November Night Tales

by Henry Chapman Mercer

  As we hurried through the hot streets, I was entertained with a short biography of the eccentric scholar, whose chance visit to Ragusa many years before had been prolonged, said the priest, from month to month and year to year until it had ended in the residence of a lifetime.

  “A man with a theory,” he continued, “which has unfortunately made him more enemies than friends. An alleged law discovered by him by which earthquakes may be predicted as following one another at fixed times. Based, of course, on many facts, such as the upheaval here of 1650, earlier catastrophes, passages in ancient authors, and other data, partly astronomical, and mixed up recently in his talk with things, which to me, as a priest, seem forbidden and irrelevant. I don’t pretend to understand it.”

  Walking onward, by the shady sides of streets, where ancient shiverings of the earth and Time’s heavy hand had in many places left their mark, my polite guide continued his sketch, often brightened with anecdotes of the startling discoveries and immense wealth of his extraordinary friend.

  But neither his eulogies nor the half-remembered gossip of Silvio prepared me for the collection shown us by a neatly-dressed janitress, in a magnificently furnished Palazzo fronting the square of St. Michael.

  Through high, open windows the sunbeams glowed on fragments of mosaics worked out in lapis lazuli and yellow marble. The glass amphorae, several well-preserved helmets, lamps and braziers, would have been classed as masterpieces anywhere. I noticed at least three stone querns of hour-glass shape, one of which was ornamented with a figure of Ceres, and had admired several bronze and marble centaurs, when we stepped into a small vaulted room decorated with opalescent shells.

  “There,” said the librarian, pointing to an object mounted on red velvet, in a glass case, “is the count’s serpent from Monte Bergato. How does it compare with your serpent, or, rather, your lamp?”

  Attracted by a curious look about the head, I walked nearer the case.

  “My little lamp,” I replied, after a close inspection through the glass, “is a mere plaything. This seems to be a masterpiece.”

  “No such masterpieces for me,” said he, with a mock shudder. “The thing repels me.”

  “But,” I protested, notice the modelling of the mouth and the expression of the eyes. Would you call it good or bad, or what?”

  “I would call it the Devil,” he returned, laughing. “But look here.” He had halted near a bookcase and had lifted from the wall a small volume hanging by a chain. “Here is the book catalogue.”

  He sat down and turned over the pages until his finger stopped upon the record. “And here,” he added, “is the volume we want.” He rose from the table and began inspecting one of the shelves.

  “Why, the book is missing!” he exclaimed. “Count Seismo must have taken it away with him.”

  “Let it go,” said I, still staring at the serpent. “I don’t suppose,” I continued, turning to the janitress, “that anyone but the count ever looks at the books?”

  “Not often, sir,” she replied; “but there was one gentleman who did,—a very tall gentleman; very tall, sir. He came here a month ago, and was more interested in the books than anything else.”

  “A book collector, I suppose,” said the priest. “How did he get in?”

  “He brought a letter from the mayor, and he stayed a long time.”

  “So he would, if he appreciates rarities. There are two or three manuscript Florians and a Livy here that would make him open his eyes. But it is too bad,” he continued, as I followed him into another room, “that the book we want is missing. Still, you have your other volume to fall back on. Why not visit your naturalist friends and clear up your lamp difficulty?”

  We had left the museum, crossed the square, and turned out of the hot sun into a narrow lane, when my friend returned to the subject.

  “By the way,” said he, “has it not occurred to you that this volume that you picked up on the mountain and returned to these strangers may well be the very book we are looking for?”

  “Lent them by the count,” I suggested.

  “Hardly lent,” he returned, and then paused with a knowing look and a droll attempt to suppress a smile.

  “But you don’t think,” I exclaimed, “that a scholar of this sort would have—would have——”

  “Sh-h-h!” he cautioned; “when we come to books and book collectors, who knows what to think?”

