things now--not in this way"--and he passed it to The Engineer, who
turned it upsidedown, as if it were a teacup, glanced at the bottom in
search of its mark, and without a word handed it back.
Lemois replaced the precious object in the triptych, his mind still
filled with his favorite topic, and, turning suddenly, wheeled a richly
upholstered chair from a far corner into the light.
"And here is another relic of Madame Sévigné, monsieur. This is
madame's own chair; the one she always used when she stopped here,
sometimes for days at a time, on her way to her country-seat, Les
Rochers. The room which she occupied, and in which she wrote many of her
famous letters, is just over our heads. If monsieur will shift his seat
a little he can see the very spot in which she sat."
But The Engineer neither shifted his seat nor rose to the bait. None of
the small things of past ages appealed to him. Even mummies and the
spoil of coffins three thousand years old--and he had inspected many of
them--failed to stir him. It was what was built over them, and the
brains and power that hoisted the stones into place, as well as the
forces of wind and water--the song of the creaking crane--those were the
things that thrilled him. That Herbert, after his career in the open,
had contented himself with a few tools and a mass of clay was what had
most surprised him when he came upon his statues in the Royal Academy.
So he kept silent until what Louis called the "bric-à-brac moment" had
passed--such discussion often occurring whenever Lemois felt he had a
new audience. Gradually the talk drifted into other channels. Mistaken
identity and the injustice of convictions on circumstantial evidence
were gone into, The Engineer recalling some of his own errors in dealing
with his men in Egypt. At this Le Blanc, wandering slightly from the
main topic, gave an account of a mysterious woman in white who on
certain nights when the moon was bright used to descend the wide
staircase of a French château which he often visited, the apparition
being the ghost of a beautiful countess who had been walled up somewhere
below stairs by a jealous husband, and who took this mode of publishing
her wrongs to the world. Le Blanc had seen her himself, first at the
head of the great staircase and then as she crept slowly down the steps
and disappeared through the solid wall to the left of the baronial
fireplace. His hostess, who affected not to believe in such uncanny
mysteries, tried to persuade him it was merely a shaft of moonlight
stencilled on the white wall, but Le Blanc scouted the explanation and
was ready to affirm on his word of honor that she looked at him out of
her great, round, beseeching eyes, and would, he felt assured, have
spoken to him had not one of the servants opened a door at the moment
and so scared her away.
I told of a somewhat similar experience in which a strong-minded
Englishwoman, who laughed at ghosts and all other forms of unsavory back
numbers, and a bishop of distinction were mixed up. There was a haunted
room in the Devonshire country house that no one dared occupy. Another
white figure prowled here, but whether man or woman, no one knew. That
it was quite six feet high and broad in proportion, and had at various
times scared the wits out of several nervous and semi-hysterical females
who had passed the night between the sheets, all agreed. As it was the
week-end, there were a goodly number of visitors and the house more or
less crowded. When the haunted room was mentioned, even the bishop
demurred--preferring to take the one across the corridor--he being a
frequent visitor and knowing the lay of the land. The strong-minded
young woman, however, jumped at the chance. She had all her life been
hoping to see a ghost and, in order to allow his or her ghostship free
entrance, had left the door of the haunted room unlocked when she got
into bed. Despite her screwed-up courage she began to get nervous, and
when she heard the door creak on its hinges and felt the cold, clammy
air of the corridor on her cheek, she slid down off her pillow and
ducked her head under the sheet. Then, to her horror, she felt the
blanket slowly slipping away and, peering out, was frozen stiff to see a
tall figure, dressed in white, standing at the foot of her bed, its
long, skinny fingers clutching at the covering. Without even a groan she
passed promptly into a fit of unconsciousness, known as a dead faint,
where, with only a sheet over her, she lay until the cold woke her. She
left by the early coach and believes to this day that she would have
been strangled had she offered the slightest protest. Nor did her
hostess's letter, covering a full explanation, satisfy her. "It was not
a ghost you saw, my dear, but the bishop, who wanted an extra blanket,
and who jumped out of bed in search of one, and into your room, thinking
it empty. It's a mercy you didn't scream, for then the situation could
never have been explained--better say nothing about it, or, if you
do--stick to its being a ghost."
