Chapter III: Part 3

“Never mind your hat,” said the priest, seeing the man's fingers at the strings of his sou'wester. “Give me my great boots from the cupboard. A wreck is it? The summer storms are always the worst. Is it a boat?”

“Who knows?” replied the man. “It is my wife who looked from the window an hour ago, and saw a light at sea two points to the east of north--a red light and then a green and then the masthead light.”

“A steamer.”

“So it would appear; and now there are no lights. That is all.”

The priest was dressed, and now pulled on a great oilskin coat. There are men who seem compact in mind and body, impressing their fellows with a sense of that restfulness which comes of assured strength. This little priest was one of these, and the mental impress that he left upon all who came in contact with him was to the effect that there is nothing in a human life that need appal, no sorrow beyond the reach of consolation--no temptation too strong to be resisted. The children ran after him in the streets, their faces expectant of a joke. The women in the doorways gave a little sigh as he passed. A woman will often sigh at the thought of that which another woman has lost, and this touches a whole gamut of thoughts which are above the reach of a man's mind.

The priest tied the strings of a sou'wester under his pink chin. He was little more than a boy after all--or else he was the possessor of a very young heart.

“Between us we make a whole man--you and I,” he said cheerily. “Perhaps we can do something.”

They went out into the night, the priest locking the door and pausing to hide the key under the mat in the porch. They all keep the house-door key under the mat at Yport. In the narrow street, which forms the whole village, running down the valley to the sea, they met the full force of the gale, and stood for a moment breathlessly fighting against it. In a lull they pushed on.

“And the tide?” shouted the priest.

“It is high at four o'clock--a spring tide, and the wind in the north-west--not standing room on the shore against the cliff for a man from here to Glainval.”

At high tide the waves beat against the towering cliff all along this grim coast, and a man standing on the turf may not recognize his son on the rocks below, while the human voice can only span the distance in calmest weather. There are spaces of three and four miles between the gaps in the great and inaccessible bluffs. An evil lee-shore to have under one's quarter--one of the waste places of the world which Nature has set apart for her own use. When Nature speaks it is with no uncertain voice.

“There is old Loisette,” shouted the cure. “He may have gone to bed sober.”

“There is no reason to suppose it,” shouted the man in reply. “No, my father, if there is aught to be done, you and I must do it.”

What with the wind and the flannel ear-flaps of the sou'wester, it was hard to make one's self heard, and the two faces almost touched--the unbeliever who knew so little, and the priest who knew not only books but men. They made their way to the little quay, or, rather, the few yards of sea-wall that protect the houses at the corner of the street. But here they could not stand, and were forced to retire to the lee side of the Hotel de la Plage, which, as all know, stands at the corner, with two timorous windows turned seaward, and all the rest seeking the comfort of the street.

In a few words Belfort explained where the light had been seen, and where, according to his judgment, the steamer must have taken the rocks.

“If the good God has farther use for any of them, he will throw them on the shore a kilometre to the east of us, where the wire rope descends from the cliff to the shore for the seaweed,” said the priest.

The other nodded.

“What must be done must be done quickly. Let us go,” said the little cure in his rather bustling manner, at which the great, slow-limbed fishermen were wont to laugh.

“Where to?”

“Along the shore.”

“With a rising tide racing in before a north-westerly wind?” said Belfort, grimly, and shook his head.

“Why not? You have your two legs, and there is Some One--up there!”

“I shouldn't have thought it,” answered the man, glancing up at the storm-driven clouds. “However, where a priest can go a one-armed man can surely follow. We need lanterns and a bottle of brandy.”

“Yes; I will wait and watch here while you fetch them.”

The priest, left alone, peered round the corner, shading his eyes with his soft, white hand, upon which the cold rain pattered. To the east of him he knew that there were three miles of almost impassable shore, of unbroken, unscalable cliff. To the west of him the same. On the one hand Fecamp, five miles away by a cliff path that none would attempt by night, nine miles by road. On the other hand Etretat, still further by road and cliff path. Inland a few farms and many miles of forest. He and Belfort had stumbled over the fallen telegraph wires as they struggled down the village street. No; if there was a wreck out there in the darkness, and men, clinging half-drowned to the rigging, were looking towards the shore, they had better look elsewhere. The sea, like the wind, treated Yport as the mouth of a funnel, and a hundred cross currents were piling up such waves as no boat could pass, though the Yport women were skilful as any man with oar or sail.

Presently Belfort returned carrying two lanterns.

“I have told her that we will not quit the seawall,” he said with a short laugh.

And straightway they both clambered over the wall and down the iron ladder to the beach. A meandering, narrow pathway is worn on the weed-grown chalk from the village to the washing-ground on the beach, a mile to the eastward, where, at low tide, a spring of fresh water wells up amid the shingle and the rock. Along this pathway the two men made their way, the cure following on his companion's heel. They stumbled and fell many times. At every step they slipped, for their boots were soaked, and the chalk was greasy and half decomposed by the salt water. At times they paused to listen, and through the roar of the wind and sea came the distant note of a bell clanging continuously.

“It is the bell on Fecamp pier,” said Belfort. “The mist is coming before the dawn.”

