his horse's neck, cocked his head on one side, stuck one arm
akimbo,--"Faith and troth!" said he, "but I'll sleep in this house
this very night."--As he said this he gave a slap on his thigh, by
way of emphasis--the slap went to the landlady's heart.
He followed up the vow by jumping off his horse, and making his way
past the staring Mynheers into the public room.--May be you've been
in the bar-room of an old Flemish inn--faith, but a handsome chamber
it was as you'd wish to see; with a brick floor, and a great
fireplace, with the whole Bible history in glazed tiles; and then the
mantelpiece, pitching itself head foremost out of the wall, with a
whole regiment of cracked teapots and earthen jugs paraded on it; not
to mention half a dozen great Delft platters, hung about the room by
way of pictures; and the little bar in one corner, and the bouncing
bar-maid inside of it, with a red calico cap, and yellow ear-drops.
My grandfather snapped his fingers over his head, as he cast an eye
round the room--"Faith, this is the very house I've been looking
after," said he.
There was some further show of resistance on the part of the
garrison; but my grandfather was an old soldier, and an Irishman to
boot, and not easily repulsed, especially after he had got into the
fortress. So he blarneyed the landlord, kissed the landlord's wife,
tickled the landlord's daughter, chucked the bar-maid under the chin;
and it was agreed on all hands that it would be a thousand pities,
and a burning shame into the bargain, to turn such a bold dragoon
into the streets. So they laid their heads together, that is to say,
my grandfather and the landlady, and it was at length agreed to
accommodate him with an old chamber, that had been for some time shut
up.
"Some say it's haunted," whispered the landlord's daughter; "but you
are a bold dragoon, and I dare say don't fear ghosts."
"The devil a bit!" said my grandfather, pinching her plump cheek.
"But if I should be troubled by ghosts, I've been to the Red Sea in
my time, and have a pleasant way of laying them, my darling."
And then he whispered something to the girl which made her laugh, and
give him a good-humoured box on the ear. In short, there was nobody
knew better how to make his way among the petticoats than my
grandfather.
In a little while, as was his usual way, he took complete possession
of the house, swaggering all over it; into the stable to look after
his horse, into the kitchen to look after his supper. He had
something to say or do with everyone; smoked with the Dutchman, drank
with the Germans, slapped the landlord on the shoulder, romped with
his daughter and the bar-maid:--never, since the days of Alley
Croaker, had such a rattling blade been seen. The landlord stared at
him with astonishment; the landlord's daughter hung her head and
giggled whenever he came near; and as he swaggered along the
corridor, with his sword trailing by his side, the maids looked after
him, and whispered to one another, "What a proper man!"
At supper, my grandfather took command of the table-d'hôte as though
he had been at home; helped everybody, not forgetting himself; talked
with everyone, whether he understood their language or not; and made
his way into the intimacy of the rich burgher of Antwerp, who had
never been known to be sociable with anyone during his life. In
fact, he revolutionised the whole establishment, and gave it such a
rouse, that the very house reeled with it. He outsat everyone at
table, excepting the little fat distiller of Schiedam, who sat
soaking a long time before he broke forth; but when he did, he was a
very devil incarnate. He took a violent affection for my
grandfather; so they sat drinking and smoking, and telling stories,
and singing Dutch and Irish songs, without understanding a word each
other said, until the little Hollander was fairly swamped with his
own gin and water, and carried off to bed, whooping and hickuping,
and trolling the burden of a Low Dutch love-song.
Well, gentlemen, my grandfather was shown to his quarters up a large
staircase, composed of loads of hewn timber; and through long
rigmarole passages, hung with blackened paintings of fish, and fruit,
and game, and country frolics, and huge kitchens, and portly
burgomasters, such as you see about old-fashioned Flemish inns, till
at length he arrived at his room.
An old-time chamber it was, sure enough, and crowded with all kinds
of trumpery. It looked like an infirmary for decayed and
superannuated furniture, where everything diseased or disabled was
sent to nurse or to be forgotten. Or rather it might be taken for a
general congress of old legitimate movables, where every kind and
country had a representative. No two chairs were alike. Such high
backs and low backs, and leather bottoms, and worsted bottoms, and
straw bottoms, and no bottoms; and cracked marble tables with
curiously carved legs, holding balls in their claws, as though they
were going to play at nine-pins.
