Masterpieces of
Adventure
_In Four Volumes_
STORIES OF DESERT PLACES
Edited by
Nella Braddy
Garden City New York
Doubleday, Page & Company
1922
COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
AT
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
GRATEFULLY DEDICATED
TO
BLANCHE COLTON WILLIAMS, Ph.D.
EDITOR'S NOTE
In these volumes the word _adventure_ has been used in its broadest
sense to cover not only strange happenings in strange places but also
love and life and death--all things that have to do with the great
adventure of living. Questions as to the fitness of a story were
settled by examining the qualities of the narrative as such rather
than by reference to a technical classification of short stories.
It is the inalienable right of the editor of a work of this kind to
plead copyright difficulties in extenuation for whatever faults it
may possess. We beg the reader to believe that this is why his
favorite story was omitted while one vastly inferior was included.
CONTENTS
I. THE BARON'S QUARRY
_Edgerton Castle_
II. A MAN AND SOME OTHERS
_Stephen Crane_
III. THE OUTLAWS
_Selma Lagerlöf_
IV. PRINCESS BOB AND HER FRIENDS
_Bret Harte_
V. THE THREE STRANGERS
_Thomas Hardy_
VI. THE PASSING OF BLACK EAGLE
_O. Henry_
VII. NIÑO DIABLO
_W. H. Hudson_
Masterpieces of Adventure
_STORIES OF DESERT PLACES_
I
THE BARON'S QUARRY*
EGERTON CASTLE
*Reprinted by permission of D. Appleton & Co.
"Oh no, I assure you, you are not boring Mr. Marshfield," said this
personage himself in his gentle voice--that curious voice that could
flow on for hours, promulgating profound and startling theories on
every department of human knowledge or conducting paradoxical
arguments without a single inflection or pause of hesitation. "I am,
on the contrary, much interested in your hunting talk. To paraphrase
a well-worn quotation somewhat widely, _nihil humanum a me alienum
est_. Even hunting stories may have their point of biological
interest: the philologist sometimes pricks his ear to the jargon of
the chase; moreover, I am not incapable of appreciating the
subject-matter itself. This seems to excite some derision. I admit
I am not much of a sportsman to look at, nor, indeed, by instinct,
yet I have had some out-of-the-way experiences in that
line--generally when intent on other pursuits. I doubt, for
instance, if even you, Major Travers, notwithstanding your well-known
exploits against man and beast, notwithstanding that doubtful smile
of yours, could match the strangeness of a certain hunting adventure
in which I played an important part."
The speaker's small, deep-set, black eyes, that never warmed to
anything more human than a purely speculative, scientific interest in
his surroundings, here wandered round the sceptical yet expectant
circle with bland amusement. He stretched out his bloodless fingers
for another of his host's superfine cigars and proceeded, with only
such interruptions as were occasioned by the lighting and careful
smoking of the latter.
"I was returning home after my prolonged stay in Petersburg,
intending to linger on my way and test with mine own ears certain
among the many dialects of eastern Europe--anent which there is a
symmetrical little cluster of philological knotty points it is my
modest intention one day to unravel. However, that is neither here
nor there. On the road to Hungary I bethought myself opportunely of
proving the once pressingly offered hospitality of the Baron
Kossowski.
"You may have met the man, Major Travers, he was a tremendous
sportsman, if you like. I first came across him at McNeil's place in
remote Ireland. Now, being in Bukowina, within measurable distance
of his Carpathian abode, and curious to see a Polish lord at home, I
remembered his invitation. It was already of long standing, but it
had been warm, born in fact of a sudden fit of enthusiasm for
me"--here a half-mocking smile quivered an instant under the
speaker's black moustache--"which, as it was characteristic, I may as
well tell you about.
"It was on the day of, or rather, to be accurate, on the day after my
arrival, toward the small hours of the morning, in the smoking-room
at Rathdrum. Our host was peacefully snoring over his empty pipe and
his seventh glass of whiskey, also empty. The rest of the men had
slunk off to bed. The baron, who all unknown to himself had been a
subject of most interesting observation to me the whole evening,
being now practically alone with me, condescended to turn an eye, as
wide awake as a fox's, albeit slightly bloodshot, upon the
contemptible white-faced person who had preferred spending the raw
hours over his papers, within the radius of a glorious fire's warmth,
to creeping slily over treacherous quagmires in the pursuit of timid
bog creatures (snipe shooting had been the order of the day)--the
baron, I say, became aware of my existence and entered into
conversation with me.
"He would no doubt have been much surprised could he have known that
he was already mapped out, craniologically and physiognomically,
catalogued with care, and neatly laid by in his proper ethnological
box, in my private type museum, that, as I sat and examined him from
my different coigns of vantage in library, in dining and smoking room
that evening, not a look of his, not a gesture went forth but had
significance for me.
