“But you will be in danger!”
“Have no concern on that score,” is the reply, delivered in grim accents.
“But—”
“Enough of buts; begone before midnight strikes, or, by the Mass, your stay in Schwerlingen will be unpleasantly prolonged. Farewell!”
And, stepping back, the jester slams the door and de Savignon is left alone, shivering with cold. For a moment the idea again occurs to him that he is being victimised by Kuoni. But he remembers that were the plot undiscovered the jester would scarcely be in possession of the secret.
Next he begins to marvel why Kuoni should evince such solicitude for his escape and for his life, after having always shown himself so bitter an enemy in the past. However, fear overcomes his doubts; so, swearing that if the fool has duped him he will return, if it be only to wring his neck, he sets off briskly in the direction indicated.
Meanwhile, Kuoni has retraced his steps to the Frenchman’s bedchamber: tricked out in de Savignon’s clothes and with de Savignon’s hat drawn well over his brows, so as to shade his face, he flings himself into the chair lately occupied by the Marquis — and waits.
Presently the deep-toned bell of St. Oswald’s chimes out the hour of midnight; scarce has the vibration of the last stroke died away on the silent night air, when his ear detects another and nearer sound.
He springs up, and turning finds himself confronted by three masked men, standing, sword in hand, by the open window through which they have entered. In an instant he has drawn de Savignon’s rapier from its scabbard.
“How now, my masters,” he exclaims, mimicking the Frenchman’s foreign accent, “what do you seek?”
“The Marquis Henri de Savignon” says one, in a voice which the jester does not recognise.
“I am he,” he replies haughtily; “what is your business? Are you robbers or assassins, that you come in this guise and penetrate at such an hour into my bedchamber?”
“We bear you news,” says the former speaker, delivering the words after the fashion of a man who is reciting a lesson that he has learnt by heart, “we bear you news that your treason is discovered, and in the King’s name we bid you prepare to die.”
“A merry jest, gentlemen! An artful story! You are certainly no common footpads, but I fear me there is some slight mistake.”
“I give you five minutes, by yonder time-piece, wherein to prepare your soul for the next world.”
“It is considerate of you, my masters,” retorts Kuoni, the mocking spirit of the jester asserting itself, “but the boon is unrequested, and, by your leave, I trust to have many years yet wherein to carry out your amiable suggestion.”
“The man is laughing at us,” cries one of the hitherto silent assassins. “Let us end the business!”
His companions seek to detain him, but, going forward in spite of them, he crosses swords with Kuoni.
Seeing him engaged, the other two come forward also, and in a few minutes a terrible fight is raging. There is not, perhaps, in the whole of Sachsenberg a finer swordsman than this lithe and agile jester, but the odds are such as no man may hope to strive against victoriously. Before many minutes have elapsed, one of the assassin’s swords has passed through his right breast.
With a groan he sinks forward in a heap, and the sword he lately held bounds with a noisy ring upon the parquet floor.
Hurrying steps are heard outside the room, and presently voices are discernible, as the household, disturbed by the clash of steel and the din of struggle, is hurrying towards De Savignon’s room.
One of the assassins is on the point of going forward to make sure of their work, by driving his dagger into the heart of the prostrate man, when, alarmed by the approaching sounds and mindful of their orders not to allow themselves on any account to be taken, the other two drag him off through the window before he can accomplish his design.
“Come,” says he who delivered the fatal blow, “he will be dead in a few minutes. That stroke never yet left a man alive.”
An instant later the door of the room is burst violently open, and just as the murderers disappear into the night a curious group of half-clad men and women with frightened faces stand awe-stricken on the threshold, gazing at the spectacle before them.
“The Marquis has been slain,” cries a voice, which is followed by a woman’s shriek, and as the crowd divides, the old, white-haired Count of Lichtenau enters the room followed by his half-fainting daughter.
Together they stand gazing at the body on the floor, and at the dark crimson stain which is slowly spreading about it.
Then suddenly —
“Henri!” shrieks the girl, and rushing forwards, she falls on her knees beside the unconscious Kuoni. Then, as her father gently turns the body over to ascertain the nature of his hurt, another and different cry escapes her. But the jester reviving, and opening his eyes at the sound, meets her gaze and whispers faintly —
“Hush, my lady! do not say that I am not the Marquis. As you value his life, keep silent and let all believe and spread the report that the Marquis is dying.”
“What does it mean? what does it mean?” she wails, wringing her hands, yet, with quick instinct, understanding that serious motives have dictated Kuoni’s words.
“Send them away — your father also — I will explain,” gasps the jester, and at each word he utters the blood wells forth from his wound.
When all have withdrawn, and when she has raised his head and pillowed it in her lap, he tells her all, bidding her not to allow the real truth of the matter to transpire until morning.
“And you, YOU, Kuoni, of all men, who have ever seemed to hate him, you have so nobly given your life to buy his safety!” she exclaims.
“No, my lady, I have not,” he answers; “I have given my life not for him but for you. I wished to save him because you loved him. And because I wished to spare you the anguish of beholding his dead body, I have changed places with him. His life is valuable to some one — mine is worthless.”
