country of free men through their own fault; they had land, of course;
no rent was asked of them; they were in a community which had now for
many ages administered itself, and had for more than a hundred years
forgotten the oppression of a territorial class. Nevertheless, by some
vice of temperament, they lived like slatterns, and if they cultivated
at all some tiny patch of their ruined and weedy holding, it was but
just so much as would keep their souls within their bodies, and they
preferred chance begging and barefoot jobs at the railway-station or in
the streets of the town. Their house was more a cave than a hut; it was
dug out of the hillside, with beaten earth walls, save where the front
portion of it jutted out, and was roofed with old bits of corrugated
iron borrowed or stolen from the sappers. These were supported by a
jumble of ramshackle wood, old railway-sleepers, and here and there
were gaps stopped roughly with canvas.
In such a place, surrounded by brothers and sisters of all ages, and
the only houseworker to a drunken and worthless mother, lived, by
accident, one of those women who have such great power in this world.
Her ugliness was singular; it had nothing to do with that power save
perhaps to enhance it. Her hair, which was sparse and crisp, was of a
bright, unpleasing red, harsh and offensive; her eyes were green and
stood very far apart in her head; her mouth was large and very decided
and firm. It is not by any recapitulation of her features (though any
one who had once seen them would always remember them) that one can
give the impression of her power. This rather proceeded from a gesture,
a manner, and a whole being which was the continual outer manifestation
of a certain kind of soul. There was strength in all her gestures, an
upstanding challenge in the poise of her body whether she worked or
walked, and a sort of creative handling of things whenever she grasped
them which at once arrested the attention of a man. Her excessive
poverty and the gross carelessness of her surroundings, by contrast
greatly enhanced these things.
The young soldiers cared very little for mysteries; their religion
was indifferent to them, their knowledge of the perils and of the
adventures of the soul was less than that of children; for those who
might have guessed at the mysterious things which everywhere surround
our existence, even at twenty-one, had such imaginings drowned and
purged out of them by continual labour in the open air, by hours of
grooming and of riding, by the deep and glorious fatigue of such a
life, by sleep in the night, by hunger and by fellowship. Nevertheless,
among the more leisured, that is, among the non-commissioned officers,
there was one man who fell under the spell. He was handsome,
unintelligent, lacking in judgment, and perhaps twenty-five years of
age. His father was a large farmer to the north of Rheims; he had
a very fair allowance from home; he was regular and did his service
well; he was, so far as the non-commissioned ranks can be in any army,
popular with the men. This fellow felt the spell. He felt it neither
deeply nor violently, for his nature was one on which the great
emotions could have no play; but he would seek such duties as brought
him to the village, he would intrigue to be sent upon any inspection
of the reserve forces or with provisions up into the forts, or upon
any other business which would give him for a few moments a chance
of seeing her at the door of that miserable hovel, and of exchanging
half-a-dozen words from the saddle. His leave he would often spend in
the inn of that village, some said in her company (but I doubt if this
were true); he would have taken her once into Nancy to see some public
show or other, but she would not go.
Between the end of winter and the start for camp, the thing had become
as much a habit to him as his own name, and by a sort of code which the
regiment observed, his habit was respected and passed by; indeed, to
have become so immeshed regarded no one but himself, and the singular
net that had been thrown over him was not one which others envied. But
there was one who envied him.
When he had been Vaguemestre, that is, the sergeant deputed to fetch
the letters of the regiment, and often also when he had gone out to
note the condition of the reserve horses or upon any other message, he
had taken with him one of the two-year men, a Belgian who had crossed
the frontier to find work in his teens, and was not ill content to have
been caught by the conscription, for he was utterly destitute and knew
neither father nor mother. This man was dark, short and broad; he was
kindly in temper and, one would have said, an animal for stupidity. He
was possessed of great physical strength; he was a faithful servant and
follower where he was employed. And his Sergeant who thus favoured him
would often see to it that his service should be lightened in one way
or another, and made his life more easy to him than it was to the other
drivers of the battery. He was popular, every one helped him, he had
done harm to no one, he was always willing. He very rarely spoke, amid
all that voluble clatter of young men, and when he did, it was to crack
some simple peasant joke or to repeat some old tag of a proverb.
