Part 9

There were four of us, as I have said: old Reiner, Tyck, Henley, and myself. Each represented a different nationality. Reiner was a Norwegian of German descent, tall and ungainly, with a large head, a shock of light-colored, coarse hair, a virgin beard, and a good-humored face focused in a pair of searching gray eyes that pried their way into everything that came under their owner’s observation. He was by no means a handsome man, neither was he unattractive; and his sober habits, cool judgment, and great stock of general information gained for him the familiar name of old Reiner among the more thoughtless and more superficial students who were his friends. He was by nature of a more scientific than artistic turn of mind. He was conversant with nine languages, including Sanskrit, had received a thorough university education in Norway and Germany, took delight in investigating every subject that came in his way--from the habits of an ant to the movements of the gold market in America--and could talk intelligently and instructively on every topic proposed to him. Indeed, his scientific and literary attainments were a wonder to the rest of us, who had lived quite as long and had accomplished much less. As an artist he had great talents as well; but here also his love of investigation constantly directed his efforts. In his academic course he had less success than might have been anticipated, except in the direction of positive rendering of certain effects. He was not a colorist; such natures rarely are; and it is probable that he would never have made a brilliant artist in any branch of the profession, for he was too much of a positivist, and even his historical pictures would have been little more than marvels of correctness of costume and accessories. In his association with us, the flow of his abundant good-humor, which sometimes seemed unlimited, was interrupted by occasional spells of complete reaction, when he neither spoke to nor even saw any one else, but made a hermit of himself until the mood had passed.

Tyck at first sight looked like a Spaniard. He was slight in stature, one short leg causing a stoop which made him appear still smaller than he was. His skin was of a clear brown, warmed by an abundance of rich blood; a mass of strong, curling hair, and a black moustache and imperial framed in a face of peculiar strong beauty. His eyes had something in them too deep to be altogether pleasing, for they caused one to look at him seriously, yet they were as full of laughter and good-nature and cheerfulness as dark eyes can be. His face was one that, notwithstanding its peculiarities, gave a good first impression; and a long friendship had proved him to be chargeable with fewer blemishes of character than are written down against the most of us. But his hands were not in his favor. They were long, bony, and cold; the finger-joints were large and lacked firmness, and the pressure of the hand was listless or unsympathetic. The lines of life were faint and discouraging, and there were few prominent marks in the palm. The secret of his complexion lay in his parentage, for his mother was a native woman of Java, and his father a Dutch merchant, who settled in that far-off country, built up a fortune, and raised a small family of boys, who deserted the paternal nest as soon as they were old enough to flutter alone. Tyck was a colorist. He seemed to see the tones of nature rich with the warm reflections of a tropical sun; and his studies from life, while strong and luscious in tone, were full of fire and subtle gradations--qualities combined rarely enough in the works of older artists. He was to all appearance in the flush of health, and, notwithstanding his deformity, was uncommonly active and fond of exercise. We who knew him intimately, however, always looked upon him as a marked man. With all his rugged, healthy look, his physique was not vigorous enough to resist the attacks of the common foe, winter, and we knew that he occasionally pined mentally and physically for the luxurious warmth of his native land. He flourished in the raw climate of Flanders only as a transplanted flower flourishes; still, he was not declining in health or strength.

It is a long and delicate process to build up an intimate friendship between men of mercurial temperament and such an impersonation of coolness and deliberation and studied manners as was Henley, the third member of our group. From his type of face and his peculiar bearing he was easily recognizable as an Englishman, and even as a member of the Church of England. His manner was plainly the result of a severe and formal training; his whole life, as he told us himself, had been passed under the careful surveillance of a strict father, who was for a long time the rector of one of the first churches of London. But Henley, serious, formal, and cool, was not uncompanionable; and I am not quite sure whether it was not the bony thinness of his face, his straggling black beard and abundant dead-colored hair, that predisposed one at first sight to judge him as a sort of melancholy black sheep among his lighter-hearted companions. So we all placed him at our first meeting. When once the ice was broken, and we felt the sympathetic presence that surrounded him in his intercourse with friends, he became a necessity to complete the current of our little circle, and his English steadiness often served a good purpose in many wordy tempests.

In religious opinions we four were as divided as we were distinct in nationality. Henley, as I have said, was a member of the Church of England. Tyck was a Jew and a Freemason. Reiner entirely disbelieved in everything that was not plain to him intellectually. Our discussions on religious subjects were long and warm, for the theories of the fourth member of the circle piled new fuel upon the flames that sprang up under the friction of the ideas of the other three, and on these topics alone we were seriously at variance. Rarely were our disputes carried to that point where either of us felt wounded after the discussion was ended, but on more than one occasion they were violent enough to have ruptured our little bond if it had not been strengthened by ties of more than ordinary friendship.

