Tales and Fantasies

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But Macfarlane silenced him roughly, bidding him turn to
business. When they had got the body upstairs and laid it on
the table, Macfarlane made at first as if he were going away.
Then he paused and seemed to hesitate; and then, 'You had
better look at the face,' said he, in tones of some
constraint. 'You had better,' he repeated, as Fettes only
stared at him in wonder.

'But where, and how, and when did you come by it?' cried the
other.

'Look at the face,' was the only answer.

Fettes was staggered; strange doubts assailed him. He looked
from the young doctor to the body, and then back again. At
last, with a start, he did as he was bidden. He had almost
expected the sight that met his eyes, and yet the shock was
cruel. To see, fixed in the rigidity of death and naked on
that coarse layer of sackcloth, the man whom he had left well
clad and full of meat and sin upon the threshold of a tavern,
awoke, even in the thoughtless Fettes, some of the terrors of
the conscience. It was a CRAS TIBI which re-echoed in his
soul, that two whom he had known should have come to lie upon
these icy tables. Yet these were only secondary thoughts.
His first concern regarded Wolfe. Unprepared for a challenge
so momentous, he knew not how to look his comrade in the
face. He durst not meet his eye, and he had neither words
nor voice at his command.

It was Macfarlane himself who made the first advance. He
came up quietly behind and laid his hand gently but firmly on
the other's shoulder.

'Richardson,' said he, 'may have the head.'

Now Richardson was a student who had long been anxious for
that portion of the human subject to dissect. There was no
answer, and the murderer resumed: 'Talking of business, you
must pay me; your accounts, you see, must tally.'

Fettes found a voice, the ghost of his own: 'Pay you!' he
cried. 'Pay you for that?'

'Why, yes, of course you must. By all means and on every
possible account, you must,' returned the other. 'I dare not
give it for nothing, you dare not take it for nothing; it
would compromise us both. This is another case like Jane
Galbraith's. The more things are wrong the more we must act
as if all were right. Where does old K- keep his money?'

'There,' answered Fettes hoarsely, pointing to a cupboard in
the corner.

'Give me the key, then,' said the other, calmly, holding out
his hand.

There was an instant's hesitation, and the die was cast.
Macfarlane could not suppress a nervous twitch, the
infinitesimal mark of an immense relief, as he felt the key
between his fingers. He opened the cupboard, brought out pen
and ink and a paper-book that stood in one compartment, and
separated from the funds in a drawer a sum suitable to the
occasion.

'Now, look here,' he said, 'there is the payment made - first
proof of your good faith: first step to your security. You
have now to clinch it by a second. Enter the payment in your
book, and then you for your part may defy the devil.'

The next few seconds were for Fettes an agony of thought; but
in balancing his terrors it was the most immediate that
triumphed. Any future difficulty seemed almost welcome if he
could avoid a present quarrel with Macfarlane. He set down
the candle which he had been carrying all this time, and with
a steady hand entered the date, the nature, and the amount of
the transaction.

'And now,' said Macfarlane, 'it's only fair that you should
pocket the lucre. I've had my share already. By the bye,
when a man of the world falls into a bit of luck, has a few
shillings extra in his pocket - I'm ashamed to speak of it,
but there's a rule of conduct in the case. No treating, no
purchase of expensive class-books, no squaring of old debts;
borrow, don't lend.'

'Macfarlane,' began Fettes, still somewhat hoarsely, 'I have
put my neck in a halter to oblige you.'

'To oblige me?' cried Wolfe. 'Oh, come! You did, as near as
I can see the matter, what you downright had to do in self-
defence. Suppose I got into trouble, where would you be?
This second little matter flows clearly from the first. Mr.
Gray is the continuation of Miss Galbraith. You can't begin
and then stop. If you begin, you must keep on beginning;
that's the truth. No rest for the wicked.'

A horrible sense of blackness and the treachery of fate
seized hold upon the soul of the unhappy student.

'My God!' he cried, 'but what have I done? and when did I
begin? To be made a class assistant - in the name of reason,
where's the harm in that? Service wanted the position;
Service might have got it. Would HE have been where I am
now?'