But one day the head of the room who happened to have no stripes
and was no more than an older soldier, or, as it was called in that
service, "an ancient," found him sitting on his bed and crying. The
lout was crying in a gentle but despairing sort of way. The ancient
was a rough man, a miner and rather brutal. He would have none of
it. And just as he was making things rough for the Belgian, the
Sergeant's voice came down the wooden corridors calling him to saddle
the two beasts: and all the Belgian did was to refuse. It was a quite
unheard-of thing. There was no elasticity in the service; and if any
one in authority said "Do this," to say "I will not," or even to be
slow in obedience, was as grave, or rather as unknown, as is a crime of
violence among wealthy men.
Now the Sergeant, with more womanliness and discernment than one would
have thought any one could have shown in such a place, made no noise
about it, but came in to see what miracle had happened. He saw the lad
sitting there upon his bed with his coarse face full of despair, and
he did not in the least understand what could have happened. The eyes
of the lad were as full of wonder and of terror and of hopelessness
as though he had seen some full tragedy of human life. The Sergeant
shrugged his shoulders and let him be, and to save his being worried
sent him off upon an easy job until he should come round. Then taking
another man to saddle the two horses and to accompany him, he went off
upon his usual round towards the hills, upon some official errand or
other which he had managed to secure. But when he got there he found
in the village, without leave, and having run and panted through the
newly ploughed fields, this Belgian fellow, looking like an angry dog,
sullen, and with new tears in his eyes, standing outside the door of
the hovel.
He ordered him back; he rode his horse after him as the Belgian obeyed,
and began trudging suddenly away, and said that he would not report it,
but that it was a piece of madness, and that if that sort of thing
went on it ended in Africa.
The Belgian said nothing, but plodded off, his enormous strength
apparent in every step; and apparent also in the set of his neck and
shoulders, and the bending of his head, something of doom. When he got
back to quarters he got a ball cartridge from the workroom--no one
knows how--he put it in one of the gunner's carbines, which he took
from the rack--he had never handled such a weapon before--pulled off
the boot from his sockless right foot, put the barrel of the thing in
his mouth, and with his toe pressed down the trigger. In this way he
killed himself.
I have told the thing exactly as it happened. Then many of the young
men first knew that our lives are not wholly of our own ordering, or,
to put it better, learned that to ride one's destiny needs in the soul
of a man a training, a quickness and a constancy like that which, in
the body, helps a man to ride a strong horse and to control him.
THE HUNGRY STUDENT
It was with great astonishment combined with a sense of misfortune that
I discovered the other day in a garret off the King's road in Chelsea
a poor hack formerly of my acquaintance, who in his endeavour to keep
body and soul together had formerly been distinguished or rather
ridiculous among journalists by his excursions into every conceivable
subject and his preparedness to write any sort of books that a
publisher might order of him.
When I found him after these many years he was lying in the last stages
of some disease the name of which I forget but which anyhow was mortal;
and it was the character in the disease which most affected him--to its
scientific appellation he was indifferent.
He confessed to me that he had long had it on his conscience that in
a work of his now long forgotten he had promised the reader to tell a
certain story, and that this promise had never been fulfilled.
"It is in the beginning of the book," he whispered feebly as his dying
eyes were turned towards the four chimneys of the electrical works,
"that I promised to tell the story--nay, two stories; I promised to
tell the story of The Hungry Student, and also the story of the Brigand
of Radicofani. Both these stories weigh heavily upon my conscience. I
have promised," he continued in a nervous manner which was tragically
affecting, "and I have not redeemed my promise. Readers of mine may
have died, still wondering what the truth may be. I beg you, therefore,
to take this manuscript" (and he motioned with his wasted hand to some
sheets of paper by the side of his bed) "and to give it to the world.
