Villa Rubein, and Other Stories

TO MY MOTHER

A KNIGHT

I

At Monte Carlo, in the spring of the year 189-, I used to notice an old fellow in a grey suit and sunburnt straw hat with a black ribbon. Every morning at eleven o’clock, he would come down to the Place, followed by a brindled German boarhound, walk once or twice round it, and seat himself on a bench facing the casino. There he would remain in the sun, with his straw hat tilted forward, his thin legs apart, his brown hands crossed between them, and the dog’s nose resting on his knee. After an hour or more he would get up, and, stooping a little from the waist, walk slowly round the Place and return up hill. Just before three, he would come down again in the same clothes and go into the casino, leaving the dog outside.

One afternoon, moved by curiosity, I followed him. He passed through the hall without looking at the gambling-rooms, and went into the concert. It became my habit after that to watch for him. When he sat in the Place I could see him from the window of my room. The chief puzzle to me was the matter of his nationality.

His lean, short face had a skin so burnt that it looked like leather; his jaw was long and prominent, his chin pointed, and he had hollows in his cheeks. There were wrinkles across his forehead; his eyes were brown; and little white moustaches were brushed up from the corners of his lips. The back of his head bulged out above the lines of his lean neck and high, sharp shoulders; his grey hair was cropped quite close. In the Marseilles buffet, on the journey out, I had met an Englishman, almost his counterpart in features – but somehow very different! This old fellow had nothing of the other’s alert, autocratic self-sufficiency. He was quiet and undemonstrative, without looking, as it were, insulated against shocks and foreign substances. He was certainly no Frenchman. His eyes, indeed, were brown, but hazel-brown, and gentle – not the red-brown sensual eye of the Frenchman. An American? But was ever an American so passive? A German? His moustache was certainly brushed up, but in a modest, almost pathetic way, not in the least Teutonic. Nothing seemed to fit him. I gave him up, and named him “the Cosmopolitan.”

Leaving at the end of April, I forgot him altogether. In the same month, however, of the following year I was again at Monte Carlo, and going one day to the concert found myself seated next this same old fellow. The orchestra was playing Meyerbeer’s “Prophete,” and my neighbour was asleep, snoring softly. He was dressed in the same grey suit, with the same straw hat (or one exactly like it) on his knees, and his hands crossed above it. Sleep had not disfigured him – his little white moustache was still brushed up, his lips closed; a very good and gentle expression hovered on his face. A curved mark showed on his right temple, the scar of a cut on the side of his neck, and his left hand was covered by an old glove, the little finger of which was empty. He woke up when the march was over and brisked up his moustache.

The next thing on the programme was a little thing by Poise from Le joli Gilles, played by Mons. Corsanego on the violin. Happening to glance at my old neighbour, I saw a tear caught in the hollow of his cheek, and another just leaving the corner of his eye; there was a faint smile on his lips. Then came an interval; and while orchestra and audience were resting, I asked him if he were fond of music. He looked up without distrust, bowed, and answered in a thin, gentle voice: “Certainly. I know nothing about it, play no instrument, could never sing a note; but fond of it! Who would not be?” His English was correct enough, but with an emphasis not quite American nor quite foreign. I ventured to remark that he did not care for Meyerbeer. He smiled.

“Ah!” he said, “I was asleep? Too bad of me. He is a little noisy – I know so little about music. There is Bach, for instance. Would you believe it, he gives me no pleasure? A great misfortune to be no musician!” He shook his head.

I murmured, “Bach is too elevating for you perhaps.”

“To me,” he answered, “any music I like is elevating. People say some music has a bad effect on them. I never found any music that gave me a bad thought – no – no – quite the opposite; only sometimes, as you see, I go to sleep. But what a lovely instrument the violin!” A faint flush came on his parched cheeks. “The human soul that has left the body. A curious thing, distant bugles at night have given me the same feeling.” The orchestra was now coming back, and, folding his hands, my neighbour turned his eyes towards them. When the concert was over we came out together. Waiting at the entrance was his dog.

“You have a beautiful dog!”

“Ah! yes, Freda, mia cara, da su mano!” The dog squatted on her haunches, and lifted her paw in the vague, bored way of big dogs when requested to perform civilities. She was a lovely creature – the purest brindle, without a speck of white, and free from the unbalanced look of most dogs of her breed.

