The Project Gutenberg Etext of New Arabian Nights

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"Thank God," said Northmour, "Aggie is not coming to-night."

Aggie was the name of the old nurse; he had not thought of her till
now; but that he should think of her at all, was a trait that
surprised me in the man.

We were again reduced to waiting. Northmour went to the fireplace
and spread his hands before the red embers, as if he were cold. I
followed him mechanically with my eyes, and in so doing turned my
back upon the window. At that moment a very faint report was
audible from without, and a ball shivered a pane of glass, and
buried itself in the shutter two inches from my head. I heard
Clara scream; and though I whipped instantly out of range and into
a corner, she was there, so to speak, before me, beseeching to know
if I were hurt. I felt that I could stand to be shot at every day
and all day long, with such marks of solicitude for a reward; and I
continued to reassure her, with the tenderest caresses and in
complete forgetfulness of our situation, till the voice of
Northmour recalled me to myself.

"An air-gun," he said. "They wish to make no noise."

I put Clara aside, and looked at him. He was standing with his
back to the fire and his hands clasped behind him; and I knew by
the black look on his face, that passion was boiling within. I had
seen just such a look before he attacked me, that March night, in
the adjoining chamber; and, though I could make every allowance for
his anger, I confess I trembled for the consequences. He gazed
straight before him; but he could see us with the tail of his eye,
and his temper kept rising like a gale of wind. With regular
battle awaiting us outside, this prospect of an internecine strife
within the walls began to daunt me.

Suddenly, as I was thus closely watching his expression and
prepared against the worst, I saw a change, a flash, a look of
relief, upon his face. He took up the lamp which stood beside him
on the table, and turned to us with an air of some excitement.

"There is one point that we must know," said he. "Are they going
to butcher the lot of us, or only Huddlestone? Did they take you
for him, or fire at you for your own BEAUX YEUX?"

"They took me for him, for certain," I replied. "I am near as
tall, and my head is fair."

"I am going to make sure," returned Northmour; and he stepped up to
the window, holding the lamp above his head, and stood there,
quietly affronting death, for half a minute.

Clara sought to rush forward and pull him from the place of danger;
but I had the pardonable selfishness to hold her back by force.

"Yes," said Northmour, turning coolly from the window; "it's only
Huddlestone they want."

"Oh, Mr. Northmour!" cried Clara; but found no more to add; the
temerity she had just witnessed seeming beyond the reach of words.

He, on his part, looked at me, cocking his head, with a fire of
triumph in his eyes; and I understood at once that he had thus
hazarded his life, merely to attract Clara's notice, and depose me
from my position as the hero of the hour. He snapped his fingers.

"The fire is only beginning," said he. "When they warm up to their
work, they won't be so particular."

A voice was now heard hailing us from the entrance. From the
window we could see the figure of a man in the moonlight; he stood
motionless, his face uplifted to ours, and a rag of something white
on his extended arm; and as we looked right down upon him, though
he was a good many yards distant on the links, we could see the
moonlight glitter on his eyes.

He opened his lips again, and spoke for some minutes on end, in a
key so loud that he might have been heard in every corner of the
pavilion, and as far away as the borders of the wood. It was the
same voice that had already shouted "TRADITORE!" through the
shutters of the dining-room; this time it made a complete and clear
statement. If the traitor "Oddlestone" were given up, all others
should be spared; if not, no one should escape to tell the tale.

"Well, Huddlestone, what do you say to that?" asked Northmour,
turning to the bed.

Up to that moment the banker had given no sign of life, and I, at
least, had supposed him to be still lying in a faint; but he
replied at once, and in such tones as I have never heard elsewhere,
save from a delirious patient, adjured and besought us not to
desert him. It was the most hideous and abject performance that my
imagination can conceive.

"Enough," cried Northmour; and then he threw open the window,
leaned out into the night, and in a tone of exultation, and with a
total forgetfulness of what was due to the presence of a lady,
poured out upon the ambassador a string of the most abominable
raillery both in English and Italian, and bade him be gone where he
had come from. I believe that nothing so delighted Northmour at
that moment as the thought that we must all infallibly perish
before the night was out.

Meantime the Italian put his flag of truce into his pocket, and
disappeared, at a leisurely pace, among the sand-hills.