My grandfather made a bow to the motley assemblage as he entered,
and, having undressed himself, placed his light in the fireplace,
asking pardon of the tongs, which seemed to be making love to the
shovel in the chimney-corner, and whispering soft nonsense in its ear.
The rest of the guests were by this time sound asleep, for your
Mynheers are huge sleepers. The housemaids, one by one, crept up
yawning to their attics; and not a female head in the inn was laid on
a pillow that night without dreaming of the bold dragoon.
My grandfather, for his part, got into bed, and drew over him one of
those great bags of down, under which they smother a man in the Low
Countries; and there he lay, melting between two feather beds, like
an anchovy sandwich between two slices of toast and butter. He was a
warm complexioned man, and this smothering played the very deuce with
him. So, sure enough, in a little time it seemed as if a legion of
imps were twitching at him, and all the blood in his veins was in a
fever heat.
He lay still, however, until all the house was quiet, excepting the
snoring of the Mynheers from the different chambers; who answered one
another in all kinds of tones and cadences, like so many bullfrogs in
a swamp. The quieter the house became, the more unquiet became my
grandfather. He waxed warmer and warmer, until at length the bed
became too hot to hold him.
"May be the maid had warmed it too much?" said the curious gentleman,
inquiringly.
"I rather think the contrary," replied the Irishman. "But, be that
as it may, it grew too hot for my grandfather."
"Faith, there's no standing this any longer," says he. So he jumped
out of bed and went strolling about the house.
"What for?" said the inquisitive gentleman.
"Why to cool himself, to be sure--or perhaps to find a more
comfortable bed--or perhaps-- But no matter what he went for--he
never mentioned--and there's no use in taking up our time in
conjecturing."
Well, my grandfather had been for some time absent from his room, and
was returning, perfectly cool, when just as he reached the door, he
heard a strange noise within. He paused and listened. It seemed as
if someone were trying to hum a tune in defiance of the asthma. He
recollected the report of the room being haunted; but he was no
believer in ghosts, so he pushed the door gently open and peeped in.
Egad, gentlemen, there was a gambol carrying on within enough to have
astonished St. Anthony himself. By the light of the fire he saw a
pale weazen-faced fellow, in a long flannel gown and a tall white
night-cap with a tassel to it, who sat by the fire with a bellows
under his arm by way of bagpipe, from which he forced the asthmatical
music that had bothered my grandfather. As he played, too, he kept
twitching about with a thousand queer contortions, nodding his head,
and bobbing about his tasselled night-cap.
My grandfather thought this very odd and mighty presumptuous, and was
about to demand what business he had to play his wind instrument in
another gentleman's quarters, when a new cause of astonishment met
his eye. From the opposite side of the room a long-backed,
bandy-legged chair covered with leather, and studded all over in a
cox-combical fashion with little brass nails, got suddenly into
motion, thrust out first a claw-foot, then a crooked arm, and at
length, making a leg, slided gracefully up to an easy chair of
tarnished brocade, with a hole in its bottom, and led it gallantly
out in a ghostly minuet about the floor.
The musician now played fiercer and fiercer, and bobbed his head and
his night-cap about like mad. By degrees the dancing mania seemed to
seize upon all the other pieces of furniture. The antique,
long-bodied chairs paired off in couples and led down a country
dance; a three-legged stool danced a horn-pipe, though horribly
puzzled by its supernumerary limb; while the amorous tongs seized the
shovel round the waist, and whirled it about the room in a German
waltz. In short, all the movables got in motion: pirouetting hands
across, right and left, like so many devils; all except a great
clothes-press, which kept courtesying and courtesying in a corner,
like a dowager, in exquisite time to the music; being rather too
corpulent to dance, or, perhaps at a loss for a partner.
