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.