he was in want, I pressed him to accept the loan of a few francs; but he
always stoutly refused. We went together to his lodging-house, where the
landlady, an Englishwoman, who boarded most of the circus people, spoke
of her “poor, dear Mr. Nodge,” as she called him, in quite a maternal
way, and assured me that he had wanted for nothing, and should not as
long as his wound disabled him. In the course of a few days I had
gathered from him a complete history of his circus-life, which was full
of adventure and hardship. When we met in Turin, he was, as I thought
at the time, somewhat of a novice in the circus business, having left
his home less than two years before. He had, indeed, been associated as
a regular member of the company only a few months, after having served a
difficult and wearing apprenticeship. He was born in Koloszvar, where
his father was a professor in the university, and there he grew up with
three brothers and a sister, in a comfortable home. He always had had a
great desire to travel, and, from early childhood, developed a special
fondness for gymnastic feats. The thought of a circus made him fairly
wild. On rare occasions a travelling show visited this Transylvanian
town, and his parents with difficulty restrained him from following the
circus away. At last, in 1873, one show, more complete and more
brilliant than any one before seen there, came on the newly opened
railway, and he, now a man grown, went away with it, unable longer to
restrain his passion for the profession. Always accustomed to horses,
and already a skilful acrobat, he was immediately accepted by the
manager as an apprentice, and, after a season in Roumania and a
disastrous trip through Southern Austria, they came into Northern Italy,
where I met him.
Whenever he spoke of his early life he always became quiet and
depressed, and, for a long time, I believed that he brooded over his
mistake in exchanging a happy home for the vicissitudes of Bohemia. It
came out slowly, however, that he was haunted by a superstition, a
strange and ingenious one, which was yet not without a certain show of
reason for its existence. Little by little I learned the following facts
about it: His father was of pure Szeklar, or original Hungarian, stock,
as dark-skinned as a Hindoo, and his mother was from one of the families
of Western Hungary, with probably some Saxon blood in her veins. His
three brothers were dark like his father, but he and his sister were
blondes. He was born with a peculiar red mark on his right shoulder,
directly over the scapula. This mark was shaped like a forked stick. His
father had received a wound in the insurrection of ’48, a few months
before the birth of him, the youngest son, and this birth-mark
reproduced the shape of the father’s scar. Among Hungarians his father
passed for a very learned man. He spoke fluently German, French, and
Latin (the language used by Hungarians in common communication with
other nationalities), and took great pains to give his children an
acquaintance with each of these tongues. Their earliest playthings were
French alphabet-blocks, and the set which served as toys and tasks for
each of the elder brothers came at last to him as his legacy. The
letters were formed by the human figure in different attitudes, and each
block had a little couplet below the picture, beginning with the letter
on the block. The Y represented a gymnast hanging by his hands to a
trapeze, and, being a letter which does not occur in the Hungarian
language except in combinations, excited most the interest and
imagination of the youngsters. Thousands of times did they practise the
grouping of the figures on the blocks, and the Y always served as a
model for trapeze exercises. My friend, on account of his birth-mark,
which resembled a rude Y, was early dubbed by his brothers with the
nickname Yatil, this being the first words of the French couplet printed
below the picture. Learning the French by heart, they believed the _Y
a-t-il_ to be one word, and, with boyish fondness for nicknames, saddled
the youngest with this. It is easy to understand how the shape of this
letter, borne on his body in an indelible mark, and brought to his mind
every moment of the day, came to seem in some way connected with his
life. As he grew up in this belief he became more and more superstitious
about the letter and about everything in the remotest way connected with
it.
The first great event of his life was joining the circus, and to this
the letter Y more or less directly led him. He left home on his
twenty-fifth birthday, and twenty-five was the number of the letter Y in
the block-alphabet.
The second great event of his life was the Turin lottery, and the
number of the lucky ticket was twenty-five. “The last sign given me,” he
said, “was the accident in the circus here.” As he spoke, he rolled up
the right leg of his trousers, and there, on the outside of the calf,
about midway between the knee and ankle, was a red scar forked like the
letter Y.
