He positively stamped. “Listen here,” he cried: “‘bac ef de cad-e
c’—_don’t_ you see?”
“No.”
“O, you ineffable ass! ‘Back of the caddy’ (that’s to say the
tea-caddy; there it is), ‘see’—see what? What follows? Why, five
notes, don’t they? ‘Back of the caddy see five notes’—and there
_they_ are.”
I sank in a heap in my chair. Light had dawned on me. “And you found
’em there, I suppose?” I murmured—“behind a false back or something?”
He nodded. “You’re getting on.”
“And, please, what’s the thing at the top?” I continued faintly. “Let
me get it all over at once.”
“Ah!” he said: “there’s a trifle more ingenuity in that, perhaps. What
is it, to begin with? A demisemiquaver balanced on the top of an M Y,
eh?”
“So it appears to me.”
“To any one. Don’t be frightened. Try it every way round, and conclude
with this: ‘On the top of M Y’—that is to say, ‘_on_ M Y,’ which is
_my_, ‘a demisemiquaver’: or, shorn of all superfluities (he pencilled
it down), thus: ‘on my demisemiquaver.’ Now apply the same process.”
I looked; pondered; felt myself instantly and brilliantly inspired;
seized the pencil from him, and ticked off the measurements:—
“On my demise | mi | q | u | av | er.”
“Exactly,” said Chaunt, rising with the air of an at-length-released
martyr, and proceeding to roll another cigarette: “‘On my demise, my
cue you have here.’ ’Pon my word, without irreverence, it’s worthier
of the composer of ‘Say, den, Julius, whar yo’ walkin’ roun’?’ than of
the author of ‘Some Unnoticed Sides of Bacon.’ But all one can say is
that he adapted himself to the intellectual measure of his legatee.
Have you got a match?”
I must end, I am really ashamed to say, with this. Anyhow, in one way
my uncle was triumphant: I was convinced, at last and at least, of _a_
value in cryptograms.
THE UNLUCKIEST MAN IN THE
WORLD
He was nicknamed, ironically, Carabas—a sort of French equivalent
for Fortunatus—the only title by which I ever knew him. Perhaps the
underlying sympathy which impelled the jest reconciled him to its
mockery; for there is, after all, an acute distinction in being the
unluckiest man in the world. Somebody says somewhere that it is better
to “lead” in hell than be a super in heaven. There came a time, I
think, when Carabas would have resented good fortune as an outrage. It
would have broken his record, and made him commonplace at a blow. As
with Hawthorne’s young woman who was bred and throve on poisons, a
normal dietary would have been fatal to him. Carabas was nurtured on
ill-luck.
I made his acquaintance at Verey’s in Montreux. It was for ever
Carabas here and Carabas there, and, sometimes, in badinage, M. le
Marquis; for the fellow was always in huge request for his capability
and good-humour. There was a great deal of commiseration being shown
for him when I first arrived. Latterly he had drawn a prize
ticket—for thirty thousand francs, I think it was—in some State
lottery. But, alas! a few days before the declaration of the winning
numbers, he had parted with his voucher for a trifle over cost price.
We got up a consolation subscription for him in the hotel—relatively,
quite a respectable little sum—which, with effusive thanks, he
deposited in the Bureau de Secours Mutuels. The bank stopped payment
almost at once, and Carabas lost his nest-egg, with a prospect of
future “calls” from the parent cuckoo.
After that, we abandoned him to his Nemesis. We had recognized
finally, I suppose, that vails to him meant nothing but tips to his
evil destiny, to whom, as to a rapacious head-waiter, they all
accrued. And so he himself was convinced with us. He showed himself
neither surprised nor aggrieved; but remained the sunniest fatalist,
with just a touch of wistfulness, which Nature had ever produced out
of a union between Candour and Philosophy.
I don’t know what his official position was. I don’t think he knew
himself. He wore a plain peaked cap, and a sleeved waistcoat with
brass buttons, and was, loosely, jackal to the tremendous concierge
whose bullion took the costly glass tabernacle in the hall with
splendour. Carabas himself was not at all a figure of splendour. He
was small, and placable in expression, with smiling cheeks, mobile
lips, pencilled over by a tiny black moustache, and strength visible
in nothing but his eyes. They were his vouchers of distinction above
the common brand.
One thing certain about him was that he was an accomplished linguist;
a second, that, for all his unspoiledness, he had a large experience
of man, and (notably) womankind; a third, that his courage was equal
to his good temper; a fourth, that, with every natural claim to
consideration, his pride halted at no service, whether of skill or
complaisance, which an unscrupulous management could exact of him; a
fifth and last, that he permitted his employers so to presume upon his
reputation for successlessness, as to accept from them, in reward for
his many accomplishments, wages which would have been cheap to
inefficiency. His own material welfare, indeed, seemed always the
thing remotest from his interests. To be helpful to others was the sum
of his morality.
I never could satisfy myself as to his nationality. Once—as one might
ask him anything without offence—I put the question to him. To my
secret surprise, he seemed to hesitate a perceptible moment before he
answered, with a smiling shrug of his shoulders—
“Cosmopolitan, monsieur; a foundling of Fortune.”