While these and other yarns were sent spinning around the table, Louis
had cut in, of course, with all sorts of asides--some whispers behind
his hand to his next neighbor--some squibs of criticism exploded without
rhyme or reason in our midst--all jolly and diverting, but nothing
approaching a story short or long.
My own and Herbert's efforts to draw him out into something sustained
brought only--"Don't know any yarns" and "Never had anything happen to
me"--followed at last by--"The only time I was ever in a tight place was
when I was sketching in Perugia; then I jumped through the window and
took most of the sash with me."
"Let's have it!" we all cried in one breath. No one was so lively and
entertaining once we got him started.
"That's all there is to it. They had locked the door on me--three of
them--and when the back of the chair gave out--I was swinging it around
my head--I made a break for out-of-doors."
"Oh!--go on--go on, Louis!" came the chorus.
"No, I'd rather listen to you men. I haven't been tattooed in the South
Seas, nor half murdered rounding Cape Horn. I'm just a plain painter,
and my experience is limited, and my three Perugian villains were just
three dirty Italians, one of whom was the landlord who had charged me
five prices for my meal, and tried to hold me up until I paid it--only
a vulgar brawl, don't you see? The landlord had his head in splints when
I passed him the next day."
"You were lucky to escape," said The Engineer. "They have a way of
knifing you while you are asleep. I had a friend who just got out of one
of those Italian dives with his life."
"Yes, that was why I was swinging the chair. Hard for any three men to
get at you if its legs and back hold out. Of course a fellow can sneak
up behind you with a knife and then you--By Jingo!--come to think of it,
I _can_ tell you a story! It just popped into my head. You have brought
it all back"--and he nodded to our guest--"about the closest shave--so I
thought at the time--that I ever had in my life. Your ghost stories
don't hold a candle to it--stealthy assassin--intended victim sound
asleep--miraculous escape!--Oh! a blood-curdler!--I was scared blue."
Everybody shifted their chairs and craned their heads to watch Louis'
face the better, overjoyed that he had at last wakened up. Louis scared
blue--and he a match for any five men--meant a tale worth hearing.
"It was the summer I made those studies of mountain brooks flowing out
of the glaciers--you remember them, Herbert? Anyway, I was across the
Swiss border, and in a ragged Italian town dumped down on the side of a
hill as if it had been spilt from a cart--one of those sprawled-out
towns with a white candle of a campanile overtopping the heap. The
diligence, about sunup, had dropped me at the exact spot with my traps,
and was hardly out of sight before I had started to work, and I kept it
up all day, pegging away like mad, as I always do when a subject takes
hold of me--and this particular mountain brook was choking the life out
of me, with lots of deep greens and transparent browns all through it,
and the creamy froth of a glass of beer floating on the top.
"When the sun began to sink down behind the mountains I realized that it
was about time to find a place to sleep. I was at work on a 40 x
30--rather large for out-doors--and, as it would take me several days, I
had arranged with a goatherd--who lived in a slant with stones enough on
its roof to keep it from being blown into space--to let me store my wet
canvas and my palette and box under its supports. I'd have bunked in
with the goats if I'd had anything to cover me from the cold--and it
gets pretty cold there at night. Then again I knew from experience that
a goatherd's sour bread and raw onions were not filling at any price.
What I really wanted was two rooms in some private house, or over a
wine-shop or village store, with a good bed and a place where I could
work in bad weather. I had found just such a place the summer before, on
the Swiss side of the mountains, belonging to an old woman who kept a
cheap grocery and who gave me for a franc a day her two upper rooms--and
mighty comfortable rooms they were, and with a good north light. So I
hung the wet canvas where the goats couldn't lick off my undertones,
shouldered my knapsack, and started downhill to the village.
"I found that the red-tiled houses followed a tangle of streets, no two
of them straight, but all twisting in and out with an eye on the
campanile, and so I struck into the crookedest, wormed my way around
back stoops, water barrels, and stone walls with a ripening pumpkin here
and there lolling over their edges, and reached the church porch just as
the bell was ringing for vespers. When you want to get any information
in an Italian village, you go to the priest, and if he is out, or busy,
or checking off some poor devil's sins--and he has plenty of it to
do--then hunt up the sacristan.
