She had understood him, had realized his nobility of ideal, his gifts, his occasional grandeur of soul,—like all artistic men he was desultory in the manifestation of his talent,—and had read aloud to him those poems written for another woman in the pitch-hot passion of his youth—before he had met her. To her he had been always, so he told himself, a cavalier in his devotion. Without wealth, he had kept the soles of her little feet from touching the sidewalks of life. Upon her dainty person he had draped lovely garments. Why then, he wondered, the vindictive expression etched, as if in aqua fortis, upon her carved features?

Some Old World superstition held him captive as he gazed. Death is the grand revealer, he thought; death alone stamps upon the crumbling canvas of mortality the truth. Rhoda was dead. Yet her face was alive for the first time. He saw its truth; and he shuddered, for he also discerned the hate that had lurked a life long in its devious and smiling expressions—expressions like a set of scenery pushed on and off as the order of the play demanded. Oh, the misery of it all! He, Monross, poet, lover, egoist, husband, to be confronted by this damnable defiance, this early-born hate! What had he done! And in the brain cells of the man there awakened a processional fleet of pictures: Rhoda wooed; Rhoda dazzled; Rhoda won; Rhoda smiling before the altar; Rhoda resigned upon that other altar; Rhoda, wife, mother; and Rhoda—dead!

But Rhoda loved—again he looked at the face. The brow was virginally placid, the drooping, bitter mouth alone telling the unhappy husband a story he had never before suspected. Rhoda! Was it possible this tiny exquisite creature had harboured rancour in her soul for the man who had adored her because she had adored him? Rhoda! The shell of his egoism fell away from him. He saw the implacable resentment of this tender girl who, her married life long, had loathed the captain that had invaded the citadel of her soul, and conqueror-like had filched her virgin zone. The woman seemingly stared at the man through lids closed in death—the woman, the sex that ages ago had feared the barbarian who dragged her to his cave, where he subdued her, making her bake his bread and bear his children.

In a wide heaven of surmise Monross read the confirmation of his suspicions—of the eternal duel between the man and the woman; knew that Rhoda hated him most when most she trembled at his master bidding. And now Rhoda lay dead in her lyre-shaped coffin, saying these ironic things to her husband, when it was too late for repentance, too early for eternity.



IX

THE ENCHANTED YODLER

A MARIENBAD ELEGY

I

The remorseless rain had washed anew the face of the dark blue sky that domed Marienbad and its curved chain of hills. Hugh Krayne threw open his window and, leaning out, exclaimed, as he eagerly inhaled the soft air of an early May morning:—

"At last! And high time!" For nine days he had waded through the wet streets, heavily leaping the raging gutters and stopping before the door of every optician to scrutinize the barometer. And there are many in this pretty Bohemian health resort, where bad weather means bad temper, with enforced confinement in dismal lodgings or stuffy restaurations, or—last resort of the bored—the promenade under the colonnade, while the band plays as human beings shuffle ponderously over the cold stones and stare at each other in sullen desperation.

But this day was a glorious one; in high spirits the Englishman left the house on the Oberkreuzbrunnenstrasse and moved slowly toward the springs. He was not thirty, but looked much older, for his weight was excessive. An easy-going temperament, a good appetite, a well-filled purse, and a conscience that never disturbed his night's slumber contributed to this making of flesh. He waddled, despite his great height, and was sufficiently sensitive to enjoy Marienbad as much for its fat visitors as for its curative virtues. Here at least he was not remarkable, while in London or Paris people looked at him sourly when he occupied a stall at the theatre or a seat in a cafe. Not only had he elbow room in Marienbad, but he felt small, positively meagre, in comparison with the prize specimens he saw painfully progressing about the shaded walks or puffing like obese engines up the sloping roads to the Ruebezahl, the Egerlaender, the Panorama, or the distant Podhorn.

The park of the Kreuzbrunnen was crowded, though the hour of six had just been signalled from a dozen clocks in the vicinity. The crowd, gathered from the four quarters of the globe, was in holiday humour, as, glass in hand, it fell into line, until each received the water doled out by uniformed officials. Occasionally a dispute as to precedence would take place when the serpentine procession filed up the steps of the old-fashioned belvedere; but quarrels were as rare as a lean man. A fat crowd is always good-tempered, irritable as may be its individual members. Hugh Krayne kept in position, while two women shoved him about as if he were a bale of hay. He heard them abusing him in Bohemian, a language of which he did not know more than a few words; their intonations told him that they heartily disliked his presence. Yet he could not give way; it would not have been Marienbad etiquette. At last he reached the spring and received his usual low bow from the man who turned the polished wheel—the fellow had an eye tuned for gratuities. With the water in his glass three-fourths cold and one-fourth warm, a small napkin in his left hand, the Englishman moved with the jaunty grace of a young elephant down the smooth terraced esplanade that has made Marienbad so celebrated. The sun was riding high, and the tender green of the trees, the flashing of the fountains, and the music of the band all caused Hugh to feel happy. He had lost nearly a pound since his arrival the week before, and he had three more weeks to stay. What might not happen!

Just where the promenade twists under the shaded alleys that lead to the Ferdinandsbrunnen, he saw four women holding hands. They were dressed in Tyrolean fashion—pleated skirts, short enough to show white, plump stockings, feet in slippers, upon the head huge caps, starched and balloony; their massive white necks, well exposed, were encircled by collars that came low on bodices elaborately embroidered. Behind them marched several burly chaps, in all the bravery of the Austrian Tyrol—the green alpine hat, with the feather at the back, the short gray jacket, the bare knees, and the homespun stockings. Krayne regarded curiously this strolling band of singers. Their faces seemed familiar to him, and he rapidly recalled souvenirs of Salzburg and an open-air concert. But this morning there was something that arrested his attention in the group. It was a girl of eighteen or twenty, with a brilliant complexion, large blue eyes, and a robust, shapely figure. As she passed she gave him such an imploring look, such an appealing look, that all his chivalric instincts rushed into the field of his consciousness. He awkwardly dropped his tumbler. He turned around, half expecting to see the big child still looking at him. Instead he gazed upon the athletic backs of her male companions and to the unpleasant accompaniment of hearty feminine laughter. Were these women laughing at him? No fool like a fat one, he merrily thought, as he bought a new glass at a bazaar, which a grinning, monkey-faced creature sold him at the regular price redoubled.

Before his meagre breakfast of one egg and a dry rusk, Krayne endeavoured to evoke the features of the pretty creature who had so strongly attracted him. He saw a tangle of black hair, a glance that touched his heart with its pathos, a pair of soft, parted red lips, and dazzling teeth. It was an impression sufficiently powerful to keep him company all the forenoon. Fat men, he reasoned on the steep pass that conducts to the Cafe Forstwarte, are always sentimental, by no means always amiable, and, as a rule, subject to sudden fancies. Ten years of his sentimental education had been sown with adventures that had begun well, caprices that had no satisfactory endings. He had fallen in love with the girl who played Chopin on the piano, the girl who played Mendelssohn on the violin, the girl who played Goltermann on the violoncello. Then followed girls who painted, poetized, botanized, and hammered metal. Once—an exception—he had succumbed to the charms of an actress who essayed characters in the dumps—Ibsen soubrettes, Strindberg servants, and Maxim Gorky tramps. Yet he had, somehow or other, emerged heart whole from his adventures among those masterpieces of the cosmos—women.

Certainly this might be another romance added to the long list of his sentimental fractures. He ate his dinner, the one satisfactory meal of the day allowed him by a cruel doctor, with the utmost deliberation. He had walked three hours during the morning, and now, under the spacious balconies of the Forstwarte, he knew that his beef and spinach would be none the worse for a small bottle of very dry, light Voeslauer. Besides, his physician had not actually forbidden him a little liquid at the midday meal. Just before bedtime he was entitled—so his dietetic schedule told him—to one glass of Pilsner beer. Not so bad, after all, this banting at Marienbad, he reflected. Anyhow, it was better than the existence of those fellows at sea-shore and mountain, who gorged and guzzled their summer away. Then he tried to remember among his London club friends any who were as heavy as he, but he could not. Idly smoking, he regarded the piazzas, with their tables and groups of obese humanity, eating, drinking, and buzzing—little fat flies, he thought, as he drew his waistcoat in, feeling quite haughty and slender.

He read on a placard that the "Praeger Bavarian Sextet" would give a "grand" concert at the Hotel Bellevue this very afternoon. "Ah ha!" said Krayne aloud, "that's the girl I saw!" Then he wasted several hours more loitering about the beautiful park on the Kaiserstrasse and looking in the shop windows at views of Marienbad on postal cards, at yellow-covered French, German, and Russian novels, at pictures of kings, queens, and actresses. He also visited the houses wherein Goethe, Chopin, and Wagner had dwelt. It was four o'clock when he entered the garden of the Bellevue establishment and secured a table. The waiter at his request removed the other chairs, so he had a nook to himself. Not a very large crowd was scattered around; visitors at Marienbad do not care to pay for their diversions. In a few minutes, after a march had been banged from a wretched piano—were pianos ever tuned on the Continent, he wondered?—the sextet appeared, looking as it did in the morning, and sang an Austrian melody, a capella. It was not very interesting.

