Chapter VIII: Psychological Studies 390 (2)

30. Some minutes later six men in brown uniforms with yellow collars, commanded by an adjutant, stood before Mateo’s door. This adjutant was a distant relative of Falcone--for in Corsica more remote degrees of relationship are recognized than elsewhere. His name was Tidora Gamba; he was an energetic man, greatly feared by the banditti, many of whom he had already hunted down.

[Sidenote: Crisis recurs.]

31. “Good day, little cousin,” he said, coming up to Fortunato. “How you have grown! Have you seen a man passing just now?”

[Sidenote: Cunning in character further revealed.]

32. “Oh, I am not so tall as you, Cousin,” the child replied with a foolish look.

33. “That time’s coming. But have you not seen a man pass by?--Tell me.”

34. “If I have seen a man pass by?”

35. “Yes, a man with a pointed cap and a waistcoat embroidered in red and yellow?”

36. “A man with a pointed cap and a waistcoat embroidered in red and yellow?”

37. “Yes; answer quickly, and don’t repeat my questions.”

38. “This morning Monsieur le Curé passed our door on his horse Piero. He asked me how papa was, and I told him--”

[Sidenote: Suspense.]

39. “Ah, you little rascal, you are making game of me! Tell me at once which way Gianetto went, for it is he that we are after, and I am certain he took this path.”

40. “How do you know that?”

41. “How do I know that? I know you have seen him.”

[Sidenote: Child’s crafty nature increasingly disclosed.]

42. “Does one see passers-by when one is asleep?”

43. “You were not asleep, you little demon; the gunshots would have waked you.”

44. “You think, then, Cousin, that your guns make a great noise? My father’s rifle makes much more.”

45. “May the devil confound you, you young scamp! I am sure enough that you have seen Gianetto. Perhaps you have even hidden him. Here, comrades, go into this house, and see if our man is not there. He could walk only on one foot, and he has too much good sense, the rascal, to have tried to reach the _maquis_ limping. Besides, the marks of blood stop here.”

[Sidenote: Sly appeal to the fear inspired by Mateo’s reputation.]

46. “Whatever will papa say!” asked Fortunato, with a chuckle; “what will he say when he finds out that his house has been entered while he was away!”

[Sidenote: Note use of suspense throughout. The story is one long crisis.]

47. “Good-for-nothing!” cried the adjutant Gamba, taking him by the ear, “do you know that I am able to make you change your tune? Perhaps when I have given you a score or more thwacks with the flat of a sword, you will speak at last!”

48. But Fortunato still laughed derisively.

49. “My father is Mateo Falcone!” he said with energy.

50. “Do you know, you little rogue, that I can carry you off to Corte, or to Bastia? I’ll make you sleep in a dungeon, on a pallet of straw, your feet in irons, and I’ll have you guillotined, if you don’t tell me where Gianetto Sanpiero is.”

51. The child burst out laughing at this foolish threat. He only repeated:

52. “My father is Mateo Falcone!”

[Sidenote: Compare with ¶4 and ¶49.]

53. “Adjutant,” whispered one of the _voltigeurs_, “we’d better not embroil ourselves with Mateo.”

[Sidenote: Setting is thus interwoven with the story, though slightly.]

[Sidenote: Character revelation.]

54. Gamba seemed evidently embarrassed. He talked in a low voice with his soldiers, who had already been through the house. It was not a lengthy operation, for the cabin of a Corsican consists of only a single square room. The furniture comprises a table, some benches, a few boxes, and utensils for hunting and housekeeping. Meanwhile, little Fortunato caressed his cat, and seemed maliciously to enjoy the embarrassment of the _voltigeurs_ and his cousin.

[Sidenote: Suspense augmented.]

55. One soldier came up to the haystack. He looked at the cat and carelessly gave a dig at the hay with his bayonet, shrugging his shoulders as if he thought the precaution were ridiculous. Nothing stirred, and the face of the child did not betray the least emotion.

[Sidenote: More crafty coolness.]

[Sidenote: The turn in the plot.]

[Sidenote: FOUNDATION FOR MAIN CRISIS.]

56. The adjutant and his troop were in despair; they were looking seriously toward the edge of the plain, as though disposed to return the way they had come; when their chief--convinced that threats would produce no effect upon the son of Falcone--thought he would make one last effort by trying the power of cajoleries and presents.

57. “Little Cousin,” he said, “you seem to be a wide-awake young fellow enough. You will get on! But you play a mean trick with me; and, if I did not fear to give pain to my cousin Mateo, devil take me, I’d carry you off with me!”

58. “Bah!”

59. “But, when my cousin returns I shall relate to him the whole affair, and for your having gone to the trouble to tell me a lie, he will give you the whip till he draws blood.”

60. “Do you know that?”

61. “You’ll find out! But, see here--be a good lad, and I’ll give you something.”

62. “I, my Cousin, will give you some advice--it is, that if you delay any more Gianetto will reach the _maquis_, then it will take a cleverer fellow to go and hunt for him.”

[Sidenote: Main crisis augmented.]

[Sidenote: PLOT INCIDENT PARTICULARIZED.]

63. The adjutant drew from his pocket a silver watch worth quite ten crowns; and seeing how the little Fortunato’s eyes sparkled when he looked at it, he said, as he held the watch suspended at the end of its steel chain:

[Sidenote: Character appeal.]

64. “You rogue! you would like very well to have such a watch as this hung round your neck, and to go and promenade the streets of Porto-Vecchio, proud as a peacock; people would ask you, ‘What time is it?’ and you would reply, ‘Look at my watch!’”

65. “When I am grown up, my uncle the corporal will give me a watch.”

66. “Yes; but your uncle’s son has one already--not such a fine one as this, it is true--of course, he is younger than you.”

