by William Archer.
Originally published in The Witching Time: Tales for the Year's End edited by Henry Norman. (D. Appleton & Co.; 1887).
We were sitting, Sir Marmaduke and I, at the Café de la Régence, one sultry evening in early summer. We had each a mazagran and a cigar. Sir Marmaduke was reading the "Times," while I looked lazily through a veil of smoke at the stars and the passers-by. In the white front of the Théâtre-Français every window blazed with light. The gas lamps of the Avenue de l'Opéra shone like flakes of gold in contrast with the misty pallor of electricity through which, at the end of the vista, the façade of the opera-house could be dimly discerned. The fountain of the Place du Théâtre-Français reflected in shifting gleams the thousand lights around. In front of the great theatre the red lamps of the orange-stalls, shining on the pyramids of fruit, heightened harmoniously the pale yellow of the prevailing light. The monotonously strident cries of the orange-men and programme sellers, together with the tinkle of the liquorice-water-vendor's bell, mingled in my ears with the dull clap-clap of the cab-horses' hoofs upon the asphalt. All sorts and conditions of men and women filed past on the broad pavement; and, watching them, I amused myself by fancifully recognizing in the more noticeable figures this or that personage of Dumas fils, or Daudet, or Zola—a Monsieur Alphonse or a Due de Septmonts; a Bisler ainé, a Delobelle, or a Deschellettes; a Sidonie or a Sapho; a Gervaise, a Lantier, a Zéphyrin, or a Satin.
But there were other types in the shifting scene besides those of the French realists. Every now and then there would pass a personage who had evidently walked straight from the pages of Mr. Howells or Mr. James; and the characters of Mr. Du Maurier (a realist, too, after his kind) brought with them airs from Kensington and blasts from Bayswater. Here, for instance, was an unmistakable Englishman crossing toward us from the Théâtre-Français, whence issued two streams of men eager for a breath of air between the acts. The Englishman was of tallish figure, middle-aged, correct, commonplace. His short brown whiskers were touched with gray; his upper lip and chin were shaved; his mouth was firm, his nose thin and well cut, his eyes small and unremarkable. His eyebrows were the only striking feature of his face—long, bushy, and overhanging, like those which Darwin developed, it is said, by continual concentration over his microscope. On the whole, I took him for a barrister in good practice, or a well-placed civil servant; and the latter hypothesis, as I afterward found, was correct.
He walked up to the Café de la Régence and looked about for a seat in the open space in front. To get at the only unoccupied table he had to pass Sir Marmaduke, whose outspread "Times" was blocking the way. Sir Marmaduke looked up absently at the intruder, then sprang from his seat, almost knocking over his water-carafe in his excitement, and seized the astonished Englishman by the hand.
"Philips!" he cried, "where have you dropped from? How glad I am to see you!"
"Ah, Middleton!" said the other, cordially, "I was thinking of you the other day as I passed by Stresa, on my way over the Simplon."
"We haven't met since that day on Maggiore—how many years ago?" said Sir Marmaduke.
"Eight or nine," put in Mr. Philips, who had meanwhile given the waiter his order.
"No; eleven," replied Sir Marmaduke, after a little thought. "What Horace says is—
"'Eheu fugaces
Anni labuntur, Postume, Postume!'
"'Years glide away, and are lost to me, lost to me!'"
"I needn't ask whether you took my advice," said Philips, looking at him. Your hair is scarcely grizzled."
This enigmatic remark excited my curiosity. Could this friend of Sir Marmaduke's be an agent of the hyacinthine Mrs. Allen, or a traveler in "Balm of Columbia"?
"If I hadn't taken your advice, my dear fellow," said Sir Marmaduke, "I shouldn't be here at this moment."
"You'd be settled in Italy?" said the other, with a curious smile.
"Probably," replied Sir Marmaduke, reflecting his friend's smile, "settled for good."
He now introduced me to Mr. Philips, and we nodded to each other with the studied frigidity of true-born Britons.
