Part 14

He was nicknamed, ironically, Carabas—a sort of French equivalent for Fortunatus—the only title by which I ever knew him. Perhaps the underlying sympathy which impelled the jest reconciled him to its mockery; for there is, after all, an acute distinction in being the unluckiest man in the world. Somebody says somewhere that it is better to “lead” in hell than be a super in heaven. There came a time, I think, when Carabas would have resented good fortune as an outrage. It would have broken his record, and made him commonplace at a blow. As with Hawthorne’s young woman who was bred and throve on poisons, a normal dietary would have been fatal to him. Carabas was nurtured on ill-luck.

I made his acquaintance at Verey’s in Montreux. It was for ever Carabas here and Carabas there, and, sometimes, in badinage, M. le Marquis; for the fellow was always in huge request for his capability and good-humour. There was a great deal of commiseration being shown for him when I first arrived. Latterly he had drawn a prize ticket—for thirty thousand francs, I think it was—in some State lottery. But, alas! a few days before the declaration of the winning numbers, he had parted with his voucher for a trifle over cost price. We got up a consolation subscription for him in the hotel—relatively, quite a respectable little sum—which, with effusive thanks, he deposited in the Bureau de Secours Mutuels. The bank stopped payment almost at once, and Carabas lost his nest-egg, with a prospect of future “calls” from the parent cuckoo.

After that, we abandoned him to his Nemesis. We had recognized finally, I suppose, that vails to him meant nothing but tips to his evil destiny, to whom, as to a rapacious head-waiter, they all accrued. And so he himself was convinced with us. He showed himself neither surprised nor aggrieved; but remained the sunniest fatalist, with just a touch of wistfulness, which Nature had ever produced out of a union between Candour and Philosophy.

I don’t know what his official position was. I don’t think he knew himself. He wore a plain peaked cap, and a sleeved waistcoat with brass buttons, and was, loosely, jackal to the tremendous concierge whose bullion took the costly glass tabernacle in the hall with splendour. Carabas himself was not at all a figure of splendour. He was small, and placable in expression, with smiling cheeks, mobile lips, pencilled over by a tiny black moustache, and strength visible in nothing but his eyes. They were his vouchers of distinction above the common brand.

One thing certain about him was that he was an accomplished linguist; a second, that, for all his unspoiledness, he had a large experience of man, and (notably) womankind; a third, that his courage was equal to his good temper; a fourth, that, with every natural claim to consideration, his pride halted at no service, whether of skill or complaisance, which an unscrupulous management could exact of him; a fifth and last, that he permitted his employers so to presume upon his reputation for successlessness, as to accept from them, in reward for his many accomplishments, wages which would have been cheap to inefficiency. His own material welfare, indeed, seemed always the thing remotest from his interests. To be helpful to others was the sum of his morality.

I never could satisfy myself as to his nationality. Once—as one might ask him anything without offence—I put the question to him. To my secret surprise, he seemed to hesitate a perceptible moment before he answered, with a smiling shrug of his shoulders—

“Cosmopolitan, monsieur; a foundling of Fortune.”

“We should do very well, then,” I answered, “to claim you for England.”

Was it fancy on my part that his pleasant face paled a little? “As to that,” he said, “I know nothing.”

“You have never been in England?”

He made no reply, but began bustling over some incoming luggage, calling to the porters at the lift; and in a moment he left me.

The next day he was taken ill. The reversion of a service of raw oysters, supplied to the guests at table d’hôte, had found its way to the supper-table of the staff. Carabas detested oysters, but his gallantry to the fair sex was proverbial, and Ninette, the prettiest of _filles de cuisine_, sat next to him. She extracted a single “bivalve” from her half-dozen, and put it on his plate, moueing at him ravishingly.

“Love conquers everything, M. Carabas,” she said; “even the antipathies of the stomach. I will not believe in your protestations unless you eat this for my sake.”

He swallowed it at a gulp, and—it was a bad oyster, the only doubtful one in the whole consignment. Later, he was very sick; and afterwards ill for four days. Ninette cried, and then laughed, and congratulated herself on her escape. But as for the hotel, it was disconsolate in the temporary loss of its Carabas.

