Grey Roses Part 4

'It was so with Kasghine. It was a very n.o.ble action which drove him, an exile, from his country. Thrown upon the streets of Paris, without friends, without money, he had not the stuff in him to stand up against the forces that were in operation to drag him down. Which of us can be sure that he would have that stuff? From begging for work whereby to earn money, Kasghine fell to begging for money itself. His pride receiving a thousand wounds, instead of being strengthened by them, was killed. Cleanliness is a luxury, a labour; he began to neglect his person; and, in the case of a gentleman, neglect of the person is generally the first step towards neglect of the spirit.

Little by little he lost his civilised character, and reverted to the primitive beast. He was feral.

'But thirty, thirty-five years ago, there were few young men in St.

Petersburg with better positions, brighter prospects, than Kasghine's.

He belonged to an excellent family; he was intelligent, good-looking, popular; he was a Captain in a good regiment. One of his uncles had been minister of war, and stood high in the favour of the Tsar.

'In the spring of 1847, Kasghine's regiment was ordered to Warsaw, and garrisoned in the fortress there. Twenty Polish patriots were confined in the casemates, awaiting execution; men of education, honourable men, men with wives and children, condemned to be hanged because they had conspired together--a foolish, ineffectual conspiracy--against what they regarded as the tyranny of Russia, for the liberty of their country. They had struck no blow, but they had written and talked; and they were to be hanged.

'The fate of these men seemed to Kasghine very unjust, very inhuman.

It preyed upon his mind. He took it into his head to rescue them, to contrive their escape. I do not say that this was wise or right; but it was certainly generous. No doubt he had a period of hesitation. On the one hand was his _consigne_ as a Russian soldier; on the other, what he conceived to be his duty as a man. He knew that the act he contemplated spelt ruin for himself, that it spelt death; and he had every reason to hold life sweet.

'However, he opened communications with the prisoners in the casemates, and with their friends in the town. And one night he got them all safely out,--by daybreak they were secure in hiding. Kasghine himself remained behind. Some one would have to be punished. If the guilty man fled, an innocent man would be punished.

'Well, he was tried by Court Martial, and sentenced to be shot. But the Emperor, out of consideration for Kasghine's family, commuted the sentence to one of hard labour for life in the mines of Kara,--a cruel kindness. After eight years in the mines, with blunted faculties, broken health, disfigured by the loss of an eye, and already no doubt in some measure demoralised by the hardships he had suffered, he was pardoned,--another cruel kindness. He was pardoned on condition that he would leave Russian territory, and never enter it again. There are periodic wholesale pardonings, you know, at Kara, to clear the prisons and make room for fresh convicts.

'Kasghine's private fortune had been confiscated. His family had ceased all relations with him, and would do nothing for him. He came to Paris, and had to engage in the struggle for existence, a struggle with which he was totally unfamiliar, for which he was totally unequipped. The only profession he knew was soldiering. He tried to obtain a commission in the French army. International considerations, if no others, put that out of the question. He tried to get work,--teaching, translating. He was not a good teacher; his translations did not please his employers. Remember, his health was enfeebled, he was disfigured by the loss of an eye; he had spent eight years in the mines at Kara. He began to sink. Let those blame him who know how hard it is to swim. From borrowing, from begging, he sank to I dare not guess what. I am afraid there can be no doubt that for a while he served the Russian secret police as a spy; but he proved an unremunerative spy; they turned him off. He took to drink, he sank lower and lower, he became whatever is lowest. I had not seen him or heard of him for years, when, yesterday, I read the announcement of his death in the _Figaro_.'

The old man set me down at the corner of the Rue Racine. I have never met him again; I have never learned who he was.

The other day, being in Paris, I made a pilgrimage to the Cemetery of Montparna.s.se, to look at Bibi's grave. The wooden cross we had erected over it was pied with weather-stains, the inscription more than half obliterated--

ALEXIS DIMITRIEVITCH KASGHINE

Ne a MOSCOU, le 20 JANVIER, 1823,

MORT a PARIS, le 20 DeCEMBRE, 1884.

_Priez pour lui_.

