A Pail of Air By FRITZ LEIBER - https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/51461/pg51461-images.html

 The dark star passed, bringing with it
eternal night and turnin history into
incredible myth in a single generation!

 

This is the story of the man manager, and how he held his own until the very last paragraph. I had it from Sully Magoon, viva voce. The words are indeed his; and if they do not constitute truthful fiction my memory should be taxed with the blame. It is not deemed amiss to point out, in the beginning, the stress that is laid upon the masculinity of the manager. For, according to Sully, the term when applied to the feminine division of mankind has precisely an opposite meaning. The woman manager (he says) economizes, saves, oppresses her household with bargains and contrivances, and looks sourly upon any pence that are cast to the fiddler for even a single jig-step on life's arid march. Wherefore her men-folk call her blessed, and praise her; and then sneak out the backdoor to see the Gilhooly Sisters do a buck-and-wing dance. Now, the man manager (I still quote Sully) is a Cæsar without a Brutus. He is an autocrat without responsibility, a player who imperils no stake of his own. His office is to enact, to reverberate, to boom, to expand, to out-coruscate—profitably, if he can. Bill-paying and growing gray hairs over results belong to his principals. It is his to guide the risk, to be the Apotheosis of Front, the three-tailed Bashaw of Bluff, the Essential Oil of Razzle-Dazzle. We sat at luncheon, and Sully Magoon told me. I asked for particulars. "My old friend Denver Galloway was a born manager," said Sully. He first saw the light of day in New York at three years of age. He was born in Pittsburg, but his parents moved East the third summer afterward. "When Denver grew up, he went into the managing business. At the age of eight he managed a news-stand for the Dago that owned it. After that he was manager at different times of a skating-rink, a livery-stable, a policy game, a restaurant, a dancing academy, a walking match, a burlesque company, a dry-goods store, a dozen hotels and summer resorts, an insurance company, and a district leader's campaign. That campaign, when Coughlin was elected on the East Side, gave Denver a boost. It got him a job as manager of a Broadway hotel, and for a while he managed Senator O'Grady's campaign in the nineteenth. "Denver was a New Yorker all over. I think he was out of the city just twice before the time I'm going to tell you about. Once he went rabbit-shooting in Yonkers. The other time I met him just landing from a North River ferry. 'Been out West on a big trip, Sully, old boy,' says he. 'Gad! Sully, I had no idea we had such a big country. It's immense. Never conceived of the magnificence of the West before. It's gorgeous and glorious and infinite. Makes the East seemed cramped and little. It's a grand thing to travel and get an idea of the extent and resources of our country.' "I'd made several little runs out to California and down to Mexico and up through Alaska, so I sits down with Denver for a chat about the things he saw. "'Took in the Yosemite, out there, of course?' I asks. "'Well—no,' says Denver, 'I don't think so. At least, I don't recollect it. You see, I only had three days, and I didn't get any farther west than Youngstown, Ohio.' "About two years ago I dropped into New York with a little fly-paper proposition about a Tennessee mica mine that I wanted to spread out in a nice, sunny window, in the hopes of catching a few. I was coming out of a printing-shop one afternoon with a batch of fine, sticky prospectuses when I ran against Denver coming round a corner. I never saw him looking so much like a tiger-lily. He was as beautiful and new as a trellis of sweet peas, and as rollicking as a clarinet solo. We shook hands, and he asked me what I was doing, and I gave him the outlines of the scandal I was trying to create in mica. "'Pooh, pooh! for your mica,' says Denver. 'Don't you know better, Sully, than to bump up against the coffers of little old New York with anything as transparent as mica? Now, you come with me over to the Hotel Brunswick. You're just the man I was hoping for. I've got something there in sepia and curled hair that I want you to look at.' "'You putting up at the Brunswick?' I asks. "'Not a cent,' says Denver, cheerful. 'The syndicate that owns the hotel puts up. I'm manager.' "The Brunswick wasn't one of them Broadway pot-houses all full of palms and hyphens and flowers and costumes—kind of a mixture of lawns and laundries. It was on one of the East Side avenues; but it was a solid, old-time caravansary such as the Mayor of Skaneateles or the Governor of Missouri might stop at. Eight stories high it stalked up, with new striped awnings, and the electrics had it as light as day. "'I've been manager here for a year,' says Denver, as we drew nigh. 'When I took charge,' says he, 'nobody nor nothing ever stopped at the Brunswick. The clock over the clerks' desk used to run for weeks without winding. A man fell dead with heart-disease on the sidewalk in front of it one day, and when they went to pick him up he was two blocks away. I figured out a scheme to catch the West Indies and South American trade. I persuaded the owners to invest a few more thousands, and I put every cent of it in electric lights, cayenne pepper, gold-leaf, and garlic. I got a Spanish-speaking force of employees and a string band; and there was talk going round of a cockfight in the basement every Sunday. Maybe I didn't catch the nut-brown gang! From Havana to Patagonia the Don Señors knew about the Brunswick. We get the highfliers from Cuba and Mexico and the couple of Americas farther south; and they've simply got the boodle to bombard every bulfinch in the bush with.' "When we got to the hotel, Denver stops me at the door. "'There's a little liver-coloured man,' says he, 'sitting in a big leather chair to your right, inside. You sit down and watch him for a few minutes, and then tell me what you think.' "I took a chair, while Denver circulates around in the big rotunda. The room was about full of curly-headed Cubans and South American brunettes of different shades; and the atmosphere was international with cigarette smoke, lit up by diamond rings and edged off with a whisper of garlic. "That Denver Galloway was sure a relief to the eye. Six feet two he was, red-headed and pink-gilled as a sun-perch. And the air he had! Court of Saint James, Chauncy Olcott, Kentucky colonels, Count of Monte Cristo, grand opera—all these things he reminded you of when he was doing the honours. When he raised his finger the hotel porters and bell-boys skated across the floor like cockroaches, and even the clerk behind the desk looked as meek and unimportant as Andy Carnegie. "Denver passed around, shaking hands with his guests, and saying over the two or three Spanish words he knew until it was like a coronation rehearsal or a Bryan barbecue in Texas. "I watched the little man he told me to. 'Twas a little foreign person in a double-breasted frock-coat, trying to touch the floor with his toes. He was the colour of vici kid, and his whiskers was like excelsior made out of mahogany wood. He breathed hard, and he never once took his eyes off of Denver. There was a look of admiration and respect on his face like you see on a boy that's following a champion base-ball team, or the Kaiser William looking at himself in a glass. "After Denver goes his rounds he takes me into his private office. "'What's your report on the dingy I told you to watch?' he asks. "'Well,' says I, 'if you was as big a man as he takes you to be, nine rooms and bath in the Hall of Fame, rent free till October 1st, would be about your size.' "'You've caught the idea,' says Denver. 