"And now tell me," said Sir Marmaduke with interest, "what became of you after we parted that morning. You vanished into thin air. Did you find your hippogriff awaiting you when you landed at Pallanza? You must know," he added, turning to me, "that Philips is a necromancer, a Cagliostro, by Jove!"
"I didn't find a hippogriff," said Philips, "but a telegram from the Home Office. I took the first steamer for Arona, and was in London two days later."
"Do you still practice the black art?" asked Sir Marmaduke.
"The black and white art, you mean," said the other, laughing. "Oh, yes, in a small way. But now I must be off—I don't want to miss the last act of 'Ruy Blas,' and besides, I'm with some people."
"But look here," said Sir Marmaduke, "you mustn't go and perform your great vanishing trick again, as you did the other time. I've something to return you, yon know—with many thanks."
"Oh, that!" said the other. "Well, I shouldn't mind having it again, especially as I don't suppose it has any great sentimental value for you. Where are you stopping?"
"Meurice's."
"And I at the Continental. Well, when I've seen my people home, I'll stroll along if you like."
"Do," said Sir Marmaduke; "you'll find us in the smoking-room."
"All right," was the reply, "expect me about twelve;" and, after paying for his black coffee, Mr. Philips hurried back to the theatre.
"Who's your mysterious friend?" I asked Sir Marmaduke; "and what's all this stuff about the black art?"
"No stuff at all," said Sir Marmaduke with conviction. "That's the most wonderful fellow I ever knew. But for him, my boy, I should now have been married and done for."
"Did he cut you out?" I asked. "He is a wonderful fellow!"
"Obvious and gratuitous impertinence!" replied the dear old boy, unruffled.
"Scusi, sa!" I said. "Tell me all about it. He doesn't look like a magician."
"By his works you shall know him," my friend answered. "The proof of the magician is in his magic, and I'm a living monument to his occult powers. Have another weed?"
We each lighted a cigar, and, that ceremony over, Sir Marmaduke began:
"Before I settled in Venice, you know, I had a villa for some time on the Lago Maggiore, at Stresa. It was a pretty little châlet of a place, a good bit above the level of the lake, with a charming outlook over the Borromean Islands. It suited me down to the ground, and I might have stopped there to this day but for the 'events I am about to narrate,' as the story-tellers have it.
"Another villa, much larger than mine, stood on the slope just above it, a narrow lane separating the two gardens. It had long been unoccupied, much to my satisfaction, for I did not care to be overlooked. At last, one morning, my Italian valet brought me the news that it had been taken, and taken by a lady. The Marchesa Trabelli, he said, was her name, but he had been unable to find out anything more about her, except that she was evidently rich. The furnishings, which soon began to arrive in cart-load upon cart-load, confirmed the latter intelligence. My man brought me glowing reports of the Oriental splendor with which the place was being bedizened. The furniture came, not from Milan, but from Paris, and it was a Parisian decorator who was in charge.
"A few weeks sufficed to transform the house from a barrack to a palace, and the garden from a wilderness to a trim pleasance. Then came the lady herself, accompanied by only two servants, a maid and a steward; the other domestics were engaged in the neighborhood. She remained a mystery to every one. She neither belonged to the local nobility nor had any friends among them. Her two French servants either knew nothing of her antecedents, or kept what they knew carefully to themselves. On two points only all reports agreed: she was a genuine Italian, and, so far as beauty was concerned, she might well be not merely a marchesa but a princess or a queen.
"On the latter point I was somewhat skeptical, for the beauty which knocks the average Italian all of a heap is apt to be too florid for my taste. But, by Jove, sir, I was punished for my skepticism! The moment I saw her I knew it was all up with me. She came, I saw, she conquered. She wasn't very young—thirty at least—but her beauty had just reached its maturity without losing a jot of its freshness. She was tall and finely proportioned, black-haired, olive-skinned, red-lipped, oval-faced; and, oh! if you could have seen how her head was set on her shoulders, and with what a lovely motion of her neck she would turn her face majestically toward you, and let her two great eyes blaze upon you—positively blaze—like—like—do you know the way the new Calais phare sends shaft on shaft of blinding light sweeping slowly round the farthest horizon?"