At once," he said with the haste and fever of a dying man, "to-morrow
you shall come and I will give you the second manuscript concerning the
Brigand of Radicofani." ("Both," he moaned, "I took from the writings
of others.") "And then I can die in peace."
I took the manuscript and left him, and to fulfil his last wishes I
publish it here.
* * * * * *
A student in the University of Paris had the misfortune to be wholly
deprived of money in any form, and such credit as he had once enjoyed
was also entirely exhausted. It was now thirty-six hours since he had
eaten any memorable meal, and during that long period of time he had
tasted no more than one roasted potato, a pennyworth of chestnuts,
a cup of coffee, and a little bread which he had kept in his pocket
from the day before yesterday, and which was therefore of a hard and
ungracious sort. Even that had been consumed in the small hours of the
morning, and he sat upon a stone bench in the evening of the day about
fifty yards from the Odéon Theatre, carefully considering what course
he should pursue, and determining, if it were necessary, to thieve; for
hunger had got him where hunger gets us all--which is not, as too many
assert, in the stomach, but in the throat and palate and brain.
As he there sat he thought of delicious things; not of a mere filling,
but of rare matters. He had longings. He remembered that beans, green
beans, are better crisp than soft; and he thought of irrecoverable
aubergines, and of what an onion was when it was well fried, and of
larded chickens, and of great Touranian pears, and of the kind of
wine called Chinon; he thought of all these things. But there is this
quality about hunger, that the imagination does not satisfy it in
any degree at all, but stimulates it only, and he was tortured as he
sat upon that bench. Remember that he had not any money at all. He
even recalled as he there sat the excellent taste of fresh bread and
chocolate, and he was about to get up and walk off the memory of such
things when a confused and growing rumour coming up the steep street
round the corner broke upon him. It was the noise of many young men. It
was almost military in its character, though it had no precision, for
one felt in it the advance of numbers. It swelled with every moment,
and at last there swung round the corner and up towards his bench a
considerable body of students who were walking rapidly, excitedly,
and happily, gesticulating freely and telling each other good news,
while a very powerful and loud-voiced young man led them on. He could
hear snatches of what was said by this company. One was crying: "It is
surely the best cooking in the world!" Another, "I care nothing for the
cooking, but what wine!" Two others were eagerly disputing whether the
lark or the thrush were the better bird, and one was hoping that there
would be a chaudfroid of nightingales. Some few sang songs, others in
a sort of contented silence went forward eagerly; all evidently had
before them some great goal.
As the Herd swept by him a lean young man with black hair just stooped
in passing the Hungry Student and whispered: "Would you like to eat
to-night?" He whispered back "Yes." "Then," said the first, whose eyes
burned like coals, "up you get and follow, and hold your tongue until
you learn the tricks of the rest."
So the Hungry Student rose up at once and went forward, mingling with
the rest; and still their robust leader plunged through the streets
before them like a captain bringing on a young army of saviours into
an oppressed land. Now and then this captain would turn round and walk
backward like a bandmaster or a drum major, shouting out good news of
food to come and of the wine that has been pressed in Paradise.
So they went until they came to the Boulevard, which they crossed, one
of them fighting with a policeman on the way. The band plunged into the
narrower streets, and came at last to a little open square where was a
restaurant with a balcony upon the first floor, and upon that balcony
an awning. The name written above the restaurant was this: "The Widow
Bertrand--a house founded in 1837." They all trooped in.
Upon the balcony a table was spread; there were other tables in the
room with which the balcony communicated. At these some few and rather
diffident guests had sat down; but the large table was reserved for the
Herd. They took their places noisily, and falling upon a few little
sardines and one or two stale strips of sausage they began loudly
exclaiming upon every side at the excellence of the fare.
The Hungry Student said nothing, though he wondered much, but seizing
an enormous piece of bread he ate it all up with the rapidity of a
storm, and heard round him as he did so ceaseless exclamations of
enthusiastic surprise. The wine was very thin and sour--but the wine of
students is always so. What astonished him was to see a curly-headed
fellow, very Northern in type, suddenly jump up and shout, so that all
the street below could hear--
"Upon my word this is amazing! Send for Gaston!"