'I've given him the wizard grip and the cabalistic eye. The glamour that emanates from yours truly has enveloped him like a North River fog. He seems to think that Señor Galloway is the man who. I guess they don't raise 74-inch sorrel-tops with romping ways down in his precinct. Now, Sully,' goes on Denver, 'if you was asked, what would you take the little man to be?' "'Why,' says I, 'the barber around the corner; or, if he's royal, the king of the boot-blacks.' "'Never judge by looks,' says Denver; 'he's the dark-horse candidate for president of a South American republic.' "'Well,' says I, 'he didn't look quite that bad to me.' "Then Denver draws his chair up close and gives out his scheme. "'Sully,' says he, with seriousness and levity, 'I've been a manager of one thing and another for over twenty years. That's what I was cut out for—to have somebody else to put up the money and look after the repairs and the police and taxes while I run the business. I never had a dollar of my own invested in my life. I wouldn't know how it felt to have the dealer rake in a coin of mine. But I can handle other people's stuff and manage other people's enterprises. I've had an ambition to get hold of something big—something higher than hotels and lumber-yards and local politics. I want to be manager of something way up—like a railroad or a diamond trust or an automobile factory. Now here comes this little man from the tropics with just what I want, and he's offered me the job.' "'What job?' I asks. 'Is he going to revive the Georgia Minstrels or open a cigar store?' "'He's no 'coon,' says Denver. 'He's General Rompiro—General Josey Alfonso Sapolio Jew-Ann Rompiro—he has his cards printed by a news-ticker. He's the real thing, Sully, and he wants me to manage his campaign—he wants Denver C. Galloway for a president-maker. Think of that, Sully! Old Denver romping down to the tropics, plucking lotus-flowers and pineapples with one hand and making presidents with the other! Won't it make Uncle Mark Hanna mad? And I want you to go too, Sully. You can help me more than any man I know. I've been herding that brown man for a month in the hotel so he wouldn't stray down Fourteenth Street and get roped in by that crowd of refugee tamale-eaters down there. And he's landed, and D. C. G. is manager of General J. A. S. J. Rompiro's presidential campaign in the great republic of—what's its name?' "Denver gets down an atlas from a shelf, and we have a look at the afflicted country. 'Twas a dark blue one, on the west coast, about the size of a special delivery stamp. "'From what the General tells me,' says Denver, 'and from what I can gather from the encyclopædia and by conversing with the janitor of the Astor Library, it'll be as easy to handle the vote of that country as it would be for Tammany to get a man named Geoghan appointed on the White Wings force.' "'Why don't General Rumptyro stay at home,' says I, 'and manage his own canvass?' "'You don't understand South American politics,' says Denver, getting out the cigars. 'It's this way. General Rompiro had the misfortune of becoming a popular idol. He distinguished himself by leading the army in pursuit of a couple of sailors who had stolen the plaza—or the carramba, or something belonging to the government. The people called him a hero and the government got jealous. The president sends for the chief of the Department of Public Edifices. "Find me a nice, clean adobe wall," says he, "and send Señor Rompiro up against it. Then call out a file of soldiers and—then let him be up against it." Something,' goes on Denver, 'like the way they've treated Hobson and Carrie Nation in our country. So the General had to flee. But he was thoughtful enough to bring along his roll. He's got sinews of war enough to buy a battleship and float her off in the christening fluid.' "'What chance has he got to be president?' "'Wasn't I just giving you his rating?' says Denver. 'His country is one of the few in South America where the presidents are elected by popular ballot. The General can't go there just now. It hurts to be shot against a wall. He needs a campaign manager to go down and whoop things up for him—to get the boys in line and the new two-dollar bills afloat and the babies kissed and the machine in running order. Sully, I don't want to brag, but you remember how I brought Coughlin under the wire for leader of the nineteenth? Ours was the banner district. Don't you suppose I know how to manage a little monkey-cage of a country like that? Why, with the dough the General's willing to turn loose I could put two more coats of Japan varnish on him and have him elected Governor of Georgia. New York has got the finest lot of campaign managers in the world, Sully, and you give me a feeling of hauteur when you cast doubts on my ability to handle the political situation in a country so small that they have to print the names of the towns in the appendix and footnotes.' "I argued with Denver some. I told him that politics down in that tropical atmosphere was bound to be different from the nineteenth district; but I might just as well have been a Congressman from North Dakota trying to get an appropriation for a lighthouse and a coast survey. Denver Galloway had ambitions in the manager line, and what I said didn't amount to as much as a fig-leaf at the National Dressmakers' Convention. 'I'll give you three days to cogitate about going,' says Denver; 'and I'll introduce you to General Rompiro to-morrow, so you can get his ideas drawn right from the rose wood.' "I put on my best reception-to-Booker-Washington manner the next day and tapped the distinguished rubber-plant for what he knew. "General Rompiro wasn't so gloomy inside as he appeared on the surface. He was polite enough; and he exuded a number of sounds that made a fair stagger at arranging themselves into language. It was English he aimed at, and when his system of syntax reached your mind it wasn't past you to understand it. If you took a college professor's magazine essay and a Chinese laundryman's explanation of a lost shirt and jumbled 'em together, you'd have about what the General handed you out for conversation. He told me all about his bleeding country, and what they were trying to do for it before the doctor came. But he mostly talked of Denver C. Galloway. "'Ah, señor,' says he, 'that is the most fine of mans. Never I have seen one man so magnifico, so gr-r-rand, so conformable to make done things so swiftly by other mans. He shall make other mans do the acts and himself to order and regulate, until we arrive at seeing accomplishments of a suddenly. Oh, yes, señor. In my countree there is not such mans of so beegness, so good talk, so compliments, so strongness of sense and such. Ah, that Señor Galloway!' "'Yes,' says I, 'old Denver is the boy you want. He's managed every kind of business here except filibustering, and he might as well complete the list.' "Before the three days was up I decided to join Denver in his campaign. Denver got three months' vacation from his hotel owners. For a week we lived in a room with the General, and got all the pointers about his country that we could interpret from the noises he made. When we got ready to start, Denver had a pocket full of memorandums, and letters from the General to his friends, and a list of names and addresses of loyal politicians who would help along the boom of the exiled popular idol. Besides these liabilities we carried assets to the amount of $20,000 in assorted United States currency. General Rompiro looked like a burnt effigy, but he was Br'er Fox himself when it came to the real science of politics. "'Here is moneys,' says the General, 'of a small amount. There is more with me—moocho more. Plentee moneys shall you be supplied, Señor Galloway. More I shall send you at all times that you need. I shall desire to pay feefty—one hundred thousand pesos, if necessario, to be elect. How no? Sacramento! If that I am president and do not make one meelion dolla in the one year you shall keek me on that side!—valgame Dios!' "Denver got a Cuban cigar-maker to fix up a little cipher code with English and Spanish words, and gave the General a copy, so we could cable him bulletins about the election, or for more money, and then we were ready to start. General Rompiro escorted us to the steamer. On the pier he hugged Denver around the waist and sobbed. 'Noble mans,' says he, 'General Rompiro propels you into his confidence and trust. Go, in the hands of the saints to do the work for your friend. Viva la libertad!' "'Sure,' says Denver. 'And viva la liberality an' la soaperino and hoch der land of the lotus and the vote us. Don't worry, General. We'll have you elected as sure as bananas grow upside down.' "'Make pictures on me,' pleads the General—'make pictures on me for money as it is needful.' "'Does he want to be tattooed, would you think?' asks Denver, wrinkling up his eyes. "'Stupid!' says I. 