The Arm Chair at the Inn Part 10

"'Yes!' he replied curtly; 'but love it on your knees.'

"So down I got, and there I stayed until he had finished his prayer at one of the side chapels and had left the church by the main door.

"All this time I was measuring it with my eye--its width, thickness, the depth of the cutting, how much plaster it would take, how large a bag it would require in which to carry it away. This done I went back to Ravenna and started to look up some one of the image vendors who haunt the door of the great church.

"But none of them would listen. It would take at least an hour before the plaster would be dry enough to come away from the marble. The priests--poor as some of them were--would never consent to such a sacrilege. Without their permission detection was almost certain; so please go to the devil, ill.u.s.trious signore, and do not tempt a poor man who does not wish to go to prison for twenty lira.

"This talk, let me tell you, took place in a shop up a back street, kept by a young Italian image-vendor who made casts and moulds with the a.s.sistance of his father, who was a hunch-back, and an old man all rags whom I could see was listening to every word of the talk.

"That same night, about the time the lamps began to be lighted, and I had started out in search of another mouldmaker, the old man in rags stepped out of the shadow of a wall and touched my arm.

"'I know the place, signore, and I know the Madonna. I have everything here in this bucket--at night the church is closed, but there is a side door. I will take your twenty lira. Come with me.'

"When you are twenty, you are like a hawk after its quarry--your blood boiling, your nerves keyed up, and you swoop down and get your talons in your prey without caring what happens afterward. Being also a romantic hawk, I liked immensely the idea of doing my prowling at night; there was a touch of danger in that kind of villany which daylight dispels. So off we started, the ragged man carrying the bucket holding a small bottle of olive-oil, dry plaster, and a thick sheet of modelling wax besides some tools: I with two good-sized candles and a box of matches.

"When you rob a bank at night you must, so I am told, be sure you have a duplicate key or something with which to pick the lock. When you rob an Italian church, there is no such bother--you simply push wide the door and begin feeling your way about. And it was not, to my surprise, very dark once we got in. The ruby light in the big altar lamp helped, and so did what was left of a single candle placed on a side altar by some poor soul as part penance for unforgiven sins.

"And it did not take long once we got to work. First a coat of oil to keep the wax from sticking to the marble; then a patting and forcing of the soft stuff with thumbs, fingers, and a wooden tool into the crevices and grooves of the stone, and then a gentle pull.

"Just here my courage failed and my conscience gave a little jump like the toothache. It might have been the quick flare of the lone candle on the side altar--I had not used my own, there being light enough to see to work--or it might have been my heated imagination, but I distinctly saw on the oil-smeared face of the blessed mother an expression of such intense humiliation that I pulled out my handkerchief, and although the ragged man was calling me to hurry, and I myself heard the noise of approaching footsteps, I kept on wiping off the oil until I saw her smile once more.

"The time lost caused our undoing--or rather mine. The ragged man with the precious mould ran out the side door which was never locked--the one he knew--I landed in the arms of a priest.

"He was bald-headed, wore sandals, and carried a lantern.

"'What are you doing here?' he asked gruffly.

"I pulled out the two candles and held them up so he could see them.

"'I came to burn these before the Madonna--the door was open and I walked in.'

"He lifted the lantern and scanned my face.

"'You are the man who was here this morning. Did you get down on your knees as I told you?'

"'Yes, holy father.'

"'Get down again while I close the church. You can light your candles by the lantern,' and he laid it on the stone pavement beside me and moved off into the gloom.

"I did everything he bade me--never was there a more devout worshipper--handed him back his lantern, and made my way out.

"At the end of the town the ragged man thrust his head over a low wall.

He seemed greatly relieved, and picking up the bucket, we two started on a run for my lodgings. Before I went to bed that night he had mixed up the dry plaster in his bucket and taken the cast. He wanted to keep the matrix, but I wouldn't have it. I did not want his dirty fingers feeling around her lovely face, and so I paid him his blood money and pounded the mould out of shape. The next morning I left Ravenna for Paris.

"You see now, messieurs, what a disreputable person I am." Here he rose from his seat and walked back to the bas-relief. "And yet, most blessed of women"--and he raised his eyes as if in prayer--"I think I would do it all over again to have you where you could always listen to my sins."

VIII

CONTAINING SEVERAL EXPERIENCES AND ADVENTURES SHOWING THE WIDE CONTRASTS IN LIFE

How it began I do not remember, for nothing had led up to it except, perhaps, Le Blanc's arrival for dinner half an hour late, due, so he explained, to a break in the running gear of his machine, most of which time he had spent flat on his back in the cold mud, monkey-wrench in hand, instead of in one of our warm, comfortable chairs.

No sooner was he seated at my side and his story told than we fell naturally to discussing similar moments in life when such sudden contrasts often caused us to look upon ourselves as two distinct persons having nothing in common each with the other. Lemois, whose story of the stolen Madonna the previous night had made us eager for more, described, in defence of the newly launched theory, a visit to a Swiss chalet, and the sense of comfort he felt in the warmth and coseyness of it all, as he settled himself in bed, when just as he was dozing off a fire broke out and in less than five minutes he, with the whole family, was shivering in a snow-bank while the house burned to the ground.

"And a most uncomfortable and demoralizing change it was, messieurs--one minute in warm white sheets and the next in a blanket of cold snow. What has always remained in my mind was the rapidity with which I pa.s.sed from one personality to another."

Brierley, taking up the thread, described his own sensations when, during a visit to a friend's luxurious camp in the Adirondacks, he lost his way in the forest and for three days and nights kept himself alive on moose-buds and huckleberries.