'My dear fellow,' said Macfarlane, 'what a boy you are! What
harm HAS come to you? What harm CAN come to you if you hold
your tongue? Why, man, do you know what this life is? There
are two squads of us - the lions and the lambs. If you're a
lamb, you'll come to lie upon these tables like Gray or Jane
Galbraith; if you're a lion, you'll live and drive a horse
like me, like K-, like all the world with any wit or courage.
You're staggered at the first. But look at K-! My dear
fellow, you're clever, you have pluck. I like you, and K-
likes you. You were born to lead the hunt; and I tell you,
on my honour and my experience of life, three days from now
you'll laugh at all these scarecrows like a High School boy
at a farce.'

And with that Macfarlane took his departure and drove off up
the wynd in his gig to get under cover before daylight.
Fettes was thus left alone with his regrets. He saw the
miserable peril in which he stood involved. He saw, with
inexpressible dismay, that there was no limit to his
weakness, and that, from concession to concession, he had
fallen from the arbiter of Macfarlane's destiny to his paid
and helpless accomplice. He would have given the world to
have been a little braver at the time, but it did not occur
to him that he might still be brave. The secret of Jane
Galbraith and the cursed entry in the day-book closed his
mouth.

Hours passed; the class began to arrive; the members of the
unhappy Gray were dealt out to one and to another, and
received without remark. Richardson was made happy with the
head; and before the hour of freedom rang Fettes trembled
with exultation to perceive how far they had already gone
toward safety.

For two days he continued to watch, with increasing joy, the
dreadful process of disguise.

On the third day Macfarlane made his appearance. He had been
ill, he said; but he made up for lost time by the energy with
which he directed the students. To Richardson in particular
he extended the most valuable assistance and advice, and that
student, encouraged by the praise of the demonstrator, burned
high with ambitious hopes, and saw the medal already in his
grasp.

Before the week was out Macfarlane's prophecy had been
fulfilled. Fettes had outlived his terrors and had forgotten
his baseness. He began to plume himself upon his courage,
and had so arranged the story in his mind that he could look
back on these events with an unhealthy pride. Of his
accomplice he saw but little. They met, of course, in the
business of the class; they received their orders together
from Mr. K-. At times they had a word or two in private, and
Macfarlane was from first to last particularly kind and
jovial. But it was plain that he avoided any reference to
their common secret; and even when Fettes whispered to him
that he had cast in his lot with the lions and foresworn the
lambs, he only signed to him smilingly to hold his peace.

At length an occasion arose which threw the pair once more
into a closer union. Mr. K- was again short of subjects;
pupils were eager, and it was a part of this teacher's
pretensions to be always well supplied. At the same time
there came the news of a burial in the rustic graveyard of
Glencorse. Time has little changed the place in question.
It stood then, as now, upon a cross road, out of call of
human habitations, and buried fathom deep in the foliage of
six cedar trees. The cries of the sheep upon the
neighbouring hills, the streamlets upon either hand, one
loudly singing among pebbles, the other dripping furtively
from pond to pond, the stir of the wind in mountainous old
flowering chestnuts, and once in seven days the voice of the
bell and the old tunes of the precentor, were the only sounds
that disturbed the silence around the rural church. The
Resurrection Man - to use a byname of the period - was not to
be deterred by any of the sanctities of customary piety. It
was part of his trade to despise and desecrate the scrolls
and trumpets of old tombs, the paths worn by the feet of
worshippers and mourners, and the offerings and the
inscriptions of bereaved affection. To rustic
neighbourhoods, where love is more than commonly tenacious,
and where some bonds of blood or fellowship unite the entire
society of a parish, the body-snatcher, far from being
repelled by natural respect, was attracted by the ease and
safety of the task. To bodies that had been laid in earth,
in joyful expectation of a far different awakening, there
came that hasty, lamp-lit, terror-haunted resurrection of the
spade and mattock. The coffin was forced, the cerements
torn, and the melancholy relics, clad in sackcloth, after
being rattled for hours on moonless byways, were at length
exposed to uttermost indignities before a class of gaping
boys.

Somewhat as two vultures may swoop upon a dying lamb, Fettes
and Macfarlane were to be let loose upon a grave in that
green and quiet resting-place. The wife of a farmer, a woman
who had lived for sixty years, and been known for nothing but
good butter and a godly conversation, was to be rooted from
her grave at midnight and carried, dead and naked, to that
far-away city that she had always honoured with her Sunday's
best; the place beside her family was to be empty till the
crack of doom; her innocent and almost venerable members to
be exposed to that last curiosity of the anatomist.