This burst of enthusiasm left my old friend out of breath, and he came to a sudden pause, illustrating by a rotund gesture the sweep of the Calais light and of the Marchesa's eyes.
"You're getting quite Musset-ish," I said:
"'Avez-vous vu, dans Barcelona,
Una Andalouse au sein bruni,
Pâle oomme un beau soir d'automne?
C'est ma maîtresse, ma lionne!
La Marquesa d'Amaëgui.'"
"That's about it," said Sir Marmaduke. "And, now I come to think of it, Musset was her favorite poet. Well, I needn't tell you how we made acquaintance with each other, or how our acquaintance ripened. She was educated and accomplished far beyond the Italian average—spoke English and French almost as well as her mother-tongue, had read much in these three languages, sang with a splendid contralto voice, and dressed with studied and sober simplicity. Indeed, she was still in half-mourning for her husband, the departed Marchese, at whose death one of the most ancient Neapolitan families became extinct. Since then she had lived with relatives in Paris; but, though her English accent was of the utmost purity, she had never crossed the Channel. Her Parisian friends had left for South America; and, as the climate of Naples did not suit her, not to mention the gloomy associations the place must ever have for her, she had determined to settle in North Italy, and lead a quiet life of study and beneficence.
"To say that I fell in love with her would be to misstate the case. I was forty, she scarcely ten years younger; and there was a self-reliance, not to say self-sufficiency, in her character which put all tenderness out of the question. She was a being to be worshiped, not caressed. Even after she was my affianced wife, our relations were courtly rather than cordial. She was not precisely cold; but she seemed to feel, as I, too, felt, that such beauty as hers must go hand in hand with perfect dignity, and that playfulness would as ill beseem her as it would the Agrippina of the Capitol. I felt toward her as toward a unique 'thing of beauty.' Have you never thought, in presence of some supreme work of art—the Sistine Madonna, for example, or the Venus of Milo—that you would like to sell all you had and buy that one thing, even though you should end, like Frankenstein, by becoming a slave to it? Well, that was something like my feeling toward the Marchesa Lucrezia. I thought her, or rather I knew her, to be one of the loveliest beings ever created; and I had an insane desire to call this phoenix mine, as Faustus longed for—
'The face that launched a thousand ships,
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium.'
You socialists may say what you like; but, as human nature is constituted, there will always be a peculiar, poignant pleasure in the sense of monopoly. Another thing which determined me to affront what I could not but recognize as the perils of matrimony, was the thought of the long face my confounded cousin would pull when he heard of my marriage; but that was a minor motive. I was in reality under a spell, quite as completely as any of those fellows in the mediæval ballads."
"Sir Marmaduke Tannhäuser," I put in—
"Ich hab in meinem sinne:
fraw Venus, edle fraw so zart
ir seind aine teufelinne.'"
"Don't go too fast," said Sir Marmaduke. "Wait and see."
"Well, the day fixed for our marriage drew near," he continued. "It was to be absolutely private. Lucrezia expressed a horror of festivities, especially at a second marriage; and I chuckled at the idea of springing the news on my friends and relations (including my heir-presumptive) through the first column of the 'Times.' Our wedding-tour was to be in the East. Lucrezia dreaded the English climate; and, as Dr. Johnson said of clean linen, 'I myself, sir, have no passion for it,' so we looked forward to living permanently south of the Alps.
"One day I happened to row across to the Isola de' Pescatori on some charitable errand of the Marchesa's; and there, strolling about in the one narrow street, I met Philips. I had known him intimately at Oxford, but we had lost sight of each other for ten or fifteen years, and we were both glad to meet again. He was stopping, he told me, at Pallanza; so I made him dismiss his barca, and promised to put him over to the mainland in my own sailing-boat. There was very little wind, so on the way we had a long talk over old times.
