Part 8
Minetti went out with the doctor, and came back shortly, carrying eggs and a bottle of vanilla extract and sugar. Fernet lay helpless, watching him bustling about. Finally the delicacy was made and set away in a pan of water to cool. At noon Minetti brought a blue bowl filled with custard to the bedside. It looked inviting, but Fernet shook his head.
“I am not hungry,” he lied.
The hunchback set the bowl down on a chair so that Fernet gazed upon it all day. The hunchback did not leave the room. He sat before the open window, reading from a thick book. Toward nightfall Fernet said to him:
“What do you find so interesting?”
Minetti darted a sardonic glance at his patient. “A book on _poison_. I did not realize that I had grown so rusty on the subject. Why, I remember scarcely enough to poison a field-mouse!”
He rose and crossed over to the bedside. “Do you not feel ready for the custard?”
Fernet cast a longing eye upon the yellow contents of the blue bowl.
“No. To tell the truth, I never eat it.”
Minetti shrugged.
“But I should like a glass of water.”
The hunchback drew water from the faucet. Fernet watched him like a ferret.
“At least,” thought Fernet, “he cannot drop poison in the water secretly. It is well that I can see every move he makes at such a time. I should not like to die of thirst.”
A little later Minetti removed the bowl and threw out its contents. Fernet looked on with half-closed eyes.
“What better proof could I have?” he mused. “If the custard were harmless he would eat it himself. I must get away to-morrow.”
But the next day he felt weaker than ever, and when the doctor came Minetti said, in answer to questions:
“I made a delicious custard yesterday and he ate every bit.... An oyster stew? ... with milk? I shall see that he has it at noon.”
“God help me!” muttered Fernet. “Why does he lie like this? I must get the doctor’s ear and tell him how things stand. I shall eat nothing—nothing! Thank Heaven I can drink water without fear.”
At noon the oyster stew was ready. But Fernet would have none of it. “Oysters make me ill!” he said.
Minetti merely shrugged as he had done the previous day, and set the savory dish upon a chair before the bed. It exuded tantalizing odors, until Fernet thought he would go mad with longing. Toward evening Minetti threw out the stew. And as before, when the doctor called the hunchback said:
“He ate a quart of stew and there were plenty of oysters in it, I can tell you. Do you think that a chicken fried in olive-oil would be too hearty?”
Fernet groaned. “This is horrible—horrible!” he wept to himself. “I shall die like a starving rat with toasted cheese dangling just beyond reach. God help me to rouse myself! Surely the effects of the poison he has given me must soon wear off.... There he is, reading from that big book again. Perhaps he is contriving a way to put poison in my water even though I am able to watch him when he draws me a drink.... Poison—poison everywhere. It can even be administered with the prick of a needle. Why did I read about it? Chicken fried in olive-oil ... what torture!”
――――
The chicken fried in olive-oil was a triumph—Fernet knew all this by the wisps of appetizing fragrance which drifted from the sizzling pan. Minetti made a great stir over the preparations. The tender flesh had to be rubbed thoroughly with garlic and well dusted with salt and pepper. And a quarter of a bottle of yellow-green olive-oil was first placed in the pan. When everything was ready and the chicken cooked to a turn, Minetti carried it to Fernet with a great flourish. Fernet gritted his teeth and turned his face away. He did not have the courage to invent an excuse. Minetti laid it on the chair as usual. For two hours Fernet was tortured with the sight of this tempting morsel, but at the sound of the doctor’s step upon the stair the hunchback whisked away the chicken.
“His appetite?” Minetti said, echoing the doctor’s query. “Why, one could not wish for better! Only this morning he despatched a chicken as if it had been no more than a soft-boiled egg. As a matter of fact, he is always hungry.”
“Well, well,” beamed the doctor, “that is the best of signs, and it happens that way very often in nervous cases. You are a capital nurse, my good man, and by the end of the week, if you keep feeding him up in this fashion, he should be as hearty as a school-boy.”
At that moment Minetti was called down-stairs by his landlord. Fernet struggled to lift himself; the doctor bent toward him.
“This hunchback,” Fernet gasped, “he is trying to poison me. Already I have drunk four or five of his concoctions, and that is why I am in this condition ... helpless. And he is lying when he says that I have eaten. I have touched nothing for three days.”
The doctor laid the patient back upon the pillow.
“Poison you, my friend? And for what reason?”
“Because I laughed at him. In God’s name, Doctor, see that you keep a straight face in his presence or else—”
The doctor patted Fernet’s hand and straightened the sliding bedclothes. By this time Minetti had come back. The doctor and the hunchback whispered together in a far corner. Minetti laughed and tapped his head. At the door Fernet heard the doctor say:
“Just keep up the good work and the idea will pass. It happens that way very often in nervous cases. I shall not look in again until the first of next week unless....”