The women stood in front and yelled with a hearty will; the men roared in the background. Krayne saw his young lady, holding her apron by the sides, her head thrown back, her mouth well opened; but he could not distinguish her individual voice. How pretty she was! He sipped his coffee. Then came a zither solo—that abominable instrument of plucked wires, with its quiver of a love-sick clock about to run down; this parody of an aeolian harp always annoyed Krayne, and he was glad when the man finished. A stout soprano in a velvet bodice, her arms bare and brawny, the arms of a lass accustomed to ploughing and digging potatoes, sang something about turtle doves. She was odious. Odious, too, was her companion, in a duo through which they screamed and rumbled—"Verlassen bin i." At last she came out and he saw by the programme that her name was Roeselein Gich. What an odd name, what an attractive girl! He finished his coffee and frantically signalled his waitress. It was against the doctor's orders to take more than one cup, and then the sugar! Hang the doctor, he cried, and drank a second cup.

She sang. Her voice was an unusually heavy, rich contralto. That she was not an accomplished artiste he knew. He did not haunt opera houses for naught, and, like all fat men who wear red ties in the forenoon, he was a trifle dogmatic in his criticism. The young woman had the making of an opera singer. What a Fricka, Brangaene, Ortrud, Sieglinde, Erda, this clever girl might become! She was musical, she was dramatic in temperament—he let his imagination run away with him. She only sang an Oberbayerische yodel, and, while her voice was not very high, she contrived a falsetto that made her English listener shiver. This yodel seemed to him as thrilling as the "Ho yo to ho!" of Brunnhilde as she rushes over the rocky road to Valhall. La la liriti! La la lirita! Hallali! chirped Roeselein, with a final flourish that positively enthralled Hugh Krayne. He applauded, beating with his stick upon the table, his face flushed by emotion. Decidedly this girl was worth the visit to Marienbad.

And he noted with delight that Fraeulein Gich had left the stage. Basket in hand, she went from table to table, selling pictures and programmes and collecting admission fees. At last he would be able to speak with the enchantress, for he prided himself on the purity of his German. Smiling until she reached his table, she suddenly became serious when she saw this big Englishman in the plaid suit and red necktie. Again he felt the imploring glance, the soft lips parted in childish supplication. It was too much for his nerves. He tossed into her basket a gold piece, grabbed at random some pictures, and as her beseeching expression deepened, her eyes moist with wonder and gratitude, he tugged at a ring on his corpulent finger, and, wrenching it free, presented it to her with a well-turned phrase, adding:—

"Thou hast the making of a great singer in thee, Fraeulein Roeselein. I wish I could help thee to fame!"

The girl gave him an incredulous stare, then reddening, the muscles on her full neck standing out, she ran like a hare back to her companions. Evidently he had made an impression. The honest folk about him who witnessed the little encounter fairly brimmed over with gossip. The stout basso moved slowly to Krayne, who braced himself for trouble. Now for it! he whispered to himself, and grasped his walking-stick firmly. But, hat in hand, his visitor, a handsome blond man, approached and thanked Hugh for his generosity. He was a lover of music, the yodler assured him, and his wife and himself felt grateful for the interest he displayed in Fraeulein Roeselein, his wife's sister. Yes, she had a remarkable voice. What a pity—but wouldn't the gentleman attend the concert to be given that evening up at the Cafe Alm? It was, to be sure, rather far, the cafe, but the moon would be up and if he could find his way there he might do the company the honour of coming back with them.

The Fraeulein would sing a lot for him—Bohemian, Tyrolean, French, and German songs. Ah, she was versatile! The man did not speak like a peasant, and seemed a shrewd, pleasant fellow. Hugh Krayne, in excellent though formal German, assured the other of his pleasure and accepted the invitation. Then he looked over at Roeselein, who stood on the stage, and as he did so she waved a crimson handkerchief at him as a friendly sign. He took off his hat, touched significantly his own tie to indicate a reciprocity of sentiment, and all aglow he ordered a third cup of coffee.

The cure could take care of itself. Man lebt nur einmal!

II

On his way to the Alm he met the fattest man in Marienbad, a former chef of the German emperor, and gave him a friendly salute. He liked to see this monster, who made the scales groan at six hundred pounds, more than double his own weight, for it put him at ease with himself. But this evening he felt uncomfortable. What if he were to reach such a climax in adiposity What if in the years to come he should be compelled, as was the unfortunate man from Berlin, to sit on a chair every five minutes, a chair carried by an impudent boy! What—here his heart sank—if the Fraeulein should mock his size! He walked so rapidly at this idea that other victims of rotundity stopped to look at his tall figure and nodded approval. Ach! Marienbad was wonderful!

After he had found a seat at the Alm next to the low wall, across which he could see a vast stretch of undulating country, lighted by a moon that seemed to swing like a silver hoop in the sky, Krayne ordered Pilsner. He was fatigued by the hilly scramble and he was thirsty. Oh, the lovely thirst of Marienbad—who that hath not been within thy hospitable gates he knoweth it not! The magic of the night was making of him a poet. He could see his Tyrolean friends behind the glass partition of the little hall. There would they sing, not in the open. It was nearly the same, for presently the windows were raised and their voices came floating out to him, the bourdon of Roeselein's organ easily distinguishable. Love had sharpened his ears. He drained his glass and sent for another. He felt that he was tumbling down an abyss of passion and that nothing in the world could save him.

The intermission! He stood up to attract the attention of Herr Johan Praeger. Roeselein saw him and at once neared him, but without the basket. This delicacy pleased Krayne very much. It showed him that he was not on the same footing as the public. He made the girl take a seat, and though he felt the eyes of the crowd upon him, he was not in the least concerned. London was far away and the season was too young for the annual rush of his compatriots. Would the Fraeulein take something? She accepted coffee, which she drank from a long glass with plenty of milk and sugar. She again gazed at him with such a resigned expression that he felt his starched cuffs grow warm from their contiguity to his leaping pulses.

"Yes, Fraeulein," he said, employing the familiar du, "thou hast overcome me. Why not accept my offer?" Was this the prudent Hugh Krayne talking? She smiled sweetly and shook her head. Her voice was delicious in colour and intonation, nor did it betray humble origin.

"I fear, dear sir, that what you offer is impossible. My sister, the soprano, would never hear of such a thing. My brother, her husband, would not allow it. And I owe them my living, my education. How could I repay them if I left them now?" she hesitated.

"Simply enough. You would be a singer at the opera some day, and take them all to live with you. Is there no other reason?" He recollected with a vivid sense of the disagreeable the lively antics of a lithe youth in the company, who, at the close of the concert, executed with diabolic dexterity what they called a Schuhplattltanz. This dance had glued Krayne's attention, for Roeselein was the young tenor singer's partner. With their wooden sabots they clattered and sang, waving wildly their arms or else making frantic passages of pretended love and coquetry. It upset the Englishman to see the impudence of this common peasant fellow grasping Roeselein by the waist, as he whirled her about in the boorish dance. Hence the clause to his question. She endured his inquiring gaze, as she simply answered:—

"No, there is no other reason." She put her hand on the arm of her companion and the lights suddenly became misty, for he was of an apoplectic tendency. They talked of music, of the opera in Vienna and Prague. She was born in Bavaria, not more than a day's ride from Marienbad. You could almost see her country from the top of the Podhornberg, in the direction of the Franconian Mountains, not far from Bayreuth. The place was called Schnabelwaid, and it was very high, very windy. Since her tenth year she had been singing—yes, even in the chorus at the Vienna opera, with her sister and brother. They were no common yodlers. They could sing all the music of the day. The yodling was part of their business, as was the costume. Later, when she had enough saved, she would study in Vienna for grand opera!

He was enraptured. How romantic it all was! A free-born maiden—he was certain she was reared in some old castle—wandering about earning money for her musical education. What a picture for a painter! What a story for a novelist! They were interrupted. The dancer, a young man with a heavy shock of hair growing low on his forehead, under which twinkled beady black eyes, had been sent to tell Fraeulein Roeselein that her colleagues were waiting for her. With a courtesy she went away. Krayne now thoroughly hated the dancer.

It was long after eleven when the concert was over and the party started on its homeward trip. Krayne and Roeselein walked behind the others, and soon the darkness and the narrowness of the road forced him to tread after the girl. The moon's rays at intervals pierced the foliage, making lacelike patches of light in the gloom. At times they skirted the edges of a circular clearing and saw the high pines fringing the southern horizon; overhead the heavens were almost black, except where great streams of stars swept in irregular bands. It was a glorious sight, Krayne told Roeselein—too sublime to be distracted by mere mortal love-making, he mentally added. Nevertheless he was glad when they were again in the woods; he could barely distinguish the girl ahead of him, but her outline made his heart beat faster. Once, as they neared the town, he helped her down a declivity into the roadway, and he could not help squeezing her hand. The pressure was returned. He boldly placed her arm within his, and they at last reached the streets, but not before, panting with mingled fright and emotion, he solemnly kissed her. She did not appear surprised.