"There must have been an extra load of peccadilloes on hand that night,
for I didn't find his reverence, nor the sacristan, nor anybody
connected with the church. What I did find was a chap squatting against
one side of the door with a tray on his lap filled with little medals
and rosaries--and a most picturesque-looking chap he was. His feet were
tied up in raw hides; his head bound in a red cotton handkerchief, over
which was smashed a broad-brimmed sombrero; his waist was gripped with
another to match; his lank body squeezed into a shrunken blue jacket,
and his shambly legs wobbled about in yellow breeches. The sombrero
shaded two cunning, monkey eyes, a hooked nose, a wavering mouth, and a
beard a week old. It was his smile, though, that tickled my funny-bone,
and this happened when he held up the tray for my inspection--one of
those creepy, oily smiles that spread slowly over his dirty, soapy face,
like the swirl of oil and turpentine which floats over a basin of suds
when you wash your brushes.
"Not a very inviting person;--a loafer, a lazzaroni, a dead-beat of a
dago, really--and yet my heart warmed to him all the same when he
answered me with enough French sandwiched between his 'o's' and 'i's' to
help out my bad Italian. What finally trickled from his wrinkled lips
was the disappointing announcement that no hostelry at all worthy of the
Distinguished Signore existed in the village, nor was there money enough
in the place for any one of the inhabitants to have a surplus of
anything--rooms especially--but there was--here the oily smile overran
the soap-suddy face--a most excellent casino kept by an equally
excellent citizen where travellers were wont to stay overnight; that it
was up a back street--they were all 'back' so far as I had seen--and
that, if the Distinguished Signore would permit, he would curtail the
sale of his religious relics long enough to conduct his D. S. to the
very door.
"So we started, the vendor of 'helps to piety' ahead and I following
behind, my knapsack over my shoulder. I soon discovered that if the
casino was up a back street he was going a long way round to reach it.
First he dived into an alley behind the mouldy, plaster-pock-marked
church--the candle-stick of the campanile--ducked under an
archway--'_sotto portico_,' he called it--opened out into a field,
struck across a little bridge into another street--hardly a soul about,
nothing alive--nothing except dogs and children--all of which he
explained was a short cut. For some time his dodging made no impression
on me; then the way he rounded the corners and hugged the shadowed side
of the street, away from the few dim lamps, set me to wondering as to
his intentions. What the devil did he mean by picking out these blind
alleys? He must have seen that I was no tenderfoot or tourist who had
lost his way.
"With this I began to fix certain landmarks in my memory in case I had
to make my way back alone. There was no question now in my mind as to
the town's character. Half the murders and hold-ups in the large cities
are concocted in these villages, and this had rascality stamped all over
it. Every corner I turned looked more forbidding than the last--every
street seemed to end in a trap--the kind of street a scene-painter tries
to produce when he has a murder up a back alley to provide for the third
act. And crooked!--well, the tracks of a bunch of fishworms crawling
out from under a brick were straight compared to it. When I at last
protested--for I was getting ravenous and I must say a trifle
uneasy--the beggar bowed low enough for me to see the tail of his jacket
over his sombrero, and gave as a reason that any other route would have
greatly fatigued the signore, all of which he must have known was a lie.
The fact was that if I had known how to get out of the tangle, I would
have lifted him by the scruff of his neck and the slack of his trousers
and dropped him into the first convenient hole.
"When he did come to a halt I found myself before a low two-story ruin
of a house--almost the last house in the village, and on the opposite
edge from that which I had entered on my way to the church. It was
evidently a common road house, the customary portico covered with
grape-vines and a square room on the ground floor, containing one or
more tables. In the rear, so I discovered later, was a dreary yard
corralling a few scraggly trees--one overhanging a slanting shed under
which the cooking was done--and below this tree an assortment of chairs
and tables under an arbor, where a bottle of wine and a bit of cheese
or bunch of grapes were served when the sun was hot.