For my part, I was even particularly conscious of a vague discomfort in his absence. Somehow a certain personal responsibility which I had undertaken seemed to weigh upon me the more heavily for it. It was not that Carabas could have lightened, by any conceivable means, my burden. It was just a sense of moral support withdrawn at a critical moment. It was as if the knees of my conscience were weak, owing to something having gone wrong with my backbone. But I will explain.

Mr. G——, a very famous lawyer in our own country, had brought his family, a son and daughter, to holiday in Lucerne. The boy was a conceited and susceptible youth; to the lady I was—engaged.

There seems no reason why impressionability should spell obstinacy; yet very often it does. Young Miller (so I will call him) having invited himself, at the Schweitzerhof, into the toils of a siren—a patently showy and dubious one—resisted all the efforts of his family to help him out. Baffled, but resolute, the father thereupon shifted the scene to Montreux, where they were no sooner arrived than he was summoned home on business at a moment’s notice. In the meanwhile, to me (hastily called from Paris, where it had been arranged I was to join the party on its homeward journey), was assigned the unenviable and impossible task of safeguarding the family interests. Miller had positively refused to accompany his father home, then or thereafter, until his absurd “honour,” as he called his fatuity, was vindicated. It would never do to abandon the wretched infant in the wilderness. He had his independence, and was a desirable _parti_. Hence my promotion to an utterly fictitious authority.

I knew, naturally, how it would be; and so it turned out. The head was no sooner withdrawn, than Mademoiselle Celestine—privately advised, of course, of the fact—arrived at Verey’s. Here, then, was defiance unequivocal—naked and unashamed, I might have said, and been nearer the truth of the case. For mademoiselle’s charms were opulent, and she made no secret of them. One would have thought a schoolboy might have seen through that rouge and enamel, through the crude pencilling on those eyelashes, through all that self-advertising display. I will not dwell upon its details, because their possessor made, after all, only a summer nightmare for us, and was early discomfited. She served, at best, for foil to a brighter soul; and such is her present use in the context.

From the outset there was no finesse, no pretence of propitiation in her tactics. She understood that it was a matter of now or never with her quarry, and aimed to bring him down sitting. A woman, even the best of her sex, never gives “law” in these matters. She goes out to kill.

The two together formed an opposition camp—quite flagrantly, out in the sunlight. I thought sometimes the boy looked unhappy; but the witch would never let me have _him_ to myself, and I could not manœuvre _her_ from under his guns. I would never have scrupled to roll her in the mud, could I once have got her alone. But she was too cunning for that; and, as for her companion, his warfare was, after all, an honourable warfare. And all the time I had my own particular Campaspe to safeguard, to console, to squire through the odious notoriety which her brother’s infatuation had conferred upon us all.

It was Carabas, of course, who in the end procured us a way, his own, out of the difficulty. The scandal being common property, there was no need for him to affect an ignorance of it. Yet we never knew, until the moment of his decision, how it had been occupying his mind from the beginning, or how, quietly and unobtrusively, he had been studying to qualify himself as our advocate. “_Our_ advocate,” I say; but I knew his brief was for the bright eyes of Campaspe. _He_ struck for the credit of the hotel, he declared; and mam’selle was associated with the best of that. Anyhow he struck, and daringly.

He had risen from his bed on the fourth day, as smiling, as complaisant as ever. His presence, like a genial thaw, ameliorated the little winter of our discontent. We greeted his reappearance with effusion, and dated, from the moment of it, our restoration to the social sanities.

It was a dusk, warm evening. The peaks of the Dent du Midi, thrust into a dewy sky, had been slowly cooling from pink to pearl-ash, like ingots of white-hot steel. Everything seemed one harmony of colour, except our thoughts, Campaspe’s and mine, as we strolled in the deserted garden. The Celestine and her victim had been out boating on the lake. We met them, unexpectedly returning. Mademoiselle was eating cherries out of a bag, and daintily spitting the stones right and left as she advanced. I don’t know how we should have faced the contretemps; I had no time, indeed, at the moment, to form a decision, before Carabas came softly and swiftly from a leafy ambush, and took command of the occasion.