“Basta! basta!” He turned to me apologetically. “We have agreed to speak Italian; in that way I keep up the language; astonishing the number of things that dog will understand!” I was about to take my leave, when he asked if I would walk a little way with him – “If you are free, that is.” We went up the street with Freda on the far side of her master.

“Do you never ‘play’ here?” I asked him.

“Play? No. It must be very interesting; most exciting, but as a matter of fact, I can’t afford it. If one has very little, one is too nervous.”

He had stopped in front of a small hairdresser’s shop. “I live here,” he said, raising his hat again. “Au revoir! – unless I can offer you a glass of tea. It’s all ready. Come! I’ve brought you out of your way; give me the pleasure!”

I have never met a man so free from all self-consciousness, and yet so delicate and diffident the combination is a rare one. We went up a steep staircase to a room on the second floor. My companion threw the shutters open, setting all the flies buzzing. The top of a plane-tree was on a level with the window, and all its little brown balls were dancing, quite close, in the wind. As he had promised, an urn was hissing on a table; there was also a small brown teapot, some sugar, slices of lemon, and glasses. A bed, washstand, cupboard, tin trunk, two chairs, and a small rug were all the furniture. Above the bed a sword in a leather sheath was suspended from two nails. The photograph of a girl stood on the closed stove. My host went to the cupboard and produced a bottle, a glass, and a second spoon. When the cork was drawn, the scent of rum escaped into the air. He sniffed at it and dropped a teaspoonful into both glasses.

“This is a trick I learned from the Russians after Plevna; they had my little finger, so I deserved something in exchange.” He looked round; his eyes, his whole face, seemed to twinkle. “I assure you it was worth it – makes all the difference. Try!” He poured off the tea.

“Had you a sympathy with the Turks?”

“The weaker side – ” He paused abruptly, then added: “But it was not that.” Over his face innumerable crow’s-feet had suddenly appeared, his eyes twitched; he went on hurriedly, “I had to find something to do just then – it was necessary.” He stared into his glass; and it was some time before I ventured to ask if he had seen much fighting.

“Yes,” he replied gravely, “nearly twenty years altogether; I was one of Garibaldi’s Mille in ‘60.”

“Surely you are not Italian?”

He leaned forward with his hands on his knees. “I was in Genoa at that time learning banking; Garibaldi was a wonderful man! One could not help it.” He spoke quite simply. “You might say it was like seeing a little man stand up to a ring of great hulking fellows; I went, just as you would have gone, if you’d been there. I was not long with them – our war began; I had to go back home.” He said this as if there had been but one war since the world began. “In ‘60,” he mused, “till ‘65. Just think of it! The poor country. Why, in my State, South Carolina – I was through it all – nobody could be spared there – we were one to three.”

“I suppose you have a love of fighting?”

“H’m!” he said, as if considering the idea for the first time. “Sometimes I fought for a living, and sometimes – because I was obliged; one must try to be a gentleman. But won’t you have some more?”

I refused more tea and took my leave, carrying away with me a picture of the old fellow looking down from the top of the steep staircase, one hand pressed to his back, the other twisting up those little white moustaches, and murmuring, “Take care, my dear sir, there’s a step there at the corner.”

“To be a gentleman!” I repeated in the street, causing an old French lady to drop her parasol, so that for about two minutes we stood bowing and smiling to each other, then separated full of the best feeling.

II

A week later I found myself again seated next him at a concert. In the meantime I had seen him now and then, but only in passing. He seemed depressed. The corners of his lips were tightened, his tanned cheeks had a greyish tinge, his eyes were restless; and, between two numbers of the programme, he murmured, tapping his fingers on his hat, “Do you ever have bad days? Yes? Not pleasant, are they?”

Then something occurred from which all that I have to tell you followed. There came into the concert-hall the heroine of one of those romances, crimes, follies, or irregularities, call it what you will, which had just attracted the “world’s” stare. She passed us with her partner, and sat down in a chair a few rows to our right. She kept turning her head round, and at every turn I caught the gleam of her uneasy eyes. Some one behind us said: “The brazen baggage!”