Fernet groaned aloud.
“I must get away to-morrow.... I must get away to-morrow!” he kept on repeating.
――――
By the end of the week the smell of food held no temptations for Fernet. Minetti stopped cooking. And when a glass of water was drawn from the faucet Fernet had difficulty in forcing his vision to answer the strain of a searching gaze.
“When my sight fails me,” Fernet thought, dimly, “I shall either die of thirst or take the consequences.”
When the doctor finally came again Fernet closed his eyes and pretended to be asleep.
“He seems thinner,” remarked the doctor, as if he had made an important discovery.
“Well, to tell the truth,” replied the hunchback, “he has lost his appetite. I have fed him milk and eggs, but—”
“There is nothing to do but be patient,” said the doctor. “Medicine will do him no good. Just rest and food. Even a little starvation will not hurt him. People eat too much, anyway.”
At this Fernet opened his eyes and broke into a laugh that startled even Minetti. The doctor looked offended.
“Well, he is in your hands,” the old fraud said, pompously, to the hunchback. “Just keep up the good work—”
Fernet laughed again.
“He is hysterical,” proclaimed the doctor, with an air of supreme wisdom. “It happens that way very often in nervous cases.”
And he walked out with great solemnity.
“Ah, I have offended him!” thought Fernet. “Well, now they will finish me—_together_!”
――――
There followed days of delicious weakness. Fernet lay for the most part wrapt in the bliss of silver-blue visions. It seemed as if years were passing. He built shining cities, received the homage of kings, surrendered himself to the joys of ripe-lipped beauties. There were lucid intervals shot through with the malignant presence of Minetti and the puttering visits of the doctor. But these were like waking moments between darkness and dawn, filled with the half-conscious joy of a sleeper secure in the knowledge of a prolonged respite. In such moments Fernet would stir feebly and think:
“I must get away to-morrow!”
And there would succeed almost instantly a languid ecstasy at the thought that to-morrow was something remote and intangible that would never come.
At times the hunchback seemed like nothing so much as a heartless gaoler who, if he would, might open the door to some shining adventure. Gradually this idea became fixed and elaborated. Fernet’s sight grew dimmer and dimmer until he followed the presence of Minetti by the sounds he made.
“He is jingling something,” Fernet would repeat, weakly. “Ah, it must be his keys! He is searching for the one that will set me free!... Now he is oiling the lock.... He has shut the door again. I am to be held awhile longer.... I am a caged bird and just beyond is the pepper-tree. It must be glistening now in the sunlight. Well, let him lock the door, for all the good it will do him. Is not the window always open? When the time comes I shall fly out the window and leave him here—alone. Then we shall see who has the best of this bargain.”
And all the silver-blue visions would steal over him again, to be pierced briefly by the arrival of the wizened doctor.
“It is he who keeps me here!” Fernet would say to himself. “If it were not for him I could fly away—forever. Well, presently even he will lose his power.”
One day a strange man stood at his bedside. Minetti was there also, and the old fraud of a doctor. The strange man drew back the covers and put his ear to Fernet’s fluttering heart and went through other tiresome matters.... Finally he smoothed back the covers again, and as he did so he shook his head. He spoke softly, but Fernet heard him distinctly.
“It is too late.... You should have called me sooner. He wishes to die.... There is nothing to be done.”
“Yes, yes—it happens this way very often in nervous cases.”
“I have done my best. I have given him food and drink. I have even starved him. But nothing seemed to do any good.”
“No,” said the stranger; “it is his mind. He has made up his mind that.... You can do nothing with a man when....”
Fernet closed his eyes.
“A man! They think I am a man. What stupidity! Can they not see that I am a bird?... They have gone out. He is locking the door again.... I can hear the keys jingle.... Well, let him lock the door if it gives him any pleasure. The window is open and to-night....”
The footsteps of the departing visitors died away. A chuckling sound came to André Fernet and the thump of ecstatic fists brought down upon a bare table-top. The voice of Flavio Minetti was quivering triumphantly like the hot whisper of a desert wind through the room:
“Without any weapon save the mind! Ha! ha! ha!”
Fernet turned his face toward the wall. “He is laughing at _me_ now. Well, let him laugh while he may.... Is not the window open? To-morrow I shall be free ... and he?... No, _he_ cannot fly—he has a broken wing.... The window is open, André Fernet!”