"They make honourable war," said Northmour. "They are all
gentlemen and soldiers. For the credit of the thing, I wish we
could change sides - you and I, Frank, and you too, Missy, my
darling - and leave that being on the bed to some one else. Tut!
Don't look shocked! We are all going post to what they call
eternity, and may as well be above-board while there's time. As
far as I'm concerned, if I could first strangle Huddlestone and
then get Clara in my arms, I could die with some pride and
satisfaction. And as it is, by God, I'll have a kiss!"

Before I could do anything to interfere, he had rudely embraced and
repeatedly kissed the resisting girl. Next moment I had pulled him
away with fury, and flung him heavily against the wall. He laughed
loud and long, and I feared his wits had given way under the
strain; for even in the best of days he had been a sparing and a
quiet laugher.

"Now, Frank," said he, when his mirth was somewhat appeased, "it's
your turn. Here's my hand. Good-bye; farewell!" Then, seeing me
stand rigid and indignant, and holding Clara to my side - "Man!" he
broke out, "are you angry? Did you think we were going to die with
all the airs and graces of society? I took a kiss; I'm glad I had
it; and now you can take another if you like, and square accounts."

I turned from him with a feeling of contempt which I did not seek
to dissemble.

"As you please," said he. "You've been a prig in life; a prig
you'll die."

And with that he sat down in a chair, a rifle over his knee, and
amused himself with snapping the lock; but I could see that his
ebullition of light spirits (the only one I ever knew him to
display) had already come to an end, and was succeeded by a sullen,
scowling humour.

All this time our assailants might have been entering the house,
and we been none the wiser; we had in truth almost forgotten the
danger that so imminently overhung our days. But just then Mr.
Huddlestone uttered a cry, and leaped from the bed.

I asked him what was wrong.

"Fire!" he cried. "They have set the house on fire!"

Northmour was on his feet in an instant, and he and I ran through
the door of communication with the study. The room was illuminated
by a red and angry light. Almost at the moment of our entrance, a
tower of flame arose in front of the window, and, with a tingling
report, a pane fell inwards on the carpet. They had set fire to
the lean-to outhouse, where Northmour used to nurse his negatives.

"Hot work," said Northmour. "Let us try in your old room."

We ran thither in a breath, threw up the casement, and looked
forth. Along the whole back wall of the pavilion piles of fuel had
been arranged and kindled; and it is probable they had been
drenched with mineral oil, for, in spite of the morning's rain,
they all burned bravely. The fire had taken a firm hold already on
the outhouse, which blazed higher and higher every moment; the back
door was in the centre of a red-hot bonfire; the eaves we could
see, as we looked upward, were already smouldering, for the roof
overhung, and was supported by considerable beams of wood. At the
same time, hot, pungent, and choking volumes of smoke began to fill
the house. There was not a human being to be seen to right or
left.

"Ah, well!" said Northmour, "here's the end, thank God."

And we returned to MY UNCLE'S ROOM. Mr. Huddlestone was putting on
his boots, still violently trembling, but with an air of
determination such as I had not hitherto observed. Clara stood
close by him, with her cloak in both hands ready to throw about her
shoulders, and a strange look in her eyes, as if she were half
hopeful, half doubtful of her father.

"Well, boys and girls," said Northmour, "how about a sally? The
oven is heating; it is not good to stay here and be baked; and, for
my part, I want to come to my hands with them, and be done."

"There is nothing else left," I replied.

And both Clara and Mr. Huddlestone, though with a very different
intonation, added, "Nothing."

As we went downstairs the heat was excessive, and the roaring of
the fire filled our ears; and we had scarce reached the passage
before the stairs window fell in, a branch of flame shot
brandishing through the aperture, and the interior of the pavilion
became lit up with that dreadful and fluctuating glare. At the
same moment we heard the fall of something heavy and inelastic in
the upper story. The whole pavilion, it was plain, had gone alight
like a box of matches, and now not only flamed sky-high to land and
sea, but threatened with every moment to crumble and fall in about
our ears.

Northmour and I cocked our revolvers. Mr. Huddlestone, who had
already refused a firearm, put us behind him with a manner of
command.

"Let Clara open the door," said he. "So, if they fire a volley,
she will be protected. And in the meantime stand behind me. I am
the scapegoat; my sins have found me out."

I heard him, as I stood breathless by his shoulder, with my pistol
ready, pattering off prayers in a tremulous, rapid whisper; and I
confess, horrid as the thought may seem, I despised him for
thinking of supplications in a moment so critical and thrilling.
In the meantime, Clara, who was dead white but still possessed her
faculties, had displaced the barricade from the front door.
Another moment, and she had pulled it open. Firelight and
moonlight illuminated the links with confused and changeful lustre,
and far away against the sky we could see a long trail of glowing
smoke.