"One fad of his remained implanted in my memory, because I used sometimes to ruffle his otherwise imperturbable temper by chaffing him on the subject. He was a devout believer in the possibility of reading character in handwriting, and used to devote a great deal of time and study to what I then regarded as a mere superstition. I asked him if he still kept up this craze, as I called it, and he answered with a smile, and a shrug, that he did. A sudden idea occurred to me. I found in my pocket a note from the Marchesa—a mere business letter, concluding with an invitation to dinner, and written, moreover, in Italian, which Philips had just been telling me that he did not understand. She wrote a particularly masculine hand; so, in the hope that he would not discover even the sex of the writer, I tore off the signature—'Lucrezia.' Then I handed it to Philips and asked him for a diagnosis of the writer's character.
"I watched his expression as he examined the writing. At the first glance he raised his eyebrows and compressed his lips with the air of a man who finds himself face to face with an unexpected problem. Then he wrinkled his eyebrows together until they hung forward like a pent-house over his eyes, and peered microscopically into each stroke, curve, and dot of the whole letter. The examination lasted, I am sure, a good five minutes, during which neither of us spoke.
"At last he looked straight up at me, and said, 'Are you much interested in this—lady?'
"'Ah, then you know it's a lady,' I replied, a little taken aback.
"'I know more than that,' he said, solemnly; and, as he tapped the paper with his forefinger, he added, 'This writing is the writing of a murderess!'
"I let go the helm and sprang forward with a cry, almost capsizing the little boat. She luffed up at once into the wind, and I had to return to my post, else I believe I should have assaulted him.
"'Come, Philips,' I said, 'a joke's a joke, but this is carrying the thing a little too far.'
"'If it were a joke,' he said, 'it would be in the worst possible taste; but I am in sober earnest.'
"'You're mad!' I said. 'This tomfoolery of yours has become a monomania. Let me tell you that I am about to marry the lady who wrote that letter.'
"'Then, all I can say is,' he replied—'and remember, I'm in solemn earnest—all I can say is, your life's not worth a twelvemonth's purchase.' He again examined the letter carefully, and then said: 'Believe me or not, as you like, this is the handwriting of a murderess. And I can tell you more—the hand that formed these letters has clasped a stiletto—that is her weapon!"
"'Pooh!' I said, beginning, in spite of myself, to be somewhat impressed. 'Do you take me for a child? If she had been a poisoner, I suppose you could have told from her handwriting whether she used antimony or arsenic?'
"'That's as may be,' was his answer. 'What I do see in the present case is that the hand which wrote this has used cold iron. Do you know the lady's past history?'
"'I know she's a widow,' I replied.
"'That's not improbable,' said he.
"'And that her husband was a Neapolitan nobleman,' I continued.
"'Hum!' he said, and proceeded to cross-question me in such a way as to show me, what had really never occurred to me, that I had no one's evidence but her own as to a single fact of her past life. At last, driven into a corner, I exclaimed, impatiently, 'Then what do you propose that I should do? I can't go to her and say, "Marchesa, a necromancer of my acquaintance assures me that you have assassinated some one—probably the late lamented Marquis. Pray, is this true?"'
"'Let me think,' Philips replied. Then, after a pause, while he again looked at the letter, 'Your plan is to take her by surprise. She is evidently of a high-strung, nervous temperament.'
"'There you're wrong,' I interrupted.
"'No, I'm not,' he replied, imperturbably. 'I'll stake my reputation on it, that if you were suddenly to show her this stiletto, she would say or do something that would betray her secret;' and, to my astonishment, he produced from under his coat a little dagger that flashed in the sunlight.
"I burst out laughing. 'You come to Italy armed!' I cried. 'You think we are still in the Middle Ages! That accounts for your absurd interpretation of the handwriting.'
"'Not a bit of it,' he replied. 'I always carry this little bit of steel; it's useful in many ways, and it has associations for me. I'm so far from imagining it particularly necessary in Italy, that I dare say you, who live here, haven't such a thing in your possession.'