A RE-INCARNATION

We were, according to our nightly habit, in possession of the Cafe des Souris--dear Cafe des Souris, that is no more; and our a.s.siduous patronage rumour alleges to have been the death of it--we were in possession of the Cafe des Souris, a score or so of us, chiefly English speakers, and all votaries of one or other of the 'quatre-z-arts,' when the door swung open, and he entered.

Now, the entrance of anybody not a member of our particular _cenacle_ into the Cafe des Souris, we, who felt (I don't know why) that we had proprietary rights in the establishment, could not help deeming somewhat in the nature of an unwarranted intrusion; so we stopped our talk for an instant, and stared at him: a man of medium stature, heavily built, with hair that fell to his shoulders, escaping from beneath a broad-brimmed, soft felt hat, knee breeches like a bicyclist's, and, in lieu of overcoat, a sort of doublet, or magnified cape, of buff-coloured cloth.

He supported our examination, and the accompanying interval of silence, which ordinary flesh and blood might have found embara.s.sing, with more than composure--with, it seemed to me, a dimly perceptible, subcutaneous smile, as of satisfaction--and seated himself at the only vacant table. This world held nothing human worthy to rivet our attention longer than thirty seconds, whence, very soon, we were hot in debate again. It was the first Sunday in May; I need hardly add that our subject-matter was the _Vernissage_, at which the greater number of us had a.s.sisted.

For myself, however, I could not forbid my gaze to wander back from time to time upon the stranger: an indulgence touching which I felt the less compunction, in that he had (it was a fair inference) got himself up with a deliberate view to attracting just such notice. Else why the sombrero and knickerbockers, the flowing locks and eccentric yellow cloak? Nay, I think it may have been in part this very note of undisguised vanity in the man that made it difficult to keep one's eyes off him: it tickled the sense of humour, and challenged the curiosity. What would his state of mind be, who, in the dotage of the Nineteenth Century, went laboriously out of his way to cultivate a fragmentary resemblance to--say a spurious Vand.y.k.e?

As the heat of the room began to tell upon him, he threw aside his outer garment, and hung up his hat, thereby discovering a velvet jacket and a very low-cut shirt, with unstarched rolling collar, and sailor's knot of pale green Liberty silk. His long hair, of a faded, dusty brown, was brushed straight back from his forehead, and plastered down upon his scalp, in such wise as to lend him a misleading effect of baldness. He wore a drooping brown moustache, and a l.u.s.treless brown beard, trimmed to an Elizabethan point. His skin was sallow; his eyes were big, wide apart, of an untransparent b.u.t.tony brilliancy, and in colour dully blue. Taken for all in all, his face, deprived of the advent.i.tious aids of long hair and Elizabethan beard, would have been peculiarly spiritless and insignificant, but from the complacency that shone like an unguent in every line of it, as well as from the studied picturesqueness of his costume, it was manifest that he posed as a unique and interesting character, a being mysterious and romantic, melancholy and rarely gifted--like the artist in a bad play.

Artist, indeed, of some description, I told myself, he must infallibly be reckoned. What mere professional man or merchant would have the heart to render his person thus conspicuous? And the hypothesis that might have disposed of him as a _model_ was excluded by the freshness of his clothes. A poet, painter, sculptor, possibly an actor or musician--anyhow, something to which the generic name of artist, soiled with all ign.o.ble use, could more or less flatteringly be applied--I made sure he was; an ornament of our own English-speaking race, moreover, proclaimed such by the light of intelligence that played upon his features as he followed our noisy conversation; and, at a guess, two or three-and-thirty years of age.

'Anybody know the duffer with the hair?'

This question, started by Charles K. Smith, of Battle Creek, Michigan, U.S.A., and commonly called in the Latin Quarter by his sobriquet of _Chalks_, went our rounds in an undertone; and everybody answered, 'No.'

'What is it? Can it talk? 'Pears like it can hear and catch on,' was Chalks's next remark. 'Shall we work the growler on it?'

The process termed by Chalks 'working the growler' was of ancient inst.i.tution in the Cafe des Souris; and I believe it is not unknown in other seats of learning--a custom handed down from generation to generation of students, which, like politeness, costing little, yields generous returns. Should a casual wayfarer, happening amongst us, so far transgress the usages of good society as to volunteer a contribution to our talk, without the preliminary of an introduction, it was the rule instantly to require him to offer the company refreshments; and, I am sorry to have to add, not infrequently, being thirsty, and possessing a lively appreciation of the value of our own money, we would, by a marked affability of bearing, by smiles, nods, glances of sympathetic understanding, or what not, designedly encourage such an one to address us, and so render himself liable to our impost.