'He wants you to draw on him for election expenses. It'll be worse than tattooing. More like an autopsy.' "Me and Denver steamed down to Panama, and then hiked across the Isthmus, and then by steamer again down to the town of Espiritu on the coast of the General's country. "That was a town to send J. Howard Payne to the growler. I'll tell you how you could make one like it. Take a lot of Filipino huts and a couple of hundred brick-kilns and arrange 'em in squares in a cemetery. Cart down all the conservatory plants in the Astor and Vanderbilt greenhouses, and stick 'em about wherever there's room. Turn all the Bellevue patients and the barbers' convention and the Tuskegee school loose in the streets, and run the thermometer up to 120 in the shade. Set a fringe of the Rocky Mountains around the rear, let it rain, and set the whole business on Rockaway Beach in the middle of January—and you'd have a good imitation of Espiritu. "It took me and Denver about a week to get acclimated. Denver sent out the letters the General had given him, and notified the rest of the gang that there was something doing at the captain's office. We set up headquarters in an old 'dobe house on a side street where the grass was waist high. The election was only four weeks off; but there wasn't any excitement. The home candidate for president was named Roadrickeys. This town of Esperitu wasn't the capital any more than Cleveland, Ohio, is the capital of the United States, but it was the political centre where they cooked up revolutions, and made up the slates. "At the end of the week Denver says the machine is started running. "'Sully,' says he, 'we've got a walkover. Just because General Rompiro ain't Don Juan-on-the-spot the other crowd ain't at work. They're as full of apathy as a territorial delegate during the chaplain's prayer. Now, we want to introduce a little hot stuff in the way of campaigning, and we'll surprise 'em at the polls.' "'How are you going to go about it?' I asks. "'Why, the usual way,' says Denver, surprised. 'We'll get the orators on our side out every night to make speeches in the native lingo, and have torch-light parades under the shade of the palms, and free drinks, and buy up all the brass bands, of course, and—well, I'll turn the baby-kissing over to you, Sully—I've seen a lot of 'em.' "'What else?' says I. "'Why, you know,' says Denver. 'We get the heelers out with the crackly two-spots, and coal-tickets, and orders for groceries, and have a couple of picnics out under the banyan-trees, and dances in the Firemen's Hall—and the usual things. But first of all, Sully, I'm going to have the biggest clam-bake down on the beach that was ever seen south of the tropic of Capricorn. I figured that out from the start. We'll stuff the whole town and the jungle folk for miles around with clams. That's the first thing on the programme. Suppose you go out now, and make the arrangements for that. I want to look over the estimates the General made of the vote in the coast districts.' "I had learned some Spanish in Mexico, so I goes out, as Denver says, and in fifteen minutes I come back to headquarters. "'If there ever was a clam in this country nobody ever saw it,' I says. "'Great sky-rockets!' says Denver, with his mouth and eyes open. 'No clams? How in the—who ever saw a country without clams? What kind of a—how's an election to be pulled off without a clam-bake, I'd like to know? Are you sure there's no clams, Sully?' "'Not even a can,' says I. "'Then for God's sake go out and try to find what the people here do eat. We've got to fill 'em up with grub of some kind.' "I went out again. Denver was manager. In half an hour I gets back. "'They eat,' says I, 'tortillas, cassava, carne de chivo, arroz con pollo, aquacates, zapates, yucca, and huevos fritos.' "'A man that would eat them things,' says Denver, getting a little mad, 'ought to have his vote challenged.' "In a few more days the campaign managers from the other towns came sliding into Esperitu. Our headquarters was a busy place. We had an interpreter, and ice-water, and drinks, and cigars, and Denver flashed the General's roll so often that it got so small you couldn't have bought a Republican vote in Ohio with it. "And then Denver cabled to General Rompiro for ten thousand dollars more and got it. "There were a number of Americans in Esperitu, but they were all in business or grafts of some kind, and wouldn't take any hand in politics, which was sensible enough. But they showed me and Denver a fine time, and fixed us up so we could get decent things to eat and drink. There was one American, named Hicks, used to come and loaf at the headquarters. Hicks had had fourteen years of Esperitu. He was six feet four and weighed in at 135. Cocoa was his line; and coast fever and the climate had taken all the life out of him. They said he hadn't smiled in eight years. His face was three feet long, and it never moved except when he opened it to take quinine. He used to sit in our headquarters and kill fleas and talk sarcastic. "'I don't take much interest in politics,' says Hicks, one day, 'but I'd like you to tell me what you're trying to do down here, Galloway?' "'We're boosting General Rompiro, of course,' says Denver. 'We're going to put him in the presidential chair. I'm his manager.' "'Well,' says Hicks, 'if I was you I'd be a little slower about it. You've got a long time ahead of you, you know.' "'Not any longer than I need,' says Denver. "Denver went ahead and worked things smooth. He dealt out money on the quiet to his lieutenants, and they were always coming after it. There was free drinks for everybody in town, and bands playing every night, and fireworks, and there was a lot of heelers going around buying up votes day and night for the new style of politics in Espiritu, and everybody liked it. "The day set for the election was November 4th. On the night before Denver and me were smoking our pipes in headquarters, and in comes Hicks and unjoints himself, and sits in a chair, mournful. Denver is cheerful and confident. 'Rompiro will win in a romp,' says he. 'We'll carry the country by 10,000. It's all over but the vivas. To-morrow will tell the tale.' "'What's going to happen to-morrow?' asks Hicks. "'Why, the presidential election, of course,' says Denver. "'Say,' says Hicks, looking kind of funny, 'didn't anybody tell you fellows that the election was held a week before you came? Congress changed the date to July 27th. Roadrickeys was elected by 17,000. I thought you was booming old Rompiro for next term, two years from now. Wondered if you was going to keep up such a hot lick that long.' "I dropped my pipe on the floor. Denver bit the stem off of his. Neither of us said anything. "And then I heard a sound like somebody ripping a clapboard off of a barn-roof. 'Twas Hicks laughing for the first time in eight years." Sully Magoon paused while the waiter poured us a black coffee. "Your friend was, indeed, something of a manager," I said. "Wait a minute," said Sully, "I haven't given you any idea of what he could do yet. That's all to come. "When we got back to New York there was General Rompiro waiting for us on the pier. He was dancing like a cinnamon bear, all impatient for the news, for Denver had just cabled him when we would arrive and nothing more. "'Am I elect?' he shouts. 'Am I elect, friend of mine? Is that mine country have demand General Rompiro for the president? The last dollar of mine have I sent you that last time. It is necessario that I am elect. I have not more money. Am I elect, Señor Galloway?' "Denver turns to me. "'Leave me with old Rompey, Sully,' he says. 'I've got to break it to him gently. 'Twould be indecent for other eyes to witness the operation. This is the time, Sully,' says he, 'when old Denver has got to make good as a jollier and a silver-tongued sorcerer, or else give up all the medals he's earned.' "A couple of days later I went around to the hotel. There was Denver in his old place, looking like the hero of two historical novels, and telling 'em what a fine time he'd had down on his orange plantation in Florida. "'Did you fix things up with the General?' I asks him. "'Did I?' says Denver. 'Come and see.' "He takes me by the arm and walks me to the dining-room door. There was a little chocolate-brown fat man in a dress suit, with his face shining with joy as he swelled himself and skipped about the floor. Danged if Denver hadn't made General Rompiro head waiter of the Hotel Brunswick!" "Is Mr. Galloway still in the managing business?" I asked, as Mr. Magoon ceased. Sully shook his head. "Denver married an auburn-haired widow that owns a big hotel in Harlem. He just helps around the place."

