Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches

M >> Maurice Baring >> Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches


Gordon and Smith slept in two adjoining cubicles, and in a third
adjoining cubicle was an upper division boy called Worthing. That night,
after they had gone to bed, Gordon asked Worthing whether, among all the
guilty, one just man had not been found.

"Surely," he said, "Campbell minor, who put up the score during the
cricket match, was attentive right through the game, and wouldn't he be
allowed to go to the New Forest with the eleven?"

"No," said Worthing, "he whistled twice."

"Oh!" said Gordon, "I didn't know that. Of course, he can't go!"




THE SHADOW OF A MIDNIGHT A GHOST STORY

It was nine o'clock in the evening. Sasha, the maid, had brought in the
samovar and placed it at the head of the long table. Marie Nikolaevna,
our hostess, poured out the tea. Her husband was playing Vindt with his
daughter, the doctor, and his son-in-law in another corner of the room.
And Jameson, who had just finished his Russian lesson--he was working
for the Civil Service examination--was reading the last number of the
_Rouskoe Slovo_.

"Have you found anything interesting, Frantz Frantzovitch?" said Marie
Nikolaevna to Jameson, as she handed him a glass of tea.

"Yes, I have," answered the Englishman, looking up. His eyes had a
clear dreaminess about them, which generally belongs only to fanatics or
visionaries, and I had no reason to believe that Jameson, who seemed to
be common sense personified, was either one or the other. "At least," he
continued, "it interests me. And it's odd--very odd."

"What is it?" asked Marie Nikolaevna.

"Well, to tell you what it is would mean a long story which you wouldn't
believe," said Jameson; "only it's odd--very odd."

"Tell us the story," I said.

"As you won't believe a word of it," Jameson repeated, "it's not much
use my telling it."

We insisted on hearing the story, so Jameson lit a cigarette, and
began:--

"Two years ago," he said, "I was at Heidelberg, at the University, and I
made friends with a young fellow called Braun. His parents were German,
but he had lived five or six years in America, and he was practically an
American. I made his acquaintance by chance at a lecture, when I first
arrived, and he helped me in a number of ways. He was an energetic and
kind-hearted fellow, and we became great friends. He was a student, but
he did not belong to any _Korps_ or _Bursenschaft_, he was working hard
then. Afterwards he became an engineer. When the summer _Semester_ came
to an end, we both stayed on at Heidelberg. One day Braun suggested that
we should go for a walking tour and explore the country. I was only
too pleased, and we started. It was glorious weather, and we enjoyed
ourselves hugely. On the third night after we had started we arrived at
a village called Salzheim. It was a picturesque little place, and there
was a curious old church in it with some interesting tombs and relics of
the Thirty Years War. But the inn where we put up for the night was even
more picturesque than the church. It had been a convent for nuns, only
the greater part of it had been burnt, and only a quaint gabled house,
and a kind of tower covered with ivy, which I suppose had once been the
belfry, remained. We had an excellent supper and went to bed early. We
had been given two bedrooms, which were airy and clean, and altogether
we were satisfied. My bedroom opened into Braun's, which was beyond it,
and had no other door of its own. It was a hot night in July, and Braun
asked me to leave the door open. I did--we opened both the windows.
Braun went to bed and fell asleep almost directly, for very soon I heard
his snores.

"I had imagined that I was longing for sleep, but no sooner had I got
into bed than all my sleepiness left me. This was odd, because we had
walked a good many miles, and it had been a blazing hot day, and up till
then I had slept like a log the moment I got into bed. I lit a candle
and began reading a small volume of Heine I carried with me. I heard the
clock strike ten, and then eleven, and still I felt that sleep was out
of the question. I said to myself: 'I will read till twelve and then I
will stop.' My watch was on a chair by my bedside, and when the clock
struck eleven I noticed that it was five minutes slow, and set it right.
I could see the church tower from my window, and every time the clock
struck--and it struck the quarters--the noise boomed through the room.

"When the clock struck a quarter to twelve I yawned for the first time,
and I felt thankful that sleep seemed at last to be coming to me. I left
off reading, and taking my watch in my hand I waited for midnight to
strike. This quarter of an hour seemed an eternity. At last the hands
of my watch showed that it was one minute to twelve. I put out my candle
and began counting sixty, waiting for the clock to strike. I had counted
a hundred and sixty, and still the clock had not struck. I counted up to
four hundred; then I thought I must have made a mistake. I lit my candle
again, and looked at my watch: it was two minutes past twelve. And still
the clock had not struck!