"Call me Roesie—thou!" she murmured, and her naivete brought the ready tears to his eyes. They made a rendezvous for the next morning on the Promenade Platz. The only thing he did not like was the scowling face of the dancer when he said good night to the others under the electric lights of the Kreuzbrunnen. He was correct, then, in his premonition.

That night Hugh Krayne dreamed he was a very skeleton for thinness—not an unusual vision of fat men—and also a Tyrolean yodler, displaying himself before a huge audience of gigantic human beings, who laughed so loudly that he could not open his lips to frame the familiar words of his song. In the despair of a frantic nightmare, his face streaming with anguished tears, he forced his voice:—

La, la, liriti! La, la, larita! Hallali! Then he awoke in triumph. Was he not a yodler?

III

He told her of his dream and strange ambition. She did not discourage him. It could be settled easily enough. Why not join the company and take a few lessons? "With such a teacher?" he had exclaimed, and his gesture was so impassioned that the promenaders, with their shining morning goblets of water, were arrested by the spectacle. Wonderful, wonderful Marienbad! was the general comment! But Krayne was past ridicule. He already saw Roeselein his bride. He saw himself a yodler. The cure? Ay, there was the rub. He laid bare his heart. She aided him with her cool advice. She was very sensible. Her brother-in-law and her sister would welcome him in their household, for he was a lover of music and his intentions were honourable. Of course, he sighed, of course, and fingered his red tie. Why not, she argued, remain at Marienbad for three weeks more and complete his cure? Anyhow, he was not so stout! She looked up at him archly. Again he saw mist.

That settled it. For another three weeks he lived in a cloud of expectation, of severe training, long walks, dieting, and Turkish baths. No man worked harder. And he was rewarded by seeing his flesh melt away a pound or two daily. When the company returned after its itinerary in the neighbourhood Roesie was surprised to meet a man who did not weigh much over two hundred pounds, healthy, vigorous, and at least five years younger in appearance. She was very much touched. So was her sister. There was a family consultation, and despite the surly opposition of the dancer, Hugh Krayne was welcomed as a member of the Praeger Bavarian Sextette company. Forgetting the future he had arranged for Roesie, he began his vocal lessons immediately.

In July he sang for the first time in public at Eger. He was extremely frightened, but as it was only a duo he managed fairly well. Then he sang at Tepl, this time alone. His voice broke badly in the yodel and he was jeered by a rude audience. He had grown very much thinner. His doctor warned him against continuing the waters, and advised rice, potatoes, and ale, but he did not listen. He now paid the bills of the company while travelling. Roesie had confessed with tears that they were fearfully poor. From that time he handed her his purse. He even placated the jealous dancer with a gold watch and a box of hair pomade. Ah! how he loathed the fellow's curly locks, his greasy familiarities! Roesie told him this acrobat was necessary in the company until he could be replaced. Already Hugh—she called him "Ue"—could yodel better. Some day he might, when thinner, dance better. Perhaps—again that appealing glance, the corner of her lips faintly touched by the mysterious smile of a Monna Lisa. Krayne redoubled his arduous training, practised yodling in the forests, danced jigs on the pine-needles, and doubled his allowance of the waters.

They went to Carlsbad. He yodled. He was applauded. The dancer was in a fine rage. Although Krayne had asked Roesie to buy a first-class compartment on the railroad trip over and back, they went in a third-class car. Praeger declared that it was good enough for him, and he didn't wish to spoil his troupe! His wife now held the purse-strings, as Roesie was too engrossed with her art and Hugh too absorbed in his love to notice such mere sublunary matters. The girl had promised nothing positive for the future. She kept him on the brittle edge of nervous expectation. The opposition of the dancer had been successfully met by threats of dismissal; Hugh continued to lose flesh and gain in vocal and pedal agility.

He danced for the first time at Koenigswart, not far from the chateau of the Metternichs. It was August. So great was the applause that the younger dancer was discharged. He left with muttered threats of vengeance. The next day Krayne turned over all his business affairs to the able hand of Frau Praeger; he lived only for Roesie and his art....

September was at hand. The weather was so warm and clear, that the king of England deferred his departure for a few days. One afternoon, just before the leaves began to brown on the hills, there was a concert at the garden of the Hotel Bellevue. The royal party attended. The yodling was much praised, especially that of a good-looking young woman and her escort, a very tall man of cadaverous aspect, his shanks like the wooden stilts of the shepherds on the Bordeaux Landes. His face, preternaturally emaciated and fatigued, opened to emit an amazing yodel. When the Schuhplattltanz was reached he surprised the audience by an extraordinary exhibition. He threw his long legs about like billiard cues, while his arms flapped as do windmills in a hard gale. He was pointed out as a celebrity—once a monster Englishman, who had taken the Kur; who was in love, but so poor that he could not marry. The girl with him was certain to make a success in grand opera some day. Yes, Marienbad was proud of Krayne. He was one of her show sons, a witness to her curative powers. Proud also of the Bavarian Praeger Sextette. Herr Praeger was reputed a rich man....

The night of that concert Marienbad saw the last of the Bavarian sextette, which at midnight, joined by its old dancer with the tenor voice, left in a third-class carriage for Vienna. Hugh Krayne, not possessing enough to pay his passage, had not been invited; nor was he informed of the sudden departure until a day later....

* * * * *

On the road to the Alm, of moonlight nights, toiling visitors catch glimpses of a human, almost a skeleton, dressed in rags, his head bare as his feet, about his neck a flaming crimson handkerchief. He is known to Marienbaeders as "The Man Who Stayed Too Long." He never addresses passers-by; but as they lose sight of him they hear the woods resound with his elegiac howl:—

La la liriti! La la lirita! Hallali!



X

THE THIRD KINGDOM

I

A DOUBTER

Brother Hyzlo sat in his cell and read. The gentle stillness of a rare spring morning enveloped him with its benison. And the clear light fell upon the large pages of a book in his hand,—the window through which it streamed was the one link between the young recluse and the life of the world. From it he could see the roofs of the city beneath him; when he so wished, he might, without straining his gaze, distinguish the Pantheon at the end of that triumphal avenue which spanned the Seine and had once evoked for him visions of antique splendour. But Brother Hyzlo no longer cared for mundane delights. His doubting soul was the battle-field over which he ranged day and night searching for diabolic opponents. Exterior existence had become for him a shadow; the only life worth living was that of the spirit.

In his book that fresh spring morning he read as if in the flare of a passing meteor these disquieting words:—

"How were it if, some day or night, a demon stole after thee into thy most solitary solitude, and said to thee: 'This life, as thou livest it now, and hast lived it, thou shalt have to live over again, and not once but innumerable times; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every pleasure and every thought and sigh, and everything in thy life, the great and the unspeakably petty alike, must come again to thee, and all in the same series and succession; this spider, too, and this moonlight betwixt the trees and this moment likewise and I myself. The eternal sand-glass of time is always turned again, and thou with it, thou atom of dust'? Wouldst thou not cast thyself down and with gnashing of teeth curse the demon who thus spoke? Or, hast thou ever experienced the tremendous moment in which thou wouldst answer him: 'Thou art a god and never heard I anything more divine'?"

The book slipped from his hands. "Why not?" he murmured, "why not? There is no such thing as chance. The law of probabilities is not a mere fancy, but an austere need. Matter is ever in evolution. Energy alone is indestructible. Radium has revealed this to us. In eternity when the Infinite throws the dice, double-sixes are sure to come up more than once. Miracles? But why miraculous? Infinity of necessity must repeat itself, and then I, sitting here now, will sit here again, sit and doubt the goodness of God, ay, doubt His existence.... How horrible!" He paused in the whirl of his thoughts.

"Yet how beautiful, for if the eternal recurrence be truth, then must the great drama of the Redemption be repeated. Then will our foes be convinced of Christianity and its reality. But shall we be conscious in that far-off time of our anterior existence? Ah! hideous, coiling doubt. What a demon is this Nietzsche to set whirring in the brains of poor, suffering humanity such torturing questions! Better, far better for the world to live and not to think. Thought is a disease, a morbid secretion of the brain-cells. Ah! materialist that I am, I can no longer think without remembering the ideas of Cabanis, that gross atheist. Why am I punished so? What crimes have I committed in a previous existence—Karma, again!—that I must perforce study the writings of impious men? Yet I submitted myself as a candidate for the task, to save my brethren in Christ from soiling their hearts. Heaven preserve me from the blight of spiritual pride, but I believe that I am now a scapegoat for the offences of my fellow-monks, and, thus, may redeem my own wretched soul. Ah! Nietzsche—Antichrist."

