BROKEN.
"My hands were very full," said the baron, displaying his stumpy
fingers. "I received patients in this house; I had what you call many
irons in ze fire. I was making napoleons then, I don't mind telling you,
as fast as a man could run bullets. My minutes counted by the crown. It
was in the month of May, 1844, late at night, a man called here, wanting
to consult me. He called himself Herr von Konigsmark. I went down and
saw him in my audience room. He knew I was to be depended upon. Such
people tell one another who may be trusted. He told me he was an
Austrian proscribed: very good. He proposed to place himself in my
hands: very well. I looked him in the face--you have _there_ exactly
what I saw."
He extended his hand toward the mask of Yelland Mace.
"'You are an Austrian,' I said, 'a native subject of the empire?'
"'Yes.'
"'Italian?'
"'No.'
"'Hungarian?'
"'No.'
"'Well, you are not _German_--ha, ha!--I can swear to that.'
"He was speaking to me in German.
"'Your accent is foreign. Come, confidence. You must be no impostor. I
must make no mistake, and blunder into a national type of features, all
wrong; if I make your mask, it must do us credit. I know many
gentlemen's secrets, and as many ladies' secrets. A man of honour! What
are you afraid of?'"
"You were not a statuary?" said Uncle David, astonished at his
versatility.
"Oh, yes! A statuary, but only in grotesque, you understand. I will show
you some of my work by-and-by."
"And I shall perhaps understand."
"You _shall_, _perfectly_. With some reluctance, then, he admitted that
what I positively asserted was true; for I told him I knew from his
accent he was an Englishman. Then, with some little pressure, I invited
him to tell his name. He did--it was Yelland Mace. _That_ is Yelland
Mace."
He had now finished his pipe: he went over to the chimney-piece, and
having knocked out the ashes, and with his pipe pointing to the tip of
the long thin plaster nose, he said, "Look well at him. Look till you
know all his features by rote. Look till you fix them for the rest of
your days well in memory, and then say what in the devil's name you
could make of them. Look at that high nose, as thin as a fish-knife.
Look at the line of the mouth and chin; see the mild gentlemanlike
contour. If you find a fellow with a flat nose, and a pair of upper
tusks sticking out an inch, and a squint that turns out one eye like the
white of an egg, you pull out the tusks, you raise the skin of the nose,
slice a bit out of the cheek, and make a false bridge, as high as you
please; heal the cheek with a stitch or two, and operate with the lancet
for the squint, and your bust is complete. Bravo! you understand?"
"I confess, Baron, I do not."
"You shall, however. Here is the case--a political refugee, like
Monsieur Yelland Mace----"
"But he was no such thing."
"Well, a criminal--any man in such a situation is, for me, a political
refugee zat, for reasons, desires to revisit his country, and yet must
be so thoroughly disguised zat by no surprise, and by no process, can he
be satisfactorily recognised; he comes to me, tells me his case, and
says, 'I desire, Baron, to become your patient,' and so he places
himself in my hands, and so--ha, ha! You begin to perceive?"
"Yes, I do! I think I understand you clearly. But, Lord bless me! what a
nefarious trade!" exclaimed Uncle David.
The baron was not offended; he laughed.
"Nevertheless," said he, "There's no harm in that. Not that I care much
about the question of right or wrong in the matter; but there's none.
Bah! who's the worse of his going back? or, if he did not, who's the
better?"
Uncle David did not care to discuss this point in ethics, but simply
said,--
"And Mr. Longcluse was also a patient of yours?"
"Yes, certainly," said the baron.
"We Londoners know nothing of his history," said Mr. Arden.
"A political refugee, like Mr. Mace," said the baron. "Now, look at Herr
Yelland Mace. It was a severe operation, but a beautiful one! I opened
the skin with a single straight cut from the lachrymal gland to the
nostril, and one underneath meeting it, you see" (he was tracing the
line of the scalpel with the stem of his pipe), "along the base of the
nose from the point. Then I drew back the skin over the bridge, and then
I operated on the bone and cartilage, cutting them and the muscle at the
extremity down to a level with the line of the face, and drew the flap
of skin back, cutting it to meet the line of the skin of the cheek;
_there_, you see, so much for the nose. Now see the curved eyebrow.
Instead of that very well marked arch, I resolved it should slant from
the radix of the nose in a straight line obliquely upward; to effect
which I removed at the upper edge of each eyebrow, at the corner next
the temple, a portion of the skin and muscle, which, being reunited and
healed, produced the requisite contraction, and thus drew that end of
each brow upward. And now, having disposed of the nose and brows, I come
to the mouth. Look at the profile of this mask."
He was holding that of Yelland Mace toward Mr. Arden, and with the bowl
of the pipe in his right hand, pointed out the lines and features on
which he descanted, with the amber point of the stem.
