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The Arm-Chair at the Inn

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Title: The Arm-Chair at the Inn

Author: Francis Hopkinson Smith

Illustrator: Arthur Ignatius Keller
        Herbert Ward


        
Release date: November 3, 2012 [eBook #41284]
                Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/41284

Credits: Produced by D Alexander, The Internet Archive (TIA) and
        the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
        http://www.pgdp.net


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ARM-CHAIR AT THE INN ***

THE ARM-CHAIR AT THE INN




[Illustration: Mignon]




  THE ARM-CHAIR
  AT THE INN

  BY
  F. HOPKINSON SMITH

  WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
  A. I. KELLER, HERBERT WARD
  AND THE AUTHOR

  [Illustration]

  NEW YORK
  CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
  1912




  COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY
  CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

  Published August, 1912




AUTHOR'S PREFACE

[Illustration]


If I have dared to veil under a thin disguise some of the men whose talk
and adventures fill these pages it is because of my profound belief that
truth is infinitely more strange and infinitely more interesting than
fiction. The characters around the table are all my personal friends;
the incidents, each and every one, absolutely true, and the setting of
the Marmouset, as well as the Inn itself, has been known to many
hundreds of my readers, who have enjoyed for years the rare hospitality
of its quaint and accomplished landlord.

                                                              F. H. S.

November, 1911

[Illustration]




CONTENTS

[Illustration]


  CHAPTER                                                         PAGE

     I. THE MARMOUSET                                                3

    II. THE WOOD FIRE AND ITS FRIENDS                               18

   III. WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO A CERTAIN COLONY OF PENGUINS      34

    IV. THE ARRIVAL OF A LADY OF QUALITY                            60

     V. IN WHICH THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A CANNIBAL AND A
          FREEBOOTER IS CLEARLY SET FORTH                           95

    VI. PROVING THAT THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE NEVER DID RUN SMOOTH  120

   VII. IN WHICH OUR LANDLORD BECOMES BOTH ENTERTAINING AND
          INSTRUCTIVE                                              144

  VIII. CONTAINING SEVERAL EXPERIENCES AND ADVENTURES SHOWING
          THE WIDE CONTRASTS IN LIFE                               163

    IX. IN WHICH MADAME LA MARQUISE BINDS UP BROKEN HEADS AND
          BLEEDING HEARTS                                          182

     X. IN WHICH WE ENTERTAIN A JAIL-BIRD                          211

    XI. IN WHICH THE HABITS OF CERTAIN GHOSTS, GOBLINS, BANDITS,
          AND OTHER OBJECTIONABLE PERSONS ARE DULY SET FORTH       240

   XII. WHY MIGNON WENT TO MARKET                                  267

  XIII. WITH A DISSERTATION ON ROUND PEGS AND SQUARE HOLES         280

   XIV. A WOMAN'S WAY                                              304

    XV. APPLE-BLOSSOMS AND WHITE MUSLIN                            335




ILLUSTRATIONS

[Illustration]


  Mignon                                                _Frontispiece_

                                                           FACING PAGE

  Howls of derision welcomed him                                    30

  Flooding the garden, the flowers, and the roofs                   60

  As her boy's sagging, insensible body was brought clear of the
    wreck                                                          132

  Herbert caught up his sketch-book and ... transferred her dear
    old head ... to paper                                          184

  Lemois crossed the room and began searching through the old
    fifteenth-century triptych                                     240

  "Just think, monsieur, what _does_ go on below Coco in the
    season"                                                        308

  First, of course, came the mayor--his worthy spouse on his left  350




THE ARM-CHAIR AT THE INN




THE ARM-CHAIR AT THE INN




I

THE MARMOUSET


"How many did you say?" inquired Lemois, our landlord.

"Five for dinner, and perhaps one more. I will know when the train gets
in. Have the fires started in the bedrooms and please tell Mignon and
old Leà to put on their white caps."

We were in the Marmouset at the moment--the most enchanting of all the
rooms in this most enchanting of all Normandy inns. Lemois was busying
himself about the table, selecting his best linen and china--an old
Venetian altar cloth and some Nancy ware--replacing the candles in the
hanging chandelier, and sorting the silver and glass. Every one of my
expected guests was personally known to him; some of them for years. All
had shared his hospitality, and each and every one appreciated its rare
value. Nothing was too good for them, and nothing should be left undone
which would add to their comfort.

I had just helped him light the first blaze in the big baronial
fireplace, an occupation I revel in, for to me the kindling of a fire is
the gathering of half a dozen friends together, each log nudging his
neighbor, the cheer of good comradeship warming them all. And a roaring
fire it was when I had piled high the logs, swept the hearth, and made
it ready for the choice spirits who were to share it with me. For years
we have had our outings--or rather our "in-tings" before it--red-letter
days for us in which the swish of a petticoat is never heard, and we are
free to enjoy a "man's time" together; red-letter days, too, in the
calendar of the Inn, when even Lemois, tired out with the whirl of the
season, takes on a new lease of life.

His annual rejuvenation began at dawn to-day, when he disappeared in the
direction of the market and returned an hour later with his procession
of baskets filled with fish and lobsters fresh out of the sea a mile
away (caught at daylight), some capons, a string of pigeons, and an
armful of vegetables snatched in the nick of time from the early grave
of an impending frost.

As for the more important items, the Chablis Moutonne and Roumanée
Conti--rare Burgundies--they were still asleep in their cobwebs on a
low Spanish bench that had once served as a temporary resting-place
outside a cardinal's door.

Until to-night Lemois and I have dined in the kitchen. You would too
could you see it. Not by any manner of means the sort of an interior the
name suggests, but one all shining brass, rare pottery, copper braziers,
and resplendent pewter, reflecting the dancing blaze of a huge open
hearth with a spit turned by the weight of a cannon ball fired by the
British, and on which--the spit, not the ball--are roasted the joints,
chickens, and game for which the Inn is famous, Pierre, the sole
remaining chef--there are three in the season--ineffectually cudgelling
his French pate under his short-cropped, shoe-brush hair for some dish
better than the last.

Because, however, of the immediate gathering of the clan, I have
abandoned the kitchen and have shifted my quarters to the Marmouset.
Over it up a steep, twisted staircase with a dangling rope for banisters
is my bedroom, the Chambre de Cure, next to the Chambre de
Officier--where the gluttonous king tossed on his royal bed (a true
story, I am told, with all the details set forth in the State Archives
of France). Mine has a high-poster with a half lambrequin, or bed
curtain, that being all Lemois could find, and he being too honest an
antiquary to piece it out with modern calico or chintz. My guests, of
course, will take their pick of the adjoining rooms--Madame Sévigné's,
Grèvin's, the Chambre du Roi, and the others--and may thank their stars
that it is not a month back. Then, even if they had written ten days
ahead, they would have been received with a shrug--one of Lemois' most
engaging shrugs tinged with grief--at his inability to provide better
accommodation for their comfort, under which one could have seen a
slight trace of suppressed glee at the prosperity of the season. They
would then doubtless have been presented with a massive key unlocking
the door of a box of a bedroom over the cake-shop, or above the
apothecary's, or next to the man who mends furniture--all in the village
of Dives itself.


And now a word about the Inn itself--even before I tell you of the
Arm-Chair or the man who sat in it or the others of the clan who
listened and talked back.

Not the low-pitched, smothered-in-ivy Kings Arms you knew on the
Thames, with its swinging sign, horse-block, and the rest of it; nor the
queer sixteenth-century tavern in that Dutch town on the Maas, with its
high wainscoting, leaded window-panes, and porcelain stove set out with
pewter flagons--not that kind of an inn at all.

This one bolsters up one corner of a quaint little town in Normandy; is
faced by walls of sombre gray stone loop-holed with slits of windows,
topped by a row of dormers, with here and there a chimney, and covers an
area as large as a city block, the only break in its monotony being an
arched gate-way in which swing a pair of big iron-bound doors. These are
always open, giving the passer-by a glimpse of the court within.

You will be disappointed, of course, when you drive up to it on a
summer's day. You will think it some public building supported by the
State--a hospital or orphan asylum--and, tourist-like, will search for
the legend deep cut in the key-stone of the archway to reassure yourself
of its identity. Nobody can blame you--hundreds have made that same
mistake, I among them.

But don't lose heart--keep on through the gate, take a dozen steps into
the court-yard and look about, and if you have any red corpuscles left
in your veins you will get a thrill that will take your breath away.
Spread out before you lies a flower-choked yard flanked about on three
sides by a chain of moss-encrusted, red-tiled, seesaw roofs, all out of
plumb. Below, snug under the eaves, runs a long go-as-you-please
corridor, dodging into a dozen or more bedrooms. Below this again, as if
tired out with the weight, staggers a basement from which peer out
windows of stained glass protected by Spanish grills of polished iron,
their leaded panes blinking in the sunshine, while in and out, up the
door-jambs, over the lintels, along the rain-spouts, even to the top of
the ridge-poles of the wavy, red-tiled roofs, thousands of blossoms and
tangled vines are running riot.

And this is not all. Close beside you stands a fuchsia-covered,
shingle-hooded, Norman well, and a little way off a quaint kiosk roofed
with flowering plants, and near by a great lichen-covered bust of Louis
VI, to say nothing of dozens of white chairs and settees grouped against
a background of flaring reds and brilliant greens. And then, with a gasp
of joy, you follow the daring flight of a giant feather-blown clematis
in a clear leap from the ground, its topmost tendrils throttling the
dormers.

Even then your surprises are not over. You have yet to come in touch
with the real spirit of the Inn, and be introduced to our jewel of a
dining-room, the "Marmouset," opening flat to the ground and hidden
behind a carved oaken door mounted in hammered iron: a low-ceilinged,
Venetian-beamed room, with priceless furniture, tapestries, and
fittings--chairs, tables, wainscoting of carved oak surmounted by
Spanish leather; quaint andirons, mirrors, arms, cabinets, silver,
glass, and china; all of them genuine and most of them rare, for Lemois,
our landlord, has searched the Continent from end to end.

Yes!--a great inn this inn of William the Conqueror at Dives, and unique
the world over. You will be ready now to believe all its legends and
traditions, and you can quite understand why half the noted men of
Europe have, at one time or another, been housed within its hospitable
walls, including such exalted personages as Louis XI and Henry IV--the
latter being the particular potentate who was laid low with a royal
colic from a too free indulgence in the seductive oyster--not to
mention such rare spirits as Molière, Dumas, George Sand, Daubigny, as
well as most of the litterateurs, painters, and sculptors of France,
including the immortal Grèvin, many of whose drawings decorate the walls
of one of the garden kiosks, and whose apartment still bears his name.

And not only savants and men of rank and letters, but the frivolous
world of to-day--the flotsam and jetsam of Trouville, Houlgate, and
Cabourg--have gathered here in the afternoon for tea in the court-yard,
their motors crowding the garage, and at night in the Marmouset when,
under the soft glow of overhead candles falling on bare shoulders and
ravishing toilettes, laughter and merry-making extend far into the small
hours. At night, too, out in the gardens, what whisperings and
love-makings in the soft, starry air!--what seductive laughter and
little half-smothered screams! And then the long silences with only the
light of telltale cigarettes to mark their hiding-places!

All summer this goes on until one fine morning the most knowing, or the
most restless, or the poorest of these gay birds of passage (the Inn is
not a benevolent institution) spreads its wings and the flight begins.
The next day the court is empty, as are all the roosting-places up and
down the shore. Then everybody at the Inn takes a long breath--the first
they have had for weeks.

About this time, too, the crisp autumn air, fresh from the sea, begins
to blow, dulling the hunger for the open. The mad whirl of blossoms no
longer intoxicates. Even the geraniums, which have flamed their bravest
all summer, lose their snap and freshness; while the blue and pink
hydrangeas hang their heads, tired out with nodding to so many
passers-by: they, too, are paying the price; you can see it in their
faces. Only the sturdy chrysanthemums are rejoicing in the first frost,
while the more daring of the roses are unbuckling their petals ready to
fight their way through the perils of an October bloom.

It is just at this blessed moment that I move in and settle down with my
companions, for now that the rush is over, and the little Normandy maids
and the older peasant women who have served the hungry and thirsty mob
all summer, as well as two of the three French cooks, have gone back to
their homes, we have Leà, Mignon, and Pierre all to ourselves.

I put dear old Leà first because it might as well be said at once that
without her loving care life at the Inn, with all its comforts, would be
no life at all--none worth living. Louis, the running-water painter,
known as the Man in High-Water Boots--one of the best beloved of our
group--always insists that in the days gone by Leà occupied a pedestal
at the main entrance of the twelfth-century church at the end of the
street, and is out for a holiday. In proof he points out the empty
pedestal set in a niche, and has even gone so far as to pencil her name
on the rough stone.

Mignon, however, he admits, is a saint of another kind--a dainty,
modest, captivating little maid, who looks at you with her wondering
blue eyes, and who is as shy as a frightened gazelle. There is a young
fisherman named Gaston, a weather-tanned, frank, fearless fellow who
knows all about these eyes. He brings the fish to the Inn--those he
catches himself--and Mignon generally manages to help in their
unpacking. It is not a part of her duty. Her special business is to make
everybody happy; to crack the great white sugar-loaf into bits with a
pair of pincers--no machine-made dominoes for Lemois--and to turn the
coffee-roaster--an old-fashioned, sheet-iron drum swinging above a
brazier of hot coals--and to cool its contents by tossing them in a
pan--much as an Egyptian girl winnows wheat. It is a pity you never
tasted her coffee, served in the garden--old Leà on the run with it
boiling-hot to your table. You might better have stopped what you were
doing and taken steamer for Havre and the Inn. You would never have
regretted it.

Nor would you even at this late hour regret any one of the dishes made
by Pierre, the chef. And now I think of it, it is but fair to tell you
that if you repent the delay and show a fit appreciation of his efforts,
or come properly endorsed (I'll give you a letter), he may, perhaps,
invite you into his kitchen which I have just vacated, a place of such
various enticing smells from things baking, broiling, and frying; with
unforgettable, appetizing whiffs of burnt sugar, garlic, fine herbs, and
sherry, to say nothing of the flavors of bowls of mayonnaise, heaps of
chopped onions, platters of cream--even a basket of eggs still warm from
the nest--that the memory of it will linger with you for the rest of
your days.

Best of all at this season, we have quite to ourselves that prince of
major-domos, our landlord, Lemois. For as this inn is no ordinary inn,
this banquet room no ordinary room, and this kitchen no ordinary
kitchen, so, too, is Monsieur Lemois no ordinary landlord. A small,
gray, gently moving, low-voiced man with thoughtful, contented face,
past the prime of life; a passionate lover of animals, flowers, and all
beautiful things; quick of temper, but over in a moment; a poet withal,
yet a man with so quaint a humor and of so odd a taste, and so
completely absorbed in his pets, cuisine, garden, and collection, that
it is easy to believe that when he is missed from his carnal body, he
will be found wandering as a ghost among these very flower-beds or
looking down from the walls of the Marmouset--doubtless an old haunt of
his prior to this his latest incarnation. Only here would he be really
happy, and only here, perhaps, among his treasures, would he be fully
understood.

One of the rarest of these--a superb Florentine chair--the most
important chair he owns, stood within reach of my hand as I sat
listening to him before the crackling blaze.

"Unquestionably of the sixteenth century!" he exclaimed with his
customary enthusiasm, as I admired it anew, for, although I had heard
most of it many times, I am always glad to listen, so quaint are his
descriptions of everything he owns, and so sincerely does he believe in
the personalities and lineage of each individual piece.

"I found it," he continued, "in a little chapel in Ravenna. For years it
had stood outside the cabinet of Alessandro, one of the Florentine
dukes. Think of all the men and women who have sat in it, and of all the
cruel and anxious thoughts that raced through their brains while they
waited for an audience with the tyrant! Nothing like a chair for
stirring up old memories and traditions. And do you see the carved heads
on the top! I assure you they are alive! I have caught them smiling or
frowning too often at the talk around my table not to know. Once when De
Bouf, the great French clown was here, the head next you came near
splitting itself in two over his grimaces, and when Marcot told one of
his pathetic stories that other one wept such tears that I had to mop
them up to keep the velvet from being spoilt. You don't believe it?--you
laugh! Ah!--that is just like you modern writers--you do not believe
anything--you have no imagination! You must measure things with a rule!
You must have them drawn on the blackboard! It is because you do not
see them as they are. You shut your eyes and ears to the real things of
life; it is because you cannot understand that it is the _soul_ of the
chair that laughs and weeps. Monsieur Herbert will not think it funny.
He understands these queer heads--and, let me tell you, they understand
_him_. I have often caught them nodding and winking at each other when
he says something that pleases them. He has himself seen things much
more remarkable. That is the reason why he is the only one of all who
enters this room worthy to sit in it."

"You like Herbert, then?" I interrupted, knowing just what he would say.

"How absurd, my dear friend! You like a filet, and a gown on a
woman--but you don't like a man. You _love_ him--when he is a
_man_!--and Monsieur Herbert is all that. It is the English in him which
counts. Since he was fourteen years of age he has been roaming around
the world doing everything a man could to make his bread--and he a
gentleman born, with his father's house to go home to if he pleased. Yet
he has been farm-hand, acrobat, hostler, sailor before the mast,
newspaper reporter, next four years in Africa among the natives; then
painter, and now, at forty-five, after only six years' practice, one of
the great sculptors of France, with his work in the Luxembourg and the
ribbon of the Legion in his button-hole! Have I not the right to say
that he is a _man_? And one thing more: not for one moment has he ever
lost the good heart and the fine manner of the gentleman. Ah! that is
most extraordinary of all, when you think of the adventures and
hair-breadth escapes and sufferings he has gone through! Did he ever
tell you of his stealing a ride in Australia on a locomotive tender to
get to Sydney, two hundred miles away?"

I shook my head.

"Well--get him to tell you. You will be so sorry for him, even now, that
you cannot keep the tears from your eyes. Listen! There goes the scream
of his horn--and I wager you, too, that he brings that delightful wild
man, Monsieur Louis, with him."




II

THE WOOD FIRE AND ITS FRIENDS


Two men burst in.

Herbert, compact, wellknit, ruddy, simple in his bearing and manner;
Louis, broad-shouldered, strong as a bull, and bubbling over with
unrepressed merriment. Both were muffled to their chins--Herbert in his
fur motor-coat, his cap drawn close over his steady gray eyes; Louis in
his big sketching-cloak and hood and a pair of goggles which gave him so
owlish a look that both Mignon and Leà broke out laughing at the sight.

"Fifty miles an hour, High-Muck" (I am High-Muck) "this brute of a
Herbert kept up. Everything went by in a blur; but for these gig-lamps
I'd be stone blind."

The brace and the snap of the crisp autumn air clinging to their clothes
suddenly permeated the room as with electricity. Even slow-moving Lemois
felt its vivifying current as he hurriedly dragged the Florentine nearer
the fire.

"See, Monsieur Herbert, the chair has been waiting for you. I have kept
even Monsieur High-Muck out of it."

"That's very good of you, Lemois," returned the sculptor as he handed
Leà his coat and gloves and settled himself in its depths. "I'm glad to
get back to it. What the chair thinks about it is another thing--make it
tell you some time."

"But it has--only last night one of the heads was saying----"

"None of that, Lemois," laughed Louis, abreast of the fireplace now, his
fingers outspread to the blaze. "Too many wooden heads talking around
here as it is. I don't, of course, object to Herbert's wobbling around
in its upholstered magnificence, but he can't play doge and monopolize
everything. Shove your high-backed pulpit with its grinning cherubs to
one side, I tell you, Herbert, and let me warm up"--and off came the
cloak and goggles, his broad shoulders and massive arms coming into
view. Then tossing them to Mignon, he turned to me.

"There's one thing you're good for, High-Muck-a-Muck, if nothing else,
and that is to keep a fire going. If I wanted to find you, and there was
a chimney within a mile, I'd be sure you were sitting in front of the
hearth with the tongs in your hand"--here he kicked a big log into
place bringing to life a swarm of sparks that blazed out a welcome and
then went laughing up the chimney. "By thunder!--isn't this glorious!
Crowd up, all of you--this is the best yet! Lemois, won't you please
shove just a plain, little chair this way for me? No--come to think of
it, I'll take half of Herbert's royal throne," and he squeezed in beside
the sculptor, one leg dangling over the arm of the Florentine.

Herbert packed himself the closer and the talk ran on: the races at
Cabourg and Trouville; the big flight of wild geese which had come a
month earlier than usual, and last, the season which had just closed
with the rush of fashion and folly, in which chatter Lemois had joined.

"And the same old crowd, of course, Lemois?" suggested Herbert; "and
always doing the same things--coffee at nine, breakfast at twelve, tea
at five, dinner at eight, and bridge till midnight! Extraordinary, isn't
it! I'd rather pound oakum in a country jail."