He arose and threw the volume across his cell. Then going to the window regarded with humid gaze the world that sprawled below him in the voluptuous sunshine. But so sternly was the inner eye fixed on the things of the spirit that he soon turned away from the delectable picture, and as he did so his glance rested upon a crucifix. He started, his perturbed imagination again touched.

"What if Nietzsche were right? The first Christian, the only Christian, died on the cross, he has said. What an arraignment of our precious faith, Jesus Christ, our Lord God! What sweet names are Thine! How could Nietzsche not feel the music of that Hebrew-Greek combination? Perhaps he did; perhaps he masked a profound love behind his hatred. Jesus our Lord! Hebrew-Greek. But why Greek? Why ...?" Another pause in this sequestered chamber where the buzzing of an insect could assume a thunderous roar. "The eternal return. Why should Christ return? Must the earth be saved again and again and a billion times again? Awful thought of a God descending to a horrible death to cleanse the nameless myriads from sins which they seek ever as flies treacle. More ghastly still is the thought that the atheist Scandinavian put into the mouth of his Julian the Apostate: When our Christ is not saving this earth from eternal damnation then he may be visiting remote planets or inaccessible stars, where coloured double suns of blinding brilliancy revolve terrifically in twin harness. There, too, are souls to be rescued. What a grand idea! It is Ibsen's, as is the interpretation of the Third Kingdom. It should have been Nietzsche's. Why this antinomianism? Why this eternal conflict of evil and good, of night and day, of sweet and sour, of God and devil, of Ormuzd and Ahriman?"

The exotic names transposed his thoughts to another avenue. If Christ is to come again, and the holy word explicitly states that He will, why not Buddha? Why not Brahma? Why not ...? Again a hiatus. This time something snapped in his head. He sank back in his chair. Buddha! Was there ever a Buddha? And if there was not, was there ever such a personality as Christ's? Scholar that he was he knew that myth-building was a pastime for the Asiatic imagination, great, impure, mysterious Asia—Asia the mother of all religions, the cradle of the human race. To deny the objective existence of Christ would set at rest all his doubts, one overwhelming doubt swallowing the minor doubts. He had never speculated at length upon the Christ legend, for did not Renan, yes, that silky heretic, believe in the personality of Jesus, believe and lovingly portray it? The Nietzsche doctrine of the eternal recurrence had so worked upon his sensitive mental apparatus that he could have almost denied the existence of Christ rather than deny that our universe repeats itself infinitely. Eternity is a wheel, earthly events are the spokes of this whirring wheel. It was the seeming waste of divine material that shocked his nerves. One crucifixion—yes; but two or two quintillions and infinitely more!

Brother Hyzlo stared at the crucifix. Was it only a symbol, as some learned blasphemers averred? The human figure so painfully extended upon it was a God, a God who descended from high heaven to become a shield between the wrath of His Father and humanity. Why? Why should the God who created us grow angry with our shortcomings? We are His handiwork. Are we then to blame for our imperfections? Is not Jesus, instead of a mediator, rather a votive offering to the wounded vanity of the great Jehovah? Was not Prometheus—a light broke in upon Hyzlo. Prometheus, a myth, Buddha a myth. All myths. There were other virgin-born saviours. Krishna, Mithra, Buddha. Vishnu had not one but nine incarnations. Christianity bears alarming resemblances to Mithraism. Mithra, too, was born in a cave. The dates of Christ's birth and death may be astronomical: the winter and vernal equinoxes. But the conflict of the authorities regarding these dates is mortifying. The four gospels are in reality four witnesses warring against each other. They were selected haphazard at a human council. They were not composed until the latter part of the second century, and the synoptic gospels are compilations from unknown writers, while the fourth gospel is a much later work. And how colourless, imitative, is the New when compared to the Old Testament,—echoing with the antiphonal thunders of Jehovah and his stern-mouthed Prophets! The passage in Josephus touching on Christ is now known to have been interpolated. Authentic history does not record the existence of Christ. Not one of His contemporaries mentions him. That tremendous drama in Galilee was not even commented upon by the Romans, a nation keen to notice any deviation from normal history. The Jewish records are doubtful, written centuries after His supposed death. And they are malicious. What cannot happen in two centuries? Hyzlo reflected sadly upon Moslemism, upon Mormonism, upon the vagaries of a strange American sect at whose head was said to be a female pope.

The similarity of circumstances in the lives of Buddha and Christ also annoyed him. Both were born of virgins, both renounced the world, both were saviours. There were the same temptations, the same happenings; prophecies, miracles, celestial rejoicings, a false disciple, the seven beatitudes—a reflection of the Oriental wisdom—an expiatory death and resurrection. The entire machinery of the Christian church, its saints, martyrs, festivals, ritual, and philosophies are borrowed from the mythologies of the pagans. Sun-worship is the beginning of all religions. To the genius of the epileptic Paul, or Saul,—founders of religions are always epilepts,—a half Greek and disciple of the Pharisee Gamaliel, who saw visions and put to the sword his enemies, to Paul, called a saint, a man of overwhelming personal force, to this cruel anarchist, relentless, half-mad fanatic and his theological doctrines we owe the preservation and power of the Christian Church. At first the Christians were the miserable offscourings of society, slaves, criminals, and lunatics. They burrowed in the Catacombs, they fastened themselves upon a decaying and magnificent civilization like the parasites they were. A series of political catastrophes, a popular uprising against the rotten emperors of decadent Rome, and the wide growth of the socialist idea—these things and an unscrupulous man, Constantine the Great, put the Christians firmly in the saddle. And soon came cataracts of blood. If the tales of the imperial persecutions are true, then hath Christianity been revenged a million fold; where her skirt has trailed there has been the cruel stain of slaughter. It must not be forgotten, too, that immorality of the grossest sort was promised the deluded sectarians, compared with which the Mahometan paradise is spiritual. And the end of the world was predicted at the end of every century, and finally relegated to the millennial celebration of Christianity's birth. When, in 1000 A.D., this catastrophe did not occur, the faith received its first great shock.

He summoned to his memory a cloud of witnesses, all contradictory. Josephus was barred. Philo Judaeus, who was living near the centre of things, an observer on the scent of the spiritual, a man acquainted with the writings of Rabbi Hillel, and the father of Neoplatonism—never mentions Jesus, nor does he speak of any religious uprising in Judea. The passage in Virgil, which has through the doubtful testimony of monkish writers been construed into a prophecy of a forthcoming Messiah, Hyzlo, who was a scholar, knew to have been addressed to a son of Virgil's intimate friend. Tacitus, too, has been interpolated. Seneca's ideal man is not Jesus, for Jesus is Osiris, Horus, Krishna, Mithra, Hercules, Adonis,—think of this beautiful young god's death!—Buddha. Such a mock trial and death could not have taken place under the Roman or Jewish laws. The sacraments derive from the Greeks, from the Indians—the mysteries of Ceres and Bacchus, from the Haoma sacrifice of the Persians, originally Brahmanic. The Trinity, was it not a relic of that ineradicable desire for polytheism implanted in the human bosom? Was the crucifixion but a memory of those darker cults and blood sacrifices of Asia, and also of the expiating goats sent out into the wilderness? What became of that Hosanna-shouting crowd which welcomed Christ on Palm Sunday? And there never were such places as Gethsemane and Calvary. Alas! the Son of Man had indeed no spot to lay his head. And why had He made no sign when on earth! Brother Hyzlo wept bitter tears.

But he wiped them away as he considered the similarity of the massacre of the Innocents in Judea and the massacre of the male children ordered by the wicked Indian Rajah of Madura, who feared the Krishna, just conceived by divine agency. Yes, the chronicles were full of these gods born of virgins, of crucifixions,—he could remember sixteen,—of these solar myths. He caught tripping in a thousand cases the translations of our holy books. The Ox and Ass legend at the Nativity he realized was the Pseudo-Matthew's description to Habakkuk of the literal presence: "In the midst of two animals thou shalt be known;" which is a mistranslated Hebrew text in the Prayer ascribed to Habakkuk. It got into the Greek Septuagint version of the Prophet made by Egyptian Jews before 150 B.C. It should read, "in the midst of the years," not "animals." "Ah!" cried Hyzlo, "in this as in important cardinal doctrines have the faithful been the slaves of the learned and unscrupulous pious forgers. Even the notorious Apollonius of Tyana imitated the miracles of Christ—all of them. And what of that wicked wizard, Simon Magus?"

The very repetition of these miracles in all races, at all epochs, pointed to the doctrine of recurrence. But back of all the negations, back of the inexpugnable proof that no such man or God as Christ existed, or was known to his contemporaries, Jewish and Roman, there must have been some legend which had crystallized into a mighty religion. Was He an agitator who preferred His obscurity that His glory might be all the greater? There must have been a beginning to the myth; behind the gospels—though they are obviously imitated from the older testaments, imitated and diluted—were unknown writings; previous to these there was word of mouth and—and ...?

