Seven Gothic Tales (11 page)

Miss Malin did not move, but her white face changed a little.

“The blood of Cardinal Hamilcar?” she asked in a slightly less steady voice. “Yes,” he said, “the blood of that noble old man. On my head. And on my hands as well. For I struck him on the head with a beam which had fallen down, before the boat arrived to rescue us early this morning.”

For quite two or three minutes there was a deep silence in the hayloft. Only the dog stirred, whining a little in its sleep as it poked its head further into the clothes of the young girl. The bandaged man and the old woman did not let go the hold of each other’s eyes. He slowly finished taking off the long, red-stained linen strips, and laid them down. Freed of these, he had a broad, red, puffed face, and dark hair.

“God rest the soul of that noble man,” said Miss Malin at last. “And who are you?”

The man’s face changed a little at her words. “Is that what you ask me?” he said. “Is it of me that you are thinking, and not of him?”

“Oh, we need not think of him, you and I,” she said. “Who are you?”

“My name,” said the man, “is Kasparson. I am the Cardinal’s valet.”

“You must tell me more,” said Miss Malin with firmness. “I still want to know with whom I have passed the night.”

“I will tell you much more, if it amuses you,” Kaparson said, “for I have been to many continents, and I myself like to dwell in the past.

“I am an actor, Madame, as you are a Nat-og-Dag; that is, we remain so whatever else we take on, and fall back upon this one thing when the others fail us.

“But when I was a child I danced in ballet, and when I was thirteen years old I was taken up—because of being so extraordinarily graceful, and particularly because I had to an unusual extent what in the technique of the ballet is termed
ballon
, which means the capacity for soaring, for rising above the ground and the laws of gravitation—by the great elderly noblemen of Berlin. My stepfather, the famous tenor, Herr Eunicke, introduced me to them, and believed that I was to be a gold mine to him. For five years I have known what it is to be a lovely woman, fed upon dainties, dressed in silks and a golden turban, whose caprices are law to everyone. But Herr Eunicke, like all tenors, forgot to reckon with the laws of passing time. Age stole upon us before we dreamed of it, and my career as a courtesan was a short one.

“Then I went to Spain, and became a barber. I was a barber in Seville for seven years, and I liked that, for I have always had a partiality toward soap and toilet waters, and have liked all sorts of clean and neat things. For this reason it often surprised me in the Cardinal that he did not object to dirtying his hands with his black and red inks. I became, Madame, a very good barber indeed.

“But I have also been a printer of revolutionary papers in Paris, a dog-seller in London, a slavetrader in Algiers, and the lover of a dowager principezza of Pisa. Through her I came to travel with Professor Rosellini, and the great French orientalist Champollion, upon their Egyptian expedition. I have been to Egypt, Madame. I have stood in the great triangular shadow of the great pyramid,
and from the top of it four thousand years gazed down upon me.”

Miss Malin, outshone as a world traveler by the valet, quickly took refuge in the wide world of her imagination. “Ah,” she said, “in Egypt, in the great triangular shadow of the great pyramid, while the ass was grazing, St. Joseph said to the Virgin: ‘Oh, my sweet young dear, could you not just for a moment shut your eyes and make believe that I am the Holy Ghost?’ ”

Kasparson went on with his account. “I have even lived in Copenhagen,” he said, “but toward the end I had but a poor time of it. I became a hostler in the night-lodgings of the fat old man called Bolle Bandeat—which means, with your permission, the cursed, or damned—where, for the fee of a penny, you could sleep on the floor, and for a halfpenny standing up, with a rope under your arms. When at last I had to flee from the hands of the law there, I changed my name to that of Kasparson, in remembrance of that proud and unfortunate boy of Nurnberg who stabbed himself to death in order to make Lord Stanhope believe that he was the illegitimate son of Grand Duchess Stephanie of Baden.

“But if it be about my family that you want to hear, I have the honor to inform you that I am a bastard of the purest bastard blood extant. My mother was a true daughter of the people, an honest artisan’s child, that lovely actress Johanna Handel-Schutz, who made all the classic ideals live upon the stage. She had a melancholy disposition nevertheless. Of my sixteen brothers and sisters, five have committed suicide. But if I tell you who was my father, that will be sure to interest you. When Johanna came to Paris, sixteen years old, to study art, she found favor in the eyes of a great lord.