"Some of them will," remarked Louis with a ruminating smile. "And it was
a good season, you say, Lemois?" he continued; "lots of people shedding
shekels and lots of tips for dear old Leà? That's the best part of it.
And did they really order good things--the beggars?--or had you cleaned
them out of their last franc on their first visit? Come now--how many
Pêche-Flambées, for instance, have you served, Lemois, to the mob since
July--and how many demoiselles de Cherbourg--those lovely little girl
lobsters without claws?"

"Do you mean the on-shore species--those you find in the hotels at
Trouville?" returned Lemois, rubbing his hands together, his thoughtful
face alight with humor. "We have two varieties, you know, Monsieur
Louis--the on-shore--the Trouville kind who always bring their claws
with them--you can feel them under their kid gloves."

"Oh, let up!--let up!" retorted Louis. "I mean the kind we devour; not
the kind who devour us."

"Same thing," remarked Herbert in his low, even tones from the depths of
the chair, as he stretched a benumbed hand toward the fire. "It
generally ends in a broil, whether it's a woman or a lobster."

Louis twisted his body and caught the sculptor by the lapel of his
coat.

"None of your cheap wit, Herbert! Marc, the lunatic, would have said
that and thought it funny--you can't afford to. Move up, I tell you, you
bloated mud-dauber, and give me more room; you'd spread yourself over
two chairs with four heads on their corners if you could fill them."

Whereupon there followed one of those good-natured rough-and-tumble
dog-plays which the two had kept up through their whole friendship.
Indeed, a wrestling match started it. Herbert, then known to the world
as an explorer and writer, was studying at Julien's at the time. Louis,
who was also a pupil, was off in Holland painting. Their fellow
students, noting Herbert's compact physique, had bided the hour until
the two men should meet, and it was when the room looked as if a cyclone
had struck it--with Herbert on top one moment and Louis the next--that
the friendship began. The big-hearted Louis, too, was the first to
recognize his comrade's genius as a sculptor. Herbert had a wad of clay
sent home from which he modelled an elephant. This was finally tossed
into a corner. There it lay a shapeless mass until his conscience smote
him and the whole was transformed into a Congo boy. Louis insisted it
should be sent to the Salon, and thus the explorer, writer, and painter
became the sculptor. And so the friendship grew and strengthened with
the years. Since then both men had won their gold medals at the
Salon--Louis two and Herbert two.

The same old dog-play was now going on before the cheery fire, Louis
scrouging and pushing, Herbert extending his muscles and standing
pat--either of them could have held the other clear of the floor at
arm's length--Herbert, all his sinews in place, ready for any move of
his antagonist; Louis, a Hercules in build, breathing health and
strength at every pore.

Suddenly the tussle in the chair ceased and the young painter, wrenching
himself loose, sprang to his feet.

"By thunder!" he cried, "I forgot all about it! Have you heard the news?
Hats off and dead silence while I tell it! Lemois, stop that confounded
racket with your dishes and listen! Let me present you to His Royal
Highness, Monsieur Herbert, the Gold Medallist--his second!" and he made
a low salaam to the sculptor stretched out in the Florentine. He was
never so happy as when extolling Herbert's achievements.

"Oh, I know all about it!" laughed back Lemois. "Le Blanc was here
before breakfast the next morning with the _Figaro_. It was your
African--am I not right, Monsieur Herbert?--the big black man with the
dagger--the one I saw in the clay? Fine!--no dryads, no satyrs nor
demons--just the ego of the savage. And why should you not have won the
medal?" he added in serious tones that commanded instant attention. "Who
among our sculptors--men who make the clay obey them--know the savage as
you do? And to think, too, of your being here after your triumph, under
the roof of my Marmouset. Do you know that its patron saint is another
African explorer--the first man who ever set foot on its western
shores--none other than the great Bethencourt himself? He was either
from Picardy or Normandy--the record is not clear--and on one of his
voyages--this, remember, was in the fifteenth century, the same period
in which the stone chimney over your heads was built--he captured and
brought home with him some little black dwarfs who became very
fashionable. You see them often later on in the prints and paintings of
the time, following behind the balloon petticoats and high headdresses
of the great ladies. After a time they became a regular article of
trade, these marmots, and there is still a street in Paris called 'The
Marmouset.' So popular were they that Charles VI is said to have had a
ministry composed of five of these little rascals. So, when you first
showed me your clay sketch of your African, I said--'Ah! here is the
spirit of Bethencourt! This Monsieur Herbert is Norman, not English; he
has brought the savage of old to light, the same savage that Bethencourt
saw--the savage that lived and fought and died before our cultivated
moderns vulgarized him.' That was a glorious thing to do, messieurs, if
you will think about it"--and he looked around the circle, his eyes
sparkling, his small body alive with enthusiasm.

Herbert extended his palms in protest, muttering something about parts
of the statue not satisfying him and its being pretty bad in spots, if
Lemois did but know it, thanking him at the same time for comparing him
to so great a man as Bethencourt; but his undaunted admirer kept on
without a pause, his voice quivering with pride: "The primitive man
demanding of civilization his right to live! Ah! that is a new motive in
art, my friends!"

"Hear him go on!" cried Louis, settling himself again on the arm of
Herbert's chair; "talks like a critic. Gentlemen, the distinguished
Monsieur Lemois will now address you on----"

Lemois turned and bowed profoundly.

"Better than a critic, Monsieur Louis. They only see the outside of
things. Pray don't rob Monsieur Herbert of his just rights or try to
lean on him; take a whole chair to yourself and keep still a moment. You
are like your running water--you----"

"Not a bit like it," broke in Herbert, glad to turn the talk away from
himself. "His water sometimes reflects--he never does."

"Ah!--but he does reflect," protested Lemois with a comical shrug; "but
it is always upsidedown. When you stand upsidedown your money is apt to
run out of your pockets; when you think upsidedown your brains run out
in the same way."

"But what would you have me do, Lemois?" expostulated Louis, regaining
his feet that he might the better parry the thrust. "Get out into your
garden and mount a pedestal?"

"Not at this season, you dear Monsieur Louis; it is too cold. Oh!--never
would I be willing to shock any of my beautiful statues in that way.
You would look very ugly on a pedestal; your shoulders are too big and
your arms are like a blacksmith's, and then you would smash all my
flowers getting up. No--I would have you do nothing and be nothing but
your delightful and charming self. This room of mine, the 'Little
Dwarf,' is built for laughter, and you have plenty of it. And now,
gentlemen"--he was the landlord once more--both elbows uptilted in a
shrug, his shoulders level with his ears--"at what time shall we serve
dinner?"

"Not until Brierley comes," I interposed after we were through laughing
at Louis' discomfiture. "He is due now--the Wigwag train from Pont du
Sable ought to be in any minute."

"Is Marc coming with him?" asked Herbert, pushing his chair back from
the crackling blaze.

"No--Marc can't get here until late. He's fallen in love for the
hundredth time. Some countess or duchess, I understand--he is staying at
her château, or was. Not far from here, so he told Le Blanc."

"Was walking past her garden gate," broke in Louis, "squinting at her
flowers, no doubt, when she asked him in to tea--or is it another
Fontainebleau affair?"

"That's one love affair of Marc's I never heard of," remarked Herbert,
with one of his meaning smiles, which always remind me of the lambent
light flashed by a glowworm, irradiating but never creasing the surface
as they play over his features.

"Well, that wasn't Marc's fault--you _would_ have heard of it had he
been around. He talked of nothing else. The idiot left Paris one
morning, put ten francs in his pocket--about all he had--and went over
to Fontainebleau for the day. Posted up at that railroad station was a
notice, signed by a woman, describing a lost dog. Later on Marc came
across a piece of rope with the dog on one end and a boy on the other.
An hour later he presented himself at madame's villa, the dog at his
heels. There was a cry of joy as her arms clasped the prodigal. Then
came a deluge of thanks. The gratitude of the poor lady so overcame Marc
that he spent every sou he had in his clothes for flowers, sent them to
her with his compliments and walked back to Paris, and for a month after
every franc he scraped together went the same way. He never
called--never wrote her any letters--just kept on sending flowers; never
getting any thanks either, for he never gave her his address. Oh, he's
a Cap and Bells when there's a woman around!"

A shout outside sent every man to his feet; the door was flung back and
a setter dog bounded in followed by the laughing face of a man who
looked twenty-five of his forty years. He was clad in a leather
shooting-jacket and leggings, spattered to his hips with mud, and
carried a double-barrelled breech-loading gun. Howls of derision
welcomed him.

"Oh!--what a spectacle!" cried Louis. "Don't let Brierley sit down,
High-Muck, until he's scrubbed! Go and scrape yourself, you ruffian--you
are the worst looking dog of the two."

The Man from the Latin Quarter, as he is often called, clutched his gun
like a club, made a mock movement as if to brain the speaker, then
rested it tenderly and with the greatest care against one corner of the
fireplace.

"Sorry, High-Muck, but I couldn't help it. I'd have missed your dinner
if I had gone back to my bungalow for clothes. I've been out on the
marsh since sunup and got cut off by the tide. Down with you, Peter! Let
him thaw out a little, Herbert; he's worked like a beaver all day, and
all we got were three plover and a becassine. I left them with Pierre
as I came in. Didn't see a duck--haven't seen one for a week. Wait until
I get rid of this," and he stripped off his outer jacket and flung it at
Louis, who caught it with one hand and, picking up the tongs, held the
garment from him until he had deposited it in the far corner of the
room.

"Haven't had hold of you, Herbert, since the gold medal," the hunter
resumed. "Shake!" and the two pressed each other's hands. "I thought
'The Savage' would win--ripping stuff up and down the back, and the
muscles of the legs, and he stands well. I think it's your high-water
mark--thought so when I saw it in the clay. By Jove!--I'm glad to get
here! The wind has hauled to the eastward and it's getting colder every
minute."

"Cold, are you, old man!" condoled Louis. "Why don't you look out for
your fire, High-Muck? Little Brierley's half frozen, he says. Hold
on!--stay where you are; I'll put on another log. Of course, you're half
frozen! When I went by your marsh a little while ago the gulls were
flying close inshore as if they were hunting for a stove. Not a
fisherman fool enough to dig bait as far as I could see."

[Illustration: Howls of derision welcomed him]

Brierley nodded assent, loosened his under coat of corduroy, searched in
an inside pocket for a pipe, and drew his chair nearer, his knees to the
blaze.

"I don't blame them," he shivered; "mighty sensible bait-diggers. The
only two fools on the beach were Peter and I; we've been on a sand spit
for five hours in a hole I dug at daylight, and it was all we could do
to keep each other warm--wasn't it, old boy?" (Peter, coiled up at his
feet, cocked an ear in confirmation.) "Where's Marc, Le Blanc, and the
others--upstairs?"

"Not yet," replied Herbert. "Marc expects to turn up, so he wired
High-Muck, but I'll believe it when he gets here. Another case of Romeo
and Juliet, so Louis says. Le Blanc promises to turn up after dinner.
Louis, you are nearest--get a fresh glass and move that decanter this
way,--Brierley is as cold as a frog."

"No--stay where you are, Louis," cried the hunter. "I'll wait until I
get something to eat--hot soup is what I want, not cognac. I say,
High-Muck, when are we going to have dinner? I'm concave from my chin to
my waistband; haven't had a crumb since I tumbled out of bed this
morning in the pitch dark."

"Expect it every minute. Here comes Leà now with the soup and Mignon
with hot plates."

Louis caught sight of the two women, backed himself against the jamb of
the fireplace, and opened wide his arms.

"Make way, gentlemen!" he cried. "Behold the lost saint--our Lady of the
Sabots!--and the adorable Mademoiselle Mignon! I kiss the tips of your
fingers, mademoiselle. And now tell me where that fisher-boy is--that
handsome young fellow Gaston I heard about when I was last here. What
have you done with him? Has he drowned himself because you wouldn't be
called in church, or is he saving up his sous to put a new straw thatch
on his mother's house so there will be room for two more?"

Pretty Mignon blushed scarlet and kept straight on to the serving-table
without daring to answer--Gaston was a tender subject to her, almost as
tender as Mignon was to Gaston--but Leà, after depositing the tureen at
the top of the table, made a little bob of a curtsy, first to Herbert
and then to Louis and Brierley--thanking them for coming, and adding, in
her quaint Normandy French, that she would have gone home a month since
had not the master told her of our coming.

"And have broken our hearts, you lovely old gargoyle!" laughed Louis.
"Don't you dare leave the Inn. They are getting on very well at the
church without you. Come, Herbert, down with you in the old Florentine.
I'll sit next so I can keep all three wooden heads in order," and he
wheeled the chair into place.

"Now, Leà--the soup!"




III

WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO A CERTAIN COLONY OF PENGUINS


Lemois, as was his custom, came in with the coffee. He serves it
himself, and always with the same little ceremony, which, while
apparently unimportant, marks that indefinable, mysterious line which he
and his ancestry--innkeepers before him--have invariably maintained
between those who wait and those who are waited upon. First, a small
spider-legged mahogany table is wheeled up between the circle and the
fire, on which Leà places a silver coffee-pot of Mignon's best; then
some tiny cups and saucers, and a sugar-dish of odd design--they said it
belonged to Marie Antoinette--is laid beside them. Thereupon Lemois
gravely seats himself and the rite begins, he talking all the time--one
of us and yet aloof--much as would a neighbor across a fence who makes
himself agreeable but who has not been given the run of your house.

To the group's delight, however, he was as much a part of the coterie
as if he had taken the fifth chair, left vacant for the always late
Marc, who had not yet put in an appearance, and a place we would have
insisted upon his occupying, despite his intended isolation, but for a
certain look in the calm eyes and a certain dignity of manner which
forbade any such encroachments on his reserve.

To-night he was especially welcome. Thanks to his watchful care we had
dined well--Pierre having outdone himself in a pigeon pie--and that
quiet, restful contentment which follows a good dinner, beside a warm
fire and under the glow of slow-burning candles, had taken possession of
us.

"A wonderful pie, Lemois--a sublime, never-to-be-forgotten pie!"
exclaimed Louis, voicing our sentiments. "Every one of those pigeons
went straight to heaven when they died."

"Ah!--it pleased you then, Monsieur Louis? I will tell Pierre--he will
be so happy."

"Pleased!" persisted the enthusiastic painter. "Why, I can think of no
better end--no higher ambition--for a well-brought-up pigeon than being
served hot in one of Pierre's pies. Tell him so for me--I am speaking as
a pigeon, of course."

"What do you think the pigeon himself would have said to Pierre before
his neck was wrung?" asked Herbert, leaning back in his big chair.
"Thank you--only one lump, Lemois."

"By Jove!--why didn't I ask the bird?--it might have been
illuminating--and I speak a little pigeon-English, you know. Doubtless
he would have told me he preferred being riddled with shot at a match
and crawling away under a hedge to die, to being treated as a common
criminal--the neck-twisting part, I mean. Why do you want to know,
Herbert?"

"Oh, nothing; only I sometimes think--if you will forgive me for being
serious--that there is another side to the whole question; though I must
also send my thanks to Pierre for the pie."

That one of their old good-natured passages at arms was coming became
instantly apparent--tilts that every one enjoyed, for Herbert talked as
he modelled--never any fumbling about for a word; never any uncertainty
nor vagueness--always a direct and convincing sureness of either opinion
or facts, and always the exact and precise truth. He would no sooner
have exaggerated a statement than he would have added a hair's-breadth
of clay to a muscle. Louis, on the other hand, talked as he
painted--with the same breeze and verve and the same wholesome cheer and
sanity which have made both himself and his brush so beloved. When
Herbert, therefore, took up the cudgels for the cooked pigeon, none of
us were surprised to hear the hilarious painter break out with:

"Stop talking such infernal rot, Herbert, and move the matches this way.
How could there be another side? What do you suppose beef and mutton
were put into the world for except to feed the higher animal, man?"

"But _is_ man higher?" returned Herbert quietly, in his low, incisive
voice, passing Louis the box. "I know I'm the last fellow in the world,
with my record as a hunter--and I'm sometimes ashamed of it--to advance
any such theory, but as I grow older I see things in a different light,
and the animal's point of view is one of them."

"Pity you didn't come to that conclusion before you plastered your
studio with the skins of the poor devils you murdered," he chuckled,
winking at Lemois.

"That was because I didn't know any better--or, rather, because I didn't
_think_ any better," retorted Herbert. "When we are young, we delude
ourselves with all sorts of fallacies, saying that things have always
been as they are since the day of Nimrod; but isn't it about time to let
our sympathies have wider play, and to look at the brute's side of the
question? Take a captive polar bear, for instance. It must seem to him
to be the height of injustice to be hunted down like a man-eating tiger,
sold into slavery, and condemned to live in a steel cage and in a
climate that murders by slow suffocation. The poor fellow never injured
anybody; has always lived out of everybody's way; preyed on nothing that
robbed any man of a meal, and was as nearly harmless, unless attacked,
as any beast of his size the world over. I know a case in point, and
often go to see him. He didn't tell me his story--his keeper did--though
he might have done so had I understood bear-talk as well as Louis
understands pigeon-English," and a challenging smile played over the
speaker's face.

"You ought to have stepped inside and passed the time of day with him.
They wouldn't have fed him on anything but raw sculptor for a month."

Herbert fanned his fingers toward Louis in good-humored protest, and
kept on, his voice becoming unusually grave.

"They wanted, it seems, a polar bear at the Zoo, because all zoos have
them, and this one must keep up with the procession. It would be
inspiring and educating for the little children on Sunday
afternoons--and so the thirty pieces of silver were raised. The chase
began among the icebergs in a steam-launch. The father and mother in
their soft white overcoats--the two baby bears in powder-puff furs--were
having a frolic on a cake of floating ice when the strange craft
surprised them. The mother bear tucked the babies behind her and pulled
herself together to defend them with her life--and did--until she was
bowled over by a rifle ball which went crashing through her skull. The
father bear fought on as long as he could, dodging the lasso,
encouraging the babies to hurry--sweeping them ahead of him into the
water, swimming behind, urging them on, until the three reached the next
cake. But the churning devil of a steam launch kept after them--two
armed men in the bow, one behind with the lariat. Another plunge--only
one baby now--a staggering lope along the edge of the floe, the little
tot tumbling, scuffling to its feet; crying in terror at being left
behind--doing the best it could to keep up. Then only the gaunt,
panic-stricken, shambling father bear--slower and slower--the breath
almost out of him. Another plunge--a shriek of the siren--a twist of the
rudder--the lasso curls in the air, the launch backs water, the line
tautens, there is a great swirl of foam broken by lumps of rocking ice,
and the dull, heavy crawl back to the ship begins, the bear in tow, his
head just above the water. Then the tackle is strapped about his girth,
the 'Lively now, my lads!' rings out in the Arctic air, and he is hauled
up the side and dumped half dead on deck, his tongue out, his eyes shot
with blood.

"You can see him any day at the Zoo--the little children's noses pressed
against the iron bars of his cage. They call him 'dear old Teddy bear,'
and throw him cakes and candies, which he sniffs at and turns over with
his great paw. As for me, I confess that whenever I stand before his
cage I always wonder what he thinks of the two-legged beasts who are
responsible for it all--his conscience being clear and neither crime,
injustice, nor treachery being charged against him. Yes, there are two
sides to this question, although, as Louis has said, it might have been
just as well to have thought about it before. Speak up, Lemois, am I
right or wrong? You have something on your mind; I see it in your eyes."

"It's more likely on his stomach," interrupted Louis; "the pigeon may
have set too heavy."

"You are more than right, Monsieur Herbert," Lemois answered in measured
tones, ignoring the painter's aside. He was stirring his cup as he
spoke, the light of the fire making a silhouette of his body from where
I sat. "For your father bear, as you call him, I have every sympathy;
but I do not have to go to the North Pole to express what we owe to
animals. I bring the matter to my very door, and I tell you from my
heart that if I had my way there would never be anything served in my
house which suffered in the killing--not even a pigeon."

Everybody looked up in astonishment, wondering where the joke came in,
but our landlord was gravity itself. "In fact," he went on, "I believe
the day will come when nothing will be killed for food--not even your
dear demoiselle de Cherbourg, Monsieur Louis. Adam and Eve got on very
well without cutlets or broiled squab, and yet we must admit they raised
a goodly race. I, myself, look forward to the time when nothing but
vegetables and fruit, with cheese, milk, and eggs, will be eaten by men
and women of refinement. When that time comes the butcher will go as
entirely out of fashion as has the witch-burner and, in many parts of
the world, the hangman."

"But what are you going to do with Brierley, who can't enjoy his morning
coffee until he has bagged half a dozen ducks on his beloved marsh?"
cried Louis, tossing the stump of his cigar into the fire.