Gaston, a very weary waiter, came.
"Gaston," said the Northerner, "I really must know where the Widow gets
this wine!"
The whole chorus of them shouted together: "Yes, Gaston, you must tell
us where she gets this wine!"
Gaston murmured something which the Hungry Student did not hear.
"Oh, do not be afraid," shouted the Northerner, "we will not give the
secret away. But what wine!" he added, turning round to his companions,
who applauded with their hands. "We will get it through the Widow. She
shall provide it to us. A wine like this is not to be missed." And he
took the miserable stuff and sipped it slowly from his glass, cocking
one eye up wisely towards the ceiling like a knowing fellow.
There followed bad soup, bad fish, bad meat, bad vegetables, and bad
roast. But the Hungry Student was not particular, and he fed. Lord! how
heartily he fed! He fed so heartily that he got into that mood when
a man thinks he will never be hungry again. He ate great quantities
of cheese, which alone of all the courses was served them with some
liberality. He drank their coffee, and the whole host rose to go. He
was still in a profound mystery.
An elderly woman, whose face betrayed keen avarice overspread
with conventional courtesy, bade them good-night as they left her
establishment. They cheered her, and the leader of the band kissed her
warmly upon both cheeks. Then they went out, turned into the Rue Cujas,
and quite suddenly their enthusiasm wholly disappeared, and a council
of war was summoned. The powerful man, the leader, stood in their
midst, gave the recommendation and took counsel with his peers.
"It is the last time!" he said grimly.
"Do you mean," said the dark-haired student who had first whispered
to the Hungry Student as he passed, before the meal, "do you mean the
Widow will not receive us again?"
"You are right," said the leader, in a solemn tone. "The
bargain was for five nights; she has extended it to six. But it
seems"--bitterly--"that we have done our work too well. There is no
need of a seventh. Only yesterday the business was bought by a very
foolish fellow from Auxerre."
"That," said a short fat young man, who had not yet spoken, "accounts
for the intolerable wine."
The leader shrugged his shoulders, and said gloomily: "Friend, it was
the same old wine, but from the bottom of the barrel."
"Then there is no meal for to-morrow," said a fourth man, anxiously,
a red-headed, vague-eyed man who had gone in for Anarchism the year
before, but was at that particular moment a Symbolist.
"Well," said the leader, "there is a meal for to-morrow. But the
conditions are a little hard."
"Where is it to be? What is the rendezvous? What are those conditions?"
cried several voices.
The strong leader obtained silence, and said: "I can tell you at once;
Berteaux wants to sell his place by private treaty next week, and he
will take us from to-morrow."
"For how many days?" broke in a silent man who had not yet spoken.
"A full week," said the leader.
"Well, that's good enough," said the dark man sullenly.
"Yes, but the point is," said the leader, "there is another offer: the
new railway station wants to start a meal at a fixed price."
"It will be better cooking," said the red-haired Symbolist doubtfully.
"You are right," answered the leader, a little wearily, "but it is one
of their conditions that one should eat at the absurd hour of half-past
five, and hurry through the meal exclaiming all the while chance things
about the express to Toulouse, and noting the rapidity of the service."
"I will never do that!" said the red-headed man firmly, amid murmurs of
approval. "If I must eat their deathly stuff I will eat it, but I will
not be hurried into the bargain; and half-past five is the hour for
poisons, not for food. Absinthe is mine."
"No, Berteaux is the man," said the leader with a sigh. He put it to
the vote, as is the fashion with the French. There was a large majority
for Berteaux.
Next day that same enthusiastic whirl of youth went through other
streets of the learned centre of Europe, their lips vivacious, their
eyes aflame, to give Berteaux's business a selling value, and
themselves to have food for nothing.
In this way was the Hungry Student filled.
* * * * * *
Next day, having sent in this manuscript that you have read, I called
upon my poor friend to receive the Brigand of Radicofani; but you may
imagine how shocked I was to hear that he was dead.