This friendship was of the unselfish order, too. We were in the habit of living on the share-and-share-alike principle. Henley was the only one who had any allowance, and he always felt that his regular remittance was rather a bar to his complete and unqualified admission to our little ring. The joint capital among us was always kept in circulation. When one had money and the others had none, and it suited our inclinations or the purposes of our study to visit the Dutch cities, or even to cross the Channel, we travelled on the common purse. Share-and-share-alike in cases less pressing than sickness or actual want may not be a sound mercantile principle; but where the freemasonry of mutual tastes, united purposes, and common hardships binds friend to friend, the spirit of communism is half the charm of existence. Especially is this true of Bohemian life.

In introducing the characters a little time has been taken, partly in order to give us a chance to move our table into a more sheltered corner, and to allow us to get well started in another game of dominos. As I remember that evening, Reiner, who had not entirely recovered from an attack of one of his peculiar moods, had been discussing miracles and mysteries with more than his accustomed warmth, and the rest of us had been cornered and driven off the field in turn; even to Henley, who was not, with all his study, quite as well up on the subject of the Jewish priests and the Druids as old Reiner, whom no topic seemed to find unprepared. When the discussion was at its height I observed in Reiner certain uneasy movements, and I instinctively looked behind him to see if any one was watching him, as his actions resembled those of a person under the mesmerism of an unseen eye. I saw no one, and concluded that my imagination had deceived me. But Reiner became suddenly grave and even solemn, and the debate stopped entirely. At last, after a long silence, Reiner proposed another game of dominos. When the pieces were distributed he began the moves, saying at the same time, quite in earnest and as if talking to himself, “This will decide it.”

His voice was so strange and his look so determined that we felt that something was at stake, and instinctively and in chorus declared that it was useless to play the game out, and proposed an adjournment to the sketching-club. Reiner did not object, and we rose to go. As we left the table I saw behind Reiner’s chair two small, luminous, green balls, set in a black mass, turned towards us--evidently the eyes of a dog, glistening in the reflection of the gas like emerald fires. Possibly the others did not notice the animal, and I was too much startled at the discovery of the unseen eye to speak of it at that moment. Before I had recovered myself completely we were out of the gate, followed by the dog. Under the street-lamp, he leaped about and seemed quite at home. He was seen to be a perfectly black Spitz poodle, with cropped ears and tail, very lively in his movements, and with a remarkably intelligent expression. He was a dog of a character not commonly met, and once observed was not easily mistaken for others of the same breed. Our walk to the club was dreary enough. The gloomy manner of old Reiner was contagious, and no one spoke a word. I was too busy reflecting on the strange manner in which our game had been interrupted to occupy myself with my companion, remembering the now frequent recurrence of Reiner’s blue days, and dreading his absence from the class and the club, which I knew from experience was sure to follow such symptoms as I had observed in the café. To the sketching-club we brought an atmosphere so forbidding that it seemed as if we were the heralds of some misfortune. Scarcely a cheerful word was said after our entrance, and frequent glasses of Louvain or _d’orge_, drunk on the production of new caricatures, failed to raise the barometer of our spirits. The meeting broke up early, and we four separated. The dog, which had been lying under a settee near the door, followed Reiner as he turned down the boulevard.

For a week we did not meet again. Reiner kept his room or was out of town. He made no sign, and without him we frequented neither the café nor the club. The weather grew cold and rainy; the last evening at the café proved to have been the final gasp of dying autumn, and winter had fairly begun. At last Reiner made his appearance at dinner one dark afternoon, and took his accustomed seat at our table, near the window which opened out upon the glass-covered court-yard of the small hotel where we used to dine, a score of us, artists and students all. He looked very weary and hollow-eyed; said he had been unwell, had taken an overdose of laudanum for neuralgia, and had been confined to his room for a few days. Expecting each day to be able to go out the next morning, he had neglected to send us word, and so the week had passed. As he was speaking I noticed a dog in the court-yard, the same black poodle that attached himself to us in the café. Reiner, observing my surprise, explained that the dog had been living with him at his room in the Steenhouwersvest, and that they were inseparable companions now. We could all see that old Reiner was not yet himself again. One of us ventured to suggest that there might be something Mephistophelian about the animal, and that Reiner was endeavoring, Faust-like, to get at the kernel of the beast, so as to fathom whatever mystery of heaven or earth was as yet to him inexplicable. No further remarks were made, as Reiner arose to go away, leaving his dinner untouched. He shook hands with us all almost solemnly, and with the poodle went out into the gloomy street.