"Now, if you observe, the chin in this face, by reason of the marked
prominence of the nose, has the effect of receding, but it does not. If
you continue the perpendicular line of ze forehead, ze chin, you see,
meets it. The upper lip, though short and well-formed, projects a good
deal. Ze under lip rather retires, and this adds to the receding effect
of the chin, you see. My _coup-d'oeil_ assured me that it was practicable
to give to this feature the character of a projecting under-jaw. The
complete depression of the nose more than half accomplished it. The rest
is done by cutting away two upper and four under-teeth, and substituting
false ones at the desired angle. By that application of dentistry I
obtained zis new line." (He indicated the altered outline of the
features, as before, with his pipe). "It was a very pretty operation.
The effect you could hardly believe. He was two months recovering,
confined to his bed, ha! ha! We can't have an immovable mask of living
flesh, blood, and bone for nothing. He was threatened with erysipelas,
and there was a rather critical inflammation of the left eye. When he
could sit up, and bear the light, and looked in the glass, instead of
thanking me, he screamed like a girl, and cried and cursed for an hour,
ha, ha, ha! He was glad of it afterward: it was so complete. Look at it"
(he held up the mask of Yelland Mace): "a face, on the whole,
good-looking, but a little of a parrot-face, you know. I took him into
my hands with that face, and" (taking up the mask of Mr. Longcluse, and
turning it with a slow oscillation so as to present it in every aspect),
he added, "these are the features of Yelland Mace as I sent him into the
world with the name of Herr Longcluse!"
"You mean to say that Yelland Mace and Walter Longcluse are the same
person?" cried David Arden, starting to his feet.
"I swear that here is Yelland Mace _before_, and here _after_ the
operation, call him what you please. When I was in London, two months
ago, I saw Monsieur Longcluse. _He_ is Yelland Mace; and these two masks
are both masks of the same Yelland Mace."
"Then the evidence is complete," said David Arden, with awe in his face,
as he stood for a moment gazing on the masks which the Baron Vanboeren
held up side by side before him.
"Ay, the masks and the witness to explain them," said the baron,
sturdily.
"It is a perfect identification," murmured Mr. Arden, with his eyes
still riveted on the plaster faces. "Good God! how wonderful that proof,
so complete in all its parts, should remain!"
"Well, I don't love Longcluse, since so he is named; he disobliged me
when I was in London," said the baron. "Let him hang, since so you
ordain it. I'm ready to go to London, give my evidence, and produce
these plaster casts. But my time and trouble must be considered."
"Certainly."
"Yes," said the baron; "and to avoid tedious arithmetic, and for the
sake of convenience, I will agree to visit London, at what time you
appoint, to bring with me these two masks, and to give my evidence
against Yelland Mace, otherwise Walter Longcluse, my stay in London not
to exceed a fortnight, for ten thousand pounds sterling."
"I don't think, Baron, you can be serious," said Mr. Arden, as soon as
he had recovered breath.
"Donner-wetter! I will show you that I am!" bawled the baron. "Now or
never, Sir. Do as you please. I sha'n't abate a franc. Do you like my
offer?"
On the event of this bargain are depending issues of which David Arden
knows nothing; the dangers, the agonies, the salvation of those who are
nearest to him on earth. The villain Longcluse, and the whole fabric of
his machinations, may be dashed in pieces by a word.
How, then, did David Arden, who hated a swindle, answer the old
extortioner, who asked him, "Do you like my offer?"
"Certainly not, Sir," said David Arden, sternly.
"Then _was_ scheert's mich! What do I care! No more, no more about it!"
yelled the baron in a fury, and dashed the two masks to pieces on the
hearth-stone at his feet, and stamped the fragments into dust with his
clumsy shoes.
With a cry, old Uncle David rushed forward to arrest the demolition, but
too late. The baron, who was liable to such accesses of rage, was
grinding his teeth, and rolling his eyes, and stamping in fury.
The masks, those priceless records, were gone, past all hope of
restoration. Uncle David felt for a moment so transported with anger,
that I think he was on the point of striking him. How it would have
fared with him, if he had, I can't tell.
"Now!" howled the baron, "ten times ten thousand pounds would not place
you where you were, Sir. You fancied, perhaps, I would stand haggling
with you all night, and yield at last to your obstinacy. What is my
answer? The floor strewn with the fragments of your calculation. Where
will you turn--what will you do now?"
"Suppose I do this," said Uncle David fiercely--"report to the police
what I have seen--your masks and all the rest, and accomplish, besides,
all I require, by my own evidence as to what I myself saw?"
"And I will confront you, as a witness," said the baron, with a cold
sneer, "and deny it all--swear it is a dream, and aid your poor
relatives in proving you unfit to manage your own money matters."
Uncle David paused for a moment. The baron had no idea how near he was,
at that moment, to a trial of strength with his English visitor. Uncle
David thinks better of it, and he contents himself with saying, "I shall
have advice, and you shall _most certainly_ hear from me again."
Forth from the room strides David Arden in high wrath. Fearing to lose
his way, he bawls over the banister, and through the corridors, "Is any
one there?" and after a time the old woman, who is awaiting him in the
hall, replies, and he is once more in the open street.