My companion turned full round, and glared at whoever it was who had spoken. The change in him was quite remarkable. His lips were drawn back from his teeth; he frowned; the scar on his temple had reddened.

“Ah!” he said to me. “The hue and cry! Contemptible! How I hate it! But you wouldn’t understand – !” he broke off, and slowly regained his usual air of self-obliteration; he even seemed ashamed, and began trying to brush his moustaches higher than ever, as if aware that his heat had robbed them of neatness.

“I’m not myself, when I speak of such matters,” he said suddenly; and began reading his programme, holding it upside down. A minute later, however, he said in a peculiar voice: “There are people to be found who object to vivisecting animals; but the vivisection of a woman, who minds that? Will you tell me it’s right, that because of some tragedy like this – believe me, it is always a tragedy – we should hunt down a woman? That her fellow-women should make an outcast of her? That we, who are men, should make a prey of her? If I thought that…” Again he broke off, staring very hard in front of him. “It is we who make them what they are; and even if that is not so – why! if I thought there was a woman in the world I could not take my hat off to – I – I – couldn’t sleep at night.” He got up from his seat, put on his old straw hat with trembling fingers, and, without a glance back, went out, stumbling over the chair-legs.

I sat there, horribly disturbed; the words, “One must try to be a gentleman!” haunting me. When I came out, he was standing by the entrance with one hand on his hip and the other on his dog. In that attitude of waiting he was such a patient figure; the sun glared down and showed the threadbare nature of his clothes and the thinness of his brown hands, with their long fingers and nails yellow from tobacco. Seeing me he came up the steps again, and raised his hat.

“I am glad to have caught you; please forget all that.” I asked if he would do me the honour of dining at my hotel.

“Dine?” he repeated with the sort of smile a child gives if you offer him a box of soldiers; “with the greatest pleasure. I seldom dine out, but I think I can muster up a coat. Yes – yes – and at what time shall I come? At half-past seven, and your hotel is – ? Good! I shall be there. Freda, mia cara, you will be alone this evening. You do not smoke caporal, I fear. I find it fairly good; though it has too much bite.” He walked off with Freda, puffing at his thin roll of caporal.

Once or twice he stopped, as if bewildered or beset by some sudden doubt or memory; and every time he stopped, Freda licked his hand. They disappeared round the corner of the street, and I went to my hotel to see about dinner. On the way I met Jules le Ferrier, and asked him to come too.

“My faith, yes!” he said, with the rosy pessimism characteristic of the French editor. “Man must dine!”

At half-past six we assembled. My “Cosmopolitan” was in an old frock-coat braided round the edges, buttoned high and tight, defining more than ever the sharp lines of his shoulders and the slight kink of his back; he had brought with him, too, a dark-peaked cap of military shape, which he had evidently selected as more fitting to the coat than a straw hat. He smelled slightly of some herb.

We sat down to dinner, and did not rise for two hours. He was a charming guest, praised everything he ate – not with commonplaces, but in words that made you feel it had given him real pleasure. At first, whenever Jules made one of his caustic remarks, he looked quite pained, but suddenly seemed to make up his mind that it was bark, not bite; and then at each of them he would turn to me and say, “Aha! that’s good – isn’t it?” With every glass of wine he became more gentle and more genial, sitting very upright, and tightly buttoned-in; while the little white wings of his moustache seemed about to leave him for a better world.

In spite of the most leading questions, however, we could not get him to talk about himself, for even Jules, most cynical of men, had recognised that he was a hero of romance. He would answer gently and precisely, and then sit twisting his moustaches, perfectly unconscious that we wanted more. Presently, as the wine went a little to his head, his thin, high voice grew thinner, his cheeks became flushed, his eyes brighter; at the end of dinner he said: “I hope I have not been noisy.”

We assured him that he had not been noisy enough. “You’re laughing at me,” he answered. “Surely I’ve been talking all the time!”

“Mon Dieu!” said Jules, “we have been looking for some fables of your wars; but nothing – nothing, not enough to feed a frog!”

The old fellow looked troubled.