Another week passed, and we saw neither Reiner nor the poodle. December began, and the days were short and dark, the sun scarcely appearing above the cathedral roof in his course from east to west. The absence of old Reiner was a constant theme of conversation, and there were multitudes of conjectures as to whether he were in love, in debt, or really ill. We had no message from him, not a word, not a written line.

One evening as we sat at dinner--it was Thursday, and a heavy rain was falling--the black poodle dashed suddenly in, closely followed by Reiner’s servant-girl, bonnetless and in slippers, and drenched to the skin. Her message was guessed before she had time to gasp out, “Och, Mynheeren, uwer vriend Reiner is dood!” Not waiting for explanations, we followed her as she returned through the slippery streets, scarcely walking or running. How I got there I never knew; it seemed at the time as if I were carried along by some superior force. Filled with dread and fear, mingled with hope that it was an awful mistake and that something might yet be done, I reached the door of the house. Through the grocery-shop, where was assembled a crowd of shivering, drenched people who had gathered there on hearing of the event, conscious that all were watching our entrance with solemn sympathy, not seeing distinctly any one or anything, forgetting the narrow, dark, and winding wooden stair, I was at the door of Reiner’s room in an instant. The tall figure of a gendarme was silhouetted against the window; a few women stood by the table whispering together, awe-stricken at the sight of something that was before them, to the left, and still hidden from me as I took in the scene on entering the door.

Another step brought me to the bedside. There in the dim light lay old Reiner, not as if asleep, for the awful pallor of death was on his face, but with an expression as calm and peaceful as if he were soon to awake from pleasant dreams, as if his soul were still dreaming on. He lay on his right side, with his head resting on his doubled arm. The bedclothes were scarcely disturbed, and his left arm lay naturally on the sheet which was turned over the coverlid. Great, dark stains splashed the wall behind the bed and the pillow; dark streaks ran along over the linen and made little pools upon the floor. His shirt-bosom was one broad, irregular blotch of blood, and in his left hand I could see the carved ivory handle of the little Scandinavian sheath-knife that he always carried in his belt. Before I had fully comprehended the awful reality of poor Reiner’s death, the doctor arrived, lights were brought, and the examination began. Our dead comrade’s head being raised and his shirt-bosom opened, there were exposed two great gashes across the left jugular vein and one across the right, and nine deep wounds in the breast. Few of the cuts would not have proved mortal, and the ferocity with which the fatal knife had been plunged again and again into his breast testified to the madness of the determination to destroy his life. On the dressing-table by the bed we found two small laudanum vials, both empty, and one over-turned, as if placed hastily beside its fellow. In all probability poor Reiner took this large dose of laudanum early in the morning, as it was found that he had been in bed during the entire day, and was seen by the servant to be sleeping at three o’clock in the afternoon. His iron constitution and great physical strength overcoming the effects of the narcotic, he probably awoke to consciousness late in the afternoon. Finding himself still alive, in the agonies of despair and disappointment at the unsuccessful attempt to dream over the chasm into the next world, he seized his knife and madly stabbed himself, doubtless feeling little pain, and only happily conscious that his long-planned step was successfully taken at last. The room was unchanged, nothing was disturbed, and there was no evidence of the premeditation of the suicide, except an open letter on the table, addressed to us, his friends. It contained a simple statement of his reasons for leaving the world, saying that he was discouraged with his progress in art, that he could not establish himself as an artist without great expense to his family and friends, and that he believed by committing suicide he simply annihilated himself--nothing more or less--and so ceased to trouble himself or those interested in him. He gave no directions as to the disposal of his effects, but enclosed a written confession of faith, which read:

“Frederik Reiner, athée, ne croyant à rien que ce que l’on peut prouver par la raison et l’expérience. Croyant tout de même à l’existence d’un esprit, mais d’un esprit qui dissoud et disparaît avec le corps.

“L'âme c’est la vie, c’est un complexité des forces qui sont inséparables des atoms ou des molecules dont se compose le corps. L’un comme l’autre a existé depuis l’éternité. Moi-même, mon âme comme mon corps, un complexité accidentel, une réunion passagère.

“J’insisterai toujours dans les éléments qui me composent mais dissoudent en d’autres complexités. Ainsi, _moi, ma personnalité_, n’existera plus après ma mort.”

Beside this letter on the table lay Henri Murger’s “Scènes de la Vie de Bohème,” open, face downward. The pages contained the description of the death of one of the artists, and the following brief and touching sentence was underlined: _“Il fut enterré quelquepart.”_ A litter was brought from the hospital, and four men carried away the body; the dog, which we had come to look upon almost with horror, closely following the melancholy procession as it gradually disappeared in the drizzling gloom of the narrow streets. We three went to our rooms in a strange bewilderment, and huddled together in speechless grief and horror around the little fireplace. When bedtime came we separated and tried to sleep, but I doubt if an eye was closed or the awful vision of poor Reiner, as we last saw him, left either of us for a moment.