To the east the long arm of Fecamp light swung slowly round the horizon, from the summit of the great bluff of Notre Dame du Salut, as if sweeping the sea and elbowing away all that dared approach so grim a coast.

“Ah!” exclaimed the priest, “I am in the water--the tide is coming up.”

To their left a wall of foam and spray shut off all view of the sea. On the right the cliff rose, a vast barrier, and cut the sky in two. These two men had nothing in common. They had, indeed, standing between them that sword which was brought into the world nineteen hundred years ago, and is still unsheathed. But neither thought of turning back. It had been agreed between them that they should make what speed they could along the shore, and only turn back at the last moment, searching the sea and beach as they returned in the light of dawn.

Belfort, the leader, the expert in night and tide and wind, led the way with one eye on the sea, the other on the eastern sky, which was now showing grey through tossing clouds.

“Here we must turn,” he said suddenly, “and the last half-mile to the sea-wall we shall have to wade.”

They paused and looked up to the sky. In half an hour the day would come, but in seventy minutes the breakers must beat against the sheer cliff.

“None has reached the shore alive and with his senses,” said Belfort, looking out to sea. “He would have seen our lights and come to us, or called if he had broken limbs. It is useless to search the shore too closely. We shall find them here at the edge, half in, half out, especially those with life belts, such as we find any winter morning after bad weather.”

He spoke grimly, as one who knew that it is not the deep sea that must be paid its toll, but the shoal water where the rocks and quicksands and crabs and gulls are waiting. They made their way back in silence, and slowly a new grey day crept into life. At last they could see the horizon and read the face of the water still torn into a seething chaos of foam. There was no ship upon them. If there had been a wreck the storm had done its work thoroughly. Belfort climbed to the summit of a rock, and looked back towards Fecamp. Then he turned and searched the shore towards Yport.

“There is one,” he cried, “half in, half out, as I said. We shall cheat the crabs at all events, my father.”

And clambering down, he stumbled on with a reckless haste that contrasted strangely with his speech. For, whatever our words may be, a human life must ever command respect. Any may (as some have done) die laughing, but his last sight must necessarily be of grave faces.

“This one is not dead,” said the priest, when they had turned the man over and dragged him to dry land. Belfort cut away the life-belt, examining it as he did so.

“No name,” he said. “They will have to wait over there in London, till he can tell them what ship it was. See, he has been struck on the head. But he is alive--a marvel.”

He looked up, meeting the priest's eyes, and, remembering his words spoken under the lee of the wall of the Hotel de la Plage, he laughed as a fencer may laugh who has been touched beyond doubt by a skilful adversary.

“He is a small-made man and light enough to carry--some town mouse this, my father--who has never had a wet jacket before--see his face how white it is, and his little arms and hands. We can carry him, turn and turn about, and shall reach the sea-wall before the tide is up, provided we find no more.”

It was full daylight when they at length reached the weed-grown steps at the side of the sea-wall, and the smoke was already beginning to rise from the chimneys of Yport. The gale was waning as the day came, but the sea was at its highest, and all the houses facing northward had their wooden shutters up. The waves were breaking over the sea-wall, but the two men with their senseless burden took no heed of it. They were all past thinking of salt water.

In answer to their summons, the Mother Senneville came hastily enough to the back door of the Hotel de la Plage--a small inn of no great promise. The Mother Senneville was a great woman, six feet high, with the carriage of a Grenadier, the calm eye of some ruminating animal, the soft, deep voice, and perhaps the soft heart, of a giant.

“Already!” she said simply, as she held the door back for them to pass in. “I thought there would likely be some this morning without the money in their pockets.”

“This one will not call too loud for his coffee,” replied Belfort, with a cynicism specially assumed for the benefit of the cure. “And now,” he added, as they laid their burden on the wine-stained table, “if he has papers that will tell us the name of the ship, I will walk to Fecamp, to Lloyds' agents there, with the news. It will be a five-franc piece in my pocket.”

They hastily searched the dripping clothing, and found a crumpled envelope, which, however, told them all they desired to know. It was addressed to Mr. Albert Robinson, steamship Ocean Waif, Southampton.

“That will suffice,” said Belfort. “I take this and leave the rest to you and Mother Senneville.”

“Send the doctor from Fecamp,” said the woman--“the new one in the Rue du Bac. It is the young ones that work best for nothing, and here is no payment for any of us.”

“Not now,” said the priest.

“Ah!” cried Belfort, tossing off the brandy, which the Mother Senneville had poured out for him. “You--you expect so much in the Hereafter, Mr. the Cure.”

“And you--you expect so much in the present, Mr. the one-armed malcontent,” replied the priest, with his comfortable little laugh. “Come, Madame Senneville. Let me get this man to bed.”

“It is an Englishman, of course,” said the Mother Senneville, examining the placid white face. “They throw their dead about the world like cigar-ends.”

By midday the news was in the London streets, and the talk was all of storms and wrecks and gallant rescues. And a few whose concern it was noted the fact that the Ocean Waif, of London, on a voyage from Antwerp and Southampton to the River Plate, had supposedly been wrecked off the north coast of France. Sole survivor, Albert Robinson, apparently a fireman or a steward, who lay at the Hotel de la Plage at Yport, unconscious, and suffering from a severe concussion of the brain. By midday, also, the cure was established as sick nurse in the back bedroom of the little hotel with an English conversation-book, borrowed from the schoolmaster, protruding from the pocket of his soutane, awaiting the return of Albert Robinson's inner consciousness.