WHAT DO YOU READ? By Boyd Ellanby - https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/49754/pg49754-images.html

 

Writers have long dreamed of a plot machine, but the machines in Script-Lab did much more than plot the story—they wrote it. Why bother with human writers when the machines did the job so much faster and better?

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Herbert would have preferred the seclusion of a coptor-taxi, but he knew he could not afford it. The Bureau paid its writers adequately, but not enough to make them comfortable in taxis. In front of his apartment house, he took the escalator to the Airway. It must have been pleasant, he thought as he stepped onto the moving sidewalk, to be a writer in the days when they were permitted to receive royalties and, presumably, to afford taxi fare.

Grandemont Charles was a little Creole gentleman, aged thirty-four, with a bald spot on the top of his head and the manners of a prince. By day he was a clerk in a cotton broker's office in one of those cold, rancid mountains of oozy brick, down near the levee in New Orleans. By night, in his three-story-high chambre garnier in the old French Quarter he was again the last male descendant of the Charles family, that noble house that had lorded it in France, and had pushed its way smiling, rapiered, and courtly into Louisiana's early and brilliant days. Of late years the Charleses had subsided into the more republican but scarcely less royally carried magnificence and ease of plantation life along the Mississippi. Perhaps Grandemont was even Marquis de Brassé. There was that title in the family. But a Marquis on seventy-five dollars per month! Vraiment! Still, it has been done on less. Grandemont had saved out of his salary the sum of six hundred dollars. Enough, you would say, for any man to marry on. So, after a silence of two years on that subject, he reopened that most hazardous question to Mlle. Adèle Fauquier, riding down to Meade d'Or, her father's plantation. Her answer was the same that it had been any time during the last ten years: "First find my brother, Monsieur Charles." This time he had stood before her, perhaps discouraged by a love so long and hopeless, being dependent upon a contingency so unreasonable, and demanded to be told in simple words whether she loved him or no. Adèle looked at him steadily out of her gray eyes that betrayed no secrets and answered, a little more softly: "Grandemont, you have no right to ask that question unless you can do what I ask of you. Either bring back brother Victor to us or the proof that he died." Somehow, though five times thus rejected, his heart was not so heavy when he left. She had not denied that she loved. Upon what shallow waters can the bark of passion remain afloat! Or, shall we play the doctrinaire, and hint that at thirty-four the tides of life are calmer and cognizant of many sources instead of but one—as at four-and-twenty? Victor Fauquier would never be found. In those early days of his disappearance there was money to the Charles name, and Grandemont had spent the dollars as if they were picayunes in trying to find the lost youth. Even then he had had small hope of success, for the Mississippi gives up a victim from its oily tangles only at the whim of its malign will. A thousand times had Grandemont conned in his mind the scene of Victor's disappearance. And, at each time that Adèle had set her stubborn but pitiful alternative against his suit, still clearer it repeated itself in his brain. The boy had been the family favourite; daring, winning, reckless. His unwise fancy had been captured by a girl on the plantation—the daughter of an overseer. Victor's family was in ignorance of the intrigue, as far as it had gone. To save them the inevitable pain that his course promised, Grandemont strove to prevent it. Omnipotent money smoothed the way. The overseer and his daughter left, between a sunset and dawn, for an undesignated bourne. Grandemont was confident that this stroke would bring the boy to reason. He rode over to Meade d'Or to talk with him. The two strolled out of the house and grounds, crossed the road, and, mounting the levee, walked its broad path while they conversed. A thunder-cloud was hanging, imminent, above, but, as yet, no rain fell. At Grandemont's disclosure of his interference in the clandestine romance, Victor attacked him, in a wild and sudden fury. Grandemont, though of slight frame, possessed muscles of iron. He caught the wrists amid a shower of blows descending upon him, bent the lad backward and stretched him upon the levee path. In a little while the gust of passion was spent, and he was allowed to rise. Calm now, but a powder mine where he had been but a whiff of the tantrums, Victor extended his hand toward the dwelling house of Meade d'Or. "You and they," he cried, "have conspired to destroy my happiness. None of you shall ever look upon my face again." Turning, he ran swiftly down the levee, disappearing in the darkness. Grandemont followed as well as he could, calling to him, but in vain. For longer than an hour he pursued the search. Descending the side of the levee, he penetrated the rank density of weeds and willows that undergrew the trees until the river's edge, shouting Victor's name. There was never an answer, though once he thought he heard a bubbling scream from the dun waters sliding past. Then the storm broke, and he returned to the house drenched and dejected. There he explained the boy's absence sufficiently, he thought, not speaking of the tangle that had led to it, for he hoped that Victor would return as soon as his anger had cooled. Afterward, when the threat was made good and they saw his face no more, he found it difficult to alter his explanations of that night, and there clung a certain mystery to the boy's reasons for vanishing as well as to the manner of it. It was on that night that Grandemont first perceived a new and singular expression in Adèle's eyes whenever she looked at him. And through the years following that expression was always there. He could not read it, for it was born of a thought she would never otherwise reveal. Perhaps, if he had known that Adèle had stood at the gate on that unlucky night, where she had followed, lingering, to await the return of her brother and lover, wondering why they had chosen so tempestuous an hour and so black a spot to hold converse—if he had known that a sudden flash of lightning had revealed to her sight that short, sharp struggle as Victor was sinking under his hands, he might have explained everything, and she— I know what she would have done. But one thing is clear—there was something besides her brother's disappearance between Grandemont's pleadings for her hand and Adèle's "yes." Ten years had passed, and what she had seen during the space of that lightning flash remained an indelible picture. She had loved her brother, but was she holding out for the solution of that mystery or for the "Truth"? Women have been known to reverence it, even as an abstract principle. It is said there have been a few who, in the matter of their affections, have considered a life to be a small thing as compared with a lie. That I do not know. But, I wonder, had Grandemont cast himself at her feet crying that his hand had sent Victor to the bottom of that inscrutable river, and that he could no longer sully his love with a lie, I wonder if—I wonder what she would have done! But, Grandemont Charles, Arcadian little gentleman, never guessed the meaning of that look in Adèle's eyes; and from this last bootless payment of his devoirs he rode away as rich as ever in honour and love, but poor in hope. That was in September. It was during the first winter month that Grandemont conceived his idea of the renaissance. Since Adèle would never be his, and wealth without her were useless trumpery, why need he add to that hoard of slowly harvested dollars? Why should he even retain that hoard? Hundreds were the cigarettes he consumed over his claret, sitting at the little polished tables in the Royal street cafés while thinking over his plan. By and by he had it perfect. It would cost, beyond doubt, all the money he had, but—le jeu vaut la chandelle—for some hours he would be once more a Charles of Charleroi. Once again should the nineteenth of January, that most significant day in the fortunes of the house of Charles, be fittingly observed. On that date the French king had seated a Charles by his side at table; on that date Armand Charles, Marquis de Brassé, landed, like a brilliant meteor, in New Orleans; it was the date of his mother's wedding; of Grandemont's birth. Since Grandemont could remember until the breaking up of the family that anniversary had been the synonym for feasting, hospitality, and proud commemoration. Charleroi was the old family