We all, I believe, instinctively recognized it for a critical one. Mademoiselle’s bosom, though she laughed musically (she had managed to preserve, it must be owned, the unspoiled voice of a _séductrice_) began to rise and fall in spasms. The portier addressed her without a moment’s hesitation.

“I take the liberty to inform madame that she is in danger.”

She gave a little gasp.

“But is this comedy or melodrama?” she cried vehemently.

“That is,” said Carabas, “as madame shall decide. I have the plot up my sleeve.”

“The plot!” she echoed, and fell staring at him; and then furiously from him to us.

“Go on,” she said. “I know very well who has instigated you to this.”

She checked herself, and, smiling, put out a hand towards her companion, as if to ask, or give, reassurance. But I noticed, already to my satisfaction, that the boy did not respond. As for us, we were in complete darkness.

“I obey, madame,” said Carabas. “This plot is told in a word. There was once in Paris a certain notorious _courtisane et joueuse_. Will madame desire her name?—_à bon entendeur demi-mot_. One night this lady’s husband, a Corsican, from whom she was separated on an honourable allowance, visited, purely by accident, her establishment. There was a fine scene, and he wounded her severely. She was forced by the police to prosecute him, and the jury, amidst the plaudits of the public, gave their verdict—against madame. But, triumphant there, the husband’s vengeance was whetted rather than assuaged. He would throw himself upon the suffrages of his countrymen in a more drastic vindication of his honour. She had disguised herself—her name—had fled. He devoted himself to the business of pursuit. At length he believed he had traced her to an hotel in Territet.”

Carabas shrugged his shoulders and his lips, stuck out his arms at right angles with his body, stiff from the elbow, and came to a significant stop. I declare I pitied the adventuress. Every expression but that of panic seemed eliminated from her face at a touch. She looked old and haggard; and then, as if conscious of her self-betrayal, collapsed in a moment, dropping her bag of cherries.

“I am not very well,” she stammered; “the night air tries me.” She turned lividly upon the portier: “Par pitié, monsieur! C’est pour me prevenir que vous etes venu, non pour me trahir?”

Without waiting for his answer, she gathered herself together, literally, folding her train about her arm; made a desperate effort at self-command; wrenched out a smile, and went off, quavering a little airy chansonnette. But, after a few steps, despite her royal amplitude she was running. Carabas, very pale but self-possessed, picked up the bag, found one cherry in it, put it in his mouth abstractedly, and—

“My God!” cried Miller hoarsely.

Carabas jumped, and gulped.

“A thousand devils!” he cried. “You made me swallow the stone, monsieur.”

The boy was in a fever of agitation.

“Is she really that—that sort?” he said.

My Campaspe fell upon his neck.

“O, my dear, O, my dear, I am so sorry!” she sobbed.

He put her roughly, but not unkindly, away.

“I’m—I’m going back to England—to the governor,” he said.

“Carabas,” I demanded privately, as we returned to the hotel, “is it a fact that——?”

“The husband is here? No, monsieur; it is not a fact.”

“But——”

“It was a _cause célèbre_. I was confident I recognized madame from the published prints. For the rest, it was just a chance shot; but it hit the mark.”

“Carabas, you are wonderful; and we shall not forget.”

Miller was as good as his word. With characteristic disregard for any but his own interests, he was gone the next morning, without sign or message, leaving us to wobble in his backwash of scandal, and to get out of it as best we could. His flight, of course, threw open all the doors of gossip. My business in Paris being unfinished, I had to go; but first I did my best to provide against unpleasantnesses by confiding Campaspe to the care of the least slanderous _dame de compagnie_ I could find. I am afraid, nevertheless, she had but a poor time of it.

A week later I received a letter from Mr. G——, who in the interval had returned to Montreux.