67. The child sighed.

68. “Well, would you like this watch, little Cousin?”

[Sidenote: Suspense.]

[Sidenote: Illustration.]

69. Fortunato, ogling the watch out of the corner of his eyes, looked just as a cat does when they suddenly offer it a chicken. Because it is afraid a joke is being played on it, it dares not pounce upon its prey, and from time to time it turns away its eyes so as not to succumb to the temptation; but it constantly licks its chops, as if to say to its master, “But your joke is a cruel one!”

70. However, the adjutant Gamba seemed to be offering the watch in good faith. Fortunato did not hold out his hand, but he said to him with a bitter smile:

71. “Why do you jest with me?”

72. “By Heaven, I am not joking! Only tell me where Gianetto is and this watch is yours.”

[Sidenote: Compare with ¶67.]

73. Fortunato allowed an incredulous sigh to escape him; and, fixing his black eyes on those of the adjutant, he sought to find in them the faith he wished to have in his words.

[Sidenote: A typical Latin protest.]

74. “May I lose my epaulets,” cried the adjutant, “if I do not give you the watch on these terms! My comrades are witnesses, and I cannot go back on my word!”

[Sidenote: A key to the plot.]

[Sidenote: MAIN CRISIS.]

75. So speaking, he held the watch nearer and nearer until it almost touched the pale cheeks of the child, whose face showed plainly the combat going on in his heart between covetousness and his respect for the laws of hospitality. His bare breast heaved violently, and he seemed to be almost stifling. All the time the watch dangled and turned, and sometimes grazed the tip of his nose. At length, little by little, his right hand lifted toward the watch, the ends of his fingers touched it, and it rested wholly on his palm, except that the adjutant still loosely held the end of the chain. The face was blue, the case was newly polished--in the sunshine it seemed to be all afire. The temptation was too strong.

[Sidenote: CRISIS RESOLVED AND DOWNWARD ACTION BEGINS. HENCEFORWARD WE SEE THE RESULTS OF CRISIS, LEADING TO THE CLIMAX.]

[Sidenote: Still sly.]

76. So Fortunato raised his left hand and with his thumb pointed over his shoulder to the haystack against which he was standing. The adjutant understood him immediately. He let go the end of the chain; Fortunato felt himself sole possessor of the watch. He jumped up with the agility of a deer, and moved ten paces away from the stack, which the _voltigeurs_ at once began to overturn.

77. It was not long before they saw the hay move, and a bleeding man, poniard in hand, came forth. But when he tried to rise to his feet, his stiffening wound would not permit him to stand. He fell down. The adjutant threw himself upon him and snatched away his stiletto. Speedily, he was securely bound, in spite of his resistance.

78. Gianetto, laid on the ground and tied like a bundle of fagots, turned his head toward Fortunato, who had drawn nearer.

79. “Son of--,” he said to him with more contempt than anger.

[Sidenote: FIRST CONTRIBUTORY INCIDENT. (A contributory incident might be changed or even omitted without vitally changing the plot.)]

[Sidenote: Tardy attempt to appear sincere.]

[Sidenote: His contempt is all for Fortunato.]

80. The boy threw to him the silver-piece that he had received from him, feeling conscious that he no longer merited it; but the outlaw seemed not to notice this action. He said to the adjutant in a perfectly cool voice:

[Sidenote: SECOND CONTRIBUTORY INCIDENT.]

81. “My dear Gamba, I am not able to walk; you will be obliged to carry me to the town.”

82. “You could run as fast as a kid just now,” retorted his cruel captor. “But be easy, I am so glad to have caught you that I could carry you for a league on my own back without being tired. All the same, my friend, we are going to make a litter for you out of some branches and your cloak, and at the farm at Crespoli we shall find some horses.”

[Sidenote: Character revelation.]

[Sidenote: Let-down in tension.]

83. “Good!” said the prisoner. “You had better also put a little straw on your litter that I may travel more easily.”

[Sidenote: NEW AND RESULTANT CRISIS. FOURTH PLOT INCIDENT.]

[Sidenote: Contrast to tragic spirit of the story.]

[Sidenote: Local color.]

84. While the _voltigeurs_ were occupied, some making a sort of stretcher out of chestnut boughs, and others dressing Gianetto’s wound, Mateo Falcone and his wife suddenly appeared in a bend of the path which led from the _maquis_. The wife advanced, bending laboriously under an enormous bag of chestnuts, while her husband came up jauntily, carrying in his hand only a gun, while another was slung over his shoulder, for it is unworthy of a man to carry any other burden than his weapons.

[Sidenote: “Bagatelle” discloses the Corsican attitude.]

85. At sight of the soldiers, Mateo’s first thought was that they had come to arrest him. But why that idea? Had he any quarrel with the law? No. He bore a good reputation. He was, as they say, particularly well thought of; but he was a Corsican, a mountaineer, and there are but few Corsican mountaineers who, if they scrutinize their memories well, cannot find some pecadillo--some gunshot, some dagger thrust, or some similar bagatelle. Mateo, more than most, had a clear conscience, for it was fully ten years since he had pointed his gun against a man; but all the same he was prudent, and he put himself in position to make a good defense, if need be.

[Sidenote: To reload his weapons, as appears in ¶87.]

86. “Wife,” said he to Giuseppa, “put down your sack and keep yourself in readiness.”

[Sidenote: Suspense.]

[Sidenote: Local color.]

87. She obeyed on the instant. He gave her the gun that was slung over his shoulder, and which would likely cause him inconvenience. He cocked the one he had in his hand and advanced slowly toward the house, skirting the trees which bordered the path, and ready at the least hostile demonstration to throw himself behind the largest trunk, whence he could fire from cover. His wife walked close behind him, holding his spare gun and his cartridge box. The duty of a good housewife, in case of conflict, is to reload her husband’s weapons.