  The novel suspicion had not occurred to me; yet, thus suddenly expressed, I admitted the probability as I bade my kind friend good-bye. But the doubtful Ammianus and his Æsculapius story had lost interest for me, and as literary frauds and the dishonesty of unscrupulous collectors had always repelled me, I had given up all thought of further pursuing the book or its owners before I reached home.

  vii

  That same day the sudden arrival of the ship bringing me my long expected instruments put an end to my days of idleness. In the several weeks that followed, devoted to my new surveys at Borsowitz, nothing happened worth noting here, except the discovery that in my absence two of the metallic fissures had been closed, as if by the rock-shifts of an earthquake,—a threatening fact that had to be accounted for in my final Report.

  At last I had got through this, sold my equipment, and was waiting one morning late in August to close my ship’s contract, when the familiar ring of my distant door-bell and a hasty word from Silvio were followed by the entrance,—not of the captain, but of my friend the priest. There was an anxious look on the kindly face as he held my hand.

  “Here I am,” said he, “for a second good-bye,—but with an apology. I have a favor to beg.”

  “Allow me to ask,” he continued, sitting down at the disordered table, “whether you have looked up the volume of Ammianus that you returned to your scientific friends?”

  As already explained, I had dropped the distasteful subject some time before. When I told him this and added that the men whom he had suspected of book-theft were still in Ragusa, he fixed his blue eyes curiously upon me.

  “Our suspicions have been verified,” said he.

  “How?” I asked.

  “By the count. He has just come back. I saw him yesterday, and heard him denounce what he calls a burglary. He has proved that the man who took the book, who is known here as Prelati, and who was seen by the janitress, is the celebrated Dr. Debaclo, professor of physics at Padua some years ago, the great Coptic scholar, discoverer of the Sourriani Codex, a sort of giant, too big to be mistaken. He and the Mr. Underbridge, a rich English naturalist, with whom he came here in a yacht, must be the persons you met on the mountain.”

  Astonished at the news, if not convinced, I asked whether the count had been told of my book experience with these men.

  “No,” replied the priest. “In his present mental condition he might suspect you. He knows enough already.”

  “But he may be wrong,” said I.

  “So he may; but if not, the thing is a disgraceful outrage that ought to be righted. What we want is evidence, and what I propose, therefore, is a social visit to Debaclo. Then, if we can arrange to get a glimpse of the book, so that I can identify it, the difficulty is settled. The count can do the rest. The law acts quickly here.”

  The plan seemed justifiable; but, on the eve of my departure, so inconvenient that, to get rid of it, I urged immediate action. As the priest agreed with me, we set out at once on our doubtful errand.

  The sun was shining brightly when we started. But by the time our uphill walk had brought us to the house we sought, it had grown prematurely dark, at the threat of a summer storm. As before, I rang the reverberating door-bell, but without result. Then, stepping through the cloistered entrance into the garden beyond, I looked out over the black-blue sea and back at the great building, where all the shutters on the terrace were closed. Painted on one of the wa
lls, the letters of a Latin inscription, not before noticed, forming the legend of a missing sun dial, caught my eye, and while the priest walked down the terrace, I looked at it until in the half-erased words, “at even, or at midnight,” I made out the ominous warning from St. Mark, 13:35, which associates the passing hours of night and dawn with the Doom of the World. As my eyes slowly followed the sentence, “at the cock-crowing, or in the morning,” and fixed themselves upon the last word, Vigilate, Watch, the cloud had darkened the upper sky; but a broad streak on the horizon, deepening the shadows in the garden, glared luridly upon the upper windows of the house. One of the shutters rattling in the wind, or the rumblings of thunder, seemed to echo a noise of pounding from inside the building, when I heard the priest call from the cloister:

  “Have you forgotten that we have no umbrellas?”

  I followed him out into the street, and without waiting to make inquiries in the neighborhood or otherwise increase our chances of a wetting, we hurried down the hill, until, on reaching the lower city, the cloud, with its spectral shadows, had vanished.