plantation, lying some twenty miles down the river. Years ago the estate had been sold to discharge the debts of its too-bountiful owners. Once again it had changed hands, and now the must and mildew of litigation had settled upon it. A question of heirship was in the courts, and the dwelling house of Charleroi, unless the tales told of ghostly powdered and laced Charleses haunting its unechoing chambers were true, stood uninhabited. Grandemont found the solicitor in chancery who held the keys pending the decision. He proved to be an old friend of the family. Grandemont explained briefly that he desired to rent the house for two or three days. He wanted to give a dinner at his old home to a few friends. That was all. "Take it for a week—a month, if you will," said the solicitor; "but do not speak to me of rental." With a sigh he concluded: "The dinners I have eaten under that roof, mon fils!" There came to many of the old, established dealers in furniture, china, silverware, decorations and household fittings at their stores on Canal, Chartres, St. Charles, and Royal Streets, a quiet young man with a little bald spot on the top of his head, distinguished manners, and the eye of a connoisseur, who explained what he wanted. To hire the complete and elegant equipment of a dining-room, hall, reception-room, and cloak-rooms. The goods were to be packed and sent, by boat, to the Charleroi landing, and would be returned within three or four days. All damage or loss to be promptly paid for. Many of those old merchants knew Grandemont by sight, and the Charleses of old by association. Some of them were of Creole stock and felt a thrill of responsive sympathy with the magnificently indiscreet design of this impoverished clerk who would revive but for a moment the ancient flame of glory with the fuel of his savings. "Choose what you want," they said to him. "Handle everything carefully. See that the damage bill is kept low, and the charges for the loan will not oppress you." To the wine merchants next; and here a doleful slice was lopped from the six hundred. It was an exquisite pleasure to Grandemont once more to pick among the precious vintages. The champagne bins lured him like the abodes of sirens, but these he was forced to pass. With his six hundred he stood before them as a child with a penny stands before a French doll. But he bought with taste and discretion of other wines—Chablis, Moselle, Château d'Or, Hochheimer, and port of right age and pedigree. The matter of the cuisine gave him some studious hours until he suddenly recollected André—André, their old chef—the most sublime master of French Creole cookery in the Mississippi Valley. Perhaps he was yet somewhere about the plantation. The solicitor had told him that the place was still being cultivated, in accordance with a compromise agreement between the litigants. On the next Sunday after the thought Grandemont rode, horseback, down to Charleroi. The big, square house with its two long ells looked blank and cheerless with its closed shutters and doors. The shrubbery in the yard was ragged and riotous. Fallen leaves from the grove littered the walks and porches. Turning down the lane at the side of the house, Grandemont rode on to the quarters of the plantation hands. He found the workers just streaming back from church, careless, happy, and bedecked in gay yellows, reds, and blues. Yes, André was still there; his wool a little grayer; his mouth as wide; his laughter as ready as ever. Grandemont told him of his plan, and the old chef swayed with pride and delight. With a sigh of relief, knowing that he need have no further concern until the serving of that dinner was announced, he placed in André's hands a liberal sum for the cost of it, giving carte blanche for its creation. Among the blacks were also a number of the old house servants. Absalom, the former major domo, and a half-dozen of the younger men, once waiters and attachés of the kitchen, pantry, and other domestic departments crowded around to greet "M'shi Grande." Absalom guaranteed to marshal, of these, a corps of assistants that would perform with credit the serving of the dinner. After distributing a liberal largesse among the faithful, Grandemont rode back to town well pleased. There were many other smaller details to think of and provide for, but eventually the scheme was complete, and now there remained only the issuance of the invitations to his guests. Along the river within the scope of a score of miles dwelt some half-dozen families with whose princely hospitality that of the Charleses had been contemporaneous. They were the proudest and most august of the old régime. Their small circle had been a brilliant one; their social relations close and warm; their houses full of rare welcome and discriminating bounty. Those friends, said Grandemont, should once more, if never again, sit at Charleroi on a nineteenth of January to celebrate the festal day of his house. Grandemont had his cards of invitation engraved. They were expensive, but beautiful. In one particular their good taste might have been disputed; but the Creole allowed himself that one feather in the cap of his fugacious splendour. Might he not be allowed, for the one day of the renaissance, to be "Grandemont du Puy Charles, of Charleroi"? He sent the invitations out early in January so that the guests might not fail to receive due notice. At eight o'clock in the morning of the nineteenth, the lower coast steamboat River Belle gingerly approached the long unused landing at Charleroi. The bridge was lowered, and a swarm of the plantation hands streamed along the rotting pier, bearing ashore a strange assortment of freight. Great shapeless bundles and bales and packets swathed in cloth and bound with ropes; tubs and urns of palms, evergreens, and tropical flowers; tables, mirrors, chairs, couches, carpets, and pictures—all carefully bound and padded against the dangers of transit. Grandemont was among them, the busiest there. To the safe conveyance of certain large hampers eloquent with printed cautions to delicate handling he gave his superintendence, for they contained the fragile china and glassware. The dropping of one of those hampers would have cost him more than he could have saved in a year. The last article unloaded, the River Belle backed off and continued her course down stream. In less than an hour everything had been conveyed to the house. And came then Absalom's task, directing the placing of the furniture and wares. There was plenty of help, for that day was always a holiday at Charleroi, and the Negroes did not suffer the old traditions to lapse. Almost the entire population of the quarters volunteered their aid. A score of piccaninnies were sweeping at the leaves in the yard. In the big kitchen at the rear André was lording it with his old-time magnificence over his numerous sub-cooks and scullions. Shutters were flung wide; dust spun in clouds; the house echoed to voices and the tread of busy feet. The prince had come again, and Charleroi woke from its long sleep. The full moon, as she rose across the river that night and peeped above the levee saw a sight that had long been missing from her orbit. The old plantation house shed a soft and alluring radiance from every window. Of its two-score rooms only four had been refurnished—the larger reception chamber, the dining hall, and two smaller rooms for the convenience of the expected guests. But lighted wax candles were set in the windows of every room. The dining-hall was the chef d'œuvre. The long table, set with twenty-five covers, sparkled like a winter landscape with its snowy napery and china and the icy gleam of crystal. The chaste beauty of the room had required small adornment. The polished floor burned to a glowing ruby with the reflection of candle light. The rich wainscoting reached half way to the ceiling. Along and above this had been set the relieving lightness of a few water-colour sketches of fruit and flower. The reception chamber was fitted in a simple but elegant style. Its arrangement suggested nothing of the fact that on the morrow the room would again be cleared and abandoned to the dust and the spider. The entrance hall was imposing with palms and ferns and the light of an immense candelabrum. At seven o'clock Grandemont, in evening dress, with pearls—a family passion—in his spotless linen, emerged from somewhere. The invitations had specified eight as the dining hour. He drew an armchair upon the porch, and sat there, smoking cigarettes and half dreaming. The moon was an hour high. Fifty years back from the gate stood the house, under its noble grove. The road ran in front, and then came the grass-grown levee and the insatiate river beyond. Just above the levee top a tiny red light was creeping down and a tiny green one was creeping up. Then the passing steamers