbers.
"Daniel," he cried, at last, punching in the side with his cane the individual thus designated--"Daniel, my good fellow, get up! do you hear?"
But Black Dan was immovable; and he poked the next sleeper.
"Joseph, Joseph! come, wake up! it's me, Doctor Johnson."
But Jingling Joe, with mouth open, and eyes shut, was not to be started.
"Bless my soul!" he exclaimed, with uplifted hands and cane, "what's got into 'em? I say, men"--he shouted, running up and down--"come to life, men! what under the sun's the matter with you?" and he struck the stocks, and bawled with increased vigour.
At last he paused, folded his hands over the head of his cane, and steadfastly gazed upon us. The notes of the nasal orchestra were rising and falling upon his ear, and a new idea suggested itself.
"Yes, yes; the rascals must have been getting boozy. Well, it's none of my business--I'll be off;" and off he went.
No sooner was he out of sight, than nearly all started to their feet, and a hearty laugh ensued.
Like myself, most of them had been watching the event from under a sly eyelid. By this time, too, Doctor Long Ghost was as wide awake as anybody. What were his reasons for taking laudanum,--if, indeed, he took any whatever,--is best known to himself; and, as it is neither mine nor the reader's business, we will say no more about it.
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{
"id": "4045"
}
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36
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WE ARE CARRIED BEFORE THE CONSUL AND CAPTAIN
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WE HAD been inmates of the Calabooza Beretanee about two weeks, when, one morning, Captain Bob, coming from the bath, in a state of utter nudity, brought into the building an armful of old tappa, and began to dress to go out.
The operation was quite simple. The tappa--of the coarsest kind--was in one long, heavy piece; and, fastening one end to a column of Habiscus wood supporting the Calabooza, he went off a few paces, and putting the other about his waist, wound himself right up to the post. This unique costume, in rotundity something like a farthingale, added immensely to his large hulk; so much so that he fairly waddled in his gait. But he was only adhering to the fashion of his fathers; for, in the olden time, the "Kihee," or big girdle, was quite the mode for both sexes. Bob, despising recent innovations, still clung to it. He was a gentleman of the old school--one of the last of the Kihees.
He now told us that he had orders to take us before the consul. Nothing loth, we formed in procession; and, with the old man at our head, sighing and labouring like an engine, and flanked by a guard of some twenty natives, we started for the village.
Arrived at the consular office, we found Wilson there, and four or five Europeans, seated in a row facing us; probably with the view of presenting as judicial an appearance as possible.
On one side was a couch, where Captain Guy reclined. He looked convalescent; and, as we found out, intended soon to go aboard his ship. He said nothing, but left everything to the consul.
The latter now rose, and, drawing forth a paper from a large roll tied with red tape, commenced reading aloud.
It purported to be, "the affidavit of John Jennin, first officer of the British Colonial Barque Julia; Guy, Master;" and proved to be a long statement of matters, from the time of leaving Sydney, down to our arrival in the harbour. Though artfully drawn up so as to bear hard against every one of us, it was pretty correct in the de-. tails; excepting that it was wholly silent as to the manifold derelictions of the mate himself--a fact which imparted unusual significance to the concluding sentence, "And furthermore, this deponent sayeth not."
No comments were made, although we all looked round for the mate to see whether it was possible that he could have authorized this use of his name. But he was not present.
The next document produced was the deposition of the captain himself. As on all other occasions, however, he had very little to say for himself, and it was soon set aside.
The third affidavit was that of the seamen remaining aboard the vessel, including the traitor Bungs, who, it seemed, had turned ship's evidence. It was an atrocious piece of exaggeration, from beginning to end; and those who signed it could not have known what they were about. Certainly Wymontoo did not, though his mark was there. In vain the consul commanded silence during the reading of this paper; comments were shouted out upon every paragraph.
The affidavits read, Wilson, who, all the while, looked as stiff as a poker, solemnly drew forth the ship's articles from their tin case. This document was a discoloured, musty, bilious-looking affair, and hard to read. When finished, the consul held it up; and, pointing to the marks of the ship's company, at the bottom, asked us, one by one, whether we acknowledged the same for our own.
"What's the use of asking that?" said Black Dan; "Captain Guy there knows as well as we they are."
"Silence, sir!" said Wilson, who, intending to produce a suitable impression by this ridiculous parade, was not a little mortified by the old sailor's bluntness.
A pause of a few moments now ensued; during which the bench of judges communed with Captain Guy, in a low tone, and the sailors canvassed the motives of the consul in having the affidavits taken.
The general idea seemed to be that it was done with a view of "bouncing," or frightening us into submission. Such proved to be the case; for Wilson, rising to his feet again, addressed us as follows:-- "You see, men, that every preparation has been made to send you to Sydney for trial. The Rosa (a small Australian schooner, lying in the harbour) will sail for that place in the course of ten days, at farthest. The Julia sails on a cruise this day week. Do you still refuse duty?"
We did.
Hereupon the consul and captain exchanged glances; and the latter looked bitterly disappointed.
Presently I noticed Guy's eye upon me; and, for the first time, he spoke, and told me to come near. I stepped forward.
"Was it not you that was taken off the island?"
"It was."
"It was you then who owe your life to my humanity. Yet this is the gratitude of a sailor, Mr. Wilson!"
"Not so, sir." And I at once gave him to understand that I was perfectly acquainted with his motives in sending a boat into the bay; his crew was reduced, and he merely wished to procure the sailor whom he expected to find there. The ship was the means of my deliverance, and no thanks to the benevolence of its captain.
Doctor Long Ghost also had a word to say. In two masterly sentences he summed up Captain Guy's character, to the complete satisfaction of every seaman present.
Matters were now growing serious; especially as the sailors became riotous, and talked about taking the consul and the captain back to the Calabooza with them.
The other judges fidgeted, and loudly commanded silence. It was at length restored; when Wilson, for the last time addressing us, said something more about the Rose and Sydney, and concluded by reminding us that a week would elapse ere the Julia sailed.
Leaving these hints to operate for themselves, he dismissed the party, ordering Captain Bob and his friends to escort us back whence we came.
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{
"id": "4045"
}
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37
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THE FRENCH PRIESTS PAY THEIR RESPECTS
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A DAY or two after the events just related, we were lounging in the Calabooza Beretanee, when we were honoured by a visit from three of the French Priests; and as about the only notice ever taken of us by the English missionaries was their leaving their cards for us, in the shape of a package of tracts, we could not help thinking that the Frenchmen, in making a personal call, were at least much better bred.
By this time they had settled themselves down quite near our habitation. A pleasant little stroll down the Broom Road, and a rustic cross peeped through the trees; and soon you came to as charming a place as one would wish to see: a soft knoll, planted with old breadfruit trees; in front, a savannah, sloping to a grove of palms, and, between these, glimpses of blue, sunny waves.
On the summit of the knoll was a rude chapel, of bamboos; quite small, and surmounted by the cross. Between the canes, at nightfall, the natives stole peeps at a small portable altar; a crucifix to correspond, and gilded candlesticks and censers. Their curiosity carried them no further; nothing could induce them to worship there. Such queer ideas as they entertained of the hated strangers. Masses and chants were nothing more than evil spells. As for the priests themselves, they were no better than diabolical sorcerers; like those who, in old times, terrified their fathers.
Close by the chapel was a range of native houses; rented from a chief, and handsomely furnished. Here lived the priests; and very comfortably, too. They looked sanctimonious enough abroad; but that went for nothing; since, at home, in their retreat, they were a club of Friar Tucks; holding priestly wassail over many a good cup of red brandy, and rising late in the morning.
Pity it was they couldn't marry--pity for the ladies of the island, I mean, and the cause of morality; for what business had the ecclesiastical old bachelors with such a set of trim little native handmaidens? These damsels were their first converts; and devoted ones they were.
The priests, as I have said before, were accounted necromancers: the appearance of two of our three visitors might have justified the conceit.
They were little, dried-up Frenchmen, in long, straight gowns of black cloth, and unsightly three-cornered hats--so preposterously big that, in putting them on, the reverend fathers seemed to extinguish themselves.
Their companion was dressed differently. He wore a sort of yellow, flannel morning gown, and a broad-brimmed Manilla hat. Large and portly, he was also hale and fifty; with a complexion like an autumnal leaf--handsome blue eyes--fine teeth, and a racy Milesian brogue. In short, he was an Irishman; Father Murphy, by name; and, as such, pretty well known, and very thoroughly disliked, throughout all the Protestant missionary settlements in Polynesia. In early youth, he had been sent to a religious seminary in France; and, taking orders there, had but once or twice afterwards revisited his native land.
Father Murphy marched up to us briskly; and the first words he uttered were, to ask whether there were any of his countrymen among us. There were two of them; one, a lad of sixteen--a bright, curly-headed rascal--and, being a young Irishman, of course, his name was Pat. The other was an ugly, and rather melancholy-looking scamp; one M'Gee, whose prospects in life had been blasted by a premature transportation to Sydney. This was the report, at least, though it might have been scandal.
In most of my shipmates were some redeeming qualities; but about M'Gee, there was nothing of the kind; and forced to consort with him, I could not help regretting, a thousand times, that the gallows had been so tardy. As if impelled, against her will, to send him into the world, Nature had done all she could to insure his being taken for what he was. About the eyes there was no mistaking him; with a villainous cast in one, they seemed suspicious of each other.
Glancing away from him at once, the bluff priest rested his gaze on the good-humoured face of Pat, who, with a pleasant roguishness, was "twigging" the enormous hats (or "Hytee Belteezers," as land beavers are called by sailors), from under which, like a couple of snails, peeped the two little Frenchmen.
Pat and the priest were both from the same town in Meath; and, when this was found out, there was no end to the questions of the latter. To him, Pat seemed a letter from home, and said a hundred times as much.
After a long talk between these two, and a little broken English from the Frenchmen, our visitors took leave; but Father Murphy had hardly gone a dozen rods when back he came, inquiring whether we were in want of anything.
"Yes," cried one, "something to eat." Upon this he promised to send us some fresh wheat bread, of his own baking; a great luxury in Tahiti.
We all felicitated Pat upon picking up such a friend, and told him his fortune was made.
The next morning, a French servant of the priest's made his appearance with a small bundle of clothing for our young Hibernian; and the promised bread for the party. Pat being out at the knees and elbows, and, like the rest of us, not full inside, the present was acceptable all round.
In the afternoon, Father Murphy himself came along; and, in addition to his previous gifts, gave Pat a good deal of advice: said he was sorry to see him in limbo, and that he would have a talk with the consul about having him set free.
We saw nothing more of him for two or three days; at the end of which time he paid us another call, telling Pat that Wilson was inexorable, having refused to set him at liberty, unless to go aboard the ship. This, the priest now besought him to do forthwith; and so escape the punishment which, it seems, Wilson had been hinting at to his intercessor. Pat, however, was staunch against entreaties; and, with all the ardour of a sophomorean sailor, protested his intention to hold out to the last. With none of the meekness of a good little boy about him, the blunt youngster stormed away at such a rate that it was hard to pacify him; and the priest said no more.
How it came to pass--whether from Murphy's speaking to the consul, or otherwise, we could not tell--but the next day, Pat was sent for by Wilson, and being escorted to the village by our good old keeper, three days elapsed before he returned.
Bent upon reclaiming him, they had taken him on board the ship; feasted him in the cabin; and, finding that of no avail, down they thrust him into the hold, in double irons, and on bread and water. All would not do; and so he was sent back to the Calabooza. Boy that he was, they must have counted upon his being more susceptible to discipline than the rest.