“We should do very well, then,” I answered, “to claim you for
England.”
Was it fancy on my part that his pleasant face paled a little? “As to
that,” he said, “I know nothing.”
“You have never been in England?”
He made no reply, but began bustling over some incoming luggage,
calling to the porters at the lift; and in a moment he left me.
The next day he was taken ill. The reversion of a service of raw
oysters, supplied to the guests at table d’hôte, had found its way to
the supper-table of the staff. Carabas detested oysters, but his
gallantry to the fair sex was proverbial, and Ninette, the prettiest
of _filles de cuisine_, sat next to him. She extracted a single
“bivalve” from her half-dozen, and put it on his plate, moueing at him
ravishingly.
“Love conquers everything, M. Carabas,” she said; “even the
antipathies of the stomach. I will not believe in your protestations
unless you eat this for my sake.”
He swallowed it at a gulp, and—it was a bad oyster, the only doubtful
one in the whole consignment. Later, he was very sick; and afterwards
ill for four days. Ninette cried, and then laughed, and congratulated
herself on her escape. But as for the hotel, it was disconsolate in
the temporary loss of its Carabas.
For my part, I was even particularly conscious of a vague discomfort
in his absence. Somehow a certain personal responsibility which I had
undertaken seemed to weigh upon me the more heavily for it. It was not
that Carabas could have lightened, by any conceivable means, my
burden. It was just a sense of moral support withdrawn at a critical
moment. It was as if the knees of my conscience were weak, owing to
something having gone wrong with my backbone. But I will explain.
Mr. G——, a very famous lawyer in our own country, had brought his
family, a son and daughter, to holiday in Lucerne. The boy was a
conceited and susceptible youth; to the lady I was—engaged.
There seems no reason why impressionability should spell obstinacy;
yet very often it does. Young Miller (so I will call him) having
invited himself, at the Schweitzerhof, into the toils of a siren—a
patently showy and dubious one—resisted all the efforts of his family
to help him out. Baffled, but resolute, the father thereupon shifted
the scene to Montreux, where they were no sooner arrived than he was
summoned home on business at a moment’s notice. In the meanwhile, to
me (hastily called from Paris, where it had been arranged I was to
join the party on its homeward journey), was assigned the unenviable
and impossible task of safeguarding the family interests. Miller had
positively refused to accompany his father home, then or thereafter,
until his absurd “honour,” as he called his fatuity, was vindicated.
It would never do to abandon the wretched infant in the wilderness. He
had his independence, and was a desirable _parti_. Hence my promotion
to an utterly fictitious authority.
I knew, naturally, how it would be; and so it turned out. The head was
no sooner withdrawn, than Mademoiselle Celestine—privately advised,
of course, of the fact—arrived at Verey’s. Here, then, was defiance
unequivocal—naked and unashamed, I might have said, and been nearer
the truth of the case. For mademoiselle’s charms were opulent, and she
made no secret of them. One would have thought a schoolboy might have
seen through that rouge and enamel, through the crude pencilling on
those eyelashes, through all that self-advertising display. I will not
dwell upon its details, because their possessor made, after all, only
a summer nightmare for us, and was early discomfited. She served, at
best, for foil to a brighter soul; and such is her present use in the
context.
From the outset there was no finesse, no pretence of propitiation in
her tactics. She understood that it was a matter of now or never with
her quarry, and aimed to bring him down sitting. A woman, even the
best of her sex, never gives “law” in these matters. She goes out to
kill.
The two together formed an opposition camp—quite flagrantly, out in
the sunlight. I thought sometimes the boy looked unhappy; but the
witch would never let me have _him_ to myself, and I could not
manœuvre _her_ from under his guns. I would never have scrupled to
roll her in the mud, could I once have got her alone. But she was too
cunning for that; and, as for her companion, his warfare was, after
all, an honourable warfare. And all the time I had my own particular
Campaspe to safeguard, to console, to squire through the odious
notoriety which her brother’s infatuation had conferred upon us all.
It was Carabas, of course, who in the end procured us a way, his own,
out of the difficulty. The scandal being common property, there was no
need for him to affect an ignorance of it. Yet we never knew, until
the moment of his decision, how it had been occupying his mind from
the beginning, or how, quietly and unobtrusively, he had been studying
to qualify himself as our advocate. “_Our_ advocate,” I say; but I
knew his brief was for the bright eyes of Campaspe. _He_ struck for
the credit of the hotel, he declared; and mam’selle was associated
with the best of that. Anyhow he struck, and daringly.
He had risen from his bed on the fourth day, as smiling, as
complaisant as ever. His presence, like a genial thaw, ameliorated the
little winter of our discontent. We greeted his reappearance with
effusion, and dated, from the moment of it, our restoration to the
social sanities.