"It was now quite dark, and my guide had some difficulty in getting his
fingers on the latch of the garden gate. When it swung open I followed
up a short path and found myself in a square room which was lighted by a
single lamp. Under this sat another oily Italian, in his shirt-sleeves,
eating from an earthen bowl. Not a picturesque-looking chap at all, but
a fat, swarthy lump of a man with small, restless eyes, stub nose, and
flabby lips--one of those fellows you think is fast asleep until you
catch him studying you from under his eyebrows, and begin to look out
for his knife. The only other occupant of the room was a woman who was
filling his glass from a straw-covered flask--a thin, flat-bosomed woman
who stooped when she walked, and who sneaked a glance at me now and then
from one side of her nose. I might better have slept in the slant and
bunked in with the goats.
"My guide bent down and whispered a word in his ear; the man jumped
up--looked me all over--a boring, sizing-up look--like a farmer guessing
the weight of a steer--bowed grandiloquently, and with an upward
flourish of his hand put his house, his fortune, and his future
happiness at my feet. There were bread and wine, and cheese and grapes;
and there were also eggs, and it might be a slice of pork. As for
chicken--he would regret to his dying day that none was within his
reach. Would I take my repast in the house at the adjoining table, or
would I have a lamp lighted in the arbor and eat under the trees?
"I preferred the lamp, of course, under the trees; picked up the flask
of wine, poured out a glass for my guide, which he drank at a gulp, and
handed him a franc for his trouble. The woman gave a sidelong glance at
the coin and followed him out into the garden; there the two stood
whispering. On her return, while she passed close enough to me to graze
my arm, she never once raised her eyes, but kept her face averted until
she had hidden herself in the kitchen.
"I had selected the garden for two reasons: I wanted the air and I
wanted to know something more of my surroundings. What I saw--and I
could see now the more clearly, for the moon had risen over the
mountain--were two rear windows on the second floor, their sills level
with the sloping shed, and a tree with its branches curved over its
roof. This meant ventilation and a view of the mountains at
sunrise--always a delight to me. It also meant an easy escape out the
window, over the roof, and down the tree-trunk to the garden, and so on
back to the goatherd if anything unusual should happen. That, however,
could take care of itself. The sensible thing to do was to eat my
supper, order my coffee to be ready at six o'clock, go to bed in one of
these rear rooms, and get back to my work before the heat became
intense.
"All this was carried out--that is, the first part of it. I had the rear
room, the one I had picked out for myself, not by my choice but by his,
the landlord selecting it for me; it would be cooler, he said, and then
I could sleep with my window open, free from the dust which sometimes
blew in the front windows when the wind rose--and it was rising now, as
the signore could hear. Yes, I should be called at six, and my coffee
would be ready--and 'may the good God watch over your slumbers, most
Distinguished of Excellencies.'
"This comforting information was imparted as I followed him up a
break-neck stair and down a long, narrow corridor, ending in a small
hall flanked by two bedroom doors. The first was mine--and so was the
candle which he now placed in my hand--and 'will your Excellency be
careful to see that it is properly blown out before your Excellency
falls asleep?' and so I bade him good-night, pushed in the door, held
the sputtering candle high above my head, and began to look around.
"It wouldn't have filled your soul with joy. Had I not been tired out
with my day's work I would have called him back, read the riot act, and
made him move in some comforts. The only things which could be
considered furniture were a heavy oaken chest and a solid wooden bed--a
box of a bed with a filling of feathers supporting two hard pillows. And
that was every blessed thing the room contained except a toy pitcher and
basin decorating the top of the chest; a white cotton curtain stretched
across the lower sash of the single window; a nail for my towel, a row
of wooden pegs for my clothes, and a square of looking-glass which once
had the measles. Not a chair of any kind, no table, no wash-stand. This
was a place in which to sleep, not sit nor idle in. Off with your
clothes and into bed--and no growling.
"I walked to the open window, pushed aside the cotton curtain, and
looked out on the sloping shed and overhanging tree, and the garden
below, all clear and distinct in the light of the moon. I could see now
that the tree had either prematurely lost its leaves or was stone dead.
The branches, too, were bent as if in pain.