The girl can find no words wherein to answer fittingly, but her tears are falling fast and they are eloquent to him. She understands at last!
“I am so happy,” he murmurs presently, “oh, so happy! Had I lived my head would never have been pillowed on your knee. Had I lived, I should never have dared to tell you — as I do now, when in the presence of death all differences of birth and station fade away — that I love you.”
The girl trembles violently; then for a second their eyes meet. She were not a woman did her heart not swell with fondness and pity for the poor despised fool, who to ensure her happiness has sacrificed his life.
Growing bold in the dread presence of the Reaper —
“Louisa,” he gasps, his voice still fainter than before, “I am dying; there are none to witness, and none will ever know — kiss me!”
Weeping softly, the girl stoops until her loose flowing hair falls about his head and neck, and her lips, so rich with the blood of life and youth, touch his, upon which the chill of death is settling.
A quiver runs through his frame, his chest heaves with a long last sigh — then all is still, but for the gentle sobbing of the girl whose tears are falling fast upon the upturned face, which smiles upon her in death.
THE SPIRITUALIST
A Story of the Occult.
In quest of local colour in that part of France that once was known as Languedoc, I spent a week last autumn in the little village of Aubepine. I stayed at the Hotel du Cerf, whereof Jules Coupri is host, and for companions of an evening I had the village notary, a couple of grocers, a haberdasher — who was in his way a leader of fashion in Aubepine — the postmaster, and half-a-dozen young farmers, who were in the habit of coming there to drink their petit-vin and exchange their ideas.
A student of human nature in my humble way, I made a point of mingling freely with them, and I am afraid that their patience and good nature drew me to talk a good deal. But on the eve of my departure I was for once cast into the sh
ade by a young seafaring man of the better sort, who was, he informed us, on his way to Carcassonne. He expatiated upon the wonders of Greece and Italy with such eloquent picturesqueness that he monopolised the attention which hitherto I had enjoyed without competition.
But my revenge was to come. Towards nine o’clock a tall, swarthy man, dressed in black clothes, which, if seedy, were of more or less fashionable cut, and wearing a chimney-pot hat, stalked into the room, and called for the landlord. He wanted supper as quickly as possible for himself and his driver — he travelled in a ramshackle carriage — and announced to all that he must push on that night to St. Hilaire. He was evil-looking of face, yet not without distinction. The nose was thin as the bill of an eagle, and as curved; the forehead high and narrow, with absurdly long, black hair brushed straight back; the eyes were close-set and piercing; the mouth little more than a straight line above the square, lean chin. He was on the whole a striking individual, and from the moment of his advent he absorbed the attention of all present.
Seemingly aware of the impression he had created, he came over to the table at which I sat, and fell easily into conversation with those about upon small matters of provincial interest. In less than five minutes the sailor and his voyages were forgotten.
I was still speculating upon the man’s business in life — for I am of those who believe that a man bears upon him the outward signs of his profession — when a young farmer happened to mention that his vineyards had been doing badly for the last three years — ever since his brother’s death. The stranger’s gimlet eyes were instantly turned upon him.
“What do you suppose to be the reason of it?” he inquired in a voice that was curiously impressive.
“Reason?” echoed young Pascal. “There is no reason. It is an unpleasant coincidence.”
A saturnine smile overspread the stranger’s face.
“So the ignorant ever say,” he deprecated. “Young man, there is no such thing as coincidence in the vulgar sense.” Then he galvanised the peasant by asking: “Have you seen your brother since?”
“Seen him? But then monsieur has not understood that he is dead!”
“And since when may we not see the dead?”
“Do you mean his spirit?” gasped Pascal.
“Call it by what name you will, I mean your brother.”
“Does monsieur believe then in revenants?”
“No, monsieur, I do not. There are no revenants; that is to say, there are none who return, for they are always with us; here, around us, everywhere.” And he tossed his arms about him, and glanced this way and that to emphasise his meaning. “It is the body only which they quit. The earth never. And their souls, no longer clogged and stultified by the obsessing flesh, are not confined to the present as are we. For them the past is clear, and the future holds no mysteries.
“They know the causes of things, the origin of matter, and its final ending. That, monsieur, is why I asked you had you seen your brother. It is clear that you have not done so. That would be foolish, were it not that it is in ignorance that you have submitted to the fate which is ruining your vineyard. If you had been better informed touching these matters you would have held intercourse with your brother, and obtained from him enlightenment. Thus might you by now have remedied the evil.”
Those present sat silent and awe-stricken. To many of them, in their ignorant, credulous, superstitious way, this man, who spoke so seriously of communion with the dead, must have appeared a wizard, if not the very fiend himself — a belief to which his fantastic personality would lend colour.
“Does monsieur mean that I can cause my brother to appear to me!”
“If you were enlightened you might do so. As it is—” He paused, shrugged his shoulders, and curled his lips contemptuously— “I am afraid you cannot.”
“But can such things be done?” cried the haberdasher.
“Assuredly,” answered the spiritualist. “In Paris they are done every day.”
“Ah — in Paris,” sighed one to whom nothing seemed impossible when associated with that wonderful name.