“To be sure!” he mused. “Let me think! there is that about Colhoun at Gettysburg; and there’s the story of Garibaldi and the Miller.” He plunged into a tale, not at all about himself, which would have been extremely dull, but for the conviction in his eyes, and the way he stopped and commented. “So you see,” he ended, “that’s the sort of man Garibaldi was! I could tell you another tale of him.” Catching an introspective look in Jules’s eye, however, I proposed taking our cigars over to the cafe opposite.

“Delightful!” the old fellow said: “We shall have a band and the fresh air, and clear consciences for our cigars. I cannot like this smoking in a room where there are ladies dining.”

He walked out in front of us, smoking with an air of great enjoyment. Jules, glowing above his candid shirt and waistcoat, whispered to me, “Mon cher Georges, how he is good!” then sighed, and added darkly: “The poor man!”

We sat down at a little table. Close by, the branches of a plane-tree rustled faintly; their leaves hung lifeless, speckled like the breasts of birds, or black against the sky; then, caught by the breeze, fluttered suddenly.

The old fellow sat, with head thrown back, a smile on his face, coming now and then out of his enchanted dreams to drink coffee, answer our questions, or hum the tune that the band was playing. The ash of his cigar grew very long. One of those bizarre figures in Oriental garb, who, night after night, offer their doubtful wares at a great price, appeared in the white glare of a lamp, looked with a furtive smile at his face, and glided back, discomfited by its unconsciousness. It was a night for dreams! A faint, half-eastern scent in the air, of black tobacco and spice; few people as yet at the little tables, the waiters leisurely, the band soft! What was he dreaming of, that old fellow, whose cigar-ash grew so long? Of youth, of his battles, of those things that must be done by those who try to be gentlemen; perhaps only of his dinner; anyway of something gilded in vague fashion as the light was gilding the branches of the plane-tree.

Jules pulled my sleeve: “He sleeps.” He had smilingly dropped off; the cigar-ash – that feathery tower of his dreams – had broken and fallen on his sleeve. He awoke, and fell to dusting it.

The little tables round us began to fill. One of the bandsmen played a czardas on the czymbal. Two young Frenchmen, talking loudly, sat down at the adjoining table. They were discussing the lady who had been at the concert that afternoon.

“It’s a bet,” said one of them, “but there’s the present man. I take three weeks, that’s enough ‘elle est declassee; ce n’est que le premier pas – ’”

My old friend’s cigar fell on the table. “Monsieur,” he stammered, “you speak of a lady so, in a public place?”

The young man stared at him. “Who is this person?” he said to his companion.

My guest took up Jules’s glove that lay on the table; before either of us could raise a finger, he had swung it in the speaker’s face. “Enough!” he said, and, dropping the glove, walked away.

We all jumped to our feet. I left Jules and hurried after him. His face was grim, his eyes those of a creature who has been struck on a raw place. He made a movement of his fingers which said plainly. “Leave me, if you please!”

I went back to the cafe. The two young men had disappeared, so had Jules, but everything else was going on just as before; the bandsman still twanging out his czardas; the waiters serving drinks; the orientals trying to sell their carpets. I paid the bill, sought out the manager, and apologised. He shrugged his shoulders, smiled and said: “An eccentric, your friend, nicht wahr?” Could he tell me where M. Le Ferrier was? He could not. I left to look for Jules; could not find him, and returned to my hotel disgusted. I was sorry for my old guest, but vexed with him too; what business had he to carry his Quixotism to such an unpleasant length? I tried to read. Eleven o’clock struck; the casino disgorged a stream of people; the Place seemed fuller of life than ever; then slowly it grew empty and quite dark. The whim seized me to go out. It was a still night, very warm, very black. On one of the seats a man and woman sat embraced, on another a girl was sobbing, on a third – strange sight – a priest dozed. I became aware of some one at my side; it was my old guest.

“If you are not too tired,” he said, “can you give me ten minutes?”

“Certainly; will you come in?”

“No, no; let us go down to the Terrace. I shan’t keep you long.”

He did not speak again till we reached a seat above the pigeon-shooting grounds; there, in a darkness denser for the string of lights still burning in the town, we sat down.

“I owe you an apology,” he said; “first in the afternoon, then again this evening – your guest – your friend’s glove! I have behaved as no gentleman should.” He was leaning forward with his hands on the handle of a stick. His voice sounded broken and disturbed.