"You, I had thought, with your broad shoulders and deep chest, your
massive head that should have gone with a tall stature, not with
those short, sturdy limbs; with your thick red hair, that should have
been black for that matter, with your wide-set, yellow eyes, you
would be a real puzzle to one who did not recognize in you equal
mixtures of the fair, stalwart, and muscular Slav with the
bilious-sanguine, thick-set, wiry Turanian. Your pedigree would no
doubt bear me out; there is as much of the Magyar as of the Pole in
your anatomy. Athlete, and yet a tangle of nerves; a ferocious brute
at bottom, I dare say, for your broad forehead inclines to flatness,
under your bristling beard your jaw must protrude, and the base of
your skull is ominously thick. And, with all that, capable of ideal
transports; when that girl played and sang to-night I saw the
swelling of your eyelid veins, and how that small, tenacious,
clawlike hand of yours twitched. You would be a fine leader of
men--but God help the wretches in your power!
"So had I mused upon him. Yet I confess that when we came into
closer contact with each other even I was not proof against the
singular courtesy of his manner and his unaccountable personal charm.
"Our conversation soon grew interesting; to me as a matter of course,
and evidently to him also. A few general words led to interchange of
remarks upon the country we were both visitors in and so to national
characteristics--Pole and Irishman have not a few in common, both in
their nature and history. An observation which he made, not without
a certain flash in his light eyes and a transient uncovering of the
teeth, on the Irish type of female beauty, suddenly suggested to me a
stanza of an ancient Polish ballad, very full of milk-and-blood
imagery, of alternating ferocity and voluptuousness. This I quoted
to the astounded foreigner, in the vernacular, and this it was that
metamorphosed his mere perfection of civility into sudden warmth,
and, in fact, procured me the invitation in question.
"When I left Rathdrum the baron's last words to me were that if I
ever thought of visiting his country otherwise than in books he held
me bound to make Yany, his Galician seat, my headquarters of study.
"From Czernowicz, therefore, where I stopped some time, I wrote,
received in due time a few lines of prettily worded reply, and
ultimately entered my sled in the nearest town to, yet at a most
forbidding distance from, Yany, and started on my journey thither.
"The undertaking meant many long hours of undulation and skidding
over the November snow, to the somniferous bell-jangle of my dirty
little horses; the only impression of interest being a weird gipsy
concert I came in for at a miserable drinking-booth half buried in
the snow where we halted for the refreshment of man and beast. Here,
I remember, I discovered a very definite connection between the
characteristic run of the tsimbol, the peculiar bite of the
Zigeuner's bow on his fiddle-string, and some distinctive points of
Turanian tongues--in other countries, in Spain for instance, your
gipsy speaks differently on his instrument. But, oddly enough, when
I later attempted to put this observation on paper I could find no
word to express it."
A few of our company evinced signs of sleepiness, but most of us who
knew Marshfield, and that he who could, unless he had something novel
to say, be as silent and retiring as he now evinced signs of being
copious, awaited further with patience. He has his own deliberate
way of speaking, which he evidently enjoys greatly, though it be
occasionally trying to his listeners.
"On the afternoon of my second day's drive, the snow, which till then
had fallen fine and continuous, ceased, and my Jehu, suddenly
interrupting himself in the midst of some exciting wolf story, quite
in keeping with the time of year and the wild surroundings, pointed
to a distant spot against the grey sky to the north-west, between two
wood-covered folds of ground--the first eastern spurs of the great
Carpathian chain.
"'There stands Yany,' said he.
"I looked at my far-off goal with interest. As we drew nearer, the
sinking sun, just dipping behind the hills, tinged the now distinct
frontage with a cold, copperlike gleam, but it was only for a minute;
the next the building became nothing more to the eye than a black
irregular silhouette against the crimson sky.
"Before we entered the long, steep avenue of poplars, the early
winter darkness was upon us, rendered all the more depressing by grey
mists which gave a ghostly aspect to such objects as the sheen of the
snow rendered visible. Once or twice there were feeble flashes of
light looming in iridescent halos as we passed little clusters of
hovels, but for which I should have been induced to fancy that the
great Hof stood alone in the wilderness, such was the deathly
stillness around. But even as the tall square building rose before
us above the vapour, yellow lighted in various stories, and mighty in
height and breadth, there broke upon my ear a deep-mouthed, menacing
bay, which gave at once almost alarming reality to the eerie
surroundings.
"'His lordship's boar and wolf hounds,' quoth my charioteer calmly,
unmindful of the regular pandemonium of howls and barks which ensued
as he skilfully turned his horses through the gateway and flogged the
tired beasts into a sort of shambling canter that we might land with
glory before the house door; a weakness common, I believe, to drivers
of all nations.
"I alighted in the court of honour, and while awaiting an answer to
my tug at the bell, stood, broken with fatigue, depressed, chilled
and aching, questioning the wisdom of my proceedings and the amount
of comfort, physical and moral, that was likely to await me in a
_tête-à-tête_ visit with a well-mannered savage in his own home.
"The unkempt tribe of stable retainers who began to gather round me
and my rough vehicle in the gloom, with their evil-smelling
sheepskins and their resigned battered visages, were not calculated
to reassure me. Yet when the door opened, there stood a smart
chasseur and a solemn major-domo who might but just have stepped out
of Mayfair; and there was displayed a spreading vista of warm,
deep-coloured halls, with here a statue and there a stuffed bear, and
underfoot pile carpets strewn with rarest skins.
"Marvelling, yet comforted withal, I followed the solemn butler, who
received me with the deference due to an expected guest and expressed
the master's regret for his enforced absence till dinner-time. I
traversed vast rooms, each more sumptuous than the last, feeling the
strangeness of the contrast between the outer desolation and this
sybaritic excess of luxury growing ever more strongly upon me; caught
a glimpse of a picture-gallery, where peculiar yet admirably executed
latter-day French pictures hung side by side with ferocious boar
hunts of Snyder and such kin; and, at length, was ushered into a most
cheerful room, modern to excess in its comfortable promise, where, in
addition to the tall stove necessary for warmth, there burned on an
open hearth a vastly pleasant fire of resinous logs, and where, on a
low table, awaited me a dainty service of fragrant Russian tea.
"My impression of utter novelty seemed somehow enhanced by this
unexpected refinement in the heart of the solitudes and in such a
rugged shell, and yet, when I came to reflect, it was only
characteristic of my cosmopolitan host. But another surprise was in
store for me.
"When I had recovered bodily warmth and mental equilibrium in my
downy armchair, before the roaring logs, and during the delicious
absorption of my second glass of tea, I turned my attention to the
French valet, evidently the baron's own man, who was deftly unpacking
my portmanteau, and who, unless my practised eye deceived me, asked
for nothing better than to entertain me with agreeable conversation
the while.
"'Your master is out, then,' quoth I, knowing that the most trivial
remark would suffice to start him.
"True, monseigneur was out; he was desolated in despair (this with
the national amiable and imaginative instinct); but it was doubtless
important business. M. le Baron had the visit of his factor during
the midday meal; had left the table hurriedly, and had not been seen
since. Madame la Baronne had been a little suffering, but she would
receive monsieur.
"'Madame!' exclaimed I, astounded. 'Is your master then married?
since when?'--visions of a fair Tartar, fit mate for my baron,
immediately springing somewhat alluringly before my mental vision.
But the answer dispelled the picturesque fancy.
"'Oh yes,' said the man, with a somewhat peculiar expression. 'Yes,
monseigneur is married. Did monsieur not know? And yet it was from
England that monseigneur brought back his wife.'
"'An Englishwoman!'
"My first thought was one of pity; an Englishwoman alone in this
wilderness--two days' drive from even a railway station--and at the
mercy of Kossowski! But the next minute I reversed my judgment.
Probably she adored her rufous lord, took his veneer of courtesy--a
veneer of the most exquisite polish, I grant you, but perilously
thin--for the very perfection of chivalry. Or perchance it was his
inner savageness itself that charmed her; the most refined women
often amaze one by the fascination which the preponderance of the
brute in the opposite sex seems to have for them.
"I was anxious to hear more.
"'Is it not dull for the lady here at this time of year?'
"The valet raised his shoulders with a gesture of despair that was
almost passionate.
"Dull! Ah, monsieur could not conceive to himself the dulness of it.
That poor Madame la Baronne! not even a little child to keep her
company on the long, long days when there was nothing but snow in the
heaven and on the earth and the howling of the wind and the dogs to
cheer her. At the beginning, indeed, it had been different; when the
master first brought home his bride the house was gay enough. It was
all redecorated and refurnished to receive her (monsieur should have
seen it before, a mere _rendezvous-de-chasse_--for the matter of that
so were all the country houses in these parts!) Ah, that was the
good time! There were visits month after month; parties, sleighing,
dancing, trips to St. Petersburg and Vienna. But this year it seemed
they were to have nothing but boars and wolves. How madame could
stand it--well, it was not for him to speak--and heaving a deep sigh
he delicately inserted my white tie round my collar, and with a
flourish twisted it into an irreproachable bow beneath my chin.
"I did not think it right to cross-examine the willing talker any
further, especially as, despite his last asseveration, there were
evidently volumes he still wished to pour forth; but I confess that,
as I made my way slowly out of my room along the noiseless length of
passage, I was conscious of an unwonted, not to say vulgar, curiosity
concerning the woman who had captivated such a man as the Baron
Kossowski.
"In a fit of speculative abstraction I must have taken the wrong
turning, for I presently found myself in a long, narrow passage I did
not remember. I was retracing my steps when there came the sound of
rapid footfalls upon stone flags; a little door flew open in the wall
close to me, and a small, thick-set man, huddled in the rough
sheepskin of the Galician peasant, with a mangy fur cap on his head,
nearly ran headlong into my arms. I was about condescendingly to
interpellate him in my best Polish when I caught the gleam of an
angry yellow eye and noted the bristle of a red beard--Kossowski!
"Amazed, I fell back a step in silence. With a growl, like an
uncouth animal disturbed, he drew his filthy cap over his brow with a
savage gesture and pursued his way down the corridor at a sort of
wild-boar trot.
"This first meeting between host and guest was so odd, so
incongruous, that it afforded me plenty of food for a fresh line of
conjecture as I traced my way back to the picture-gallery, and from
thence successfully to the drawing-room, which, as the door was ajar,
I could not this time mistake.
"It was large and lofty and dimly lit by shaded lamps; through the
rosy gloom I could at first only just make out a slender figure by
the hearth; but as I advanced, this was resolved into a singularly
graceful woman in clinging, fur-trimmed velvet gown, who, with one
hand resting on the high mantelpiece, the other hanging listlessly by
her side, stood gazing down at the crumbling wood fire as if in a
dream.
"My friends are kind enough to say that I have a catlike tread; I
know not how that may be, at any rate the carpet I was walking upon
was thick enough to smother a heavier footfall; not until I was quite
close to her did my hostess become aware of my presence. Then she
started violently and looked over her shoulder at me with dilating
eyes. Evidently a nervous creature, I saw the pulse in her throat,
strained by her attitude, flutter like a terrified bird.
"The next instant she had stretched out her hand with sweet, English
words of welcome, and the face, which I had been comparing in my mind
to that of Guide's Cenci, became transformed by the arch and
exquisite smile of a Greuse. For more than two years I had had no
intercourse with any of my nationality. I could conceive the sound
of his native tongue under such circumstances moving a man in a
curious, unexpected fashion.
"I babbled some commonplace reply, after which there was silence
while we stood opposite each other, she looking at me expectantly.
At length, with a sigh checked by a smile and an overtone of sadness
in a voice that yet tried to be sprightly:--
"'Am I then so changed, Mr. Marshfield?' she asked. And all at once
I knew her: the girl whose nightingale throat had redeemed the
desolation of the evenings at Rathdrum, whose sunny beauty had seemed
(even to my celebrated, cold-blooded aestheticism) worthy to haunt a
man's dreams. Yes, there was the subtle curve of waist, the warm
line of throat, the dainty foot, the slender, tip-tilted
fingers--witty fingers, as I had classified them--which I now shook
like a true Briton, instead of availing myself of the privilege the
country gave me, and kissing her slender wrist.
"But she was changed; and I told her so with unconventional
frankness, studying her closely as I spoke.
"'I am afraid,' I said gravely, 'that this place does not agree with
you.'
"She shrank from my scrutiny with a nervous movement and flushed to
the roots of her red-brown hair. Then she answered coldly that I was
wrong, that she was in excellent health, but that she could not
expect, any more than other people, to preserve perennial youth (I
rapidly calculated she might be two-and-twenty), though indeed, with
a little forced laugh, it was scarcely flattering to hear one had
altered out of all recognition. Then, without allowing me time to
reply, she plunged into a general topic of conversation which, as I
should have been obtuse indeed not to take the hint, I did my best to
keep up.
"But while she talked of Vienna and Warsaw, of her distant neighbours
and last year's visitors, it was evident that her mind was elsewhere;
her eye wandered, she lost the thread of her discourse; answered me
at random, and smiled her piteous smile incongruously.
"However lonely she might be in her solitary splendour, the company
of a countryman was evidently no such welcome diversion.
"After a little while she seemed to feel herself that she was lacking
in cordiality, and, bringing her absent gaze to bear upon me with a
puzzled, strained look:--
"'I fear you will find it very dull,' she said; 'my husband is so
wrapped up this winter in his country life and his sport, you are the
first visitor we have had. There is nothing but guns and horses
here, and you do not care for these things.'
"The door creaked behind us; and the baron entered, in faultless
evening dress. Before she turned toward him I was sharp enough to
catch again the upleaping of a quick dread in her eyes, not even so
much dread perhaps, I thought afterward, as horror--the horror we
notice in some animals at the nearing of a beast of prey. It was
gone in a second, and she was smiling. But it was a revelation.
"Perhaps he beat her in Russian fashion, and she as an English woman
was narrow-minded enough to resent this; or perhaps merely I had the
misfortune to arrive during a matrimonial misunderstanding.
"The baron would not give me leisure to reflect; he was so very
effusive in his greeting--not a hint of our previous meeting--unlike
my hostess, all in all to me; eager to listen, to reply; almost
affectionate, full of references to old times and genial allusions.
No doubt when he chose he could be the most charming of men; there
were moments when, looking at him in his correct attire, hearkening
to his cultured voice, marking his quiet smile and restrained
gesture, the almost exaggerated politeness of his manner to his wife,
whose fingers he had kissed with pretty, old-fashioned gallantry upon
his entrance, I asked myself, could that encounter in the passage
have been a dream? could that savage in the sheepskin be my courteous
entertainer?
"'Just as I came in, did I hear my wife say there was nothing for you
to do in this place?' he said presently to me. Then, turning to
her:--
"'You do not seem to know Mr. Marshfield. Wherever he can open his
eyes, there is for him something to see which might not interest
other men. He will find things in my library which I have no notion
of. He will discover objects for scientific observation in all the
members of my household, not only in the good-looking maids--though
he could, I have no doubt, tell their points as I could those of a
horse. We have maidens here of several distinct races, Marshfield.
We have also witches, and Jew leeches, and holy daft people. In any
case, Yany, with all its dependencies, material, male, and female,
are at your disposal, for what you can make out of them.'
"'It is good,' he went on gaily, 'that you should happen to have this
happy disposition, for I fear that, no later than to-morrow, I may
have to absent myself from home. I have heard that there are news of
wolves--they menace to be a greater pest than usual this winter, but
I am going to drive them on quite a new plan, and it will go hard
with me if I don't come even with them. Well for you, by the way,
Marshfield, that you did not pass within their scent to-day.' Then,
musingly: 'I should not give much for the life of a traveller who
happened to wander in these parts just now.' Here he interrupted
himself hastily, and went over to his wife who had sunk back on her
chair, livid, seemingly on the point of swooning.
"His gaze was devouring; so might a man look at the woman he adored,
in his anxiety.
"'What! faint, Violet, alarmed!' His voice was subdued, yet there
was an unmistakable thrill of emotion in it.
"'Pshaw!' thought I to myself, 'the man is a model husband.'
"She clenched her hands, and by sheer force of will seemed to pull
herself together. These nervous women have often an unexpected fund
of strength.
"'Come, that is well,' said the baron, with a flickering smile; 'Mr.
Marshfield will think you but badly acclimatized to Poland if a
little wolf-scare can upset you. My dear wife is so soft-hearted,'
he went on to me, 'that she is capable of making herself quite ill
over the sad fate that might have, but has not, overcome you. Or,
perhaps,' he added, in a still gentler voice, 'her fear is that I may
expose myself to danger for the public weal.'
"She turned her head away, but I saw her set her teeth as if to choke
a sob. The baron chuckled in his throat and seemed to luxuriate in
the pleasant thought.
"At this moment folding doors were thrown open, and supper was
announced. I offered my arm, she rose and took it in silence. This
silence she maintained during the first part of the meal, despite her
husband's brilliant conversation and almost uproarious spirits. But,
by and by, a bright colour mounted to her cheeks and lustre to her
eyes. I suppose you will all think me horribly unpoetical if I add
that she drank several glasses of champagne one after the other, a
fact which perhaps may account for the change.
"At any rate she spoke and laughed and looked lovely, and I did not
wonder that the baron could hardly keep his eyes off her.
But--whether it was her wifely anxiety or not--it was evident her
mind was not at ease through it all, and I fancied that her
brightness was feverish, her merriment slightly hysterical.
"After supper--an exquisite one it was--we adjourned together, in
foreign fashion, to the drawing-room; the baron threw himself into a
chair and, somewhat with the air of a pasha, demanded music. He was
flushed; the veins of his forehead were swollen and stood out like
cords; the wine drunk at table was potent; even through my phlegmatic
frame it ran hotly.
"She hesitated a moment or two, then docilely sat down to the piano.
That she could sing I have already made clear; how she could sing,
with what pathos, passion, as well as perfect art, I had never
realized before.
"When the song was ended she remained for a while, with eyes lost in
distance, very still, save for her quick breathing. It was clear she
was moved by the music; indeed she must have thrown her whole soul
into it.
"At first we, the audience, paid her the rare compliment of silence.
Then the baron broke forth into loud applause.
"'Brava, brava! that was really said _con amore_. A delicious
love-song, delicious--but French. You must sing one of our Slav
melodies for Marshfield before you allow us to go and smoke.'
"She started from her reverie with a flush, and after a pause struck
slowly a few simple chords, then began one of those strangely sweet
yet intensely pathetic Russian airs which give one a curious
revelation of the profound, endless melancholy lurking in the
national mind.
"'What do you think of it?' asked the baron of me when it ceased.
"'What I have always thought of such music--it is that of a hopeless
people; poetical, crushed, and resigned.'
"He gave a loud laugh. 'Hear the analyst, the psychologue--why, man,
it is a love-song! Is it possible that we, uncivilized, are truer
realists than our hyper-cultured Western neighbours? Have we gone to
the root of the matter, in our simple way?'
"The baroness got up abruptly. She looked white and spent; there
were bistre circles round her eyes.
"'I am tired,' she said, with dry lips. 'You will excuse me, Mr.
Marshfield, I must really go to bed.'
"'Go to bed, go to bed,' cried her husband gaily. Then, quoting in
Russian from the song she had just sung: 'Sleep, my little soft white
dove; my little innocent, tender lamb!'
"She hurried from the room. The baron laughed again, and, taking me
familiarly by the arm led me to his own set of apartments for the
promised smoke. He ensconced me in an armchair, placed cigars of
every description, and a Turkish pipe ready to my hand and a little
table on which stood cut glass flasks and beakers in tempting array.
"After I had selected my cigar with some precautions, I glanced at
him over a careless remark, and was startled to see a sudden
alteration in his whole look and attitude.
"'You will forgive me, Marshfield,' he said, as he caught my eye,
speaking with spasmodic politeness. 'It is more than probable that I
shall have to set out upon this chase I spoke of to-night, and I must
now go and change my clothes, that I may be ready to start at any
moment. This is the hour when it is most likely these hell-beasts
are to be got at. You have all you want, I hope,' interrupting an
outbreak of ferocity by an effort after his former courtesy.
"It was curious to watch the man of the world struggling with the
primitive man.
"'But, baron,' said I, 'I do not at all see the fun of sticking at
home like this. You know my passion for witnessing everything new,
strange, and outlandish. You will surely not refuse me such an
opportunity for observation as a midnight wolf-raid. I will do my
best not to be in the way if you will take me with you.'
"At first it seemed as if he had some difficulty in realizing the
drift of my words, he was so engrossed by some inner thought. But as
I repeated them, he gave vent to a loud cachinnation.
"'By heaven! I like your spirit,' he exclaimed, clapping me strongly
on the shoulder. 'Of course you shall come. You shall,' he
repeated, 'and I promise you a sight, a hunt such as you never heard
or dreamt of--you will be able to tell them in England the sort of
thing we can do here in that line--such wolves are rare quarry,' he
added, looking slyly at me, 'and I have a new plan for getting at
them.'"
"There was a long pause, and then there rose in the stillness the
unearthly howling of the baron's hounds, a cheerful sound which only
their owner's somewhat loud converse of the evening had kept from
becoming excessively obtrusive.
"'Hark at them--the beauties!' cried he, showing his short, strong
teeth, pointed like a dog's, in a wide grin of anticipative delight.
'They have been kept on pretty short commons, poor things! They are
hungry. By the way, Marshfield, you can sit tight to a horse, I
trust? If you were to roll off, you know, these splendid fellows
they would chop you up in a second. They would chop you up,' he
repeated unctuously, 'snap, crunch, gobble, and there would be an end
of you!'
"'If I could not ride a decent horse without being thrown,' I
retorted, a little stung by his manner, 'after my recent three
months' torture with the Guard Cossacks, I should indeed be a
hopeless subject. Do not think of frightening me from the exploit,
but say frankly if my company would be displeasing.'
"'Tut!' he said, waving his hand impatiently, 'it is your affair. I
have warned you. Go and get ready if you want to come. Time
presses.'
"I was determined to be of the fray; my blood was up. I have hinted
that the baron's Tokay had stirred it.
"I went to my room and hurriedly donned clothes more suitable for
rough nightwork. My last care was to slip into my pockets a brace of
double-barrelled pistols which formed part of my travelling kit.
"When I returned I found the baron already booted and spurred; this
without metaphor. He was stretched full length on the divan, and did
not speak as I came in, or even look at me. Chewing an unlit cigar,
with eyes fixed on the ceiling, he was evidently following some
absorbing train of ideas.
"The silence was profound; time went by; it grew oppressive; at
length, wearied out, I fell, over my chibouque, into a doze filled
with puzzling visions, out of which I was awakened with a start. My
companion had sprung up, very lightly, to his feet. In his throat
was an odd, half-suppressed cry, gruesome to hear. He stood on
tiptoe, with eyes fixed, as though looking through the wall, and I
distinctly saw his ears point in the intensity of his listening.
"After a moment, with hasty, noiseless energy, and without the
slightest ceremony, he blew the lamps out, drew back the heavy
curtains and threw the tall window wide open.
"A rush of icy air, and the bright rays of the moon--gibbous, I
remember, in her third quarter--filled the room. Outside, the mist
had condensed, and the view was unrestricted over the white plains at
the foot of the hill.
"The baron stood motionless in the open window, callous to the cold
in which, after a minute, I could hardly keep my teeth from
chattering, his head bent forward, still listening. I listened too,
with 'all my ears,' but could not catch a sound; indeed the silence
over the great expanse of snow might have been called awful; even the
dogs were mute.
"Presently, far, far away, came a faint tinkle of bells; so faint, at
first, that I thought it was but fancy, then distincter. It was even
more eerie than the silence I thought, though I knew it could come
but from some passing sleigh. All at once that ceased, and again my
duller senses could perceive nothing, though I saw by my host's
craning neck that he was more on the alert than ever. But at last I
too heard once more, this time not bells, but as it were the tread of
horses muffled by the snow, intermittent and dull yet drawing nearer.
And then in the inner silence of the great house it seemed to me I
caught the noise of closing doors; but here the hounds, as if
suddenly becoming alive to some disturbance, raised the same fearsome
concert of yells and barks with which they had greeted my arrival,
and listening became useless.
"I had risen to my feet. My host, turning from the windows, seized
my shoulder with a fierce grip, and bade me 'hold my noise;' for a
second or two I stood motionless under his iron talons, then he
released me with an exultant whisper:--
"'Now for our chase!' and made for the door with a spring. Hastily
gulping down a mouthful of arrack from one of the bottles on the
table, I followed him, and, guided by the sound of his footsteps
before me, groped my way through passages black as Erebus.
"After a time, which seemed a long one, a small door was flung open
in front, and I saw Kossowski glide into the moonlit courtyard and
cross the square. When I too came out he was disappearing into the
gaping darkness of the open stable door, and there I overtook him.
"A man who seemed to have been sleeping in a corner jumped up at our
entrance, and led out a horse ready saddled. In obedience to a gruff
order from his master, as the latter mounted, he then brought forward
another which he had evidently thought to ride himself and held the
stirrup for me.
"We came delicately forth, and the Cossack hurriedly barred the great
door behind us--I caught a glimpse of his worn, scarred face by the
moonlight, as he peeped after us for a second before shutting himself
in; it was stricken with terror.
"The baron trotted briskly toward the kennels from whence there was
now issuing a truly infernal clangour, and, as my steed followed suit
of his own accord, I could see how he proceeded dexterously to unbolt
the gates without dismounting, while the beasts within dashed
themselves against them and tore the ground in their fury of
impatience.
"He smiled, as he swung back the barriers at last, and his 'beauties'
came forth. Seven or eight monstrous brutes, hounds of a kind
unknown to me; fulvous and sleek of coat, tall on their legs,
square-headed, long-tailed, deep-chested; with terrible jaws
slobbering in eagerness. They leapt around and up at us, much to our
horses' distaste. Kossowski, still smiling, lashed at them
unsparingly with his hunting whip, and they responded, not with yells
of pain, but with snarls of fury.