Late one afternoon the pair set forth, well wrapped in cloaks
and furnished with a formidable bottle. It rained without
remission - a cold, dense, lashing rain. Now and again there
blew a puff of wind, but these sheets of falling water kept
it down. Bottle and all, it was a sad and silent drive as
far as Penicuik, where they were to spend the evening. They
stopped once, to hide their implements in a thick bush not
far from the churchyard, and once again at the Fisher's
Tryst, to have a toast before the kitchen fire and vary their
nips of whisky with a glass of ale. When they reached their
journey's end the gig was housed, the horse was fed and
comforted, and the two young doctors in a private room sat
down to the best dinner and the best wine the house afforded.
The lights, the fire, the beating rain upon the window, the
cold, incongruous work that lay before them, added zest to
their enjoyment of the meal. With every glass their
cordiality increased. Soon Macfarlane handed a little pile
of gold to his companion.

'A compliment,' he said. 'Between friends these little d-d
accommodations ought to fly like pipe-lights.'

Fettes pocketed the money, and applauded the sentiment to the
echo. 'You are a philosopher,' he cried. 'I was an ass till
I knew you. You and K- between you, by the Lord Harry! but
you'll make a man of me.'

'Of course we shall,' applauded Macfarlane. 'A man? I tell
you, it required a man to back me up the other morning.
There are some big, brawling, forty-year-old cowards who
would have turned sick at the look of the d-d thing; but not
you - you kept your head. I watched you.'

'Well, and why not?' Fettes thus vaunted himself. 'It was no
affair of mine. There was nothing to gain on the one side
but disturbance, and on the other I could count on your
gratitude, don't you see?' And he slapped his pocket till
the gold pieces rang.

Macfarlane somehow felt a certain touch of alarm at these
unpleasant words. He may have regretted that he had taught
his young companion so successfully, but he had no time to
interfere, for the other noisily continued in this boastful
strain:-

'The great thing is not to be afraid. Now, between you and
me, I don't want to hang - that's practical; but for all
cant, Macfarlane, I was born with a contempt. Hell, God,
Devil, right, wrong, sin, crime, and all the old gallery of
curiosities - they may frighten boys, but men of the world,
like you and me, despise them. Here's to the memory of
Gray!'

It was by this time growing somewhat late. The gig,
according to order, was brought round to the door with both
lamps brightly shining, and the young men had to pay their
bill and take the road. They announced that they were bound
for Peebles, and drove in that direction till they were clear
of the last houses of the town; then, extinguishing the
lamps, returned upon their course, and followed a by-road
toward Glencorse. There was no sound but that of their own
passage, and the incessant, strident pouring of the rain. It
was pitch dark; here and there a white gate or a white stone
in the wall guided them for a short space across the night;
but for the most part it was at a foot pace, and almost
groping, that they picked their way through that resonant
blackness to their solemn and isolated destination. In the
sunken woods that traverse the neighbourhood of the burying-
ground the last glimmer failed them, and it became necessary
to kindle a match and re-illumine one of the lanterns of the
gig. Thus, under the dripping trees, and environed by huge
and moving shadows, they reached the scene of their
unhallowed labours.

They were both experienced in such affairs, and powerful with
the spade; and they had scarce been twenty minutes at their
task before they were rewarded by a dull rattle on the coffin
lid. At the same moment Macfarlane, having hurt his hand
upon a stone, flung it carelessly above his head. The grave,
in which they now stood almost to the shoulders, was close to
the edge of the plateau of the graveyard; and the gig lamp
had been propped, the better to illuminate their labours,
against a tree, and on the immediate verge of the steep bank
descending to the stream. Chance had taken a sure aim with
the stone. Then came a clang of broken glass; night fell
upon them; sounds alternately dull and ringing announced the
bounding of the lantern down the bank, and its occasional
collision with the trees. A stone or two, which it had
dislodged in its descent, rattled behind it into the
profundities of the glen; and then silence, like night,
resumed its sway; and they might bend their hearing to its
utmost pitch, but naught was to be heard except the rain, now
marching to the wind, now steadily falling over miles of open
country.