The day had advanced, the sun was very warm. A shaft of light fell upon the cold stone floor, and in its fiery particles darted myriads of motes. Hyzlo followed their spiral flights, thinking all the while of humanity which flashes from out the dark void, plays madly in the light, only to vanish into the unknown night. His gaze was held by the smoothness of the flagging at his feet. Then it became transformed into marble, the walls of his cell widened, and he closed his eyes, so blinding were the long ladders of light....

II

TWO DREAMERS

He opened them ... the harbour with its army of galleys and pleasure craft lay in the burning sunshine, its surface a sapphire blue. Overhead the sky echoed this tone, which modulated into deeper notes of purple on the far-away hills whose tops were wreathed in mist. Under his sandalled feet was marble, back of him were the gleaming spires and towers of the great city, and at his left was a mountain of shining marble, the Pharos.

"Alexandria?" he called out as he was jostled by a melon-seller, and startled by the fluted invitations of a young girl—an antique statue come to life.

"Of course it is Alexandria," replied a deep, harsh voice at his elbow. He turned. It was his friend Philo.

"You have at last emerged from your day-dream, Hyzlo! I thought, as our bark clove the water, that you were enjoying visions." And it seemed to Hyzlo that he had just awakened from a bizarre dream of a monastic cell, to more beautiful sights and shapes and sounds. The pair now traversed the quay, past the signal masts, the fortified towers, pushing through the throng of sailors, courtesans, philosophers, fruitsellers, soldiers, beggars, and idle rich toward the spacious city. Past the palace to the wall of the Canal, along the banks of the Royal Port, they finally struck into a broad, deserted avenue. At its head was a garden wall. Philo introduced himself and his companion through a low door and presently they were both in an apartment full of parchments, glittering brass and gold instruments all reposing on a wide, long table.

"Hyzlo," said the Jewish philosopher, in his slightly accented Greek, "I have long promised you that I would reveal to you my secret, my life work. I am downcast by sadness. Rome is full of warring cults, Greek, African, Babylonian, Buddhistic; the writings of the great teachers, the masters, Heraclitus, Zeno, Anaxagoras, Plato, Socrates, Epictetus, Seneca, are overlaid with heretical emendations. The religion of my fellow-countrymen is a fiery furnace, Jerusalem a den of warring thieves. The rulers of earth are weary and turn a deaf ear on their peoples. The time is ripe for revolt. Sick of the accursed luxury and debauchery, fearful of the threatening barbarians from Asia and the boreal regions, who are hemming the civilized world, waiting like vultures for the first sign of weakness to destroy everything, the slaves in revolt—all these impending terrors assure me that the end of the old order is at hand. But what will become of the new if there is no central belief to steady the ensanguined hands of furious mobs? For years I have bethought me of a drama, a gigantic world-drama which shall embody all the myths of mankind, all the noblest thoughts of the philosophers. I shall take the Buddha myth, surely the supreme myth, and transpose its characters to Jerusalem. A humble Jew shall be my Buddha. He shall be my revenge on our conquerors; for my people have been trampled upon by the insolent Romans, and who knows—a Jewish God, a crucified God, may be worshipped in the stead of Jupiter and his vile pantheon of gods and goddesses! One God, the son of Jahveh who comes upon earth to save mankind, is crucified and killed, is resurrected and like Elijah is caught up to heaven in a fiery chariot. But you know the usual style of these Asiatic legends! They are all alike; a virgin birth, a miraculous life, and transfiguration. That sums up myths from Adonis to Krishna, from Krishna to Buddha; though Monotheism comes from the Hebrews, the Trinity from the Indians, and the logos was developed by Plato. Where I am original is that I make my hero a Jew—the Jews are still half-cracked enough to believe in the coming of a Messiah. And to compass a fine dramatic moment I have introduced an incident I once witnessed in Alexandria at the landing of King Agrippa, when the populace dressed up a vagabond named Karabas as a mock king and stuck upon his head papyrus leaves for a crown, in his hand a reed for a sceptre, and then saluted him as king. I shall make my Jew-God seized by the Jews, his own blood and kin, given over to the Romans, mocked, reviled, and set aside for some thief who shall be called Karabas. Then, rejected, he shall be crucified, he a god born of a virgin, by the very people who are looking for their Messiah. He is their Messiah; yet they know it not. They shall never know it. That shall be their tragedy, the tragedy of my race, which, notwithstanding the prophecies, turned its back upon the Messiah because he came not clothed in the purple of royalty. Is that not a magnificent idea for a drama?"

"Excellent," answered Hyzlo, in a critical tone; "but continue!"

"You seem without enthusiasm, Hyzlo. I tell you that AEschylus, Sophocles, or Euripides never conceived a story more infinitely dramatic or pathetic, or—thanks to my Hebraic blood—so suffused with tragic irony. I shall make a very effective tableau at the death; on some forbidding stony hill near Jerusalem I shall plant my crucified hero, and near him a converted courtesan—ah! what a master of the theatre I am!—in company with a handful of faithful disciples. The others have run away to save their cowardly skins in the tumult. The mobs that hailed him as King of the Jews now taunt him, after the manner of all mobs. His early life I shall borrow outright from the Buddha legends. He shall be born of a virgin; he shall live in the desert; as a child he shall confute learned doctors in the temple; and later in the desert he shall be tempted by a demon. All this is at hand. My chief point is the philosophies in which I shall submerge my characters.

"My hero shall be the logos of Heraclitus with the superadded authority of the Hebrew high priest. You may recall the fact that I greatly admire the Essenes and their system. My deity is a pure essence; not Jehovah the protector or avenger. The logos, or mediator, I have borrowed from the writings of the Greek philosophers. This logos returns to the bosom of God after the sacrifice. Greek philosophy combined with Hebraic moral principles! Ah! it is grand synthesis; Seneca with his conception of a perfected humanity, Lucretius, Manlius—who called, rightfully too, Epicurus a god—and Heraclitus with the first idea of a logos: all these ancient ideas I have worked into my romantic play, including the old cult of the Trinities; the Buddhistic: Buddha, Dharma, and Saingha; the Chinese: Heaven, Earth, and Emperor; the Babylonian: Ea, the father, Marduk, the son, and the Fire God, Gibil, who is also the Paraclete. So my philosophy is merely a continuation and modification of that taught by Heraclitus and Plato, but with a Jewish background—for mine is the only moral nation. The wisdom of the Rabbis, their Monotheism and ethics, are all there." His eyes were ablaze.

"You are very erudite, Philo Judaeus!" exclaimed his listener; "but, tell me, is there no actual foundation for your Jewish god?" Hyzlo eagerly awaited a reply, though he could not account for this curiosity.

"Yes," answered Philo, lightly, "there is, I freely acknowledge, a slight foundation. Some years ago in Jerusalem they arrested a poverty-stricken fanatic, the son of a Jewess. His father was said to have been an indigent and aged carpenter. This Joshua, or Ieshua, was driven out of Jerusalem, and he took refuge among a lot of poor fishermen on Lake Gennesareth. There he joined a sect called the Baptists, because their founder, a socialist named Ioakanaan, poured water on the heads of the converted. Ieshua never married and was suspected of idolatrous practices, which he had absorbed from hermits of the Egyptian Thebaid. Josephus, a wise friend and companion of my youth, wrote me these details. He said that Ieshua disappeared after his mad attempt to take Jerusalem by storm, riding—as is depicted the Bona Dea—on the back of a humble animal. Yet, if you wish to appeal to the common folk, make your hero a deposed king or divinity, who walks familiarly among the poor, as walked the gods at the dawn of time with the daughters of men. I depict my protagonist as a half-cracked Jew. I call him Iesus Christos—after Krishna; and this poor man's god proposes to redeem the world, to place the lowly in the seats of the mighty—he is an Anarchos, as they would say in Athens. He promises the Kingdom of God to those who follow him; but only a few do. He is the friend of outcasts, prostitutes, criminals. And though he does not triumph on earth, nevertheless he is the spiritual ruler of earth; he is the Son of the Trinity which comprises the Father and Holy Ghost. The contending forces to my hero will be incarnated by Pontius Pilatus, the Roman governor, and Judas of Kerioth, a very dangerous and powerful Hebrew politician—a man of very liberal ideas, one who believed in the supremacy of the West. What a glorious play it will make! I have named it The Third Kingdom, Hyzlo. What a glorious idea it is, Hyzlo—the greatest drama the world has ever witnessed!"