  Walking homeward after leaving my friend, a vague feeling of uneasiness, not reasonably accounted for by anything seen or done, might have prepared me for Silvio’s bad news. The man, who had been waiting in the street, stepped forward with a gloomy shake of the head to tell me that the ship had sailed without us. The captain, he said, who had come to demand our instant embarkation, had waited a long time for me. At last he had gone off, and now the ship had gone with him.

  To make sure of the evil truth, we went upstairs, and from one of the laboratory windows saw the lights of the vessel, beyond the harbor, moving westward in the windy twilight.

  viii

  When, on the morning following this exasperating upset of my plans, I set out to tell my friend, the librarian, why I was still in Ragusa, my biassed reflections upon his book errand had put me out of humor. As a further reminder of my troubles, I happened to catch sight of my unlucky bronze lamp upon one of the tables. I had removed some of the rust, and in the slanting light, the bluish-green figure of the old man holding the snake stood out in clear relief. But I had taken a dislike to the thing. Suddenly remembering the librarian’s aversion to serpents, and deciding to get rid of it, as a joke, by giving it to him, I wrapped it up and put it in my pocket.

  Again my friend the priest welcomed me in his cool little ante-chamber. But I had scarcely told him of my mishap and listened to his sympathetic self-blame in the matter, when he turned anxiously to the subject of our last meeting. Everything had gone wrong, he said. The janitress had been talking too much, and he had found it impossible to explain our library visit to the count.

  “Whether he suspects us or not, I hardly know,” he went on, as we sat down at the broad table, where he had been taking notes from several open folio volumes. “But, according to the doctor, he is suffering from some kind of mental breakdown, resulting from his speculations in physics. No doubt true in part; but, to my mind, there is something else,—some dangerous discovery that he keeps secret. Still,” he continued slowly, leaning back in his chair and looking up at the ceiling, “I may be wrong. What philosopher has ever accounted for the eternal conflict between the phenomena of good and evil, life and death, health and disease, which our Holy Mother Church explains through faith? When the count’s talks continually associate these mysteries with so repulsive a subject as serpent worship, what are we to think, unless we suppose either that his mind is unhinged or—unless,——” his voice sinking to a lower tone, “——we are prepared to admit the doctrine of fetishism, that is to say, that there may be objects,—such, for instance, as this bronze snake of his,—which, whether by long worship or otherwise, cease to be entirely material. Our Church has at times, as you know, humored this thing; but——”

  He stopped at a confused sound of footsteps and voices in the outer library, held up his hand, and listened. “How very strange,” he whispered; “but, if I am not mistaken, here comes the count himself.”

  He hardly had time to rise to his feet, when a small, well-built, handsome man of about sixty years, elegantly dressed, and leaning on the arm of a servant, entered the room. He wore a blue velvet skullcap with a gold tassel, and the close-trimmed whitening beard and long drooping moustache darkened by contrast a purple flush upon his aquiline features,—somewhat marred, I thought, by heavy eyebrows, which notched his forehead, over rather prominent green-grey eyes. His heavily-ringed right hand grasped a long gold-headed cane and shook nervously. He bowed politely when my friend introduced me, but, declining an invitation to sit down, looked at us awhile in silence.

  “Gentlemen, I am sorry to disturb you,” said he, at length, “but there is one detail of this book affair that I don’t quite understand.” He paused, turned to the librarian, and then, in a louder and somewhat contemptuous voice, glancing at me, continued; “what interest can this gentleman have in the matter? Why should he wish to visit my library in my absence, to examine a book of this sort? If there is any collusion here, any scheme to shield——”

  At this, the librarian tried to interrupt him.

  “Wait!” exclaimed the count. “That book was full of my notes—upon my next thesis—very important notes—discoveries known only to myself,——” There was a dangerous glitter in his eyes, and the purple flush on his face had deepened, as he stepped nearer. “The man who took this book,—this Debaclo,—is a plagiarist. You don’t know him. I do. He has stolen these notes, and will use them to suit his villainous purpose.”