"But Monsieur Brierley is half converted already, my dear Monsieur
Louis; he told me the last time I was at his bungalow that he would
never kill another deer. He was before his fireplace under the head of a
doe at the time--one he had shot and had stuffed. Am I not right,
Monsieur Brierley?" and Lemois inclined his head toward the hunter.

Brierley nodded in assent.

"Same old game," muttered Louis. "Had his fun first."

"I have been a cook all my life," continued the undaunted Lemois, "and
half the time train my own chefs in my kitchen, and yet I say to you
that I could feed my whole clientele sumptuously without ever spilling a
drop of blood. I live in that way myself as far as I can, and so would
you if you had thought about it."

"Skimmed milk and hard-boiled eggs for breakfast, I suppose!" roared
Louis in derision, "with a lettuce sandwich and a cold turnip for
luncheon."

"No, you upsidedown man! Cheese souffles, omelets in a dozen different
ways, stuffed peppers, tomatoes fried, stewed, and fricasseed, oysters,
clams----"

"And crabs and lobsters?" added Louis.

"Ah! but crabs and lobsters suffer like any other thing which has the
power to move; what I am trying to do is to live so that nothing will
suffer because of my appetite."

"And go round looking like a skeleton in a doctor's office! How could
you get these up on boiled cabbage?" and he patted Herbert's biceps.

"No, my dear Monsieur Louis," persisted Lemois gravely, still refusing
to be side-tracked by the young painter's onslaughts. "If we loved the
things we kill for food as Monsieur Brierley loves his dog Peter, there
would never be another Chateaubriand cooked in the world. What would you
say if I offered you one of that dear fellow's ribs for breakfast? It
would be quite easy--the butcher is only around the corner and Pierre
would broil it to a turn. But that would not do for you gourmets. You
must have liver or sweetbreads cut from an animal you never saw and of
which, of course, you know nothing. If the poor animal had been a
playmate of Mignon's--and she once had a pet lamb--you could no sooner
cut its throat than you could Peter's."

Before Louis could again explode, Brierley, who, at mention of Peter's
name had leaned over to stroke the dog's ears, now broke in, a dry smile
on his face.

"There's another side of this question which you fellows don't seem to
see, and which interests me a lot. You talk about cruelty to animals,
but I tell you that most of the cruelty to-day is served out to the man
with the gun. The odds are really against him. The birds down my way
have got so almighty cunning that they club together and laugh at us. I
hear them many a time when Peter and I are dragging ourselves home
empty-handed. They know too when I start out and when I give up and
make for cover."

"Go slow, Brierley; go slow!"

"Of course they know, Louis!" retorted Brierley in mock dejection.
"Doesn't a crow keep a watch out for the flock? Can you get near one of
them with a gun unless you are lucky enough to shoot the sentry first?
You can call it instinct if you choose--I call it reason--the same kind
of mental process that compels you to look out for an automobile before
you cross the street, with your eyes both ways at once. When you talk of
their helplessness and want of common sense, and inability to look out
for themselves, you had better lie under a hedge as I have done, the
briars scraping your neck, or scrunched down in a duckblind, with your
feet in ice water, and study these simple-minded creatures. Explain this
if you can. Some years ago, in America, I spent the autumn on the
Housatonic River. The ducks come in from Long Island Sound to feed on
the shore stuff, and I could sometimes get five--once I got
eleven--between dawn and sunrise. The constant banging away soon made
them so shy that if I got five in a week I was lucky. On the first of
the month and for the first time in the State a new law came into force
making it cost a month's wages for any pot-hunter to kill a duck or even
have one in his possession. The law, as is customary, was duly
advertised. Not only was it published in the papers but stuck up in
bar-rooms and county post-offices, and at last became common gossip
around the feeding-ground of the ducks. At first they didn't believe it,
for they still kept out of sight, flying high--and few at that. But when
they found the law was obeyed and that all firing had ceased, not a gun
being heard on the river, they tumbled to the game as quick as did the
pot-hunters. When the shooting season opened the following year, hardly
a duck showed up. Those that came were evidently stragglers who rested
for a day on their long flight south; but the Long Island Sound
ducks--the well-posted ducks--stayed away altogether until, with the
first of the month, the law for their protection came into force again.
Then, so the old farmer, a very truthful man with whom I used to put up,
wrote me, they came back by thousands; the shore was black with them."

"And you really believe it, Brierley?" Louis' head was shaking in a
commiserating way.

"Of course I believe it, and I can show the farmer's letter to back
it," he answered, with a wink at me behind his hand; "and so would you
if you had been humbugged by them as many times as I have. Ask
Peter--he'll tell you the same thing. And I'll tell you something else.
On the edge of that same village was a jumble of shanties inhabited by a
lot of Italians who had come up from New York to work a quarry near by.
On Sundays and holidays these fellows went gunning for the small birds,
especially cedar birds and flickers, hiding in the big woods a mile
away. After these birds had stood it for a while they put their dear
little innocent heads together and thought it all out. Women and
children did not shoot, therefore the safest place for nesting and
skylarking was among these very women and children. After that the woods
were empty; the birds just made fools of the pot-hunters and swarmed to
the gardens and yards and village trees. No one had ever seen them
before in such quantities, and--would you believe it?--they never went
back to the woods again until the Italians had left for New York."

Lemois, having also missed the humor in Brierley's tone, rose from his
place beside the coffee-table, leaned over the young writer, and, with
a characteristic gesture, patted him on the arm, exclaiming:

"How admirably you have put it, my dear Monsieur Brierley; I have to
thank you most sincerely. Ah! you Americans are always clear and to the
point. May I add one more word? That which made these birds so cunning
was the fact that you were out to _kill_ them." Here he straightened up,
his back to the fire, and stood with the light of its blaze tingeing his
gray beard. "It's a foolish fancy, I know, but I would have liked to
have lived, if only for one day, with the man Adam, just to see how he
and Madame Eve and the Noah's ark family got on before they began
quarrelling and Cain made a hole in the head of the other monsieur. I
have an idea that the lion and the lamb ate out of the same trough, with
the birds on their backs for company--all the world at peace. My Coco
rubs his beak against my cheek, not because I feed him, but because he
trusts me; he would, I am sure, bite a piece out of Monsieur Louis'
because he does not trust him--and with reason," and the old man smiled
good-naturedly. "But why don't they all trust us?"

Herbert, who had also for some reason entirely missed Brierley's humor,
fumbled for an instant with the end of a match he had picked from the
cloth, and then, tossing it quickly from him as if he had at last framed
the sentence he was about to utter, said in a thoughtful tone:

"I have often wondered what the world would be like if all fear of every
kind was abolished--of punishment, of bodily hurt, and of pain?
Everything that swims, flies, or walks is afraid of something
else--women of men, men of each other. The first thing an infant does is
to cry out--not from the pain, but from fright--just as a small dog or
the cub of a bear hides under its mother's coat before its eyes are
open. It is the ogre, Fear, that begins with the milk and ends with the
last breath in terror over the unknown, and it is our fault. Half the
children in the world--perhaps three-fourths of them--have been brought
up by fear and not by love."

"How about the lambasting your father gave you, Herbert, when you hooked
it from school? 'Spare the rod and spoil the--' You know the rest of it.
Did you deserve it?"

"Probably I did," laughed Herbert. "But, all the same, Louis, that
foolish line has done more harm in the world than any line ever
written. Many a brute of a father--not mine, for he did what he thought
was right--has found excuse in those half-dozen words for his temper
when he beat his boy."

"Oh, come, let us get back to dry ground, gentlemen," broke in Brierley.
"We commenced on birds and we've brought up on moral suasion with the
help of a birch-rod. Nobody has yet answered my argument: What about the
birds and the way they play it on Peter and me?" and again Brierley
winked at me.

"It's because you tricked them first, Brierley," returned Herbert in all
seriousness and in all sincerity. "They got suspicious and outwitted
you, and they will every time. A beast never forgets treachery. I know
of a dozen instances to prove it."

"Now I think of it, I know of one case, too," remarked Louis gravely, in
the voice of a savant uncovering a matter of great weight; "that is, if
I may be allowed to tell it in the presence of the big Nimrod of the
Congo--he of a hundred pairs of tusks, to say nothing of skins galore."

Herbert nodded assent and with an air of surprise leaned forward to
listen. That the jovial painter had ever met the savage beast in any
part of the world was news to him.

"A most extraordinary and remarkable instance, gentlemen, showing both
the acumen, the mental equipment, and the pure cussedness, if I may be
permitted the expression, of the brute beast of the field. The incident,
as told to me, made a profound impression on my early life, and was
largely instrumental in my abandoning the pursuit and destruction of
game of that class. I refer to the well-known case of the boy who gave
the elephant a quid of tobacco for a cake, and was buried the following
year by his relatives when the circus came again to his town--he
unfortunately having occupied a front seat. Yes, you are right, the
beast forgives anything but treachery. But go on, Professor Herbert;
your treatment of this extremely novel view of animal life is most
exhilarating. I shall, at the next meeting of the Academy of Sciences,
introduce a----"

Brierley's hand set firmly on Louis' mouth, who sputtered out he would
be good, would have ended the discussion had not Lemois moved into an
empty chair beside Herbert, and, resting his hand on the sculptor's
shoulder, exclaimed in so absorbed a tone as to command every one's
attention:

"Please do not stop, Monsieur Herbert, and please do not mind this wild
man, who has two mouths in his face--one with which he eats and the
other with which he interrupts. I am very much interested. You were
speaking of the ogre, Fear. Please go on. One of the things I want to
know is whether it existed in the Garden of Eden. Now if you gentlemen
will all keep still"--here he fixed his eyes on Louis--"we may hear
something worth listening to."

Louis threw up both hands in submission, begging Lemois not to shoot,
and Herbert, having made him swear by all that was holy not to open
either of his mouths until his story was told to the end, emptied his
glass of Burgundy and faced the expectant group.

"We don't need to go back to the Garden of Eden to decide the question,
Lemois. As to who is responsible for the existence of this ogre, Fear, I
can answer best by telling you what happened only four years ago on a
German expedition to the South Pole. It was told me by the commander
himself, who had been specially selected by Emperor William as the best
man to take charge. When I met him he was captain of one of the great
North Atlantic liners--a calm, self-contained man of fifty, with a smile
that always gave way to a laugh, and a sincerity, courage, and capacity
that made you turn over in your berth for another nap no matter how hard
it blew.

"We were in his cabin near the bridge at the time, the walls of which
were covered with photographs of the Antarctic, most of which he had
taken himself, showing huge icebergs, vast stretches of hummock ice,
black, clear-etched shore lines, and wastes of snow that swept up to
high mountains, their tops lost in the fog. He was the first human
being, so he told me, to land on that coast. He had left the ship in the
outside pack and with his first mate and one of the scientists had
forced a way through the floating floes, their object being to make the
ascent of a range of low rolling mountains seen in one of the
photographs. This was pure white from base to summit except for a dark
shadow one-third the slope, which he knew must be caused by an
overhanging ledge with possibly a cave beneath. If any explorers had
ever reached this part of the Antarctic, this cave, he knew, would be
the place of all others in which to search for records and remains.

"He had hardly gone a dozen yards toward it when his first mate touched
his arm and pointed straight ahead. Advancing over the crest of the snow
came the strangest procession he had ever seen. Thirty or more penguins
of enormous size, half as high as a man, were marching straight toward
them in single file, the leader ahead. When within a few feet of them
the penguins stopped, bunched themselves together, looked the invaders
over, bending their heads in a curious way--walking round and round as
if to get a better view--and then waddled back to a ridge a few rods
off, where they evidently discussed their strange guests.

"The captain and the first mate, leaving the scientist, walked up among
them, patted their heads, caressed their necks--the captain at last
slipping his hand under one flipper of the largest penguin, the mate
taking the other--the two conducting the bird slowly and with great
solemnity and dignity back to the boat, its companions following as a
matter of course. None of them exhibited the slightest fear; did not
start or crane their heads in suspicion, but were just as friendly as so
many tame birds waiting to be fed. The boat seemed to interest them as
much as the men had done. One by one, or by twos and threes, they came
waddling gravely down to where it lay, examined it all over and as
gravely waddled back, looking up into the explorers' faces as if for
some explanation of the meaning and purpose of the strange craft. They
had, too, a queer way of extending their necks, rubbing their cheeks
softly against the men's furs, as if it felt good to them. The only
thing they seemed disappointed in were the ship's rations--these they
would not touch.

"Leaving the whole flock grouped about the boat, the party pushed on to
the dark shadow up the white slope. It was, as he had supposed, an
overhanging cliff, its abrupt edge and slant forming a shallow cave
protected from the glaciers and endless snows. As he approached nearer
he could make out the whirling flight of birds, and when he reached the
edge he found it inhabited by thousands upon thousands of sea fowl--a
gray and white species common to these latitudes. But there was no
commotion nor excitement of any kind--no screams of alarm or running to
cover. On the contrary, when the party came to a halt and looked up at
the strange sight, two birds stopped in their flight to perch on the
mate's shoulder, and one hopped toward the captain with a movement as
if politely asking his business. He even lifted the young birds from
under their mother's wings without protest of any kind--not even a peck
of their beaks--one of the older birds really stepped into his hand and
settled herself as unconcerned as if his warm palm was exactly the kind
of nest she had been waiting for. He could, he told me, have carried the
whole family away without protest of any kind so long as he kept them
together.

"The following week he again visited the shore. This time he found not
only the friendly penguins, who met him with even more than their former
welcome, but a huge seal which had sprawled itself out on the rock and
whose only acknowledgment of their presence was a lazy lift of the head
followed by a sleepy stare. So perfectly undisturbed was he by their
coming, that both the captain and the first mate sat down on his back,
the mate remaining long enough to light his pipe. Even then the seal
moved only far enough to stretch himself, as if saying, 'Try that and
you will find it more comfortable.'

"On this visit, however, something occurred which, he told me, he
should never cease to regret as long as he lives. That morning as they
pushed off from the ship, one of the dogs had made a clear spring from
the deck and had landed in the boat. It was rather difficult to send him
back without loss of time, and so he put him in charge of the mate, with
orders not to take his eyes off him and, as a further precaution, to
chain him to the seat when he went ashore. So fascinated were the
penguins by the dog that for some minutes they kept walking round and
round him, taking in his every movement. In some way, when the mate was
not looking, the dog slipped his chain and disappeared. Whether he had
gone back to the vessel or was doing some exploring on his own account
nobody knew; anyhow, he must be found.

"It then transpired that one of the penguins had also taken a notion to
go on a still hunt of its own, and alone. Whether the dog followed the
penguin, or the penguin the dog, he said he never knew; but as soon as
both were out of sight the dog pounced upon the bird and strangled it.
They found it flat on its back, the black-webbed feet, palms up, as in
dumb protest, the plump white body glistening in the snow. From its
throat trickled a stream of blood: they had come just in time to save
any further mutilation. To hide all traces of the outrage, the captain
and his men not only carried the dead penguin and the live dog to the
boat, but carefully scraped up every particle of the stained snow, which
was also carried to the boat and finally to the ship. What he wanted, he
told me, was to save his face with the birds. He knew that not one of
them had seen the tragedy, and he was determined that none of them
should find it out. So careful was he that no smell of blood would be
wafted toward them, that he had the boat brought to windward before he
embarked the load; in this way, too, he could avoid bidding both them
and the seal good-by.

"The following spring he again landed on the shore. He had completed the
survey, and the coast lay on their homeward track. There were doubters
in the crew, who had heard the captain's story of the penguins walking
arm and arm with him, so he landed some of the ship's company to
convince them by ocular demonstration of its truth. But no penguins were
in sight, nor did any other living thing put in an appearance. One of
his men--there were six this time--caught a glimpse of a row of heads
peering at them over a ridge of snow a long way off, but that was all.
When he reached the cave the birds flew out in alarm, screaming and
circling as if to protect their young."

Herbert paused, moved his cup nearer the arm of his chair, and for a
moment stirred it gently.

Lemois, whose grave eyes had never wandered from Herbert, broke the
silence.

"I should have learned their language and have stayed on until they did
understand," he murmured softly. "It wouldn't have taken very long."

"The captain did try, Lemois," returned Herbert, "first by signs and
gentle approaches, and then by keeping perfectly still, to pacify them;
but it was of no use. They had lost all confidence in human kind. The
peace of the everlasting ages had come to an end. Fear had entered into
their world!"




IV

THE ARRIVAL OF A LADY OF QUALITY


One of the delights of dressing by our open windows at this season is to
catch the aroma of Mignon's roasting coffee. This morning it is
particularly delicious. The dry smell of the soil that gave it birth is
fast merging into that marvellous perfume which makes it immortal. The
psychological moment is arriving; in common parlance it is just on the
"burn"--another turn and the fire will have its revenge. But Mignon's
vigil has never ceased--into the air it goes, the soft breeze catching
and cooling it, and then there pours out, flooding the garden, the
flowers, and the roofs, its new aroma and with it its new life.

And the memories it calls up--this pungent, fragrant, spicy perfume:
memories of the cup I drank in that old posada outside the gate of
Valencia and the girl who served it, and the matador who stood by the
window and scowled; memories of my own toy copper coffee-pot, with its
tiny blue cup and saucer which Luigi, my gondolier, brings and pours
himself; memories of the thimblefuls in shallow china cups hardly bigger
than an acorn shell, that Yusef, my dragoman, laid beside my easel in
the patio of the Pigeon Mosque in Stamboul, when the priests forbade me
to paint.

[Illustration: Flooding the garden, the flowers, and the roofs]

Yes!--a wonderful aroma this which our pretty, joyous Mignon is
scattering broadcast over the court-yard, hastening every man's toilette
that he may get down the earlier where Leà is waiting for him with the
big cups, the crescents, the pats of freshly churned butter, and the
pitcher of milk boiling-hot from Pierre's fire.

Another of the pleasures of the open window is being able to hear what
goes on in the court-yard. To-day the ever-spontaneous and delightful
Louis, as usual, is monopolizing all the talk, with Lemois and Mignon
for audience, he having insisted on the open garden for his early cup,
which the good Leà has brought, her scuffling sabots marking a track
across the well-raked gravel. The conversation is at long range--Louis
sitting immediately under my window and Lemois, within reach of the
kitchen door at the other side of the court, busying himself with his
larder spread out on a table.

"Monsieur Lemois! Oh, Monsieur Lemois!" Louis called; "will you be good
enough to pay attention! What about eggs?--can I have a couple of
soft-boiled?"

"Why, of course you can have eggs! Leà, tell Pierre to----"

"Yes, I know, but will it endanger the life of the chickens inside?
After your sermon last night, and Herbert's penguin yarn, I don't intend
that any living thing shall suffer because of my appetite--not if I can
help it."

Lemois shrugged his shoulders in laughter, and kept on with his work,
painting a still-life picture on his table-top--a string of silver
onions for high lights and a brace of pheasants with a background of
green turnip-tops for darks. To see Lemois spread his marketing thus
deliberately on his canvas of a kitchen table is a lesson in color and
composition. You get, too, some idea as to why he was able to reproduce
in real paint the "Bayeux" tapestry on the walls of the "Gallerie" and
arrange the Marmouset as he has done.

My ear next became aware of a certain silence in the direction of the
coffee-roaster which had ceased its rhythm--the coffee is roasted fresh
every morning. I glanced out and discovered our Mignon standing erect
beside her roaster with flushed cheeks and dancing eyes. Next I caught
sight of young Gaston, his bronze, weather-beaten face turned toward the
girl, his eyes roaming around the court-yard. In his sunburned hand he
clutched a letter. He was evidently inquiring of Mignon as to whom he
should give it.

"Who's it for?" shouted Louis, who, as godfather to Mignon's romance,
had also been watching the little comedy in delight. "All private
correspondence read by the cruel parent! I am the cruel parent--bring it
over here! What!--not for me? Oh!--for the High-Muck-a-Muck." The shout
now came over his left shoulder. "Here's a letter for you, High-Muck,
from Marc, so this piscatorial Romeo announces. Shall I send it up?"

"No--open and read it," I shouted back.

Louis slit the envelope with his thumb-nail and absorbed its contents.

"Well!--I'll be--No, I won't, but Marc ought. What do you think he's
been and gone and done, the idiot!"

"Give it up!"

"Invited a friend of his--a young--the Marquise de la Caux--to dine with
us to-night. Says she's the real thing and the most wonderful woman he
knows. Doesn't that make your hair curl up backward! He's coming down
with her in her motor--be here at seven precisely. A marquise! Well!--if
that doesn't take the cake! I'll bet she's Marc's latest mash!"

Herbert put his head out of an adjoining window. "What's the matter?"

"Matter! Why that lunatic Marc is going to bring a woman down to
dinner--one of those fine things from St. Germain. She's got a château
above Buezval. Marc stayed there last night instead of showing up here."