“Can you do it?” asked the haberdasher bluntly, yet with a certain awe lurking in his question.
The man smiled the quiet smile of one who is conscious of his strength.
“Have you never heard of M. Delamort?” he asked — much as he might have asked: “Have you never heard of Bonaparte?”
They were silent, from which he seemed to gather that his fame, however great elsewhere, had not travelled yet as far as this.
“I am a member of the Societe Transemperique, which devotes itself to researches in the spirit-world,” he informed them.
Thereupon they fell to questioning him fearfully as to whether he had ever held communion with a spirit, to which he answered vaingloriously:
“With hundreds, messieurs.”
At that the sailor, who, I imagined, would be nursing a grudge against this man who had stripped him of his popularity, burst into a contemptuous laugh, which acted as a cold douche upon the audience. M. Delamort glared at him with angry eyes, but the man’s expression of disbelief found many an echo, and from one or two I even caught the contemptuous word “Charlatan!”
“Fools,” cried the spiritualist, his voice like a rumble of distant thunder. “Crass, ignorant clods! You live out your animal lives in this corner of the world much as a rat lives in its burrow. As your minds are closed to intelligence, so, too, do you close your ears to knowledge. Derision is the ever-ready weapon of the ignorant, and because the things I tell you are things of which you never dreamt in your unenlightened lives, you laugh and call me charlatan. But I will give you proof that what I have said is true. I will let you see the extent of my powers.”
He addressed us all, collectively; but ever and anon his glance wandered to the sailor, who had been the first to express his want of faith, as though to him he conveyed a special challenge.
Receiving no answer, Delamort looked about from one to another, until his sinister glance lighted on Pascal.
“Will you submit yourself to the test?” he asked. “Will you let me summon your brother’s spirit for you?”
The young man recoiled and made the sign of the cross. “God forbid!” he ejaculated.
With a contemptuous laugh the spiritualist turned from him to the sailor.
“Are you also afraid?” he demanded witheringly.
“I?” faltered the fellow, and a sickly smile spread over his weather- beaten face. “I am not afraid. I do not believe in your impostures.”
“Excellent,” exclaimed Delamort with a satanic grin. “You do not believe, therefore you are not afraid.”
“Certainly I am not afraid,” answered the young man with more assurance. Delamort’s contempt seemed to have effectively roused him.
“Then you will submit to the test, and you shall see whether or not I have the power to raise the spirit of the dead — to render them visible to mortal eyes. You shall tell these gentlemen then whether I am an impostor. Whose ghost shall I evoke for you, monsieur?” he ended, rising as he spoke. All sat staring in horror and genuinely afraid. But the sailor’s scepticism was not again to be shaken.
“I’ll not submit to any mummeries of yours,” he announced. “I know your ways, and I am not to be humbugged by any lying conjurer.”
“It is not mummery and it is not humbug as I shall prove. Why insult me so? Name rather some dead friend or relative with whom you wish to commune, and I will gratify your wish.”
A sudden look of cunning flashed in the sailor’s face.
“Can I have my own way in this?” he asked briskly. “May I select the room in which I am to commune with the spirit?”
“But certainly.”
“And may I also keep it from your knowledge whose spirit I wish to see?”
His tone and manner were full of insolence and craftiness. Delamort hesitated for an instant.
“It were better that I should know,” he said at last.
�
��There,” cried the sailor triumphantly, appealing to the audience. And he would have added more but that Delamort interrupted him.
“Fool, if you insist upon it, I will remain in ignorance of the name of your spirit. But lest you should tell us afterwards that I have evoked the wrong one, I shall ask you to impart the name to these gentlemen whilst I am out of earshot. Come now, are we agreed?”
The sailor announced himself ready to comply, and Delamort left the room at once, Pascal, at the sailor’s bidding, stationing himself at the door. Then the sailor set himself to harangue us.
He had seen an illusionist do such things, he announced, at a theatre at Marseilles, by means of ventriloquism and a magic-lantern. It was nothing but trickery, he swore, and if we would unite with him, we would teach this impostor a lesson that he would remember.
With one accord we all pronounced ourselves ready to conspire with him — for what is there sweeter in all the world than to trick a trickster, to hoist him with his own petard? His plan was simple enough. He would choose the room in which to receive his ghostly visitant at the last moment, and we were to remain outside with Delamort, and see that he never for a second set foot within it. Thus should he be completely baffled. Already he was labouring under serious difficulties by not knowing whose spirit he was desired to evoke. The sailor announced then to us that he wished to see the ghost of his friend Gravine who had fallen overboard on the last voyage.
The plot being laid, Delamort was recalled and informed that the sailor was ready to submit himself to the test.
“You will not tell me whom you wish to see?” he asked.
“No, monsieur. You yourself confessed that it was not essential.”
“Parfaitement,” answered Delamort, bowing. “Monsieur is still sceptical?”
“So sceptical that if you care to make a little wager with me—”
“This is a serious matter,” interrupted the spiritualist sternly. “It would ill become me to employ my powers for purposes of gain.”
“I was proposing,” said the sailor readily, “that you should employ them for purposes of loss, but I thought you would refuse,” he sneered, winking at us.
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 459