saluted, and the hoarse din startled the drowsy silence of the melancholy lowlands. The stillness returned, save for the little voices of the night—the owl's recitative, the capriccio of the crickets, the concerto of the frogs in the grass. The piccaninnies and the dawdlers from the quarters had been dismissed to their confines, and the melée of the day was reduced to an orderly and intelligent silence. The six coloured waiters, in their white jackets, paced, cat-footed, about the table, pretending to arrange where all was beyond betterment. Absalom, in black and shining pumps posed, superior, here and there where the lights set off his grandeur. And Grandemont rested in his chair, waiting for his guests. He must have drifted into a dream—and an extravagant one—for he was master of Charleroi and Adèle was his wife. She was coming out to him now; he could hear her steps; he could feel her hand upon his shoulder— "Pardon moi, M'shi Grande"—it was Absalom's hand touching him, it was Absalom's voice, speaking the patois of the blacks—"but it is eight o'clock." Eight o'clock. Grandemont sprang up. In the moonlight he could see the row of hitching-posts outside the gate. Long ago the horses of the guests should have stood there. They were vacant. A chanted roar of indignation, a just, waxing bellow of affront and dishonoured genius came from André's kitchen, filling the house with rhythmic protest. The beautiful dinner, the pearl of a dinner, the little excellent superb jewel of a dinner! But one moment more of waiting and not even the thousand thunders of black pigs of the quarter would touch it! "They are a little late," said Grandemont, calmly. "They will come soon. Tell André to hold back dinner. And ask him if, by some chance, a bull from the pastures has broken, roaring, into the house." He seated himself again to his cigarettes. Though he had said it, he scarcely believed Charleroi would entertain company that night. For the first time in history the invitation of a Charles had been ignored. So simple in courtesy and honour was Grandemont, and, perhaps, so serenely confident in the prestige of his name, that the most likely reasons for the vacant board did not occur to him. Charleroi stood by a road travelled daily by people from those plantations whither his invitations had gone. No doubt even on the day before the sudden reanimation of the old house they had driven past and observed the evidences of long desertion and decay. They had looked at the corpse of Charleroi and then at Grandemont's invitations, and, though the puzzle or tasteless hoax or whatever the thing meant left them perplexed, they would not seek its solution by the folly of a visit to that deserted house. The moon was now above the grove, and the yard was pied with deep shadows save where they lightened in the tender glow of outpouring candle light. A crisp breeze from the river hinted at the possibility of frost when the night should have become older. The grass at one side of the steps was specked with the white stubs of Grandemont's cigarettes. The cotton-broker's clerk sat in his chair with the smoke spiralling above him. I doubt that he once thought of the little fortune he had so impotently squandered. Perhaps it was compensation enough for him to sit thus at Charleroi for a few retrieved hours. Idly his mind wandered in and out many fanciful paths of memory. He smiled to himself as a paraphrased line of Scripture strayed into his mind: "A certain poor man made a feast." He heard the sound of Absalom coughing a note of summons. Grandemont stirred. This time he had not been asleep—only drowsing. "Nine o'clock, M'shi Grande," said Absalom in the uninflected voice of a good servant who states a fact unqualified by personal opinion. Grandemont rose to his feet. In their time all the Charleses had been proven, and they were gallant losers. "Serve dinner," he said calmly. And then he checked Absalom's movement to obey, for something clicked the gate latch and was coming down the walk toward the house. Something that shuffled its feet and muttered to itself as it came. It stopped in the current of light at the foot of the steps and spake, in the universal whine of the gadding mendicant. "Kind sir, could you spare a poor, hungry man, out of luck, a little to eat? And to sleep in the corner of a shed? For"—the thing concluded, irrelevantly—"I can sleep now. There are no mountains to dance reels in the night; and the copper kettles are all scoured bright. The iron band is still around my ankle, and a link, if it is your desire I should be chained." It set a foot upon the step and drew up the rags that hung upon the limb. Above the distorted shoe, caked with the dust of a hundred leagues, they saw the link and the iron band. The clothes of the tramp were wreaked to piebald tatters by sun and rain and wear. A mat of brown, tangled hair and beard covered his head and face, out of which his eyes stared distractedly. Grandemont noticed that he carried in one hand a white, square card. "What is that?" he asked. "I picked it up, sir, at the side of the road." The vagabond handed the card to Grandemont. "Just a little to eat, sir. A little parched corn, a tartilla, or a handful of beans. Goat's meat I cannot eat. When I cut their throats they cry like children." Grandemont held up the card. It was one of his own invitations to dinner. No doubt some one had cast it away from a passing carriage after comparing it with the tenantless house of Charleroi. "From the hedges and highways bid them come," he said to himself, softly smiling. And then to Absalom: "Send Louis to me." Louis, once his own body-servant, came promptly, in his white jacket. "This gentleman," said Grandemont, "will dine with me. Furnish him with bath and clothes. In twenty minutes have him ready and dinner served." Louis approached the disreputable guest with the suavity due to a visitor to Charleroi, and spirited him away to inner regions. Promptly, in twenty minutes, Absalom announced dinner, and, a moment later, the guest was ushered into the dining hall where Grandemont waited, standing, at the head of the table. The attentions of Louis had transformed the stranger into something resembling the polite animal. Clean linen and an old evening suit that had been sent down from town to clothe a waiter had worked a miracle with his exterior. Brush and comb had partially subdued the wild disorder of his hair. Now he might have passed for no more extravagant a thing than one of those poseurs in art and music who affect such oddity of guise. The man's countenance and demeanour, as he approached the table, exhibited nothing of the awkwardness or confusion to be expected from his Arabian Nights change. He allowed Absalom to seat him at Grandemont's right hand with the manner of one thus accustomed to be waited upon. "It grieves me," said Grandemont, "to be obliged to exchange names with a guest. My own name is Charles." "In the mountains," said the wayfarer, "they call me Gringo. Along the roads they call me Jack." "I prefer the latter," said Grandemont. "A glass of wine with you, Mr. Jack." Course after course was served by the supernumerous waiters. Grandemont, inspired by the results of André's exquisite skill in cookery and his own in the selection of wines became the model host, talkative, witty, and genial. The guest was fitful in conversation. His mind seemed to be sustaining a succession of waves of dementia followed by intervals of comparative lucidity. There was the glassy brightness of recent fever in his eyes. A long course of it must have been the cause of his emaciation and weakness, his distracted mind, and the dull pallor that showed even through the tan of wind and sun. "Charles," he said to Grandemont—for thus he seemed to interpret his name—"you never saw the mountains dance, did you?" "No, Mr. Jack," answered Grandemont, gravely, "the spectacle has been denied me. But, I assure you, I can understand it must be a diverting sight. The big ones, you know, white with snow on the tops, waltzing—décolleté, we may say." "You first scour the kettles," said Mr. Jack, leaning toward him excitedly, "to cook the beans in the morning, and you lie down on a blanket and keep quite still. Then they come out and dance for you. You would go out and dance with them but you are chained every night to the centre pole of the hut. You believe the mountains dance, don't you, Charlie?" "I contradict no traveller's tales," said Grandemont, with a smile. Mr. Jack laughed loudly. He dropped his voice to a confidential whisper. "You are a fool to believe it," he went on. "They don't really dance. It's the fever in your head. It's the hard work and the bad water that does it. You are sick for weeks and there is no medicine. The fever comes on every evening, and then you are as strong as two men. One night the