The interest felt in Pat's welfare, by his benevolent countryman, was very serviceable to the rest of us; especially as we all turned Catholics, and went to mass every morning, much to Captain Bob's consternation. Upon finding it out, he threatened to keep us in the stocks if we did not desist. He went no farther than this, though; and so, every few days, we strolled down to the priest's residence, and had a mouthful to eat, and something generous to drink. In particular, Dr. Long Ghost and myself became huge favourites with Pat's friend; and many a time he regaled us from a quaint-looking travelling case for spirits, stowed away in one corner of his dwelling. It held four square flasks, which, somehow or other, always contained just enough to need emptying. In truth, the fine old Irishman was a rosy fellow in canonicals. His countenance and his soul were always in a glow. It may be ungenerous to reveal his failings, but he often talked thick, and sometimes was perceptibly eccentric in his gait.
I never drink French brandy but I pledge Father Murphy. His health again! And many jolly proselytes may he make in Polynesia!
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{
"id": "4045"
}
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38
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LITTLE JULIA SAILS WITHOUT US
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TO MAKE good the hint thrown out by the consul upon the conclusion of the Farce of the Affidavits, we were again brought before him within the time specified.
It was the same thing over again: he got nothing out of us, and we were remanded; our resolute behaviour annoying him prodigiously.
What we observed led us to form the idea that, on first learning the state of affairs on board the Julia, Wilson must have addressed his invalid friend, the captain, something in the following style: "Guy, my poor fellow, don't worry yourself now about those rascally sailors of yours. I'll dress them out for you--just leave it all to me, and set your mind at rest."
But handcuffs and stocks, big looks, threats, dark hints, and depositions, had all gone for nought.
Conscious that, as matters now stood, nothing serious could grow out of what had happened; and never dreaming that our being sent home for trial had ever been really thought of, we thoroughly understood Wilson, and laughed at him accordingly.
Since leaving the Julia, we had caught no glimpse of the mate; but we often heard of him.
It seemed that he remained on board, keeping house in the cabin for himself and Viner; who, going to see him according to promise, was induced to remain a guest. These two cronies now had fine times; tapping the captain's quarter-casks, playing cards on the transom, and giving balls of an evening to the ladies ashore. In short, they cut up so many queer capers that the missionaries complained of them to the consul; and Jermin received a sharp reprimand.
This so affected him that he still drank more freely than before; and one afternoon, when mellow as a grape, he took umbrage at a canoe full of natives, who, on being hailed from the deck to come aboard and show their papers, got frightened, and paddled for the shore.
Lowering a boat instantly, he equipped Wymontoo and the Dane with a cutlass apiece, and seizing another himself, off they started in pursuit, the ship's ensign flying in the boat's stern. The alarmed islanders, beaching their canoe, with loud cries fled through the village, the mate after them, slashing his naked weapon to right and left. A crowd soon collected; and the "Karhowree toonee," or crazy stranger, was quickly taken before Wilson.
Now, it so chanced that, in a native house hard by, the consul and Captain Guy were having a quiet game at cribbage by themselves, a decanter on the table standing sentry. The obstreperous Jermin was brought in; and finding the two thus pleasantly occupied, it had a soothing effect upon him; and he insisted upon taking a hand at the cards, and a drink of the brandy. As the consul was nearly as tipsy as himself, and the captain dared not object for fear of giving offence, at it they went--all three of them--and made a night of it; the mate's delinquencies being summarily passed over, and his captors sent away.
An incident worth relating grew out of this freak.
There wandered about Papeetee, at this time, a shrivelled little fright of an Englishwoman, known among sailors as "Old Mother Tot." From New Zealand to the Sandwich Islands, she had been all over the South Seas; keeping a rude hut of entertainment for mariners, and supplying them with rum and dice. Upon the missionary islands, of course, such conduct was severely punishable; and at various places, Mother Tot's establishment had been shut up, and its proprietor made to quit in the first vessel that could be hired to land her elsewhere. But, with a perseverance invincible, wherever she went she always started afresh; and so became notorious everywhere.
By some wicked spell of hers, a patient, one-eyed little cobbler followed her about, mending shoes for white men, doing the old woman's cooking, and bearing all her abuse without grumbling. Strange to relate, a battered Bible was seldom out of his sight; and whenever he had leisure, and his mistress' back was turned, he was forever poring over it. This pious propensity used to enrage the old crone past belief; and oftentimes she boxed his ears with the book, and tried to burn it. Mother Tot and her man Josy were, indeed, a curious pair.
But to my story.
A week or so after our arrival in the harbour, the old lady had once again been hunted down, and forced for the time to abandon her nefarious calling. This was brought about chiefly by Wilson, who, for some reason unknown, had contracted the most violent hatred for her; which, on her part, was more than reciprocated.
Well: passing, in the evening, where the consul and his party were making merry, she peeped through the bamboos of the house; and straightway resolved to gratify her spite.
The night was very dark; and providing herself with a huge ship's lantern, which usually swung in her hut, she waited till they came forth. This happened about midnight; Wilson making his appearance, supported by two natives, holding him up by the arms. These three went first; and just as they got under a deep shade, a bright light was thrust within an inch of Wilson's nose. The old hag was kneeling before him, holding the lantern with uplifted hands.
"Ha, ha! my fine counsellor," she shrieked; "ye persecute a lone old body like me for selling rum--do ye? And here ye are, carried home drunk--Hoot! ye villain, I scorn ye!" And she spat upon him.
Terrified at the apparition, the poor natives--arrant believers in ghosts--dropped the trembling consul, and fled in all directions. After giving full vent to her rage, Mother Tot hobbled away, and left the three revellers to stagger home the best way they could.
The day following our last interview with Wilson, we learned that Captain Guy had gone on board his vessel for the purpose of shipping a new crew. There was a round bounty offered; and a heavy bag of Spanish dollars, with the Julia's articles ready for signing, were laid on the capstan-head.
Now, there was no lack of idle sailors ashore, mostly "Beachcombers," who had formed themselves into an organized gang, headed by one Mack, a Scotchman, whom they styled the Commodore. By the laws of the fraternity, no member was allowed to ship on board a vessel unless granted permission by the rest. In this way the gang controlled the port, all discharged seamen being forced to join them.
To Mack and his men our story was well known; indeed, they had several times called to see us; and of course, as sailors and congenial spirits, they were hard against Captain Guy.
Deeming the matter important, they came in a body to the Calabooza, and wished to know whether, all things considered, we thought it best for any of them to join the Julia.
Anxious to pack the ship off as soon as possible, we answered, by all means. Some went so far as to laud the Julia to the skies as the best and fastest of ships. Jermin too, as a good fellow, and a sailor every inch, came in for his share of praise; and as for the captain--quiet man, he would never trouble anyone. In short, every inducement we could think of was presented; and Plash Jack ended by assuring the beachcombers solemnly that, now we were all well and hearty, nothing but a regard to principle prevented us from returning on board ourselves.
The result was that a new crew was finally obtained, together with a steady New Englander for second mate, and three good whalemen for harpooners. In part, what was wanting for the ship's larder was also supplied; and as far as could be done in a place like Tahiti, the damages the vessel had sustained were repaired. As for the Mowree, the authorities refusing to let him be put ashore, he was carried to sea in irons, down in the hold. What eventually became of him we never heard.
Ropey, poor poor Ropey, who a few days previous had fallen sick, was left ashore at the sailor hospital at Townor, a small place upon the beach between Papeetee and Matavai. Here, some time after, he breathed his last. No one knew his complaint: he must have died of hard times. Several of us saw him interred in the sand, and I planted a rude post to mark his resting-place.
The cooper, and the rest who had remained aboard from the first, of course, composed part of the Julia's new crew.
To account for the conduct, all along, of the consul and captain, in trying so hard to alter our purpose with respect to the ship, the following statement is all that is requisite. Beside an advance of from fifteen to twenty-five dollars demanded by every sailor shipping at Tahiti, an additional sum for each man so shipped has to be paid into the hands of the government, as a charge of the port. Beside this, the men--with here and there an exception--will only ship for one cruise, thus becoming entitled to a discharge before the vessel reaches home; which, in time, creates the necessity of obtaining other men, at a similar cost. Now, the Julia's exchequer was at low-water mark, or rather, it was quite empty; and to meet these expenses, a good part of what little oil there was aboard had to be sold for a song to a merchant of Papeetee.
It was Sunday in Tahiti and a glorious morning, when Captain Bob, waddling into the Calabooza, startled us by announcing "Ah--my boy--shippy you, harre--maky sail!" In other words, the Julia was off.
The beach was quite near, and in this quarter altogether uninhabited; so down we ran, and, at cable's length, saw little Jule gliding past--top-gallant-sails hoisting, and a boy aloft with one leg thrown over the yard, loosing the fore-royal. The decks were all life and commotion; the sailors on the forecastle singing "Ho, cheerly men!" as they catted the anchor; and the gallant Jennin, bare-headed as his wont, standing up on the bowsprit, and issuing his orders. By the man at the helm stood Captain Guy, very quiet and gentlemanly, and smoking a cigar.
Soon the ship drew near the reef, and, altering her course, glided out through the break, and went on her way.
Thus disappeared little Jule, about three weeks after entering the harbour: and nothing more have I ever heard of her.
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{
"id": "4045"
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39
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JERMIN SERVES US A GOOD TURN--FRIENDSHIPS IN POLYNESIA
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THE ship out of the way, we were quite anxious to know what was going to be done with us. On this head, Captain Bob could tell us nothing; no further, at least, than that he still considered himself responsible for our safe-keeping. However, he never put us to bed any more; and we had everything our own way.
The day after the Julia left, the old man came up to us in great tribulation, saying that the bucket of bread was no longer forthcoming, and that Wilson had refused to send anything in its place. One and all, we took this for a hint to disperse quietly, and go about our business. Nevertheless, we were not to be shaken off so easily; and taking a malicious pleasure in annoying our old enemy, we resolved, for the present, to stay where we were. For the part he had been acting, we learned that the consul was the laughing-stock of all the foreigners ashore, who frequently twitted him upon his hopeful proteges of the Calabooza Beretanee.
As we were wholly without resources, so long as we remained on the island no better place than Captain Bob's could be selected for an abiding-place. Beside, we heartily loved the old gentleman, and could not think of leaving him; so, telling him to give no thought as to wherewithal we should be clothed and fed, we resolved, by extending and systematizing our foraging operations, to provide for ourselves.
We were greatly assisted by a parting legacy of Jermin's. To him we were indebted for having all our chests sent ashore, and everything left therein. They were placed in the custody of a petty chief living near by, who was instructed by the consul not to allow them to be taken away; but we might call and make our toilets whenever we pleased.
We went to see Mahinee, the old chief; Captain Bob going along, and stoutly insisting upon having the chattels delivered up. At last this was done; and in solemn procession the chests were borne by the natives to the Calabooza. Here, we disposed them about quite tastefully; and made such a figure that, in the eyes of old Bob and his friends, the Calabooza Beretanee was by far the most sumptuously furnished saloon in Tahiti.
Indeed, so long as it remained thus furnished, the native courts of the district were held there; the judge, Mahinee, and his associates, sitting upon one of the chests, and the culprits and spectators thrown at full length upon the ground, both inside of the building and under the shade of the trees without; while, leaning over the stocks as from a gallery, the worshipful crew of the Julia looked on, and canvassed the proceedings.
I should have mentioned before that, previous to the vessel's departure, the men had bartered away all the clothing they could possibly spare; but now, it was resolved to be more provident.
The contents of the chests were of the most miscellaneous description:--sewing utensils, marling-spikes, strips of calico, bits of rope, jack-knives; nearly everything, in short, that a seaman could think of. But of wearing apparel, there was little but old frocks, remnants of jackets, and legs of trousers, with now and then the foot of a stocking.
These, however, were far from being valueless; for, among the poorer Tahitians, everything European is highly esteemed. They come from "Beretanee, Fenooa Pararee" (Britain, Land of Wonders), and that is enough.
The chests themselves were deemed exceedingly precious, especially those with unfractured looks, which would absolutely click, and enable the owner to walk off with the key. Scars, however, and bruises, were considered great blemishes. One old fellow, smitten with the doctor's large mahogany chest (a well-filled one, by the bye), and finding infinite satisfaction in merely sitting thereon, was detected in the act of applying a healing ointment to a shocking scratch which impaired the beauty of the lid.