III

THE DOVE

"The greatest drama the world has ever witnessed" ... mumbled his disciple.... The sun still shone on the cold stone flagging, and upon the wall facing him hung the crucifix. But the motes no longer danced merrily in the light. Evening was setting in apace, and Hyzlo, accepting one dream as equal in veracity with the other, crossed to the embrasure and, his elbows on the sill, watched the sun—looking like a sulphur-coloured cymbal—sink behind the sky-line. He was still in the same attitude when the blue of the heavens—ah! but not that gorgeous, hard Alexandrian blue—melted into peacock and cool saffron hues. He mused aloud:—

"By the very nature of his mental organs man can never grasp reality. It is always the sensation, never the real thing, he feels. The metaphysicians are right. We can never know the actual world outside of ourselves. We are imprisoned in a dream cage; the globe itself is a cage of echoes. Science, instead of contradicting religion, has but affirmed its truths. Matter is radiant energy—matter is electric phenomenon. The germ-plasma from which we stem—the red clay of Genesis—is eternal. The individual is sacrificed to the species. The species never dies. And how beautifully logical is the order of our ancestry as demonstrated by the science of embryology. Fish, batrachians, reptiles, mammals; in which latter are included the marsupials as well as lemurs, primates, Man. And after what struggles Man assumed an erect position and looked into the eyes of his mate! After Man? Nietzsche preaches that man is a link between the primate and Superman; Superman—the angels! But intelligence in man may be an accident caused by over-nutrition, the brain developing from rich phosphors. If this were so—how would fall to earth our house of pride! Are we so close to the animal? But Quinton proves that after man in the zooelogical series comes the bird. Birds—half reptiles, half angels. Angels! Do evolution and revelation meet here on common ground? Or was Joachim, the Abbot of Flores, inspired when he wrote of the Third Kingdom, that Kingdom in which the empire of the flesh is swallowed up in the empire of the spirit; that Third Kingdom in which the twin-natured shall reign, as Ibsen declares; the Messiah—neither Emperor nor Redeemer, but the Emperor-God. The slime shall become sap and the sap become spirit! From gorilla to God! Man in the coming Third Kingdom may say: "I, too, am a god." But is this not blasphemous? And after the wheel of the universe has again revolved, will I see, as foresaw Nietzsche, the selfsame spider, the same moonlight? There is nothing new under the sun, says Ecclesiastes. Wretched man is never to know the entire truth but will be always at daggers drawn with his destiny. After classic Paganism came romantic Christianity; after the romantic will the pendulum swing back—or—alas! is there coming another horde of atheists with a new Attila at their head?"

He threw himself before the crucifix and sobbed.

"Lord Jesus, Our Christ! Thou art the real Christ and not the fiction of that supersubtle Greek-Jewish and boastful philosopher in Alexandria! Make for me, O God, a sign! Give me back in all its purity my faith; faith, noblest gift of all! Oh! to hear once more the thrilling of the harps divine, whereon the dawn plays, those precursors of the Eternal Harmony! Gloria in Excelsis." He remained prostrate, his heart no longer battered by doubts and swimming in blissful love for his crucified God. The celestial hurricane subsided in his bosom; he arose and again interrogated the heavens. The stars in the profound splendours of the sky stared at him like the naked eyes of houris. Suddenly a vast white cloud sailed over the edge of the horizon and as it approached his habitation assumed the shape of a monstrous dove, its fleecy wings moving in solemn rhythms. In the resurgence of his hopes this apparition was the coveted sign from the Almighty.

And flat upon the floor of his cell, his face abased in the dust, Hyzlo worshipped in epileptic frenzy, crying aloud, after the manner of the sad-tongued Preacher:—

"The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be!"



XI

THE HAUNTED HARPSICHORD

[In the Style of Mock-Mediaeval Fiction]

I told Michael to look sharply to his horse. It was dusk; a few bits of torn clouds, unresolved modulations of nebulous lace, trembled over the pink pit in the west, wherein had sunk the sun; and one evening star, silver pointed, told the tale of another spent day.

Michael was surly, I was impatient, and the groom, who lagged in the rear, whistled softly; but I knew that both men were tired and hungry, and so were the horses. The road, hard and free from dust, echoed the resilient hoof-falls of our beasts. The early evening was finely cool, for it was the month of September. We had lost our way. Green fields on either side, and before us the path declined down a steep slope, that lost itself in huddled foliage.

Michael spoke up:—

"We are astray. I knew this damnable excursion would lead to no good."

I gently chided him. "Pooh, you braggart! Even Arnold, who rides a brute a world too wide for him, has not uttered a complaint. Brave Michael, if her ladyship heard you now!"

His face grew hard as he muttered:—

"Her ladyship! may all the saints in the calendar watch over her ladyship! But I wish she had never taken you at your hot-headed word. Then we would not have launched upon this madcap adventure."

I grew stern. "Her ladyship, I bid you remember, my worthy man, is our mistress, and it ill behooves you to question her commands, especially in the presence of a groom."

Michael growled, and then the sudden turn in the road startled our horses on a gallop, and for a quarter of an hour we thrashed our way ahead in the twilight. We had entered a small thicket when an ejaculation from Arnold—who had been riding abreast—brought us all up to a sharp standstill.

"There's a light," said the groom, in a most tranquil manner, pointing his heavy crop stick to the left. How we had missed seeing the inn from the crest of the hill was strange. A hundred yards away stood a low, red-tiled house, with lights burning downstairs, and an unmistakable air of hostlery for man and beast. We veered at once in our course, and in a few minutes were hallooing for the host or the hostler.

"Now I hope that you are satisfied, my friend," I said exultantly to Michael, who only grunted as he swung off his animal. Arnold followed, and soon we were chatting with an amiable old man in a white cap and apron, who had run out of the house when we shouted.

"Amboise?" he answered me when I told him of our destination. "Amboise; why, sirrah, you are a good five leagues from Amboise! Step within and remain here for the night. I have plenty of convenience for you and your suite."

I glanced at Michael, but he was busily employed in loosening his pistols from the holster, and Arnold, in company with a lame man, led the horses to the stable. There was little use in vain regrets. The other had the start of the half-day, and surely we could go no further that night. I gritted my teeth as the little fat landlord led us into the house.

In half an hour we were smoking our pipes before a lively fire—the night had grown chilly—and enjoying silent recollections of a round of beef and several bottles of fortifying burgundy.

Our groom had gone to bed, and I soon saw that I could get nothing out of Michael for the present. He stared moodily into the fire. I noticed that his pistols were handy. The host came in and asked my permission to join us. He felt lonely, he explained, for he was a widower, and his only son was away in the world somewhere. I was very glad to ease myself with gossip; my heart was not quite at peace with this expedition of ours. I knew what her ladyship asked of us was much, so much that only a bold spirit and a thirst for the unknown could pardon the folly of the chase.

I bade the innkeeper to take a seat at the fire, and soon we fell to chatting like ladies' maids. He was a Norman and curious as a cat. He opened his inquiries delicately.

"You have ridden far and fast to-day, my sir. Your horses were all but done for. Yet there is no cloud of war in the sky and you are too far from Paris to be honourable envoys. I hope you like our country?"

I dodged his tentative attempt at prying by asking him a question myself.

"You don't seem to have many guests, good host? Yet do I hardly wonder at it. You are all but swallowed up in the green and too far from the main travelled road."

The little man sighed and said in sad accents: "Too true, yet the Scarlet Dragon was once a thriving place, a fine money-breeding house. Before my son went away—"

I interrupted him. "Your son, what is he, and where is he now?"

The other became visibly agitated and puffed at his pipe some minutes before replying.

"Alas! worthy sir," he said at last in a lower key, "my son dare not return here for reasons I cannot divulge. Indeed, this was no cheerful house for the boy. He had his ambitions and he left me to pursue them."

"What does he do, this youngster?" interrupted Michael, in his gruffest tones. The landlord started.

"Indeed, good sir, I could not tell you, for I know not myself."

"Humph!" grunted my sullen companion; but I observed his suspicious little eyes fixed persistently on the man of the inn.

I turned the talk, which had threatened to languish. The old man did not relish the questions about his son, and began deploring the poor crops. At this juncture an indefinable feeling that we were losing time in stopping at this lonely place came over me. I am not superstitious, but I swear that I felt ill at ease and confused in my plans.

On bended knee I had sworn to my lady that I would bring back to her the fugitive unharmed, and I would never return to her empty-handed, confessing failure. Michael's queer behaviour disconcerted me. From the outset of the chase he had turned sour and inaccessible, and now he was so ill-tempered that I feared he would pick a quarrel at the slightest provocation with our host.

With a strange sinking at the heart I asked about our horses.

"They will be attended to, my sirs; my servant is a good boy. He is handy, although he can't get about lively, for he was thrown in a turnip field from our only donkey."

I was in no mood for this sort of chatter and quizzed the fellow as to our beds.

"We must be off early in the morning; we have important business to transact at Amboise before the sun sets to-morrow," I testily remarked.

"At Amboise—h'm, h'm! Well, I don't mind telling you that you can reach Amboise by stroke of noon; and so you have business at Amboise, eh?"

I saw Michael's brow lower at this wheedling little man's question, and answered rather hastily and imprudently:—

"Yes, business, my good man, important business, as you will see when we return this road to-morrow night with the prize we are after."

Michael jumped up and cried "Damnation!" and I at once saw my mistake. The landlord's manner instantly altered. He looked at me triumphantly and said:—

"Beds, beds! but, my honoured sirs, I have no beds in the house. I forgot to tell you that no guest has been upstairs in years, for certain reasons. Indeed, sirs, I am so embarrassed! I should have told you at once I have only a day trade. My regular customers would not dare to stop here over night, as the house,"—here a cunning, even sinister, look spread over the fellow's fat face—"the house bears an evil reputation."

Michael started and crossed himself, but not I. I suspected some deep devilry and determined to discover it.

"So ho? Haunted, eh? Well, ghosts and old women's stories shan't make me budge until dawn. Go fetch more wine and open it here, mine host of the Scarlet Dragon," I roared. The little man was nonplussed, hesitated a moment, and then trotted off.

I saw that Michael was at last aroused.

"What diabolical fooling is this? If the place is haunted, I'm off."

"I'm damned if I am," I said quite bravely, and more wine appeared. We both sat down.

The air had become nipping, and the blaze on the hearth was reassuring. Besides, the wind was querulous, and I didn't fancy a ride at midnight, even if my lady's quest were an urgent one.

Michael held his peace as the wine was poured out, and I insisted on the landlord drinking with us. We finished two bottles, and I sent for more. I foresaw that sleep was out of the question, and so determined to make a night of it.

"Touching upon this ghost," I began, when the other bade me in God's name not to jest. There were some things, he said, not to be broached in honest Christian company.

"A fig for your scruples!" I cried, emptying my glass; my head was hot and I felt bold. "A fig, I say, for your bogie-man nonsense! Tell me at what time doth this phantom choose to show itself." The landlord shivered and drew his seat closer to the fire.

"Oh, sir, do not jest! What I tell you is no matter for rude laughter. Begging your pardon for my offer, if you will be patient, I will relate to you the story, and how my misfortune came from this awful visitant."

Even Michael seemed placated, and after I nodded my head in token of assent the landlord related to us this story:—

* * * * *

Once upon a time, sirs, when the great and good Louis, sixteenth of his name, was King of France, this domain was the property of the Duke of Langlois. The duke was proud and rich, and prouder and haughtier was his duchess, who was born Berri. Ah! they were mighty folk then, before the Revolution came with its sharp axes to clip off their heads. This inn was the stable of the chateau, which stood off yonder in the woods. Alas! nothing remains of it to-day but a few blackened foundations, for it was burned to the earth by the red devils in '93. But at the time I speak of, the chateau was a big, rich palace, full of gay folk; all the nobility came there, and the duchess ruled the land.

She was crazy for music, and to such lengths did she go in her madness that she even invited as her guests celebrated composers and singers. The duke was old-fashioned and hated those crazy people who lived only to hum and strum. He would have none of them, and quarrels with his duchess were of daily occurrence. Indeed, sirs, so bad did it become that he swore that he would leave the house if Messire Gluck, or Messire Piccini, or any of the other strolling vagabonds—so the duke called them—entered his chateau. And he kept his word, did the duke. The Chevalier Gluck, a fine, shapely man, was invited down by the duchess and amused her and her guests by playing his wonderful tunes on the beautiful harpsichord in the great salon.

The duke would have none of this nonsense and went to Paris, where he amused himself gambling and throwing gold into his mistresses' laps. The duchess kept right on, and then the gossips of the neighbourhood began to wag their busy tongues. The lady of the chateau was getting very fine pleasure from the company of the handsome Austrian chevalier. It was whispered that the Queen Marie Antoinette had looked with favourable eyes upon the composer, and, furthermore, had lent him certain moneys to further his schemes for reforming the stage.

Reform, forsooth! all he cared for was the company of the duchess, and he vowed that he could make better music at the chateau than up in noisy Paris. On a fine afternoon it is said that it was no uncommon sight to see the chevalier, all togged up in his bravest court costume, sword and all, sitting at his harpsichord, playing ravishing music. This was out in the pretty little park back of the chateau, and the duchess would sit at Gluck's side and pour out champagne for him. All this may have been idle talk, but at last the duke got wind of the rumours, and one night he surprised the pair playing a duo at the harpsichord, and stabbed them both dead.

Since then the chateau was burned down, but the place has been haunted. I, myself, good gentlemen, have heard ghostly music, and I swear to you—

"Oh, my God, listen, listen!"

"What pagan nonsense!" blurted out Michael.

I cautioned silence, and we all listened. The old man had slid off his chair, and his face was chalky white. Michael's ugly mouth was half opened in his black beard, and I confess that I felt rather chilly.

Music, faint, tinkling, we certainly heard. It came with the wind in little sobs, and then silence settled upon us.

"It's the Chevalier Gluck, and he is playing to his duchess out in the fields. See, I will open the door and show you," whispered the fat landlord.

He went slowly to the door, and we followed him breathlessly. The door was pushed open, and we peered out. The wind was still high, and the moon rode among rolling boulders of yellow, fleecy clouds.

"There, there, over yonder, look; Mother of Christ, look at the ghost!" the old man pointed a shaking hand.

Just then the moonlight was blackened by a big cloud, and we heard the tinkling music of a harpsichord again, but could see naught. The sounds were plainer now, and presently resolved into the rhythmic accents of a gavotte. But it seemed far away and very plaintive!

"Hark," said Michael, in a hoarse voice. "That's the gavotte from Pagliacci. Listen! Don't you remember it?"

"Pshaw!" I said roughly, for my nerves were all astir. "It's the Alceste music of Gluck."

"Look, look, gentlemen!" called our host, and as the moon glowed again in the blue we saw at the edge of the forest a white figure, saw it, I swear, although it vanished at once and the music ceased. I started to follow, but Michael and the old man seized my arms, the door was closed with a crash, and we found ourselves staring blankly into the fire, all feeling a bit shaken up.

It was Michael's turn to speak. "You may do what you please, but I stay here for the night, no sleep for me," and he placed his pistols on his knee.

I looked at the landlord and I thought I saw an expression of disappointment on his face, but I was not sure. He made some excuse about being tired and went out of the room. We spent the rest of the night in gloomy silence. We did not speak five words, for I saw that conversation only irritated my companion.

At dawn we walked into the sweet air and I called loudly for Arnold, who looked sleepy and out of sorts when he appeared. The fat old man came to see us off and smilingly accepted the silver I put into his hand for our night's reckoning.

"Au revoir, my old friend," I said as I pressed the unnecessary spur into my horse's flank. "Au revoir, and look out for the ghost of the gallant Chevalier Gluck. Tell him, with my compliments, not to play such latter-day tunes as the gavotte from Pagliacci."

"Oh, I'll tell him, you may be sure," said he, quite dryly.

We saluted and dashed down the road to Amboise, where we hoped to capture our rare prize.

We had ridden about a mile when a dog attempted to cross our path. We all but ran the poor brute down.

"Why, it's lame!" exclaimed Arnold.

"Oh, if it were but a lame man, instead of a dog!" fervently said the groom, who was in the secret of our quest.

A horrid oath rang out on the smoky morning air. Michael, his wicked eyes bulging fiercely, his thick neck swollen with rage, was cursing like the army in Flanders, as related by dear old Uncle Toby.

"Lame man! why, oddsbodkins, that hostler was lame! Oh, fooled, by God! cheated, fooled, swindled and tricked by that scamp and scullion of the inn! Oh, we've been nicely swindled by an old wives' tale of a ghost!"

I stared in sheer amazement at Michael, wondering if the strangely spent night had upset his reason. He could only splutter out between his awful curses:—

"Gluck, the rascal, the ghost, the man we're after! That harpsichord—the lying knave—that tune—I swear it wasn't Gluck—oh, the rascal has escaped again! The ghost story—the villain was told to scare us out of the house—to put us off the track. A thousand devils chase the scamp!" And Michael let his head drop on the pommel of his saddle as he fairly groaned in the bitterness of defeat.

I had just begun a dignified rebuke, for Michael's language was inexcusable, when it flashed upon me that we had been, indeed, duped.

"Ah," I cried, in my fury, "of course we were taken in! Of course his son was the lame hostler, the very prize we expected to bag! O Lord! what will we say to my lady? We are precious sharp! I ought to have known better. That stuff he told us! Langlois, pshaw, Berri—pouf! A Berri never married a Langlois, and I might have remembered that Gluck wasn't assassinated by a jealous duke. What shall we do?"

We all stood in the middle of the road, gazing stupidly at the lame dog that gave us the clue. Then Arnold timidly suggested:—

"Hadn't we better go back to the inn?"

Instantly our horses' heads were turned and we galloped madly back on our old tracks. Not a word was uttered until we reined up in front of the lonely house, which looked more haunted by daylight than it did the night before.

"What did I tell you?" suddenly cried Michael.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Over there, you blind bat!" he said, coarsely and impatiently; and pulling out his pistol he fired thrice, and a low, melodious sound followed the reports of his weapon. When the smoke cleared away I saw that he had hit an old harpsichord which stood against a tree, facing the house.

"The ghost!" we yelled, and then we laughed consumedly. But the shots that winged the old-fashioned instrument had a greater result. The fat host appeared on the edge of the forest, and he waved a large napkin as a flag of truce. With him was the lame hostler.