"Very glad of it, why not?" called Herbert, drawing in his head.

Lemois, who had heard the entire outbreak, nodded to himself as if in
assent, looked at Gaston for a moment, and, without adding a word of any
kind, disappeared in the kitchen. What he thought of it all nobody knew.

There was no doubt as to the seriousness of the impending catastrophe.
Marc, in his enthusiasm, had lost all sense of propriety, and was about
to introduce among us an element we had hitherto avoided. Indeed, one
of the enticing comforts at the Inn was its entire freedom from
petticoat government of any kind. A woman of quality, raised as she had
been, would mean dress-coats and white ties for dinner and the restraint
that comes with the mingling of the sexes, and we disliked both--that
is, when on our outings.

By this time the news had penetrated to the other rooms, producing
various comments. Herbert, with his head again out of the window,
advanced the opinion that the hospitality of madame la marquise had been
so overwhelming, and her beauty and charm so compelling, that Marc's
only way out was to introduce her among us. Louis kept his nose in the
air. Brierley, from the opposite side of the court, indulged in a
running fire of good-natured criticism in which Marc was described as
the prize imbecile who needed a keeper. As for me, sitting on the
window-sill watching the by-plays going on below--especially Louis, who
demanded an immediate answer for Gaston--there was nothing left, of
course, but a--"Why certainly, Louis, any friend of Marc's will be most
welcome, and say that we dine at seven."

And yet before the day was over--so subtly does the feminine make its
appeal--that despite our assumed disgust, each and every man of us had
resolved to do his prettiest to make the distinguished lady's visit a
happy one. As a woman of the world she would, of course, overlook the
crudities of our toilettes. And then, as we soon reasoned to ourselves,
why shouldn't our bachelor reunions be enlivened, at least for once, by
a charming woman of twenty-five--Marc never bothered himself with any
older--who would bring with her all the perfume, dash, and chic of the
upper world and whose toilette in contrast with our own dull clothes
would be all the more entrancing? This, now that we thought about it,
was really the touch the Marmouset needed.

It was funny to see how everybody set to work without a word to his
fellow. Herbert made a special raid through the garden and nipped off
the choicest October roses--buds mostly--as befitted our guest. Louis,
succumbing to the general expectancy, occupied himself in painting the
menus on which Watteau cupids swinging from garlands were most
pronounced. Brierley, pretending it was for himself, spent half the
morning tuning up the spinet with a bed-key, in case this rarest of
women could sing, or should want any one else to, while Lemois, with
that same dry smile which his face always wears when his mind is
occupied with something that amuses him, ordered Pierre to begin at once
the preparation of his most famous dish, Poulet Vallée d'Auge, spending
the rest of the morning in putting a final polish on his entire George
III coffee service--something he never did except for persons, as he
remarked, of "exceptional quality."

Not to be outdone in courtesy I unhooked the great iron key of the
wine-cellar from its nail in Pierre's kitchen, and swinging back the old
door on its rusty hinges, drew from among the cobwebs a bottle of
Chablis, our heavier Burgundies being, of course, too heating for so
dainty a creature. This I carried in my own hands to the Marmouset,
preserving its long-time horizontal so as not to arouse a grain of the
sediment of years, tucking it at last into a crib of a basket for a
short nap, only to be again awakened when my lady's glass was ready.

When the glad hour arrived and we were drawn up to receive her--every
man in his best outfit--best he had--with a rosebud in his
button-hole--and she emerged from the darkness and stood in the light of
the overhead candles--long, lank Marc bowing and scraping at her side,
there escaped from each one of us, all but Lemois, a half-smothered
groan which sounded like a faint wail.

What we saw was not a paragon of delicate beauty, nor a vision of
surpassing loveliness, but a parallelogram stood up on end, fifty or
more years of age, one unbroken perpendicular line from her shoulders to
her feet--or rather to a brown velvet, close-fitting skirt that reached
to her shoe-tops--which were stout as a man's and apparently as big.
About her shoulders was a reefing jacket, also of brown velvet, fastened
with big horn buttons; above this came a loose cherry-red scarf of
finest silk in perfect harmony with the brown of the velvet; above this
again was a head surmounted by a mass of fluffy, partly gray hair,
parted on one side--as Rosa Bonheur wore hers. Then came two brilliant
agate eyes, two ruddy cheeks, and a sunny, happy mouth filled with
pearl-white teeth.

One smile--and it came with the radiance of a flashlight--and all
misgivings vanished. There was no question of her charm, of her
refinement, or of her birth. Neither was there any question as to her
thorough knowledge of the world.

"I knew you were all down here for a good time," she began in soft, low,
musical tones, when the introductions were over, "and would understand
if I came just as I was. I have been hunting all day--tramping the
fields with my dogs--and I would not even stop to rearrange my hair. It
was so good of you to let me come; and I love this room--its atmosphere
is so well bred, and it is never so charming as when the firelight
dances about it. Ah, Monsieur Lemois! I see some new things. Where did
you get that duck of a sauce-boat?--and another Italian mirror! But then
there is no use trying to keep up with you. My agent offered what I
thought was three times its value for that bit of Satsuma, and I nearly
broke my heart over it--and here it is! You really _should_ be locked up
as a public nuisance!"

We turned instinctively toward Lemois, remembering his queer, dry smile
when he referred to her coming, but his only reply to her comment was a
low bow to the woman of rank, with the customary commonplace, that all
of his curios were at her disposal if she would permit him to send them
to her, and with this left the room.

"And now where shall I sit?" she bubbled on. "Next to you, I hope, my
dear Monsieur Herbert. You do not know me--never heard of me,
perhaps--but I know all about you and the wonderful things you have
accomplished. And you too, Monsieur Louis. I remember your first success
as I do those of most of the young men who have won their medals for
twenty years back. And you, Monsieur Brierley--and--can I say
it?--Monsieur High-Muck"--and she nodded gayly at me. "And now you will
all please give your imagination free rein. Try and remember that I am
not a hideous old woman in corduroys and high boots, but a most
delightful and bewitching demoiselle; and please remember, too, that I
can wear a décolleté gown if I please, only I don't please, and haven't
pleased for ten years or more."

Her perfect poise and freedom from all conventionality put us at once at
our ease, making us forget she had only been among us a few minutes.

"And how clever you are to have chosen this room for these delightful
meetings, of which Monsieur Marc has told me," she continued, her eyes
wandering again over the several objects, while her personality
completely dominated everything. "Nobody but Lemois would have brought
them all together. What a genius he is! Think of his putting that wooden
angel where its golden crown can become an aureole in the candle-light:
he has done that since my last visit. And that other one--really the
rarest thing he owns--in the dark corner by the fireplace. May I tell
you about it before he comes back? It is of the fifteenth century, and
is called the 'Bella Nigra'--the Black Virgin. Look at it, all of you,
while I hold the candle. You see the face is black, the legend running,
'I am beautiful though black because the sun has looked at me so long.'
You notice, too, that she has neither arms nor legs--a symbol of
nobility, showing she need neither work nor walk, and the triple crown
means that she is Queen of Heaven, Earth, and Sea. Why he pokes her in a
dark corner I cannot imagine, except that it is just like him to do the
queerest things--and say them too. And yet, he is _such_ a dear--and
_so_ funny! You cannot think what funny things he does and says until
you watch him as I have. Why is it, Monsieur Brierley, that you have
never put him into one of your books--you who write such charming
stories of our coast? Only this summer something occurred which I laugh
over every time I think of it. The Cabourg races were on and the
court-yard outside was packed with people who had come for luncheon
before the Prix Lagrange was run. They were making a good deal of
noise--a thing the old gentleman hates, especially from loudly dressed
women. I was at the next table, sheltered from the others, and was
enjoying the curious spectacle--such people always interest me--when I
noticed Monsieur Lemois rubbing his hands together, talking to himself,
his eyes fixed on the group. I knew one of his storms was brewing, and
was wondering what would happen, when I saw him start forward as another
uproarious laugh escaped one of the most boisterous.

"'Mademoiselle,' he said in his softest and most courteous tone, hat in
hand, bowing first to her and then to her male companions;
'mademoiselle, I love to hear you laugh; I built this place for
laughter, but when you laughed so _very_ loud a moment ago my flowers
were so ashamed they hung their heads,' and then he kept on bowing, his
hat still in his hand, his face calm, his manner scrupulously polite.
Nobody was offended. They seemed to think it was some kind of a
compliment; the rebuked woman even turned her head toward the big
hydrangeas as if trying to find out how they really felt about it.
Oh!--he is too delicious for words."

And so it went on until before the dinner was over she had captured
every man in the room--both by what she said and the way she said
it--her eyes flashing like a revolving light, now dim, now brilliant
with the thoughts behind them, her white teeth gleaming as she talked.
Marc seemed beside himself with pride and happiness. "Never was there
such a woman," he was pouring into Herbert's ear; "and you should see
her pictures and her stables and her gun-room. Really the most
extraordinary creature I have ever known! Does just as she pleases--a
tramp one day and a duchess the next. And you should watch her at the
head of her table in her château--then you will know what a real 'Grande
Dame' is."

While the others were crowding about her, Marc eager to anticipate her
every wish in the way of cushions, footstools, and the like, I went to
find Lemois, who was just outside, his hands laden with a tray of
cordials.

"You know her then?"

"Oh, for years," he whispered back. "I did not tell you, for I wanted to
see your surprise and surrender. It is always the same story with her.
She does not live here except for a month or so in the autumn, when the
small villa on the bluff above Buezval--two miles from here--is opened;
a little box of a place filled with costly bric-à-brac. Her great
château--the one in which she really lives--is on an estate of some
thousands of acres near Rouen, and is stocked with big game--boar and
deer. The marquis--and a great gentleman he was--died some twenty years
ago. Madame paints, carves ivories, binds books, shoots, fishes, speaks
five languages, has lived all over the world and knows everybody worth
knowing. No one in her youth was more beautiful, but the figure has
gone, as you see--and it is such a pity, for it was superb; only the
eyes and the teeth are left--and the smile. That was always her greatest
charm, and still is--except her charities, which never cease."

Her musical voice was still vibrating through the room as I re-entered.

"No, I don't agree with you, Monsieur Herbert," she was saying. "It is
shameful that we do not keep closer to the usages and requirements of
the old régime. In my time a woman would have excited comment who did
not wear her finest gown and her choicest jewels in so select a company
as this; and often very extraordinary things happened when any one
defied the mandate. I remember one very queer instance which I wish I
could tell you about--and it resulted in all sorts of dreadful
complications. I became so adept a fibber in consequence that I wasn't
able to speak the truth for months afterward--and all because this most
charming girl wouldn't wear a low gown at one of our dinners."

Herbert beat the air with his hand. "Keep still, everybody--madame la
marquise is going to tell us a story."

"Madame la marquise is going to do nothing of the kind. She has enough
sins of her own to answer for without betraying those of this poor
girl."

"Hold up your hands and swear secrecy, every one of you!" cried Louis.

"But who will absolve me from breaking the commandment? You will never
have any respect for me again--you remember the rule--all liars shall
have their portion--don't you?"

"If madame will permit me," said Lemois with a low bow, "I will be her
father-confessor, for I alone of all this group know how good she really
is."

"Very well, I take you at your word, Fra Lemois, and to prove how good
_you_ are, you shall send me the Satsuma with your compliments, and pick
from my collection anything that pleases you. But you must first let me
have a cigarette. Wait"--she twisted back her arm and drew a gold case
from the side pocket of her jacket--"yes, I have one of my own--one I
rolled myself, and I cure my own tobacco too, if you please. No! no more
Burgundy" (she had declined my carefully selected Chablis and had drank
the heavier wine with the rest of us). "That Romanée Conti I know, and
it generally gets into my head, and I don't like anything in my head
except what I put there myself. What did you want me to do? Oh, yes,
tell you that story of my youth.

"Well, one day my dear husband received a letter from an English
officer, a dear friend of his with whom he had had the closest relations
when they were both stationed in Borneo. This letter told us that his
daughter, whom, as we knew, had been captured by the Dyaks when she was
a child of eight, had been found some three years before by a scouting
party and returned to the English agent at the principal seaport, the
name of which I forget. Since that time she had been living with a
relative, who had sent her to school. She had now completed her
education, the letter went on to say, and was on her way back to England
to join him, he being an invalided officer on half-pay. Before reaching
him he wanted her to see something of the world, particularly of French
life, and knew of no one with whom he would be more willing to trust her
than ourselves. She was just grown--in her eighteenth year--and,
although she had passed seven years of her life among a wild tribe, was
still an English girl of prepossessing appearance.

"Well, she came--a beautifully formed, graceful creature, with flashing
black eyes, a clear skin, and with a certain barbaric litheness when she
moved that always reminded me of a panther, it was so measured, and had
such meaning in it. She brought some expensive clothes, but no décolleté
dresses of any kind, which surprised me, and when I offered to lend her
my own--we were of about the same size--she refused politely but
firmly, which surprised me all the more, and went right on wearing her
high-necked gowns, which, while good in themselves--for her people were
not poor--were not exactly the kind of toilettes my husband and my
guests had been accustomed to--certainly not at dinners of twenty.

"At every other function she was superb, and for each one had the proper
outfit and of the best make. She rode well, danced well, sang like a
bird, could shoot and hunt with any of us, and, with the exception of
this curious whim--for her form was faultless--was one of the most
delightful creatures who ever stayed with us--and we had had, as you may
suppose, a good many. The subjects she avoided were her captivity and
the personnel of those with whom she had lived. When pressed she would
answer that she had told the story so often she was tired of it; had
banished it from her mind and wished everybody else would.

"Then the expected happened. Indeed I had begun to wonder why it had not
happened before. A young Frenchman, the only son of one of our oldest
families, a man of birth and fortune, fell madly in love with her. The
mother was up in arms, and so was the father. She was without title,
and, so far as they knew, without fortune in her own right; was English,
and the match could not and should not take place.

"How the girl felt about it we could not find out. Sometimes she would
see him alone, generally in the dusk of the evening on the lawn, but
though she was English, and we had given the full limit of her freedom,
she always kept within sight of the veranda. At other times she refused
to see him altogether, sending word she was ill, or engaged, or had
friends, all of which I found extraordinary. This went on until matters
reached a crisis. She knew she must either send him about his business
or succumb: this was _her_ problem. _His_ problem was to win her whether
or no; if not here, then in England, where he would follow her; and he
took no pains to conceal it. His persistence was met by a firm refusal,
and finally by a command to leave her alone. The dismissal was given one
night after dinner when they were together for a few minutes in the
library, after which, so my maid told me, she went to her room and threw
herself on her bed in an agony of tears.

"But there is nothing for sheer obstinacy like a Frenchman in love.
Indeed he was too far gone to believe a word she said or take no for an
answer, and as my grounds were next to his mother's, and the two
families most intimate, he still kept up his visits to the house, where,
I must say, he was always welcome, for my husband and I liked him
extremely, and he deserved it. His mother, objecting to the marriage,
wanted to keep him away. She insisted--all this I heard afterward--that
the girl was half savage and looked and moved like one; that she had
doubtless been brought up among a lawless tribe who robbed every one
around them; that there was no knowing what such a girl had done and
would not do, and that she would rather see her son lying dead at her
feet--the usual motherly exaggeration--than see him her victim. This
brought him at last to his senses, for he came to me one day and wanted
me to tell him what I knew of her antecedents as well as the story of
her captivity and life with the savages. This was a difficult situation
to face, and I at first refused to discuss her private affairs. Then I
knew any mystery would only make him the more crazy, and so I told him
what I knew, omitting the more intimate details. Strange to say,
Frenchman-like, it only maddened him the more--so much so that he again
waylaid her and asked her some questions which made her blaze like coals
of fire, and again the poor girl went to bed in a flood of tears.

"Then the most puzzling and inexplicable thing happened. I had a very
deep topaz of which I was passionately fond--one given me by my dear
husband shortly after we were married. I generally kept it in my small
jewel case, to which only my maid and I had the key. This night when I
opened it the jewel was gone. My maid said she remembered distinctly my
putting it, together with the chain, in the box, for my guest was with
me at the time and had begged me to wear it because of its rich color,
which she always said matched my eyes. At first I said nothing to any
one--not even my husband--and waited; then I watched my maid; then my
butler, about whom I did not know much, and who was in love with the
maid, and might have tempted her to steal it. And, last of all--why I
could not tell, and cannot to this day, except for that peculiar
pantherlike movement about my guest--I watched the girl herself. But
nothing came of it.

"Then I began to talk. I told my husband; I told the young man's mother,
my intimate friend, who told her son, she accusing the girl, of course,
without a scintilla of proof; I told my butler, my maid--I told
everybody who could in any way help to advertise my loss and the reward
I was willing to pay for its recovery. Still nothing resulted and the
week passed without a trace of the jewel or the thief.

"One morning just after luncheon, when I was alone in my little boudoir
and my husband and the young man were having their coffee and cigarettes
on the veranda outside, the girl walked in, made sure that no one was
within hearing, and held out her hand. In the palm was my lost topaz.

"'Here is your jewel,' she said calmly; 'I stole it, and now I have
brought it back.'

"'You!' I gasped. 'Why?'

"'To disgust him and make him hate me so that he will never see me
again. I love him too much to give myself to him. In my madness I
thought of this.'

"'And you want him to know it!' I cried out. I could hardly get my
breath, the shock was so great.

"'Yes--_here!_--NOW!' She stepped to the door. 'Monsieur,' she called,
'I have something to tell you. I have just brought back her jewel--I
stole it! Now come, madame, to my room and I will tell you the rest!'

"I followed her upstairs, leaving the horror-stricken young man dazed
and speechless. She shut the door, locked it, and faced me.

"'I have lied to both of you, madame. I did not steal your jewel; nobody
stole it. I found it a few minutes ago under the edge of the rug where
it had rolled; you dropped it in my room the night you wore it. In my
agony to find some way out I seized on this. It came to me in a flash
and I ran downstairs clutching it in my hand, knowing I would be lost if
I hesitated a moment. It is over now. He will never see me again!'

"I stood half paralyzed at the situation; she erect before me, her eyes
blazing, her figure stretched to the utmost, like an animal in pain.

"'And you deliberately told him you were a thief!' I at last managed to
stammer out. 'Why?'

"'Because it was the only way to escape--it was the only way out. I never
want him to think of me in any other light--I want to be dead to him
forever! Nothing else would have done; I should have yielded, for I
could no longer master my love for him. Look!'

"She was fumbling at her dress, loosening the top buttons close under
her chin; then she ripped it clear, exposing her neck and back.

"'This is what was done to me when I was a child!'

"I leaned forward to see the closer. The poor child was one mass of
hideous tattoo from her throat to her stays!

"'Now you know the whole story,' she sobbed, her eyes streaming tears;
'my heart is broken but I am satisfied. I could have stood anything but
his loathing.'

"With this she fastened her dress and walked slowly out of the room, her
head down, her whole figure one of abject misery."

Madame leaned forward, picked up her goblet of water, and remarking that
walking in the wind always made her thirsty, drained its contents. Then
she turned her head to hide her tears.

"A most extraordinary story, madame. Did the young fellow ever speak of
the theft?" asked Herbert, the first of her listeners to speak.

"No," she answered slowly, in the effort to regain her composure, "he
loved her too much to hear anything against her. He knew she had stolen
it, for he had heard it from her own lips."

"And you never tried to clear her character?"

"How could I? It was her secret, not mine. To divulge it would have led
to her other and more terrible secret, and that I was pledged to keep.
She is dead, poor girl, or I would not have told you now."

"And what did you do, may I ask?" inquired Brierley.

"Nothing, except tell fibs. After she had gone the following morning I
excused her to him, of course, on every ground that I could think of. I
argued that she had a peculiar nature; that owing to her captivity she
had perhaps lost that fine sense of what was her own and what was
another's; that she had many splendid qualities; that she had only
yielded to an impulse, just as a Bedouin does who steals an Arab horse
and who, on second thought, returns it. That I had forgiven her, and had
told her so, and as proof of it had tried, without avail, to make her
keep the topaz. Only my husband knew the truth. 'Let it stay as it is,
my dear,' he said to me; 'that girl has more knowledge of human nature
than I credited her with. Once that young lover of hers had learned the
cruel truth he wouldn't have lived with her another hour.'"

"I think I should have told him," remarked Louis slowly; the story
seemed to have strangely moved him. "If he really loved her he'd have
worn green spectacles and taken her as she was--I would. Bad business,
this separating lovers."

"No, you wouldn't, Louis," remarked Herbert, "if you'd ever seen her
neck. I know something of that tattoo, although mine was voluntary, and
only covered a part of my arm. Madame did just right. There are times
when one must tell anything but the truth."