There is no telling the love of a Tahitian for a sailor's trunk. So ornamental is it held as an article of furniture in the hut, that the women are incessantly tormenting their husbands to bestir themselves and make them a present of one. When obtained, no pier-table just placed in a drawing-room is regarded with half the delight. For these reasons, then, our coming into possession of our estate at this time was an important event.
The islanders are much like the rest of the world; and the news of our good fortune brought us troops of "tayos," or friends, eager to form an alliance after the national custom, and do our slightest bidding.
The really curious way in which all the Polynesians are in the habit of making bosom friends at the shortest possible notice is deserving of remark. Although, among a people like the Tahitians, vitiated as they are by sophisticating influences, this custom has in most cases degenerated into a mere mercenary relation, it nevertheless had its origin in a fine, and in some instances, heroic sentiment, formerly entertained by their fathers.
In the annals of the island are examples of extravagant friendships, unsurpassed by the story of Damon and Pythias: in truth, much more wonderful; for, notwithstanding the devotion--even of life in some cases--to which they led, they were frequently entertained at first sight for some stranger from another island.
Filled with love and admiration for the first whites who came among them, the Polynesians could not testify the warmth of their emotions more strongly than by instantaneously making their abrupt proffer of friendship. Hence, in old voyages we read of chiefs coming off from the shore in their canoes, and going through with strange antics, expressive of the desire. In the same way, their inferiors accosted the seamen; and thus the practice has continued in some islands down to the present day.
There is a small place, not many days' sail from Tahiti, and seldom visited by shipping, where the vessel touched to which I then happened to belong.
Of course, among the simple-hearted natives, We had a friend all round. Mine was Poky, a handsome youth, who never could do enough for me. Every morning at sunrise, his canoe came alongside loaded with fruits of all kinds; upon being emptied, it was secured by a line to the bowsprit, under which it lay all day long, ready at any time to carry its owner ashore on an errand.
Seeing him so indefatigable, I told Poky one day that I was a virtuoso in shells and curiosities of all kinds. That was enough; away he paddled for the head of the bay, and I never saw him again for twenty-four hours. The next morning, his canoe came gliding slowly along the shore with the full-leaved bough of a tree for a sail. For the purpose of keeping the things dry, he had also built a sort of platform just behind the prow, railed in with green wicker-work; and here was a heap of yellow bananas and cowree shells; young cocoa-nuts and antlers of red coral; two or three pieces of carved wood; a little pocket-idol, black as jet, and rolls of printed tappa.
We were given a holiday; and upon going ashore, Poky, of course, was my companion and guide. For this, no mortal could be better qualified; his native country was not large, and he knew every inch of it. Gallanting me about, everyone was stopped and ceremoniously introduced to Poty's "tayo karhowree nuee" or his particular white friend.
He showed me all the lions; but more than all, he took me to see a charming lioness--a young damsel--the daughter of a chief--the reputation of whose charms had spread to the neighbouring islands, and even brought suitors therefrom. Among these was Tooboi, the heir of Tamatory, King of Eaiatair, one of the Society Isles. The girl was certainly fair to look upon. Many heavens were in her sunny eyes; and the outline of that arm of hers, peeping forth from a capricious tappa robe, was the very curve of beauty.
Though there was no end to Poky's attentions, not a syllable did he ever breathe of reward; but sometimes he looked very knowing. At last the day came for sailing, and with it, also, his canoe, loaded down to the gunwale with a sea stock of fruits. Giving him all I could spare from my chest, I went on deck to take my place at the windlass; for the anchor was weighing. Poky followed, and heaved with me at the same handspike.
The anchor was soon up; and away we went out of the bay with more than twenty shallops towing astern. At last they left us; but long as I could see him at all, there was Poky, standing alone and motionless in the bow of his canoe.
PART II
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{
"id": "4045"
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40
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WE TAKE UNTO OURSELVES FRIENDS
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THE arrival of the chests made my friend, the doctor, by far the wealthiest man of the party. So much the better for me, seeing that I had little or nothing myself; though, from our intimacy, the natives courted my favour almost as much as his.
Among others, Kooloo was a candidate for my friendship; and being a comely youth, quite a buck in his way, I accepted his overtures. By this, I escaped the importunities of the rest; for be it known that, though little inclined to jealousy in love matters, the Tahitian will hear of no rivals in his friendship.
Kooloo, running over his qualifications as a friend, first of all informed me that he was a "Mickonaree," thus declaring his communion with the church.
The way this "tayo" of mine expressed his regard was by assuring me over and over again that the love he bore me was "nuee, nuee, nuee," or infinitesimally extensive. All over these seas, the word "nuee" is significant of quantity. Its repetition is like placing ciphers at the right hand of a numeral; the more places you carry it out to, the greater the sum. Judge, then, of Kooloo's esteem. Nor is the allusion to the ciphers at all inappropriate, seeing that, in themselves, Kooloo's profession turned out to be worthless. He was, alas! as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal; one of those who make no music unless the clapper be silver.
In the course of a few days, the sailors, like the doctor and myself, were cajoled out of everything, and our "tayos," all round, began to cool off quite sensibly. So remiss did they become in their attentions that we could no longer rely upon their bringing us the daily supply of food, which all of them had faithfully promised.
As for Kooloo, after sponging me well, he one morning played the part of a retrograde lover; informing me that his affections had undergone a change; he had fallen in love at first sight with a smart sailor, who had just stepped ashore quite flush from a lucky whaling-cruise.
It was a touching interview, and with it, our connection dissolved. But the sadness which ensued would soon have been dissipated, had not my sensibilities been wounded by his indelicately sporting some of my gifts very soon after this transfer of his affections. Hardly a day passed that I did not meet him on the Broom Road, airing himself in a regatta shirt which I had given him in happier hours.
He went by with such an easy saunter too, looking me pleasantly in the eye, and merely exchanging the cold salute of the road:--"Yar onor, boyoee," a mere sidewalk how d'ye do. After several experiences like this, I began to entertain a sort of respect for Kooloo, as quite a man of the world. In good sooth, he turned out to be one; in one week's time giving me the cut direct, and lounging by without even nodding. He must have taken me for part of the landscape.
Before the chests were quite empty, we had a grand washing in the stream of our best raiment, for the purpose of looking tidy, and visiting the European chapel in the village. Every Sunday morning it is open for divine service, some member of the mission officiating. This was the first time we ever entered Papeetee unattended by an escort.
In the chapel there were about forty people present, including the officers of several ships in harbour. It was an energetic discourse, and the pulpit cushion was well pounded. Occupying a high seat in the synagogue, and stiff as a flagstaff, was our beloved guardian, Wilson. I shall never forget his look of wonder when his interesting wards filed in at the doorway, and took up a seat directly facing him.
Service over, we waited outside in hopes of seeing more of him; but sorely annoyed at the sight of us, he reconnoitred from the window, and never came forth until we had started for home.
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{
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41
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WE LEVY CONTRIBUTIONS ON THE SHIPPING
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SCARCELY a week went by after the Julia's sailing, when, with the proverbial restlessness of sailors, some of the men began to grow weary of the Calabooza Beretanee, and resolved to go boldly among the vessels in the bay, and offer to ship.
The thing was tried; but though strongly recommended by the commodore of the beachcombers, in the end they were invariably told by the captains to whom they applied that they bore an equivocal character ashore, and would not answer. So often were they repulsed that we pretty nearly gave up all thoughts of leaving the island in this way; and growing domestic again, settled down quietly at Captain Bob's.
It was about this time that the whaling-ships, which have their regular seasons for cruising, began to arrive at Papeetee; and of course their crews frequently visited us. This is customary all over the Pacific. No sailor steps ashore, but he straightway goes to the "Calabooza," where he is almost sure to find some poor fellow or other in confinement for desertion, or alleged mutiny, or something of that sort. Sympathy is proffered, and if need be, tobacco. The latter, however, is most in request; as a solace to the captive, it is invaluable.
Having fairly carried the day against both consul and captain, we were objects of even more than ordinary interest to these philanthropists; and they always cordially applauded our conduct. Besides, they invariably brought along something in the way of refreshments; occasionally smuggling in a little Pisco. Upon one occasion, when there was quite a number present, a calabash was passed round, and a pecuniary collection taken up for our benefit.
One day a newcomer proposed that two or three of us should pay him a sly, nocturnal visit aboard his ship; engaging to send us away well freighted with provisions. This was not a bad idea; nor were we at all backward in acting upon it. Right after night every vessel in the harbour was visited in rotation, the foragers borrowing Captain Bob's canoe for the purpose. As we all took turns at this--two by two--in due course it came to Long Ghost and myself, for the sailors invariably linked us together. In such an enterprise, I somewhat distrusted the doctor, for he was no sailor, and very tall; and a canoe is the most ticklish of navigable things. However, it could not be helped; and so we went.
But a word about the canoes before we go any further. Among the Society Islands, the art of building them, like all native accomplishments, has greatly deteriorated; and they are now the most inelegant, as well as the most insecure of any in the South Seas. In Cook's time, according to his account, there was at Tahiti a royal fleet of seventeen hundred and twenty large war canoes, handsomely carved, and otherwise adorned. At present, those used are quite small; nothing more than logs hollowed out, sharpened at one end, and then launched into the water.
To obviate a certain rolling propensity, the Tahitians, like all Polynesians, attach to them what sailors call an "outrigger." It consists of a pole floating alongside, parallel to the canoe, and connected with it by a couple of cross sticks, a yard or more in length. Thus equipped, the canoe cannot be overturned, unless you overcome the buoyancy of the pole, or lift it entirely out of the water.
Now, Captain Bob's "gig" was exceedingly small; so small, and of such a grotesque shape, that the sailors christened it the Pill Box; and by this appellation it always went. In fact, it was a sort of "sulky," meant for a solitary paddler, but, on an emergency, capable of floating two or three. The outrigger was a mere switch, alternately rising in air, and then depressed in the water.
Assuming the command of the expedition, upon the strength of my being a sailor, I packed the Long Doctor with a paddle in the bow, and then shoving off, leaped into the stern; thus leaving him to do all the work, and reserving to myself the dignified sinecure of steering. All would have gone on well, were it not that my paddler made such clumsy work that the water spattered, and showered down upon us without ceasing. Continuing to ply his tool, however, quite energetically, I thought he would improve after a while, and so let him alone. But by and bye, getting wet through with this little storm we were raising, and seeing no signs of its clearing off, I conjured him, in mercy's name, to stop short, and let me wring myself out. Upon this, he suddenly turned round, when the canoe gave a roll, the outrigger flew overhead, and the next moment came rap on the doctor's skull, and we were both in the water.
Fortunately, we were just over a ledge of coral, not half-a-fathom under the surface. Depressing one end of the filled canoe, and letting go of it quickly, it bounced up, and discharged a great part of its contents; so that we easily baled out the remainder, and again embarked. This time, my comrade coiled himself away in a very small space; and enjoining upon him not to draw a single unnecessary breath, I proceeded to urge the canoe along by myself. I was astonished at his docility, never speaking a word, and stirring neither hand nor foot; but the secret was, he was unable to swim, and in case we met with a second mishap, there were no more ledges beneath to stand upon. "Crowning's but a shabby way of going out of the world," he exclaimed, upon my rallying him; "and I'm not going to be guilty of it."
At last, the ship was at hand, and we approached with much caution, wishing to avoid being hailed by anyone from the quarter-deck. Dropping silently under her bows, we heard a low whistle--the signal agreed upon--and presently a goodly-sized bag was lowered over to us.
We cut the line, and then paddled away as fast as we could, and made the best of our way home. Here, we found the rest waiting impatiently.
The bag turned out to be well filled with sweet potatoes boiled, cubes of salt beef and pork, and a famous sailors' pudding, what they call "duff," made of flour and water, and of about the consistence of an underdone brick. With these delicacies, and keen appetites, we went out into the moonlight, and had a nocturnal picnic.