BLIND VISION
_By_ MARY MITCHELL FREEDLEY From _The Century Magazine_ _Copyright, 1918, by The Century Company._ _Copyright, 1919, by Mary Mitchell Freedley._
Four months of pleasant meetings led to the superficial intimacy that war makes possible, so that I regretted the moving of the hospital and the need of a rest which took me to Paris.
It was there, one dreary evening in late November, that Marston’s name was brought to my dim little apartment, with the request that, if possible, I receive him at once. I was about to sit down to a lonely dinner, and the prospect of his company delighted me. Then he came into the room.
I had last seen him with his friend Esmè as they stood together waving me good-by, the rich, heavy summer sunshine all about them, though something more than a trick of golden light flooded their faces. They were both vitally alive in widely different ways; and yet they strangely seemed to be merely parts of each other. Esmè was an erratic dreamer and seer of visions, and lacked always, even in the unimportant aspects of living, any sense of the personal, the concrete; Marston, in curious contrast, was at all times practical, level-headed, full of the luster of life.
The man who stood hesitatingly just inside my door was not Marston, but some stone-sculptured image of the gay, glad boy I had known.
The cry I could not choke broke through his terrible immobility, and he spoke, the words sounding unreal, as though he had memorized them for a lesson and rehearsed their very intonation.
“I had to come. I had to tell some one. Then I will go away. I don’t know where; just away. You knew him, knew I loved him. Will you let me tell you? Then I will go away.”
It flashed across my mind in the second before I found words that I had half wondered why Esmè was not with him. It seemed impossible that even their bodies could be separated.
I tried to lead him to the fire and remove his overcoat, but he pushed me from him.
“No, no; don’t touch me. You don’t know, don’t understand. I’ve hunted two weeks trying to find some one—you, any one who knew us to whom I could tell it.” He hesitated, and I waited. His voice took on a curious quality of childlike appeal as he went on: “You know I loved him, know I’d given my life for his, don’t you?” Such phrasing was utterly unlike Marston, but I had seen their friendship in all the glory of its intensity, and I knew no sacrifice would have been too great. I assured him of this, and, remembering my nursing, insisted that he eat, promising to listen to anything he wanted to tell me.
We sat facing each other across the spread table, but neither of us thought of the food after the first few mouthfuls. Twice in the early part of his story I filled his glass with claret, but I cannot recollect his drinking any.
“You must think this strange of me, but I’m not really mad, not now. You see, I’ve lived with the horror ever since they gave me leave—just afterward, trying to find some one I could talk to, some one who would help me go on and finish the things we’d—
“I want to make it all as clear as possible, but I’ve got to tell it my own way, and that isn’t clear.
“Do you remember Brander? We brought him over once or twice. He was a mighty decent sort of fellow. Somehow, though, I hated his being such friends with Esmè, I’d been his only one for so long, you see. Brander was born in India, and somehow Esmè found it out; from hearing him curse in a dialect, I think. They used to talk some unheard-of jargon to each other and enjoyed it.
“Well, one day Brander got smashed in a fight up the lines, along the British front, and was dying. He kept asking for Esmè, calling his name, and when Esmè got word of it, of course he started at once. He took one of the baby Nieuports; they’re fast, and not much of a target from below. He knew the Germans had a masked battery which he’d have to cross.
“I thought I’d like to see him across the enemy country, so I let him get a good start, and then I went up. I lost sight of him in a cloud-bank, and must have flown beyond him, for when I cleared it, he was behind and below me, and coming toward him a big German fighting-plane.
“Esmè’s wasn’t a fighting-machine, and he should have tried to get away; but he must have seen the German a second after I did and judged it too late. He fired his revolver once, then suddenly seemed to lose control of his machine, and dropped to the level of the other. He must have thought he was done for and made his decision on the instant, counting it better to try to ram the German plane and go down to death together than to take the millionth chance of landing and let the enemy escape. He went head on at the other, and they fell, woven as one machine, just inside the German lines.
“Somehow I got back to our fellows; God knows I wish I hadn’t.
“Every man in our escadrille paid in his own way unconscious tribute to Esmè’s memory. We were awfully and justly proud of him,—it’s something to have died for France,—but for all of us the fun, the excitement, of the work had gone, been snuffed out. No one turned corkscrew somersaults, Esmè’s great stunt; no one did any of his special tricks any more, not even to show off before the new men.
“We got one of those French immortelle wreaths, tied to it his name and the number of the machine he was driving and dropped it inside their lines. The next morning just at sunrise one of their men flew over our hangars and threw down a stone. Painted on it in German was, ‘Your dead sends thanks’! That’s just like them, brutal, and the last word on their side.
“There’s always work to be done in war, each day’s effort to be made, and the mercy of constant doing helped me. I used to try to forget the fighting and the horrors and go back to the old days.
