In the Days of My Youth: A Novel

by Amelia Ann Blanford Edwards

  THE STUDENT'S STORY.

  "When I was in Rome, I lodged in the Via Margutta, which, for thebenefit of those who have not been there, may be described as a streetof studios and stables, crossed at one end by a little roofed gallerywith a single window, like a shabby 'Bridge of Sighs,' A gutter runsdown the middle, interrupted occasionally by heaps of stable-litter; andthe perspective is damaged by rows of linen suspended across the streetat uncertain intervals. The houses in this agreeable thoroughfare aredingy, dilapidated, and comfortless, and all which are not in use asstables, are occupied by artists. However, it was a very jolly place,and I never was happier anywhere in my life. I had but just touched mylittle patrimony, and I was acquainted with plenty of pleasant fellowswho used to come down to my rooms at night from the French Academy wherethey had been studying all day. Ah, what evenings those were! Whatsuppers we used to have in from the _Lepre_! What lots of Orvieto wedrank! And what a mountain of empty wicker bottles had to be clearedaway from the little square yard with the solitary lemon-tree at theback of the house!"

  "Come, Mueller--no fond memories!" cried a student in a holland blouse."Get on with the story."

  "Ay, get on with the story!" echoed several voices.

  To which Mueller, who took advantage of the interruption to finish his_grog au vin_, deigned no reply.

  "Well," he continued, "like a good many other fellows who, havingeverything to learn and nothing to do, fancy themselves great geniusesonly because they are in Rome, I put a grand brass plate on the door,testifying to all passers-by that mine was the STUDIO DI HERR FRANZMULLER; and, having done this, I believed, of course, that my fortunewas to be made out of hand. Nothing came of it, however. People insearch of Dessoulavy's rooms knocked occasionally to ask their way, anda few English and Americans dropped in from time to time to stare aboutthem, after the free-and-easy fashion of foreigners in Rome; but, forall this, I found no patrons. Thus several months went by, during whichI studied from the life, worked hard at the antique, and relieved themonotony of study with occasional trips to Frascati, or supper partiesat the Cafe Greco."

  "The story! the story!" interrupted a dozen impatient voices.

  "All in good time," said Mueller, with provoking indifference. "We arenow coming to it."

  And assuming an attitude expressive of mystery, he dropped his voice,looked round the table, and proceeded:--

  "It was on the last evening of the Carnival. It had been raining atintervals during the day, but held up for a good hour just at dusk, asif on purpose for the _moccoli_. Scarcely, however, had the guns of St.Angelo thundered an end to the frolic, when the rain came down again intorrents, and put out the last tapers that yet lingered along the Corso.Wet, weary, and splashed from head to foot with mud and tallow, I camehome about seven o'clock, having to dine and dress before going to amasked-ball in the evening. To light my stove, change my wet clothes,and make the best of a half-cold _trattore_ dinner, were my firstproceedings; after which, I laid out my costume ready to put on, wrappedmyself in a huge cloak, swallowed a tumbler full of hot cognac andwater, and lay down in front of the fire, determined to have a sound napand a thorough warming, before venturing out again that night. I fellasleep, of course, and never woke till roused by a tremendous peal uponthe studio-bell, about two hours and a half afterwards. More dead thanalive, I started to my feet. The fire had gone out in the stove; theroom was in utter darkness; and the bell still pealed loud enough toraise the neighborhood.

  "'Who's there?' I said, half-opening the door, through which the windand rain came rushing. 'And what, in the name of ten thousand devils, doyou want?"

  "'I want an artist,' said my visitor, in Italian. 'Are you one?'

  "'I flatter myself that I am,' replied I, still holding the doortolerably close.

  "'Can you paint heads?'

  "'Heads, figures, landscapes--anything,' said I, with my teethchattering like castanets.

  "The stranger pushed the door open, walked in without further ceremony,closed it behind him, and said, in a low, distinct voice:--

  "'Could you take the portrait of a dead man?'

  "'Of a dead man?' I stammered. 'I--I ... Suppose I strike a light?'

  "The stranger laid his hand upon my arm.

  "'Not till you have given me an answer,' said he. 'Yes or no? Remember,you will be paid well for your work.'

  "'Well, then--yes,' I replied.

  "'And can you do it at once?'

  "'At once?'

  "'Ay, Signore, will you bring your colors, and come with me thisinstant--or must I seek some other painter?'

  "I thought of the masked-ball, and sighed; but the promise of goodpayment, and, above all, the peculiarity of the adventure determined me.

  "'Nay, if it is to be done,' said I, 'one time is as good as another.Let me strike a light, and I will at once pack up my colors and comewith you.'

  "'_Bene_!' said the stranger. 'But be as quick as you can, Signore, fortime presses.'