From the time he confided his superstition to me he sought me more than
ever. I must confess to feeling, at each visit of his, a little
constrained and unnatural. He seemed to lean on me as a protector, and
to be hungry all the time for an intimate sympathy I could never give
him. Although I shared his secret, I could not lighten the burden of his
superstition. His wound had entirely healed, but, as his leg was still
weak and he still continued to limp a little, he could not resume his
place in the circus. Between brooding over his superstition and worrying
about his accident, he grew very despondent. The climax of his
hopelessness was reached when the doctor told him at last that he would
never be able to vault again. The fracture had been a severe one, the
bone having protruded through the skin. The broken parts had knitted
with great difficulty, and the leg would never be as firm and as elastic
as before. Besides, the fracture had slightly shortened the lower leg.
His circus career was therefore ended, and he attributed his misfortune
to the ill-omened letter Y.
Just about the time of his greatest despondency, war was declared
between Russia and Turkey. The Turkish embassadors were drumming up
recruits all over Western Europe. News came to the circus boarding-house
that good riders were wanted for the Turkish mounted gendarmes. Nagy
resolved to enlist, and we went together to the Turkish embassy. He was
enrolled after only a superficial examination, and was directed to
present himself on the following day to embark for Constantinople. He
begged me to go with him to the rendez-vous, and there I bade him adieu.
As I was shaking his hand he showed me the certificate given him by the
Turkish embassador. It bore the date of May 25, and at the bottom was a
signature in Turkish characters which could be readily distorted by the
imagination into a rude and scrawling Y.
* * * * *
A series of events occurring immediately after Nagy left for
Constantinople resulted in my own unexpected departure for the seat of
war in a civil capacity in the Russian army. The series of curious
coincidences in the experience of the circus-rider had impressed me very
much when he related them, but in the excitement of the Turkish campaign
I entirely forgot him and his story. I do not, indeed, recall any
thought of Nagy during the first five months in the field. The day after
the fall of Plevna I rode towards the town through the line of deserted
earthworks. The dead were lying where they had fallen in the dramatic
and useless sortie of the day before. The corpses on a battle-field
always excite fresh interest, no matter if the spectacle be an every-day
one; and as I rode slowly along I studied the attitudes of the dead
soldiers, speculating on the relation between the death-poses and the
last impulse that had animated the living frame. Behind a rude barricade
of wagons and household goods, part of the train of non-combatants which
Osman Pasha had ordered to accompany the army in the sortie, a great
number of dead lay in confusion. The peculiar position of one of these
instantly attracted my eye. He had fallen on his face against the
barricade, with both arms stretched above his head, evidently killed
instantly. The figure on the alphabet-block, described by the
circus-rider, came immediately to my mind. My heart beat as I dismounted
and looked at the dead man’s face. It was unmistakably Turkish.
This incident revived my interest in the life of the circus-rider, and
gave me an impulse to look among the prisoners to see if by chance he
might be with them. I spent a couple of days in distributing tobacco and
bread in the hospitals and among the thirty thousand wretches herded
shelterless in the snow. There were some of the mounted gendarmes among
them, and I even found several Hungarians; but none of them had ever
heard of the circus-rider.
The passage of the Balkans was a campaign full of excitement, and was
accompanied by so much hardship that selfishness entirely got the
upperhand of me, and life became a battle for physical comfort. After
the passage of the mountain range, we went ahead so fast that I had
little opportunity, even if I had the enterprise, to look among the few
prisoners for the circus-rider.
Time passed, and we were at the end of a three days’ fight near
Philippopolis, in the middle of January. Suleiman Pasha’s army,
defeated, disorganized, and at last disbanded, though to that day still
unconquered, had finished the tragic act of its last campaign with the
heroic stand made in the foot-hills of the Rhodope Mountains, near
Stanimaka, south of Philippopolis. A long month in the terrible cold, on
the summits of the Balkan range; the forced retreat through the snow
after the battle of Taskosen; the neck-and-neck race with the Russians
down the valley of the Maritza; finally, the hot little battle on the
river-bank, and the two days of hand-to-hand struggle in the vineyards
of Stanimaka--this was a campaign to break the constitution of any
soldier. Days without food, nights without shelter from the mountain
blasts, always marching and always fighting, supplies and baggage lost,
ammunition and artillery gone--human nature could hold out no longer,
and the Turkish army dissolved away into the defiles of the Rhodopes.