'If we don't,' continued Chalks, 'it will be to fly in the face of Providence. The man is simply bursting to fire his mouth off. He's had something to say swelling in him for the last half-hour. It will be an act of Christian mercy to let him say it. And for myself, I confess I'm rather dry.'

Chalks doubtless argued from the eager eye with which the man regarded us; from the uneasy way in which he held his seat, shifting in it, and edging in our direction; and from the tentative manner in which he occasionally coughed.

Now, persuaded by the American, we one by one fell silent, to give our victim his opportunity; whilst those nearest to him baited the trap by looking enquiringly at his face.

It was all he needed.

'I beg your pardon,' he began, with no symptom of diffidence, 'but I too was at the _Vernissage_ to-day, and some of your comments upon it have surprised me.' He spoke with a _staccato_ north-country accent, in a chirpy, querulous little voice; and each syllable seemed to chop the air, like a blow from a small hatchet. 'Am I to take it that you are serious when you condemn Bouguereau's great picture as a _croute_? _Croute_, if I mistake not, is equivalent to the English _daub_?'

Our one-armed waiter, Pierre, had but awaited this crisis to come forward and receive our orders. When they were delivered Chalks courteously explained the situation to the neophyte, adding that, as a further formality, he must make us acquainted with his name and occupation.

He accepted it in perfectly good part. 'I'm sure I shall feel honoured if you will drink with me,' he said, and settled the reckoning with Pierre.

'Name? Name?' a dozen of us cried in scattering chorus.

'I had thought that, among so many Englishmen and Americans, some one would have recognised me,' he replied. 'I am Davis Blake.'

He said it as one might say, 'I am Mr. Gladstone'--or Lord Salisbury--or Bismarck--with dignity, with an inflection of conscious greatness, it is true, but with neither haughtiness nor ostentation.

We, however, are singularly ignorant of contemporary English literature in the Latin Quarter--our chief reading matter, indeed, being Maupa.s.sant and _Le Pet.i.t Journal pour Rire_--and though, as we shortly learned, here was a writer whose works were for sale at every bookstall in the United Kingdom, lavishly pirated in the United States, and distributed far and wide by Baron Tauchnitz on the Continent, his announcement left us unenlightened.

'Painter?' demanded Chalks.

A shadow crossed his face. 'You are surely familiar with my name?'

'Never heard it that I know of,' answered Chalks; then, raising his voice, 'Any gentleman present ever heard of--what did you say your name was?' he asked in an aside; and being informed, went on, 'of Mr.

Davis Blake?'

No one spoke.

'Mud?' queried Chalks.

'Mud?' repeated Mr. Blake, perplexed.

'He means to enquire whether you are a sculptor,' ventured I.

'A sculptor--certainly not.' He spoke sharply, throwing back his head.

'It is impossible that no one here should have heard of me; and this pretence of ignorance is meant as a practical joke. I am a novelist--one of the best known novelists living. I am Davis Blake, the author of "Crispin Dorr," and "The Card Dealer." My portrait, with a short biographical sketch, appeared in the _Ill.u.s.trated Gazette_ not a month ago. My works have been translated into French, German, Russian, and Italian. Of "The Card Dealer," upwards of thirty thousand copies have been sold in Great Britain alone.'

'Ah, then you could well afford to stand us drinks,' was Chalks's cheerful commentary. 'We ain't much on book-learning, this side the river, Mr. Blake. We're plain blunt men, that ain't ashamed of manual labour--h.o.r.n.y-handed sons of toil, in short. But we're proud to meet a cultivated gentleman like yourself, all the same, and can appreciate him when met.'

Blake laughed rather lamely, and responded, 'I perceive that you are a humorist. Your countrymen are great admirers of my writings; of "Crispin Dorr," I am told, there are no fewer than three rival editions in the market; and I have received complimentary letters and requests for my autograph, from all parts of the United States, I think that the quality of American humour has been over-rated: but I can forgive a jest at my own expense, provided it be not meant in malice.'