  "I was quick, you may be sure, and yet not so quick but that I foundtime to look at my strange visitor. He was a dark, elderly man, dressedin a suit of plain black, and might have been a clerk, or a tradesman,or a confidential servant. As soon as I was ready, he took the lead;conducted me to a carriage which was waiting at the corner of aneighboring street; took his place respectfully on the opposite seat;pulled down both the blinds, and gave the word to drive on. I never knewby what streets we went, or to what part of Rome he took me; but the wayseemed long and intricate. At length, we stopped and alighted. The nightwas pitch-dark, and still stormy. I saw before me only the outline of alarge building, indistinct and gloomy, and a small open door dimlylighted-from within. Hurried across the strip of narrow pavement, andshut in immediately, I had no time to identify localities--no choice,except to follow my conductor and blindly pursue the adventure to itsclose. Having entered by a back door, we went up and down a labyrinth ofstaircases and passages, for the mere purpose, as it seemed, ofbewildering me as much as possible--then paused before an oaken door atthe end of the corridor. Here my conductor signified by a gesture that Iwas to precede him.

  "It was a large, panelled chamber, richly furnished. A wood firesmouldered on the hearth--a curtained alcove to the left partlyconcealed a bed--a corresponding alcove to the right, fitted with altarand crucifix, served as an oratory. In the centre of the room stood atable covered with a cloth. It needed no second glance to tell me whatobject lay beneath that cloth, uplifting it in ghastly outline! Myconductor pointed to the table, and asked if there was anything Ineeded. To this I replied that I must have more light and more fire, andso proceeded to disembarrass myself of my cloak, and prepare my palette.In the meantime, he threw on a log and some pine-cones, and went tofetch an additional lamp.

  "Left alone with the body and impelled by an irresistible impulse, Irolled back the cloth and saw before me the corpse of a young man infancy dress--a magnificent fellow cast in the very mould of strength andgrace, and measuring his six feet, if an inch. The features weresingularly handsome; the brow open and resolute; the hair dark, andcrisp with curls. Looking more closely, I saw that a lock had beenlately cut from the right temple, and found one of the severed hairsupon the cheek, where it had fallen. The dress was that of a jester ofthe middle ages, half scarlet and half white, with a rich belt round thewaist. In this belt, as if in horrible mockery of the dead, was stuck atiny baton surmounted by a fool's cap, and hung with silver bells.Looking down thus upon the body--so young, so beautiful, so evidentlyunprepared for death--a conviction of foul play flashed upon me with allthe suddenness and certainty of revelation. Here were no appearances ofdisease and no signs of strife. The expression was not that of a man whohad fallen weapon in hand. Neither, however, was it that of one who haddied in the agony of poison. The longer I looked, the more mysterious itseemed; yet the more I felt assured that there was guilt at the bottomof the mystery.

  "While I was yet under the first confused and shuddering impression ofthis doubt, my guide came back with
a powerful solar lamp, and, seeingme stand beside the body, said sharply:--

  "'Well, Signore, you look as if you had never seen a dead man before inall your life!'

  "'I have seen plenty,' I replied, 'but never one so young, and sohandsome.'

  "'He dropped down quite suddenly,' said he, volunteering theinformation, 'and died in a few minutes. 'Then finding that I remainedsilent, added:--

  "'But I am told that it is always so in cases of heart-disease.'

  "'I turned away without replying, and, having placed the lamp to mysatisfaction, began rapidly sketching in my subject. My instructionswere simple. I was to give the head only; to produce as rapid an effectwith as little labor as possible; to alter nothing; to add nothing; and,above all, to be ready to leave the house before daybreak. So I setsteadily to work, and my conductor, establishing himself in aneasy-chair by the fire, watched my progress for some time, and then, asthe night advanced, fell profoundly asleep. Thus, hour after hour wentby, and, absorbed in my work, I painted on, unconscious of fatigue--might almost say with something of a morbid pleasure in the task beforeme. The silence within; the raving of the wind and rain without; thesolemn mystery of death, and the still more solemn mystery of crimewhich, as I followed out train after train of wild conjectures, grew tostill deeper conviction, had each and all their own gloomy fascination.Was it not possible, I asked myself, by mere force of will to penetratethe secret? Was it not possible to study that dead face till the springsof thought so lately stilled within the stricken brain should vibrateonce more, if only for an instant, as wire vibrates to wire, and soundto sound! Could I not, by long studying of the passive mouth, compelsome sympathetic revelation of the last word that it uttered, thoughthat revelation took no outward form, and were communicable to theapprehension only? Pondering thus, I lost myself in a labyrinth offantastic reveries, till the hand and the brain worked independently ofeach other--the one swiftly reproducing upon canvas the outer lineamentsof the dead; the other laboring to retrace foregone facts of which nopalpable evidence remained. Thus my work progressed; thus the nightwaned; thus the sleeper by the fireside stirred from time to time, ormoaned at intervals in his dreams.