“I am the son of that Duke of Orléans—who shortly after took up with the people in still another way—who insisted on being addressed as a
citoyen
, voted for the death of the King of France, and changed his name to that of Egalité. The bastard of Egalité! Can one be more bastard than that, Madame?”

“No,” said the old woman, with white and stiff lips, unable to give a word of comfort to the pale man before her.

“That poor King Louis Philippe,” said Kasparson, “for whom I feel sorry, and about whom I regret having spoken so harshly tonight—he is my little brother.”

Miss Malin, even face to face with the greatest misfortunes, was never speechless for long. She said after a silence:

“Tell me now, for we may not have much time, first, why did
you
murder the Cardinal? And secondly, why did you take the trouble to deceive me, after you came here with me, and to make a fool of me on what may be the last night of my life? You were in no danger here. Did you think that I had not sufficient spirit myself, or sympathy with the dark places of the heart, to understand you?”

“Ah,” said Kasparson, “why did I not tell you? That moment, in which I killed the Cardinal, that was the mating of my soul with destiny, with eternity, with the soul of God. Do we not still impose silence at the threshold of the nuptial chamber? Or even, does the Emperor demand publicity, may not Pythagoras have a taste for decorum?

“And why did I kill my master?” he went on. “Madame, there was little hope that both of us could be saved, and he would have sacrificed his life for mine. Should I have lived on as the servant for whom the lord had died, or should I have been simply drowned and lost, a sad adventurer?

“I told you: I am an actor. Shall not an actor have a rôle? If all the time the manager of the theater holds back the good rôles from us, may we not insist upon understudying the stars? The proof of our undertaking is in the success or fiasco. I have played the part well. The Cardinal would have applauded me, for he was a fine connoisseur of the art. Sir Walter Scott, Madame, took much pleasure in Wilibald Alexis’s novel,
Walladmor
, which he published in his name, and which he called the most delightful mystery of the century. The Cardinal would have recognized himself
in me. Quoting the great tragedy,
Axel and Walborg
, he said, slowly:

“The only thing,” he went on after a pause, “which he might have criticized is this: he might have held that I overdid my rôle. I stayed in this hayloft to save the lives of those sottish peasants, who preferred the salvation of their cattle to their own. It is doubtful whether the Cardinal would ever have done that, for he was a man of excellent sense. That may be so. But a little charlatanry there must needs be in all great art, and the Cardinal himself was not free from it.

“But in any case,” he concluded, lifting his voice and his body, “at the day of judgment God shall not say to me now: ‘Kasparson, you bad actor! How was it that you could not, not even with death in your own heart, play me the dying Gaul?’ ”

Again Miss Malin sat for a long time in the deep silence of the huge dark room.

“And why,” she said at last, “did you want this rôle so much?”

“I will confide in you,” said Kasparson, speaking slowly. “Not by the face shall the man be known, but by the mask. I said so at the beginning of the night.

“I am a bastard. I have upon me the bastard’s curse, of which you know not. The blood of Egalité is an arrogant blood, full of vanity—difficult, difficult for you, when you have it in your veins. It claimed splendor, Madame; it will stand no equivalence; it makes you suffer greatly at the least slight.

“But these peasants and fishermen are my mother’s people. Do you not think that I have wept blood over the hardness of their lives and their pale children? At the thought of their hard crusts and thin-worn breadknives, their patched clothes and patient faces,
my heart is wrung. Nothing in the world have I ever loved, except them. If they would have made me their master I would have served them all my life. If they would only have fallen down and worshiped me, I would have died for them. But they would not. That they reserved for the Cardinal. Only tonight have they come around. They have seen the face of God in my face. They will tell you, after tonight, that there was a white light over the boat in which I went out with them. Yes, even so, Madame.