"A curious uncomfortable feeling came over me, and I sat up in bed
with my watch in my hand and longed to call Braun, who was peacefully
snoring, but I did not like to. I sat like this till a quarter past
twelve; the clock struck the quarter as usual. I made up my mind that
the clock must have struck twelve, and that I must have slept for
a minute--at the same time I knew I had not slept--and I put out my
candle. I must have fallen asleep almost directly.

"The next thing I remember was waking with a start. It seemed to me that
some one had shut the door between my room and Braun's. I felt for
the matches. The match-box was empty. Up to that moment--I cannot tell
why--something--an unaccountable dread--had prevented me looking at the
door. I made an effort and looked. It was shut, and through the cracks
and through the keyhole I saw the glimmer of a light. Braun had lit his
candle. I called him, not very loudly: there was no answer. I called
again more loudly: there was still no answer.

"Then I got out of bed and walked to the door. As I went, it was gently
and slightly opened, just enough to show me a thin streak of light.
At that moment I felt that some one was looking at me. Then it was
instantly shut once more, as softly as it had been opened. There was not
a sound to be heard. I walked on tiptoe towards the door, but it seemed
to me that I had taken a hundred years to cross the room. And when
at last I reached the door I felt I could not open it. I was simply
paralysed with fear. And still I saw the glimmer through the key-hole
and the cracks.

"Suddenly, as I was standing transfixed with fright in front of the
door, I heard sounds coming from Braun's room, a shuffle of footsteps,
and voices talking low but distinctly in a language I could not
understand. It was not Italian, Spanish, nor French. The voices grew all
at once louder; I heard the noise of a struggle and a cry which ended
in a stifled groan, very painful and horrible to hear. Then, whether
I regained my self-control, or whether it was excess of fright which
prompted me, I don't know, but I flew to the door and tried to open it.
Some one or something was pressing with all its might against it. Then
I screamed at the top of my voice, and as I screamed I heard the cock
crow.

"The door gave, and I almost fell into Braun's room. It was quite dark.
But Braun was waked by my screams and quietly lit a match. He asked me
gently what on earth was the matter. The room was empty and everything
was in its place. Outside the first greyness of dawn was in the sky.

"I said I had had a nightmare, and asked him if he had not had one as
well; but Braun said he had never slept better in his life.

"The next day we went on with our walking tour, and when we got back to
Heidelberg Braun sailed for America. I never saw him again, although
we corresponded frequently, and only last week I had a letter from him,
dated Nijni Novgorod, saying he would be at Moscow before the end of the
month.

"And now I suppose you are all wondering what this can have to do with
anything that's in the newspaper. Well, listen," and he read out the
following paragraph from the _Rouskoe Slovo_:--

"Samara, II, ix. In the centre of the town, in the Hotel --,
a band of armed swindlers attacked a German engineer
named Braun and demanded money. On his refusal one of the
robbers stabbed Braun with a knife. The robbers, taking the
money which was on him, amounting to 500 roubles, got away.
Braun called for assistance, but died of his wounds in the
night. It appears that he had met the swindlers at a
restaurant."

"Since I have been in Russia," Jameson added, "I have often thought that
I knew what language it was that was talked behind the door that night
in the inn at Salzheim, but now I know it was Russian."




JEAN FRANCOIS

Jean Francois was a vagabond by nature, a balladmonger by profession.
Like many poets in many times, he found that the business of writing
verse was more amusing than lucrative; and he was constrained to
supplement the earnings of his pen and his guitar by other and more
profitable work. He had run away from what had been his home at the age
of seven (he was a foundling, and his adopted father was a shoe-maker),
without having learnt a trade. When the necessity arose he decided
to supplement the art of balladmongering by that of stealing. He was
skilful in both arts: he wrote verse, sang ballads, picked pockets (in
the city), and stole horses (in the country) with equal facility and
success. Some of his verse has reached posterity, for instance the
"Ballads du Paradis Peint," which he wrote on white vellum, and
illustrated himself with illuminations in red, blue and gold, for the
Dauphin. It ends thus in the English version of a Balliol scholar:--

Prince, do not let your nose, your Royal nose,
Your large Imperial nose get out of joint;
Forbear to criticise my perfect prose--
Painting on vellum is my weakest point.