  "At length, when many hours had gone by, and I began to be conscious ofthe first languor of sleeplessness, I heard, or fancied I heard, a lightsound in the corridor without. I held my breath, and listened. As Ilistened, it ceased--was renewed--drew nearer--paused outside the door.Involuntarily, I rose and looked round for some means of defence, incase of need. Was I brought here to perpetuate the record of a crime,and was I, when my task was done, to be silenced in a dungeon, or agrave? This thought flashed upon me almost before I was conscious of thehorror it involved. At the same moment, I saw the handle of the doorturned slowly and cautiously--then held back--and then, after a briefpause, the door itself gradually opening."

  Here the student paused as if overcome by the recollection of thatmoment, and passed his hand nervously across his brow. I took theliberty of pushing our bottle of Chablis towards him, for which hethanked me with a nod and a smile, and filled his glass to the brim.

  "Well?" cried two or three voices eagerly; my own being one of them."The door opened--what then?"

  "And a lady entered," he continued. "A lady dressed in black from headto foot, with a small lamp in her hand. Seeing me, she laid her fingersignificantly on her lip, closed the door as cautiously as she hadopened it, and, with the faltering, uncertain steps of one just risenfrom a sick-bed, came over to where I had been sitting, and leaned forsupport against my chair. She was very pale, very calm, very young andbeautiful, with just that look of passive despair in her face that onesees in Guido's portrait of Beatrice Cenci. Standing thus, I observedthat she kept her eyes turned from the corpse, and her attentionconcentrated on the portrait. So several minutes passed, and neither ofus spoke nor stirred. Then, slowly, shudderingly, she turned, grasped meby the arm, pointed to the dead form stretched upon the table, and lesswith her breath than by the motion of her lips, shaped out the oneword:--'_Murdered_!'

  "Stunned by this confirmation of my doubts, I could only clasp my handsin mute horror, and stare helplessly from the lady to the corpse, fromthe corpse to the sleeper. Wildly, feverishly, with all her calmnessturned to eager haste, she then bent over the body, tore open the richdoublet, turned back the shirt, and, without uttering one syllable,pointed to a tiny puncture just above the region of the heart--a spot sosmall, so insignificant, such a mere speck upon the marble, that but forthe pale violet discoloration which spread round it like a halo, I couldscarcely have believed it to be the cause of death. The wound hadevidently bled inwardly, and, being inflicted with some singularlyslender weapon, had closed again so completely as to leave an apertureno larger than might have been caused by the prick of a needle. While Iwas yet examining it, the fire fell together, and my conductor stirreduneasily in his sleep. To cover the body hastily with the cloth andresume my seat, was, with me, the instinctive work of a moment; but hewas quiet again the next instant, and breathing heavily. With tremblinghands, my visitor next re-closed the shirt and doublet, replaced theouter covering, and bending down till her lips almost touched my ear,whispered:--

  "'You have seen it. If called upon to do so, will you swear it?'

  "I promised.

  "'You will not let yourself be intimidated by threats? nor bribed bygold? nor lured by promises?

  "'Never, so help me Heaven!'

  "She looked into my eyes, as if she would read my very soul; then,before I knew what she was about to do, seized my hand, and pressed itto her lip.

  "'I believe you,' she said. 'I believe, and I thank you. Not a word tohim that you have seen me'--here she pointed to the sleeper by the fire.'He is faithful; but not to my interests alone. I dare tell you nomore--at all events, not now. Heaven bless and reward you. In thisportrait you give me the only treasure--the only consolation of myfuture life!'

  "So saying, she took a ring from her finger, pressed it, without anotherword, into my unwilling hand; and, with the same passive dreary lookthat her face had worn on first entering took up her lamp again, andglided from the room.

  "How the next hour, or half hour, went by, I know not--except that I satbefore the canvas like one dreaming. Now and then I added a few touches;but mechanically, and, as it were, in a trance of wonder and dismay. Ihad, however, made such good progress before being interrupted, thatwhen my companion woke and told me it would soon be day and I must makehaste to be gone, the portrait was even more finished than I had myselfhoped to make it in the time. So I packed up my colors and paletteagain, and, while I was doing so, observed that he not only drew thecloth once more over the features of the dead, but concealed thelikeness behind the altar in the oratory, and even restored the chairsto their old positions against the wall. This done, he extinguished thesolar lamp; put it out of sight; desired me once more to follow him; andled the way back along the same labyrinth of staircases and corridors bywhich he brought me. It was gray dawn as he hurried me into the coach.The blinds were already down--the door was instantly closed--again weseemed to be going through an infinite number of streets--again westopped, and I found myself at the corner of the Via Margutta.