It was a dusk, warm evening. The peaks of the Dent du Midi, thrust
into a dewy sky, had been slowly cooling from pink to pearl-ash, like
ingots of white-hot steel. Everything seemed one harmony of colour,
except our thoughts, Campaspe’s and mine, as we strolled in the
deserted garden. The Celestine and her victim had been out boating on
the lake. We met them, unexpectedly returning. Mademoiselle was eating
cherries out of a bag, and daintily spitting the stones right and left
as she advanced. I don’t know how we should have faced the
contretemps; I had no time, indeed, at the moment, to form a decision,
before Carabas came softly and swiftly from a leafy ambush, and took
command of the occasion.
We all, I believe, instinctively recognized it for a critical one.
Mademoiselle’s bosom, though she laughed musically (she had managed to
preserve, it must be owned, the unspoiled voice of a _séductrice_)
began to rise and fall in spasms. The portier addressed her without a
moment’s hesitation.
“I take the liberty to inform madame that she is in danger.”
She gave a little gasp.
“But is this comedy or melodrama?” she cried vehemently.
“That is,” said Carabas, “as madame shall decide. I have the plot up
my sleeve.”
“The plot!” she echoed, and fell staring at him; and then furiously
from him to us.
“Go on,” she said. “I know very well who has instigated you to this.”
She checked herself, and, smiling, put out a hand towards her
companion, as if to ask, or give, reassurance. But I noticed, already
to my satisfaction, that the boy did not respond. As for us, we were
in complete darkness.
“I obey, madame,” said Carabas. “This plot is told in a word. There
was once in Paris a certain notorious _courtisane et joueuse_. Will
madame desire her name?—_à bon entendeur demi-mot_. One night this
lady’s husband, a Corsican, from whom she was separated on an
honourable allowance, visited, purely by accident, her establishment.
There was a fine scene, and he wounded her severely. She was forced by
the police to prosecute him, and the jury, amidst the plaudits of the
public, gave their verdict—against madame. But, triumphant there, the
husband’s vengeance was whetted rather than assuaged. He would throw
himself upon the suffrages of his countrymen in a more drastic
vindication of his honour. She had disguised herself—her name—had
fled. He devoted himself to the business of pursuit. At length he
believed he had traced her to an hotel in Territet.”
Carabas shrugged his shoulders and his lips, stuck out his arms at
right angles with his body, stiff from the elbow, and came to a
significant stop. I declare I pitied the adventuress. Every expression
but that of panic seemed eliminated from her face at a touch. She
looked old and haggard; and then, as if conscious of her
self-betrayal, collapsed in a moment, dropping her bag of cherries.
“I am not very well,” she stammered; “the night air tries me.” She
turned lividly upon the portier: “Par pitié, monsieur! C’est pour me
prevenir que vous etes venu, non pour me trahir?”
Without waiting for his answer, she gathered herself together,
literally, folding her train about her arm; made a desperate effort at
self-command; wrenched out a smile, and went off, quavering a little
airy chansonnette. But, after a few steps, despite her royal amplitude
she was running. Carabas, very pale but self-possessed, picked up the
bag, found one cherry in it, put it in his mouth abstractedly, and—
“My God!” cried Miller hoarsely.
Carabas jumped, and gulped.
“A thousand devils!” he cried. “You made me swallow the stone,
monsieur.”
The boy was in a fever of agitation.
“Is she really that—that sort?” he said.
My Campaspe fell upon his neck.
“O, my dear, O, my dear, I am so sorry!” she sobbed.
He put her roughly, but not unkindly, away.
“I’m—I’m going back to England—to the governor,” he said.
“Carabas,” I demanded privately, as we returned to the hotel, “is it a
fact that——?”
“The husband is here? No, monsieur; it is not a fact.”
“But——”
“It was a _cause célèbre_. I was confident I recognized madame from
the published prints. For the rest, it was just a chance shot; but it
hit the mark.”
“Carabas, you are wonderful; and we shall not forget.”
Miller was as good as his word. With characteristic disregard for any
but his own interests, he was gone the next morning, without sign or
message, leaving us to wobble in his backwash of scandal, and to get
out of it as best we could. His flight, of course, threw open all the
doors of gossip. My business in Paris being unfinished, I had to go;
but first I did my best to provide against unpleasantnesses by
confiding Campaspe to the care of the least slanderous _dame de
compagnie_ I could find. I am afraid, nevertheless, she had but a poor
time of it.
A week later I received a letter from Mr. G——, who in the interval
had returned to Montreux.
“All is happily over with all,” he wrote: “with the exception, that is
to say, of poor Carabas, who is to undergo an operation for
appendicitis. It appears that a cherry-stone, which he swallowed
unwittingly, did the business. The management (OWLS!) demur to the
expense. I have insisted (FOOLS!) upon undertaking it upon my own
account. We owe much to him; and so do they (IDIOTS!). But they don’t
understand how to pay your debts is very often the best foresight.”
It was a case of pitch and toss. For days, it appeared, Carabas’s life
hung in the balance. In the meanwhile, I was enabled to rejoin Mr.
G—— and his daughter at Montreux, and to take my share in the
nursing. Between gratitude and indignation, we rather claimed Carabas
among us. Campaspe the poor fellow simply adored. Once, when he
fancied himself losing hold, he confided to her, while we stood by,
some main incidents in his life. I retail them here, in an abbreviated
form.