My grandfather concluded the latter to be the reason; so being, like
a true Irishman, devoted to the sex, and at all times ready for a
frolic, he bounced into the room, called to the musician to strike up
Paddy O'Rafferty, capered up to the clothes-press, and seized upon
the two handles to lead her out:----when--whirr! the whole revel was
at an end. The chairs, tables, tongs, and shovel slunk in an instant
as quietly into their places as if nothing had happened, and the
musician vanished up the chimney, leaving the bellows behind him in
his hurry. My grandfather found himself seated in the middle of the
floor with the clothes-press sprawling before him, and the two
handles jerked off, and in his hands.
"Then, after all, this was a mere dream!" said the inquisitive
gentleman.
"The divil a bit of a dream!" replied the Irishman. "There never was
a truer fact in this world. Faith, I should have liked to see any
man tell my grandfather it was a dream."
Well, gentlemen, as the clothes-press was a mighty heavy body, and my
grandfather likewise, particularly in rear, you may easily suppose
that two such heavy bodies coming to the ground would make a bit of a
noise. Faith, the old mansion shook as though it had mistaken it for
an earthquake. The whole garrison was alarmed. The landlord, who
slept below, hurried up with a candle to inquire the cause, but with
all his haste his daughter had arrived at the scene of uproar before
him. The landlord was followed by the landlady, who was followed by
the bouncing bar-maid, who was followed by the simpering
chambermaids, all holding together, as well as they could, such
garments as they first laid hands on; but all in a terrible hurry to
see what the deuce was to pay in the chamber of the bold dragoon.
My grandfather related the marvellous scene he had witnessed, and the
broken handles of the prostrate clothes-press bore testimony to the
fact. There was no contesting such evidence; particularly with a lad
of my grandfather's complexion, who seemed able to make good every
word either with sword or shillelah. So the landlord scratched his
head and looked silly, as he was apt to do when puzzled. The
landlady scratched--no, she did not scratch her head but she knit her
brow, and did not seem half pleased with the explanation. But the
landlady's daughter corroborated it by recollecting that the last
person who had dwelt in that chamber was a famous juggler who died of
St. Vitus's dance, and had no doubt infected all the furniture.
This set all things to rights, particularly when the chambermaids
declared that they had all witnessed strange carryings on in that
room; and as they declared this "upon their honours," there could not
remain a doubt upon the subject.
"And did your grandfather go to bed again in that room?" said the
inquisitive gentleman.
"That's more than I can tell. Where he passed the rest of the night
was a secret he never disclosed. In fact, though he had seen much
service, he was but indifferently acquainted with geography, and apt
to make blunders in his travels about inns at night, which it would
have puzzled him sadly to account for in the morning."
"Was he ever apt to walk in his sleep?" said the knowing old
gentleman.
"Never that I heard of."
IV
THE BET*
ANTON CHEKHOV
*Reprinted by permission of John W. Luce and Company.
I
It was a dark autumn night. The old banker was pacing from corner to
corner of his study, recalling to his mind the party he gave in the
autumn fifteen years ago. There were many clever people at the party
and much interesting conversation. They talked among other things of
capital punishment. The guests, among them not a few scholars and
journalists, for the most part disapproved of capital punishment.
They found it obsolete as a means of punishment, unfitted to a
Christian state and immoral. Some of them thought that capital
punishment should be replaced universally by life-imprisonment.
"I don't agree with you," said the host. "I myself have experienced
neither capital punishment nor life-imprisonment, but if one may
judge _a priori_, then in my opinion capital punishment is more moral
and more humane than imprisonment. Execution kills instantly,
life-imprisonment kills by degrees. Who is the more humane
executioner, one who kills you in a few seconds or one who draws the
life out of you incessantly, for years?"
"They're both equally immoral," remarked one of the guests, "because
their purpose is the same, to take away life. The state is not God.
It has no right to take away that which it cannot give back, if it
should so desire."
Among the company was a lawyer, a young man of about twenty-five. On
being asked his opinion, he said:
"Capital punishment and life-imprisonment are equally immoral; but if
I were offered the choice between them, I would certainly choose the
second. It's better to live somehow than not to live at all."