[Sidenote: Development of fourth incident.]

88. On the other side, the adjutant was very uneasy at sight of Mateo advancing thus upon them with measured steps, his gun forward and his finger on the trigger.

[Sidenote: Key.]

[Sidenote: A fight would ensue.]

89. “If it should chance,” thought he, “that Gianetto is related to Mateo, or that he is his friend, and he intends to protect him, the bullets of his two guns will come to two of us as sure as a letter to the post, and if he should aim at me, good-bye to our kinship!”

[Sidenote: Note force of “alone.”]

90. In this perplexity, he put on a courageous front and went forward alone toward Mateo to tell him of the matter, while greeting him like an old acquaintance; but the brief space that separated him from Mateo seemed to him terribly long.

[Sidenote: Note constraint.]

91. “Hello! Ah! my old comrade,” he called out. “How are you, old fellow? It’s I, Gamba, your cousin.”

[Sidenote: Resolution of suspense.]

92. Mateo, without replying a word, stopped, and while the other was speaking he imperceptibly raised the muzzle of his rifle in such a manner that it was pointing heavenward by the time the adjutant came up to him.

93. “Good day, brother,”[18] said the adjutant, holding out his hand. “It’s a very long time since I’ve seen you.”

94. “Good day, brother.”

[Sidenote: Diminutive for Giuseppa.]

[Sidenote: There is something manlike in most of Mérimée’s female characters.]

95. “I just came in, while passing, to say ‘good day’ to you and my cousin Pepa. We have had a long journey to-day; but we must not complain of fatigue, for we have taken a famous prize. We have just got hold of Gianetto Sanpiero.”

96. “God be praised!” exclaimed Giuseppa. “He stole one of our milch goats last week.”

[Sidenote: Character contrast.]

97. These words rejoiced Gamba.

98. “Poor devil!” said Mateo. “He was hungry.”

[Sidenote: New crisis. PREPARATION FOR CLIMAX.]

99. “The fellow defended himself like a lion,” pursued the adjutant, slightly mortified. “He killed one of the men, and, not content with that, he broke Corporal Chardon’s arm; but that is not such a great disaster, for he is nothing but a Frenchman.... Then he hid himself so cleverly that the devil would not have been able to find him. Without my little cousin Fortunato, I should never have discovered him.”

100. “Fortunato!” cried Mateo.

101. “Fortunato!” repeated Giuseppa.

102. “Yes, Gianetto was hidden way down in your haystack; but my little cousin showed me his trick. So I will speak of him to his uncle the corporal, that he may send him a fine present for his trouble. And his name and yours will be in the report which I shall send to _Monsieur l’avocat général_.”

103. “Malediction!” said Mateo under his breath.

[Sidenote: Misunderstanding adds to complication.]

104. They had now rejoined the detachment. Gianetto was already laid on the litter and they were ready to leave. When he saw Mateo in the company of Gamba, he smiled a strange smile; then, turning himself toward the door of the house, he spat on the threshold as he cried out:

[Sidenote: Key to plot. FIFTH PLOT INCIDENT.]

105. “House of a traitor!”

106. No one but a man who had made up his mind to die would have dared to utter the word “traitor” as applying to Falcone. One good stroke of the dagger, which would not need to be repeated, would have immediately repaid the insult. But Mateo made no other gesture than that of putting his hand to his head like a dazed man.

[Sidenote: THIRD CONTRIBUTORY INCIDENT.]

[Sidenote: Is this repentance, fear, hypocrisy, or an attempt to placate his father?]

107. Fortunato had gone into the house upon seeing his father come up. He reappeared shortly with a jug of milk, which he offered with downcast eyes to Gianetto. “Keep away from me!” cried the outlaw in a voice of thunder.

108. Then turning to one of the _voltigeurs_,

109. “Comrade, give me a drink of water,” he said.

[Sidenote: Delineation of mood by suggestion.]

110. The soldier placed the gourd in his hands, and the bandit drank the water given him by a man with whom he had just exchanged gunshots. He then asked that they would tie his hands across his breast instead of having them behind his back.

111. “I prefer,” he said, “to lie down at my ease.”

[Sidenote: FOURTH CONTRIBUTORY INCIDENT.]

112. When they had adjusted them to his satisfaction, the adjutant gave the signal to start, said adieu to Mateo--who answered never a word--and went down at a quick pace toward the plain.

[Sidenote: Suspense.]

113. Some ten minutes passed before Mateo opened his mouth. The child looked with an uneasy eye first at his mother, then at his father, who, leaning on his gun, was gazing at him with a gaze of concentrated wrath.

[Sidenote: PREPARATION FOR CLIMAX.]

[Sidenote: SIXTH AND FINAL PLOT INCIDENT.]

114. “You begin well,” said Mateo at last, in a voice calm but terrifying to those who knew the man.

115. “Father!” exclaimed the child with tears in his eyes, drawing near as if to fall upon his knees.

116. But Mateo only cried out:

117. “Away from me!”

118. The child stopped and began to sob, standing motionless a few steps from his father.

119. Giuseppa came near. She had just perceived the chain of the watch dangling about from Fortunato’s blouse.

[Sidenote: Contrast with ¶114.]

120. “Who gave you that watch?” she asked him severely.

[Sidenote: Note the sly use of “cousin.”]

121. “My cousin the adjutant.”

[Sidenote: FIFTH CONTRIBUTORY INCIDENT.]

122. Falcone seized the watch, and, throwing it violently against a stone, broke it into a thousand pieces.

123. “Woman,” he said, “this child--is he mine?”

124. Giuseppa’s brown cheeks flamed brick-red.

125. “What are you saying, Mateo? Do you know to whom you are speaking?”

[Sidenote: Key.]

126. “Well, this child is the first of his race who has committed a treason.”

[Sidenote: Decision, and foundation for final crisis.]

[Sidenote: FULL RESULTANT CRISIS.]

127. Fortunato’s sobs and hiccoughs redoubled, and Falcone kept his lynx-eyes always fixed upon him. At length he struck the ground with the butt of his gun; then he flung it across his shoulder and, calling to Fortunato to follow him, retook the way to the _maquis_. The child obeyed.

128. Giuseppa ran after Mateo, and seized him by the arm.

129. “He is your son,” she said to him in a trembling voice, fixing her black eyes on those of her husband, as though to read what was passing through his mind.

[Sidenote: Note the double meaning.]

130. “Let me go,” replied Mateo: “I am his father.”

131. Giuseppa embraced her son, and went back crying into the hut. She threw herself on her knees before an image of the Virgin, and prayed with fervor.

[Sidenote: Forecast.]

132. Meanwhile, Falcone had walked about two-hundred yards along the path, and stopped at a little ravine, which he descended. He sounded the earth with the butt of his gun and found it soft and easy to dig. The spot seemed suitable for his design.

[Sidenote: Suspense.]

133. “Fortunato, go near to that large rock.”

134. The boy did as he was commanded, then he knelt down.

135. “Say your prayers.”

136. “Father, Father, do not kill me!”

137. “Say your prayers!” repeated Mateo in a terrible voice.

[Sidenote: “Our Father, etc.,” “I believe in God, etc.”]

138. The child, all stammering and sobbing, repeated the _Pater_ and the _Credo_. The father, in a firm voice responded Amen at the close of each prayer.

139. “Are those all the prayers that you know?”

[Sidenote: “Hail Mary, etc.” A liturgical prayer.]

140. “I also know the _Ave Maria_, and the _Litany_ that my aunt taught me, Father.”

141. “It is rather long, but it doesn’t matter.”

[Sidenote: Note force of “achieved.”]

142. The child achieved the _Litany_ in a faint voice.

143. “Have you finished?”

[Sidenote: Contrast with his former vicious “coolness.”]

144. “Oh, Father, Father, mercy! Pardon me! I will never do it again! I will beg my cousin the corporal with all my might for mercy for Gianetto!”

145. He went on speaking; Mateo loaded his rifle and took aim as he said:

146. “May God forgive you!”

[Sidenote: FULL CLIMAX AND DENOUEMENT.]

147. The boy made a desperate effort to get up and clasp his father’s knees, but he had not time. Mateo fired, and Fortunato fell dead.

[Sidenote: Note force of “throwing.”]

148. Without throwing a single glance at the body, Mateo returned to his house to fetch a spade with which to bury his son. He had taken but a few steps when he met Giuseppa, who had run out, alarmed by the sound of the firing.

149. “What have you done?”

150. “Justice!”

151. “Where is he?”

[Sidenote: SIXTH CONTRIBUTORY INCIDENT.]

[Sidenote: Swift conclusion.]

[Sidenote: Character revelation.]

152. “In the ravine; I am going to bury him. He died a Christian; I shall have a mass sung for him. Let some one tell my son-in-law Tiodoro Bianchi to come and live with us.”

STEVENSON AND HIS WRITINGS

Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson, as he was baptized, was born November 13, 1850, at Edinburgh, Scotland, of Scotch parents. He entered Edinburgh University when he was seventeen, intending to learn his father’s profession, civil engineering--though he had always longed to be a writer, having dictated books at the precocious ages of six, seven, and nine. At twenty-one he decided to study law, and four years later passed the bar examination in his native city. In 1880 he married Mrs. Osbourne, with whose son, Lloyd, he collaborated in the writing of several stories. Stevenson’s health, which was never robust, sent him on many journeys in search of strength--to the European continent, several times to the United States, and once on a two years’ voyage to the South Seas. In 1890 he finally settled in Samoa, where he died at his home, Vailima, December 3, 1894. He was buried on the nearby summit of Mount Vaea.

Stevenson was a brilliant novelist, essayist, poet, and short-story writer. _Treasure Island_, _Kidnapped_, _The Master of Ballantrae_, and _Weir of Hermiston_--the last of which he left unfinished--are his best novels. His journeys were chronicled by such delightful travel-sketches as _An Inland Voyage_, _Travels With a Donkey_, and _The Silverado Squatters_. _A Child’s Garden of Verse_ contains his best poems. His most noteworthy essays are found in _Memories and Portraits_, and _Familiar Studies of Men and Books_. Most famous among his short-stories are “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” (a novelette in length), “The Pavilion on the Links,” “Thrawn Janet,” “Will o’ the Mill,” “The Sire de Malétroit’s Door,” “The Merry Men,” “Markheim,” published first in _Unwin’s Annual_, London, 1885, and given in this volume in full, and “A Lodging for the Night,” which follows entire. It was first published in _The Temple Bar_ magazine, October, 1877.

* * * * *

Stevenson was a supreme craftsman. No writer of the short-story in English, except Edgar Allan Poe, was so conscious of his art and so gifted to create up to the measure of his orderly knowledge. In criticism of the story-teller’s art, Poe was the greater originator, Stevenson the more brilliant generalizer; Poe was the deeper, Stevenson the broader; Poe’s opinions as to form grew largely out of his own consciousness, and shaped his practices--they were arrived at deductively: Stevenson’s standards grew as his creations shaped themselves, and were measurably molded by his own writings--they were examples of inductive reasoning. Thus Stevenson was doubly equipped to produce incomparably the greatest group of short-stories ever written by a Briton before the days of Kipling, and some sound critics will dispute even this reservation. In charm, in dash of style, in a sense of form, in pure romantic spirit, and in penetrating human interest, Stevenson ranks among the ten greatest short-story-tellers of his era.

I wonder if any one had ever more energy upon so little
strength?--R. L. STEVENSON, _Vailima Letters_.

In the highest achievements of the art of words, the dramatic and
the pictorial, the moral and romantic interest, rise and fall
together by a common and organic law. Situation is animated with
passion, passion clothed upon with situation. Neither exists
for itself, but each inheres indissolubly with the other. This
is high art; and not only the highest art possible in words,
but the highest art of all, since it combines the greatest mass
and diversity of the elements of truth and pleasure. Such are
epics, and the few prose tales that have the epic weight.--R. L.
STEVENSON, _A Gossip on Romance_.

The stories of Stevenson exhibit a double union, as admirable as it
is rare. They exhibit the union of splendid material with the most
delicate skill in language; and they exhibit the union of thrilling
events with a remarkable power of psychological analysis.--WILLIAM
LYON PHELPS, _Essays on Modern Novelists_.

Mr. Stevenson enjoys the reputation of being the modern
representative of the romantic school of fiction. There are others
of high repute, for romanticism is now the vogue, but there is
hardly any other whose name we would care to link with that of
Walter Scott.--WILLIAM H. SHERAN, _Handbook of Literary Criticism_.

Perhaps the first quality in Mr. Stevenson’s works, now so many
and so various, which strikes a reader, is the buoyancy, the
survival of the child in him. He has told the world often, in
prose and verse, how vivid are his memories of his own infancy....
The peculiarity of Mr. Stevenson is not only to have been a
fantastic child, and to retain, in maturity, that fantasy ripened
into imagination: he has also kept up the habit of dramatising
everything, of playing, half consciously, many parts, of making
the world “an unsubstantial fairy place....” It is the eternal
child that drives him to seek adventures and to sojourn among
beach-combers and savages.--ANDREW LANG, _Essays in Little_.

It has been stated that the finer qualities of Stevenson are
called out by the psychological romance on native soil. He did
some brilliant and engaging work of foreign setting and motive....
Judged as art, “The Bottle Imp” and “The Beach of Falesa” are
among the triumphs of ethnic interpretation, let alone their more
external charms of story. And another masterpiece of foreign
setting, “A Lodging for the Night,” is further proof of Stevenson’s
ability to use other than Scotch motives for the materials of his
art.... Few novelists of any race have beaten this wandering Scot
in the power of representing character and envisaging it, and there
can hardly be successful characterization without this allied power
of creating atmosphere.--RICHARD BURTON, _Masters of the English
Novel_.

Not until 1877, and Robert Louis Stevenson’s first published
narrative, does any Englishman of real caliber show both desire and
ability to do something _new_ with the short story. This narrative
was “A Lodging for the Night,” published in _Temple Bar_ for
October.... “A Lodging for the Night” is as clearly and consciously
an impressionistic short story as George Meredith’s contemporary
novelettes are not of that category; the two stories which followed
(“Will o’ the Mill” and “The Sire de Malétroit’s Door”) would
assure the most timid critic of our generation that here was a
master in this department of fiction.... There is “The Strange Case
of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” that short story thrown over into the
form of a detective romance.... Or there is “Markheim,” a story
less powerful in execution, but more excellent in workmanship,
and an almost ideal example of the impressionistic short story.
Flaubert might have written the description of the curiosity
shop as the murderer saw it, with its accusing clock-voices, its
wavering shadows, from the inner door “a long slit of daylight like
a pointing finger.” And Flaubert would have praised the skilful
gradation of incident and description, whereby conscience gains
and gains in the struggle for Markheim’s mind. But Hawthorne would
have been prouder still of the plot--a weak man with a remnant of
high ideals suddenly realizing that his curve is plotted and can
lead him only downwards.... How like to Hawthorne’s usual way is
Stevenson’s determination to make, at all costs, a moral issue the
outcome of his story!... “Will o’ the Mill” is like a twice-told
tale not only in theme; its whole effect is Hawthornesque. “A
Lodging for the Night” has for its kernel a question of ethics.--H.
S. CANBY, _The Short Story in English_.

FURTHER REFERENCES FOR READING ON STEVENSON

_Mr. Stevenson’s Methods in Fiction_, A. Conan Doyle (1890); _Robert Louis Stevenson, An Elegy_, Richard Le Gallienne (1895); _Robert Louis Stevenson_, Walter Raleigh (1895); _Vailima Letters_, to Sidney Colvin (1895); _Adventures in Criticism_, A. T. Quiller-Couch (1896); _Critical Kit-Kats_, Edmund W. Gosse (1896); _Studies in Two Literatures_, Arthur Symons (1897); _Life of Robert Louis Stevenson_, Graham Balfour (1901); _Stevenson’s Attitude to Life_, J. F. Genung (1901); _Memories of Vailima_, Isobel Strong and Lloyd Osbourne (1903); _Robert Louis Stevenson_, W. R. Nicoll and G. K. Chesterton.

FOR ANALYSIS

A LODGING FOR THE NIGHT
BY ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

It was late in November, 1456. The snow fell over Paris with rigorous, relentless persistence; sometimes the wind made a sally and scattered it in flying vortices; sometimes there was a lull, and flake after flake descended out of the black night air, silent, circuitous, interminable. To poor people, looking up under moist eyebrows, it seemed a wonder where it all came from. Master Francis Villon had propounded an alternative that afternoon, at a tavern window; was it only Pagan Jupiter plucking geese upon Olympus? or were the holy angels moulting? He was only a poor master of arts, he went on; and as the question somewhat touched upon divinity, he durst not venture to conclude. A silly old priest from Montargis, who was among the company, treated the young rascal to a bottle of wine in honor of the jest and grimaces with which it was accompanied, and swore on his own white beard that he had been just such another irreverent dog when he was Villon’s age.

2. The air was raw and pointed, but not far below freezing; and the flakes were large, damp, and adhesive. The whole city was sheeted up. An army might have marched from end to end and not a footfall given the alarm. If there were any belated birds in heaven, they saw the island like a large white patch, and the bridges like slim white spars, on the black ground of the river. High up overhead the snow settled among the tracery of the cathedral towers. Many a niche was drifted full; many a statue wore a long white bonnet on its grotesque or sainted head. The gargoyles had been transformed into great false noses, drooping toward the point. The crockets were like upright pillows swollen on one side. In the intervals of the wind, there was a dull sound of dripping about the precincts of the church.

3. The cemetery of St. John had taken its own share of the snow. All the graves were decently covered; tall white housetops stood around in grave array; worthy burghers were long ago in bed, be-nightcapped like their domiciles; there was no light in all the neighborhood but a little peep from a lamp that hung swinging in the church choir, and tossed the shadows to and fro in time to its oscillations. The clock was hard on ten when the patrol went by with halberds and a lantern, beating their hands; and they saw nothing suspicious about the cemetery of St. John.

4. Yet there was a small house, backed up against the cemetery wall, which was still awake, and awake to evil purpose, in that snoring district. There was not much to betray it from without; only a stream of warm vapor from the chimney-top, a patch where the snow melted on the roof, and a few half-obliterated footprints at the door. But within, behind the shuttered windows, Master Francis Villon, the poet, and some of the thievish crew with whom he consorted, were keeping the night alive and passing round the bottle.

5. A great pile of living embers diffused a strong and ruddy glow from the arched chimney. Before this straddled Dom Nicolas, the Picardy monk, with his skirts picked up and his fat legs bared to the comfortable warmth. His dilated shadow cut the room in half; and the firelight only escaped on either side of his broad person, and in a little pool between his outspread feet. His face had the beery, bruised appearance of the continual drinker’s; it was covered with a network of congested veins, purple in ordinary circumstances, but now pale violet, for even with his back to the fire the cold pinched him on the other side. His cowl had half fallen back, and made a strange excrescence on either side of his bull neck. So he straddled, grumbling, and cut the room in half with the shadow of his portly frame.

6. On the right, Villon and Guy Tabary were huddled together over a scrap of parchment; Villon making a ballad which he was to call the “Ballad of Roast Fish,” and Tabary spluttering admiration at his shoulder. The poet was a rag of a man, dark, little, and lean, with hollow cheeks and thin black locks. He carried his four-and-twenty years with feverish animation. Greed had made folds about his eyes, evil smiles had puckered his mouth. The wolf and pig struggled together in his face. It was an eloquent, sharp, ugly, earthly countenance. His hands were small and prehensile, with fingers knotted like a cord; and they were continually flickering in front of him in violent and expressive pantomime. As for Tabary, a broad, complacent, admiring imbecility breathed from his squash nose and slobbering lips: he had become a thief, just as he might have become the most decent of burgesses, by the imperious chance that rules the lives of human geese and human donkeys.

7. At the monk’s other hand, Montigny and Thevenin Pensete played a game of chance. About the first there clung some flavor of good birth and training, as about a fallen angel; something long, lithe, and courtly in the person; something aquiline and darkling in the face. Thevenin, poor soul, was in great feather: he had done a good stroke of knavery that afternoon in the Faubourg St. Jacques, and all night he had been gaining from Montigny. A flat smile illuminated his face; his bald head shone rosily in a garland of red curls; his little protuberant stomach shook with silent chucklings as he swept in his gains.

8. “Doubles or quits?” said Thevenin.

9. Montigny nodded grimly.

10. “Some may prefer to dine in state,” wrote Villon, “On bread and cheese on silver plate. Or, or--help me out, Guido!”

11. Tabary giggled.

12. “Or parsley on a golden dish,” scribbled the poet.

13. The wind was freshening without; it drove the snow before it, and sometimes raised its voice in a victorious whoop, and made sepulchral grumblings in the chimney. The cold was growing sharper as the night went on. Villon, protruding his lips, imitated the gust with something between a whistle and a groan. It was an eerie, uncomfortable talent of the poet’s, much detested by the Picardy monk.

14. “Can’t you hear it rattle in the gibbet?” said Villon. “They are all dancing the devil’s jig on nothing, up there. You may dance, my gallants, you’ll be none the warmer! Whew! what a gust! Down went somebody just now! A medlar the fewer on the three-legged medlar-tree!--I say, Dom Nicolas, it’ll be cold to-night on the St. Denis Road?” he asked.

15. Dom Nicolas winked both his big eyes, and seemed to choke upon his Adam’s apple. Montfaucon, the great grisly Paris gibbet, stood hard by the St. Denis Road, and the pleasantry touched him on the raw. As for Tabary, he laughed immoderately over the medlars; he had never heard anything more light-hearted; and he held his sides and crowed. Villon fetched him a fillip on the nose, which turned his mirth into an attack of coughing.

16. “Oh, stop that row,” said Villon, “and think of rhymes to ‘fish.’”

17. “Doubles or quits,” said Montigny, doggedly.

18. “With all my heart,” quoth Thevenin.

19. “Is there any more in that bottle?” asked the monk.

20. “Open another,” said Villon. “How do you ever hope to fill that big hogshead, your body, with little things like bottles? And how do you expect to get to heaven? How many angels, do you fancy, can be spared to carry up a single monk from Picardy? Or do you think yourself another Elias--and they’ll send the coach for you?”

21. “_Hominibus impossible_,” replied the monk, as he filled his glass.

22. Tabary was in ecstasies.

23. Villon filliped his nose again.

24. “Laugh at my jokes, if you like,” he said.

25. “It was very good,” objected Tabary.

26. Villon made a face at him. “Think of rhymes to ‘fish,’” he said. “What have you to do with Latin? You’ll wish you knew none of it at the great assizes, when the devil calls for Guido Tabary, _clericus_--the devil with the humpback and red-hot finger-nails. Talking of the devil,” he added, in a whisper, “look at Montigny!”

27. All three peered covertly at the gamester. He did not seem to be enjoying his luck. His mouth was a little to a side; one nostril nearly shut, and the other much inflated. The black dog was on his back, as people say in terrifying nursery metaphor; and he breathed hard under the grewsome burden.

28. “He looks as if he could knife him,” whispered Tabary, with round eyes.

29. The monk shuddered, and turned his face and spread his open hands to the red embers. It was the cold that thus affected Dom Nicolas, and not any excess of moral sensibility.

30. “Come, now,” said Villon--“about this ballad. How does it run so far?” And beating time with his hand he read it aloud to Tabary.

31. They were interrupted at the fourth rhyme by a brief and fatal movement among the gamesters. The round was completed, and Thevenin was just opening his mouth to claim another victory, when Montigny leaped up, swift as an adder, and stabbed him to the heart. The blow took effect before he had time to move. A tremor or two convulsed his frame; his hands opened and shut, his heels rattled on the floor; then his head rolled backward over one shoulder with the eyes wide open; and Thevenin Pensete’s spirit had returned to Him who gave it.

32. Everyone sprung to his feet; but the business was over in two twos. The four living fellows looked at each other in rather a ghastly fashion; the dead man contemplating a corner of the roof with a singular and ugly leer.

33. “My God!” said Tabary; and he began to pray in Latin.

34. Villon broke out into hysterical laughter. He came a step forward and ducked a ridiculous bow at Thevenin, and laughed still louder. Then he sat down suddenly, all of a heap, upon a stool, and continued laughing bitterly as though he would shake himself to pieces.

35. Montigny recovered his composure first.

36. “Let’s see what he has about him,” he remarked; and he picked the dead man’s pockets with a practiced hand, and divided the money into four equal portions on the table. “There’s for you,” he said.

37. The monk received his share with a deep sigh, and a single stealthy glance at the dead Thevenin, who was beginning to sink himself and topple sideways off the chair.

38. “We’re all in for it,” cried Villon, swallowing his mirth. “It’s a hanging job for every man jack of us that’s here--not to speak of those who aren’t.” He made a shocking gesture in the air with his raised right hand, and put out his tongue and threw his head on one side, so as to counterfeit the appearance of one who has been hanged. Then he pocketed his share of the spoil, and executed a shuffle with his feet as if to restore the circulation.

39. Tabary was the last to help himself; he made a dash at the money, and retired to the other end of the apartment.

40. Montigny stuck Thevenin upright in the chair, and drew out a dagger, which was followed by a jet of blood.

41. “You fellows had better be moving,” he said, as he wiped the blade on his victim’s doublet.

42. “I think we had,” returned Villon, with a great gulp. “Damn his fat head!” he broke out. “It sticks in my throat like phlegm. What right has a man to have red hair when he is dead?” And he fell all of a heap again upon the stool, and fairly covered his face with his hands.

43. Montigny and Dom Nicolas laughed aloud, even Tabary feebly chiming in.

44. “Cry baby,” said the monk.

45. “I always said he was a woman,” added Montigny, with a sneer. “Sit up, can’t you?” he went on, giving another shake to the murdered body. “Tread out that fire, Nick!”

46. But Nick was better employed; he was quietly taking Villon’s purse, as the poet sat, limp and trembling, on the stool where he had been making a ballad not three minutes before. Montigny and Tabary dumbly demanded a share of the booty, which the monk silently promised as he passed the little bag into the bosom of his gown. In many ways an artistic nature unfits a man for practical existence.

47. No sooner had the theft been accomplished than Villon shook himself, jumped to his feet, and began helping to scatter and extinguish the embers. Meanwhile Montigny opened the door and cautiously peered into the street. The coast was clear; there was no meddlesome patrol in sight. Still it was judged wiser to slip out severally; and as Villon was himself in a hurry to escape from the neighborhood of the dead Thevenin, and the rest were in a still greater hurry to get rid of him before he should discover the loss of his money, he was the first by general consent to issue forth into the street.

48. The wind had triumphed and swept all the clouds from heaven. Only a few vapors, as thin as moonlight, fleeted rapidly across the stars. It was bitter cold; and by a common optical effect, things seemed almost more definite than in the broadest daylight. The sleeping city was absolutely still; a company of white hoods, a field full of little alps, below the twinkling stars. Villon cursed his fortune. Would it were still snowing! Now, wherever he went, he left an indelible trail behind him on the glittering streets; wherever he went he was still tethered to the house by the cemetery of St. John; wherever he went he must weave, with his own plodding feet, the rope that bound him to the crime and would bind him to the gallows. The leer of the dead man came back to him with a new significance. He snapped his fingers as if to pluck up his own spirits, and choosing a street at random, stepped boldly forward in the snow.

49. Two things preoccupied him as he went; the aspect of the gallows at Montfaucon in this bright, windy phase of the night’s existence, for one; and for another, the look of the dead man with his bald head and garland of red curls. Both struck cold upon his heart, and he kept quickening his pace as if he could escape from unpleasant thoughts by mere fleetness of foot. Sometimes he looked back over his shoulder with a sudden nervous jerk; but he was the only moving thing in the white streets, except when the wind swooped round a corner and threw up the snow, which was beginning to freeze, in spouts of glittering dust.