Everybody looked at the speaker in astonishment. Of all men in the world
he kept closest to the exact hair-line; indeed, one of Herbert's
peculiarities, as I have said, was his always understating rather than
overstating a fact.

"Yes," he continued, "the only way out is to 'lie like a gentleman,' as
the saying is, and be done with it. I've been through it myself and
know. Your story, madame, has brought it all back to me."

"It's about a girl, of course," remarked Louis, flashing a smile around
the circle, "and your best girl, of course. Have a drop of cognac, old
man," and he filled Herbert's tiny glass. "It may help you tell the
_whole_ truth before you get through."

"No," returned Herbert calmly, pushing the cognac from him, a peculiar
tenderness in his voice; "not my best girl, Louis, but a gray-haired
woman of sixty--one I shall never forget."

Madame laid her hand quickly on Herbert's arm; she had caught the note
in his voice.

"Oh! I'm so glad!" she said. "I love stories of old women; I always
have. Please go on."

"If I could have made her young again, madame, you would perhaps have
liked my story better."

"Why? Is it very sad?"

"Yes and no. It is not, I must say, exactly an after-dinner story, and
but that it illustrates precisely how difficult it is sometimes to speak
the truth, I would not tell it at all. Shall I go on?"

"Yes, please do," she pleaded, a tremor now in her own voice. It was
astonishing how simple and girlish she could be when her sympathies were
aroused.

"My gray-haired woman had an only son, a man but a few years younger
than myself, a member of my own party, who had died some miles from our
camp at Bangala, and it accordingly devolved upon me not only to notify
his people of his death, but to forward to them the few trinkets and
things he had left behind. As I was so soon to return to London I wrote
his people that I would bring them with me.

"He was a fine young fellow, cool-headed, afraid of nothing, and was a
great help to me and very popular with every one in the camp. Having
been sent out by the company to which I belonged, as were many others
during the first years of our stay on the Congo, he had already mastered
both the language and the ways of the natives. When a powwow was to be
held I always sent him to conduct it if I could not go myself. I did so,
too, when he had to teach the natives a lesson--lessons they needed and
never forgot, for he was as plucky as he was politic.

"I knew nothing of his people except that he was a Belgian whose mother,
Madame Brion, occupied a villa outside of Brussels, where she lived with
a married daughter.

"On presenting my card I was shown into a small library where the young
woman received me with tender cordiality, and, after closing the door so
that we might not be overheard, she gave me an outline of the ordeal I
was about to go through. With her eyes brimming tears she told me how
her mother had only allowed her son to leave home because of the
pressure brought to bear upon her by his uncle, who was interested in
the company; how she daily, almost hourly, blamed herself for his death;
how, during the years of his absence, she had lived on his letters, and
when mine came, telling her of his end, she had sat dazed and paralyzed
for hours, the open page in her lap--no word escaping her--no
tears--only the dull pain of a grief which seemed to freeze the blood in
her veins. Since that time she had counted the days to my coming, that
she might hear the details of his last illness and suffering.

"You can imagine how I felt. I have never been able to face a woman when
she is broken down with grief, and but that she was expecting me every
minute, and had set her heart on my coming, I think I should have been
cowardly enough to have left the house.

"When the servant returned, I was conducted up the broad staircase and
into a small room hung with wonderful embroideries and pictures and
filled with flowers. In one corner on an easel was Brion's portrait in
the uniform of an officer, while all about were other portraits--some
taken when he was a child, others as a boy--a kind of sanctuary, really,
in which the mother worshipped this one idol of her life."

Herbert stopped, drew the tiny glass of cognac toward him, sipped its
contents slowly, the tenderness of tone increasing as he went on:

"She greeted me simply and kindly, and led me to a seat on the sofa
beside her, where she thanked me for the trouble I had taken, her soft
blue eyes fixed on mine, her gentle, high-bred features illumined with
her gratitude, her silver-gray hair forming an aureole in the light of
the window behind her, as she poured out her heart. Then followed
question after question; she wanting every incident, every word he had
uttered; what his nursing had been--all the things a mother would want
to know. Altogether it was the severest ordeal I had been through since
I left home--and I have had some trying ones.

"For three hours I sat there, giving her minute accounts of his illness,
his partial recovery, his relapse; what remedies I had used; how he
failed after the fourth day; how his delirium had set in, and how at the
last he had passed peacefully away. Next I described the funeral, giving
a succinct account of the preparations; how we buried him on a little
hill near a spring, putting a fence around the grave to keep any one
from walking over it. Then came up the question of a small head-stone.
This she insisted she would order cut at once and sent out to me--or
perhaps one could be made ready so that I might take it with me. All
this I promised, of course, even to taking it with me were there time,
which, after all, I was able to do, for my steamer was delayed. And so I
left her, her hands on my shoulders, her eyes fixed on mine in gratitude
for all I had done for her dead son."

"Oh!--the poor, dear lady!" cried madame la marquise, greatly moved, her
hands tight clasped together. "Yes, I believe you--nothing in all your
experience could have been as painful!"

Brierley raised his head and looked at Herbert:

"Rather a tight place, old man, awful tight place," and his voice
trembled. "But where does the lie come in? You told her the truth, after
all."

"Told her the truth! I thought you understood. Why I lied straight
through! There _was_ no grave--there never had been! Her son and his
three black carriers had been trapped by cannibals and eaten."

Madame started from her chair and clutched Herbert's hand.

"Oh!--how terrible! No! you could not have told her!--I would never have
liked you again if you had told her. Oh! I am so glad you didn't!"

"There was nothing else to do, madame," said Herbert thoughtfully, his
eyes gazing into space as if the recital had again brought the scene
before him.

"Pray God she never found out!" said the marquise under her breath.

"That has always been my consolation, madame. So far as I know she never
did find out. She is dead now."

"And I wish we had never found out either!" groaned Louis. "Why in the
world do you want to make goose-flesh crawl all over a fellow! An
awful, frightful story. I say, Herbert, if you've got any more horrors
keep 'em for another night. I move we have a rest. Drag out that spinet,
Brierley, and give us some music."

"No, please don't!" cried the marquise. "Tell us another. I wish this
one of Monsieur Herbert's was in print, so that I could read it over and
over. Think how banal is our fiction; how we are forever digging in the
same dry ground, turning up the same trivialities--affairs of the heart,
domestic difficulties--thin, tawdry romances of olden times, all the
characters masquerading in modern thought--all false and stupid. Oh! how
sick I am of it all! But this epic of Monsieur Herbert means the clash
of races, the meeting of two civilizations, the world turning back, as
it were, to measure swords with that from which it sprung. And think,
too, how rare it is to meet a man who in his own life has lived them
both--the savage and the civilized. So please, Monsieur Herbert, tell us
another--something about the savage himself. You know so many things and
you _are so human_."

"He doesn't open his lips, madame, until I get some fresh air!" cried
Louis. "Throw back that door, Lemois, and let these hobgoblins out! No
more African horrors of any kind! Ladies and gentlemen, you will now
hear the distinguished spinetist, Herr Brierley, of Pont du Sable, play
one of his soul-stirring melodies! Up with you, Brierley, and take the
taste out of our mouths!"




V

IN WHICH THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A CANNIBAL AND A FREE-BOOTER IS CLEARLY
SET FORTH


To-night the circle around the table welcomed the belated Le Blanc,
bringing with him his friend, The Architect, who had designed some of
the best villas on the coast, and whose fad when he was not bending over
his drawing-board was writing plays. Marc, to every one's regret, did
not come. After returning with madame to her villa the night of her
visit, he had, according to Le Blanc, been lost to the world.

Dinner over and the cigarettes lighted, the men pushed back their
chairs; Louis spreading himself on the sofa or great lounge; Brierley in
a chair by the fire, with Peter cuddled up in his arms, and the others
where they would be the most comfortable; Lemois, as usual, at the
coffee-table.

The talk, as was to be expected, still revolved around the extraordinary
woman who had so charmed us the night before; Le Blanc expressing his
profound regret at not having been present, adding that he would rather
listen to her talk than to that of any other woman in Europe, and I had
just finished giving him a résumé of her story about the tattooed girl
and her sufferings, when Brierley, who is peculiarly sympathetic, let
the dog slip to the floor, and rising to his feet broke out in a tirade
against all savage tribes from Dyaks to cannibals, closing his outburst
with the hope that the next fifty years would see them all exterminated.
Soon the table had taken sides, The Architect, who had lived in Nevada
and the far West, defending the noble red man so cruelly debauched by
the earlier settlers; Le Blanc siding with Brierley, while Lemois and I
watched the discussion, Louis, from his sofa, putting in his oar
whenever he thought he could jostle the boat, grewsome discussions not
being to his liking.

Herbert, who, dinner over, had been leaning back in his chair, the glow
of the firelight touching both his own and the two carved heads above
him, and who, up to this time, had taken no part in the talk--Herbert,
not the heads, suddenly straightened up, threw away his cigarette, and
rested his hands on the table.

"I have not been among the savage tribes in lower Borneo," he said,
addressing The Architect; "neither do I know the red Indian as the
Americans or their grandfathers may have known him. But I do know the
cannibal"--here he looked straight at Le Blanc--"and he is not as black
as he is painted. In fact, the white man is often ten times blacker in
the same surroundings."

"Not when they roasted your Belgian friend?" cried Louis, with some
anger.

"Not even then. There were two sides to that question."

"The brown and the underdone, I suppose," remarked Louis _sotto voce_.

"No, the human."

"But you don't excuse the devils, do you?" broke in Le Blanc. "Their
cruelties are incredible. A friend of mine once met a man in Zanzibar
who told him he had seen a group of slaves, mostly young girls, who,
after being fattened up, were tied together and marched from one of the
villages to the other that the buyers might select and mark upon their
bodies the particular cuts they wanted."

"I haven't a doubt of it. It's all true," replied Herbert. "I once saw
the same thing myself when I was helpless to prevent it, as I was in
hiding at the time and dared not expose myself. Yet I recognized even
then that the savage was only following out the traditions of centuries,
with no one to teach him any better. We ourselves have savage tastes
that are never criticised; to do so would be considered mawkish and
sentimental. We feel, for instance, no regret when we wring the neck of
a pigeon--that is, we didn't," Herbert added with a dry smile, "until
Lemois advanced his theories of 'mercy' the other night. We still feed
our chickens in coops, stuff our geese to enlarge their livers, fatten
our hogs until they can barely stagger, and, after parading them around
the market-places, kill and eat them just as the African does his human
product. Even Lemois, with equal nonchalance, hacks up his lobsters
while they are alive or plunges them into boiling water--he wouldn't
dare serve them to us in any other way. The only difference is that we
persuade ourselves that our pigs and poultry are ignorant of what is
going to happen to them, while the captured African begins to suffer the
moment he is pounced upon by his captors."

"And you mean to tell me you don't blame these wretches!" burst out Le
Blanc. "I'd burn 'em alive!"

"Yes, I am quite sure you would--that is the usual civilized,
twentieth-century way, a continuation of the eye-for-an-eye dogma, but
it isn't always efficacious, and it is seldom just. The savage has his
good side; he can really teach some of us morals and manners, though you
may not believe it. Please don't explode again--not now; wait until I
get through. And I go even farther, for my experience teaches me that
the savage never does anything which he himself thinks to be wrong. I
say this because I have been among them for a good many years, speak
their dialects, and have had, perhaps, a better opportunity of studying
them than most travellers. And these evidences of a better nature can be
found, let me tell you, not only among the tribes in what is known as
'White Man's Africa,' opened up by the explorers, but in the more
distant parts--out of the beaten track--often where no white man has
ever stepped--none at least before me. Even among the cannibal tribes I
have often been staggered at discovering traits which were as mysterious
as they were amazing--deep human notes of the heart which put the white
man to shame. These traits are all the more extraordinary because they
are found in a race who for centuries have been steeped in superstition
with its attendant cruelty, and who are considered incapable even of
love because they sell their women.

"You, Le Blanc, naturally break out and want to burn them alive. Lemois,
more humane, as he always is, would exercise more patience if he could
see anything to build upon. You are both wrong. Indeed, between the
educated white man freed from all restraint and turned loose in a savage
wilderness, and the uneducated savage I would have more hope of the
cannibal than the freebooter, and I say this because the older I grow
the more I am convinced that with a great majority of men, public
opinion, and public opinion only, keeps them straight, and that when
they are far from these restraints they often stoop to a lower level
than the savage, unless some form of religion controls their actions. To
make this clear I will tell you two stories.

"My first is about a young fellow, a graduate of one of the first
universities of Europe. I am not going to preach, nor throw any blame.
Some of us in our twenties might have done what that white man did. I
am only trying to prove my statement that the cannibal in his cruelties
is only following out the instincts and traditions of his race, which
have existed for centuries, while the white man goes back on every one
of his. I wish to prove to you if I can that there is more in the heart
of a savage than most of us realize--more to build upon, as Lemois puts
it.

"Some years ago I met, on the Upper Congo, a young fellow named Goringe,
of about twenty-four or five, who had a contract with the company for
providing carriers to be sent to the coast for the supplies to be
brought back and delivered to the several camps, mine among the others.
He, like many an adventurer drawn to that Eldorado of adventure, was a
man of more than ordinary culture, a brilliant talker, and of very great
executive ability. It was his business to visit the different villages,
buy, barter, or steal able-bodied men for so much a month, and rush them
in gangs to the coast under charge of an escort. On their return the
company paid them and him so much a head. There were others besides
Goringe, of course, engaged in the same business, but none of them
attained his results, as I had learned from time to time from those who
had come across his caravans in their marches through the jungle.

"One morning a runner came into my camp with a message from Goringe,
telling me that he intended passing within a mile or so of where I was;
that he was pressed for time or would do himself the honor of calling
upon me, and that he would deem it a great favor if I would meet him at
a certain crossing where he meant to rest during the heat of the day. I,
of course, sent him word that I should be on hand. I hadn't seen him for
some years--few other white men, for that matter--and I wanted to learn
for myself the secret of his marvellous success. When in London he had
worn correct evening clothes, a decoration in his button-hole, and was a
frequenter of the best and most exclusive clubs--rather a poor training,
one would suppose, for the successful life he had of late been leading
in the jungle--and it _was_ successful so far as the profits of the home
company were concerned. While their other agents would hire ten men--or
twenty--in a long march of months, gathering up former carriers out of
work, some of whom had served Stanley in his time, Goringe would get a
hundred or more of fresh recruits, all able-bodied savages capable of
carrying a load of sixty-five pounds no matter what the heat or how
rough the going.

"I arrived at the crossing first and waited--waited an hour, perhaps
two--before his vanguard put in an appearance. Then, to use one of
Louis' expressions, I 'sat up and began to take notice.' I had seen a
good many barbaric turnouts in my time--one in India when I was the
guest of a maharaja, who received me at the foot of a steep hill flanked
on either side by a double row of elephants in gorgeous trappings, with
armed men in still more gorgeous costumes filling the howdahs; another
in Ceylon, and another in southern Spain at Easter time--but Goringe's
march was the most unique and the most startling spectacle I had ever
laid my eyes on, so much so that I hid myself in a mass of underbrush
and let the last man pass me before I made myself known.

"The vanguard was composed of some twenty naked men, black as tar, of
course, and armed with spears and rawhide shields. These were the
fighters, clearing the way for my lord, the white man. These were
followed by a dozen others carrying light articles: the great man's
india-rubber bath-tub, his guns, ammunition, medicine-chest, tobacco,
matches, and toilette articles--with such portions of his wardrobe as he
might choose to enjoy. Separated from the contaminating touch of those
in front by a space of some twenty feet and by an equal distance from
those behind, came Goringe, walking alone, like a potentate of old. As
he passed within a few yards of where I lay concealed I had ample
opportunity to study every detail of his personality and make-up. I was
not quite sure that it was he; then I got his smile and the peculiar
debonair lift of his head. Except that he was fifty pounds heavier, he
was the man with whom I had dined so often in London.

"On his head was a pith helmet that had once been white, round which was
wound a yard or more of bright-red calico. A dozen strings of gaudy
beads bound his throat and half covered his bare chest. After that there
was nothing but his naked skin--back and front, as far down as his
waist, from which hung a frock of blue denim falling to his knees--then
more bare skin, and then his feet wrapped in goat-skins. In his hand he
carried a staff which he swung from side to side as he walked with
lordly stride.

"His harem followed: thirty girls in single file, dressed in the
prevailing fashion of the day--a petticoat of plantain leaves and a
string of beads. Each of them carried a gaudy paper umbrella like those
sold at home for sixpence. Some of the girls were slim and tall, some
fat; but all were young and all bore themselves with an air of calm
distinction, as if conscious of their alliance with a superior race.
Bringing up the rear was a long line of carriers loaded down with tents,
provisions, and other camp equipage.

"When it had all passed I stepped quickly through the forest, got
abreast of my lord the white man, and shouted:

"'Goringe!'

"He turned suddenly, lifted the edge of his helmet, threw his staff to
one of his men, and came quickly toward me.

"'By the Eternal, but I'm glad to see you! I was afraid you were going
back on me! It was awfully decent in you to come. You didn't mind my
sending for you, did you? I've got to make the next village by sundown,
and then I'm going up into the Hill Country, and may not be this way
again for months--perhaps never. How well you look! What do you think of
my turnout?'

"I told him in reply, that it was rather remarkable--about as
uncivilized as anything I had ever seen--and was on the point of asking
some uncomfortable questions when, noting my disapproval, he switched
off by explaining that it was the only way he could make a penny, and
again turned the conversation by exclaiming abruptly:

"'Saw my wives, didn't you?-every one of them the daughter of a chief.
You see, I buy the girl, and so get even with her father, am made High
Pan-Jam with the red button and feather, or next of kin to the chief by
blood-letting--anything they want. I'm scarred all up now mixing my
precious ancestral fluid with that of these blacklegs, and am first
cousin to half the cutthroats on the river. Next I start on the
carriers, pick 'em out myself, and send 'em down to the agent. The home
company is getting ugly, so I hear, and wonder why they owe me so much
for the carriers I've sent them--pretty near six hundred pounds
sterling, now. They think there is something crooked about it, but I'm
keeping it up. I'm going down when the row is over and present my bill,
and they've got to pay it or I'll know the reason why. Now we'll have
tiffin.'

"I watched his women crowd about him. One spread a blanket for his
royal highness to sit on; two or more busied themselves getting the food
together; one, parasol in hand, planted herself behind him to shield his
precious head from the few sunbeams that filtered through the
overhanging leaves, fanning him vigorously all the while.

"With the serving of the meal and the uncorking of a bottle in which he
kept what he called his 'private stock,' he gave me further details of
his methods with the natives. When a chief was at war with another
tribe, for instance, he would move into the first village he came to,
spread his own tent and those of his wives, post his retainers, and then
despatch one of his men to the other combatant, commanding a powwow the
next morning. Everybody would come--everybody would talk, including
himself, for he spoke Kinkongo and Bangala perfectly. Then when he had
patched up their difficulties, he would distribute presents, get
everybody drunk on palm wine, and would move on next day with a
contribution of carriers from both tribes, adding with a wink, 'And the
trick works every time.'"

Herbert paused for a moment and his lips curled.

"Now there's a specimen white man for you! To have expressed my disgust
of his methods in the way I would have liked to do--and I can be pretty
ugly at times--would, under the circumstances, have been impossible,
although there was no question in my mind of his cruelty nor of his
sublime selfishness. The world was his oyster and he opened it at his
leisure. He knew as well as I did what would become of the women when he
was through with them--that they would either be sold into slavery or
eaten--and he knew, too, how many of those poor devils of carriers would
go to their death, for the mortality among them is fearful--and yet none
of it ever made the slightest impression on him. Now I could excuse that
sort of thing in Tippoo Tib, whom I knew very well. He was a
slave-trader and the most cruel ruffian that was ever let loose on the
natives; but this man was an Anglo-Saxon, a graduate of a university,
speaking French and German fluently, with a good mother, and sisters,
and friends; a man whom you could no doubt find to-night perfectly
dressed and heartily welcomed in a London club, or in the foyer of some
theatre in Paris, for his father has since died and he has come into his
property. And yet the environment and the absence of public opinion had
reduced him to something worse than a savage, and so I say again, one
can excuse a cannibal whose traditions and customs have known no change
for centuries, but you cannot excuse a freebooter who goes back on every
drop of decent blood in his veins."

Before any one could reply The Architect was on his feet waving his
napkin. "By Jove!" he cried, "what a personality! Wouldn't he be a hit
in comic opera! And think what could be done with the scenery; and that
procession of parasols, with snakes hanging down from the branches, and
monkeys skipping around among the leaves! Robinson Crusoe wouldn't be in
it--why, it would take the town by storm! Girls in black stockinette and
bangles, savages, spears, palms, elephant tusks, Goringe in a helmet and
goat-skin shoes! I'll tell Michel Carré about it the first time I see
him."