Again, the _ballade_ of which the "Envoi" runs:--

Prince, when you light your pipe with radium spills,
Especially invented for the King--
Remember this, the worst of human ills:
Life without matches is a dismal thing,

is, in reality, only a feeble adaptation of his "Priez pour feu le vrai
tresor de vie."

But although Jean Francois was not unknown during his lifetime, and
although, as his verse testifies, he knew his name would live among
those of the enduring poets after his death, his life was one of rough
hardship, brief pleasures, long anxieties, and constant uncertainty.
Sometimes for a few days at a time he would live in riotous luxury,
but these rare epochs would immediately be succeeded by periods of want
bordering on starvation. Besides which he was nearly always in peril
of his life; the shadow of the gallows darkened his merriment, and the
thought of the wheel made bitter his joy. Yet in spite of this hazardous
and harassing life, in spite of the sharp and sudden transitions in his
career, in spite of the menace of doom, the hint of the wheel and the
gallows, his fund of joy remained undiminished, and this we see in
his verse, which reflects with equal vividness his alternate moods of
infinite enjoyment and unmitigated despair. For instance, the only two
triolets which have survived from his "Trente deux Triolets joyeux and
tristes" are an example of his twofold temperament. They run thus in the
literal and exact translations of them made by an eminent official:--

I wish I was dead,
And lay deep in the grave.
I've a pain in my head,
I wish I was dead.
In a coffin of lead--
With the Wise and the Brave--
I wish I was dead,
And lay deep in the grave.

This passionate utterance immediately preceded, in the original text,
the following verses in which his buoyant spirits rise once more to the
surface:--

Thank God I'm alive
In the light of the Sun!
It's a quarter to five;
Thank God I'm alive!
Now the hum of the hive
Of the world has begun,
Thank God I'm alive
In the light of the Sun!

A more plaintive, in fact a positively wistful note, which is almost
incongruous amongst the definite and sharply defined moods of Jean
Francois, is struck in the sonnet of which only the first line has
reached us: "I wish I had a hundred thousand pounds." ("Voulentiers
serais pauvre avec dix mille escus.") But in nearly all his verse,
whether joyous as in the "Chant de vin et vie," or gloomy as in the
"Ballade des Treize Pendus," there is a curious recurrent aspiration
towards a warm fire, a sure and plentiful supper, a clean bed, and a
long, long sleep. Whether Jean Francois moped or made merry, and in
spite of the fact that he enjoyed his roving career and would not have
exchanged it for the throne of an Emperor or the money-bags of Croesus,
there is no doubt that he experienced the burden of an immense fatigue.
He was never quite warm enough; always a little hungry; and never got
as much sleep as he desired. A place where he could sleep his fill
represented the highest joys of Heaven to him; and he looked forward
to Death as a traveller looks forward to a warm inn where (its terrible
threshold once passed), a man can sleep the clock round. Witness the
sonnet which ends (the translation is mine):--

For thou has never turned
A stranger from thy gates or hast denied,
O hospitable Death, a place to rest.

And it is of his death and not of his life or works which I wish to
tell, for it was singular. He died on Christmas Eve, 1432. The winter
that year in the north of France was, as is well known, terrible for its
severe cold. The rich stayed at home, the poor died, and the unfortunate
third estate of gipsies, balladmongers, tinkers, tumblers, and thieves
had no chance of displaying their dexterity. In fact, they starved. Ever
since the 1st of December Jean Francois had been unable to make a silver
penny either by his song or his sleight of hand. Christmas was drawing
near, and he was starving; and this was especially bitter to him, as it
was his custom (for he was not only a lover of good cheer, but a good
Catholic and a strict observer of fasts and feasts) to keep the great
day of Christendom fittingly. This year he had nothing to keep it with.
Luck seemed to be against him; for three days before Christmas he met in
a dark side street of the town the rich and stingy Sieur de Ranquet. He
picked the pocket of that nobleman, but owing to the extreme cold his
fingers faltered, and he was discovered. He ran like a hare and managed
easily enough to outstrip the miser, and to conceal himself in a den
where he was well known. But unfortunately the matter did not end there.
The Sieur de Ranquet was influential at Court; he was implacable as well
as avaricious, and his disposition positively forbade him to forgive any
one who had nearly picked his pocket. Besides which he knew that
Jean had often stolen his horses. He made a formal complaint at high
quarters, and a warrant was issued against Jean, offering a large sum in
silver coin to the man who should bring him, alive or dead, to justice.