  The count’s voice had risen to a high key. He raised his cane and brandished it in a threatening manner.

  Fortunately, the librarian was equal to the quick defense necessary. In his blandest manner, he hurriedly explained my first association with the affair, my lamp difficulty, and chance knowledge of the book-borrowers. Upon which, I added a hasty account of my own, while the count limped to the window, and looking outward, with his back towards us, now and then interrupted with questions.

  But, as our talk continued, something curiously suggested in the voice and manner of the enraged scholar,—rather of abstract enthusiasm absorbed in things sought for or imagined, than of egotism or vanity,—touched me with compassion. I remembered the lamp in my pocket. On a sudden impulse, I pulled it out, unwrapped it, and explaining it as the original cause of my visit to his collection, handed it to him. “If it is a rarity, count, your wonderful museum is the place for it.”

  Slowly, and with hesitation, he took the relic in his trembling hands and held it close to the window. When, after examining it in the light, he turned again, his troubled frown had given way to a stare of astonishment.

  “Very kind of you, indeed,” he faltered, in a much-subdued voice; “but before I accept this, may I ask you—if you are aware of—if you have deciphered—the inscription?”

  As already narrated, my efforts to reconcile the chief figure, apparently the god Æsculapius, with the word CULA had failed. I told him so, adding that the letters IOV might stand, I thought, for some part of a dedication to Jupiter.

  “I think not,” he said, touching with his ringed middle finger a much corroded spot on the lid; “there is a syllable missing here, AES. You have failed to supply it; and if we prefix this and add a final P, we have ÆSCULAPIO.”

  I smiled at my stupidity.

  “The relief upon the margin,” the count went on, “a child carried in the arms of a centaur, can only mean the early education of the god, as described by Apollodorus and others. The V may stand for venenum, poison; venom, or for some word of minor importance. Let it go for the present.

  “But,” he added, holding up the lamp and turning it about in the light, “here is the serpent, never an attribute of Jupiter, but always of Æsculapius, throttled in the hand of the central figure,—a symbol of the stupendous compromise between Good and Evil, which underlies all creation.r />
  “What is it,” he continued, sitting down and placing the lamp on the palm of his left hand, “but another proof of the former worship of the God of Healing, at this place, or at the ancient city of Epidaurus, near here?—of events—things—remarkable things—I mean—the genius—the skill, lavished by the artists of antiquity on this serpent,—this Divine Benefactor, here seen in the form of an old man!”

  He paused; then, speaking rather to himself than to us, continued in a whisper of suppressed emotion, “But sometimes in the full radiance of Youth.”

  He stopped. His eyes, showing a predominance of the whites, glared with an entranced look, as if seeing something through or beyond us. But before I could fully account for his change in manner, the color left his face, his hands fell, and the lamp rolled upon the floor. He had fainted.

  His servant sprang forward and leaned affectionately over him. The librarian hurried away and came back with a basin of water. But not until this was sprinkled on the unconscious man’s face and a little brandy had been poured into his mouth, did he manage to sit up and at length rise to his feet.

  But his efforts to talk failed. His feeble voice murmured incoherently, until at last, yielding to the entreaties of his guardian, who had picked up the lamp and followed by the librarian, he tottered out of the room, leaving me alone, to wonder at what had happened.

  A long time passed after I heard the noise of their retreating footsteps upon the outer staircase. Then, at length, the priest returned. The large, expressive eyes of my friend had a careworn look as, with a long, loud breath, he sat down.

  “Your lamp,” said he, “seems to have upset the count completely. By the time he had recovered his voice in the open air, I saw that, in some way, the delusion of which I have spoken,—his secret, whatever it is,—had been strongly suggested to him. Several times, I thought, he was on the point of confiding in me; but he always stopped, and I learned nothing,—except that the thing weighing upon him is in some way connected with this infernal myth of Epidaurus, if there is such a place.”