"The correct drawing of trees, especially of their limbs and twig ends,
has always been a fad of mine, and the twistings of this old scrag were
so unusual, and the tree itself so gnarled and ugly, that I let my
imagination loose, wondering whether, like the villagers, it was
suffering from some unconfessed sin, and whether fear of the future and
the final bonfire, which overtakes most of us sooner or later, was not
the cause of its writhings. With this I blew out the candle and crawled
into bed, where I lay thinking over the events of the evening and
laughing at myself for being such a first-class ass until I fell asleep.
"How long I slept I do not know, but when I woke it was with a start,
all my faculties about me. What I heard was the sound of steps on the
shed outside my window--creaking, stealthy steps as of a man's weight
bending the supports of the flimsy shed. I raised myself cautiously on
my elbow and looked about me. The square of moonlight which had
patterned the floor when I first entered the room was gone, although the
moon was still shining. This showed me that I had slept some time. I
noticed, too, that the wind had risen, although very little seemed to
penetrate the apartment, the curtains only flopping gently in the
draught.
"I lay motionless, hardly breathing. Had I heard aright--or was it a
dream? Again came the stealthy tread, and then _the shadow of a hand_
crept across the curtain. This sent me sitting bolt upright in bed.
There was no question now--some deviltry was in the air.
"I slid from under the cover, dropped to the floor, flattened myself to
the matting, worked my body to the window-sill, and stood listening. He
must have heard me, for there came a sudden halt and a quick retreat.
Then all was silent.
"I waited for some minutes, reached up with one hand and gently lowered
the sash a foot or more, leaving room enough for me to throw it up and
spring out, but not room enough for him to slide in without giving me
warning. If the brute tried it again I would paste myself to the wall
next the sash where I could see him, and he not see me, and as he
ducked his head to crawl in I'd hit him with all my might; that would
put him to sleep long enough for me to dress, catch up my traps, and get
away.
"Again the step and the shadow. This time he stopped before he reached
the window-sill. He had evidently noticed the difference in the height
of the sash. Then followed a hurried retreating footstep on the roof. I
craned my head an inch or more to see how big he was, but I was too
late--he had evidently dropped to the garden below.
"I remained glued to the window-jamb and waited. I'd watch now for his
head when he pulled himself up on the roof. If it were the lumpy
landlord, the best plan was to plant the flat of my boot in the pit of
his stomach--that would double him up like a bent pillow. If it was the
brigand with the rosaries, or some of his cut-throat friends, I would
try something else. I had no question now that I had been enticed here
for the express purpose of doing me up while I was asleep. The
mysterious way in which I had been piloted proved it; so did my guide's
evident anxiety to avoid being seen by any of the inhabitants. Then
there bobbed up in my mind the cool, sizing-up glance of the landlord
as he looked me over. This clinched my suspicions. I was in for a scrap
and a lively one. If there were two of them, I'd give them both barrels
straight from the shoulder; if there were three or more, I'd fight my
way out with a chair, as I had done at Perugia.
"With this I came to a sudden halt and moved to the middle of the room.
There I stood, straining my eyes in the dim light, hoping to find
something with which to brain the gang should they come in a bunch. I
took hold of the bed and shook it--the posts and back were as solid as a
cart body. The chest was worse--neither of them could be whirled around
my head as a club, as I had used the chair at Perugia. Next I tried the
door, and found it without lock or bolt--in fact it swung open as
noiselessly and easily as if it had been greased. The toy pitcher and
basin came next--too small even to throw at a cat. It was a case, then,
of bare fists and the devil take the hindmost.
"With this clear in my mind, I laid the pitcher on the floor within an
inch of the door, so that the edge would strike it if opened, and again
raised the window high enough for me to jump through. I could, of
course, have dragged the chest across the door, as a girl would have
done, put the basin and pitcher on top, and shoved the head-board of the
bed against the window-sash--but this I was ashamed to do; and then,
again, the whole thing might be a blooming farce--one I would laugh over
in the morning.
"The question now arose whether I should get into my clothes, walk
boldly down the corridor, and make a break through the kitchen and
square room, with the risk of being stabbed in the garden, or whether I
should stick it out until morning. Inside, I could choose my fighting
ground; outside was a different thing. Then, again, daylight was not far
off.