“Are you feeling better?” the cure had all ready to fire off at him as soon as he awoke. To which the conversation-book made reply: “Yes, but I have caught a severe chill on the mountain,” which also the cure had made ready to understand--with modifications.

But the day passed away without any use having been found for the conversation-book. And sundry persons, whose business it was, came and looked at Albert Robinson, and talked to the priest and to Jean Belfort--who, to tell the truth, made much capital and a number of free glasses of red wine out of the incident--and went away again.

The cure passed that night on the second bed of the back bedroom of the Hotel de la Plage, and awoke only at daylight, full of self-reproach, to find his charge still unconscious, still placid like a statue, with cheeks a little hollower, and lips a little whiter. The young doctor came and shook his head, and discoursed of other cases of a similar nature which he had read up since the previous day, and pretended now to have remembered among his experiences. He also went away again, and Yport seemed to drop out of the world once more into that oblivion to which a village with such a poor sea front and no railway station, or lodging houses, or hotels where there are waiters, must expect to be consigned.

The cure had just finished his dejeuner of fish and an omelette--the day being Friday--when a carriage rattled down the village street, leaving behind it doorways suddenly occupied by the female population of Yport wiping its hands upon its apron.

“It is Francois Morin's carriage from Fecamp,” said the Mother Senneville, “with a Parisienne, who has a parasol, if you please.”

“No,” corrected the cure; “that is an Englishwoman. I saw several last year in Rouen.”

And he hurried out, hatless, conversation-book in hand. He was rather taken aback--never having spoken to a person so well-dressed as this English girl, who nodded quickly in answer to his salutation.

“Is this the hotel? Is he here? Is he conscious yet?” she asked in tolerable French.

“Yes--madam. He is here, but he is not conscious yet. The doctor--”

“I am not madam--I am mademoiselle. I am his sister,” said the girl, quickly descending from the carriage and frankly accepting the assistance of the cure's rather timid hand.

He followed her meekly, wondering at her complete self-possession--at an utter lack of ceremony--at a certain blunt frankness which was new to Yport. She nodded to Madame Senneville.

“Where is he?” she asked.

“Monsieur le Cure will show you. It is he who has saved his life.”

The young lady turned and looked into the priest's pink face, which grew pinker. This was not the material of which gallant rescuers are usually made.

“Thank you, Monsieur le Cure,” she said, with a sudden gentleness. “Thank you. It is so difficult--is it not?--to thank any one.”

“There is not the necessity,” murmured the little cure, rather confusedly; and he led the way upstairs.

Once in the sick-room he found his tongue again, and explained matters volubly enough. Besides, she made it easy. She was so marvellously natural, so free from a certain constraint which in some French circles is mistaken for good manners. She asked every detail, and made particular inquiry as to who had seen the patient.

“No one must be allowed to see him,” she said, in her decisive way. “He must be kept quite quiet. No one must approach this room, only you and I, Monsieur le Cure.”

“Yes, mademoiselle,” he said slowly. “Yes.”

“You have been so good--you have done such wonders, that I rely upon you to help me;” and a sudden, sharp look of anxiety swept across her face. “We shall be good friends--n'est ce pas?” she said, turning to look at him as he stood near the door.

“It will be easy, I think, mademoiselle.”

Then he turned to Madame Senneville, who was carrying the baggage upstairs.

“It is his sister, Madame Senneville,” he said. “She will, of course, stay in the hotel.”

“Yes, and I have no room ready,” replied the huge woman, pessimistically. “One never knows what a summer storm may bring to one.”

“No, Mother Senneville, no; one never knows,” he said rather absently, and went out into the street. He was thinking of the strange young person upstairs, who was unlike any woman he had met or imagined. Those in her station in life whom he had seen during his short thirty years were mostly dressed-up dolls, to whom one made banal remarks without meaning. The rest were almost men, doing men's work, leading a man's life.

That same evening the injured man recovered consciousness, and it was the cure who sent off the telegram to the doctor at Fecamp. For the wire had been repaired with the practical rapidity with which they manage such affairs in France.

Through the slow recovery it was the cure who was ever at the beck and call of the two strangers, divining their desires, making quite easy a situation which otherwise might have been difficult enough. Not only the cure, but the whole village soon became quite reconciled to the hitherto unheard-of position assumed by this young girl, without a guardian or a chaperon, who lived a frank, fearless life among them, making every day terrible assaults upon that code of feminine behaviour which hedges Frenchwomen about like a wall.

In the intimacy of the sick-room the little priest soon learnt to talk with the Englishwoman and her brother quite freely, as man to man, as he had talked to his bosom friend by selection at St. Omer. And there was in his heart that ever-abiding wonder that a woman may thus be a companion to a man, sharing his thoughts, nay, divining them before he had shaped them in his own mind. It was all very wonderful and new to this little priest, who had walked, as it were, on one side of the street of life since boyhood without a thought of crossing the road.