Now the police were keenly anxious to make an end of Jean. They knew
he was guilty of a hundred thefts, but such was his skill that they had
never been able to convict him; he had often been put in prison, but he
had always been released for want of evidence. This time no mistake was
possible. So Jean, aware of the danger, fled from the city and sought a
gipsy encampment in a neighbouring forest, where he had friends. These
gipsy friends of his were robbers, outlaws, murderers and horse-stealers
all of them, and hardened criminals; they called themselves gipsies, but
it was merely a courtesy title.

On Christmas Eve--it was snowing hard--Jean was walking through the
forest towards the town, ready for a desperate venture, for in the
camp they were starving, and he was sick almost to death of his hunted,
miserable life. As he plunged through the snow he heard a moan, and he
saw a child sitting at the roots of a tall tree crying. He asked
what was the matter. The child--it was a little boy about five years
old--said that it had run away from home because its nurse had beaten
it, and had lost its way.

"Where do you live?" asked Jean.

"My father is the Sieur de Ranquet," said the child.

At that moment Jean heard the shouts of his companions in the distance.

"I want to go home," said the little boy quietly. "You must take me
home," and he put his hand into Jean's hand and looked up at him and
smiled.

Jean thought for a moment. The boy was richly dressed; he had a large
ruby cross hanging from a golden collar worth many hundred gold pieces.
Jean knew well what would happen if his gipsy companions came across the
child. They would kill it instantly.

"All right," said Jean, "climb on my back."

The little boy climbed on to his back, and Jean trudged through the
snow. In an hour's time they reached the Sieur de Ranquet's castle; the
place was alive with bustling men and flaring torches, for the Sieur's
heir had been missed.

The Sieur looked at Jean and recognised him immediately. Jean was a
public character, and especially well known to the Sieur de Ranquet.
A few words were whispered. The child was sent to bed, and the archers
civilly lead Jean to his dungeon. Jean was tired and sleepy. He fell
asleep at once on the straw. They told him he would have to get up early
the next morning, in time for a long, cold journey. The gallows, they
added, would be ready.

But in the night Jean dreamed a dream: he saw a child in glittering
clothes and with a shining face who came into the dungeon and broke the
bars.

The child said: "I am little St. Nicholas, the children's friend, and I
think you are tired, so I'm going to take you to a quiet place."

Jean followed the child, who led him by the hand till they came to a
nice inn, very high up on the top of huge mountains. There was a blazing
log fire in the room, a clean warm bed, and the windows opened on a
range of snowy mountains, bright as diamonds. And the stars twinkled in
the sky like the candles of a Christmas tree.

"You can go to bed here," said St. Nicholas, "nobody will disturb you,
and when you do wake you will be quite happy and rested. Good-night,
Jean." And he went away.

* * * * *

The next day in the dawn, when the archers came to fetch Jean, they
found he was fast asleep. They thought it was almost a pity to wake him,
because he looked so happy and contented in his sleep; but when they
tried they found it was impossible.




THE FLUTE OF CHANG LIANG

To P. Kershaw

The village was called Moe-tung. It was on the edge of the big main road
which leads from Liao-yang to Ta-shi-chiao. It consisted of a few baked
mud-houses, a dilapidated temple, a wall, a clump of willows, and a
pond. One of the houses I knew well; in its square open yard, in which
the rude furniture of toil lay strewn about, I had halted more than once
for my midday meal, when riding from Liao-yang to the South. I had been
entertained there by the owner of the house, a brawny husbandman and his
fat brown children, and they had given me eggs and Indian corn. Now it
was empty; the house was deserted; the owner, his wife and his children,
had all gone, to the city probably, to seek shelter. We occupied the
house; and the Cossacks at once made a fire with the front door and any
fragments of wood they could find. The house was converted into a stable
and a kitchen, and the officers' quarters were established in another
smaller building across the road, on the edge of a great plain, which
was bright green with the standing giant millet.