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{
"id": "4045"
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42
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MOTOO-OTOO A TAHITIAN CASUIST
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THE Pill Box was sometimes employed for other purposes than that described in the last chapter. We sometimes went a-pleasuring in it.
Right in the middle of Papeetee harbour is a bright, green island, one circular grove of waving palms, and scarcely a hundred yards across. It is of coral formation; and all round, for many rods out, the bay is so shallow that you might wade anywhere. Down in these waters, as transparent as air, you see coral plants of every hue and shape imaginable:--antlers, tufts of azure, waving reeds like stalks of grain, and pale green buds and mosses. In some places, you look through prickly branches down to a snow-white floor of sand, sprouting with flinty bulbs; and crawling among these are strange shapes:--some bristling with spikes, others clad in shining coats of mail, and here and there, round forms all spangled with eyes.
The island is called Hotoo-Otoo; and around Hotoo-Otoo have I often paddled of a white moonlight night, pausing now and then to admire the marine gardens beneath.
The place is the private property of the queen, who has a residence there--a melancholy-looking range of bamboo houses--neglected and falling to decay among the trees.
Commanding the harbour as it does, her majesty has done all she could to make a fortress of the island. The margin has been raised and levelled, and built up with a low parapet of hewn Hocks of coral. Behind the parapet are ranged, at wide intervals, a number of rusty old cannon, of all fashions and calibres. They are mounted upon lame, decrepit-looking carriages, ready to sink under the useless burden of bearing them up. Indeed, two or three have given up the ghost altogether, and the pieces they sustained lie half buried among their bleaching bones. Several of the cannon are spiked; probably with a view of making them more formidable; as they certainly must be to anyone undertaking to fire them off.
Presented to Pomaree at various times by captains of British armed ships, these poor old "dogs of war," thus toothless and turned out to die, formerly bayed in full pack as the battle-hounds of Old England.
There was something about Hotoo-Otoo that struck my fancy; and I registered a vow to plant my foot upon its soil, notwithstanding an old bareheaded sentry menaced me in the moonlight with an unsightly musket. As my canoe drew scarcely three inches of water, I could paddle close up to the parapet without grounding; but every time I came near, the old man ran toward me, pushing his piece forward, but never clapping it to his shoulder. Thinking he only meant to frighten me, I at last dashed the canoe right Up to the wall, purposing a leap. It was the rashest act of my life; for never did cocoa-nut come nearer getting demolished than mine did then. With the stock of his gun, the old warder fetched a tremendous blow, which I managed to dodge; and then falling back, succeeded in paddling out of harm's reach.
He must have been dumb; for never a word did he utter; but grinning from ear to ear, and with his white cotton robe streaming in the moonlight, he looked more like the spook of the island than anything mortal.
I tried to effect my object by attacking him in the rear--but he was all front; running about the place as I paddled, and presenting his confounded musket wherever I went. At last I was obliged to retreat; and to this day my vow remains unfulfilled.
It was a few days after my repulse from before the walls of Hotoo-Otoo that I heard a curious case of casuistry argued between one of the most clever and intelligent natives I ever saw in Tahiti, a man by the name of Arheetoo, and our learned Theban of a doctor.
It was this:--whether it was right and lawful for anyone, being a native, to keep the European Sabbath, in preference to the day set apart as such by the missionaries, and so considered by the islanders in general.
It must be known that the missionaries of the good ship Duff, who more than half-a-century ago established the Tahitian reckoning, came hither by the way of the Cape of Good Hope; and by thus sailing to the eastward, lost one precious day of their lives all round, getting about that much in advance of Greenwich time. For this reason, vessels coming round Cape Horn--as they most all do nowadays--find it Sunday in Tahiti, when, according to their own view of the matter, it ought to be Saturday. But as it won't do to alter the log, the sailors keep their Sabbath, and the islanders theirs.
This confusion perplexes the poor natives mightily; and it is to no purpose that you endeavour to explain so incomprehensible a phenomenon. I once saw a worthy old missionary essay to shed some light on the subject; and though I understood but a few of the words employed, I could easily get at the meaning of his illustrations. They were something like the following: "Here," says he, "you see this circle" (describing a large one on the ground with a stick); "very good; now you see this spot here" (marking a point in the perimeter): "well; this is Beretanee (England), and I'm going to sail round to Tahiti. Here I go, then (following the circle round), and there goes the sun (snatching up another stick, and commissioning a bandy-legged native to travel round with it in a contrary direction). Now then, we are both off, and both going away from each other; and here you see I have arrived at Tahiti (making a sudden stop); and look now where Bandy Legs is!"
But the crowd strenuously maintained that Bandy Legs ought to be somewhere above them in the atmosphere; for it was a traditionary fact that the people from the Duff came ashore when the sun was high overhead. And here the old gentleman, being a very good sort of man, doubtless, but no astronomer, was obliged to give up.
Arheetoo, the casuist alluded to, though a member of the church, and extremely conscientious about what Sabbath he kept, was more liberal in other matters. Learning that I was something of a "mick-onaree" (in this sense, a man able to read, and cunning in the use of the pen), he desired the slight favour of my forging for him a set of papers; for which, he said, he would be much obliged, and give me a good dinner of roast pig and Indian turnip in the bargain.
Now, Arheetoo was one of those who board the shipping for their washing; and the competition being very great (the proudest chiefs not disdaining to solicit custom in person, though the work is done by their dependants), he had decided upon a course suggested by a knowing sailor, a friend of his. He wished to have manufactured a set of certificates, purporting to come from certain man-of-war and merchant captains, known to have visited the island; recommending him as one of the best getters up of fine linen in all Polynesia.
At this time, Arheetoo had known me but two hours; and, as he made the proposition very coolly, I thought it rather presumptuous, and told him so. But as it was quite impossible to convey a hint, and there was a slight impropriety in the thing, I did not resent the insult, but simply declined.
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{
"id": "4045"
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43
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ONE IS JUDGED BY THE COMPANY HE KEEPS
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ALTHOUGH, from its novelty, life at Captain Bob's was pleasant enough, for the time; there were some few annoyances connected with it anything but agreeable to a "soul of sensibility."
Prejudiced against us by the malevolent representations of the consul and others, many worthy foreigners ashore regarded us as a set of lawless vagabonds; though, truth to speak, better behaved sailors never stepped on the island, nor any who gave less trouble to the natives. But, for all this, whenever we met a respectably-dressed European, ten to one he shunned us by going over to the other side of the road. This was very unpleasant, at least to myself; though, certes, it did not prey upon the minds of the others.
To give an instance.
Of a fine evening in Tahiti--but they are all fine evenings there--you may see a bevy of silk bonnets and parasols passing along the Broom Road: perhaps a band of pale, little white urchins--sickly exotics--and, oftener still, sedate, elderly gentlemen, with canes; at whose appearance the natives, here and there, slink into their huts. These are the missionaries, their wives, and children, taking a family airing. Sometimes, by the bye, they take horse, and ride down to Point Venus and back; a distance of several miles. At this place is settled the only survivor of the first missionaries that landed--an old, white-headed, saint-like man, by the name of Wilson, the father of our friend, the consul.
The little parties on foot were frequently encountered; and, recalling, as they did, so many pleasant recollections of home and the ladies, I really longed for a dress coat and beaver that I might step up and pay my respects. But, situated as I was, this was out of the question. On one occasion, however, I received a kind, inquisitive glance from a matron in gingham. Sweet lady! I have not forgotten her: her gown was a plaid.
But a glance, like hers, was not always bestowed.
One evening, passing the verandah of a missionary's dwelling, the dame, his wife, and a pretty, blonde young girl, with ringlets, were sitting there, enjoying the sea-breeze, then coming in, all cool and refreshing, from the spray of the reef. As I approached, the old lady peered hard at me; and her very cap seemed to convey a prim rebuke. The blue, English eyes, by her side, were also bent on me. But, oh Heavens! what a glance to receive from such a beautiful creature! As for the mob cap, not a fig did I care for it; but, to be taken for anything but a cavalier, by the ringleted one, was absolutely unendurable.
I resolved on a courteous salute, to show my good-breeding, if nothing more. But, happening to wear a sort of turban--hereafter to be particularly alluded to--there was no taking it off and putting it on again with anything like dignity. At any rate, then, here goes a how. But, another difficulty presented itself; my loose frock was so voluminous that I doubted whether any spinal curvature would be perceptible.
"Good evening, ladies," exclaimed I, at last, advancing winningly; "a delightful air from the sea, ladies."
Hysterics and hartshorn! who would have thought it? The young lady screamed, and the old one came near fainting. As for myself, I retreated in double-quick time; and scarcely drew breath until safely housed in the Calabooza.
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{
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44
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CATHEDRAL OF PAPOAR--THE CHURCH OF THE COCOA-NUTS
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ON Sundays I always attended the principal native church, on the outskirts of the village of Papeetee, and not far from the Calabooza Beretanee. It was esteemed the best specimen of architecture in Tahiti.
Of late, they have built their places of worship with more reference to durability than formerly. At one time, there were no less than thirty-six on the island--mere barns, tied together with thongs, which went to destruction in a very few years.
One, built many years ago in this style, was a most remarkable structure. It was erected by Pomaree II., who, on this occasion, showed all the zeal of a royal proselyte. The building was over seven hundred feet in length, and of a proportionate width; the vast ridge-pole was at intervals supported by a row of thirty-six cylindrical trunks of the bread-fruit tree; and, all round, the wall-plates rested on shafts of the palm. The roof--steeply inclining to within a man's height of the ground--was thatched with leaves, and the sides of the edifice were open. Thus spacious was the Royal Mission Chapel of Papoar.
At its dedication, three distinct sermons were, from different pulpits, preached to an immense concourse gathered from all parts of the island.
As the chapel was built by the king's command, nearly as great a multitude was employed in its construction as swarmed over the scaffolding of the great temple of the Jews. Much less time, however, was expended. In less than three weeks from planting the first post, the last tier of palmetto-leaves drooped from the eaves, and the work was done.
Apportioned to the several chiefs and their dependants, the labour, though immense, was greatly facilitated by everyone's bringing his post, or his rafter, or his pole strung with thatching, ready for instant use. The materials thus prepared being afterwards secured together by thongs, there was literally "neither hammer, nor axe, nor any tool of iron heard in the house while it was building."
But the most singular circumstance connected with this South Sea cathedral remains to be related. As well for the beauty as the advantages of such a site, the islanders love to dwell near the mountain streams; and so, a considerable brook, after descending from the hills and watering the valley, was bridged over in three places, and swept clean through the chapel.
Flowing waters! what an accompaniment to the songs of the sanctuary; mingling with them the praises and thanksgivings of the green solitudes inland.
But the chapel of the Polynesian Solomon has long since been deserted. Its thousand rafters of habiscus have decayed, and fallen to the ground; and now, the stream murmurs over them in its bed.
The present metropolitan church of Tahiti is very unlike the one just described. It is of moderate dimensions, boarded over, and painted white. It is furnished also with blinds, but no sashes; indeed, were it not for the rustic thatch, it would remind one of a plain chapel at home.
The woodwork was all done by foreign carpenters, of whom there are always several about Papeetee.
Within, its aspect is unique, and cannot fail to interest a stranger. The rafters overhead are bound round with fine matting of variegated dyes; and all along the ridge-pole these trappings hang pendent, in alternate bunches of tassels and deep fringes of stained grass. The floor is composed of rude planks. Regular aisles run between ranges of native settees, bottomed with crossed braids of the cocoa-nut fibre, and furnished with backs.
But the pulpit, made of a dark, lustrous wood, and standing at one end, is by far the most striking object. It is preposterously lofty; indeed, a capital bird's-eye view of the congregation ought to be had from its summit.
Nor does the church lack a gallery, which runs round on three sides, and is supported by columns of the cocoa-nut tree.