Unfortunately for her, Turkey has no literature to chronicle, no art to
perpetuate, the heroism of her defenders.
The incidents of that short campaign are too full of horror to be
related. Not only did the demon of war devour strong men, but found
dainty morsels for its bloody maw in innocent women and children. Whole
families, crazed by the belief that capture was worse than death, fought
in the ranks with the soldiers. Women, ambushed in coverts, shot the
Russians as they rummaged the captured trains for much-needed food.
Little children, thrown into the snow by the flying parents, died of
cold and starvation, or were trampled to death by passing cavalry. Such
a useless waste of human life has not been recorded since the
indiscriminate massacres of the Middle Ages.
The sight of human suffering soon blunts the sensibilities of any one
who lives with it, so that he is at last able to look upon it with no
stronger feeling than that of helplessness. Resigned to the inevitable,
he is no longer impressed by the woes of the individual. He looks upon
the illness, wounds, and death of the soldier as a part of the lot of
all combatants, and comes to consider him an insignificant unit of the
great mass of men. At last, only novelties in horrors will excite his
feelings.
I was riding back from the Stanimaka battle-field, sufficiently elated
at the prospect of a speedy termination of the war--now made certain by
the breaking-up of Suleiman’s army--to forget where I was, and to
imagine myself back in my comfortable apartments in Paris. I only awoke
from my dream at the station where the highway from Stanimaka crosses
the railway line about a mile south of Philippopolis. The great wooden
barracks had been used as a hospital for wounded Turks, and, as I drew
up my horse at the door, the last of the lot of four hundred, who had
been starving there nearly a week, were being placed upon carts to be
transported to the town. The road to Philippopolis was crowded with
wounded and refugees. Peasant families struggled along with all their
household goods piled upon a single cart. Ammunition wagons and droves
of cattle, rushing along against the tide of human beings towards the
distant bivouacs, made the confusion hopeless. Night was fast coming on,
and, in company with a Cossack, who was, like myself, seeking the
headquarters of General Gourko, I made my way through the tangle of men,
beasts, and wagons in the direction of the town. It was one of those
chill, wet days of winter when there is little comfort away from a
blazing fire, and when good shelter for the night is an absolute
necessity. The drizzle had saturated my garments, and the snow-mud had
soaked my boots. Sharp gusts of piercing wind drove the cold mist
along, and as the temperature fell in the late afternoon, the slush of
the roads began to stiffen and the fog froze where it gathered. Every
motion of the limbs seemed to expose some unprotected part of the body
to the cold and wet. No amount of exercise that was possible with
stiffened limbs and in wet garments would warm the blood. Leading my
horse, I splashed along, holding my arms away from my body, and only
moving my benumbed fingers to wipe the chill drip from my face. It was
weather to take the courage out of the strongest man, and the sight of
the soaked and shivering wounded, packed in the jolting carts or limping
through the mud, gave me, hardened as I was, a painful contraction of
the heart. The best I could do was to lift upon my worn-out horse one
brave young fellow who was hobbling along with a bandaged leg. Followed
by the Cossack, whose horse bore a similar burden, I hurried along,
hoping to get under cover before dark. At the entrance to the town
numerous camp-fires burned in the bivouacs of the refugees, who were
huddled together in the shelter of their wagons, trying to warm
themselves in the smoke of the wet fuel. I could see the wounded, as
they were jolted past in the heavy carts, look longingly at the kettles
of boiling maize which made the evening meal of the houseless natives.
Inside the town, the wounded and the refugees were still more miserable
than those we had passed on the way. Loaded carts blocked the streets.
Every house was occupied, and the narrow sidewalks were crowded with
Russian soldiers, who looked wretched enough in their dripping
overcoats, as they stamped their rag-swathed feet. At the corner, in
front of the great Khan, motley groups of Greeks, Bulgarians, and
Russians were gathered, listlessly watching the line of hobbling wounded
as they turned the corner to find their way among the carts, up the hill
to the hospital, near the Konak. By the time I reached the Khan the
Cossack who accompanied me had fallen behind in the confusion, and,
without waiting for him, I pushed along, wading in the gutter, dragging
my horse by the bridle. Half-way up the hill I saw a crowd of natives
watching with curiosity two Russian guardsmen and a Turkish prisoner.