"Managing his restless steed and his cruel whip with consummate ease,
my host drove the unruly crew before him, out of the precincts, then
halted and bent down from his saddle to examine some slight prints in
the snow which led, not the way I had come, but toward what seemed
another avenue. In a second or two the hounds were gathered round
this spot, their great snake-like tails quivering, nose to earth,
yelping with excitement. I had some ado to manage my horse, and my
eyesight was far from being as keen as the baron's, but I had then no
doubt he had come already upon wolf-tracks, and I shuddered mentally,
thinking of the sleigh-bells.
"Suddenly Kossowski raised himself from his strained position; under
his low fur cap his face, with its fixed smile, looked scarcely human
in the white light; and then we broke into a hand canter just as the
hounds dashed, in a compact body, along the trail.
"But we had not gone more than a few hundred yards before they began
to falter, then straggled, stopped, and ran back and about with
dismal cries. It was clear to me they had lost the scent. My
companion reined in his horse, and mine, luckily a well-trained
brute, halted of himself.
"We had reached a bend in a broad avenue of firs and larches, and
just where we stood, and where the hounds ever returned and met nose
to nose in frantic conclave, the snow was trampled and soiled, and a
little further on planed in a great sweep, as if by a turning sleigh.
Beyond was a double-furrowed track of skates and regular hoof-prints
leading far away.
"Before I had time to reflect upon the bearing of this unexpected
interruption, Kossowski, as if suddenly possessed by a devil, fell
upon the hounds with his whip, flogging them upon the new track,
uttering the while the most savage cries I have ever heard issue from
human throat. The disappointed beasts were nothing loth to seize
upon another trail; after a second of hesitation they had understood,
and were off upon it at a tearing pace, and we after them at the best
speed of our horses.
"Some unformed idea that we were going to escort, or rescue,
benighted travellers flickered dimly in my mind as I galloped through
the night air; but when I managed to approach my companion and called
out to him for explanation, he only turned half round and grinned at
me.
"Before us lay now the white plain, scintillating under the high
moon's rays. That light is deceptive; I could be sure of nothing
upon the wide expanse, but of the dark, leaping figures of the hounds
already spread out in a straggling line, some right ahead, others
just in front of us. In a short time also the icy wind, cutting my
face mercilessly as we increased our pace, well-nigh blinded me with
tears of cold.
"I can hardly realize how long this pursuit after an unseen prey
lasted; I can only remember that I was getting rather faint with
fatigue, and ignominiously held on to my pommel, when all of a sudden
the black outline of a sleigh merged into sight in front of us.
"I rubbed my smarting eyes with my benumbed hand; we were gaining
upon it second by second; two of those hell-hounds of the baron's
were already within a few leaps of it.
"Soon I was able to make out two figures, one standing up and urging
the horses on with whip and voice, the other clinging to the back
seat and looking toward us in an attitude of terror. A great fear
crept into my half frozen brain--were we not bringing deadly danger,
instead of help to these travellers? Great God! did the baron mean
to use them as a bait for his new method of wolf-hunting?
"I would have turned upon Kossowski with a cry of expostulation or
warning, but he, urging on his hounds, as he galloped on their flank,
howling and gesticulating like a veritable Hun, passed me by like a
flash, and all at once I knew."
Marshfield paused for a moment and sent his pale smile round upon his
listeners, who now showed no signs of sleepiness; he knocked the ash
from his cigar, twisted the latter round in his mouth, and added
dryly:--
"And I confess it seemed to me a little strong, even for a baron in
the Carpathians. The travellers were our quarry. But the reason why
the Lord of Yany had turned man-hunter I was yet to learn. Just then
I had to direct my energies to frustrating his plans. I used my
spurs mercilessly. Whilst I drew up even with him I saw the two
figures in the sleigh change places; he who had hitherto driven now
faced back, while his companion took the reins; there was the pale
blue sheen of a revolver barrel under the moonlight, followed by a
yellow flash, and the nearest hound rolled over in the snow.
"With an oath the baron twisted round in his saddle to call up and
urge on the remainder. My horse had taken fright at the report and
dashed irresistibly forward, bringing me at once almost level with
the fugitives, and the next instant the revolver was turned
menacingly toward me. There was no time to explain; my pistol was
already drawn, and as another of the brutes bounded up, almost under
my horse's feet, I loosed it upon him--I must have let off both
barrels at once, for the weapon flew out of my hand, but the hound's
back was broken. I presume the traveller understood; at any rate he
did not fire at me.
"In moments of intense excitement like these, strangely enough, the
mind is extraordinarily open to impressions. I shall never forget
that man's countenance, in the sledge, as he stood upright and defied
us in his mortal danger; it was young, very handsome, the features
not distorted, but set into a sort of desperate, stony calm, and I
knew it, beyond all doubt, for that of an Englishman. And then I saw
his companion--it was the baron's wife.