Its facings are here and there daubed over with a tawdry blue; and in other places (without the slightest regard to uniformity), patches of the same colour may be seen. In their ardour to decorate the sanctuary, the converts must have borrowed each a brush full of paint, and zealously daubed away at the first surface that offered.
As hinted, the general impression is extremely curious. Little light being admitted, and everything being of a dark colour, there is an indefinable Indian aspect of duskiness throughout. A strange, woody smell, also--more or less pervading every considerable edifice in Polynesia--is at once perceptible. It suggests the idea of worm-eaten idols packed away in some old lumber-room at hand.
For the most part, the congregation attending this church is composed of the better and wealthier orders--the chiefs and their retainers; in short, the rank and fashion of the island. This class is infinitely superior in personal beauty and general healthfulness to the "marenhoar," or common people; the latter having been more exposed to the worst and most debasing evils of foreign intercourse. On Sundays, the former are invariably arrayed in their finery; and thus appear to the best advantage. Nor are they driven to the chapel, as some of their inferiors are to other places of worship; on the contrary, capable of maintaining a handsome exterior, and possessing greater intelligence, they go voluntarily.
In respect of the woodland colonnade supporting its galleries, I called this chapel the Church of the Cocoa-nuts.
It was the first place for Christian worship in Polynesia that I had seen; and the impression upon entering during service was all the stronger. Majestic-looking chiefs whose fathers had hurled the battle-club, and old men who had seen sacrifices smoking upon the altars of Oro, were there. And hark! hanging from the bough of a bread-fruit tree without, a bell is being struck with a bar of iron by a native lad. In the same spot, the blast of the war-conch had often resounded. But to the proceedings within.
The place is well filled. Everywhere meets the eye the gay calico draperies worn on great occasions by the higher classes, and forming a strange contrast of patterns and colours. In some instances, these are so fashioned as to resemble as much as possible European garments. This is in excessively bad taste. Coats and pantaloons, too, are here and there seen; but they look awkwardly enough, and take away from the general effect.
But it is the array of countenances that most strikes you. Each is suffused with the peculiar animation of the Polynesians, when thus collected in large numbers. Every robe is rustling, every limb in motion, and an incessant buzzing going on throughout the assembly. The tumult is so great that the voice of the placid old missionary, who now rises, is almost inaudible. Some degree of silence is at length obtained through the exertions of half-a-dozen strapping fellows, in white shirts and no pantaloons. Running in among the settees, they are at great pains to inculcate the impropriety of making a noise by creating a most unnecessary racket themselves. This part of the service was quite comical.
There is a most interesting Sabbath School connected with the church; and the scholars, a vivacious, mischievous set, were in one part of the gallery. I was amused by a party in a corner. The teacher sat at one end of the bench, with a meek little fellow by his side. When the others were disorderly, this young martyr received a rap; intended, probably, as a sample of what the rest might expect, if they didn't amend.
Standing in the body of the church, and leaning against a pillar, was an old man, in appearance very different from others of his countrymen. He wore nothing but a coarse, scant mantle of faded tappa; and from his staring, bewildered manner, I set him down as an aged bumpkin from the interior, unaccustomed to the strange sights and sounds of the metropolis. This old worthy was sharply reprimanded for standing up, and thus intercepting the view of those behind; but not comprehending exactly what was said to him, one of the white-liveried gentry made no ceremony of grasping him by the shoulders, and fairly crushing him down into a seat.
During all this, the old missionary in the pulpit--as well as his associates beneath, never ventured to interfere--leaving everything to native management. With South Sea islanders, assembled in any numbers, there is no other way of getting along.
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45
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MISSIONARY'S SERMON; WITH SOME REFLECTIONS
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SOME degree of order at length restored, the service was continued, by singing. The choir was composed of twelve or fifteen ladies of the mission, occupying a long bench to the left of the pulpit. Almost the entire congregation joined in.
The first air fairly startled me; it was the brave tune of Old Hundred, adapted to a Tahitian psalm. After the graceless scenes I had recently passed through, this circumstance, with all its accessories, moved me forcibly.
Many voices around were of great sweetness and compass. The singers, also, seemed to enjoy themselves mightily; some of them pausing, now and then, and looking round, as if to realize the scene more fully. In truth, they sang right joyously, despite the solemnity of the tune.
The Tahitians have much natural talent for singing; and, on all occasions, are exceedingly fond of it. I have often heard a stave or two of psalmody, hummed over by rakish young fellows, like a snatch from an opera.
With respect to singing, as in most other matters, the Tahitians widely differ from the people of the Sandwich Islands; where the parochial flocks may be said rather to Heat than sing.
The psalm concluded, a prayer followed. Very considerately, the good old missionary made it short; for the congregation became fidgety and inattentive as soon as it commenced.
A chapter of the Tahitian Bible was now read; a text selected; and the sermon began. It was listened to with more attention than I had anticipated.
Having been informed, from various sources, that the discourses of the missionaries, being calculated to engage the attention of their simple auditors, were, naturally enough, of a rather amusing description to strangers; in short, that they had much to say about steamboats, lord mayor's coaches, and the way fires are put out in London, I had taken care to provide myself with a good interpreter, in the person of an intelligent Hawaiian sailor, whose acquaintance I had made.
"Now, Jack," said I, before entering, "hear every word, and tell me what you can as the missionary goes on."
Jack's was not, perhaps, a critical version of the discourse; and at the time, I took no notes of what he said. Nevertheless, I will here venture to give what I remember of it; and, as far as possible, in Jack's phraseology, so as to lose nothing by a double translation.
"Good friends, I glad to see you; and I very well like to have some talk with you to-day. Good friends, very bad times in Tahiti; it make me weep. Pomaree is gone--the island no more yours, but the Wee-wees' (French). Wicked priests here, too; and wicked idols in woman's clothes, and brass chains.
"Good friends, no you speak, or look at them--but I know you won't--they belong to a set of robbers--the wicked Wee-wees. Soon these bad men be made to go very quick. Beretanee ships of thunder come and away they go. But no more 'bout this now. I speak more by by.
"Good friends, many whale-ships here now; and many bad men come in 'em. No good sailors living--that you know very well. They come here, 'cause so bad they no keep 'em home.
"My good little girls, no run after sailors--no go where they go; they harm you. Where they come from, no good people talk to 'em--just like dogs. Here, they talk to Pomaree, and drink arva with great Poofai.
"Good friends, this very small island, but very wicked, and very poor; these two go together. Why Beretanee so great? Because that island good island, and send mickonaree to poor kannaka In Beretanee, every man rich: plenty things to buy; and plenty things to sell. Houses bigger than Pomaree's, and more grand. Everybody, too, ride about in coaches, bigger than hers; and wear fine tappa every day. (Several luxurious appliances of civilization were here enumerated, and described.)
"Good friends, little to eat left at my house. Schooner from Sydney no bring bag of flour: and kannaka no bring pig and fruit enough. Mickonaree do great deal for kannaka; kannaka do little for mickonaree. So, good friends, weave plenty of cocoa-nut baskets, fill 'em, and bring 'em to-morrow."
Such was the substance of great part of this discourse; and, whatever may be thought of it, it was specially adapted to the minds of the islanders: who are susceptible to no impressions, except from things palpable, or novel and striking. To them, a dry sermon would be dry indeed.
The Tahitians can hardly ever be said to reflect: they are all impulse; and so, instead of expounding dogmas, the missionaries give them the large type, pleasing cuts, and short and easy lessons of the primer. Hence, anything like a permanent religious impression is seldom or never produced.
In fact, there is, perhaps, no race upon earth, less disposed, by nature, to the monitions of Christianity, than the people of the South Seas. And this assertion is made with full knowledge of what is called the "Great Revival at the Sandwich Islands," about the year 1836; when several thousands were, in the course of a few weeks, admitted into the bosom of the Church. But this result was brought about by no sober moral convictions; as an almost instantaneous relapse into every kind of licentiousness soon after testified. It was the legitimate effect of a morbid feeling, engendered by the sense of severe physical wants, preying upon minds excessively prone to superstition; and, by fanatical preaching, inflamed into the belief that the gods of the missionaries were taking vengeance upon the wickedness of the land.
It is a noteworthy fact that those very traits in the Tahitians, which induced the London Missionary Society to regard them as the most promising subjects for conversion, and which led, moreover, to the selection of their island as the very first field for missionary labour, eventually proved the most serious obstruction. An air of softness in their manners, great apparent ingenuousness and docility, at first misled; but these were the mere accompaniments of an indolence, bodily and mental; a constitutional voluptuousness; and an aversion to the least restraint; which, however fitted for the luxurious state of nature, in the tropics, are the greatest possible hindrances to the strict moralities of Christianity.
Added to all this is a quality inherent in Polynesians; and more akin to hypocrisy than anything else. It leads them to assume the most passionate interest in matters for which they really feel little or none whatever; but in which, those whose power they dread, or whose favour they court, they believe to be at all affected. Thus, in their heathen state, the Sandwich Islanders actually knocked out their teeth, tore their hair, and mangled their bodies with shells, to testify their inconsolable grief at the demise of a high chief, or member of the royal family. And yet, Vancouver relates that, on such an occasion, upon which he happened to be present, those apparently the most abandoned to their feelings, immediately assumed the utmost light-heartedness on receiving the present of a penny whistle, or a Dutch looking-glass. Similar instances, also, have come under my own observation.
The following is an illustration of the trait alluded to, as occasionally manifested among the converted Polynesians.
At one of the Society Islands--Baiatair, I believe--the natives, for special reasons, desired to commend themselves particularly to the favour of the missionaries. Accordingly, during divine service, many of them behaved in a manner, otherwise unaccountable, and precisely similar to their behaviour as heathens. They pretended to be wrought up to madness by the preaching which they heard. They rolled their eyes; foamed at the mouth; fell down in fits; and so were carried home. Yet, strange to relate, all this was deemed the evidence of the power of the Most High; and, as such, was heralded abroad.
But, to return to the Church of the Cocoa-nuts. The blessing pronounced, the congregation disperse; enlivening the Broom Road with their waving mantles. On either hand, they disappear down the shaded pathways, which lead off from the main route, conducting to hamlets in the groves, or to the little marine villas upon the beach. There is considerable hilarity; and you would suppose them just from an old-fashioned "hevar," or jolly heathen dance. Those who carry Bibles swing them carelessly from their arms by cords of sinnate.
The Sabbath is no ordinary day with the Tahitians. So far as doing any work is concerned, it is scrupulously observed. The canoes are hauled up on the beach; the nets are spread to dry. Passing by the hen-coop huts on the roadside, you find their occupants idle, as usual; but less disposed to gossip. After service, repose broods over the whole island; the valleys reaching inland look stiller than ever.
In short, it is Sunday--their "Taboo Day"; the very word formerly expressing the sacredness of their pagan observances now proclaiming the sanctity of the Christian Sabbath.
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46
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SOMETHING ABOUT THE KANNAKIPPERS
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A WORTHY young man, formerly a friend of mine (I speak of Kooloo with all possible courtesy, since after our intimacy there would be an impropriety in doing otherwise)--this worthy youth, having some genteel notions of retirement, dwelt in a "maroo boro," or bread-fruit shade, a pretty nook in a wood, midway between the Calabooza Beretanee and the Church of Cocoa-nuts. Hence, at the latter place, he was one of the most regular worshippers.
Kooloo was a blade. Standing up in the congregation in all the bravery of a striped calico shirt, with the skirts rakishly adjusted over a pair of white sailor trousers, and hair well anointed with cocoa-nut oil, he ogled the ladies with an air of supreme satisfaction. Nor were his glances unreturned.
But such looks as the Tahitian belles cast at each other: frequently turning up their noses at the advent of a new cotton mantle recently imported in the chest of some amorous sailor. Upon one occasion, I observed a group of young girls, in tunics of course, soiled sheeting, disdainfully pointing at a damsel in a flaming red one. "Oee tootai owree!" said they with ineffable scorn, "itai maitai!" (You are a good-for-nothing huzzy, no better than you should be).