Mr. Huddlestone, filled for the moment with a strength greater than
his own, struck Northmour and myself a back-hander in the chest;
and while we were thus for the moment incapacitated from action,
lifting his arms above his head like one about to dive, he ran
straight forward out of the pavilion.

"Here am!" he cried - "Huddlestone! Kill me, and spare the
others!"

His sudden appearance daunted, I suppose, our hidden enemies; for
Northmour and I had time to recover, to seize Clara between us, one
by each arm, and to rush forth to his assistance, ere anything
further had taken place. But scarce had we passed the threshold
when there came near a dozen reports and flashes from every
direction among the hollows of the links. Mr. Huddlestone
staggered, uttered a weird and freezing cry, threw up his arms over
his head, and fell backward on the turf.

"TRADITORE! TRADITORE!" cried the invisible avengers.

And just then, a part of the roof of the pavilion fell in, so rapid
was the progress of the fire. A loud, vague, and horrible noise
accompanied the collapse, and a vast volume of flame went soaring
up to heaven. It must have been visible at that moment from twenty
miles out at sea, from the shore at Graden Wester, and far inland
from the peak of Graystiel, the most eastern summit of the Caulder
Hills. Bernard Huddlestone, although God knows what were his
obsequies, had a fine pyre at the moment of his death.

CHAPTER IX - TELLS HOW NORTHMOUR CARRIED OUT HIS THREAT

I should have the greatest difficulty to tell you what followed
next after this tragic circumstance. It is all to me, as I look
back upon it, mixed, strenuous, and ineffectual, like the struggles
of a sleeper in a nightmare. Clara, I remember, uttered a broken
sigh and would have fallen forward to earth, had not Northmour and
I supported her insensible body. I do not think we were attacked;
I do not remember even to have seen an assailant; and I believe we
deserted Mr. Huddlestone without a glance. I only remember running
like a man in a panic, now carrying Clara altogether in my own
arms, now sharing her weight with Northmour, now scuffling
confusedly for the possession of that dear burden. Why we should
have made for my camp in the Hemlock Den, or how we reached it, are
points lost for ever to my recollection. The first moment at which
I became definitely sure, Clara had been suffered to fall against
the outside of my little tent, Northmour and I were tumbling
together on the ground, and he, with contained ferocity, was
striking for my head with the butt of his revolver. He had already
twice wounded me on the scalp; and it is to the consequent loss of
blood that I am tempted to attribute the sudden clearness of my
mind.

I caught him by the wrist.

"Northmour," I remember saying, "you can kill me afterwards. Let
us first attend to Clara."

He was at that moment uppermost. Scarcely had the words passed my
lips, when he had leaped to his feet and ran towards the tent; and
the next moment, he was straining Clara to his heart and covering
her unconscious hands and face with his caresses.

"Shame!" I cried. "Shame to you, Northmour!"

And, giddy though I still was, I struck him repeatedly upon the
head and shoulders.

He relinquished his grasp, and faced me in the broken moonlight.

"I had you under, and I let you go," said he; "and now you strike
me! Coward!"

"You are the coward," I retorted. "Did she wish your kisses while
she was still sensible of what she wanted? Not she! And now she
may be dying; and you waste this precious time, and abuse her
helplessness. Stand aside, and let me help her."

He confronted me for a moment, white and menacing; then suddenly he
stepped aside.

"Help her then," said he.

I threw myself on my knees beside her, and loosened, as well as I
was able, her dress and corset; but while I was thus engaged, a
grasp descended on my shoulder.

"Keep your hands of her," said Northmour fiercely. "Do you think I
have no blood in my veins?"

"Northmour," I cried, "if you will neither help her yourself, nor
let me do so, do you know that I shall have to kill you?"

"That is better!" he cried. "Let her die also, where's the harm?
Step aside from that girl! and stand up to fight"

"You will observe," said I, half rising, "that I have not kissed
her yet."

"I dare you to," he cried.

I do not know what possessed me; it was one of the things I am most
ashamed of in my life, though, as my wife used to say, I knew that
my kisses would be always welcome were she dead or living; down I
fell again upon my knees, parted the hair from her forehead, and,
with the dearest respect, laid my lips for a moment on that cold
brow. It was such a caress as a father might have given; it was
such a one as was not unbecoming from a man soon to die to a woman
already dead.

"And now," said I, "I am at your service, Mr. Northmour."