The days that followed were, to me at least, most agonizing. The terrible death of old Reiner grew less and less repulsive and more horribly absorbing. I had often read of the influence of such examples on peculiarly constituted minds, but had never before felt the dread and ghastly fascination which seemed to grow upon me as the days following the tragedy drew no veil across the awful spectacle, ever present in my mind’s eye, but rather added vividness and distinctness to the smallest details of the scene. My bed, with its white curtains, the conventional pattern of heavy Flemish furniture found in every room, came to be almost a tomb, in the morbid state of my imagination. I could never look at its long, spotless drapery without fancying my own head on the pillow, my own blood on the wall and staining with splashes of deep red the curtain and sheets. The number and shape of the spots on old Reiner’s bed seemed photographed on the retina of my eye, and danced upon the slender, graceful folds of the curtains as often as I dared look at them. A little nickel-plated derringer, always lying on my table as a paper-weight, often found its way into my hands, and I would surprise myself wondering whether death by such a means were not, after all, preferable to destruction by the knife. A few cartridges in the corner of my closet, which I had hidden away to keep them from the meddling hands of the servant, seemed to draw me towards them with a constant magnetism. I could not forget that shelf and that particular spot behind a bundle of paint-rags. If there was need of anything on that particular shelf for months after Reiner’s death, I always took it quickly and resolutely, shutting the closet door as if I were shutting in all the evil spirits that could possess me. The tempter was exorcised, but with difficulty, and to this day, for all I know, the cartridges may still lie hidden there. Then, too, a quaint Normandy hunting-knife was quite as fiendish in its influence as the derringer. Its ugly, crooked blade, and strong, sharp point were very suggestive, and for a time I was almost afraid to touch the handle, lest the demon of suicide should overcome me. Still, in the climax of this fever, which might well have resulted in the suicide of another of the four, for it was evident that Henley and Tyck were also under the same influences that surrounded me day and night, the thought of burdening our friends with our dead bodies was the strongest inducement that stayed our hands. It is certain that if we had been situated where the disposal of our bodies would have been a matter of little or no difficulty--as, for example, on board ship--one or perhaps all three of us would have succumbed to the influence of the mania that possessed us.

It was on the Sunday forenoon--a grim, gray morning threatening a storm--following the fatal Thursday, that we met in the court-yard of the city hospital to bury poor Reiner.

The hideous barrenness of a Flemish burial-ground, even in bright, cheerful weather, is enough to crush the most buoyant spirits; it is indescribably oppressive and soul-sickening. The awful desolation of the place in the dreariness of that day will ever remain a horrid souvenir in my mind. Nature did not seem to weep, but to frown; and in the heavy air one felt a deep and solemn reproach. The soaked and dull atmosphere was stifling in its density, like the overloaded breath from some newly opened tomb. There was an army of felt but unseen spirits lurking in the ghostly quiet of the place, which the presence of a hundred mortals did not disturb. There was no breath of wind, and the settling of the snow and a faint, faint moan of the distant rushing tide made the silence more oppressive. The drip of the water from the drenched mosses on the brick walls; the faintest rustle of the wreaths of immortelles hung on every hideous black cross; the fall of one withered flower from the forgotten offerings of some friend of the buried dead--every sound at other times and in other places quite inaudible, broke upon that unearthly quiet with startling distinctness. The sound of our footsteps, as we followed the winding path to the fresh heap of earth in a remote corner, fell heavily on the thick air, and the high brick walls, mouldy and rotting in the sunless angles, gave a deep and unwilling echo. It was like treading the dark and skull-walled passages of the Catacombs without the grateful veil of a partial darkness. All that was mortal and subject to decay, all that was to our poor human understanding immortal and indestructible, seemed buried alike in this rigid, barren enclosure. Beyond? There was no beyond; the straight, barren walls on all sides, and the impenetrable murkiness of the gray vault that covered us, barred out the material and the spiritual world. Here was the end, here all was certain and defined--a narrow ditch, a few shovelfuls of earth, and nothing more that needed or invited explanation. There was no future, no waking from that sleep: all exit from that narrow and pitiless graveyard seemed forever closed. Such thoughts as these were, until then, strangers to us. Could it be the unextinguishable influence of that nerveless body that filled the place with the dread and uncongenial presence that urged us to accept for the time, then and there, the theories and convictions of the mind which once animated that cold and motionless mass?