When the three were together they were merry enough; indeed, the Englishman's mistakes in French were sufficient to cause laughter in themselves without that re-action which lightens the atmosphere of a sick-room when the danger is past. But while he was talking to the Mother Senneville downstairs, or waiting a summons to come up, the cure never heard laughter in the back bedroom. There seemed to be some shadow there which fled before his cheery smile when he went upstairs. When he and the girl were together when she walked on the sea-wall with him for a breath of air, she was grave enough too, as if now that she knew him better she no longer considered it necessary to assume a light-heartedness she did not feel.

“Are you sure there is nothing I can do to make your life easier here?” he asked suddenly one day.

“Quite sure,” she answered without conviction.

“Have you all that you want, mademoiselle?”

“Oh yes.”

But he felt that there was some anxiety weighing upon her. He was always at or near the Hotel de la Plage now, so that she could call him from the window or the door. One day--a day of cloud and drizzle, which are common enough at Yport in the early summer--he went into the little front room, which the Mother Senneville fondly called her salon, to read the daily office from the cloth-bound book he ever carried in his pocket. He was engaged in this devout work when the Englishwoman came hastily into the room, closing the door and standing with her back against it.

“There is a gendarme in the street,” she said, in little more than a whisper, her eyes glittering. She was breathless.

“What of it, mademoiselle? It is my old friend the Sergeant Grall. It is I who christen his children.”

“Why is he here?”

“It is his duty, mademoiselle. The village is peaceful enough now that the men are away at the fisheries. You have nothing to fear.”

She glanced round the room with a hunted look in her eyes.

“Oh,” she said, “I cannot keep it up any longer. You must have guessed--you who are so quick--that my brother is a great criminal. He has ruined thousands of people. He was escaping with the money he had stolen when the steamer was wrecked.”

The cure did not say whether this news surprised him or not, but walked to the window and looked thoughtfully out to sea. The windows were dull and spray-ridden.

“Ah!” the girl cried, “you must not judge hastily. You cannot know his temptation.”

“I will not judge at all, mademoiselle. No man may judge of another's temptation. But--he can restore the money.”

“No. It was all lost in the steamer.”

She had approached the other window, and stood beside the little priest looking out over the grey sea.

“It was surely my duty to come here and help him, whatever he had done.”

“Assuredly, mademoiselle.”

“But he says you can give him up if you like.”

She glanced at him and caught her breath. The priest shook his head.

“Why not? Because you are too charitable?” she whispered; and again he shook his head. “Then, why not?” she persisted with a strange pertinacity.

“Because he is your brother, mademoiselle.”

And they stood for some moments looking out over the sea, through the rime-covered windows, in a breathless silence. The cure spoke at length.

“You must get him removed to Havre,” he said, in his cheery way, “as soon as possible. There he can take a steamer to America. I will impress upon the doctor the necessity of an early departure.”

It was not lately, but many years ago, that the Ocean Waif was wrecked in a summer storm. And any who penetrate to Yport to-day will probably see in the sunlight on the sea-wall a cheery little cure, who taps his snuff-box, while he exchanges jokes with the idlers there. Yport has slowly crept into the ken of the traveller, and every summer sees English tourists pass that way. They are not popular with the rough natives, who, after all, are of the same ancestry as ourselves; but the little cure is quick and kind with information or assistance to all who seek it. When the English tongue is spoken he draws near and listens--snuff-box in hand; when the travellers speak in French his eyes travel out to sea with a queer look, as if the accent aroused some memory.

And in an obscure English watering-place there lives a queer little old maid--churchy and prim--who does charitable work, gives her opinion very freely concerning the administration of matters parochial, thinks the vicar very self-indulgent and idle--and in her own heart has the abiding conviction that there are none on earth like the Roman clergy.

“GOLOSSA-A-L”

“Golossa-a-l!” I heard him say. “Golossa-a-l, these Englishmen! Are they not everywhere?”

A moment later I was introduced to him, and he rose to shake hands--a tall, fair, good-natured German student. Heavy if you will--but clean withal, and of a cleanly mind.

“Honour,” he muttered politely. “It is not often we have an English student at Gottingen--but perhaps we can teach you something--eh?” And he broke into a boyish laugh. “You will take beer?” he added, drawing forward an iron chair--for we were in the Brauerei Garden.

“Thank you.”

“A doctor of medicine--the Herr Professor tells me,” he said pleasantly. “Prosit,” he added, as he raised his great mug to his lips.

“Prosit! Yes, a doctor of medicine--of the army.”

“Ah, of the army, that is good. I also I hope, some day! And you come to pass our Gottingen examination. Yes, but it is hard--ach Gott!--devilish hard.”

There was a restrained shyness about the man which I liked. Shy men are so rare. And, although he could have cleared the Brauerei Garden in five minutes, there was no bluster about this Teutonic Hercules. His loud, good-natured laugh was perhaps the most striking characteristic of Carl von Mendebach. Next to that, his readiness to be surprised at everything or anything, and to class it at once as colossal. Hence the nickname by which he was known amongst us. The term was applied to me a thousand times--figuratively. For I am a small man, as I have had reason to deplore more than once while carrying the wounded out of action. It takes so much longer if one is small.