This smaller cottage had an uncultivated garden in front of it, and
a kind of natural summer-house made by the twining of a pumpkin plant
which spread its broad leaves over some stakes. We lay down to rest
in this garden. About five miles to the north of us was the town of
Liao-yang; to the east in the distance was a range of pale blue hills,
and immediately in front of us to the south, and scarcely a mile off,
was the big hill of Sho-shantze. It was five o'clock in the afternoon,
and we had been on the move since two o'clock in the morning. The
Cossacks brought us tea and pancakes, and presently news came from the
town that the big battle would be fought the next day: the big battle;
the real battle, which had been expected for so long and which had
been constantly put off. There was a complete stillness everywhere. The
officers unpacked their valises and their camp-beds. Every one arranged
his bed and his goods in his chosen place, and it seemed as if we had
merely begun once more to settle down for a further period of siesta in
the long picnic which had been going on for the last two months. Nobody
was convinced in spite of the authentic news which we had received, that
the Japanese would attack the next day.

The sunset faded into a twilight of delicious summer calm.

From the hills in the east came the noise of a few shots fired by
the batteries there, and a captive balloon soared slowly, like a
soap-bubble, into the eastern sky. I walked into the village; here
and there fires were burning, and I was attracted by the sight of the
deserted temple in which the wooden painted gods were grinning, bereft
of their priest and of their accustomed dues. I sat down on the mossy
steps of the little wooden temple, and somewhere, either from one of the
knolls hard by or from one of the houses, came the sound of a flute, or
rather of some primitive wooden pipe, which repeated over and over again
a monotonous and piercingly sad little tune. I wondered whether it was
one of the soldiers playing, but I decided this could not be the case,
as the tune was more eastern than any Russian tune. On the other hand,
it seemed strange that any Chinaman should be about. The tune continued
to break the perfect stillness with its iterated sadness, and a vague
recollection came into my mind of a Chinese legend or poem I had read
long ago in London, about a flute-player called Chang Liang. But I could
not bring my memory to work; its tired wheels all seemed to be buzzing
feebly in different directions, and my thoughts came like thistledown
and seemed to elude all efforts of concentration. And so I capitulated
utterly to my drowsiness, and fell asleep as I sat on the steps of the
temple.

I thought I had been sleeping for a long time and had woken before the
dawn: the earth was misty, although the moon was shining; and I was no
longer in the temple, but back once more at the edge of the plain. "They
must have fetched me back while I slept," I thought to myself. But when
I looked round I saw no trace of the officers, nor of the Cossacks, nor
of the small house and the garden, and, stranger still, the millet had
been reaped and the plain was covered with low stubble, and on it
were pitched some curiously-shaped tents, which I saw were guarded by
soldiers. But these soldiers were Chinamen, and yet unlike any Chinamen
I had ever seen; for some of them carried halberds, the double-armed
halberds of the period of Charles I., and others, halberds with a
crescent on one side, like those which were used in the days of Henry
VII. And I then noticed that a whole multitude of soldiers were lying
asleep on the ground, armed with two-edged swords and bows and arrows.
And their clothes seemed unfamiliar and brighter than the clothes which
Chinese soldiers wear nowadays.

As I wondered what all this meant, a note of music came stealing through
the night, and at first it seemed to be the same tune as I heard in the
temple before I dropped off to sleep; but presently I was sure that this
was a mistake, for the sound was richer and more mellow, and like that
of a bell, only of an enchanted bell, such as that which is fabled to
sound beneath the ocean. And the music seemed to rise and fall, to grow
clear and full, and just as it was floating nearer and nearer, it died
away in a sigh: but as it did so the distant hills seemed to catch it
and to send it back in the company of a thousand echoes, till the whole
night was filled and trembling with an unearthly chorus. The sleeping
soldiers gradually stirred and sat listening spellbound to the music.
And in the eyes of the sentries, who were standing as motionless as
bronze statues in front of the tents, I could see the tears glistening.
And the whole of the sleeping army awoke from its slumber and listened
to the strange sound. From the tents came men in glittering silks (the
Generals, I supposed) and listened also. The soldiers looked at each
other and said no word. And then all at once, as though obeying some
silent word of command given by some unseen captain, one by one they
walked away over the plain, leaving their tents behind them. They all
marched off into the east, as if they were following the music into
the heart of the hills, and soon, of all that great army which had been
gathered together on the plain, not one man was left. Then the music
changed and seemed to grow different and more familiar, and with a
start I became aware that I had been asleep and dreaming, and that I was
sitting on the temple steps once more in the twilight, and that not far
off, round a fire, some soldiers were singing. It was a dream, and my
sleep could not have been a long one, for it was still twilight and the
darkness had not yet come.