"And every one of Goringe's girls a beautiful seductive houri," chimed
in Louis with a wink at Le Blanc. "You seem to have slurred over all the
details of this part of the panorama, Herbert."

"Oh, ravishingly beautiful, Louis! Half of them were greased from head
to foot with palm-oil, and smeared with powdered camwood that changed
them to a deep mahogany; all had their wool twisted into knobs and
pigtails, and most of them wore pieces of wood, big as the handle of a
table knife, skewered through their upper lips. Oh!--a most adorable lot
of houris."

"All the better," vociferated The Architect. "Be stunning under the
spotlights. Tell me more about him. I may write the libretto myself and
get Livadi to do the music. It's a wonderful find! Did you ever see
Goringe again?"

"No, but I kept track of him. The Belgian home company went back on
their contract, and refused to pay him just as he feared they would;
they claimed he didn't and couldn't have supplied that number of
carriers--the sort of defence a corporation always makes when they want
to get out of a bad bargain. This decided him. He made a bee-line for
the coast, sailed by the first steamer, brought suit, tried it himself,
won his case, got his money and a new contract; took the first train for
Monte Carlo, lost every penny he had in a night; went back to Brussels,
got a second contract, sailed the same week for the Congo, and when I
left Bangala for home had another caravan touring the country--bigger
than the first--fitted out with the best that money could buy----"

"Including his wives, of course," suggested Louis.

"Yes, but not the lot he had left behind," added Herbert slowly, a frown
settling on his brow. "They had long since been wiped out of existence."

The Architect pounded the table until the glasses rattled. "Superb!
Magnificent! That finishes the libretto! Carré shan't have it; I'll
write it myself! But tell me please, if----"

Lemois opened his fingers deprecatingly, his gaze fixed good-naturedly
on the speaker.

"You will pardon me, my dear friend, but Monsieur Herbert is only half
through. He is not writing a play; he is introducing us to a higher
standard of morals and perhaps of manners. Besides, if you listen you
may get a fourth act and a climax which will be better than what you
have. He has promised to convince Monsieur Le Blanc, who has not yet
said a word, that the savage should not be burnt alive, and to convince
me that there is something in that terrible blackamoor worthy of my
admiration, even if he does dine on his fellow men. We have yet to hear
Monsieur Herbert's second story."

"All right, Lemois, but I doubt if it will help our distinguished guest
here to complete his scenario; but here goes:

"When I was chief of Bangala Station, circumstances made it necessary
for me to make an expedition into the Aruwimi District, inhabited by a
tribe now known as the Waluheli--cannibals and typical savages so far as
morals and habits were concerned. These people, as I afterward learned,
are possessed of great physical strength and are constantly on the
war-path, trading among each other between times in slaves, ivory, and
native iron ore. They live in huts made of grass stalks and plaited
palm-leaves. Manioc is about the only food. This, of course, the women
till. In fact, that which protects her from being sold as food is often
her value as a worker, for one of their beliefs is that women have no
souls and no future state.

"I took with me five carriers and some fifteen fighting men and struck
due east. It was the customary outfit, each man carrying sixty-five
pounds of baggage, including tent, guns, ammunition, etc. The Aruwimi
District, we had heard, was rich in plantains, as well as game, and we
needed both, and the fighting men served for protection in case we were
attacked, and as food carriers if we were not.

"The first day's march brought us to a small river, a branch of the
larger tributaries of the Upper Congo, which we crossed. Then followed a
three days' march which led us to a hilly country where the villages
were few and far between, and although the natives we met on the trail
were most friendly--indeed some of their men had helped make up my
gangs, two of them joining my escort--no food was to be had, and so I
was obliged to push on until I struck a stretch that looked as if the
plantains and manioc could be raised. Still further on I discovered
traces of antelope and zebra and some elephants' tracks. Although the
villages we passed were deserted, the character of the country proved
that at some time in the past both plantains and a sort of yam had been
raised in abundance, which led me to believe we could get what we
wanted.

"In this new country, too, we met a new kind of native, different from
those to whom I had been accustomed, who, on discovering us, crouched
behind trees and bunches of tangled vines, brandishing their spears and
shields, but making no direct assault. Coming suddenly upon eight or ten
warriors in fording a small brook, I walked boldly in among them,
shouting that we were friendly and not enemies. They listened without
moving and in a moment more my men had cut off their retreat and had
surrounded them. Then I discovered that they spoke one of the dialects I
knew--the Mabunga--and after that we had no trouble. Indeed, they
directed us to their village, where that night my bed was spread in
their largest hut. Next day I started bartering and soon had all the
provisions we could carry, the currency, as usual, being glass beads and
a few feet of brass and copper wire, with some yards of calico for the
women and the chief. I should then have turned in another direction, but
early the next morning, as I was getting ready to leave, one of my men
brought news of an elephant who the night before had been seen
destroying their crops. The temptation was too strong--no, don't laugh,
Louis, I have reformed of late--and I dropped everything and started for
the game. Meat for our camp, and especially for the friendly village,
would be a godsend, and, taking five men, I was soon on his track. They
are strong-legged and quick movers, these elephants, and a few hours'
start makes it difficult for a white man to catch up with them. All that
day I followed him, never getting near him, although the spoor, stripped
saplings, and vines showed that he was but a few miles ahead. At
nightfall I gave him up, sent my men back, and, to avoid fording a deep
stream, made a short détour to the right. The sun had set and darkness
had begun to fall. And it comes all at once and almost without warning
in these parts.

"My men being out of reach, I pushed ahead until I struck a narrow path
twisting in and out of the heavier trees and less tangled underbrush.
Here I came upon an open place with signs of cultivation and caught
sight of another unexpected village, the first I had run across in that
day's march. This one, on nearer approach, proved to be a collection of
small huts straggling along the edge of what at last became a road or
street. Squatting in front of these rude dwellings sat the inhabitants
staring at me in wonder--the first white man they had ever seen.

"It was a curious sight and an uncanny one--these silent black savages
watching my advance. One man had thrown his arm around his wife, as if
to protect her; she crouching close to him--both naked as the day they
were born. I used the pair in a group I exhibited two or three years ago
which bore the title, 'They Have Eyes and See Not'--you may perhaps
remember it. I wanted to express the instinctive recognition of the
savage for what he feels dimly is to conquer him, and I tried as well to
give something of the pathos of the surrender.

"There was no movement as I approached--no greeting--no placing of yams,
coarse corn, and pieces of dried game and dried meat on the ground at
their feet, especially the flesh of animals, in preparing which they are
experts, a whole carcass being sometimes so dried. They only stared
wonderstruck--absorbed in my appearance. Now and then, as I passed
rapidly along so as to again reach my men before absolute darkness set
in, I would stop and make the sign of peace. This they returned, showing
me that their customs, and I hoped their language, was not unlike what I
understood.

"When I was abreast of the middle of the village a sudden desire for a
pipe--that solace of the lone man--took possession of me and I began
fumbling about my clothes for my matchbox. Then I remembered that I had
given it to one of my carriers to start our morning blaze. I now began
to scan the dwellings I passed for some signs of a fire. My eye finally
caught between the supports of the last hut on the line the glow of a
heap of embers, and huddled beside it the dim outline of two
figures--that of a man and a woman.

"For a moment I hesitated. I was alone, out of the hearing of my
followers, and darkness was rapidly falling. As long as I kept on a
straight course I was doubtless safe; if I halted or, worse yet, if I
entered his hut without invitation, the result might be different. Then
the picture began to take hold of me: the rude primeval home; the warmth
and cheer of the fire; the cuddling of man and wife close to the embers,
the same the world over whether cannibal or Christian. Involuntarily my
thoughts went back to my own fireside, thousands of miles away: those I
loved were sitting beside the glowing coals that gave it life, a curl of
smoke drifting toward the near hills.

"I turned sharply, walked straight into the hut, and, making the sign of
peace, asked in Mabunga for a light for my pipe.

"The man started--I had completely surprised him--sprang to his feet,
and, looking at me in amazement, returned my greeting in the same
tongue, touching his forehead in peaceful submission as he spoke. The
woman made neither salutation nor gesture. I leaned over to pick up a
coal, and, to steady myself, laid my hand on the woman's shoulder.

"It was cold and hard as wood!

"I bent closer and scanned her face.

"She was a dried mummy!

"The man's gaze never wavered.

"Then, he said slowly: 'She was my woman--I loved her, and I could not
bury her!'"


Herbert's dénouement had come as an astounding surprise. He looked round
at the circle of faces, his eyes resting on Le Blanc's and Lemois' as if
expecting some reply.

The older man roused himself first.

"Your story, Monsieur Herbert," he said with a certain quaver in his
voice, "has opened up such a wide field that I no longer think of the
moral, although I see clearly what you intended to prove. When your
climax came"--and his eyes kindled--"I felt as if I were standing on
some newly discovered cliff of modern thought, below which rolled a
thick cloud of superstition rent suddenly by a flash of human sympathy
and love. Below and beyond stretched immeasurable distances fading into
the mists of the ages. You will excuse the way I put it--I do not mean
to be fanciful nor pedantic--but it does not seem that I can express my
meaning in any other way. _Mon Dieu_, what a lot of cheap dancing jacks
we are! We dig and sell our product; we plead to save a criminal; we
toil with our hands and scheme with our heads, and when it is all done
it is to get a higher place in the little world we ourselves make. Once
in a while there comes a flash of lightning like this from on high and
the cloud is rent in twain and we look through and are ashamed. Thank
you again, Monsieur Herbert. You have widened my skull--cracked it open
an inch at least, and my heart not a little. Your savage should be
canonized!"

And he left the room.




VI

PROVING THAT THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE NEVER DID RUN SMOOTH


Mignon's coffee-roaster was silent this morning. By listening intently a
faint rhythm could be heard coming from beyond the kitchen door, telling
that she was alive and about her work, but the garden was not the scene
of her operations. Rain had fallen steadily all night and was still at
it, driving every one within doors. Furthermore, somewhere off in the
North Sea the wind had suddenly tumbled out of bed and was raising the
very Old Harry up and down the coast. Reports had come in of a bad wreck
along shore, and much anxiety was felt for the fishing fleet.

To brave such a downpour seemed absurd, and so we passed the morning as
best we could. I made a sketch in color of the Marmouset; Herbert and
Brierley disposed themselves about the room reading, smoking, or
criticising my work; Louis upstairs was stretching a canvas--nothing
appealed to him like a storm--and he had determined, as soon as the
deluge let up--no moderate downpour ever bothers him--to paint the surf
dashing against the earth cliffs that frowned above the angry sea.
Lemois did not appear until near noon, his excuse being that he had lain
awake half the night thinking of Herbert's story of the African's dried
wife, and had only dropped off to sleep when the fury of the storm awoke
him.

As luncheon was about to be served, Le Blanc arrived in his car one mass
of mud, the glass window in the rear of the cover smashed by the wind.
He brought news of a serious state of things along the coast. The sea in
its rage, so his story ran, was biting huge mouthfuls out of the bluffs,
the yellow blood of the dissolving clay staining the water for half a
mile out. One of the card-board, jig-saw, gimcrack villas edging the
cliff had already slid into the boiling surf, and the rest of them would
follow if the wind held for another hour.

We drew him to the fire, helped him off with his drenched coat, each of
us becoming more and more thoughtful as we listened to his description.
Leà and Mignon, unheeded, came in bearing the advance dishes--some
oysters and crisp celery. They were soon followed by Lemois, who,
instead of helping, as was his invariable custom, in the arrangement of
the table, walked to the hearth and stood gazing into the coals. He,
too, was thoughtful, and after a moment asked if we would permit Mignon
to replace him at the coffee-table that evening, as he must be off for a
few hours, and possibly all night, explaining in answer to our questions
that the storm had already reached the danger line, and he felt that as
ex-mayor of the village he should be within reach if any calamity
overtook the people and fishermen in and around Buezval. We all, of
course, offered to go with him--Louis being especially eager--but Lemois
insisted that we had better finish our meal, promising to send for us if
we were really needed.

His departure only intensified our apprehensions as to the gravity of
the situation. What had seemed to us at first picturesque, then
threatening, assumed alarming proportions. The gale too, during
luncheon, had gone on increasing. Great puffs of smoke belched from the
throat of the chimney into the room, and we heard the thrash of the rain
and shrill wails of the burglarious wind rising and falling as it
fingered the cracks and crevices of the old building. Now and then an
earthen tile would be ripped from the roof and sent crashing into the
court. "By Jove!--just hear that wind!" followed by an expectant
silence, interrupted almost every remark.

As the fury of the storm increased we noticed that a certain nervous
anxiety had taken possession of our pretty Mignon, who, at one crash
louder than the others, so far forgot herself as to go to the window,
trying to peer out between the bowed shutters, her baffled eyes seeking
Leà's for some comforting assurance, the older woman, without ceasing
her ministrations to our needs, patting the girl's shoulder in passing.

Suddenly the great outside door of the court, which had been closed to
break the force of the wind, gave way with a bang; then came the muffled
cry of a man in distress, and Gaston burst in, clad in oilskins, his
south-wester tied under his chin, rivers of rain pouring from his hat
and overalls. Mignon gave a half-smothered sob of relief and would have
sunk to the floor at his feet had not Leà caught her.

The young fisherman staggered back against the edge of the fire-jamb,
his hand on his chest.

"It's madame la marquise!" he gasped. He had run the two miles from
Buezval and had barely breath enough to reach the Inn. "I came for
Monsieur Lemois! There isn't a moment to lose--the sea is now up to the
porch. She is lost if you wait!"

"Madame lost!" we cried in unison.

"No," he panted, "the house. She is not there. Find Monsieur
Lemois!--all of you must come!"

Le Blanc was out of his chair before Gaston had completed his sentence.

"Get your coats and meet me at the garage!" he shouted. "I'll run the
motor out; we'll be there in ten minutes! My coat too, Leà!" and he
slammed the door behind him.

The old woman clattered upstairs into the several rooms for our ulsters
and water-proofs, but Mignon sat still, too overjoyed to move or speak.
Gaston, she knew, was going out into the rain again, but he was safe on
the land now and not on a fishing craft, fighting his way into the
harbor, as she had feared all day. The young fellow looked at her from
under the brim of his dripping south-wester, but there was no word of
recognition, though he had come as much to tell her he was safe as to
summon us to madame's villa. I caught her lifted eyes and the furtive
glance of gratitude she gave him.


It was a wild dash up the coast; Le Blanc driving, Herbert handling the
siren, the others packed in, crouching close, Gaston holding to the
foot-board, where he roared in our ears the details of the impending
calamity, his breath having now come back to him. The cliff, he
explained, that supported the tennis court of an adjoining villa had
given way, taking with it a slice of madame's lawn, leaving only the
gravel walk under her library windows. The surf, goaded by the thrash of
the wind, was, when he left, cutting great gashes in the toe of the
newly exposed slope. Another hour's work like the last--and it was not
high water until four o'clock--would send the cottage heels over head
into the sea. Madame was in Paris, and the caretakers--an old fisherman
and his wife--too old to work--were panic-stricken, calling piteously
for Monsieur Lemois, whom their mistress trusted most of all the people
in and about the village.

The end of the shore road had now been reached, our siren blowing
continuously. With a twist of the wheel we swerved from the main
highway, climbed a short hill, and chugged along an overhanging road
flanked by a row of little black lumps of cottages in silhouette against
the white fury of the smashing surf. The third of these, so Gaston said,
was madame's. Thank God it was still square-sided and the chimneys still
upright. We were in time anyhow!

More than once have I helped in a fire or lent a welcoming hand to a
shipwrecked crew breasting an ugly sea in a water-logged boat; but to
hold on to a cottage sliding into the sea--as one would to the heels of
a would-be suicide determined to dash himself to pieces on the sidewalk
below--was a new experience to me.

Not so to Herbert--that is, you would never have supposed it from the
way he took hold of things. In less time than I tell it, he had swung
wide the rear door of madame's villa, stationed Brierley, Le Blanc, and
myself at the side entrances to keep out poachers, formed a line of
fishermen (whom Gaston knew) to pass out bric-à-brac, pictures, and rare
furniture to the garage at the end of the lawn--the only safe place
under cover--and, with Louis to help, was packing it with household
goods.

While this was going on, although we did not know it, Lemois was
half-way down the slope watching the encroaching sea; calculating the
number of minutes which the villa had to live; watching, too, the slow
crumbling of the cliff. He knew something of these earth slides--or
thought he did--and, catching sight of our rescue party, struggled up to
warn us.

But Herbert had not furled a mainsail off Cape Horn for nothing. He also
knew the sea and what its savage force could do. He, too, had swept his
eyes over the crumbling slopes, noted the wind, looked at his watch,
and, bounding back, had given orders to go ahead. There was possibly an
hour--certainly thirty minutes--before the house, caught by the tide at
high water, would sag, tilt, and pitch headlong, like a bird-cage
dropped from a window-sill, and no power on earth could save it. Until
then the work of rescuing madame's belongings must go on.

Louis' enormous strength now came into play: first it was an inlaid
cabinet, mounted in bronze, with heavy glass doors. This, stripped of
its curios, which he crammed into his pockets, was picked up bodily and
carried without a break to the garage, a hundred yards in the rear;
then followed bronzes that had taken two men to place on their
pedestals; pictures in heavy frames; a harp muffled in a water-proof
cover, which became a toy in his hands; even the piano went out on the
run and was slid along the porch and down the steps, and, with the aid
of Gaston and another fisherman, whirled under cover.

The fight now was against time, Lemois indicating the most valuable
articles. Soon the first floor was entirely cleared except for some
heavy pieces of furniture, and a dash was made upstairs for madame's
bedroom and boudoir, filled with choice miniatures, larger portraits,
and the little things she loved and lived with. The pillows were now
torn from the beds, emptied, and every conceivable kind of small
precious thing--silver-topped toilet articles, an ivory crucifix, bits
of Dresden china--all the odds and ends a woman of quality, taste, and
refinement uses and must have--were dumped one after another into the
pillow-sacks and carried carefully to shelter. Then followed the books
and rare manuscripts.

Herbert, who, between every trip to the garage or to the crowd of
willing workers outside, had paused to watch the sea, now bawled up the
staircase ordering every man out. The last moment of safety had arrived.
Lemois, intent on rescuing a particular portfolio of etchings, either
would not or did not hear. Gaston, more alert, and who had been helping
him to carry down an armful of the more precious books, sprang past
Herbert, despite his cry, and dashed back up the steps, shouting as he
raced on that Lemois was still upstairs. Herbert made a plunge to follow
when Louis threw his arms around him.

"No, for God's sake! She's going! Out of this!--quick! Jump, Herbert, or
you'll be killed!"

As the two men cleared the doorway there came a racking, splitting,
tearing noise; a doubling under of the posts of the front porch; a hail
of broken glass and clouds of blinding dust from squares of plaster as
the ceilings collapsed; then the whole structure canted--slid ten feet
and stopped, the brick chimneys smashing their full length into the
crumbling mass. When the dust and flying splinters settled, Herbert and
Louis were standing on firm ground within a foot only of the upheaved
edge of raw earth. Staring them in the face, like the upturned feet of
a prostrate man, were the bottom timbers of the cottage.

Somewhere inside the chaotic mass lay Lemois and Gaston!

A cry of horror went up from the crowd, made more intense by the shriek
of a fisher-woman--Gaston's mother--who just before the crash came had
seen her son's head at the library window, and who was now fighting her
way to where Herbert was keeping back the mob until he could make up his
mind what was best to do. Her breathless news decided him.

"Louis!" he shouted, his voice ringing above the roar of the sea, "pick
out two men--good ones--and follow me!"

The four worked their way to a careened window now flattened within a
foot of the ground, crawled over the sill, and Herbert calling out to
Lemois and Gaston all the while, crept under a tangle of twisted beams,
flooring, and furniture, until they reached what was once the farther
wall of the library.

Under an overturned sofa, pinned down but unhurt, white with dust and
broken plaster and almost unrecognizable, they found our landlord.
Gaston lay a few feet away, the breath knocked out of him, an ugly
wound in his head. Lemois had answered their call, but Gaston had given
no sign.

Herbert braced himself and in the dim light looked about him. The saving
of lives was now a question of judgment, requiring that same
instantaneous making up of his mind always necessary when his own life
had depended upon the exact placing of a rifle-ball in the skull of a
charging elephant. There was not a second to lose. Another slash of the
sea and the whole mass might go headlong down the slope, and yet to lift
the wrong timber in an effort to free Lemois might topple the entire
heap, as picking out the wrong match-stick topples a pile of jackstraws.

He ran his eye over the shattered room; ordered the two fishermen to
leave the wrecked building; selected, after a moment's pause, a heavy
joist lying across the sofa; stood by while Louis put his shoulder under
its edge, his enormous strength bearing the full brunt of the weight;
waited until it swayed loose, and then, grabbing Lemois firmly by the
coat-collar, dragged him clear and set him on his feet.