I cannot exactly say why Carl von Mendebach and I became close friends; but I do not think that Lisa von Mendebach had anything to do with it. I was never in love with Lisa, although I admired her intensely, and I never see a blue-eyed, fair-haired girl to this day without thinking of Lischen. But I was not in love with her. I was never good-looking. I did not begin by expecting much from the other sex, and I have never been in love with anybody. I wonder if Lisa remembers me.

The students were pleasant enough fellows. It must be recollected that I speak of a period dating back before the war of 1870--before there was a German Empire. I soon made a sort of place for myself at the University, and I was tolerated good-naturedly. But Carl did more than tolerate me. He gave me all the friendship of his simple heart. Without being expansive--for he was a Hanoverian--he told me all about himself, his thoughts and his aims, an open-hearted ambition and a very Germanic contentment with a world which contained beer and music. Then at last he told me all about his father, General von Mendebach, and Lisa. Finally he took me to his house one evening to supper.

“Father,” he said in his loud, cheery way, “here is the Englishman--a good friend of mine--a great scholar--golossa-a-l.”

The General held out his hand and Lisa bowed, prettily formal, with a quaint, prim smile which I can see still.

I went to the house often--as often, indeed, as I could. I met the Von Mendebachs at the usual haunts--the theatre, an occasional concert, the band on Sunday afternoon, and at the houses of some of the professors. It was Lisa who told me that another young Briton was coming to live in Gottingen--not, however, as a student at the University. He turned out to be a Scotsman--one Andrew Smallie, the dissolute offspring of a prim Edinburgh family. He had been shipped off to Gottingen, in the hope that he might there drink himself quietly to death. The Scotch do not keep their skeletons at home in a cupboard. They ship them abroad and give them facilities.

Andrew Smallie soon heard that there was an English student in Gottingen, and, before long, procured an introduction. I disliked him at once. I took good care not to introduce him to any friends of mine.

“Seem to lead a quiet life here,” he said to me one day when I had exhausted all conversation and every effort to get him out of my rooms.

“Very,” I replied.

“Don't you know anybody? It's a deuced slow place. I don't know a soul to talk to except yourself. Can't take to these beer-drinking, sausage-eating Germans, you know. Met that friend of yours, Carl von Mendebach, yesterday, but he didn't seem to see me.”

“Yes,” I answered. “It is possible he did not know you. You have never been introduced.”

“No,” he answered dubiously. “Shouldn't think that would matter in an out-of-the-way place like this.”

“It may seem out of the way to you,” I said, without looking up from my book. “But it does not do so to the people who live here.”

“D--d slow lot, I call them,” he muttered. He lighted a cigar and stood looking at me for some time and then he went away.

It was about this time that Carl von Mendebach fought his first student duel, and he was kind enough to ask me to be his surgeon. It was, of course, no quarrel of his own, but a point of honour between two clubs; and Carl was selected to represent his “corps.” He was delighted, and the little slit in his cheek which resulted from the encounter gave him infinite satisfaction. I had been elected to the “corps” too, and wore my cap and colours with considerable pride. But, being an Englishman, I was never asked to fight. I did not then, and I do not now, put forward any opinion on student duelling. My opinion would make no difference, and there is much to be said on both sides.

It was a hard winter, and I know few colder places than Gottingen. An ice fete was organized by the University. I believe Carl and I were among the most energetic of the organizers. I wish I had never had anything to do with it.

I remember to this day the pleasure of skating with Lisa's warmly gloved little hands in my own--her small furred form touching me lightly each time we swung over to the left on the outside edge. I saw Andrew Smallie once or twice. Once he winked at me, knowingly, as I passed him with Lisa--and I hated him for it. That man almost spoilt Gottingen for me. Britons are no friends of mine out of their own country. They never get over the fallacy that everywhere except London is an out-of-the-way place where nothing matters.

As the evening wore on, some of the revellers became noisy in a harmless German way. They began to sing part songs with a skill which is not heard out of the Fatherland. Parties of young men and maidens joined hands and swung round the lake in waltz time to the strain of the regimental band.

Lisa was tired, so she sought a seat with the General, leaving Carl and me to practise complicated figures. They found a seat close to us--a seat somewhat removed from the lamps. In the dusk it was difficult to distinguish between the townspeople and the gentlefolk.

We were absorbed in our attempts when I heard a voice I knew--and hated.

“Here, you, little girl in the fur jacket--come and have a turn with me,” it was saying in loud, rasping, intoxicated tones.

I turned sharply. Smallie was standing in front of Lisa with a leer in his eyes. She was looking up at him--puzzled, frightened--not understanding English. The General was obesely dumfounded.

“Come along--my dear,” Andrew Smallie went on. He reached out his hand, and, grasping her wrist, tried to drag her towards him.

Then I went for him. I am, as I have confessed, a small man. But if a man on skates goes for another, he gathers a certain impetus. I gave it to him with my left, and Andrew Smallie slid along the ice after he had fallen.

The General hustled Lisa away, muttering oaths beneath his great white moustache.

When Andrew Smallie picked himself up, Carl von Mendebach was standing over him.

“Tell him,” said Carl in German, “that that was my sister.”

I told Smallie.

Then Carl von Mendebach slowly drew off his fur glove and boxed Smallie heavily on the ear so that he rolled over sideways.

“Golossa-a-l,” muttered Von Mendebach, as we went away hurriedly together.