“Esmè never was like other men in certain ways—all the early things that were unconsciously part of him, I suppose. Even as a little shaver at school he couldn’t be made to understand the ‘why’ of a school-boy’s code. He used to rush headlong into anything and everything, and he generally came out on top. He did the most outrageous things calmly, unthinkingly, and we always made excuses, forgave him, because he was Esmè. At college the men were sometimes rather nasty to him, partly because he couldn’t understand their points of view; and he used to stare a minute and then loll away. He never hurried,—perhaps it was his Oriental blood,—but he always got there, and could make his very lolling an insult.
“I used to wonder just what it was that made Esmè a great aviator. He was a phenomenally good pilot, although he himself never seemed to realize his remarkable ability. His losing control of his machine that day was inexplicable. But one can’t tell. That high up the slightest thing uncounted on means death. Those days after—
“A month went by. One morning our anti-aircrafters started, and we rushed to see what was doing, and there, just a blot against the unclouded sky, was a plane turning corkscrew somersaults one after another as it came lower and lower. I went mad for a few minutes; _only_ Esmè could turn corkscrews in such a way. I got the captain, and begged him to give orders for our gunners to stop. I must have made him feel the certainty of the wild thing I believed, for he gave the order. It was one of our own machines, in it Esmè, alone—Esmè in the flesh before us, drawn and haggard and old, but Esmè.
“At first he couldn’t speak. We called it strain; perhaps in any other man we shouldn’t, even in our minds, have given it its real name—emotion. He was like a girl. When I put my arm across his shoulders in the old, familiar way, he began to weep silently.
“The fellows were awfully decent and drifted away out of kindness, leaving him alone with me. We went to our tent, the one we’d shared together, and there, after a little while, he told me how it all happened.
“When the two machines fell together in a tangled heap, by some miraculous chance he was unhurt. The German was dead before they landed, he thought.
“Then began the slow, torturing weeks. They kept at him day and night, night and day. They never left him alone, not just guards, but some one always near him whose only business it was to _watch_ him.
“He was a marked man. The Germans knew him to be our best, perhaps the best aviator in all the Allied armies, and they needed him. They tried every sort of hellish torture on him, things one mustn’t think about, to get him to take up one of their photographers over the French trenches, knowing he could do certain notorious tricks which would prove him our man and so render the taking of the necessary pictures comparatively safe. He stuck it out, growing weaker and weaker, until the order came that he was to take up their man in his own machine (they’d used their diabolical skill to reconstruct it), or— Perhaps if it had been an order to shoot him then and there, his courage would have held out; but the other— He was broken, weakened, driven; he gave in.
“They’d taken photographs for miles along the French and British fronts when Esmè noticed the strap which held the camera man was loosened. The man was busy adjusting the films for a new set. Esmè pulled, the strap gave way; he lurched the machine suddenly, and turned it over,—his famous somersault trick,—and then, without looking back or down, made for our camp.
“Sometimes one forgets to guard one’s expression. I suppose mine showed the horror I couldn’t help feeling. He put his hand out to touch me, but I jumped up and moved away. ‘Marston,’ he said, ‘what’s the matter? Aren’t you glad? There wasn’t any other way but to give in to them. _You_ don’t know what it’s like to feel yourself dying by inches, a little piece more every day, all the time knowing you can’t die _enough_, and then the chance to be free once more, in the air, clean; you only fifty miles away, and one man between us—one man. What was his life among so many? It’s war, Marston; war.’
“I failed him then. I didn’t stop to think of his overwrought condition, mentally and physically. He simply wasn’t responsible. I had a quick vision of the way the other men would take it, of how I’d try and try to explain Esmè’s action because it was Esmè’s, and all the time I’d know the explanations weren’t any good. We have a code all our own; no rules, no mention ever made of its interpretation—just an aviator’s honor.
“Now, looking back, I can’t think why Esmè’s dropping the man out seemed so hideous. It did, though, and I failed him. He wanted to hear me say the words of welcome he’d counted on, and I just stood and looked at him. He was making queer, whimpering little noises, with his mouth wobbling all over his face, and I watched him. He was suffering, and I looked on.
“After a while the whimperings turned into words, and the words started with giggles. ‘A-aren’t you g-glad, Marston? A-aren’t you g-glad? A-aren’t you?’
“I turned on him, all the friendship and the memories of the years behind swept away. I didn’t know what I was saying. I’m not sure now; something about the things one doesn’t do, that it wasn’t war the way we fought it to drop a man thousands of feet who was only doing his duty. It was murder. Over and over I said it—that word murder. He wasn’t my friend; he was a murderer!