Gaston came next, limp and apparently dead--the blood trickling from
his head and spattering his rescuers.

The crowd shouted in unison as they caught sight of Lemois' gray head,
all the whiter from the grime of powdered plaster. Then came another and
louder shout, followed by another piercing shriek from Gaston's mother
as her boy's sagging, insensible body was brought clear of the wreck.
None of his bones were broken, none that Lemois could find; something
had struck the boy--some falling weight--perhaps a bust from one of the
bookcases over his head. That was the last the lad had known until he
found his mother kneeling beside him in the rain and mud, where the cold
wind and rain revived him.

But our work was not yet over. The miscellaneous assortment of precious
things housed in the garage must be rearranged before nightfall and
protected against breakage and leakage. Watchmen must be selected and
made comfortable in the garage, a telegram despatched to madame at her
apartment in Paris, with details of the catastrophe and salvage, and
another to her estate at Rouen, and, more important still, Gaston must
be carried home, put to bed, and a doctor sent for. This done, Herbert
and the rest of us could go back to the inn in Le Blanc's motor.

[Illustration: As her boy's sagging, insensible body was brought clear
of the wreck]

The first load brought Herbert, Brierley, and myself, Le Blanc driving:
Lemois had remained with Gaston. Mignon, with staring, inquiring eyes,
her apron over her head to protect her from the wet, met us at the outer
gate, but not a word was said by any of us about Gaston, a crack on a
fisherman's head not being a serious affair--and then again, this one
was as tough as a rudder-post and as full of spring as an oar--and then,
more important still, the poor child with her hungry, tear-stained eyes
had had trouble enough for one day, as we all knew. Later when Leà  and
I were alone, I told her the story, describing Gaston's pluck and
bravery and his risking his life to save Lemois--the dear old woman
clasping her fingers together as if in church when I added that "he'd be
all right in the morning after a good night's rest."

"Pray God nothing happens to him!" she said at last, crossing herself.
"Mignon is only a child and it would break her heart. Monsieur Lemois
does not wish it, and there is trouble--much trouble--ahead for her, but
while there is life there is hope. He is a good Gaston--his mother and
I were girls together; she had only this one left--the boat upset and
the father was drowned off _Les Dents Terribles_ two years ago."

Louis, whose heart is as big as his body, was less cautious. He must
have a word with the girl herself. And so, when we had all gathered
before the fire to dry out--for most of us were still wet and all
ravenous--he called out to her in his cheery, hearty way:

"That is a plucky garçon of yours, mademoiselle. Monsieur Lemois would
have been flattened into a pancake but for him. When the house fell it
was Monsieur Gaston who jerked him away from the window and rolled a
sofa on top of him. Ah!--a brave garçon, and one who does you credit."

The girl--she was busying herself with her dishes at the time--blushed
and said: "Merci, monsieur," her eyes dancing over the praise of her
lover, but she was too modest and too well trained to say more.

Again Le Blanc's siren came shrieking down the road. This time it would
bring Lemois. I threw on another log to warm them both, and Louis began
collecting a small assortment of glasses, Mignon following with a
decanter.

Several minutes passed, during which we waited for the heavy tread of
fat Le Blanc. Then the door opened and Leà appeared; she was trembling
from head to foot and white as a ghost.

"Monsieur wants you--all of you--something has happened! Not you,
Mignon--you stay here."

Inside the court-yard, close to the door of the Marmouset, stood Le
Blanc's motor. Lemois was on the foot-board leaning over the body of a
man stretched out on the two seats.

"Easy now," Lemois whispered to Louis, who had pushed his way alongside
of the others crowding about the car. "He collapsed again as soon as you
all left. There is something serious I am afraid--that is why I brought
him here. His mother wanted to take him home, but that's no place for
him now. He must stay here to-night. We stopped and left word for the
doctor and he will be here in a minute. Be careful, Monsieur Louis--not
in there--upstairs."

Louis was careful--careful as if he were lifting a baby; but he did not
delay, nor did he take him upstairs. Picking up the unconscious
fisherman bodily in his arms, he bore him clear of the machine, carried
him through the open door of the Marmouset, and stretched him full
length on the lounge, tucking a cushion under his head as the lad sank
down into the soft mattress.

As the flare of the table candles stirred by the night wind lighted up
his face, Mignon, who had been pushing aside the chairs from out the
wounded man's way, believing it to be Le Blanc, sprang forward, and with
a half-stifled cry sank on her knees beside the boy. Lemois lunged
forward, stooped quickly, and grasping her firmly by the arm, dragged
her to her feet.

"Leave the room!--you are in the way," he said in low, angry tones.
"There are plenty here to take care of him."

Louis, who had moved closer to the girl, and who had already begun to
quiet her fears, wheeled suddenly and would have broken out in
instantaneous protest had not Leà, her lean, tall body stretched to its
utmost, her flat, sunken chest heaving with indignation, stepped in
front of Lemois.

"You are not kind, monsieur," she said coldly, with calm, unflinching
eyes.

"Hold your tongue! I do not want your advice. Take her out!--this is no
place for her!"

Louis' eyes blazed. Unkindness to a woman was the one thing that always
enraged him. Then his better judgment worked.

"Give her to me, Leà," he said. "Come, Mignon! Don't cry, child; he's
not hurt so bad; he'll be all right in the morning. Move away there, all
of you!" and he led the sobbing girl from the room.

A dull, paralyzing silence fell upon us all. Those of us who knew only
the gentle, kind-hearted, always courteous Lemois were dumb with
astonishment. Had he, too, received a crack on his head which had
unsettled his judgment, or was this, after all, the real Lemois?

The opening of the door and the hurried re-entrance of Louis, followed
by the doctor, a short, thick-set man with a bald head, for a time
relieved the tension.

"I was on my way near here when your messenger met me," called out the
doctor with a nod of salutation to the room at large as he dropped into
a chair beside the sufferer, thus supplanting Brierley, who during
Lemois' outburst had been wiping the blood-stained face and lips with a
napkin and finger-bowl he had caught up from the table.

There was an anxious hush; the men standing in a half-circle awaiting
the decision; the doctor feeling for broken limbs, listening to his
breathing, his hand on the boy's heart. Then there came a convulsive
movement and the wounded man lifted his head and gazed about him.

The doctor bent closer, studied Gaston's eyes for a moment, rose to his
feet, tucked his spectacles into a black leather case which he took from
his pocket, and said calmly:

"I think there's no fracture of the skull. I'll know definitely later
on. He is, as I at first supposed, suffering from shock and has
swallowed a lot of dust. He must have complete rest; get him to bed
somewhere and send for a woman in the village to take care of him. I'll
come to-morrow. Who carried him in here?"

Louis nodded his head.

"Then pick him up again and, if Monsieur Lemois is willing, put him in
the room on the ground floor at the end of the court. I can get at him
then from the outside without disturbing anybody. You, gentlemen, so I
hear, are down here for your pleasure and not to run a hospital, and so
I will see you are not disturbed."

Louis leaned down, picked the young fisherman up in his arms with no
more effort than if he had been handling a bag of flour, and carried him
out of the room, across the court, Leà following, and into the basement
chamber, where he laid him on the bed, leaving him with the remark:

"Now stay here and take care of him, Leà, no matter what Monsieur Lemois
says."

Meanwhile Lemois had poured out a glass of wine for the doctor, waited
until he had drank it, thanked him in his most courteous tones for his
promptness, bidden him good-night on the threshold, closed the door
behind him, and without a word to any of us had resumed his place by the
fire.

Another embarrassing silence ensued. Every one felt that the incident,
if aggravated by any untimely remarks, might lead up to an outbreak
which would bring our visit to a premature close. And yet both Leà and
Mignon were so beloved by all of us, and the brutality of the attack
upon the little maid was so uncalled for, that we felt something was due
to our own self-respect.

Herbert, catching our suggestive glances, essayed the task. He was the
man held in most esteem by Lemois, and might perhaps be allowed to say
things which the old gentleman would not take from the rest; and then
again, whatever the outcome, Herbert could be depended upon to keep his
temper no matter what Lemois might answer in return.

"Mignon did nothing, monsieur, except show her love for her
sweetheart--why break out on her?" Herbert's voice was low, but there
was meaning behind it.

"I won't have this thing!" came the indignant retort, all his poise
gone. "That's why I broke out on her. Mignon is not for fishermen, nor
ditch-diggers, nor road-makers. She is like my child--I have other
things in store for her. I tell you I will not have it go on--she knows
why and Leà knows why! I have said so, and it is finished!"

"He about saved your life a little while ago. Does that count for
anything?" The words edged their way through tightly closed lips.

"Yes--for me; that is why I brought him home--but he has not saved
Mignon's life. He would wreck it. She will marry somebody else and he
will marry somebody else. There are too many thick-heads along the
coast now. I decide to steer clear of them."

Louis, who now that his human-ambulance trip was over, had returned to
the Marmouset, stood wondering. What had taken place in his absence was
a mystery. He had, after depositing his burden, taken Mignon to Pierre
and sat her down by the kitchen fire, where he had left her crying
softly to herself.

Lemois waited until Louis had found a seat and went on:

"You, gentlemen, are my friends, and so I will explain to you what I
would not explain to others. You wonder at what I have just said and
done. I try to do my duty--that is my religion, and my only religion. I
have tried to do it to-night. With your help I have done what I could to
save my friend's property, because she was away and helpless. She has
now left to her some of the things she loved. So it is with this girl.
Ten years ago I found her, a child of eight, crying in the street. For
months she had gotten up at daylight, had washed and dressed her two
baby brothers, cooked their breakfast, cleaned house, and tucked in her
bedridden mother; but, try as she would, she was late for school--not
once, but several times. This was against the rules, and when the
prizes and diplomas were given out, all she got was a scolding. Later on
she was dismissed. Because she had no other place to go, and because I
had no child of my own, I took her home with me. As I assumed all
responsibility for her, and she has no one but me, I shall carry it out
to the end, exactly as if she were my daughter. My own daughter should
not and would not marry a fisherman, neither shall Mignon. Madame la
Marquise de la Caux is in Paris, and I do what I can to look after her
belongings. Madame, Mignon's mother, is in heaven, and the remnant of
her people God knows where, and so I do what I can to look after their
child."

"But has the girl no say in the matter?" broke out Louis angrily. "You
are not to live with him--she is."

"That may make some difference in your country, Monsieur Louis, but it
makes no difference in mine. In France we parents and guardians are the
best judges of what is and what is not good for our children. Now,
gentlemen, let us brush it all away. It is very creditable to your
hearts to be so interested in the child; I do not blame you. She is very
lovely and very amusing, and when she leaves us--even with the man I
shall choose for her--it will be a great grief for me, for you see I am
quite alone in the world. So, Monsieur Herbert, there is my hand. Not to
have you understand me would be harder than all the rest, for I esteem
you as I do no other man. And you too, Monsieur Louis, with your big
arms and your big heart. Let us be friends once more. And now I am tired
out with the day's work, and if you do not mind I will say
'Good-night!'"




VII

IN WHICH OUR LANDLORD BECOMES BOTH ENTERTAINING AND INSTRUCTIVE


The experiences of the previous day had left their mark in stiffened
joints and blistered hands. Herbert was nursing a wrenched finger,
Lemois had discovered a bruised back, and Louis a strained wrist--slight
accidents all of them, unheeded in the excitement of the rescue, and
only definitely located when the several victims got out of bed the next
morning.

The real sufferer was Gaston. Two stitches had been taken in his shapely
head and, although he was quite himself and restless as a goat, the
doctor had given positive orders to Leà to keep him where he was until
his wound should heal. To this Lemois had added another and far more
cruel mandate, forbidding Mignon either outside or inside his bedroom
door under pain of death, or words to that effect.

It was not to be wondered at, therefore, that the day was passed
quietly, the men keeping indoors, although the storm had whirled down
the coast, leaving behind it only laughing blue skies and a light wind.

The one exciting incident was a telegram from madame la marquise,
thanking Lemois and his "brave body of men" for their heroic services
and adding that she would come as soon as possible to inspect what she
called her "ruin," and would then give herself the pleasure of thanking
each and every one in person. This was followed some hours later by a
second despatch inquiring after the wounded fisherman and charging
Lemois to spare no expense in bringing him back to health; and a third
one from Marc saying he had gone to Paris and would not be back for
several days.

The absorbing topic, of course, had been Lemois' outbreak on Mignon and
subsequent justification of his conduct. Louis was the most outspoken of
all, and, despite Lemois' defence, valiantly espoused the girl's cause,
the rest of us with one accord pledging ourselves to fight her battles
and Gaston's, no matter at what cost. Brierley even went so far as to
offer to relieve Leà, during which blissful interim he would smuggle
Mignon in for a brief word of sympathy, but this was frowned upon and
abandoned when Herbert reminded us that we were in a sense Lemois'
guests and could not, therefore, breed treachery among his servants. To
this was added his positive conviction that the girl's sufferings would
so tell upon the old man that before many days he would not only regret
his attitude, but would abandon his ambitious plans and give her to the
man she loved.

If Lemois had any such misgivings there was no evidence of it in his
manner. But for an occasional wry face when he moved, due to the blow of
the overturned sofa, he was in an exceptionally happy frame of mind. Nor
did he show the slightest resentment toward any one of us for not
agreeing with him. Even when the twilight hour arrived--a restful hour
when the fellowship of the group came out strongest, and men voiced the
thoughts that lay closest to their hearts--no word escaped him. Music,
church architecture, the influence of Rodin and Rostand on the art and
literature of our time, French politics--all were touched upon in turn,
but not a word of the condition of Gaston's broken head nor the state
of Mignon's bleeding heart--nothing so harrowing. Indeed, so gay was
he, so full of quaint sayings and odd views of life and things, that
when Brierley sat down at the spinet and ran his fingers over the keys,
giving us snatches of melodies from the current music of the day, he
begged for some mediæval anthems "as a slight apology to my suffering
ears," and when Brierley complied with what he claimed was an old
Italian chant, having found the original in Padua, Lemois branched off
into a homily on church music which evinced such a mastery of the
subject that even Brierley, who is something of a musician himself, was
filled with amazement. Indeed, the discussion was in danger of becoming
so heated that the old man, with a twinkle in his eye, relieved the
tension with:

"No, you are quite wrong, Monsieur Brierley, if you will forgive me for
saying so. Your chant is not Italian; it is Spanish. I have a better way
of knowing than by searching among musty libraries and sacristies. When
your fingers were touching the keys I looked around my Marmouset to see
who was listening beside you gentlemen. I soon discovered that the two
heads on Monsieur Herbert's chair were glum and solemn; they might have
been asleep so dull were they. My old Virgin in the corner, which I
found in Rouen, and which is unquestionably French, never raised her
eyes; but the two carved saints over your head, the ones I got in
Salamanca when I was last there, were overjoyed. One smiled so sweetly
that I could not take my eyes from her, and the other kept such perfect
time with his head that I was sorry when you stopped. So you see, your
chant is unquestionably Spanish, and I am glad."

Nor did his spirits flag when dinner was over and he took his place by
the coffee-table, handing Mignon the tiny cups without even a look of
reproach at the demure, sad-eyed girl who was keeping up so brave a
heart.

The change was a delightful one to the coterie. As long as the
embarrassing situation continued there was no telling what might happen.
A question of cuisine could be settled by more or less cayenne, but the
question of a marriage settlement was another affair. Press him too far
and the old gentleman might have bundled us all into the street and
thrown our trunks after us.

The wisest thing, therefore, was to meet his cordiality more than half
way, an easy solution, really, since his _amende honorable_ of the night
before had put us all on our mettle. He should be made to realize and at
once that all traces of ill feeling of every kind had been wiped out of
our hearts.

Herbert, who, as usual when any patching up was to be done, was chief
pacificator, opened the programme by becoming suddenly interested in the
several rare specimens of furniture that enriched the room in which we
sat, complimenting Lemois on his good taste in banishing from his
collection the severe, uncomfortable chairs and sofas of Louis XIV and
XV, and calling special attention to the noble Spanish and Italian
specimens about us, with wide seats, backs, and arms, where, even in the
old days, tired mortals could have lounged without splitting their
stockings or disarranging their wigs, had the dons and contessas worn
any such absurdities.

"Quite true, Monsieur Herbert, but you must remember that the
aristocrats of that day never sat down--their mirrors were hung too high
for them to see themselves should they recline. It was an era of high
heels and polished floors, much low bowing, and overmuch ceremony. And
yet it was a delightful period, and a most instructive one, for the
antiquary, even if it did end with the guillotine. I have always thought
that nothing so clearly defines the taste and intelligence of a nation
as their furniture and house decoration. The frivolities of the Monarchs
of the period is to be found in every twist and curve of their several
styles, just as the virility and out-door life of the Greeks and Romans
are expressed in their solid-marble benches and carved-stone sofas.
Since I have no place in my gardens for ruins of this kind, I do not
collect them--nor would I if I had. There should be, I think, a certain
sane appropriateness in every collection, even in so slight a one as my
own, and a Greek garden with a line of motor cars on one side and a
Normandy church on the other would, I am afraid, be a little out of
keeping," and he laughed softly.

"But you haven't kept close to that rule in this room," said Herbert,
gazing about him. "We have everything here from Philip the Second to
Napoleon the Third."

"I have kept much closer than you think, Monsieur Herbert. The panels,
ceiling, furniture, and stained glass, as well as the fireplace, are
more or less of one period. The fixtures, such as the andirons,
candelabra, and curtains, might have been obtained in one of the
antiquary shops of the day--if any such existed; and so could the china,
silver, and glass. What I had in mind was, not a museum, but a room that
would take you into its arms--a restful, warm, enticing room--one full
of surprises, too"--and he pointed to his rarest possession, the Black
Virgin, half hidden in the recess of the chimney breast. "You see, a
very rare thing is always more effective when you come upon it suddenly
than when you confront it in the blaze of a window or under a fixed
light. Your curiosity is then aroused, and you must stoop to study it. I
arrange these surprises for all my most precious things.

"Here, for instance"--and he crossed the room, opened a cabinet, and
brought from its hiding-place a crystal chalice with a legend in Latin
engraved in gold letters around the rim, placing it on the table so that
the light from the candelabra could fall upon it--"here is something now
you would not look at twice, perhaps, if it were put in the window and
filled with flowers. It must be hidden away before you appreciate it. I
found it in a convent outside of Salamanca some years ago. It is
evidently the work of some old monk who spent his life in doing this
sort of thing, and is a very rare example of that kind of craftsmanship.
Be very careful, Monsieur Louis, you will break the monk's heart, as
well as my own, if you smash it."

"Brierley is the man you want to look out for," answered the painter,
bending closer over the precious object. "He'll be borrowing it to mix
high-balls in unless you keep the cabinet locked."

"Monsieur Brierley is too good for any such sacrilege. And now please
stand aside, and you, Monsieur High-Muck, will you kindly move your
arm?" and he lifted the vase from the cloth and replaced it in the
cabinet, adding with a shrewd glance, "You see, it is always wise to
keep the most precious things hidden away, with, perhaps, only an edge
peeping out to arouse your curiosity--and I have many such."

"Like a grisette's slipper below a petticoat," remarked Louis _sotto
voce_.

"Quite like a grisette's slipper, my dear Monsieur Louis. What a nimble
wit is yours! Only, take an old man's advice and don't be too curious."

Every one roared, Louis louder than any one, and when quiet reigned once
more Herbert, who was determined to keep the talk along the lines which
would most interest our landlord, and who had examined the chalice with
the greatest interest, said, pointing to the cabinet:

"And now show us something else. Here I have lived with these things for
weeks at a time and yet am only beginning to find them out. What else
have you that is especially rare?"

Lemois, who had just closed the door of the cabinet, turned and began
searching the room before replying.

"Well, there is my bas-relief, my Madonna. It is just behind you--very
beautiful and very rare. I do not lock it up; I keep it in a dark corner
where the cross-lights from the window can bring out the face in strong
relief. Please do me the favor, gentlemen, to leave your seats. I never
take it from its place," and he crossed the room and stood beneath it.
"This is the only one in existence, so far as I know--that is, the only
replica. The original is in the Sistine Chapel, near Ravenna. Bring a
candle, please, Monsieur Brierley, so we can all enjoy it. See how
beautiful is the Madonna's face--it is very seldom that so lovely a
smile has lived in marble--and the tenderness of the mother suggested in
the poise of the head as it bends over the Child. I never look at it
without a twinge of my conscience, for it is the only thing in this room
which I made off with without letting any one know I had it, but I was
young then and a freebooter like Monsieur Herbert's man Goringe. I did
penance for years afterward by putting a few lira in the poor-box
whenever I was in Italy, and I often come in here and say my prayers,
standing reverently before her, begging her forgiveness; and she always
gives it--that is, she _must_--for the smile has never, during all these
years, faded from her face."