“Do you know,” he said, “do you know why I look to, why I cleave to, God? Why I cannot do without him? Because he is the only being toward whom I need not, I cannot, I must not, feel pity. Looking at all the other creatures of this life I am tortured, I am devoured by pity, and I am bent and crushed under the weight of their sorrows. I was sorry for the Cardinal, very sorry for that old man who had to be great and good, and who wrote a book on the Holy Ghost like a little spider hanging in the great space. But in the relation of God and me, if there is any pitying to be done, it is for him to do it. He will be sorry for me.

“Why, Madame, so it should have been with our kings. But, God help me, I feel sorry for my brother the King of France. My heart aches a little for the little man.

“Only God I shall keep, to have no mercy upon him. Let me, at least, keep God, you tender-hearted humans.”

“But in that case,” said Miss Malin suddenly, “it cannot possibly mean much to you whether we are saved or not. Forgive me for saying so, Kasparson, but it will not make much difference to your fate if this house holds on until the boat comes back for us, or not.”

Kasparson, at these words, laughed a little, softly and congenially. It was clear by now that he was under the influence of the peasants’ keg of gin, but in this matter Miss Malin was not far behind him.

“You are right, Miss Nat-og-Dag,” he said, “your sharp wits have hit the nail on the head. And so much for my fine courage. But
have patience just a little longer, and I will explain the case to you.

“Few people, I said, could say of themselves that they were free of the belief that they could have made the world. Nay, go further, Madame: few people can say of themselves that they are free of the belief that this world which they see around them is in reality the work of their own imagination. Are we pleased with it, proud of it, then? Yes, at times. In the evenings, in early spring, in the company of children and of beautiful, witty women, I have been pleased with and proud of my creation. At other times, when I have been with ordinary people, I have had a very bad conscience over my producing of such vulgar, insipid, dull stuff. I may have tried to do away with them, as the monk, in his cell, tries to drive out the degrading pictures which disturb his peace of mind and his pride in being a servant of the Lord. Now, Madame, I am pleased to have made this night here. I am genuinely proud of having made you, I assure you. But what about this one figure within the picture, this man Kasparson? Is he a success? Is he worth keeping? May he not be pronounced a blot in the picture? The monk may go to the extent of flagellating himself to drive out the image which offends him. My five brothers and sisters, who, of my mother’s sixteen children, have committed suicide, may have felt in this way, for, as I have already said, my mother had a deep feeling and instinct for the classics, for the harmonious cosmos. They may have said: This work is in itself rather brilliant. My only failure is this one figure within it, which I will now have removed, even at a cost.”

“Well,” said Miss Malin after a pause, “and did you enjoy playing the rôle of the Cardinal when you had your chance at last? Did you have a pleasant time?”

“As God liveth, Madame, I had that,” said Kasparson, “a good night and day. For I have lived long enough, by now, to have learned, when the devil grins at me, to grin back. And what now if this—to grin back when the devil grins at you—be in reality the
highest, the only true fun in all the world? And what if everything else, which people have named fun, be only a presentiment, a foreshadowing, of it? It is an art worth learning, then.”

“And I too, I too,” said Miss Malin in a voice which, although it was subdued, was rich and shrill, and which seemed to rise in the flight of a lark. As if she wanted to accompany in person the soaring course of it, she rose straight up, with the lightness and dignity of a lady who has had, by now, enough of a pleasant entertainment, and is taking her leave. “I have grinned back at him too. It is an art worth learning.”

The actor had risen with her, her
cavalière servante
, and now stood up. She looked at him with radiant eyes.

“Kasparson, you great actor,” she said, “Bastard of Egalité, kiss me.”

“Ah, no, Madame,” said Kasparson, “I am ill; there is poison in my mouth.”

Miss Malin laughed. “A fig for that tonight,” she said. She looked, indeed, past any sort of poison. She had on her shoulders that death’s-head by which druggists label their poison bottles, an unengaging object for any man to kiss. But looking straight at the man before her, she said slowly and with much grace:
“Fils de St. Louis, montez au ciel!
”

The actor took her in his arms, held her even in a strong embrace, and kissed her. So the proud old maid did not go unkissed into her grave.