Now, Kooloo communed with the church; so did all these censorious young ladies. Yet after eating bread-fruit at the Eucharist, I knew several of them, the same night, to be guilty of some sad derelictions.
Puzzled by these things, I resolved to find out, if possible, what ideas, if any, they entertained of religion; but as one's spiritual concerns are rather delicate for a stranger to meddle with, I went to work as adroitly as I could.
Farnow, an old native who had recently retired from active pursuits, having thrown up the business of being a sort of running footman to the queen, had settled down in a snug little retreat, not fifty rods from Captain Bob's. His selecting our vicinity for his residence may have been with some view to the advantages it afforded for introducing his three daughters into polite circles. At any rate, not averse to receiving the attentions of so devoted a gallant as the doctor, the sisters (communicants, be it remembered) kindly extended to him free permission to visit them sociably whenever he pleased.
We dropped in one evening, and found the ladies at home. My long friend engaged his favourites, the two younger girls, at the game of "Now," or hunting a stone under three piles of tappa. For myself, I lounged on a mat with Ideea the eldest, dallying with her grass fan, and improving my knowledge of Tahitian.
The occasion was well adapted to my purpose, and I began.
"Ah, Ideea, mickonaree oee?" the same as drawling out--"By the bye, Miss Ideea, do you belong to the church?"
"Yes, me mickonaree," was the reply.
But the assertion was at once qualified by certain, reservations; so curious that I cannot forbear their relation.
"Mickonaree ena" (church member here), exclaimed she, laying her hand upon her mouth, and a strong emphasis on the adverb. In the same way, and with similar exclamations, she touched her eyes and hands. This done, her whole air changed in an instant; and she gave me to understand, by unmistakable gestures, that in certain other respects she was not exactly a "mickonaree." In short, Ideea was "A sad good Christian at the heart--A very heathen in the carnal part."
The explanation terminated in a burst of laughter, in which all three sisters joined; and for fear of looking silly, the doctor and myself. As soon as good-breeding would permit, we took leave.
The hypocrisy in matters of religion, so apparent in all Polynesian converts, is most injudiciously nourished in Tahiti by a zealous and in many cases, a coercive superintendence over their spiritual well-being. But it is only manifested with respect to the common people, their superiors being exempted.
On Sunday mornings, when the prospect is rather small for a full house in the minor churches, a parcel of fellows are actually sent out with ratans into the highways and byways as whippers-in of the congregation. This is a sober fact.
These worthies constitute a religious police; and you always know them by the great white diapers they wear. On week days they are quite as busy as on Sundays; to the great terror of the inhabitants, going all over the island, and spying out the wickedness thereof.
Moreover, they are the collectors of fines--levied generally in grass mats--for obstinate non-attendance upon divine worship, and other offences amenable to the ecclesiastical judicature of the missionaries.
Old Bob called these fellows "kannakippers" a corruption, I fancy, of our word constable.
He bore them a bitter grudge; and one day, drawing near home, and learning that two of them were just then making a domiciliary visit at his house, he ran behind a bush; and as they came forth, two green bread-fruit from a hand unseen took them each between the shoulders. The sailors in the Calabooza were witnesses to this, as well as several natives; who, when the intruders were out of sight, applauded Captain Bob's spirit in no measured terms; the ladies present vehemently joining in. Indeed, the kannakippers have no greater enemies than the latter. And no wonder: the impertinent varlets, popping into their houses at all hours, are forever prying into their peccadilloes.
Kooloo, who at times was patriotic and pensive, and mourned the evils under which his country was groaning, frequently inveighed against the statute which thus authorized an utter stranger to interfere with domestic arrangements. He himself--quite a ladies' man--had often been annoyed thereby. He considered the kannakippers a bore.
Beside their confounded inquisitiveness, they add insult to injury, by making a point of dining out every day at some hut within the limits of their jurisdiction. As for the gentleman of the house, his meek endurance of these things is amazing. But "good easy man," there is nothing for him but to be as hospitable as possible.
These gentry are indefatigable. At the dead of night prowling round the houses, and in the daytime hunting amorous couples in the groves. Yet in one instance the chase completely baffled them.
It was thus.
Several weeks previous to our arrival at the island, someone's husband and another person's wife, having taken a mutual fancy for each other, went out for a walk. The alarm was raised, and with hue and cry they were pursued; but nothing was seen of them again until the lapse of some ninety days; when we were called out from the Calabooza to behold a great mob inclosing the lovers, and escorting them for trial to the village.
Their appearance was most singular. The girdle excepted, they were quite naked; their hair was long, burned yellow at the ends, and entangled with burrs; and their bodies scratched and scarred in all directions. It seems that, acting upon the "love in a cottage" principle, they had gone right into the interior; and throwing up a hut in an uninhabited valley, had lived there, until in an unlucky stroll they were observed and captured.
They were subsequently condemned to make one hundred fathoms of Broom Road--a six months' work, if not more.
Often, when seated in a house, conversing quietly with its inmates, I have known them betray the greatest confusion at the sudden announcement of a kannakipper's being in sight. To be reported by one of these officials as a "Tootai Owree" (in general, signifying a bad person or disbeliever in Christianity), is as much dreaded as the forefinger of Titus Gates was, levelled at an alleged papist.
But the islanders take a sly revenge upon them. Upon entering a dwelling, the kannakippers oftentimes volunteer a pharisaical prayer-meeting: hence, they go in secret by the name of "Boora-Artuas," literally, "Pray-to-Gods."
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47
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HOW THEY DRESS IN TAHITI
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EXCEPT where the employment of making "tappa" is inflicted as a punishment, the echoes of the cloth-mallet have long since died away in the listless valleys of Tahiti. Formerly, the girls spent their mornings like ladies at their tambour frames; now, they are lounged away in almost utter indolence. True, most of them make their own garments; but this comprises but a stitch or two; the ladies of the mission, by the bye, being entitled to the credit of teaching them to sew.
The "kihee whihenee," or petticoat, is a mere breadth of white cotton, or calico; loosely enveloping the person, from the waist to the feet. Fastened simply by a single tuck, or by twisting the upper corners together, this garment frequently becomes disordered; thus affording an opportunity of being coquettishly adjusted. Over the "kihee," they wear a sort of gown, open in front, very loose, and as negligent as you please. The ladies here never dress for dinner.
But what shall be said of those horrid hats! Fancy a bunch of straw, plaited into the shape of a coal-scuttle, and stuck, bolt upright, on the crown; with a yard or two of red ribbon flying about like kite-strings. Milliners of Paris, what would ye say to them! Though made by the natives, they are said to have been first contrived and recommended by the missionaries' wives; a report which, I really trust, is nothing but scandal.
Curious to relate, these things for the head are esteemed exceedingly becoming. The braiding of the straw is one of the few employments of the higher classes; all of which but minister to the silliest vanity.
The young girls, however, wholly eschew the hats; leaving those dowdy old souls, their mothers, to make frights of themselves.
As for the men, those who aspire to European garments seem to have no perception of the relation subsisting between the various parts of a gentleman's costume. To the wearer of a coat, for instance, pantaloons are by no means indispensable; and a bell-crowned hat and a girdle are full dress. The young sailor, for whom Kooloo deserted me, presented him with a shaggy old pea-jacket; and with this buttoned up to his chin, under a tropical sun, he promenaded the Broom Road, quite elated. Doctor Long Ghost, who saw him thus, ran away with the idea that he was under medical treatment at the time--in the act of taking, what the quacks call, a "sweat."
A bachelor friend of Captain Bob rejoiced in the possession of a full European suit; in which he often stormed the ladies' hearts. Having a military leaning, he ornamented the coat with a great scarlet patch on the breast; and mounted it also, here and there, with several regimental buttons, slyly cut from the uniform of a parcel of drunken marines sent ashore on a holiday from a man-of-war. But, in spite of the ornaments, the dress was not exactly the thing. From the tightness of the cloth across the shoulders, his elbows projected from his sides, like an ungainly rider's; and his ponderous legs were jammed so hard into his slim, nether garments that the threads of every seam showed; and, at every step, you looked for a catastrophe.
In general, there seems to be no settled style of dressing among the males; they wear anything they can get; in some cases, awkwardly modifying the fashions of their fathers so as to accord with their own altered views of what is becoming.
But ridiculous as many of them now appear, in foreign habiliments, the Tahitians presented a far different appearance in the original national costume; which was graceful in the extreme, modest to all but the prudish, and peculiarly adapted to the climate. But the short kilts of dyed tappa, the tasselled maroes, and other articles formerly worn, are, at the present day, prohibited by law as indecorous. For what reason necklaces and garlands of flowers, among the women, are also forbidden, I never could learn; but, it is said, that they were associated, in some way, with a forgotten heathen observance.
Many pleasant, and, seemingly, innocent sports and pastimes, are likewise interdicted. In old times, there were several athletic games practised, such as wrestling, foot-racing, throwing the javelin, and archery. In all these they greatly excelled; and, for some, splendid festivals were instituted. Among their everyday amusements were dancing, tossing the football, kite-flying, flute-playing, and singing traditional ballads; now, all punishable offences; though most of them have been so long in disuse that they are nearly forgotten.
In the same way, the "Opio," or festive harvest-home of the breadfruit, has been suppressed; though, as described to me by Captain Bob, it seemed wholly free from any immoral tendency. Against tattooing, of any kind, there is a severe law.
That this abolition of their national amusements and customs was not willingly acquiesced in, is shown in the frequent violation of many of the statutes inhibiting them; and, especially, in the frequency with which their "hevars," or dances, are practised in secret.
Doubtless, in thus denationalizing the Tahitians, as it were, the missionaries were prompted by a sincere desire for good; but the effect has been lamentable. Supplied with no amusements in place of those forbidden, the Tahitians, who require more recreation than other people, have sunk into a listlessness, or indulge in sensualities, a hundred times more pernicious than all the games ever celebrated in the Temple of Tanee.
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48
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TAHITI AS IT IS
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AS IN the last few chapters, several matters connected with the general condition of the natives have been incidentally touched upon, it may be well not to leave so important a subject in a state calculated to convey erroneous impressions. Let us bestow upon it, therefore, something more than a mere cursory glance.
But in the first place, let it be distinctly understood that, in all I have to say upon this subject, both here and elsewhere, I mean no harm to the missionaries nor their cause; I merely desire to set forth things as they actually exist.
Of the results which have flowed from the intercourse of foreigners with the Polynesians, including the attempts to civilize and Christianize them by the missionaries, Tahiti, on many accounts, is obviously the fairest practical example. Indeed, it may now be asserted that the experiment of Christianizing the Tahitians, and improving their social condition by the introduction of foreign customs, has been fully tried. The present generation have grown up under the auspices of their religious instructors. And although it may be urged that the labours of the latter have at times been more or less obstructed by unprincipled foreigners, still, this in no wise renders Tahiti any the less a fair illustration; for, with obstacles like these, the missionaries in Polynesia must always, and everywhere struggle.
Nearly sixty years have elapsed since the Tahitian mission was started; and, during this period, it has received the unceasing prayers and contributions of its friends abroad. Nor has any enterprise of the kind called forth more devotion on the part of those directly employed in it.
It matters not that the earlier labourers in the work, although strictly conscientious, were, as a class, ignorant, and, in many cases, deplorably bigoted: such traits have, in some degree, characterized the pioneers of all faiths. And although in zeal and disinterestedness the missionaries now on the island are, perhaps, inferior to their predecessors, they have, nevertheless, in their own way at least, laboured hard to make a Christian people of their charge.
Let us now glance at the most obvious changes wrought in their condition.