THE BRIGAND OF RADICOFANI
It is with the utmost pleasure that I am able to communicate to the
English-speaking world a literary document of capital importance
which my readers had only too great reason to mourn as lost. It will
be remembered that my poor friend the Hack, recently deceased in the
neighbourhood of the King's road, suffered in his last hours from the
fear that the world might never receive his two masterpieces which he
had so long promised them, "The Story of the Hungry Student" and "The
Brigand of Radicofani." It will also be remembered that on reaching his
humble lodgings after the publication of the first, I discovered him to
be dead, and feared, therefore, that the second of these two classics
would never be discovered. I am delighted to say that a Rag and Bottle
Merchant and Dealer in Kitchen Stuff near The World's End (which
is a landmark in that neighbourhood) has been found in possession
of the precious paper, which by a providential accident is still
legible, although it had been used to wrap up two boot-brushes and a
second-hand pot of blacking. Such coincidences are not unknown in the
history of English Letters.
* * * * * *
A young Colonial journalist, full of a great determination to succeed
in life, but insufficiently equipped for that ambition, had occasion to
visit the country north of Rome in the year 1903. He had been sent by
his proprietors to gather information upon the customs of the peasantry
for a series of articles which they designed to publish; he had orders
to photograph these natives with or without their leave, and to acquire
such a knowledge of the local dialects as would permit him to converse
with them.
With his numerous adventures in the extinct volcanoes of that district
I need not detain you, nor tell you of how he was imprisoned in
Ronciglione, fined by a magistrate in Viterbo, nor how he was soundly
beaten by a drunken mason in the town of Bolsena, whose lovely lake
he still remembers with associated feelings of admiration and regret.
It is more to my purpose to retail how in each of these towns as he
wandered northwards, and at every intervening house of call, he was
perpetually reminded of the Brigand of Radicofani. Some, when he would
ask them questions upon their local habits, would reply, "Oh, go and
discuss it with the Brigand of Radicofani"; others, when he attempted
to stammer his experiences of the road, would tell him that the Brigand
would make a better audience than they. The magistrate who fined him at
Viterbo made an allusion to the Brigand of Radicofani which he caught
but ill, but which provoked, to his annoyance, considerable laughter in
court. The policeman who locked him up in Ronciglione turned the key
with an allusion to the same individual, and even the drunken mason in
the very act of beating him in Bolsena bade him begone to the Brigand
of Radicofani. As for Acquapendente, the town was full of rumours about
this strange man, the children in the streets, who should have known
better, took the young Colonial twice for the Brigand and followed him
in chorus, calling him by that name; while a little brown man who was
pushing a barrow assured him with great solemnity that he was taking
its contents of private refreshment for the Brigand of Radicofani.
It may be imagined with what eagerness the journalist left the town
next morning by the northern road and with what curiosity of attention
he marked the little town of Radicofani perched upon its distant
conical hill and glaring white under the hot morning. "There," said he
to himself, as he laboriously panted up the last slope, "I shall find
a character indeed worthy of so many pains, and discover something
perhaps of permanent value for the history of this ancient land."
He seated himself in the principal room of the first inn he came to
within the gate and boldly asked whether it were possible at that hour
to interview the Brigand. The young woman who was the mistress of the
house looked at him for a moment in a sort of stupor, then bursting
into wild cries not unmixed with laughter, she fled from him and left
him for quite a quarter of an hour alone; she returned with a little
crowd of Radicofanian burgesses who stood round, hats in hand, looking
at him lugubriously. At last the oldest of them, a man with a noble
head, handsome and grey, said to him solemnly--
"Do we understand, Excellence, that you desire to see the well-known
Brigand of Radicofani?"
"That is so," replied the journalist manfully. "I am indeed sorry if my
pursuit of such an audience seems impertinent, for I recognise the high
position held by this gentleman in your community; and I am equally
sorry if I have given you any trouble by my request. But as I am
deputed by a foreign newspaper of high standing to discover what I can
of the customs of an ancient land, I could hardly proceed onward to the
notable town of Sienna and leave behind me uninterviewed the principal
personage of your countryside."