"Poor grub when you have been living on porter-house steak and lobsters from Fulton Market and peaches from South Africa. Time, however, didn't appeal to me as it did to Lemois, but hunger did, and I have never looked a huckleberry in the face since without the same queer feeling around my waistband."

Appealed to by Herbert for some experiences of my own, I told how this same realization of intense and sudden contrasts always took possession of me, when, after having lived for a week on hardtack, boiled pork, and plum duff, begrimed with dust and cement, I would leave the inside of a coffer-dam and in a few hours find myself in the customary swallow-tail and white tie at a dinner of twelve, sitting among ladies in costly gowns and jewels.

"What, however, stuck out clearest in my mind," I continued, "was neither time nor what I had had to eat, but the enormous contrasts in the color scheme of my two experiences: at noon a gray sky and leaden sea, relieved by men in overalls, rusty derricks, and clouds of white steam rising from the concrete mixers; at night filmy gowns and bare shoulders rose pink in the softened light against a strong relief of the reds and greens of deep-toned tapestries and portraits in rich frames. I remember only the color."

At this Herbert lighted a fresh cigar and, with the flaming match still in hand, said quietly:

"While you men have been talking I have been going over some of my own experiences"--here he blew out the match--"and I have a great mind to tell you of one that I had years ago which made an indelible impression on me."

"Leave out your 'great mind,' Herbert," cried Louis--"we'll believe anything but that--and give us the story--that is, Le Blanc, if you will be so very good as to move your very handsome but slightly opaque head, so that I can watch the distinguished mud-dauber's face while he talks.

Fire away, Herbert!"

"I was a lad of twenty at the time," resumed Herbert, pausing for a moment until the unembarra.s.sed Le Blanc had pushed back his chair, "and for reasons which then seemed good to me ran away from home, and for two years served as common sailor aboard an English merchantman, bunking in the forecastle, eating hardtack, and doing work aloft like any of the others. I had the world before me, was strong and st.u.r.dily built, and, being a happy-hearted young fellow, was on good terms with every one of the crew except a dark, murderous-looking young Portuguese of about my own age, active as a cat, and continually quarrelling with every one.

When you get a low-down Portuguese with negro blood in his veins you have reached the bottom of cunning and cruelty. I've come across several of them since--some in dress suits--and know.

"For some reason this fellow hated me as only sailors who are forced to live together on long voyages know how to hate. My bunk was immediately over his, and when I slid out in the morning my feet had to dangle in front of his venomous face. When I crawled up at night the same thing happened. We worked side by side, got the same pay, and ate the same grub, yet I never was with him without feeling his animosity toward me.

"It was only by the merest accident that I found out why he hated me. He blurted it out in the forecastle one night after I had gone on deck, and the men told me when I dropped down the companion-way again. He hated me because I brushed my teeth! Oh!--you needn't laugh! Men have murdered each other for less. I once knew a man who picked a quarrel at the club with a diplomat because he dared to twist his mustache at the same angle as his own; and another--an Austrian colonel--who challenged a brother officer to a mortal duel for serving a certain Johannesburg when it was a well-known fact that he claimed to own every bottle of that year's vintage.

"I continued brushing my teeth, of course, and at the same time kept an eye on the Portuguese whose slurs and general ugliness at every turn became so marked that I was convinced he was only waiting for a chance to put a knife into me. The captain, who studied his crew, was of the same opinion and instructed the first mate to look after us both and prevent any quarrel reaching a crisis.

"One night, off Cape Horn, a gale came up, and half a dozen of us were ordered aloft to furl a topsail. That's no easy job for a greenhorn; sometimes it's a pretty tough job for an old hand. The yard is generally wet and slippery, the reefers stiff as marlin-spikes, and the sail hard as a board, particularly when the wind drives it against your face. But orders were orders and up I went. Then again, I had been a fairly good gymnast when I was at school, and could throw wheels on the horizontal bars with the best of them.

"The orders had come just as we were finishing supper. As usual the Portuguese had opened on me again; this time it was my table manners, my way of treating my plate after finishing meals being to leave some of the fragments still sticking to the bottom and edge, while he wiped his clean with a crust of bread as a compliment to the cook.

"The mate had heard the last of his outbreak, and in detailing the men sent me up the port ratlines and the Portuguese up the starboard. The sail was thrashing and flopping in the wind, the vessel rolling her rails under as the squall struck her. I was so occupied with tying the reefers over the canvas and holding on at the same time to the slippery yard, that I had not noticed the Portuguese, who, with every flop of the sail, was crawling nearer to where I clung.

"He was almost on top of me when I caught sight of him sliding along the foot-stay, his eyes boring into mine with a look that made me stop short and pull myself together. One hand was around the yard, the other clutched his sheath knife. Another lunge of the ship and he would let drive and over I'd go.

"For an instant I quavered before the fellow's hungry glare, his tiger eyes fixed on mine, the knife in his hand, the sail smothering me as it flapped in my face, while below were the black sea and half-lighted deck. Were he to strike, no trace would be left of me. I was a greenhorn, and it would be supposed I had missed my hold and fallen clear of the ship.

"Bracing myself, I twisted a reefer around my wrist for better hold, determined, if he moved an inch nearer, to kick him square in the face.

But at that instant a sea broke over the starboard bow, wrenching the ship fore and aft and jerking the yards as if they had been so many tent-poles. Then came a horrible shriek, and looking down I saw the Portuguese clutching wildly at the ratlines, clear the ship's side, and strike the water head-foremost. 'Man overboard!' I yelled at the top of my lungs, slid to the deck, and ran into the arms of the first mate, who had been watching us and who had seen the whole thing.

"Some of the crew made a spring for the davits, I among them. But the mate shook his head.