There ensued a lively discussion. The banker who was then younger
and more nervous suddenly lost his temper, banged his fist on the
table, and turning to the young lawyer, cried out:
"It's a lie. I bet you two millions you wouldn't stick in a cell
even for five years."
"If that's serious," replied the lawyer, "then I bet I'll stay not
five but fifteen."
"Fifteen! Done!" cried the banker. "Gentlemen, I stake two
millions."
"Agreed. You stake two millions, I my freedom," said the lawyer.
So this wild, ridiculous bet came to pass. The banker, who at that
time had too many millions to count, spoiled and capricious, was
beside himself with rapture. During supper he said to the lawyer
jokingly:
"Come to your senses, young man, before it's too late. Two millions
are nothing to me, but you stand to lose three or four of the best
years of your life. I say three or four, because you'll never stick
it out any longer. Don't forget either, you unhappy man, that
voluntary is much heavier than enforced imprisonment. The idea that
you have the right to free yourself at any moment will poison the
whole of your life in the cell. I pity you."
And now the banker pacing from corner to corner recalled all this and
asked himself:
"Why did I make this bet? What's the good? The lawyer loses fifteen
years of his life and I throw away two millions. Will it convince
people that capital punishment is worse or better than imprisonment
for life? No, No! all stuff and rubbish. On my part, it was the
caprice of a well-fed man; on the lawyer's, pure greed of gold."
He recollected further what happened after the evening party. It was
decided that the lawyer must undergo his imprisonment under the
strictest observation, in a garden-wing of the banker's house. It
was agreed that during the period he would be deprived of the right
to cross the threshold, to see living people, to hear human voices,
and to receive letters and newspapers. He was permitted to have a
musical instrument, to read books, to write letters, to drink wine
and smoke tobacco. By the agreement he could communicate, but only
in silence with the outside world through a little window specially
constructed for this purpose. Everything necessary, books, music,
wine, he could receive in any quantity by sending a note through the
window. The agreement provided for all the minutest details, which
made the confinement strictly solitary, and it obliged the lawyer to
remain exactly fifteen years from twelve o'clock of November 14th
1870 to twelve o'clock of November 14th 1885. The least attempt on
his part to violate the conditions, to escape if only for two minutes
before the time freed the banker from the obligation to pay him the
two millions.
During the first year of imprisonment, the lawyer, as far as it was
possible to judge from his short notes, suffered terribly from
loneliness and boredom. From his wing day and night came the sound
of the piano. He rejected wine and tobacco. "Wine," he wrote,
"excites desires, and desires are the chief foes of a prisoner;
besides, nothing is more boring than to drink good wine alone," and
tobacco spoils the air in his room. During the first year the lawyer
was sent books of a light character; novels with a complicated love
interest, stories of crime and fantasy, comedies, and so on.
In the second year the piano was heard no longer and the lawyer asked
only for classics. In the fifth year music was heard again, and the
prisoner asked for wine. Those who watched him said that during the
whole of that year he was only eating, drinking, and lying on his
bed. He yawned often and talked angrily to himself. Books he did
not read. Sometimes at nights he would sit down to write. He would
write for a long time and tear it all up in the morning. More than
once he was heard to weep.
In the second half of the sixth year, the prisoner began zealously to
study languages, philosophy, and history. He fell on these subjects
so hungrily that the banker hardly had time to get books enough for
him. In the space of four years about six hundred volumes were
bought at his request. It was while that passion lasted that the
banker received the following letter from the prisoner: "My dear
gaoler, I am writing these lines in six languages. Show them to
experts. Let them read them. If they do not find one single
mistake, I beg you to give orders to have a gun fired off in the
garden. By the noise I shall know that my efforts have not been in
vain. The geniuses of all ages and countries speak in different
languages; but in them all burns the same flame. Oh, if you knew my
heavenly happiness now that I can understand them!" The prisoner's
desire was fulfilled. Two shots were fired in the garden by the
banker's order.
Later on, after the tenth year, the lawyer sat immovable before his
table and read only the New Testament. The banker found it strange
that a man who in four years had mastered six hundred erudite
volumes, should have spent nearly a year in reading one book, easy to
understand and by no means thick. The New Testament was then
replaced by the history of religions and theology.