The latter was evidently exhausted, for he was crouching in the freezing
mud of the street. Presently the soldiers shook him roughly, and raised
him forcibly to his feet, and, half supporting him between them, they
moved slowly along, the Turk balancing on his stiffened legs, and
swinging from side to side.
He was a most wretched object to look at. He had neither boots nor fez;
his feet were bare, and his trousers were torn off near the knee, and
hung in tatters around his mud-splashed legs. An end of the red sash
fastened to his waist trailed far behind in the mud. A blue-cloth jacket
hung loosely from his shoulders, and his hands and wrists dangled from
the ragged sleeves. His head rolled around at each movement of the body,
and at short intervals the muscles of the neck would rigidly contract.
All at once he drew himself up with a shudder and sank down in the mud
again.
The guardsmen were themselves near the end of their strength, and their
patience was well-nigh finished as well. Rough mountain marching had
torn the soles from their boots, and great, unsightly wraps of raw-hide
and rags were bound on their feet. The thin, worn overcoats, burned in
many places, flapped dismally against their ankles; and their caps,
beaten out of shape by many storms, clung drenched to their heads. They
were in no condition to help any one to walk, for they could scarcely
get on alone. They stood a moment shivering, looked at each other, shook
their heads as if discouraged, and proceeded to rouse the Turk by
hauling him upon his feet again. The three moved on a few yards, and the
prisoner fell again, and the same operation was repeated. All this time
I was crowding nearer and nearer, and as I got within a half-dozen
paces, the Turk fell once more, and this time lay at full length in the
mud. The guardsmen tried to rouse him by shaking, but in vain. Finally,
one of them, losing all patience, pricked him with his bayonet on the
lower part of the ribs exposed by the raising of the jacket as he fell.
I was now near enough to act, and with a sudden clutch I pulled the
guardsman away, whirled him around, and stood in his place. As I was
stooping over the Turk he raised himself slowly, doubtless aroused by
the pain of the puncture, and turned on me a most beseeching look, which
changed at once into something like joy and surprise. Immediately a
death-like pallor spread over his face, and he sank back again with a
groan.
By this time quite a crowd of Bulgarians had gathered around us, and
seemed to enjoy the sight of a suffering enemy. It was evident that they
did not intend to volunteer any assistance, so I helped the wounded
Russian down from my saddle, and invited the natives rather sternly to
put the Turk in his place. With true Bulgarian spirit they refused to
assist a Turk, and it required the argument of the raw-hide (_nagajka_)
to bring them to their senses. Three of them, cornered and flogged,
lifted the unconscious man and carried him towards the horse; the
soldiers meanwhile, believing me to be an officer, standing in the
attitude of attention. As the Bulgarians bore the Turk to the horse, a
few drops of blood fell to the ground. I noticed then that he had his
shirt tied around his left shoulder, under his jacket. Supported in the
saddle by two natives on each side, his head falling forward on his
breast, the wounded prisoner was carried with all possible tenderness to
the Stafford House Hospital, near the Konak. As we moved slowly up the
hill, I looked back, and saw the two guardsmen sitting on the muddy
sidewalk, with their guns leaning against their shoulders--too much
exhausted to go either way.
I found room for my charge in one of the upper rooms of the hospital,
where he was washed and put into a warm bed. His wound proved to be a
severe one. A Berdan bullet had passed through the thick part of the
left pectoral, out again, and into the head of the humerus. The surgeon
said that the arm would have to be operated on, to remove the upper
quarter of the bone.