compania are lying drunk with mescal. They have brought back sacks of silver dollars from a ride, and they drink to celebrate. In the night you file the chain in two and go down the mountain. You walk for miles—hundreds of them. By and by the mountains are all gone, and you come to the prairies. They do not dance at night; they are merciful, and you sleep. Then you come to the river, and it says things to you. You follow it down, down, but you can't find what you are looking for." Mr. Jack leaned back in his chair, and his eyes slowly closed. The food and wine had steeped him in a deep calm. The tense strain had been smoothed from his face. The languor of repletion was claiming him. Drowsily he spoke again. "It's bad manners—I know—to go to sleep—at table—but—that was—such a good dinner—Grande, old fellow." Grande! The owner of the name started and set down his glass. How should this wretched tatterdemalion whom he had invited, Caliph-like, to sit at his feet know his name? Not at first, but soon, little by little, the suspicion, wild and unreasonable as it was, stole into his brain. He drew out his watch with hands that almost balked him by their trembling, and opened the back case. There was a picture there—a photograph fixed to the inner side. Rising, Grandemont shook Mr. Jack by the shoulder. The weary guest opened his eyes. Grandemont held the watch. "Look at this picture, Mr. Jack. Have you ever—" "My sister Adèle!" The vagrant's voice rang loud and sudden through the room. He started to his feet, but Grandemont's arms were about him, and Grandemont was calling him "Victor!—Victor Fauquier! Merci, merci, mon Dieu!" Too far overcome by sleep and fatigue was the lost one to talk that night. Days afterward, when the tropic calentura had cooled in his veins, the disordered fragments he had spoken were completed in shape and sequence. He told the story of his angry flight, of toils and calamities on sea and shore, of his ebbing and flowing fortune in southern lands, and of his latest peril when, held a captive, he served menially in a stronghold of bandits in the Sonora Mountains of Mexico. And of the fever that seized him there and his escape and delirium, during which he strayed, perhaps led by some marvellous instinct, back to the river on whose bank he had been born. And of the proud and stubborn thing in his blood that had kept him silent through all those years, clouding the honour of one, though he knew it not, and keeping apart two loving hearts. "What a thing is love!" you may say. And if I grant it, you shall say, with me: "What a thing is pride!" On a couch in the reception chamber Victor lay, with a dawning understanding in his heavy eyes and peace in his softened countenance. Absalom was preparing a lounge for the transient master of Charleroi, who, to-morrow, would be again the clerk of a cotton-broker, but also— "To-morrow," Grandemont was saying, as he stood by the couch of his guest, speaking the words with his face shining as must have shone the face of Elijah's charioteer when he announced the glories of that heavenly journey—"To-morrow I will take you to Her."

A QUESTION OF IDENTITY BY FRANK RILEY - https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/60467/pg60467-images.html

 What is a Man?... A paradox
indeed—the world's finest minds
gathered to defend a punk killer....

We were going up the Champs Elysées with Doctor V——, gathering from the walls pierced by shells, and from the pavements broken by grape-shot, the story of Paris under siege. Just before we came to the Place de l'Etoile, the Doctor halted, and, pointing to one of the great corner houses grouped around the Arch of Triumph, "Do you see those four closed windows?" he asked. "One of the first days of August—the terrible month of August of last year, so full of anguish and disaster—I was called there to a case of apoplexy. "Colonel Jouve, a cuirassier of the First Empire (a stubborn fellow, bristling with glory and with patriotism), had leased that flat with the balcony looking on the Champs Elysées. He had come there at the beginning of the war (1870-71). Guess for what purpose. To be present at the triumphal entry of our troops! Poor old man! The news from Wissembourg arrived one day just as he arose from table; he read the name of the Napoleon at the foot of the bulletin, of our defeat, and dropped as if felled by a sledgehammer. I found the old fellow stretched at full length upon the carpet, livid, apparently dead. He must have been very tall. As he lay there he looked gigantic—with fine, clear-cut features, fair teeth, and curling white hair. Eighty years old! but he did not look sixty. His granddaughter, a beautiful young girl, knelt close to him, weeping. She resembled him. Seeing the two faces together you might have thought them two fine Greek medals of the same impression, one an antique dimmed by age, somewhat worn around the edges; the other resplendent in all the velvet gloss of its pristine days. I was touched by the child's grief; later I became her ally and devoted friend. She was the daughter and grand-daughter of soldiers. Her father was on MacMahon's staff; and the man before her, lying, to all appearances, dead, must have suggested to her mind another equally terrible possibility. I did my best to give her courage. I had very little hope. It was an unquestionable hemiplegia, and men eighty years old never come out of that. The sick man lay in a stupor three days. During that time the news from Reichshofen reached Paris. You remember how it reached us! Until that night we had believed it a great victory—twenty thousand Prussians killed, the Prince Royal a prisoner.... I do not know by what miracle or stirred by what magnetic current an echo of the national joy reached the numb brain and thrilled the paralyzed limbs of my unconscious patient; but when I approached his bed I found him another man. His eyes were almost clear, his tongue less thick; he found strength to smile and to stammer the words: 'Vic-to-ry! Vic-to-ry!'" "'Yes, Colonel,' I answered, 'a great victory!' In measure as I gave him the details of our triumph, his features softened and his whole face brightened. When I went out the granddaughter was waiting for me. She was very pale. I took her hand in mine. 'Do not weep,' I said, 'your grandfather is better; he will recover.' And then she told me the true story of Reichshofen—MacMahon in flight, the army crushed! We stood there face to face, speechless. She was thinking of her father. I own that all my thoughts were with her grandfather. I trembled for him! What could I do? To tell him the truth would kill him! But what right had I to leave him to the delusive joy that had called him back from the grave? "'I can not help it,' said the heroic girl, 'I must tell a lie!' and drying her eyes, radiant, smiling, she entered the sick room. "At first it was not so hard; the old fellow was very weak, and as easily deceived as a child. But as he gained strength our difficulties increased; his brain cleared; he was impatient for news; he insisted upon following the movements of the army; and his granddaughter was forced to sit by his bed and invent bulletins from the conquered country. It was piteous! The beautiful, tired child forced to bend over the map of Germany, marking the imaginary progress of the army with little flags—Bazaine in command in Berlin, Froissart in Bavaria, MacMahon on the Baltic! "In her ignorance she came to me for all her details; and I—almost as ignorant—did what I could for her. But now our best aid came from the grandfather. He helped us at every point in our imaginary invasion. He had conquered Germany so many times under the First Empire he knew the way. He could tell just what was coming. "'Can you see what they are doing?' he cried. 'They are here! They turn right here, where I place this pin!' As far as the route was concerned, all that he predicted came true, and when we told him so he gloried in it. Unhappily for us we could not work fast enough for him. We might well take cities, win battles, pursue flying armies—he was insatiable! Every day as soon as I entered the sick room I was told of new triumphs. "'Doctor,' cried the young girl, hurrying into the room and facing me, to bar my progress—'Doctor, we have taken Mayence!' And I cried as gaily, 'I know it! I heard it this morning!' Sometimes her joyful voice cried the news to me through the closed door. "'We are getting on! We are getting on!' laughed the invalid. 