But I saw, to my surprise, that he had turned his back upon me.

"Do you hear?" I asked.

"Yes," said he, "I do. If you wish to fight, I am ready. If not,
go on and save Clara. All is one to me."

I did not wait to be twice bidden; but, stooping again over Clara,
continued my efforts to revive her. She still lay white and
lifeless; I began to fear that her sweet spirit had indeed fled
beyond recall, and horror and a sense of utter desolation seized
upon my heart. I called her by name with the most endearing
inflections; I chafed and beat her hands; now I laid her head low,
now supported it against my knee; but all seemed to be in vain, and
the lids still lay heavy on her eyes.

"Northmour," I said, "there is my hat. For God's sake bring some
water from the spring."

Almost in a moment he was by my side with the water. "I have
brought it in my own," he said. "You do not grudge me the
privilege?"

"Northmour," I was beginning to say, as I laved her head and
breast; but he interrupted me savagely.

"Oh, you hush up!" he said. "The best thing you can do is to say
nothing."

I had certainly no desire to talk, my mind being swallowed up in
concern for my dear love and her condition; so I continued in
silence to do my best towards her recovery, and, when the hat was
empty, returned it to him, with one word - "More." He had,
perhaps, gone several times upon this errand, when Clara reopened
her eyes.

"Now," said he, "since she is better, you can spare me, can you
not? I wish you a good night, Mr. Cassilis."

And with that he was gone among the thicket. I made a fire, for I
had now no fear of the Italians, who had even spared all the little
possessions left in my encampment; and, broken as she was by the
excitement and the hideous catastrophe of the evening, I managed,
in one way or another - by persuasion, encouragement, warmth, and
such simple remedies as I could lay my hand on - to bring her back
to some composure of mind and strength of body.

Day had already come, when a sharp "Hist!" sounded from the
thicket. I started from the ground; but the voice of Northmour was
heard adding, in the most tranquil tones: "Come here, Cassilis,
and alone; I want to show you something."

I consulted Clara with my eyes, and, receiving her tacit
permission, left her alone, and clambered out of the den. At some
distance of I saw Northmour leaning against an elder; and, as soon
as he perceived me, he began walking seaward. I had almost
overtaken him as he reached the outskirts of the wood.

"Look," said he, pausing.

A couple of steps more brought me out of the foliage. The light of
the morning lay cold and clear over that well-known scene. The
pavilion was but a blackened wreck; the roof had fallen in, one of
the gables had fallen out; and, far and near, the face of the links
was cicatrised with little patches of burnt furze. Thick smoke
still went straight upwards in the windless air of the morning, and
a great pile of ardent cinders filled the bare walls of the house,
like coals in an open grate. Close by the islet a schooner yacht
lay to, and a well-manned boat was pulling vigorously for the
shore.

"The RED EARL!" I cried. "The RED EARL twelve hours too late!"

"Feel in your pocket, Frank. Are you armed?" asked Northmour.

I obeyed him, and I think I must have become deadly pale. My
revolver had been taken from me.

"You see I have you in my power," he continued. "I disarmed you
last night while you were nursing Clara; but this morning - here -
take your pistol. No thanks!" he cried, holding up his hand. "I
do not like them; that is the only way you can annoy me now."

He began to walk forward across the links to meet the boat, and I
followed a step or two behind. In front of the pavilion I paused
to see where Mr. Huddlestone had fallen; but there was no sign of
him, nor so much as a trace of blood.

"Graden Floe," said Northmour.

He continued to advance till we had come to the head of the beach.

"No farther, please," said he. "Would you like to take her to
Graden House?"

"Thank you," replied I; "I shall try to get her to the minister's
at Graden Wester."

The prow of the boat here grated on the beach, and a sailor jumped
ashore with a line in his hand.

"Wait a minute, lads!" cried Northmour; and then lower and to my
private ear: "You had better say nothing of all this to her," he
added.

"On the contrary!" I broke out, "she shall know everything that I
can tell."

"You do not understand," he returned, with an air of great dignity.
"It will be nothing to her; she expects it of me. Good-bye!" he
added, with a nod.

I offered him my hand.

"Excuse me," said he. "It's small, I know; but I can't push things
quite so far as that. I don't wish any sentimental business, to
sit by your hearth a white-haired wanderer, and all that. Quite
the contrary: I hope to God I shall never again clap eyes on
either one of you."

"Well, God bless you, Northmour!" I said heartily.

"Oh, yes," he returned.