“Oh!” I muttered. “It’s nothing!”’

“You are very good,” he sighed; “but I feel that I must explain. I consider I owe this to you, but I must tell you I should not have the courage if it were not for another reason. You see I have no friend.” He looked at me with an uncertain smile. I bowed, and a minute or two later he began…

III

“You will excuse me if I go back rather far. It was in ‘74, when I had been ill with Cuban fever. To keep me alive they had put me on board a ship at Santiago, and at the end of the voyage I found myself in London. I had very little money; I knew nobody. I tell you, sir, there are times when it’s hard for a fighting man to get anything to do. People would say to me: ‘Afraid we’ve nothing for a man like you in our business.’ I tried people of all sorts; but it was true – I had been fighting here and there since ‘60, I wasn’t fit for anything – ” He shook his head. “In the South, before the war, they had a saying, I remember, about a dog and a soldier having the same value. But all this has nothing to do with what I have to tell you.” He sighed again and went on, moistening his lips: “I was walking along the Strand one day, very disheartened, when I heard my name called. It’s a queer thing, that, in a strange street. By the way,” he put in with dry ceremony, “you don’t know my name, I think: it is Brune – Roger Brune. At first I did not recognise the person who called me. He had just got off an omnibus – a square-shouldered man with heavy moustaches, and round spectacles. But when he shook my hand I knew him at once. He was a man called Dalton, who was taken prisoner at Gettysburg; one of you Englishmen who came to fight with us – a major in the regiment where I was captain. We were comrades during two campaigns. If I had been his brother he couldn’t have seemed more pleased to see me. He took me into a bar for the sake of old times. The drink went to my head, and by the time we reached Trafalgar Square I was quite unable to walk. He made me sit down on a bench. I was in fact – drunk. It’s disgraceful to be drunk, but there was some excuse. Now I tell you, sir” (all through his story he was always making use of that expression, it seemed to infuse fresh spirit into him, to help his memory in obscure places, to give him the mastery of his emotions; it was like the piece of paper a nervous man holds in his hand to help him through a speech), “there never was a man with a finer soul than my friend Dalton. He was not clever, though he had read much; and sometimes perhaps he was too fond of talking. But he was a gentleman; he listened to me as if I had been a child; he was not ashamed of me – and it takes a gentleman not to be ashamed of a drunken man in the streets of London; God knows what things I said to him while we were sitting there! He took me to his home and put me to bed himself; for I was down again with fever.” He stopped, turned slightly from me, and put his hand up to his brow. “Well, then it was, sir, that I first saw her. I am not a poet and I cannot tell you what she seemed to me. I was delirious, but I always knew when she was there. I had dreams of sunshine and cornfields, of dancing waves at sea, young trees – never the same dreams, never anything for long together; and when I had my senses I was afraid to say so for fear she would go away. She’d be in the corner of the room, with her hair hanging about her neck, a bright gold colour; she never worked and never read, but sat and talked to herself in a whisper, or looked at me for a long time together out of her blue eyes, a little frown between them, and her upper lip closed firm on her lower lip, where she had an uneven tooth. When her father came, she’d jump up and hang on to his neck until he groaned, then run away, but presently come stealing back on tiptoe. I used to listen for her footsteps on the stairs, then the knock, the door flung back or opened quietly – you never could tell which; and her voice, with a little lisp, ‘Are you better today, Mr. Brune? What funny things you say when you’re delirious! Father says you’ve been in heaps of battles!”’