"It takes a long time to say all this; it only required an instant to
see it. The loud explosion of my pistol had hardly ceased to ring
before the baron, with a fearful imprecation, was upon me. First he
lashed at me with his whip as we tore along side by side, and then I
saw him wind the reins round his off-arm and bend over, and I felt
his angry fingers close tightly on my right foot. The next instant I
should have been lifted out of my saddle, but there came another shot
from the sledge. The baron's horse plunged and stumbled, and the
baron, hanging on to my foot with a fierce grip, was wrenched from
his seat. His horse, however, was up again immediately, and I was
released, and then I caught a confused glimpse of the frightened and
wounded animal galloping wildly away to the right, leaving a black
track of blood behind him in the snow, his master, entangled in the
reins, running with incredible swiftness by his side and endeavouring
to vault back into the saddle.
"And now came to pass a terrible thing which, in his savage plans, my
host had doubtless never anticipated.
"One of the hounds that had during this short check recovered lost
ground, coming across this hot trail of blood, turned away from his
course, and with a joyous yell darted after the running man. In
another instant the remainder of the pack were upon the new scent.
"As soon as I could stop my horse, I tried to turn him in the
direction the new chase had taken, but just then, through the night
air, over the receding sound of the horse's scamper and the sobbing
of the pack in full cry, there came a long scream, and after that a
sickening silence. And I knew that somewhere yonder, under the
beautiful moonlight, the Baron Kossowski was being devoured by his
starving dogs.
"I looked round, with the sweat on my face, vaguely, for some human
being to share the horror of the moment, and I saw, gliding away, far
away, in the white distance, the black silhouette of the sledge."
"Well?" said we, in divers tones of impatience, curiosity, or horror,
according to our divers temperaments, as the speaker uncrossed his
legs and gazed at us in mild triumph, with all the air of having said
his say, and satisfactorily proved his point.
"Well," repeated he, "what more do you want to know? It will
interest you but slightly, I am sure, to hear how I found my way back
to the Hof; or how I told as much as I deemed prudent of the
evening's gruesome work to the baron's servants, who, by the way, to
my amazement, displayed the profoundest and most unmistakable sorrow
at the tidings, and sallied forth (at their head the Cossack who had
seen us depart) to seek for his remains. Excuse the unpleasantness
of the remark; I fear the dogs must have left very little of him; he
had dieted them so carefully. However, since it was to have been a
case of 'chop, crunch, and gobble,' as the baron had it, I preferred
that that particular fate should have overtaken him than me--or, for
that matter, either of these two country people of ours in the sledge.
"Nor am I going to inflict upon you," continued Marshfield, after
draining his glass, "a full account of my impressions when I found
myself once more in that immense, deserted, and stricken house, so
luxuriously prepared for the mistress who had fled from it; how I
philosophized over all this, according to my wont; the conjectures I
made as to the first acts of the drama, the untold sufferings my
country-woman must have endured from the moment her husband first
grew jealous till she determined on this desperate step; as to how
and when she had met her lover, how they communicated, and how the
baron had discovered the intended flitting in time to concoct his
characteristic revenge.
"One thing you may be sure of, I had no mind to remain at Yany an
hour longer than necessary. I even contrived to get well clear of
the neighbourhood before the lady's absence was discovered. Luckily
for me--or I might have been taxed with connivance; though indeed the
simple household did not seem to know what suspicion was, and
accepted my account with childlike credence--very typical, and very
convenient to me at the same time."
"But how do you know," said one of us, "that the man was her
lover?--he might have been her brother or some other relative?"
"That," said Marshfield, with his little flat laugh, "I happen to
have ascertained--and, curiously enough, only a few weeks ago. It
was at the play, between the acts, from my comfortable seat (first
row of the pit), I was looking leisurely round the house when I
caught sight of a woman, in a box, close by, whose head was turned
from me, and who presented the somewhat unusual spectacle of a young
neck and shoulders of the most exquisite contour--and perfectly gray
hair; and not dull gray, but rather of a pleasing tint--like frosted
silver. This aroused my curiosity. I brought my glasses to a focus
on her, and waited patiently till she turned round. Then I
recognized the Baroness Kossowski, and I no longer wondered at the
young hair being white.
"Yet she looked placid and happy; strangely so, it seemed to me,
under the sudden reviving in my memory of such scenes as I have now
described. But presently I understood further; beside her, in close
attendance, was the man of the sledge, a handsome fellow, with much
of a military air about him.
"During the course of the evening, as I watched, I saw a friend of
mine come into the box, and at the end I slipped out into the passage
to catch him as he came out.
"'Who is the woman with the white hair?' I asked. Then, in the
fragmentary style approved of by ultra-fashionable young men--this
earnest-languid mode of speech presents curious similarities in all
languages--he told me: 'Most charming couple in London--awfully
pretty, wasn't she? _He_ had been in the Guards--_attaché_ at Vienna
once--they adored each other. White hair, devilish queer, wasn't it?
Suited her, somehow. And then she had been married to a Russian, or
something, somewhere in the wilds, and their names were--' But do
you know," said Marshfield, interrupting himself, "I think I had
better let you find that out for yourselves, if you care."
II
A MAN AND SOME OTHERS
STEPHEN CRANE
I
Dark mesquit spread from horizon to horizon. There was no house or
horseman from which a mind could evolve a city or a crowd. The world
was declared to be a desert and unpeopled. Sometimes, however, on
days when no heat-mist arose, a blue shape, dun, of the substance of
a specter's veil, appeared in the southwest, and a pondering
sheep-herder might remember that there were mountains.