They were so nearly at an end of their abhorred task that
they judged it wisest to complete it in the dark. The coffin
was exhumed and broken open; the body inserted in the
dripping sack and carried between them to the gig; one
mounted to keep it in its place, and the other, taking the
horse by the mouth, groped along by wall and bush until they
reached the wider road by the Fisher's Tryst. Here was a
faint, diffused radiancy, which they hailed like daylight; by
that they pushed the horse to a good pace and began to rattle
along merrily in the direction of the town.

They had both been wetted to the skin during their
operations, and now, as the gig jumped among the deep ruts,
the thing that stood propped between them fell now upon one
and now upon the other. At every repetition of the horrid
contact each instinctively repelled it with the greater
haste; and the process, natural although it was, began to
tell upon the nerves of the companions. Macfarlane made some
ill-favoured jest about the farmer's wife, but it came
hollowly from his lips, and was allowed to drop in silence.
Still their unnatural burden bumped from side to side; and
now the head would be laid, as if in confidence, upon their
shoulders, and now the drenching sack-cloth would flap icily
about their faces. A creeping chill began to possess the
soul of Fettes. He peered at the bundle, and it seemed
somehow larger than at first. All over the country-side, and
from every degree of distance, the farm dogs accompanied
their passage with tragic ululations; and it grew and grew
upon his mind that some unnatural miracle had been
accomplished, that some nameless change had befallen the dead
body, and that it was in fear of their unholy burden that the
dogs were howling.

'For God's sake,' said he, making a great effort to arrive at
speech, 'for God's sake, let's have a light!'

Seemingly Macfarlane was affected in the same direction; for,
though he made no reply, he stopped the horse, passed the
reins to his companion, got down, and proceeded to kindle the
remaining lamp. They had by that time got no farther than
the cross-road down to Auchenclinny. The rain still poured
as though the deluge were returning, and it was no easy
matter to make a light in such a world of wet and darkness.
When at last the flickering blue flame had been transferred
to the wick and began to expand and clarify, and shed a wide
circle of misty brightness round the gig, it became possible
for the two young men to see each other and the thing they
had along with them. The rain had moulded the rough sacking
to the outlines of the body underneath; the head was distinct
from the trunk, the shoulders plainly modelled; something at
once spectral and human riveted their eyes upon the ghastly
comrade of their drive.

For some time Macfarlane stood motionless, holding up the
lamp. A nameless dread was swathed, like a wet sheet, about
the body, and tightened the white skin upon the face of
Fettes; a fear that was meaningless, a horror of what could
not be, kept mounting to his brain. Another beat of the
watch, and he had spoken. But his comrade forestalled him.

'That is not a woman,' said Macfarlane, in a hushed voice.

'It was a woman when we put her in,' whispered Fettes.

'Hold that lamp,' said the other. 'I must see her face.'

And as Fettes took the lamp his companion untied the
fastenings of the sack and drew down the cover from the head.
The light fell very clear upon the dark, well-moulded
features and smooth-shaven cheeks of a too familiar
countenance, often beheld in dreams of both of these young
men. A wild yell rang up into the night; each leaped from
his own side into the roadway: the lamp fell, broke, and was
extinguished; and the horse, terrified by this unusual
commotion, bounded and went off toward Edinburgh at a gallop,
bearing along with it, sole occupant of the gig, the body of
the dead and long-dissected Gray.

THE STORY OF A LIE

CHAPTER I - INTRODUCES THE ADMIRAL

WHEN Dick Naseby was in Paris he made some odd acquaintances;
for he was one of those who have ears to hear, and can use
their eyes no less than their intelligence. He made as many
thoughts as Stuart Mill; but his philosophy concerned flesh
and blood, and was experimental as to its method. He was a
type-hunter among mankind. He despised small game and
insignificant personalities, whether in the shape of dukes or
bagmen, letting them go by like sea-weed; but show him a
refined or powerful face, let him hear a plangent or a
penetrating voice, fish for him with a living look in some
one's eye, a passionate gesture, a meaning and ambiguous
smile, and his mind was instantaneously awakened. 'There was
a man, there was a woman,' he seemed to say, and he stood up
to the task of comprehension with the delight of an artist in
his art.