"I admitted I hadn't. 'Well, then,' he said, unfastening the sheath which hung at his waistband, concealed by his coat, 'I'll make a sort of wager with you. This is a very pretty little toy, you'll admit—an antique Italian dagger, the haft and sheath of ivory inlaid with gold; and here, you see, is a red amethyst set in the butt of the handle, and another in the point of the sheath. Well, I hand this over to you on condition that you suddenly, and without any warning, produce it and present it to the lady. If there is nothing unusual in her method of accepting it, the knife is hers, and I have lost my wager. If you notice anything odd in her behavior, come and tell me, and we will inquire into the matter further.'
"'Well, positively,' I said, 'it is a sort of insult to the Marchesa to consent to any such test. But you're right, the dagger is a very beautiful piece of workmanship, and—hang it!—I rather like the idea of making her a handsome present at your expense, especially as I dare say the lesson will do you good, and imprint on you the maxim, "Put not your trust in pot-hooks."'
"'Pot-hooks are sometimes hangers as well,' he replied. To this day I don't know what he meant by the remark, for just then I laid the boat in to the steamboat stage at Pallanza, and he stepped ashore. He gave me the name of his hotel, and I promised to look him up the next day and report. Then I sailed back to Stresa with a fresher breeze, pondering on his curious mania and on his last oracular remark.
"That afternoon I presented myself at the Villa Trabelli at my usual hour. I had carefully wrapped up the dagger in white paper, tied it with a pink ribbon, and sealed the packet. I found Lucrezia in a rocking-chair on the veranda, looking superbly beautiful. She wore a black summer dress, I remember, of some gauzy, diaphanous material, closed at the throat and at the wrists with knots of red ribbon; and round the alabaster pillar of her throat were three narrow circlets of blood-red coral.
"'Marchesa,' I said, as I kissed her hand, 'I have here a small offering for you—a trifle, but I think unique.'
"She untied the ribbon and broke the seals. 'Some amiable surprise, I do not doubt,' she said, as she unrolled the wrappings; but before she had finished doing so, the dagger slipped out, sheath and all, and fell in her lap.
"The instant she set eyes on it she raised her hands in the air and sprang from her seat with a sort of gurgling, stifled cry. The dagger dropped on the matting at her feet, and for a moment she stared at it, her eyes starting from their sockets, while her complexion turned to livid green. Then she staggered back a few paces, as though making for the salon, and sank in a huddled heap on the floor.
"'I did not do it! I did not do it!' she moaned. 'It was she—the viper—the fiend! I was innocent! innocent! innocent!' Her voice failed her, but she continued to moan to herself in broken sentences, writhing the while as though in physical agony.
"I called to her maid, who quickly appeared. 'Your mistress is ill,' I said, and together we raised her from the floor. This brought her in some degree to herself, and when I attempted to help the servant in supporting her into the house, she shrank from me with a gesture of horror, leaned her whole weight on the sturdy French woman's arm, tottered into the salon, and disappeared.
"I was bewildered and benumbed. I picked up the dagger, put it in my pocket, hurried down as fast as I could to the lake, jumped into a skiff, and ordered two rowers to take me at racing speed to Pallanza, where I went straight to Philips's hotel. He was gone!—to Arona and Milan, the porter believed, but after that nothing was known of his destination. From that day until this evening I saw and heard nothing of him. He had left me no address, and I knew of none that would find him. From something he said this evening, I presume he must have been in the Home Office, but he had not mentioned the fact. I rather fancied he was an idle globe-trotter like myself, and trusted to the fates, in this little world of ours, to bring us together again. They have done so, you see, though it has taken them eleven years.
"On returning to Stresa, I inquired at the Villa Trabelli and learned that the Marchesa was ill and in bed. Next morning I called again, when one of the Italian servants handed me a note, and informed me that the Marchesa and her maid had departed early that morning, no one knew whither. The note was written in English; I can repeat it word for word:
"'I imagined that Sir Marmaduke Middleton was a gentleman; is it the part of a gentleman brutally to wrench and wring the nerves of a much-tried woman? Whatever sins have been laid at my door, I have never tortured a being weaker than myself—a friend, who had done me no wrong. If you have a spark of chivalry left, you will make no attempt to track me, and breathe no word of my secret.—L.T.'