"But this is plaster," remarked Herbert, reaching up and passing his
skilled fingers over the caste. "Very well done, too."

"Yes--of course. I helped make the mould myself from the original marble
built into the altar--and in the night too, when I had to feel my way
about. I am glad you think it is so good."

"Couldn't do it better myself. But why in the night?"

"Ah--that is a long story."

Herbert clapped his hands to command attention.

"Everybody take their seats. Monsieur Lemois is going to tell us of how
he burglarized a church and made off with a Madonna."

Louis walked solemnly toward the door, his hand over his heart.

"You must excuse me, Herbert, if I leave the room before Lemois begins,"
he said, turning and facing the group, "for I should certainly interrupt
his recital. This whole discussion is so repulsive to me, and so far
below my own high standard of what is right and wrong, that my morals
are in danger of being undermined. And I----"

"Dry up, Louis!" growled Brierley. "Go on, Lemois."

"No, I mean what I say," protested Louis. "Only a few nights ago, and at
this very table, a most worthy woman, descendant of one of the oldest
families in France, and our guest, confessed to wilful perjury, and now
a former mayor of this village admits that he robbed a church. I have
not been brought up this way, and if----"

"Tie him to a chair, High-Muck!" cried Herbert. "No, his hands are up!
All right, go on, Lemois."

"Our landlord drew nearer to the table, sat down, and, with a humorous
nod toward Louis, began:

"You must all remember I was an impressionable young fellow at the time,
full of daredevil, romantic ideas, and, like most young fellows, saw
only the end in view without caring a sou about the means by which I
reached it.

"I found the bas-relief, as I have told you, in a small chapel outside
of Ravenna--one of those deep-toned interiors lighted by dust-begrimed
windows, the roof supported by rows of marble columns. The altar, which
was low and of simple design, was placed at the top of a wide flight of
three rose-marble steps over which swung a huge brass lamp burning a
ruby light. With the exception of an old woman asleep on her knees
before a figure of the Virgin, I was the only person in the building. I
had already seen dozens of such interiors, all more or less alike, and
after walking around it once or twice was about to leave by a side door
protected by a heavy clay-soiled red curtain when my eye fell on the
original of the caste above you, the figures and surrounding panel
being built into the masonry of the altar, a position it had occupied,
no doubt, since the days of Michael Angelo.

"For half an hour I stood before it--worshipping it, really. The longer
I looked the more I wanted something to take away with me that would
keep it alive in my memory. I drew a little, of course, and had my
sketch-book filled, student-like, with bits of architecture, peasants,
horses, and things I came across every day; but I knew I could never
reproduce the angelic smile on the Madonna's face, and that was the one
thing that made it greater than all the bas-reliefs I had seen in all my
wanderings. Then it suddenly occurred to me--there being no photographs
in those days: none you could buy of a thing like this--that perhaps I
could get some one in the village to make a caste, the Italians being
experts at this work. While I was leaning over the rose-marble rail
drinking it in, a door opened somewhere behind the altar and an old
priest came slowly toward me.

"'It is very lovely, holy father,' I said, in an effort to open up a
conversation which might lead somewhere.

"'Yes!' he replied curtly; 'but love it on your knees.'

"So down I got, and there I stayed until he had finished his prayer at
one of the side chapels and had left the church by the main door.

"All this time I was measuring it with my eye--its width, thickness, the
depth of the cutting, how much plaster it would take, how large a bag it
would require in which to carry it away. This done I went back to
Ravenna and started to look up some one of the image vendors who haunt
the door of the great church.

"But none of them would listen. It would take at least an hour before
the plaster would be dry enough to come away from the marble. The
priests--poor as some of them were--would never consent to such a
sacrilege. Without their permission detection was almost certain; so
please go to the devil, illustrious signore, and do not tempt a poor man
who does not wish to go to prison for twenty lira.

"This talk, let me tell you, took place in a shop up a back street, kept
by a young Italian image-vendor who made casts and moulds with the
assistance of his father, who was a hunch-back, and an old man all rags
whom I could see was listening to every word of the talk.

"That same night, about the time the lamps began to be lighted, and I
had started out in search of another mouldmaker, the old man in rags
stepped out of the shadow of a wall and touched my arm.

"'I know the place, signore, and I know the Madonna. I have everything
here in this bucket--at night the church is closed, but there is a side
door. I will take your twenty lira. Come with me.'

"When you are twenty, you are like a hawk after its quarry--your blood
boiling, your nerves keyed up, and you swoop down and get your talons in
your prey without caring what happens afterward. Being also a romantic
hawk, I liked immensely the idea of doing my prowling at night; there
was a touch of danger in that kind of villany which daylight dispels. So
off we started, the ragged man carrying the bucket holding a small
bottle of olive-oil, dry plaster, and a thick sheet of modelling wax
besides some tools: I with two good-sized candles and a box of matches.

"When you rob a bank at night you must, so I am told, be sure you have a
duplicate key or something with which to pick the lock. When you rob an
Italian church, there is no such bother--you simply push wide the door
and begin feeling your way about. And it was not, to my surprise, very
dark once we got in. The ruby light in the big altar lamp helped, and so
did what was left of a single candle placed on a side altar by some poor
soul as part penance for unforgiven sins.

"And it did not take long once we got to work. First a coat of oil to
keep the wax from sticking to the marble; then a patting and forcing of
the soft stuff with thumbs, fingers, and a wooden tool into the crevices
and grooves of the stone, and then a gentle pull.

"Just here my courage failed and my conscience gave a little jump like
the toothache. It might have been the quick flare of the lone candle on
the side altar--I had not used my own, there being light enough to see
to work--or it might have been my heated imagination, but I distinctly
saw on the oil-smeared face of the blessed mother an expression of such
intense humiliation that I pulled out my handkerchief, and although the
ragged man was calling me to hurry, and I myself heard the noise of
approaching footsteps, I kept on wiping off the oil until I saw her
smile once more.

"The time lost caused our undoing--or rather mine. The ragged man with
the precious mould ran out the side door which was never locked--the
one he knew--I landed in the arms of a priest.

"He was bald-headed, wore sandals, and carried a lantern.

"'What are you doing here?' he asked gruffly.

"I pulled out the two candles and held them up so he could see them.

"'I came to burn these before the Madonna--the door was open and I
walked in.'

"He lifted the lantern and scanned my face.

"'You are the man who was here this morning. Did you get down on your
knees as I told you?'

"'Yes, holy father.'

"'Get down again while I close the church. You can light your candles by
the lantern,' and he laid it on the stone pavement beside me and moved
off into the gloom.

"I did everything he bade me--never was there a more devout
worshipper--handed him back his lantern, and made my way out.

"At the end of the town the ragged man thrust his head over a low wall.
He seemed greatly relieved, and picking up the bucket, we two started on
a run for my lodgings. Before I went to bed that night he had mixed up
the dry plaster in his bucket and taken the cast. He wanted to keep the
matrix, but I wouldn't have it. I did not want his dirty fingers feeling
around her lovely face, and so I paid him his blood money and pounded
the mould out of shape. The next morning I left Ravenna for Paris.

"You see now, messieurs, what a disreputable person I am." Here he rose
from his seat and walked back to the bas-relief. "And yet, most blessed
of women"--and he raised his eyes as if in prayer--"I think I would do
it all over again to have you where you could always listen to my
sins."




VIII

CONTAINING SEVERAL EXPERIENCES AND ADVENTURES SHOWING THE WIDE CONTRASTS
IN LIFE


How it began I do not remember, for nothing had led up to it except,
perhaps, Le Blanc's arrival for dinner half an hour late, due, so he
explained, to a break in the running gear of his machine, most of which
time he had spent flat on his back in the cold mud, monkey-wrench in
hand, instead of in one of our warm, comfortable chairs.

No sooner was he seated at my side and his story told than we fell
naturally to discussing similar moments in life when such sudden
contrasts often caused us to look upon ourselves as two distinct persons
having nothing in common each with the other. Lemois, whose story of the
stolen Madonna the previous night had made us eager for more, described,
in defence of the newly launched theory, a visit to a Swiss chalet, and
the sense of comfort he felt in the warmth and coseyness of it all, as
he settled himself in bed, when just as he was dozing off a fire broke
out and in less than five minutes he, with the whole family, was
shivering in a snow-bank while the house burned to the ground.

"And a most uncomfortable and demoralizing change it was, messieurs--one
minute in warm white sheets and the next in a blanket of cold snow. What
has always remained in my mind was the rapidity with which I passed from
one personality to another."

Brierley, taking up the thread, described his own sensations when,
during a visit to a friend's luxurious camp in the Adirondacks, he lost
his way in the forest and for three days and nights kept himself alive
on moose-buds and huckleberries.

"Poor grub when you have been living on porter-house steak and lobsters
from Fulton Market and peaches from South Africa. Time, however, didn't
appeal to me as it did to Lemois, but hunger did, and I have never
looked a huckleberry in the face since without the same queer feeling
around my waistband."

Appealed to by Herbert for some experiences of my own, I told how this
same realization of intense and sudden contrasts always took possession
of me, when, after having lived for a week on hardtack, boiled pork, and
plum duff, begrimed with dust and cement, I would leave the inside of a
coffer-dam and in a few hours find myself in the customary swallow-tail
and white tie at a dinner of twelve, sitting among ladies in costly
gowns and jewels.

"What, however, stuck out clearest in my mind," I continued, "was
neither time nor what I had had to eat, but the enormous contrasts in
the color scheme of my two experiences: at noon a gray sky and leaden
sea, relieved by men in overalls, rusty derricks, and clouds of white
steam rising from the concrete mixers; at night filmy gowns and bare
shoulders rose pink in the softened light against a strong relief of the
reds and greens of deep-toned tapestries and portraits in rich frames. I
remember only the color."

At this Herbert lighted a fresh cigar and, with the flaming match still
in hand, said quietly:

"While you men have been talking I have been going over some of my own
experiences"--here he blew out the match--"and I have a great mind to
tell you of one that I had years ago which made an indelible impression
on me."

"Leave out your 'great mind,' Herbert," cried Louis--"we'll believe
anything but that--and give us the story--that is, Le Blanc, if you will
be so very good as to move your very handsome but slightly opaque head,
so that I can watch the distinguished mud-dauber's face while he talks.
Fire away, Herbert!"

"I was a lad of twenty at the time," resumed Herbert, pausing for a
moment until the unembarrassed Le Blanc had pushed back his chair, "and
for reasons which then seemed good to me ran away from home, and for two
years served as common sailor aboard an English merchantman, bunking in
the forecastle, eating hardtack, and doing work aloft like any of the
others. I had the world before me, was strong and sturdily built, and,
being a happy-hearted young fellow, was on good terms with every one of
the crew except a dark, murderous-looking young Portuguese of about my
own age, active as a cat, and continually quarrelling with every one.
When you get a low-down Portuguese with negro blood in his veins you
have reached the bottom of cunning and cruelty. I've come across several
of them since--some in dress suits--and know.

"For some reason this fellow hated me as only sailors who are forced to
live together on long voyages know how to hate. My bunk was immediately
over his, and when I slid out in the morning my feet had to dangle in
front of his venomous face. When I crawled up at night the same thing
happened. We worked side by side, got the same pay, and ate the same
grub, yet I never was with him without feeling his animosity toward me.

"It was only by the merest accident that I found out why he hated me. He
blurted it out in the forecastle one night after I had gone on deck, and
the men told me when I dropped down the companion-way again. He hated me
because I brushed my teeth! Oh!--you needn't laugh! Men have murdered
each other for less. I once knew a man who picked a quarrel at the club
with a diplomat because he dared to twist his mustache at the same angle
as his own; and another--an Austrian colonel--who challenged a brother
officer to a mortal duel for serving a certain Johannesburg when it was
a well-known fact that he claimed to own every bottle of that year's
vintage.

"I continued brushing my teeth, of course, and at the same time kept an
eye on the Portuguese whose slurs and general ugliness at every turn
became so marked that I was convinced he was only waiting for a chance
to put a knife into me. The captain, who studied his crew, was of the
same opinion and instructed the first mate to look after us both and
prevent any quarrel reaching a crisis.

"One night, off Cape Horn, a gale came up, and half a dozen of us were
ordered aloft to furl a topsail. That's no easy job for a greenhorn;
sometimes it's a pretty tough job for an old hand. The yard is generally
wet and slippery, the reefers stiff as marlin-spikes, and the sail hard
as a board, particularly when the wind drives it against your face. But
orders were orders and up I went. Then again, I had been a fairly good
gymnast when I was at school, and could throw wheels on the horizontal
bars with the best of them.

"The orders had come just as we were finishing supper. As usual the
Portuguese had opened on me again; this time it was my table manners, my
way of treating my plate after finishing meals being to leave some of
the fragments still sticking to the bottom and edge, while he wiped his
clean with a crust of bread as a compliment to the cook.

"The mate had heard the last of his outbreak, and in detailing the men
sent me up the port ratlines and the Portuguese up the starboard. The
sail was thrashing and flopping in the wind, the vessel rolling her
rails under as the squall struck her. I was so occupied with tying the
reefers over the canvas and holding on at the same time to the slippery
yard, that I had not noticed the Portuguese, who, with every flop of the
sail, was crawling nearer to where I clung.

"He was almost on top of me when I caught sight of him sliding along the
foot-stay, his eyes boring into mine with a look that made me stop short
and pull myself together. One hand was around the yard, the other
clutched his sheath knife. Another lunge of the ship and he would let
drive and over I'd go.

"For an instant I quavered before the fellow's hungry glare, his tiger
eyes fixed on mine, the knife in his hand, the sail smothering me as it
flapped in my face, while below were the black sea and half-lighted
deck. Were he to strike, no trace would be left of me. I was a
greenhorn, and it would be supposed I had missed my hold and fallen
clear of the ship.

"Bracing myself, I twisted a reefer around my wrist for better hold,
determined, if he moved an inch nearer, to kick him square in the face.
But at that instant a sea broke over the starboard bow, wrenching the
ship fore and aft and jerking the yards as if they had been so many
tent-poles. Then came a horrible shriek, and looking down I saw the
Portuguese clutching wildly at the ratlines, clear the ship's side, and
strike the water head-foremost. 'Man overboard!' I yelled at the top of
my lungs, slid to the deck, and ran into the arms of the first mate, who
had been watching us and who had seen the whole thing.

"Some of the crew made a spring for the davits, I among them. But the
mate shook his head.

"'Ain't no use lowerin',' he said. 'Besides, he ain't worth savin'.'

"That night I had to crawl over the dead man's empty berth; his pillow
and quilt were just as he had left them, all tumbled and mussed, and his
tin tobacco-box where he had laid it. Try as I would as I lay awake in
my warm bunk and thought of him out in the sea, and my own close shave
for life, I could not get rid of a certain uncanny feeling--something
akin to the sensation as that of which Lemois was speaking. Only an
instant's time had saved me from the same awful plunge--his last in
life. I never got over the feeling until we reached port, for his berth
was left untouched and his tin tobacco-box still lay beside his pillow.
Even now when a sailor or fisherman pulls out an old tin box--they are
all pretty much alike--or cuts a plug with a sheath knife, it gives me a
shudder."

"Served the brute right!" cried Louis. "Very good story, Herbert--a
little exaggerated in parts, particularly where you were so
absent-minded as to select the face of the gentleman for your murderous
kick, but it's all right: very good story. I could freeze you all solid
by an experience I had with an Apache who followed me on my way to
Montmartre last week, but I won't."

"Give it to us, Louis!" cried everybody in unison.

"No!"

"Well, why not?" I demanded.

"Because he turned down the next street. I said I _could_, and I would
if he'd kept on after me. Your turn, Brierley. We haven't heard from you
since you kept school for crows and wild ducks and taught them how to
dodge bird shot. Unhook your ear-flaps, gentlemen; the distinguished
naturalist is about to relate another one of his soul-stirring
adventures--pure fiction, of course, but none the less entertaining."

Before I could reply, Lemois, who had followed the course of the
discussion with the keenest interest, interrupted with a deprecating
shrug of his shoulders, his fingers widened out.

"But not another bird story, if you please, Monsieur Brierley. We want
something deeper and stronger. We have touched upon a great subject
to-night, and have only scraped the surface."

Herbert leaned forward until he caught Lemois' eye.

"Say the rest, Lemois. You have something to tell us."

"I! No--I have nothing to tell you. My life has been too stupid. I am
always either bowing to my guests or making sauces for them over
Pierre's fire. I could only tell you about things of which I have
_heard_. You, Monsieur Herbert, can tell us of things with which you
have _lived_. I want to listen now to something we will remember, like
your story of the cannibal's wife. Almost every night since you have
been here I go to bed with a great song ringing in my ears. You,
Monsieur Herbert, must yourself have seen such tragedies in men's lives,
when in the space of a lightning's flash their souls were stripped clean
and they left naked."

Herbert played with his fork for a moment, threw it back upon the cloth,
and then said in a decided tone:

"No--it is not my turn; I've talked enough to-night. Open up, Le Blanc,
and give us something out of the old Latin Quartier--there were
tragedies enough there."

"Only what absinthe and starvation brought--and a ring now and then on
the wrong girl's finger--or none at all, as the case might have been.
But you've got a story, Herbert, if you will tell it, which will send
Lemois to bed with a whole orchestra sounding in his ears."

Herbert looked up.

"Which one?"

"The fever camp at Bangala."

Herbert's face became instantly grave and an expression of intense
thought settled upon it. We waited, our eyes fixed upon him.

"No--I'd rather not, Le Blanc," he said slowly. "That belongs to the
dead past, and it is best to leave it so."

"Tell it, Herbert," I coaxed.

"Both you and Le Blanc have heard it."

"But Lemois and the others haven't."

"Got any cannibals or barbecues in it, Herbert?" inquired Louis.

"No, just plain white man all the way through, Louis. Two of them are
still alive--I and another fellow. And you really want it again, Le
Blanc? Well, all right. But before I begin I must ask you to pardon my
referring so often to my African experiences"--and he glanced in apology
around the table--"but I was there at a most impressionable age, and
they still stand out in my mind--this one in particular. You may have
read of the horrors that took place at Bangala in what at the time was
known as the fever camp, where some of the bravest fellows who ever
entered the jungles met their deaths. Both natives and white men had
succumbed, one after another, in a way that wiped out all hope.

"The remedies we had, had been used without effect, and quinine had lost
its power to pull down the temperature, and each fellow knew that if he
were not among those carried out feet foremost to-day, and buried so
deep that the hyenas could not dig him up, it was only a question if on
the morrow his own turn did not come. A strange kind of fear had taken
possession of us, sick or well, and a cold, deadening despair had crept
into our hearts, so great was the mortality, and so quickly when once a
man was stricken did the end come. We were hundreds of miles from
civilization of any kind, unable to move our quarters unless we deserted
our sick, and even then there was no healthier place within reach. And
so, not knowing who would go next, we awaited the end.

"The only other white man in the country besides ourselves was a young
English missionary who had taken up his quarters in a native village
some two miles away, in the low, marshy lands, and who from the very day
of his arrival had set to work to teach and care for the swarms of
native children who literally infested the settlement. Many of these had
been abandoned by their parents and would have perished but for his
untiring watchfulness. When the fever broke out he, with the assistance
of those of the natives whom he could bribe to help, had constructed a
rude hospital into which the little people were placed. These he nursed
with his own hands, and as children under ten years of age were less
liable to the disease than those who were older, and, when stricken,
easier to coax back to life, his mortality list was very much less than
our own.

"With our first deaths we would send for him to come up the hill and
perform the last rites over the poor fellows, but, as our lists grew, we
abandoned even this. Why I escaped at the time I do not know, unless it
was by sheer force of will. I have always believed that the mind has
such positive influence over the body that if you can keep it working
you can arrest the progress of any disease--certainly long enough for
the other forces of the body to come to its aid. So when I was at last
bowled over and so ill that I could not stand on my feet, or even turn
on my bed, I would have some one raise me to a sitting posture and then
I would deliberately shave myself. The mental effort to get the beard
off without cutting the skin; the determination to leave no spot
untouched; the making of the lather, balancing of the razor, and
propping up of the small bit of looking-glass so as to reflect my face
properly, was what I have always thought really saved my life.

"What I started to tell you, however, happened before I was finally
stricken and will make you think of the tales often heard of shipwrecked
men who, having given up all hope at the pumps, turn in despair and
break open the captain's lockers, drinking themselves into a state of
bestiality. It is the coward's way of meeting death, or perhaps it means
the great final protest of the physical against the spiritual--a mad
defiance of the inevitable--and confirms what some of our physiologists
have always maintained--that only

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