"Mercy, gentlemen, mercy, we beseech you!" he cried, and we soon surrounded both and bound them securely.

"You will pay dearly for the trick you put upon us, my man," said Michael, grimly, and, walking our horses, we went by easy stages toward the castle, towing our prisoners along.

When I fetched the lame man to my lady, her face glowed with joy, and her Parisian eyes grew brilliant with victory.

"So you tried to escape?" she cruelly asked of the poor, cowering wretch. "You will never get another chance, I'll warrant me. Go, let the servants put you to work in the large music room first. Begin with the grands, then follow with the uprights. Thank you, gentlemen both, for the courage and finesse you displayed in this desperate quest. I'll see that you are both suitably rewarded." I fancied that Michael regarded me sardonically, but he held his peace about the night's adventures.

We had indeed reason to feel flattered at the success of the dangerous expedition. Had we not captured, more by sheer good luck than strategy, the only piano-tuner in mediaeval France?



XII

THE TRAGIC WALL

I

BY THE DARK POOL

It was not so high, the wall, as massive, not so old as moss-covered. After Rudolph Cot, the painter, had achieved celebrity with his historical canvas, The Death of the Antique World, now in the Louvre, he bought the estate of Chalfontaine, which lies at the junction of two highroads: one leading to Ecouen, the other to Villiers-le-Bel. Almost touching the end of the park on the Ecouen side there is a little lake, hardly larger than a pool, and because of its melancholy aspect—sorrowful willows hem it about, drooping into stagnant waters—Monsieur Cot had christened the spot: The Dark Tarn of Auber. He was a fanatical lover of Poe, reading him in the Baudelaire translation, and openly avowing his preference for the French version of the great American's tales. That he could speak only five words of English did not deter his associates from considering him a profound critic of literature.

After his death his property and invested wealth passed into the hands of his youthful widow, a charming lady, a native of Burgundy, and—if gossip did not lie—a former model of the artist; indeed, some went so far as to assert that her face could be seen in her late husband's masterpiece—the figure of a young Greek slave attired as a joyous bacchante. But her friends always denied this. Her dignified bearing, sincere sorrow for her dead husband, and her motherly solicitude for her daughter left no doubt as to the value of all petty talk. It was her custom of summer evenings to walk to the pool, and with her daughter Berenice she would sit on the broad wall and watch the moon rise, or acknowledge the respectful salutations of the country folk with their bran-speckled faces. In those days Villiers-le-Bel was a dull town a half-hour from Paris on the Northern Railway, and about two miles from the station.

The widow was not long without offers. Her usual answer was to point out the tiny Berenice, playing in the garden with her nurse. Then a landscape painter, one of the Barbizon group, appeared, and, as a former associate of Rudolph Cot, and a man of means and position, his suit was successful. To the astonishment of Villiers-le-Bel, Madame Valerie Cot became Madame Theophile Mineur; on the day of the wedding little Berenice—named after a particularly uncanny heroine of Poe's by his relentless French admirer—scratched the long features of her stepfather. The entire town accepted this as a distressing omen and it was not deceived; Berenice Cot grew up in the likeness of a determined young lady whose mother weakly endured her tyranny, whose new father secretly feared her.

At the age of eighteen she had refused nearly all the young painters between Ecouen and Domaine de Vallieres; and had spent several summers in England, and four years at a Lausanne school. She feared neither man nor mouse, and once, when she saw a famous Polish pianist walking on his terrace at Morges, she took him by the hand, asked for a lock of his hair, and was not refused by the amiable virtuoso. After that Berenice was the acknowledged leader of her class. The teachers trembled before her sparkling, wrathful black eyes. At home she ruled the household, and as she was an heiress no one dared to contradict her. Her contempt for her stepfather was only matched by her impatience in the company of young men. She pretended—so her intimates said—to loathe them. "Frivolous idiots" was her mildest form of reproof when an ambitious boy would trench upon her pet art theories or attempt to flirt. She called her mother "the lamb" and her stepfather "the parrot"—he had a long curved nose; all together she was very unlike the pattern French girl. Her favourite lounging place was the wall, and after she had draped it with a scarlet shawl and perched herself upon it, she was only too happy to worry any unfortunate man who presented himself.

The night Hubert Falcroft called at Chalfontaine Mademoiselle Elise Evergonde told him that her cousin, Madame Mineur, and Berenice had gone in the direction of the pool. He had walked over from the station, preferring the open air to the stuffy train. So a few vigorous steps brought to his view mother and daughter as they slowly moved, encircling each other's waist. The painter paused and noted the general loveliness of the picture; the setting sun had splashed the blue basin overhead with delicate pinks, and in the fretted edges of some high floating cloud-fleece there was a glint of fire. The smooth grass parquet swept gracefully to the semicircle of dark green trees, against the foliage of which the virginal white of the gowns was transposed to an ivory tone by the blue and green keys in sky and forest.

"By Jove!" he exclaimed, "paint in the foreground a few peacocks languidly dragging their gorgeous tails, and you have a Watteau or a Fragonard—no, a Monticelli! Only, Monticelli would have made the peacocks the central motive with the women and trees as an arabesque."

He was a portraitist who solemnly believed in the principle of decoration—character must take its chances when he painted. Falcroft was successful with women's heads, which he was fond of depicting in misty shadows framed by luxurious accessories. They called him the Master of Chiffon, at Julien's; when he threw overboard his old friends and joined the new crowd, their indignation was great. His title now was the Ribbon Impressionist, and at the last salon of the Independents, Falcroft had the mortification of seeing a battalion of his former companions at anchor in front of his picture, The Lady with the Cat, which they reviled for at least an hour. He was an American who had lived his life long in France, and only showed race in his nervous, brilliant technic and his fondness for bizarre subjects....

He had not stood many minutes when a young voice saluted him:—

"Ah, Monsieur Falcroft. Come, come quickly. Mamma is delighted to see you!" His mental picture was decomposed by the repeated waving of the famous shawl, which only came into view as Berenice turned. Hubert regretted that she had not worn it—the peacocks could have been exchanged for its vivid note of scarlet. Pretending not to have heard her speech, he gravely saluted the mother and daughter. But Berenice was unabashed.

"Mamma was wondering if you would visit us to-night, Monsieur Falcroft, when I saw you staring at us as if we were ghosts." A burst of malicious laughter followed.

"Berenice, Berenice," remonstrated her mother, "when will you cease such tasteless remarks!" She blushed in her pretty matronly fashion and put her hand on her daughter's mouth.

"Don't mind her, Madame Mineur! I like to meet a French girl with a little unconventionality. Berenice reminds me now of an English girl—"

"Or one of your own countrywomen!" interrupted Berenice; "and please—Miss, after this, I am a grown young lady." He joined in the merriment. She was not to be resisted and he wished—no, he did not wish—but he thought, that if he were younger, what gay days he might have. Yet he admired her mother much more. Elaine Cot-Mineur was an old-fashioned woman, gentle, reserved, and at the age when her beauty had a rare autumnal quality—the very apex of its perfection; in a few years, in a year, perhaps, the change would come and crabbed winter set in. He particularly admired the oval of her face, her soft brown eyes, and the harmonious contour of her head. He saw her instantly with a painter's imagination—filmy lace must modulate about her head like a dreamy aureole; across her figure a scarf of yellow silk; in her hands he would paint a crystal vase, and in the vase one rose with a heart of sulphur. And her eyes would gaze as if she saw the symbol of her age—the days slipping away like ropes of sand from her grasp. He could make a fascinating portrait he thought, and he said so. Instantly another peal of irritating laughter came from Berenice:—

"Don't tell papa. He is so jealous of the portrait he tried to make of mamma last summer. You never saw it! It's awful. It's hid away behind a lot of canvases in the atelier. It looks like a Cezanne still-life. I'll show it to you sometime." Her mother revealed annoyance by compressing her lips. Falcroft said nothing. They had skirted the pool in single file, for the path was narrow and the denseness of the trees caused a partial obscurity. When they reached the wall, the moon was rising in the eastern sky.

"L'heure exquise," murmured Madame Mineur. Berenice wandered down the road and Hubert helped her mother to the wall, where he sat beside her and looked at her. He was a big, muscular man with shaven cheeks, dark eyes, and plenty of tumbled hair, in which flecks of gray were showing. He had been a classmate of Theophile Mineur, for whose talents or personality he had never betrayed much liking. But one day at a dejeuner, which had prolonged itself until evening, Mineur insisted on his old friend—the Burgundy was old, too—accompanying him to Villiers-le-Bel, and not without a motive. He knew Falcroft to be rich, and he would not be sorry to see his capricious and mischievous stepdaughter well settled. But Falcroft immediately paid court to Madame Mineur, and Berenice had to content herself with watching him and making fun to her stepfather of the American painter's height and gestures. The visit had been repeated. Berenice was amused by a dinner en ville and a theatre party, and then Hubert Falcroft became a friend of the household. When Mineur was away painting, the visits were not interrupted.