The next morning Carl sent an English-speaking student with a challenge to Andrew Smallie. I wrote a note to my compatriot, telling him that although it was not our habit in England, he would do well to accept the challenge or to leave Gottingen at once. Carl stood over me while I wrote the letter.

“Tell him,” he said, “where he can procure fencing lessons.”

I gave Smallie the name of the best fencing-master in Gottingen. Then we called for beer and awaited the return of our messenger. The student came back looking grave and pale.

“He accepts,” he said. “But--”

“Well!” we both exclaimed.

“He names pistols.”

“What?” I cried. Carl laughed suddenly. We had never thought of such a thing. Duelling with pistols is forbidden. It is never dreamt of among German students.

“Ah--all right!” said Carl. “If he wishes it.”

I at once wrote a note to Smallie, telling him that the thing was impossible. My messenger was sent back without an answer. I wrote, offering to fight Carl myself with the usual light sword or the sabre, in his name and for him. To this I received no answer. I went round to his rooms and was refused admittance.

The next morning at five--before it was light--Carl and I started off on foot for a little forest down by the river. At six o'clock Andrew Smallie arrived. He was accompanied by an Einjahriger--a German who had lived in England before he came home to serve his year in the army.

We did not know much about it. Carl laughed as I put him in position. The fresh pink of his cheek--like the complexion of a healthy girl--never faded for a moment.

“When I've done with him,” cried Smallie, “I'll fight you.”

We placed our men. The German soldier gave the word. Carl von Mendebach went down heavily.

He was still smiling--with a strange surprise on his simple face.

“Little man,” he said, “he has hit me.”

He lay quite still while I quickly loosened his coat. Then suddenly his breath caught.

“Golossa-a-l!” he muttered. His eyes glazed. He was dead.

I looked up and saw Smallie walking quickly away alone. The Einjahriger was kneeling beside me.

I have never seen or heard of Andrew Smallie since. I am a grey-haired man now. I have had work to do in every war of my day. I have been wounded--I walk very lame. But I still hope to see Andrew Smallie--perhaps in a country where I can hold him to his threat; if it is only for the remembrance of five minutes that I had with Lisa when I went back to Gottingen that cold winter morning.

THE MULE

“Si je vis, c'est bien; si je meurs, c'est bien.”

“Ai-i-ieah,” the people cried, as Juan Quereno passed--the cry of the muleteers, in fact. And this was considered an excellent joke. It had been a joke in the country-side for nearly twenty years; one of perhaps half a dozen, for the uneducated mind is slow to comprehend, and slower to forget. Some one had nicknamed Juan Quereno the “Mule” when he was at school, and Spain, like Italy and parts of Provence, is a country where men have two names--the baptismal, and the so-called. Indeed, the custom is so universal, that official records must needs take cognizance of it, and grave Government papers are made out in the name of so-and-so, “named the monkey.”

There were, after all, worse by-names in the village than the Mule, which is, as many know, a willing enough beast if taken the right way. If taken in the wrong--well, one must not take him in the wrong way, and there is an end of it! A mule will suddenly stop because, it would appear, he has something on his mind and desires to think it out then and there. And the man who raises a stick is, of course, a fool. Any one knows that. There is nothing for it but to stand and watch his ears, which are a little set back, and cry, “Ai-i-ieah,” patiently and respectfully, until the spirit moves him to go on. And then the mule will move on, slowly at first, without enthusiasm, a quality which, by the way, is, of all the animals, only to be found in the horse and the dog.

The quick-witted who had dealings with Quereno knew, therefore, by his name what manner of man this was, and dealt with him accordingly. Juan Quereno was himself a muleteer, and in even such a humble capacity as scrambling behind a beast of burden over a rocky range of mountains and through a stream or two, a man may make for himself a small reputation in his small world. Juan Quereno was, namely, a Government muleteer, and carried the mails over nineteen chaotic miles of rock and river. When the mails were delayed owing, it was officially announced, to heavy snow or rain in the mountains, the delay never occurred on Quereno's etapa.

For nine years, winter and summer, storm and shine, he got his mails through, backwards and forwards, sleeping one night at San Celoni, the next at Puente de Rey. Such was Juan Quereno, “a stupid enough fellow,” the democratic schoolmaster of San Celoni said, with a shrug of his shoulders and a wave of the cigarette which he always carried half-smoked and unlighted in his fingers.

The schoolmaster was, nevertheless, pleasant enough when the Mule, clean-shaven and shy, with a shrinking look in his steady, black eyes, asked one evening if he could speak to him alone.

“But yes--amigo!” he replied; “but yes.” And he drew aside on the bench that stands at the schoolhouse door. “Sit down.”

The Mule sat down, leant heavily against the wall, and thrust out first one heavy foot and then the other. Then he sat forward with his elbows on his knees, and looked at his dusty boots. His face was tanned a deep brown--a stolid face--not indicative of much intelligence perhaps, not spiritual, but not bad on the other hand, which is something in a world that abounds in bad faces. He glanced sideways at the schoolmaster, and moistened his lips with his tongue, openly, after the manner of the people.

“It is about Caterina, eh?” inquired the elder man.