  "'Alight, Signore,' said the stranger, speaking for the first time sincewe started. 'Alight--you are but a few yards from your own door. Hereare a hundred scudi; and all that you have now to do, is to forget yournight's work, as if it had never been.'

  "With this he closed the carriage-door, the horses dashed on again, and,before I had time even to see if any arms were blazoned on the panels,the whole equipage had disappeared.

  "And here, strange to say, the adventure ended. I never was called uponfor evidence. I never saw anything more of the stranger, or the lady. Inever heard of any sudden death, or accident, or disappearance havingtaken place about that time; and I never even obtained any clue to theneighborhood of the house in which these things took place. Often andoften afterwards, when I was strolling by night along the streets ofRome, I ling
ered before some old palazzo, and fancied that I recognisedthe gloomy outline that caught my eye in that hurried transit from thecarriage to the house. Often and often I paused and started, thinkingthat I had found at last the very side-door by which I entered. Butthese were mere guesses after all. Perhaps that house stood in someremote quarter of the city where my footsteps never went again--perhapsin some neighboring street or piazza, where I passed it every day! Atall events, the whole thing vanished like a dream, and, but for the ringand the hundred scudi, a dream I should by this time believe it to havebeen. The scudi, I am sorry to say, were spent within a month--the ringI have never parted from, and here it is."

  Hereupon the student took from his finger a superb ruby set between twobrilliants of inferior size, and allowed it to pass from hand to hand,all round the table. Exclamations of surprise and admiration,accompanied by all sorts of conjectures and comments, broke fromevery lip.

  "The dead man was the lady's lover," said one. "That is why she wantedhis portrait."

  "Of course, and her husband had murdered him," said another.

  "Who, then, was the man in black?" asked a third.

  "A servant, to be sure. She said, if you remember, that he was faithful;but not devoted to her interests alone. That meant that he would obey tothe extent of procuring for her the portrait of her lover; but that hedid not choose to betray his master, even though his master was amurderer."

  "But if so, where was the master?" said the first speaker. "Is it likelythat he would have neglected to conceal the body during allthese hours?"

  "Certainly. Nothing more likely, if he were a man of the world, and knewhow to play his game out boldly to the end. Have we not been told thatit was the last night of the Carnival, and what better could he do, toavert suspicion, than show himself at as many balls as he could visit inthe course of the evening? But really, this ring is magnificent!"

  "Superb. The ruby alone must be worth a thousand francs."

  "To say nothing of the diamonds, and the setting," observed the next towhom it was handed.

  At length, after having gone nearly the round of the table, the ringcame to a little dark, sagacious-looking man, just one seat beyondDalrymple's, who peered at it suspiciously on every side, breathed uponit, rubbed it bright again upon his coat-sleeve, and, finally, held thestones up sideways between his eyes and the light.

  "Bah!" said he, sending it on with a contemptuous fillip of theforefinger and thumb. "Glass and paste, _mon ami_. Not worth five francsof anybody's money."

  Mueller, who had been eyeing him all the time with an odd smile lurkingabout the corners of his mouth, emptied his last drop of Chablis, turnedthe glass over on the table, bottom upwards, and said very coolly:--

  "Well, I'm sorry for that; because I gave seven francs for it myselfthis morning, in the Palais Royal."

  "You!"

  "Seven francs!"

  "Bought in the Palais Royal!"

  "What does he mean?"

  "Mean?" echoed the student, in reply to this chorus of exclamations. "Imean that I bought it this morning, and gave seven francs for it. It isnot every morning of my life, let me tell you, that I have seven francsto throw away on my personal appearance."

  "But then the ring that the lady took from her finger?"

  "And the murder?"

  "And the servant in black?"

  "And the hundred scudi?"

  "One great invention from beginning to end, Messieurs les Chicards, andbeing got up expressly for your amusement, I hope you liked it._Garcon?_--another _grog au vin_, and sweeter than the last!"

  It would be difficult to say whether the Chicards were most disappointedor delighted at this _denoument_--disappointed at its want of fact, ordelighted with the story-weaving power of Herr Franz Mueller. Theyexpressed themselves, at all events, with a tumultuous burst ofapplause, in the midst of which we rose and left the room. When we oncemore came out into the open air, the stars had disappeared and the airwas heavy with the damps of approaching daybreak. Fortunately, we caughtan empty _fiacre_ in the next street and, as we were nearer the Rue duFaubourg Montmartre than the Chaussee d' Antin, Dalrymple set medown first.

  "Adieu, Damon," he said, laughingly, as we shook hands through thewindow. "If we don't meet before, come and dine with me next Sunday atseven o'clock--and don't dream of dreadful murders, if you can help it!"

  I did not dream of dreadful murders. I dreamt, instead, of Madame deMarignan, and never woke the next morning till eleven o'clock, just twohours later than the time at which I should have presented myself atDr. Cheron's.

  * * * * *