During the last two years of his confinement the prisoner read an
extraordinary amount, quite haphazard. Now he would apply himself to
the natural sciences, then would read Byron or Shakespeare. Notes
used to come from him in which he asked to be sent at the same time a
book on chemistry, a textbook of medicine, a novel, and some treatise
on philosophy or theology. He read as though he were swimming in the
sea among the broken pieces of wreckage, and in his desire to save
his life was eagerly grasping one piece after another.
II
The banker recalled all this, and thought:
"To-morrow at twelve o'clock he receives his freedom. Under the
agreement, I shall have to pay him two millions. If I pay, it's all
over with me. I am ruined for ever...."
Fifteen years before he had too many millions to count, but now he
was afraid to ask himself which he had more of, money or debts.
Gambling on the Stock-Exchange, risky speculation, and the
recklessness of which he could not rid himself even in old age, had
gradually brought his business to decay; and the fearless,
self-confident, proud man of business had become an ordinary banker,
trembling at every rise and fall in the market.
"That cursed bet," murmured the old man, clutching his head in
despair.... "Why didn't the man die? He's only forty years old. He
will take away my last farthing, marry, enjoy life, gamble on the
Exchange, and I will look on like an envious beggar and hear the same
words from him every day: 'I'm obliged to you for the happiness of my
life. Let me help you.' No, it's too much! The only escape from
bankruptcy and disgrace--is that the man should die."
The clock had just struck three. The banker was listening. In the
house everyone was asleep, and one could hear only the frozen trees
whining outside the windows. Trying to make no sound, he took out of
his safe the key of the door which had not been opened for fifteen
years, put on his overcoat, and went out of the house. The garden
was dark and cold. It was raining. A keen damp wind hovered howling
over all the garden and gave the trees no rest. Though he strained
his eyes, the banker could see neither the ground, nor the white
statues, nor the garden-whig, nor the trees. Approaching the place
where the garden wing stood, he called the watchman twice. There was
no answer. Evidently the watchman had taken shelter from the bad
weather and was now asleep somewhere in the kitchen or the greenhouse.
"If I have the courage to fulfil my intention," thought the old man,
"the suspicion will fall on the watchman first of all."
In the darkness he groped for the stairs and the door and entered the
hall of the garden-wing, then poked his way into a narrow passage and
struck a match. Not a soul was there. Someone's bed, with no
bedclothes on it, stood there, and an iron stove was dark in the
corner. The seals on the door that led into the prisoner's room were
unbroken.
When the match went out, the old man, trembling from agitation,
peeped into the little window.
In the prisoner's room a candle was burning dim. The prisoner
himself sat by the table. Only his back, the hair on his head and
his hands were visible. On the table, the two chairs, and the carpet
by the table open books were strewn.
Five minutes passed and the prisoner never once stirred. Fifteen
years' confinement had taught him to sit motionless. The banker
tapped on the window with his finger, but the prisoner gave no
movement in reply. Then the banker cautiously tore the seals from
the door and put the key into the lock. The rusty lock gave a hoarse
groan and the door creaked. The banker expected instantly to hear a
cry of surprise and the sound of steps. Three minutes passed and it
was as quiet behind the door as it had been before. He made up his
mind to enter.
Before the table sat a man, unlike an ordinary human being. It was a
skeleton, with tight-drawn skin, with a woman's long curly hair, and
a shaggy beard. The colour of his face was yellow, of an earthy
shade; the cheeks were sunken, the back long and narrow, and the hand
upon which he leaned his hairy head was so lean and skinny that it
was painful to look upon. His hair was already silvering with grey,
and no one who glanced at the senile emaciation of the face would
have believed that he was only forty years old. On the table, before
his bended head, lay a sheet of paper on which something was written
in a tiny hand.
"Poor devil," thought the banker, "he's asleep and probably seeing
millions in his dreams. I have only to take and throw this half-dead
thing on the bed, smother him a moment with the pillow, and the most
careful examination will find no trace of unnatural death. But,
first, let us read what he has written here."
The banker took the sheet from the table and read: