to utter the word “traitor” as applying to Falcone. One good stroke of
the dagger, which would not need to be repeated, would have immediately
repaid the insult. But Mateo made no other gesture than that of putting
his hand to his head like a dazed man.
[Sidenote: THIRD CONTRIBUTORY INCIDENT.]
[Sidenote: Is this repentance, fear, hypocrisy, or an attempt to
placate his father?]
107. Fortunato had gone into the house upon seeing his father come
up. He reappeared shortly with a jug of milk, which he offered with
downcast eyes to Gianetto. “Keep away from me!” cried the outlaw in a
voice of thunder.
108. Then turning to one of the _voltigeurs_,
109. “Comrade, give me a drink of water,” he said.
[Sidenote: Delineation of mood by suggestion.]
110. The soldier placed the gourd in his hands, and the bandit drank
the water given him by a man with whom he had just exchanged gunshots.
He then asked that they would tie his hands across his breast instead
of having them behind his back.
111. “I prefer,” he said, “to lie down at my ease.”
[Sidenote: FOURTH CONTRIBUTORY INCIDENT.]
112. When they had adjusted them to his satisfaction, the adjutant
gave the signal to start, said adieu to Mateo--who answered never a
word--and went down at a quick pace toward the plain.
[Sidenote: Suspense.]
113. Some ten minutes passed before Mateo opened his mouth. The child
looked with an uneasy eye first at his mother, then at his father, who,
leaning on his gun, was gazing at him with a gaze of concentrated wrath.
[Sidenote: PREPARATION FOR CLIMAX.]
[Sidenote: SIXTH AND FINAL PLOT INCIDENT.]
114. “You begin well,” said Mateo at last, in a voice calm but
terrifying to those who knew the man.
115. “Father!” exclaimed the child with tears in his eyes, drawing near
as if to fall upon his knees.
116. But Mateo only cried out:
117. “Away from me!”
118. The child stopped and began to sob, standing motionless a few
steps from his father.
119. Giuseppa came near. She had just perceived the chain of the watch
dangling about from Fortunato’s blouse.
[Sidenote: Contrast with ¶114.]
120. “Who gave you that watch?” she asked him severely.
[Sidenote: Note the sly use of “cousin.”]
121. “My cousin the adjutant.”
[Sidenote: FIFTH CONTRIBUTORY INCIDENT.]
122. Falcone seized the watch, and, throwing it violently against a
stone, broke it into a thousand pieces.
123. “Woman,” he said, “this child--is he mine?”
124. Giuseppa’s brown cheeks flamed brick-red.
125. “What are you saying, Mateo? Do you know to whom you are speaking?”
[Sidenote: Key.]
126. “Well, this child is the first of his race who has committed a
treason.”
[Sidenote: Decision, and foundation for final crisis.]
[Sidenote: FULL RESULTANT CRISIS.]
127. Fortunato’s sobs and hiccoughs redoubled, and Falcone kept his
lynx-eyes always fixed upon him. At length he struck the ground with
the butt of his gun; then he flung it across his shoulder and, calling
to Fortunato to follow him, retook the way to the _maquis_. The child
obeyed.
128. Giuseppa ran after Mateo, and seized him by the arm.
129. “He is your son,” she said to him in a trembling voice, fixing her
black eyes on those of her husband, as though to read what was passing
through his mind.
[Sidenote: Note the double meaning.]
130. “Let me go,” replied Mateo: “I am his father.”
131. Giuseppa embraced her son, and went back crying into the hut. She
threw herself on her knees before an image of the Virgin, and prayed
with fervor.
[Sidenote: Forecast.]
132. Meanwhile, Falcone had walked about two-hundred yards along the
path, and stopped at a little ravine, which he descended. He sounded
the earth with the butt of his gun and found it soft and easy to dig.
The spot seemed suitable for his design.
[Sidenote: Suspense.]
133. “Fortunato, go near to that large rock.”
134. The boy did as he was commanded, then he knelt down.
135. “Say your prayers.”
136. “Father, Father, do not kill me!”
137. “Say your prayers!” repeated Mateo in a terrible voice.
[Sidenote: “Our Father, etc.,” “I believe in God, etc.”]
138. The child, all stammering and sobbing, repeated the _Pater_ and
the _Credo_. The father, in a firm voice responded Amen at the close of
each prayer.
139. “Are those all the prayers that you know?”
[Sidenote: “Hail Mary, etc.” A liturgical prayer.]
140. “I also know the _Ave Maria_, and the _Litany_ that my aunt taught
me, Father.”
141. “It is rather long, but it doesn’t matter.”
[Sidenote: Note force of “achieved.”]
142. The child achieved the _Litany_ in a faint voice.
143. “Have you finished?”
[Sidenote: Contrast with his former vicious “coolness.”]
144. “Oh, Father, Father, mercy! Pardon me! I will never do it again!
I will beg my cousin the corporal with all my might for mercy for
Gianetto!”
145. He went on speaking; Mateo loaded his rifle and took aim as he
said:
146. “May God forgive you!”
[Sidenote: FULL CLIMAX AND DENOUEMENT.]
147. The boy made a desperate effort to get up and clasp his father’s
knees, but he had not time. Mateo fired, and Fortunato fell dead.
[Sidenote: Note force of “throwing.”]
148. Without throwing a single glance at the body, Mateo returned to
his house to fetch a spade with which to bury his son. He had taken but
a few steps when he met Giuseppa, who had run out, alarmed by the sound
of the firing.
149. “What have you done?”
150. “Justice!”
151. “Where is he?”
[Sidenote: SIXTH CONTRIBUTORY INCIDENT.]
[Sidenote: Swift conclusion.]
[Sidenote: Character revelation.]
152. “In the ravine; I am going to bury him. He died a Christian; I
shall have a mass sung for him. Let some one tell my son-in-law Tiodoro
Bianchi to come and live with us.”
STEVENSON AND HIS WRITINGS
Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson, as he was baptized, was born November
13, 1850, at Edinburgh, Scotland, of Scotch parents. He entered
Edinburgh University when he was seventeen, intending to learn his
father’s profession, civil engineering--though he had always longed
to be a writer, having dictated books at the precocious ages of six,
seven, and nine. At twenty-one he decided to study law, and four years
later passed the bar examination in his native city. In 1880 he married
Mrs. Osbourne, with whose son, Lloyd, he collaborated in the writing
of several stories. Stevenson’s health, which was never robust, sent
him on many journeys in search of strength--to the European continent,
several times to the United States, and once on a two years’ voyage to
the South Seas. In 1890 he finally settled in Samoa, where he died at
his home, Vailima, December 3, 1894. He was buried on the nearby summit
of Mount Vaea.
Stevenson was a brilliant novelist, essayist, poet, and short-story
writer. _Treasure Island_, _Kidnapped_, _The Master of Ballantrae_,
and _Weir of Hermiston_--the last of which he left unfinished--are
his best novels. His journeys were chronicled by such delightful
travel-sketches as _An Inland Voyage_, _Travels With a Donkey_, and
_The Silverado Squatters_. _A Child’s Garden of Verse_ contains his
best poems. His most noteworthy essays are found in _Memories and
Portraits_, and _Familiar Studies of Men and Books_. Most famous among
his short-stories are “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”
(a novelette in length), “The Pavilion on the Links,” “Thrawn Janet,”
“Will o’ the Mill,” “The Sire de Malétroit’s Door,” “The Merry Men,”
“Markheim,” published first in _Unwin’s Annual_, London, 1885, and
given in this volume in full, and “A Lodging for the Night,” which
follows entire. It was first published in _The Temple Bar_ magazine,
October, 1877.
* * * * *
Stevenson was a supreme craftsman. No writer of the short-story in
English, except Edgar Allan Poe, was so conscious of his art and
so gifted to create up to the measure of his orderly knowledge. In
criticism of the story-teller’s art, Poe was the greater originator,
Stevenson the more brilliant generalizer; Poe was the deeper,
Stevenson the broader; Poe’s opinions as to form grew largely out of
his own consciousness, and shaped his practices--they were arrived
at deductively: Stevenson’s standards grew as his creations shaped
themselves, and were measurably molded by his own writings--they were
examples of inductive reasoning. Thus Stevenson was doubly equipped to
produce incomparably the greatest group of short-stories ever written
by a Briton before the days of Kipling, and some sound critics will
dispute even this reservation. In charm, in dash of style, in a sense
of form, in pure romantic spirit, and in penetrating human interest,
Stevenson ranks among the ten greatest short-story-tellers of his era.
I wonder if any one had ever more energy upon so little
strength?--R. L. STEVENSON, _Vailima Letters_.
In the highest achievements of the art of words, the dramatic and
the pictorial, the moral and romantic interest, rise and fall
together by a common and organic law. Situation is animated with
passion, passion clothed upon with situation. Neither exists
for itself, but each inheres indissolubly with the other. This
is high art; and not only the highest art possible in words,
but the highest art of all, since it combines the greatest mass
and diversity of the elements of truth and pleasure. Such are
epics, and the few prose tales that have the epic weight.--R. L.
STEVENSON, _A Gossip on Romance_.
The stories of Stevenson exhibit a double union, as admirable as it
is rare. They exhibit the union of splendid material with the most
delicate skill in language; and they exhibit the union of thrilling
events with a remarkable power of psychological analysis.--WILLIAM
LYON PHELPS, _Essays on Modern Novelists_.
Mr. Stevenson enjoys the reputation of being the modern
representative of the romantic school of fiction. There are others
of high repute, for romanticism is now the vogue, but there is
hardly any other whose name we would care to link with that of
Walter Scott.--WILLIAM H. SHERAN, _Handbook of Literary Criticism_.
Perhaps the first quality in Mr. Stevenson’s works, now so many
and so various, which strikes a reader, is the buoyancy, the
survival of the child in him. He has told the world often, in
prose and verse, how vivid are his memories of his own infancy....
The peculiarity of Mr. Stevenson is not only to have been a
fantastic child, and to retain, in maturity, that fantasy ripened
into imagination: he has also kept up the habit of dramatising
everything, of playing, half consciously, many parts, of making
the world “an unsubstantial fairy place....” It is the eternal
child that drives him to seek adventures and to sojourn among
beach-combers and savages.--ANDREW LANG, _Essays in Little_.
It has been stated that the finer qualities of Stevenson are
called out by the psychological romance on native soil. He did
some brilliant and engaging work of foreign setting and motive....
Judged as art, “The Bottle Imp” and “The Beach of Falesa” are
among the triumphs of ethnic interpretation, let alone their more
external charms of story. And another masterpiece of foreign
setting, “A Lodging for the Night,” is further proof of Stevenson’s
ability to use other than Scotch motives for the materials of his
art.... Few novelists of any race have beaten this wandering Scot
in the power of representing character and envisaging it, and there
can hardly be successful characterization without this allied power
of creating atmosphere.--RICHARD BURTON, _Masters of the English
Novel_.
Not until 1877, and Robert Louis Stevenson’s first published
narrative, does any Englishman of real caliber show both desire and
ability to do something _new_ with the short story. This narrative
was “A Lodging for the Night,” published in _Temple Bar_ for
October.... “A Lodging for the Night” is as clearly and consciously
an impressionistic short story as George Meredith’s contemporary
novelettes are not of that category; the two stories which followed
(“Will o’ the Mill” and “The Sire de Malétroit’s Door”) would
assure the most timid critic of our generation that here was a
master in this department of fiction.... There is “The Strange Case
of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” that short story thrown over into the
form of a detective romance.... Or there is “Markheim,” a story
less powerful in execution, but more excellent in workmanship,
and an almost ideal example of the impressionistic short story.
Flaubert might have written the description of the curiosity
shop as the murderer saw it, with its accusing clock-voices, its
wavering shadows, from the inner door “a long slit of daylight like
a pointing finger.” And Flaubert would have praised the skilful
gradation of incident and description, whereby conscience gains
and gains in the struggle for Markheim’s mind. But Hawthorne would
have been prouder still of the plot--a weak man with a remnant of
high ideals suddenly realizing that his curve is plotted and can
lead him only downwards.... How like to Hawthorne’s usual way is
Stevenson’s determination to make, at all costs, a moral issue the
outcome of his story!... “Will o’ the Mill” is like a twice-told
tale not only in theme; its whole effect is Hawthornesque. “A
Lodging for the Night” has for its kernel a question of ethics.--H.
S. CANBY, _The Short Story in English_.
FURTHER REFERENCES FOR READING ON STEVENSON
_Mr. Stevenson’s Methods in Fiction_, A. Conan Doyle (1890); _Robert
Louis Stevenson, An Elegy_, Richard Le Gallienne (1895); _Robert
Louis Stevenson_, Walter Raleigh (1895); _Vailima Letters_, to
Sidney Colvin (1895); _Adventures in Criticism_, A. T. Quiller-Couch
(1896); _Critical Kit-Kats_, Edmund W. Gosse (1896); _Studies in Two
Literatures_, Arthur Symons (1897); _Life of Robert Louis Stevenson_,
Graham Balfour (1901); _Stevenson’s Attitude to Life_, J. F. Genung
(1901); _Memories of Vailima_, Isobel Strong and Lloyd Osbourne (1903);
_Robert Louis Stevenson_, W. R. Nicoll and G. K. Chesterton.
FOR ANALYSIS
A LODGING FOR THE NIGHT
BY ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
It was late in November, 1456. The snow fell over Paris with rigorous,
relentless persistence; sometimes the wind made a sally and scattered
it in flying vortices; sometimes there was a lull, and flake after
flake descended out of the black night air, silent, circuitous,
interminable. To poor people, looking up under moist eyebrows, it
seemed a wonder where it all came from. Master Francis Villon had
propounded an alternative that afternoon, at a tavern window; was
it only Pagan Jupiter plucking geese upon Olympus? or were the holy
angels moulting? He was only a poor master of arts, he went on; and as
the question somewhat touched upon divinity, he durst not venture to
conclude. A silly old priest from Montargis, who was among the company,
treated the young rascal to a bottle of wine in honor of the jest and
grimaces with which it was accompanied, and swore on his own white
beard that he had been just such another irreverent dog when he was
Villon’s age.
2. The air was raw and pointed, but not far below freezing; and the
flakes were large, damp, and adhesive. The whole city was sheeted
up. An army might have marched from end to end and not a footfall
given the alarm. If there were any belated birds in heaven, they saw
the island like a large white patch, and the bridges like slim white
spars, on the black ground of the river. High up overhead the snow
settled among the tracery of the cathedral towers. Many a niche was
drifted full; many a statue wore a long white bonnet on its grotesque
or sainted head. The gargoyles had been transformed into great false
noses, drooping toward the point. The crockets were like upright
pillows swollen on one side. In the intervals of the wind, there was a
dull sound of dripping about the precincts of the church.
3. The cemetery of St. John had taken its own share of the snow. All
the graves were decently covered; tall white housetops stood around
in grave array; worthy burghers were long ago in bed, be-nightcapped
like their domiciles; there was no light in all the neighborhood but
a little peep from a lamp that hung swinging in the church choir, and
tossed the shadows to and fro in time to its oscillations. The clock
was hard on ten when the patrol went by with halberds and a lantern,
beating their hands; and they saw nothing suspicious about the cemetery
of St. John.
4. Yet there was a small house, backed up against the cemetery wall,
which was still awake, and awake to evil purpose, in that snoring
district. There was not much to betray it from without; only a stream
of warm vapor from the chimney-top, a patch where the snow melted
on the roof, and a few half-obliterated footprints at the door. But
within, behind the shuttered windows, Master Francis Villon, the poet,
and some of the thievish crew with whom he consorted, were keeping the
night alive and passing round the bottle.
5. A great pile of living embers diffused a strong and ruddy glow
from the arched chimney. Before this straddled Dom Nicolas, the
Picardy monk, with his skirts picked up and his fat legs bared to the
comfortable warmth. His dilated shadow cut the room in half; and the
firelight only escaped on either side of his broad person, and in a
little pool between his outspread feet. His face had the beery, bruised
appearance of the continual drinker’s; it was covered with a network of
congested veins, purple in ordinary circumstances, but now pale violet,
for even with his back to the fire the cold pinched him on the other
side. His cowl had half fallen back, and made a strange excrescence on
either side of his bull neck. So he straddled, grumbling, and cut the
room in half with the shadow of his portly frame.
6. On the right, Villon and Guy Tabary were huddled together over
a scrap of parchment; Villon making a ballad which he was to call
the “Ballad of Roast Fish,” and Tabary spluttering admiration at his
shoulder. The poet was a rag of a man, dark, little, and lean, with
hollow cheeks and thin black locks. He carried his four-and-twenty
years with feverish animation. Greed had made folds about his eyes,
evil smiles had puckered his mouth. The wolf and pig struggled together
in his face. It was an eloquent, sharp, ugly, earthly countenance. His
hands were small and prehensile, with fingers knotted like a cord;
and they were continually flickering in front of him in violent and
expressive pantomime. As for Tabary, a broad, complacent, admiring
imbecility breathed from his squash nose and slobbering lips: he
had become a thief, just as he might have become the most decent of
burgesses, by the imperious chance that rules the lives of human geese
and human donkeys.
7. At the monk’s other hand, Montigny and Thevenin Pensete played a
game of chance. About the first there clung some flavor of good birth
and training, as about a fallen angel; something long, lithe, and
courtly in the person; something aquiline and darkling in the face.
Thevenin, poor soul, was in great feather: he had done a good stroke
of knavery that afternoon in the Faubourg St. Jacques, and all night
he had been gaining from Montigny. A flat smile illuminated his face;
his bald head shone rosily in a garland of red curls; his little
protuberant stomach shook with silent chucklings as he swept in his
gains.
8. “Doubles or quits?” said Thevenin.
9. Montigny nodded grimly.
10. “Some may prefer to dine in state,” wrote Villon, “On bread and
cheese on silver plate. Or, or--help me out, Guido!”
11. Tabary giggled.
12. “Or parsley on a golden dish,” scribbled the poet.
13. The wind was freshening without; it drove the snow before it, and
sometimes raised its voice in a victorious whoop, and made sepulchral
grumblings in the chimney. The cold was growing sharper as the night
went on. Villon, protruding his lips, imitated the gust with something
between a whistle and a groan. It was an eerie, uncomfortable talent of
the poet’s, much detested by the Picardy monk.
14. “Can’t you hear it rattle in the gibbet?” said Villon. “They
are all dancing the devil’s jig on nothing, up there. You may
dance, my gallants, you’ll be none the warmer! Whew! what a gust!
Down went somebody just now! A medlar the fewer on the three-legged
medlar-tree!--I say, Dom Nicolas, it’ll be cold to-night on the St.
Denis Road?” he asked.
15. Dom Nicolas winked both his big eyes, and seemed to choke upon his
Adam’s apple. Montfaucon, the great grisly Paris gibbet, stood hard by
the St. Denis Road, and the pleasantry touched him on the raw. As for
Tabary, he laughed immoderately over the medlars; he had never heard
anything more light-hearted; and he held his sides and crowed. Villon
fetched him a fillip on the nose, which turned his mirth into an attack
of coughing.
16. “Oh, stop that row,” said Villon, “and think of rhymes to ‘fish.’”
17. “Doubles or quits,” said Montigny, doggedly.
18. “With all my heart,” quoth Thevenin.
19. “Is there any more in that bottle?” asked the monk.
20. “Open another,” said Villon. “How do you ever hope to fill that
big hogshead, your body, with little things like bottles? And how do
you expect to get to heaven? How many angels, do you fancy, can be
spared to carry up a single monk from Picardy? Or do you think yourself
another Elias--and they’ll send the coach for you?”
21. “_Hominibus impossible_,” replied the monk, as he filled his glass.
22. Tabary was in ecstasies.
23. Villon filliped his nose again.
24. “Laugh at my jokes, if you like,” he said.
25. “It was very good,” objected Tabary.
26. Villon made a face at him. “Think of rhymes to ‘fish,’” he
said. “What have you to do with Latin? You’ll wish you knew none
of it at the great assizes, when the devil calls for Guido Tabary,
_clericus_--the devil with the humpback and red-hot finger-nails.
Talking of the devil,” he added, in a whisper, “look at Montigny!”
27. All three peered covertly at the gamester. He did not seem to be
enjoying his luck. His mouth was a little to a side; one nostril nearly
shut, and the other much inflated. The black dog was on his back, as
people say in terrifying nursery metaphor; and he breathed hard under
the grewsome burden.
28. “He looks as if he could knife him,” whispered Tabary, with round
eyes.
29. The monk shuddered, and turned his face and spread his open hands
to the red embers. It was the cold that thus affected Dom Nicolas, and
not any excess of moral sensibility.
30. “Come, now,” said Villon--“about this ballad. How does it run so
far?” And beating time with his hand he read it aloud to Tabary.
31. They were interrupted at the fourth rhyme by a brief and fatal
movement among the gamesters. The round was completed, and Thevenin
was just opening his mouth to claim another victory, when Montigny
leaped up, swift as an adder, and stabbed him to the heart. The blow
took effect before he had time to move. A tremor or two convulsed his
frame; his hands opened and shut, his heels rattled on the floor; then
his head rolled backward over one shoulder with the eyes wide open; and
Thevenin Pensete’s spirit had returned to Him who gave it.
32. Everyone sprung to his feet; but the business was over in two
twos. The four living fellows looked at each other in rather a ghastly
fashion; the dead man contemplating a corner of the roof with a
singular and ugly leer.
33. “My God!” said Tabary; and he began to pray in Latin.
34. Villon broke out into hysterical laughter. He came a step forward
and ducked a ridiculous bow at Thevenin, and laughed still louder.
Then he sat down suddenly, all of a heap, upon a stool, and continued
laughing bitterly as though he would shake himself to pieces.
35. Montigny recovered his composure first.
36. “Let’s see what he has about him,” he remarked; and he picked the
dead man’s pockets with a practiced hand, and divided the money into
four equal portions on the table. “There’s for you,” he said.
37. The monk received his share with a deep sigh, and a single stealthy
glance at the dead Thevenin, who was beginning to sink himself and
topple sideways off the chair.