He walked down the beach; and the man who was ashore gave him an
arm on board, and then shoved off and leaped into the bows himself.
Northmour took the tiller; the boat rose to the waves, and the oars
between the thole-pins sounded crisp and measured in the morning
air.

They were not yet half-way to the RED EARL, and I was still
watching their progress, when the sun rose out of the sea.

One word more, and my story is done. Years after, Northmour was
killed fighting under the colours of Garibaldi for the liberation
of the Tyrol.

A LODGING FOR THE NIGHT - A STORY OF FRANCIS VILLON

It was late in November 1456. The snow fell over Paris with
rigorous, relentless persistence; sometimes the wind made a sally
and scattered it in flying vortices; sometimes there was a lull,
and flake after flake descended out of the black night air, silent,
circuitous, interminable. To poor people, looking up under moist
eyebrows, it seemed a wonder where it all came from. Master
Francis Villon had propounded an alternative that afternoon, at a
tavern window: was it only Pagan Jupiter plucking geese upon
Olympus? or were the holy angels moulting? He was only a poor
Master of Arts, he went on; and as the question somewhat touched
upon divinity, he durst not venture to conclude. A silly old
priest from Montargis, who was among the company, treated the young
rascal to a bottle of wine in honour of the jest and the grimaces
with which it was accompanied, and swore on his own white beard
that he had been just such another irreverent dog when he was
Villon's age.

The air was raw and pointed, but not far below freezing; and the
flakes were large, damp, and adhesive. The whole city was sheeted
up. An army might have marched from end to end and not a footfall
given the alarm. If there were any belated birds in heaven, they
saw the island like a large white patch, and the bridges like slim
white spars, on the black ground of the river. High up overhead
the snow settled among the tracery of the cathedral towers. Many a
niche was drifted full; many a statue wore a long white bonnet on
its grotesque or sainted head. The gargoyles had been transformed
into great false noses, drooping towards the point. The crockets
were like upright pillows swollen on one side. In the intervals of
the wind, there was a dull sound of dripping about the precincts of
the church.

The cemetery of St. John had taken its own share of the snow. All
the graves were decently covered; tall white housetops stood around
in grave array; worthy burghers were long ago in bed, benightcapped
like their domiciles; there was no light in all the neighbourhood
but a little peep from a lamp that hung swinging in the church
choir, and tossed the shadows to and fro in time to its
oscillations. The clock was hard on ten when the patrol went by
with halberds and a lantern, beating their hands; and they saw
nothing suspicious about the cemetery of St. John.

Yet there was a small house, backed up against the cemetery wall,
which was still awake, and awake to evil purpose, in that snoring
district. There was not much to betray it from without; only a
stream of warm vapour from the chimney-top, a patch where the snow
melted on the roof, and a few half-obliterated footprints at the
door. But within, behind the shuttered windows, Master Francis
Villon the poet, and some of the thievish crew with whom he
consorted, were keeping the night alive and passing round the
bottle.

A great pile of living embers diffused a strong and ruddy glow from
the arched chimney. Before this straddled Dom Nicolas, the Picardy
monk, with his skirts picked up and his fat legs bared to the
comfortable warmth. His dilated shadow cut the room in half; and
the firelight only escaped on either side of his broad person, and
in a little pool between his outspread feet. His face had the
beery, bruised appearance of the continual drinker's; it was
covered with a network of congested veins, purple in ordinary
circumstances, but now pale violet, for even with his back to the
fire the cold pinched him on the other side. His cowl had half
fallen back, and made a strange excrescence on either side of his
bull neck. So he straddled, grumbling, and cut the room in half
with the shadow of his portly frame.

On the right, Villon and Guy Tabary were huddled together over a
scrap of parchment; Villon making a ballade which he was to call
the "Ballade of Roast Fish," and Tabary spluttering admiration at
his shoulder. The poet was a rag of a man, dark, little, and lean,
with hollow cheeks and thin black locks. He carried his four-and-
twenty years with feverish animation. Greed had made folds about
his eyes, evil smiles had puckered his mouth. The wolf and pig
struggled together in his face. It was an eloquent, sharp, ugly,
earthly countenance. His hands were small and prehensile, with
fingers knotted like a cord; and they were continually flickering
in front of him in violent and expressive pantomime. As for
Tabary, a broad, complacent, admiring imbecility breathed from his
squash nose and slobbering lips: he had become a thief, just as he
might have become the most decent of burgesses, by the imperious
chance that rules the lives of human geese and human donkeys.

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