The entire system of idolatry has been done away; together with several barbarous practices engrafted thereon. But this result is not so much to be ascribed to the missionaries, as to the civilizing effects of a long and constant intercourse with whites of all nations; to whom, for many years, Tahiti has been one of the principal places of resort in the South Seas. At the Sandwich Islands, the potent institution of the Taboo, together with the entire paganism of the land, was utterly abolished by a voluntary act of the natives some time previous to the arrival of the first missionaries among them.
The next most striking change in the Tahitians is this. From the permanent residence among them of influential and respectable foreigners, as well as from the frequent visits of ships-of-war, recognizing the nationality of the island, its inhabitants are no longer deemed fit subjects for the atrocities practised upon mere savages; and hence, secure from retaliation, vessels of all kinds now enter their harbours with perfect safety.
But let us consider what results are directly ascribable to the missionaries alone.
In all cases, they have striven hard to mitigate the evils resulting from the commerce with the whites in general. Such attempts, however, have been rather injudicious, and often ineffectual: in truth, a barrier almost insurmountable is presented in the dispositions of the people themselves. Still, in this respect, the morality of the islanders is, upon the whole, improved by the presence of the missionaries.
But the greatest achievement of the latter, and one which in itself is most hopeful and gratifying, is that they have translated the entire Bible into the language of the island; and I have myself known several who were able to read it with facility. They have also established churches, and schools for both children and adults; the latter, I regret to say, are now much neglected: which must be ascribed, in a great measure, to the disorders growing out of the proceedings of the French.
It were unnecessary here to enter diffusely into matters connected with the internal government of the Tahitian churches and schools. Nor, upon this head, is my information copious enough to warrant me in presenting details. But we do not need them. We are merely considering general results, as made apparent in the moral and religious condition of the island at large.
Upon a subject like this, however, it would be altogether too assuming for a single individual to decide; and so, in place of my own random observations, which may be found elsewhere, I will here present those of several known authors, made under various circumstances, at different periods, and down to a comparative late date. A few very brief extracts will enable the reader to mark for himself what progressive improvement, if any, has taken place.
Nor must it be overlooked that, of these authorities, the two first in order are largely quoted by the Right Reverend M. Kussell, in a work composed for the express purpose of imparting information on the subject of Christian missions in Polynesia. And he frankly acknowledges, moreover, that they are such as "cannot fail to have great weight with the public."
After alluding to the manifold evils entailed upon the natives by foreigners, and their singularly inert condition; and after somewhat too severely denouncing the undeniable errors of the mission, Kotzebue, the Russian navigator, says, "A religion like this, which forbids every innocent pleasure, and cramps or annihilates every mental power, is a libel on the divine founder of Christianity. It is true that the religion of the missionaries has, with a great deal of evil, effected some good. It has restrained the vices of theft and incontinence; but it has given birth to ignorance, hypocrisy, and a hatred of all other modes of faith, which was once foreign to the open and benevolent character of the Tahitian."
Captain Beechy says that, while at Tahiti, he saw scenes "which must have convinced the great sceptic of the thoroughly immoral condition of the people, and which would force him to conclude, as Turnbull did, many years previous, that their intercourse with the Europeans had tended to debase, rather than exalt their condition."
About the year 1834, Daniel Wheeler, an honest-hearted Quaker, prompted by motives of the purest philanthropy, visited, in a vessel of his own, most of the missionary settlements in the South Seas. He remained some time at Tahiti; receiving the hospitalities of the missionaries there, and, from time to time, exhorting the natives.
After bewailing their social condition, he frankly says of their religious state, "Certainly, appearances are unpromising; and however unwilling to adopt such a conclusion, there is reason to apprehend that Christian principle is a great rarity."
Such, then, is the testimony of good and unbiassed men, who have been upon the spot; but, how comes it to differ so widely from impressions of others at home? Simply thus: instead of estimating the result of missionary labours by the number of heathens who have actually been made to understand and practise (in some measure at least) the precepts of Christianity, this result has been unwarrantably inferred from the number of those who, without any understanding of these things, have in any way been induced to abandon idolatry and conform to certain outward observances.
By authority of some kind or other, exerted upon the natives through their chiefs, and prompted by the hope of some worldly benefit to the latter, and not by appeals to the reason, have conversions in Polynesia been in most cases brought about.
Even in one or two instances--so often held up as wonderful examples of divine power--where the natives have impulsively burned their idols, and rushed to the waters of baptism, the very suddenness of the change has but indicated its unsoundness. Williams, the martyr of Erromanga, relates an instance where the inhabitants of an island professing Christianity voluntarily assembled, and solemnly revived all their heathen customs.
All the world over, facts are more eloquent than words; the following will show in what estimation the missionaries themselves hold the present state of Christianity and morals among the converted Polynesians.
On the island of Imeeo (attached to the Tahitian mission) is a seminary under the charge of the Rev. Mr. Simpson and wife, for the education of the children of the missionaries, exclusively. Sent home--in many cases, at a very early age--to finish their education, the pupils here are taught nothing but the rudiments of knowledge; nothing more than may be learned in the native schools. Notwithstanding this, the two races are kept as far as possible from associating; the avowed reason being to preserve the young whites from moral contamination. The better to insure this end, every effort is made to prevent them from acquiring the native language.
They went even further at the Sandwich Islands; where, a few years ago, a playground for the children of the missionaries was inclosed with a fence many feet high, the more effectually to exclude the wicked little Hawaiians.
And yet, strange as it may seem, the depravity among the Polynesians, which renders precautions like these necessary, was in a measure unknown before their intercourse with the whites. The excellent Captain Wilson, who took the first missionaries out to Tahiti, affirms that the people of that island had, in many things, "more refined ideas of decency than ourselves." Vancouver, also, has some noteworthy ideas on this subject, respecting the Sandwich Islanders.
That the immorality alluded to is continually increasing is plainly shown in the numerous, severe, and perpetually violated laws against licentiousness of all kinds in both groups of islands.
It is hardly to be expected that the missionaries would send home accounts of this state of things. Hence, Captain Beechy, in alluding to the "Polynesian Researches" of Ellis, says that the author has impressed his readers with a far more elevated idea of the moral condition of the Tahitians, and the degree of civilization to which they have attained, than they deserve; or, at least, than the facts which came under his observation authorized. He then goes on to say that, in his intercourse with the islanders, "they had no fear of him, and consequently acted from the impulse of their natural feeling; so that he was the better enabled to obtain a correct knowledge of their real disposition and habits."
Prom my own familiar intercourse with the natives, this last reflection still more forcibly applies to myself.
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{
"id": "4045"
}
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49
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SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED
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WE have glanced at their moral and religious condition; let us see how it is with them socially, and in other respects.
It has been said that the only way to civilize a people is to form in them habits of industry. Judged by this principle, the Tahitians are less civilized now than formerly. True, their constitutional indolence is excessive; but surely, if the spirit of Christianity is among them, so unchristian a vice ought to be, at least, partially remedied. But the reverse is the fact. Instead of acquiring new occupations, old ones have been discontinued.
As previously remarked, the manufacture of tappa is nearly obsolete in many parts of the island. So, too, with that of the native tools and domestic utensils; very few of which are now fabricated, since the superiority of European wares has been made so evident.
This, however, would be all very well were the natives to apply themselves to such occupations as would enable them to supply the few articles they need. But they are far from doing so; and the majority being unable to obtain European substitutes for many things before made by themselves, the inevitable consequence is seen in the present wretched and destitute mode of life among the common people. To me so recently from a primitive valley of the Marquesas, the aspect of most of the dwellings of the poorer Tahitians, and their general habits, seemed anything but tidy; nor could I avoid a comparison, immeasurably to the disadvantage of these partially civilized islanders.
In Tahiti, the people have nothing to do; and idleness, everywhere, is the parent of vice. "There is scarcely anything," says the good old Quaker Wheeler, "so striking, or pitiable, as their aimless, nerveless mode of spending life."
Attempts have repeatedly been made to rouse them from their sluggishness; but in vain. Several years ago, the cultivation of cotton was introduced; and, with their usual love of novelty, they went to work with great alacrity; but the interest excited quickly subsided, and now, not a pound of the article is raised.
About the same time, machinery for weaving was sent out from London; and a factory was started at Afrehitoo, in Imeeo. The whiz of the wheels and spindles brought in volunteers from all quarters, who deemed it a privilege to be admitted to work: yet, in six months, not a boy could be hired; and the machinery was knocked down, and packed off to Sydney.
It was the same way with the cultivation of the sugar-cane, a plant indigenous to the island; peculiarly fitted to the soil and climate, and of so excellent a quality that Bligh took slips of it to the West Indies. All the plantations went on famously for a while; the natives swarming in the fields like ants, and making a prodigious stir. What few plantations now remain are owned and worked by whites; who would rather pay a drunken sailor eighteen or twenty Spanish dollars a month, than hire a sober native for his "fish and tarro."
It is well worthy remark here, that every evidence of civilization among the South Sea Islands directly pertains to foreigners; though the fact of such evidence existing at all is usually urged as a proof of the elevated condition of the natives. Thus, at Honolulu, the capital of the Sandwich Islands, there are fine dwelling-houses, several hotels, and barber-shops, ay, even billiard-rooms; but all these are owned and used, be it observed, by whites. There are tailors, and blacksmiths, and carpenters also; but not one of them is a native.
The fact is, that the mechanical and agricultural employment of civilized life require a kind of exertion altogether too steady and sustained to agree with an indolent people like the Polynesians. Calculated for a state of nature, in a climate providentially adapted to it, they are unfit for any other. Nay, as a race, they cannot otherwise long exist.
The following statement speaks for itself.
About the year 1777, Captain Cook estimated the population of Tahiti at about two hundred thousand. By a regular census, taken some four or five years ago, it was found to be only nine thousand. This amazing decrease not only shows the malignancy of the evils necessary to produce it; but, from the fact, the inference unavoidably follows that all the wars, child murders, and other depopulating causes, alleged to have existed in former times, were nothing in comparison to them.
These evils, of course, are solely of foreign origin. To say nothing of the effects of drunkenness, the occasional inroads of the small-pox, and other things which might be mentioned, it is sufficient to allude to a virulent disease which now taints the blood of at least two-thirds of the common people of the island; and, in some form or other, is transmitted from father to son.
Their first horror and consternation at the earlier ravages of this scourge were pitiable in the extreme. The very name bestowed upon it is a combination of all that is horrid and unmentionable to a civilized being.
Distracted with their sufferings, they brought forth their sick before the missionaries, when they were preaching, and cried out, "Lies, lies! you tell us of salvation; and, behold, we are dying. We want no other salvation than to live in this world. Where are there any saved through your speech? Pomaree is dead; and we are all dying with your cursed diseases. When will you give over?"
At present, the virulence of the disorder, in individual cases, has somewhat abated; but the poison is only the more widely diffused.
"How dreadful and appalling," breaks forth old Wheeler, "the consideration that the intercourse of distant nations should have entailed upon these poor, untutored islanders a curse unprecedented, and unheard of, in the annals of history."
In view of these things, who can remain blind to the fact that, so far as mere temporal felicity is concerned, the Tahitians are far worse off now, than formerly; and although their circumstances, upon the whole, are bettered by the presence of the missionaries, the benefits conferred by the latter become utterly insignificant when confronted with the vast preponderance of evil brought about by other means.
Their prospects are hopeless. Nor can the most devoted efforts now exempt them from furnishing a marked illustration of a principle which history has always exemplified. Years ago brought to a stand, where all that is corrupt in barbarism and civilization unite, to the exclusion of the virtues of either state; like other uncivilized beings, brought into contact with Europeans, they must here remain stationary until utterly extinct.
The islanders themselves are mournfully watching their doom.
Several years since, Pomaree II. said to Tyreman and Bennet, the deputies of the London Missionary Society, "You have come to see me at a very bad time. Your ancestors came in the time of men, when Tahiti was inhabited: you are come to behold just the remnant of my people."