“Yes,” replied the Mule, with a sort of gasp. If the Mule had ever been afraid in his life, it was at that moment--afraid, if you please, of a little democrat of a schoolmaster no bigger than the first-class boys, blinking through a pair of magnifying spectacles which must have made the world look very large, if one could judge from the effect that they had upon his eyes.

The schoolmaster looked up towards the mountains, to the goats poised there upon the broken ground, seeking a scanty herbage in the crannies.

“How many beasts is it that you have--four or five?” he inquired kindly enough, after a moment, and the Mule drew a deep breath.

“Five,” he replied; and added, after a minute's deep and honest thought, “and good ones, except Cristofero Colon, the big one. He eats much, and yet, when the moment comes”--he paused and looked towards the mountains, which rose like a wall to the south, a wall that the Mule must daily climb--“when the moment comes he will sometimes refuse--especially in an east wind.”

The schoolmaster smiled, thinking perhaps of that other Cristofero Colon and the east wind that blew him to immortal fame.

“And Caterina,” he asked. “What does she think of it?”

“I don't know.”

The schoolmaster looked at his companion with an upward jerk of the head. It was evident that he thought him a dull fellow. But that assuredly was Caterina's affair. It was, on the other hand, distinctly the affair of Caterina's father to remember those five beasts of the Mule's, than which there were none better in the country-side--to recollect that the Mule himself had a good name at his trade, and was trusted by the authorities. There was no match so good in all the valley, and certainly none to compare with this dull swain in the accursed village of San Celoni. The schoolmaster never spoke of the village without a malediction. He had been planted there in his youth with a promise of promotion, and promotion had never come. For a man of education it was exile--no newspapers, no passing travellers at the Cafe. The nearest town was twenty miles away over the Sierra Nevada, and Malaga--the paved Paradise of his rural dreams--forty rugged miles to the south. No wonder he was a democrat, this disappointed man. In a Republic, now, such as his father had schemed for in the forties, he would have succeeded. A Republic, it must be remembered, being a community in which every man is not only equal, but superior to his neighbour.

“You don't know?”

“No,” answered the Mule, with a dull look of shame at his own faint-heartedness. Moreover, he was assuredly speaking an untruth. The man who fears to inquire--knows.

As a matter of fact, he had hardly spoken to Caterina. Conversation was not the Mule's strong point. He had exchanged the usual greetings with her at the fountain on a fiesta day. He had nodded a good morning to her, gruff and curt (for the Mule had no manners), more times than he could count. And Caterina had met his slow glance with those solemn eyes of hers, and that, so to speak, had settled the Mule's business. Just as it would have settled the business of five out of six men. For Caterina had Moorish eyes--dark and solemn and sad, which said a hundred things that Caterina had never thought of--which seemed to have some history in them that could hardly have been Caterina's history, for she was only seventeen. Though, as to this, one cannot always be sure. Perhaps the history was all to come. Of course, the Mule knew none of these things. He was a hard-working, open-air Andalusian, and only knew that he wanted Caterina, and, as the saying is, could not live without her. Meantime he lived on from day to day without that which he wanted, and worked--just as the reader may be doing. That, in fact, is life--to live on without something or other, and work. Than which there is one thing worse, namely, to live on and be idle.

“But--” said the schoolmaster, slowly, for Andalusian tongues are slow, if the knives are quick--“but one may suppose that you would make her a good husband.”

And a sudden gruff laugh was the answer. A woman would have understood it; but Caterina had no mother. And the schoolmaster was thinking of the five beasts and the postal appointment. The muleteer's face slowly sank back into stolidity again. The light that had flashed across it had elevated that dull physiognomy for a moment only.

“Yes,” said the Mule slowly, at length.

“You can read and write?” inquired the man of education.

“Yes, but not quickly!”

“That,” said the schoolmaster, “is a matter of practice. You should read the newspapers.”

Which was bad advice, for the Mule was simple and might have believed what he read.

The conversation was a long one; that is to say, it lasted a long time; until, indeed, the sun had set and the mountains had faded from blue to grey, while the far-off snow peaks reared their shadowy heads into the very stars. The schoolmaster had a few more questions to ask, and the Mule answered them in monosyllables. He was tired, perhaps, after his day's journey; for he had come the northward trip, which was always the hardest, entailing as it did a rocky climb on the sunny side of the mountains. He had nothing to say in his own favour, which is not such a serious matter as some might suspect. The world does not always take us at our own valuation, which is just as well--for the world.

Indeed, the schoolmaster only succeeded in confirming his own suspicion that this was nothing but a dull fellow, and he finally had to dismiss the Mule, who had not even the savoir faire to perceive when conversation was ended.

“Vederemos,” he said, judicially, “we shall see.”

And the Mule went away with that heaviness of heart which must surely follow a mean action. For he knew that in applying to Caterina's father he had placed Caterina at a disadvantage. The schoolmaster, be it remembered, was a democrat, and such are usually autocrats in their own house. He was, moreover, a selfish man, and had long cherished the conviction that he was destined to be great. He thought that he was an orator, and that gift, which is called by those who do not possess it the gift of the gab, is the most dangerous that a man can have. There was no one in San Celoni to listen to him. And if Caterina were married and he were a free man, he could give up the school and go to Malaga, where assuredly he could make a name.