“All is happily over with all,” he wrote: “with the exception, that is to say, of poor Carabas, who is to undergo an operation for appendicitis. It appears that a cherry-stone, which he swallowed unwittingly, did the business. The management (OWLS!) demur to the expense. I have insisted (FOOLS!) upon undertaking it upon my own account. We owe much to him; and so do they (IDIOTS!). But they don’t understand how to pay your debts is very often the best foresight.”

It was a case of pitch and toss. For days, it appeared, Carabas’s life hung in the balance. In the meanwhile, I was enabled to rejoin Mr. G—— and his daughter at Montreux, and to take my share in the nursing. Between gratitude and indignation, we rather claimed Carabas among us. Campaspe the poor fellow simply adored. Once, when he fancied himself losing hold, he confided to her, while we stood by, some main incidents in his life. I retail them here, in an abbreviated form.

CARABAS’S STORY

“There is no doubt,” he said “that as truly as some men are born without a palate, so some men are born without luck. It is no use trying to remedy the deficiency; it is well, rather, to study to reconcile oneself to it.

“I was born in an English village, of naturalized Huguenot parents. When I was nineteen, I fell passionately in love. I had for a rival a youth very strong and unscrupulous. One day he persuaded me to bathe with him in the river, then swollen with floods. In mid-stream he pounced upon me, and strove to bear me under. I struggled desperately—it was of no avail. Death thundered in my ears; the water enwrapped and proceeded to swallow me. The last thing I saw was a figure gesticulating and shouting on the bridge a little way above; then consciousness fled, and I sank. I came to myself, stranded somewhere in a dark channel. A mad face was bending over me. I knew it—it was that of the miller. I had been carried into his race, and, just short of the wheel, he had caught and dragged me to shore. He was a drunkard, of that I was aware; and he was now quite demented.

“‘Mordieu!’ he said, ‘I see what you’ve come for, and the devil shan’t call twice for his own.’

“I understood instantly. He meant himself to go with me into the water—to join issues with the devil who had called for him, and have a fine frolic into eternity with his visitor. Terror lent me strength. I caught at a post, and, as he leaned down, shot my whole body at him like a spring. He went over with a splash, and I heard the wheel hitch, then begin to turn again, chewing its prey. O, my friends, what a situation! I lay like one damned, a thousand dreadful reflections mastering me. I should be accused, if caught, of murdering this man. That terror quite devoured the other, and increased with every moment that I lay. Darkness came upon me, and then I rose and fled. I thought of nothing but to escape; and so, stealing always by night, I reached London.

“Now, I will tell you the irony of this destiny. Many weeks later I read, by chance, in a newspaper, how my rival had been granted your Royal Humane Society’s testimonial, on the evidence of a casual spectator, for a brave but unsuccessful attempt to _save me_ from drowning; and how the little pretty romance had terminated with his marriage to the admiring object of our two regards. So I was dead; and, as long as I lay in my nameless grave—for my body, it appeared, had never been recovered—the ghost of my fear was laid. I do not complain, therefore. Yet—ah, mademoiselle, most condescending of sympathizers!—_she_ had been very dear to me.”

Here Carabas found it necessary to console my Campaspe before he could go on.

“I obtained work—under an assumed name, of course—and for many years found at least a living in that immense capital. I had an aptitude for languages, which was my great good fortune; yet prosperity never more than looked at me through the window. What then? I could keep body and soul together. Ill-luck is too mean a spirit for Death to patronize. Many a time has the great Angel turned his back disdainfully on the other’s spiteful hints. He will not claim me, I believe, until he sees him asleep, or tired of persecuting me.

“One day I was travelling on your underground railway. I had for companion in my compartment a single individual. He jumped out at the Blackfriars station, leaving a handbag on the seat. At the moment the train moved off I noticed this, seized it, and leaned with it out of the window, with a purpose to shout to its owner. I saw him in the distance, hurriedly returning. The train gathered speed; I saw he could never reach me in time, and I flung the bag upon the platform. Instantly I perceived him leap, and jerk his arm across his eyes; and on the same moment a terrible explosion occurred.

“Stunned, but unhurt, I had fallen back, when, in a flash, the full horror of my situation burst upon me. It was the time of the dynamite scares, and—ah, mon Dieu, mam’selle! your quick wit has already perceived my misfortune.