'In less than eight days we shall enter Berlin!' "We knew that the Prussians were coming, and, as they neared Paris, we wondered if it would not be safer to get the old man into the country. But we dared not do it; once out of the house he would look around him; he would question; he would see and hear. He was too weak, too numb from his great shock to bear the truth! We decided to stay where we were. The first day of the investment I went upstairs with a heavy heart, I remember. I had come through the deserted streets of Paris, past the ramparts. The troops were dragging up their cannon. All our suburbs were frontiers. I found my old fellow sitting up in bed, jubilant and proud. "'Well,' said he, 'at last the siege is begun!' "I was stupefied; I stared at him. His granddaughter cried out: 'Yes, Doctor, we have had great news! The siege of Berlin is begun!' "She said it so pleasantly, threading her needle and taking her little stitches so calmly! How could he doubt her? He could not hear the guns; they were too far away. And Paris, wretched, tortured, sinister under the icy sky. What could he know of that! Sitting propped up in his bed he could see nothing but a corner of the Arch of Triumph. In his room everything was of the epoch of the Empire. Even the bric-à-brac was well fitted to foster his illusions. Portraits of field-marshals, pictures of battles, the king of Rome in his cradle; and the stiff consoles ornamented with brass trophies, and laden with Imperial relics! Medals, bronzes, the rock of St. Helena under a glass shade, and miniatures (all portraits of the same pretty woman with curling hair, dressed for a ball, in a yellow high-necked robe with leg-of-mutton sleeves, and wide belt, in the stiff fashion of 1806). "Brave and faithful soldier of Napoleon! his relics formed an influence stronger for his deception than all our well-meant lies. He had lived for years in an atmosphere of conquest, and that atmosphere had prepared him for his dream of Berlin. "From the beginning of the siege our military movements were simple; to take Berlin was merely an affair of time. When the old man was too tired of his enforced idleness, his granddaughter read him letters from his son—imaginary letters, of course, as nothing was permitted to enter Paris. Since the battle of Sedan the Colonel's son, MacMahon's aide, had been ordered to a German fortress. "You may imagine the anguish of the poor man, separated from his family, knowing them to be prisoners in Paris, deprived of everything, possibly sick. Conscious as we were of his sorrow, it was not easy to pretend that he had written merry letters. Well, we did our best. The letters were vivacious, somewhat brief. Naturally, a soldier in the field—nay, more than that, a soldier always on the march in a conquered country!—could not write long letters. Sometimes the poor grandchild's heart failed her; try as she might she could not write; then, for weeks there was no news. But the old man watched for it; and when we saw that the news must come, the little one ran into the room, letter in hand. Naturally, our strategic combinations were chimerical, difficult, even for their authors, to understand; but the old colonel invented explanations; it was all practical to him; he listened, smiled knowingly, criticized, approved. He was admirable when he answered his letters. "'Never forget that thou art French,' dictated the vibrating voice. 'Be generous to the vanquished. Poor people! do not make them feel that they have lost! do not bear too heavy in this invasion.' "Then followed advice oft-repeated, tender and touching little lay sermons, admonitions calculated to stimulate the young soldier to every military virtue. Truly, one could find in all that a code of honor—specially compiled for the use of conquerors; and scattered here and there throughout the letter were a few general reflections on politics, the preliminaries of peace, etc. "'What must be done before the signing of the treaty?' The old man was not quite decided on the point; he 'must consider' before he could be sure; he was not exigeant: 'The indemnity of war—nothing more. Why should we take their provinces? What could we do with them? Could we ever make France out of Germany?' He dictated it all so firmly, in so strong a voice, and there was such truth, such candor, such patriotic zeal in his words, that it was impossible to listen to him unmoved. "All that time the siege was in progress; but alas, it was not the siege of Berlin! It was just at that time of the year when Paris is bitter cold. The Prussians were shelling the city, and we were shut in there with epidemics and with famine. But surrounded by our indefatigable tenderness the old soldier lacked nothing. Even to the last I was able to provide him with fresh meat and with white bread. There was no white bread for us. I can not think of anything more touching than those dinners, so innocently, so ignorantly selfish! There he was, sitting in his bed fresh and smiling, his napkin under his chin, and his granddaughter, pale from privation, close to him, guiding his hand from his plate to his mouth, and holding his glass while he sipped his drinks with childlike satisfaction! Animated by the repast and by the calming influence of the warm room, he looked out on the winter: the tiled roofs; the snow whirling against the window-pane; and he thought of the far North, and for the hundredth time told us of the retreat from Russia when they had had nothing to eat but frozen biscuit and horse-meat. "Horse-meat! "'Can you imagine that, little one?' "You may believe she could imagine that! For two months she had eaten no other meat. Our task was growing hard. In measure, as his strength returned, the numbness of all his senses—our chief aid to deception—was decreasing. Two or three times the volleys fired at the Porte Maillot had reached his ears, and he had lifted his head with ears pricked like the ears of a retriever. The last lie must be told, the last victory reported. Bazaine at Berlin! We told him that the shot that had startled him had been fired from the Invalides in honor of the victory. "Another day they rolled his bed close to the window (I think that it was the Thursday of Buzenval), and he saw, distinctly, the National Guards massing on the Avenue de la Grande Armée. "'What troops are those?' he asked sharply. Then he grumbled under his breath: 'Badly drilled! Very badly drilled! The whole outfit is slovenly!' "Nothing came of it, but it was a warning. We had been warned before and we had taken precautions; but unfortunately they had fallen short. "One day, when I arrived, the granddaughter ran to meet me, pale and anxious. 'They will enter the city to-morrow,' she murmured. "Was the door of the sick-room open? As I think of it to-night, it seems to me that there was a strange expression on the fine, old face. It is probable that he had overheard his granddaughter. "We had been speaking of the Prussians, but the old man could think of nothing but the French and their triumphal entry; MacMahon descending the Avenue in a shower of flowers, to the music of the fanfares. His son would be riding with the Marshal; and he, the Colonel, on the balcony, in full uniform, as he was at Lutzen, saluting the torn flags and the French eagles, dimmed by all the powder of the war! "Poor old Jouve! Probably he believed that we had kept the good news to ourselves, fearing to excite him unduly. He did not say one word to any one; but the day following, when the victorious battalions of Prussia timidly entered the long road leading from the Porte Maillot to the Tuileries, the window was cautiously opened, and the Colonel appeared on the balcony, with his casque, his lance, and all the faded glory of the ex-cuirassier of Milhaud. I have often wondered what subconscious effort of the will, what sudden fanning of the vital flame, put the old man on his feet and into harness! What is sure is, that he was there, on foot, erect, looking with wild eyes over Paris—Paris in her mourning!—the wide, silent streets, the iron blinds drawn down. Paris, as sinister as a dead-house! He saw flags everywhere—white flags crossed with red! And not a soul to greet the returning army! For an instant he thought that he was dreaming. But, no! from away down there, below the Arch of Triumph, came a confused, metallic rattling, then a black line, advancing under the rising sun; then the gleaming combs of brazen helmets. The little drums of Jena rolled; and through the Arch of the Star of France, the day-star of the world, rhythmed by the heavy tread of the German sections, rang the triumphal march of Schubert!... "Then the mournful silence of the Place de l'Etoile was broken by a cry: "'To arms! To arms! The Prussians!' and the four Uhlans of the vanguard, looking up to the balcony, saw a tall, old man throw his arms above his head, waver, and fall backward. . . . . . . . . . . . . "And this time Colonel Jouve was really dead."

NEW APPLES IN THE GARDEN BY KRIS NEVILLE - https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/30767/pg30767-images.html

 Some problems are perfectly predictable—yet not in the sense that allows a preprogrammed machine to handle them—