The next morning I went to the hospital to see what had become of the
wounded man, for the incident of the previous evening had made a deep
impression on my mind. As I walked through the corridor I saw a group
around a temporary bed in the corner. Some one was evidently about to
undergo an operation, for an assistant held at intervals a great cone of
linen over a haggard face on the pillow, and a strong smell of
chloroform filled the air. As I approached, the surgeon turned around,
and, recognizing me, said with a nod and a smile, “We are at work on
your friend.” While he was speaking, he bared the left shoulder of the
wounded man, and I saw the holes made by the bullet as it passed from
the pectoral into the upper part of the deltoid. Without waiting longer,
the surgeon made a straight cut downward from near the acromion through
the thick fibre of the deltoid to the bone. He attempted to sever the
tendons so as to slip the head of the humerus from the socket, but
failed. He wasted no time in further trial, but made a second incision
from the bullet-hole diagonally to the middle of the first cut, and
turned the pointed flap up over the shoulder. It was now easy to unjoint
the bones, and but a moment’s work to saw off the shattered piece of the
humerus, tie the severed arteries, and bring the flap again into its
place.
There was no time to pause, for the surgeon began to fear the effects of
the chloroform on the patient. We hastened to revive him by every
possible means at hand, throwing cold water on him and warming his hands
and feet. Although under the influence of chloroform to the degree that
he was insensible to pain, he had not been permitted to lose his entire
consciousness, and he appeared to be sensible of what we were doing.
Nevertheless, he awoke slowly, very slowly, the surgeon meanwhile
putting the stitches in the incision. At last he raised his eyelids,
made a slight movement with his lips, and then deliberately surveyed the
circle of faces gathered closely around the bed. There was something in
his eyes which had an irresistible attraction for me, and I bent forward
to intercept his gaze. As his eyes met mine they changed as if a sudden
light had struck them, and the stony stare gave way to a look of
intelligence and recognition. Then, through the beard of a season’s
growth, and behind the haggard mask before me, I saw at once the
circus-rider of Turin and Paris. I remember being scarcely excited or
surprised at the meeting, for a great sense of irresponsibility came
over me, and I involuntarily accepted the coincidence as a matter of
course. He tried in vain to speak, but held up his right hand and feebly
made with his fingers the sign of the letter which had played such an
important part in the story of his life. Even at that instant the light
left his eyes, and something like a veil seemed drawn over them. With
the instinctive energy which possesses every one when there is a chance
of saving human life, we redoubled our efforts to restore the patient to
consciousness. But while we strove to feed the flame with some of our
own vitality, it flickered and went out, leaving the hue of ashes where
the rosy tinge of life had been. His heart was paralyzed.
As I turned away, my eye caught the surgeon’s incision, which was now
plainly visible on the left shoulder. The cut was in the form of the
letter Y.
TEDESCO’S RUBINA
Any one may see among the fragments of antique sculpture in one of the
museums of Rome a marble head of a young maiden which has been rudely
broken off at the neck. It bears no marks of restoration, and is mounted
on the conventional pedestal or support. There is a half-coquettish
twinkle in the lines of the mouth and eyes, and a most bewitching
expression of innocent youthful happiness about the face, which at once
attract and fascinate the eye of even the most careless observer of
these relics of ancient art. The head is gracefully poised and
exquisitely proportioned, but is not conventionalized to the degree
usual in busts of a similar character. Indeed, notwithstanding its
classical aspect, there is a marked individuality of treatment
noticeable in its composition, if I may so call the arrangement of the
hair and the pose of the head. The features are small and regular; the
chin a trifle too delicate, if possible, to complete the full oval
suggested by the upper part of the face; and the hair, in which a wreath
of ivy is twined, clusters in slender, irregular curls around a low
forehead, and is gathered behind in a loose knot. One tress of hair,
escaping from the embrace of the ivy-branch, caressingly clings to the
neck. On the pedestal is the label:
“A Roman Nymph--Fragment.”
Visiting the museum one day in company with two artist friends, I
pointed this head out to them as we were hastily passing through the
room. Like myself, they were enchanted with the fragment, and lingered
to sketch it. They were very long in making their sketches; and after
they declared them finished, shut their books with a resolute air,
walked briskly off, but returned again, one after the other, to take
another look. At last I succeeded in dragging them away; but while we
were examining another part of the collection, in an adjoining room,
each disappeared in turn, and came back, after a few minutes’ absence,
with the volunteered excuse that he had found it necessary to put a last
touch on his drawing of the attractive fragment. When we left the museum
both of my infatuated friends had made arrangements with the custodian
to permit a moulder to come and take a cast of the head.