He got up, paced restlessly to and fro, and sat down again. “I remember every word as if it were yesterday, all the things she said, and did; I’ve had a long time to think them over, you see. Well, I must tell you, the first morning that I was able to get up, I missed her. Dalton came in her place, and I asked him where she was. ‘My dear fellow,’ he answered, ‘I’ve sent Eilie away to her old nurse’s inn down on the river; she’s better there at this time of year.’ We looked at each other, and I saw that he had sent her away because he didn’t trust me. I was hurt by this. Illness spoils one. He was right, he was quite right, for all he knew about me was that I could fight and had got drunk; but I am very quick-tempered. I made up my mind at once to leave him. But I was too weak – he had to put me to bed again. The very next morning he came and proposed that I should go into partnership with him. He kept a fencing-school and pistol-gallery. It seemed like the finger of God; and perhaps it was – who knows?” He fell into a reverie, and taking out his caporal, rolled himself a cigarette; having lighted it, he went on suddenly: “There, in the room above the school, we used to sit in the evenings, one on each side of the grate. The room was on the second floor, I remember, with two windows, and a view of nothing but the houses opposite. The furniture was covered up with chintz. The things on the bookshelf were never disturbed, they were Eilie’s – half-broken cases with butterflies, a dead frog in a bottle, a horse-shoe covered with tinfoil, some shells too, and a cardboard box with three speckled eggs in it, and these words written on the lid: ‘Missel-thrush from Lucy’s tree – second family, only one blown.’” He smoked fiercely, with puffs that were like sharp sighs.

“Dalton was wrapped up in her. He was never tired of talking to me about her, and I was never tired of hearing. We had a number of pupils; but in the evening when we sat there, smoking – our talk would sooner or later – come round to her. Her bedroom opened out of that sitting – room; he took me in once and showed me a narrow little room the width of a passage, fresh and white, with a photograph of her mother above the bed, and an empty basket for a dog or cat.” He broke off with a vexed air, and resumed sternly, as if trying to bind himself to the narration of his more important facts: “She was then fifteen – her mother had been dead twelve years – a beautiful, face, her mother’s; it had been her death that sent Dalton to fight with us. Well, sir, one day in August, very hot weather, he proposed a run into the country, and who should meet us on the platform when we arrived but Eilie, in a blue sun-bonnet and frock – flax blue, her favourite colour. I was angry with Dalton for not telling me that we should see her; my clothes were not quite – my hair wanted cutting. It was black then, sir,” he added, tracing a pattern in the darkness with his stick. “She had a little donkey-cart; she drove, and, while we walked one on each side, she kept looking at me from under her sunbonnet. I must tell you that she never laughed – her eyes danced, her cheeks would go pink, and her hair shake about on her neck, but she never laughed. Her old nurse, Lucy, a very broad, good woman, had married the proprietor of the inn in the village there. I have never seen anything like that inn: sweetbriar up to the roof! And the scent – I am very susceptible to scents!” His head drooped, and the cigarette fell from his hand. A train passing beneath sent up a shower of sparks. He started, and went on: “We had our lunch in the parlour – I remember that room very well, for I spent the happiest days of my life afterwards in that inn… We went into a meadow after lunch, and my friend Dalton fell asleep. A wonderful thing happened then. Eilie whispered to me, ‘Let’s have a jolly time.’ She took me for the most glorious walk. The river was close by. A lovely stream, your river Thames, so calm and broad; it is like the spirit of your people. I was bewitched; I forgot my friend, I thought of nothing but how to keep her to myself. It was such a day! There are days that are the devil’s, but that was truly one of God’s. She took me to a little pond under an elm-tree, and we dragged it, we two, an hour, for a kind of tiny red worm to feed some creature that she had. We found them in the mud, and while she was bending over, the curls got in her eyes. If you could have seen her then, I think, sir, you would have said she was like the first sight of spring… We had tea afterwards, all together, in the long grass under some fruit-trees. If I had the knack of words, there are things that I could say.” He bent, as though in deference to those unspoken memories. “Twilight came on while we were sitting there. A wonderful thing is twilight in the country! It became time for us to go. There was an avenue of trees close by – like a church with a window at the end, where golden light came through. I walked up and down it with her. ‘Will you come again?’ she whispered, and suddenly she lifted up her face to be kissed. I kissed her as if she were a little child. And when we said good-bye, her eyes were looking at me across her father’s shoulder, with surprise and sorrow in them. ‘Why do you go away?’ they seemed to say… But I must tell you,” he went on hurriedly, “of a thing that happened before we had gone a hundred yards. We were smoking our pipes, and I, thinking of her – when out she sprang from the hedge and stood in front of us. Dalton cried out, ‘What are you here for again, you mad girl?’ She rushed up to him and hugged him; but when she looked at me, her face was quite different – careless, defiant, as one might say – it hurt me. I couldn’t understand it, and what one doesn’t understand frightens one.”