Of like import was the prediction of Teearmoar, the high-priest of Paree; who lived over a hundred years ago. I have frequently heard it chanted, in a low, sad tone, by aged Tahitiana:-- "A harree ta fow, A toro ta farraro, A now ta tararta."
"The palm-tree shall grow, The coral shall spread, But man shall cease."
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{
"id": "4045"
}
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50
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SOMETHING HAPPENS TO LONG GHOST
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WE will now return to the narrative.
The day before the Julia sailed, Dr. Johnson paid his last call. He was not quite so bland as usual. All he wanted was the men's names to a paper, certifying to their having received from him sundry medicaments therein mentioned. This voucher, endorsed by Captain Guy, secured his pay. But he would not have obtained for it the sailors' signs manual, had either the doctor or myself been present at the time.
Now, my long friend wasted no love upon Johnson; but, for reasons of his own, hated him heartily: all the same thing in one sense; for either passion argues an object deserving thereof. And so, to be hated cordially, is only a left-handed compliment; which shows how foolish it is to be bitter against anyone.
For my own part, I merely felt a cool, purely incidental, and passive contempt for Johnson, as a selfish, mercenary apothecary, and hence, I often remonstrated with Long Ghost when he flew out against him, and heaped upon him all manner of scurrilous epithets. In his professional brother's presence, however, he never acted thus; maintaining an amiable exterior, to help along the jokes which were played.
I am now going to tell another story in which my long friend figures with the physician: I do not wish to bring one or the other of them too often upon the stage; but as the thing actually happened, I must relate it.
A few days after Johnson presented his bill, as above mentioned, the doctor expressed to me his regret that, although he (Johnson) 'had apparently been played off for our entertainment, yet, nevertheless, he had made money out of the transaction. And I wonder, added the doctor, if that now he cannot expect to receive any further pay, he could be induced to call again.
By a curious coincidence, not five minutes after making this observation, Doctor Long Ghost himself fell down in an unaccountable fit; and without asking anybody's leave, Captain Bob, who was by, at once dispatched a boy, hot foot, for Johnson.
Meanwhile, we carried him into the Calabooza; and the natives, who assembled in numbers, suggested various modes of treatment. One rather energetic practitioner was for holding the patient by the shoulders, while somebody tugged at his feet. This resuscitatory operation was called the "Potata"; but thinking our long comrade sufficiently lengthy without additional stretching, we declined potataing him.
Presently the physician was spied coming along the Broom Road at a great rate, and so absorbed in the business of locomotion, that he heeded not the imprudence of being in a hurry in a tropical climate. He was in a profuse perspiration; which must have been owing to the warmth of his feelings, notwithstanding we had supposed him a man of no heart. But his benevolent haste upon this occasion was subsequently accounted for: it merely arose from professional curiosity to behold a case most unusual in his Polynesian practice. Now, under certain circumstances, sailors, generally so frolicsome, are exceedingly particular in having everything conducted with the strictest propriety. Accordingly, they deputed me, as his intimate friend, to sit at Long Ghost's head, so as to be ready to officiate as "spokesman" and answer all questions propounded, the rest to keep silent.
"What's the matter?" exclaimed Johnson, out of breath, and bursting into the Calabooza: "how did it happen? --speak quick!" and he looked at Long Ghost.
I told him how the fit came on.
"Singular"--he observed--"very: good enough pulse;" and he let go of it, and placed his hand upon the heart.
"But what's all that frothing at the mouth?" he continued; "and bless me! look at the abdomen!"
The region thus denominated exhibited the most unaccountable symptoms. A low, rumbling sound was heard; and a sort of undulation was discernible beneath the thin cotton frock.
"Colic, sir?" suggested a bystander.
"Colic be hanged!" shouted the physician; "who ever heard of anybody in a trance of the colic?"
During this, the patient lay upon his back, stark and straight, giving no signs of life except those above mentioned.
"I'll bleed him!" cried Johnson at last--"run for a calabash, one of you!"
"Life ho!" here sung out Navy Bob, as if he had just spied a sail.
"What under the sun's the matter with him!" cried the physician, starting at the appearance of the mouth, which had jerked to one side, and there remained fixed.
"Pr'aps it's St. Witus's hornpipe," suggested Bob.
"Hold the calabash!" --and the lancet was out in a moment.
But before the deed could be done, the face became natural;--a sigh was heaved;--the eyelids quivered, opened, closed; and Long Ghost, twitching all over, rolled on his side, and breathed audibly. By degrees, he became sufficiently recovered to speak.
After trying to get something coherent out of him, Johnson withdrew; evidently disappointed in the scientific interest of the case. Soon after his departure, the doctor sat up; and upon being asked what upon earth ailed him, shook his head mysteriously. He then deplored the hardship of being an invalid in such a place, where there was not the slightest provision for his comfort. This awakened the compassion of our good old keeper, who offered to send him to a place where he would be better cared for. Long Ghost acquiesced; and being at once mounted upon the shoulders of four of Captain Bob's men, was marched off in state, like the Grand Lama of Thibet.
Now, I do not pretend to account for his remarkable swoon; but his reason for suffering himself to be thus removed from the Calabooza was strongly suspected to be nothing more than a desire to insure more regularity in his dinner-hour; hoping that the benevolent native to whom he was going would set a good table.
The next morning, we were all envying his fortune; when, of a sudden, he bolted in upon us, looking decidedly out of humour.
"Hang it!" he cried; "I'm worse off than ever; let me have some breakfast!" We lowered our slender bag of ship-stores from a rafter, and handed him a biscuit. While this was being munched, he went on and told us his story.
"After leaving here, they trotted me back into a valley, and left me in a hut, where an old woman lived by herself. This must be the nurse, thought I; and so I asked her to kill a pig, and bake it; for I felt my appetite returning. 'Ha! Hal--oee mattee--mattee nuee'--(no, no; you too sick). 'The devil mattee ye,' said I--'give me something to eat!' But nothing could be had. Night coming on, I had to stay. Creeping into a corner, I tried to sleep; but it was to no purpose;--the old crone must have had the quinsy, or something else; and she kept up such a wheezing and choking that at last I sprang up, and groped after her; but she hobbled away like a goblin; and that was the last of her. As soon as the sun rose, I made the best of my way back; and here I am." He never left us more, nor ever had a second fit.
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{
"id": "4045"
}
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51
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WILSON GIVES US THE CUT--DEPARTURE FOR IMEEO
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ABOUT three weeks after the Julia's sailing, our conditions began to be a little precarious. We were without any regular supply of food; the arrival of ships was growing less frequent; and, what was worse yet, all the natives but good old Captain Bob began to tire of us. Nor was this to be wondered at; we were obliged to live upon their benevolence, when they had little enough for themselves. Besides, we were sometimes driven to acts of marauding; such as kidnapping pigs, and cooking them in the groves; at which their proprietors were by no means pleased.
In this state of affairs, we determined to march off to the consul in a body; and, as he had brought us to these straits, demand an adequate maintenance.
On the point of starting, Captain Bob's men raised the most outrageous cries, and tried to prevent us. Though hitherto we had strolled about wherever we pleased, this grand conjunction of our whole force, upon one particular expedition, seemed to alarm them. But we assured them that we were not going to assault the village; and so, after a good deal of gibberish, they permitted us to leave.
We went straight to the Pritchard residence, where the consul dwelt. This house--to which I have before referred--is quite commodious. It has a wide verandah, glazed windows, and other appurtenances of a civilized mansion. Upon the lawn in front are palm-trees standing erect here and there, like sentinels. The Consular Office, a small building by itself, is inclosed by the same picket which fences in the lawn.
We found the office closed; but, in the verandah of the dwelling-house, was a lady performing a tonsorial operation on the head of a prim-looking, elderly European, in a low, white cravat;--the most domestic little scene I had witnessed since leaving home. Bent upon an interview with Wilson, the sailors now deputed the doctor to step forward as a polite inquirer after his health.
The pair stared very hard as he advanced; but no ways disconcerted, he saluted them gravely, and inquired for the consul.
Upon being informed that he had gone down to the beach, we proceeded in that direction; and soon met a native, who told us that, apprised of our vicinity, Wilson was keeping out of the way. We resolved to meet him; and passing through the village, he suddenly came walking toward us; having apparently made up his mind that any attempt to elude us would be useless.
"What do you want of me, you rascals?" he cried--a greeting which provoked a retort in no measured terms. At this juncture, the natives began to crowd round, and several foreigners strolled along. Caught in the very act of speaking to such disreputable acquaintances, Wilson now fidgeted, and moved rapidly toward his office; the men following. Turning upon them incensed, he bade them be off--he would have nothing more to say to us; and then, hurriedly addressing Captain Bob in Tahitian, he hastened on, and never stopped till the postern of Pritchard's wicket was closed behind him.
Our good old keeper was now highly excited, bustling about in his huge petticoats, and conjuring us to return to the Calabooza. After a little debate, we acquiesced.
This interview was decisive. Sensible that none of the charges brought against us would stand, yet unwilling formally to withdraw them, the consul now wished to get rid of us altogether; but without being suspected of encouraging our escape. Thus only could we account for his conduct.
Some of the party, however, with a devotion to principle truly heroic, swore they would never leave him, happen what might. For my own part, I began to long for a change; and as there seemed to be no getting away in a ship, I resolved to hit upon some other expedient. But first, I cast about for a comrade; and of course the long doctor was chosen. We at once laid our heads together; and for the present, resolved to disclose nothing to the rest.
A few days previous, I had fallen in with a couple of Yankee lads, twins, who, originally deserting their ship at Tanning's Island (an uninhabited spot, but exceedingly prolific in fruit of all kinds), had, after a long residence there, roved about among the Society group. They were last from Imeeo--the island immediately adjoining--where they had been in the employ of two foreigners who had recently started a plantation there. These persons, they said, had charged them to send over from Papeetee, if they could, two white men for field-labourers.
Now, all but the prospect of digging and delving suited us exactly; but the opportunity for leaving the island was not to be slighted; and so we held ourselves in readiness to return with the planters; who, in a day or two, were expected to visit Papeetee in their boat.
At the interview which ensued, we were introduced to them as Peter and Paul; and they agreed to give Peter and Paul fifteen silver dollars a month, promising something more should we remain with them permanently. What they wanted was men who would stay. To elude the natives--many of whom, not exactly understanding our relations with the consul, might arrest us, were they to see us departing--the coming midnight was appointed for that purpose.
When the hour drew nigh, we disclosed our intention to the rest. Some upbraided us for deserting them; others applauded, and said that, on the first opportunity, they would follow our example. At last, we bade them farewell. And there would now be a serene sadness in thinking over the scene--since we never saw them again--had not all been dashed by M'Gee's picking the doctor's pocket of a jack-knife, in the very act of embracing him.
We stole down to the beach, where, under the shadow of a grove, the boat was waiting. After some delay, we shipped the oars, and pulling outside of the reef, set the sail; and with a fair wind, glided away for Imeeo.
It was a pleasant trip. The moon was up--the air, warm--the waves, musical--and all above was the tropical night, one purple vault hung round with soft, trembling stars.
The channel is some five leagues wide. On one hand, you have the three great peaks of Tahiti lording it over ranges of mountains and valleys; and on the other, the equally romantic elevations of Imeeo, high above which a lone peak, called by our companions, "the Marling-pike," shot up its verdant spire.
The planters were quite sociable. They had been sea-faring men, and this, of course, was a bond between us. To strengthen it, a flask of wine was produced, one of several which had been procured in person from the French admiral's steward; for whom the planters, when on a former visit to Papeetee, had done a good turn, by introducing the amorous Frenchman to the ladies ashore. Besides this, they had a calabash filled with wild boar's meat, baked yams, bread-fruit, and Tombez potatoes. Pipes and tobacco also were produced; and while regaling ourselves, plenty of stories were told about the neighbouring islands.
At last we heard the roar of the Imeeo reef; and gliding through a break, floated over the expanse within, which was smooth as a young girl's brow, and beached the boat.
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{
"id": "4045"
}
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