And indeed, rightly considered, this interest of his was an
artistic interest. There is no science in the personal study
of human nature. All comprehension is creation; the woman I
love is somewhat of my handiwork; and the great lover, like
the great painter, is he that can so embellish his subject as
to make her more than human, whilst yet by a cunning art he
has so based his apotheosis on the nature of the case that
the woman can go on being a true woman, and give her
character free play, and show littleness, or cherish spite,
or be greedy of common pleasures, and he continue to worship
without a thought of incongruity. To love a character is
only the heroic way of understanding it. When we love, by
some noble method of our own or some nobility of mien or
nature in the other, we apprehend the loved one by what is
noblest in ourselves. When we are merely studying an
eccentricity, the method of our study is but a series of
allowances. To begin to understand is to begin to
sympathise; for comprehension comes only when we have stated
another's faults and virtues in terms of our own. Hence the
proverbial toleration of artists for their own evil
creations. Hence, too, it came about that Dick Naseby, a
high-minded creature, and as scrupulous and brave a gentleman
as you would want to meet, held in a sort of affection the
various human creeping things whom he had met and studied.

One of these was Mr. Peter Van Tromp, an English-speaking,
two-legged animal of the international genus, and by
profession of general and more than equivocal utility. Years
before he had been a painter of some standing in a colony,
and portraits signed 'Van Tromp' had celebrated the greatness
of colonial governors and judges. In those days he had been
married, and driven his wife and infant daughter in a pony
trap. What were the steps of his declension? No one exactly
knew. Here he was at least, and had been any time these past
ten years, a sort of dismal parasite upon the foreigner in
Paris.

It would be hazardous to specify his exact industry.
Coarsely followed, it would have merited a name grown
somewhat unfamiliar to our ears. Followed as he followed it,
with a skilful reticence, in a kind of social chiaroscuro, it
was still possible for the polite to call him a professional
painter. His lair was in the Grand Hotel and the gaudiest
cafes. There he might be seen jotting off a sketch with an
air of some inspiration; and he was always affable, and one
of the easiest of men to fall in talk withal. A conversation
usually ripened into a peculiar sort of intimacy, and it was
extraordinary how many little services Van Tromp contrived to
render in the course of six-and-thirty hours. He occupied a
position between a friend and a courier, which made him worse
than embarrassing to repay. But those whom he obliged could
always buy one of his villainous little pictures, or, where
the favours had been prolonged and more than usually
delicate, might order and pay for a large canvas, with
perfect certainty that they would hear no more of the
transaction.

Among resident artists he enjoyed celebrity of a non-
professional sort. He had spent more money - no less than
three individual fortunes, it was whispered - than any of his
associates could ever hope to gain. Apart from his colonial
career, he had been to Greece in a brigantine with four brass
carronades; he had travelled Europe in a chaise and four,
drawing bridle at the palace-doors of German princes; queens
of song and dance had followed him like sheep and paid his
tailor's bills. And to behold him now, seeking small loans
with plaintive condescension, sponging for breakfast on an
art-student of nineteen, a fallen Don Juan who had neglected
to die at the propitious hour, had a colour of romance for
young imaginations. His name and his bright past, seen
through the prism of whispered gossip, had gained him the
nickname of THE ADMIRAL.

Dick found him one day at the receipt of custom, rapidly
painting a pair of hens and a cock in a little water-colour
sketching box, and now and then glancing at the ceiling like
a man who should seek inspiration from the muse. Dick
thought it remarkable that a painter should choose to work
over an absinthe in a public cafe, and looked the man over.
The aged rakishness of his appearance was set off by a
youthful costume; he had disreputable grey hair and a
disreputable sore, red nose; but the coat and the gesture,
the outworks of the man, were still designed for show. Dick
came up to his table and inquired if he might look at what
the gentleman was doing. No one was so delighted as the
Admiral.

'A bit of a thing,' said he. 'I just dash them off like
that. I - I dash them off,' he added with a gesture.

'Quite so,' said Dick, who was appalled by the feebleness of
the production.

'Understand me,' continued Van Tromp; 'I am a man of the
world. And yet - once an artist always an artist. All of a
sudden a thought takes me in the street; I become its prey:
it's like a pretty woman; no use to struggle; I must - dash
it off.'

'I see,' said Dick.

'Yes,' pursued the painter; 'it all comes easily, easily to
me; it is not my business; it's a pleasure. Life is my
business - life - this great city, Paris - Paris after dark -
its lights, its gardens, its odd corners. Aha!' he cried,
'to be young again! The heart is young, but the heels are
leaden. A poor, mean business, to grow old! Nothing remains
but the COUP D'OEIL, the contemplative man's enjoyment, Mr. -
,' and he paused for the name.

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