"You may imagine that when I read this I felt, as the Yankees say, 'almighty mean.' I breathed no word of her secret, for the very good reason that I knew no word of it to breathe; but by way of a little penance, I have mortified my curiosity and carefully refrained from making any attempt to discover it. A month or two later I learned that the Villa Trabelli, with all its furnishings and appurtenances, just as it stood, had been sold to a German banker. I soon sold my own châlet, and set off for a three-years' ramble in China, Japan, California, and so forth. Once, at a small station on the Pacific Railroad, I fancied I caught a glimpse of my enchantress's face. Her train was just moving off in the direction of San Francisco, as mine was starting toward Omaha. I felt a momentary impulse to jump out and take the next train in pursuit; but I resisted it—and here I am!"
Mr. Philips was as good as his word, and arrived at Meurice's shortly before midnight. The more I studied his solid, well-built, commonplace features, the less did I believe in his clairvoyance, or whatever occult faculty Sir Marmaduke credited him with. I was curious, consequently, to hear their conversation.
Sir Marmaduke began by telling Mr. Philips the result of his experiment, just as he had related it to me. He was describing the sudden collapse of the Marchesa Lucrezia, when his hearer interrupted him.
"By Jove!" he said, "I gave her credit for more nerve than that!"
"Then your black and white art can't quite rank among the exact sciences?" said Sir Harmaduke. "You can't measure nerve force to a millionth of a grain?"
"The fact is," said Philips, smiling, "I confess I was trifling with you to a certain extent. You used to be so obstinately skeptical of my power of reading character, that I could not resist the temptation to pay you out a bit. Handwriting is to a certain extent an index to character, and by long and close study of it I developed an abnormally keen sense for minute resemblances and differences; in short, I made myself an expert. At the Home Office my powers quickly became known, and I was given frequent opportunities for exercising them. Then I began to be called as a witness in courts of law, though the impertinent incredulity with which the evidence of experts is generally regarded made me detest these cases. Don't you remember a murder trial fourteen or fifteen years ago, in which an Italian lady (she had been an opera singer) was accused of deliberately 6tabbing her husband, an Englishman, and a man of great wealth, either from jealousy, or from mere cupidity, or perhaps from both combined? She suspected him of carrying on an intrigue with another woman, and she forged a letter, purporting to be in that woman's handwriting, giving him an assignation, at the dead of night, in some lonely corner of his own park. He fell into the trap, came to the spot, and sat down on a log to await the lady's arrival; whereupon his wife stole up behind him and stabbed him in three places, killing him almost before he could utter a cry. That, at any rate, was the theory of the prosecution; but the whole case turned on bringing home to her the forged letter. I was one of the experts called, and I had not the slightest hesitation in identifying the writing of the forged letter with the prisoner's acknowledged hand. The other so-called experts, who were mere charlatans, expressed less confidence; and the result was, that the murderess escaped. The moment you showed me that letter, Middleton, I recognized her handwriting. After the trial, I had secured as a curiosity the little stiletto with which the murder was committed; and in this I at once saw a chance of mystifying you a bit, and saving you from the lady's toils. I thought she would betray herself in some way at sight of the weapon, or, at any rate, would take it as a hint that you either knew, or were on the verge of discovering, her secret; but, from her behavior during the trial, I thought she would have brazened it out a good deal better than she did. What you tell me amounts to an absolute admission of guilt."
"In the disguise of an assertion of innocence!" I could not refrain from putting in. "That dagger would have quite sufficiently painful associations for her, though she were as innocent as the day."
"I believe I've been an even greater brute than I thought," said Sir Marmaduke. "It seems to me, Philips, that, by your own showing, you are the only witness against her."
"It was her own hand that condemned her," said the expert.
"No, that's just what it didn't," said Sir Marmaduke. "In this case pot-hooks were not hangers. But why did she take a bogus title? And why—?And why—? On the whole, Philips, I bear you no grudge for having forbidden the banns."