So the schoolmaster told Caterina the next morning that she was to marry the Mule--that the matter was settled. The dusky roses faded from Caterina's cheek for a moment, and her great dark eyes had a hunted look. That look had often come there of late. The priest had noticed it, and one or two old women.

“Almost as if she were in the mountains,” they said, which is a local polite way of referring to those unfortunate gentlemen who, for some reason or another, do not desire to meet the Guardia Civil, and haunt the upper slopes of the Sierra Nevada, where they live, as live the beasts of the forest, seeking their meat from God, while the charitable, and, it is even whispered, the priest or the Alcalde himself, will at times lay an old coat or a loaf of bread at the roadside above the village, and never inquire who comes to take it.

The Mule himself, it is known, buys more matches than he can ever burn, so much as six boxes at a time, of those cheap sulphurous wooden matches that are made at Barcelona, and the next day will buy more. The Mule, however, is such a silent man that those who are “in the mountains” make no concealment with him, but meet him (wild, unkempt figures that appear quietly from behind a great rock) as he passes on his journeys, and ask him if he has a match upon him. They sometimes look at the mail-bags slung across the stubborn back of Cristofero Colon with eyes that have the hunted, hungry look which Caterina has.

“There is, perhaps, money in there,” they say.

“Perhaps,” answers the Mule, without afterthought.

“It may be a thousand pesetas.”

“Perhaps.”

And the Mule, who is brave enough where Caterina is not concerned, quietly turns his back upon a man who carries a gun, and follows Cristofero Colon. It sometimes happens that he trudges his nineteen miles without meeting any one, with no companion but his mules and his dog. This last-named animal is such as may be met in Spain or even in France at any street corner--not a retriever, nor a foxhound, nor anything at all but a dog as distinguished from a cat or a goat, living a troubled and uncertain life in a world that will always cringe to a pedigree, but has no respect for nondescripts. It was on these journeys that the Mule had so much leisure for thought. For even he could think, according to his dim lights. He was only conscious, however, of an ever-increasing feeling of a sickness--a physical nausea (for he was, of course, a mere earthy-creature)--at the thought of a possible life without Caterina. And it was at the end of a grilling day that the schoolmaster beckoned to him as he passed the school-house, and told him that it was settled--that Caterina would marry him.

“Would you like to see her? She is indoors,” inquired the bearer of the tidings.

“No,” answered the Mule, after a dull pause. “Not to-night. I have my mail-bags, as you see.”

And he clattered on down the narrow street with a dazed look, as if the brightness of Paradise had flashed across his vision.

So it was settled. Caterina and the Mule were to be married, and there had been no love-making, the old women said. “And what,” they asked, “is youth for, if there is to be no love-making?”

“And God knows they were right,” said the priest who heard the remark, and who was a very old man himself.

Two days after that, the Mule met Caterina as she was going to the fountain. He said “Good morning.” They both stopped, and the Mule looked into Caterina's eyes and had nothing to say. For he saw something there which he did not understand, and which made him feel that he was no better than Cristofero Colon, scraping and stumbling up the narrow street with the mail-bags, in such a vile temper, by the way, that the Mule had to hurry after him.

“It is a slow business,” said the schoolmaster to Sergeant Nolveda, of the Guardia Civil, who lived in San Celoni and trained one young recruit after another according to the regulations of this admirable corps. For one never meets a Guardia Civil alone, but always in company--an old head and a pair of young legs. “A slow business. He is not a lover such as I should choose were I a pretty girl like Caterina; but one can never tell with women--eh?”

Indeed, matters did not progress very quickly. The Mule appeared to take so much for granted--to take as said so much that had not been said. Even the love-making seemed to him to have been understood, and he appeared to be quite content to go his daily journeys with the knowledge that Caterina was to be his wife. There were, of course, others in the valley who would have been glad enough to marry Caterina, but she had shown no preference for any of these swains, who knew themselves inferior, in a worldly sense, to the Mule. So the whole country-side gradually accustomed itself also to the fact that Caterina was to marry Quereno. The news even spread to the mountains. The Mule heard of it there one day when he had accomplished fourteen daily journeys to the accompaniment of this new happiness.

As he was nearing the summit of the pass he saw Pedro Casavel, who had been “in the mountains” three years, seated on a stone awaiting him. Pedro Casavel was a superior man, who had injured another in a dispute originating in politics. His adversary was an old man, now stricken with a mortal disease. And it was said that Pedro Casavel could safely return to the village, where his father owned a good house and some land. His enemy had forgiven him, and would not prosecute. But Casavel lingered in the mountains, distrusting so Christian a spirit.

He rose as the Mule slowly approached. He carried a gun always, and was more daring than his companions in retreat. The Mule mechanically sought in his jacket pocket for a box of matches, which he knew would be a welcome gift, and held them out silently as he neared Casavel. But Casavel did not take them.

“I hear that you are to marry Caterina,” he said, with a half disdainful laugh. “Is it true?”

“It is true,” answered the Mule.

“If you do,” cried the other, passionately, with a bang on the stock of his gun that startled Cristofero Colon--“if you do, I will shoot you.”

The Mule smiled slowly, just as he smiled when the people cried “Ai-i-ieah” as he passed them.