50. Suddenly he saw, a long way before him, a black clump and a couple of lanterns. The clump was in motion, and the lanterns swung as though carried by men walking. It was a patrol. And though it was merely crossing his line of march, he judged it wiser to get out of eyeshot as speedily as he could. He was not in the humor to be challenged, and he was conscious of making a very conspicuous mark upon the snow. Just on his left hand there stood a great hotel, with some turrets and a large porch before the door; it was half-ruinous, he remembered, and had long stood empty; and so he made three steps of it, and jumped into the shelter of the porch. It was pretty dark inside, after the glimmer of the snowy streets, and he was groping forward with outspread hands, when he stumbled over some substance which offered an indescribable mixture of resistances, hard and soft, firm and loose. His heart gave a leap, and he sprung two steps back and stared dreadfully at the obstacle. Then he gave a little laugh of relief. It was only a woman, and she dead. He knelt beside her to make sure upon this latter point. She was freezing cold, and rigid like a stick. A little ragged finery fluttered in the wind about her hair, and her cheeks had been heavily rouged that same afternoon. Her pockets were quite empty; but in her stocking, underneath the garter, Villon found two of the small coins that went by the name of whites. It was little enough, but it was always something, and the poet was moved with a deep sense of pathos that she should have died before she had spent her money. That seemed to him a dark and pitiful mystery; and he looked from the coins in his hand to the dead woman, and back again to the coins, shaking his head over the riddle of man’s life.

51. Henry V. of England, dying at Vincennes just after he had conquered France, and this poor jade cut off by a cold draught in a great man’s doorway, before she had time to spend her couple of whites--it seemed a cruel way to carry on the world. Two whites would have taken such a little while to squander; and yet it would have been one more good taste in the mouth, one more smack of the lips, before the devil got the soul, and the body was left to birds and vermin. He would like to use all his tallow before the light was blown out and the lantern broken.

52. While these thoughts were passing through his mind, he was feeling, half mechanically, for his purse. Suddenly his heart stopped beating; a feeling of cold scales passed up the back of his legs, and a cold blow seemed to fall upon his scalp. He stood petrified for a moment; then he felt again with one feverish movement; and then his loss burst upon him, and he was covered at once with perspiration. To spend-thrifts money is so living and actual--it is such a thin veil between them and their pleasures! There is only one limit to their fortune--that of time; and a spendthrift with only a few crowns is the Emperor of Rome until they are spent. For such a person to lose his money is to suffer the most shocking reverse, and fall from heaven to hell, from all to nothing, in a breath. And all the more if he has put his head in the halter for it; if he may be hanged to-morrow for that same purse, so dearly earned, so foolishly departed! Villon stood and cursed; he threw the two whites into the street; he shook his fist at heaven; he stamped, and was not horrified to find himself trampling the poor corpse. Then he began rapidly to retrace his steps toward the house beside the cemetery. He had forgotten all fear of the patrol, which was long gone by at any rate, and had no idea but that of his lost purse. It was in vain that he looked right and left upon the snow; nothing was to be seen. He had not dropped it in the streets. Had it fallen in the house? He would have liked dearly to go in and see; but the idea of the grisly occupant unmanned him. And he saw besides, as he drew near, that their efforts to put out the fire had been unsuccessful; on the contrary, it had broken into a blaze, and a changeful light played in the chinks of door and window, and revived his terror for the authorities and Paris gibbet.

53. He returned to the hotel with the porch, and groped about upon the snow for the money he had thrown away in his childish passion. But he could only find one white; the other had probably struck sideways and sunk deeply in. With a single white in his pocket, all his projects for a rousing night in some wild tavern vanished utterly away. And it was not only pleasure that fled laughing from his grasp; positive discomfort, positive pain, attacked him as he stood ruefully before the porch. His perspiration had dried upon him, and although the wind had now fallen, a binding frost was setting in stronger with every hour, and he felt benumbed and sick at heart. What was to be done? Late as was the hour, improbable as was success, he would try the house of his adopted father, the chaplain of St. Benoit.

54. He ran there all the way, and knocked timidly. There was no answer. He knocked again and again, taking heart with every stroke; and at last steps were heard approaching from within. A barred wicket fell open in the iron-studded door, and emitted a gush of yellow light.

55. “Hold up your face to the wicket,” said the chaplain, from within.

56. “It’s only me,” whimpered Villon.

57. “Oh, it’s only you, is it?” returned the chaplain; and he cursed him with foul unpriestly oaths for disturbing him at such an hour, and bade him be off to hell, where he came from.

58. “My hands are blue to the wrist,” pleaded Villon; “my feet are dead and full of twinges; my nose aches with the sharp air; the cold lies at my heart. I may be dead before morning. Only this once, father, and before God, I will never ask again!”

59. “You should have come earlier,” said the ecclesiastic coolly. “Young men require a lesson now and then.” He shut the wicket and retired deliberately into the interior of the house.

60. Villon was beside himself; he beat upon the door with his hands and feet, and shouted hoarsely after the chaplain.

61. “Wormy old fox!” he cried. “If I had my hand under your twist, I would send you flying headlong into the bottomless pit.”

62. A door shut in the interior, faintly audible to the poet down long passages. He passed his hand over his mouth with an oath. And then the humor of the situation struck him, and he laughed and looked lightly up to heaven, where the stars seemed to be winking over his discomfiture.

63. What was to be done? It looked very like a night in the frosty streets. The idea of the dead woman popped into his imagination, and gave him a hearty fright; what had happened to her in the early night might very well happen to him before morning. And he so young! and with such immense possibilities of disorderly amusement before him! He felt quite pathetic over the notion of his own fate, as if it had been some one else’s, and made a little imaginative vignette of the scene in the morning when they should find his body.

64. He passed all his chances under review, turning the white between his thumb and forefinger. Unfortunately he was on bad terms with some old friends who would once have taken pity on him in such a plight. He had lampooned them in verses; he had beaten and cheated them; and yet now, when he was in so close a pinch, he thought there was at least one who might perhaps relent. It was a chance. It was worth trying at least, and he would go and see.