“The train had stopped; the place was full of smoke; the hubbub of a great tumult sounded in my ears. The owner of the infernal machine was certainly destroyed in his own trap; I, at the same time, had as certainly thrown the bag. No evidence to exonerate me was now possible. Without an instant’s consideration, I opened the door upon the line, slipped out, closed it, and raced for my life through the smoke to the next station. I was successful in gaining its platform without exciting observation. News of the catastrophe had already been passed on, so that I was able, mingling with a frenzied crowd, to make my way to the streets. But panic was in my feet, and all reason had fled from my brain. I felt only that to remain in London would be to find myself, sooner or later, the most execrated of human monstrosities, on the scaffold. There and then I effaced myself for the second time, hurried to the docks, and procured a post as steward on an out-going steamer. I have never been in England since. I now give monsieur the explanation he once asked for, secure in the thought that, as ill-luck has at last conceded to me the ministrations of this dear angel of a mademoiselle, his persecution must be nearing its end before the approach of the only foe he dreads. I leave it to monsieur, if he likes, to vindicate my name.”

As he finished, Mr. G——, whose face had been wonderfully kindling towards the end, bent over the bed.

“This must not be, Carabas,” he said. “The man, the dynamiter, confessed the whole truth before he died.”

Carabas sprang up.

“Monsieur!” he cried.

“I am a lawyer,” said Mr. G——; “I was connected with the case. The man confessed, I say. If I had only known that—Carabas! Carabas! you were the one witness we wanted, and could not find!”

Campaspe knelt down, and put a pitiful young arm round the shoulders of the unluckiest man in the world.

“Not only we now,” she said softly, “but others also, it seems, owe you a great debt, dear Carabas. We shall all be unable to pay it if you die. If—if I give you a kiss, will you live to return it to me on my wedding day?”

“Mademoiselle!” cried Carabas, radiant. “You shame ill-luck; you shame even Death. See how they turn and go out by the door! Vouchsafe me that dear mascot, and I swear I will live for ever.”

He is now, and has been for long, our most loved and trusted servant, with an iron constitution, and, what is best, an unshakable conviction that the circumstances which led him on to his present position were, after all, the kindest of luck in disguise.

JACK THE SKIPPER

“Will you favour me by looking at it, young gentleman?” said the petitioner.

_It_ was a most curious little model, which the petitioner had taken reverently out of a handbag. He was a hungry, eager-looking man, in a battered bowler, shabby frockcoat, and a primordial “comforter” which might have been made for Job.

Mr. Edward Cantle, busy at his desk, paid no attention.

“It turns, sir, literally, on a question of fresh butter,” said the petitioner. “Who gets it nowadays, or realizes how, between churn and table, every pat becomes a dumping-ground for bacilli? Here, you will observe, the whole difficulty is resolved. We lead the cow into the cart itself, milk her into a separator, turn her out, drive off, and the revolution of the wheels completes the process. See? No chance for any freebooting germ! The result is simplicity itself—the customer’s butter made actually on the way to his door.”

Mr. Cantle put his pen in his mouth, blotted what he had been at work on, examined it cursorily but surely, rose, walked to the counter, and presented a form to the petitioner, all something with the air of a passionless police-inspector. He was a tall young man, loose-limbed, and with all his hardness, like a melancholy Punch’s show character, in his head. Much converse with cranks had engendered in him an air of perpetual unspoken protest, of exasperated resignation. For he was a trusted clerk in the office of the Commissioners of Patents for Inventions.

“Exactly,” he mumbled over the goose-quill. “That’s a matter for your provisional specification. Good morning.”

“It’s the most wonderful——”

“Of course—they all are. Good morning.”

“It will revolutionize——”

“Naturally. You will make your petition and declaration in the proper forms. Good morning.”

The inventor essayed another effort or two, met with no response, quavered out a sigh, packed up his treasure and vanished. The sound of his exit neither relaxed nor deepened a wrinkle on the brow of the neatly groomed Government official. He simply went on with his work.