After Dark, Wilkie Collins [best short novels .txt] 📗

machinery together, and, leaving his men to work it, descended with me to the bedroom. The smothering canopy was then lowered, but not so noiselessly as I had seen it lowered. When I mentioned this to the Sub-prefect, his answer, simple as it was, had a terrible significance. “My men,” said he, “are working down the bed-top for the first time—the men whose money you won were in better practice.”

We left the house in the sole possession of two police agents—every one of the inmates being removed to prison on the spot. The Sub-prefect, after taking down my “proces verbal” in his office, returned with me to my hotel to get my passport. “Do you think,” I asked, as I gave it to him, “that any men have really been smothered in that bed, as they tried to smother me?”

“I have seen dozens of drowned men laid out at the Morgue,” answered the Sub-prefect, “in whose pocketbooks were found letters stating that they had committed suicide in the Seine, because they had lost everything at the gaming table. Do I know how many of those men entered the same gambling-house that you entered? won as you won? took that bed as you took it? slept in it? were smothered in it? and were privately thrown into the river, with a letter of explanation written by the murderers and placed in their pocketbooks? No man can say how many or how few have suffered the fate from which you have escaped. The people of the gambling-house kept their bedstead machinery a secret from us—even from the police! The dead kept the rest of the secret for them. Good-night, or rather good-morning, Monsieur Faulkner! Be at my office again at nine o’clock—in the meantime, au revoir!”

The rest of my story is soon told. I was examined and re-examined; the gambling-house was strictly searched all through from top to bottom; the prisoners were separately interrogated; and two of the less guilty among them made a confession. I discovered that the Old Soldier was the master of the gambling-house—_justice_ discovered that he had been drummed out of the army as a vagabond years ago; that he had been guilty of all sorts of villainies since; that he was in possession of stolen property, which the owners identified; and that he, the croupier, another accomplice, and the woman who had made my cup of coffee, were all in the secret of the bedstead. There appeared some reason to doubt whether the inferior persons attached to the house knew anything of the suffocating machinery; and they received the benefit of that doubt, by being treated simply as thieves and vagabonds. As for the Old Soldier and his two head myrmidons, they went to the galleys; the woman who had drugged my coffee was imprisoned for I forget how many years; the regular attendants at the gambling-house were considered “suspicious” and placed under “surveillance”; and I became, for one whole week (which is a long time) the head “lion” in Parisian society. My adventure was dramatized by three illustrious play-makers, but never saw theatrical daylight; for the censorship forbade the introduction on the stage of a correct copy of the gambling-house bedstead.

One good result was produced by my adventure, which any censorship must have approved: it cured me of ever again trying “Rouge et Noir” as an amusement. The sight of a green cloth, with packs of cards and heaps of money on it, will henceforth be forever associated in my mind with the sight of a bed canopy descending to suffocate me in the silence and darkness of the night.

 

Just as Mr. Faulkner pronounced these words he started in his chair, and resumed his stiff, dignified position in a great hurry. “Bless my soul!” cried he, with a comic look of astonishment and vexation, “while I have been telling you what is the real secret of my interest in the sketch you have so kindly given to me, I have altogether forgotten that I came here to sit for my portrait. For the last hour or more I must have been the worst model you ever had to draw from!”

“On the contrary, you have been the best,” said I. “I have been trying to catch your likeness; and, while telling your story, you have unconsciously shown me the natural expression I wanted to insure my success.”

NOTE BY MRS. KERBY.

I cannot let this story end without mentioning what the chance saying was which caused it to be told at the farmhouse the other night. Our friend the young sailor, among his other quaint objections to sleeping on shore, declared that he particularly hated four-post beds, because he never slept in one without doubting whether the top might not come down in the night and suffocate him. I thought this chance reference to the distinguishing feature of William’s narrative curious enough, and my husband agreed with me. But he says it is scarcely worth while to mention such a trifle in anything so important as a book. I cannot venture, after this, to do more than slip these lines in modestly at the end of the story. If the printer should notice my few last words, perhaps he may not mind the trouble of putting them into some out-of-the-way corner.

L. K.

PROLOGUE TO THE SECOND STORY.

The beginning of an excellent connection which I succeeded in establishing in and around that respectable watering-place, Tidbury-on-the-Marsh, was an order for a life-size oil portrait of a great local celebrity—one Mr. Boxsious, a solicitor, who was understood to do the most thriving business of any lawyer in the town.

The portrait was intended as a testimonial “expressive (to use the language of the circular forwarded to me at the time) of the eminent services of Mr. Boxsious in promoting and securing the prosperity of the town.” It had been subscribed for by the “Municipal Authorities and Resident Inhabitants” of Tidbury-on-the-Marsh; and it was to be presented, when done, to Mrs. Boxsious, “as a slight but sincere token”—and so forth. A timely recommendation from one of my kindest friends and patrons placed the commission for painting the likeness in my lucky hands; and I was instructed to attend on a certain day at Mr. Boxsious’s private residence, with all my materials ready for taking a first sitting.

On arriving at the house, I was shown into a very prettily furnished morning-room. The bow-window looked out on a large inclosed meadow, which represented the principal square in Tidbury. On the opposite side of the meadow I could see the new hotel (with a wing lately added), and close by, the old hotel obstinately unchanged since it had first been built. Then, further down the street, the doctor’s house, with a colored lamp and a small door-plate, and the banker’s office, with a plain lamp and a big door-plate—then some dreary private lodging-houses—then, at right angles to these, a street of shops; the cheese-monger’s very small, the chemist’s very smart, the pastry-cook’s very dowdy, and the green-grocer’s very dark, I was still looking out at the view thus presented, when I was suddenly apostrophized by a glib, disputatious voice behind me.

“Now, then, Mr. Artist,” cried the voice, “do you call that getting ready for work? Where are your paints and brushes, and all the rest of it? My name’s Boxsious, and I’m here to sit for my picture.”

I turned round, and confronted a little man with his legs astraddle, and his hands in his pockets. He had light-gray eyes, red all round the lids, bristling pepper-colored hair, an unnaturally rosy complexion, and an eager, impudent, clever look. I made two discoveries in one glance at him: First, that he was a wretched subject for a portrait; secondly, that, whatever he might do or say, it would not be of the least use for me to stand on my dignity with him.

“I shall be ready directly, sir,” said I.

“Ready directly?” repeated my new sitter. “What do you mean, Mr. Artist, by ready directly? I’m ready now. What was your contract with the Town Council, who have subscribed for this picture? To paint the portrait. And what was my contract? To sit for it. Here am I ready to sit, and there are you not ready to paint me. According to all the rules of law and logic, you are committing a breach of contract already. Stop! let’s have a look at your paints. Are they the best quality? If not, I warn you, sir, there’s a second breach of contract! Brushes, too? Why, they’re old brushes, by the Lord Harry! The Town Council pays you well, Mr. Artist; why don’t you work for them with new brushes? What? you work best with old? I contend, sir, that you can’t. Does my housemaid clean best with an old broom? Do my clerks write best with old pens? Don’t color up, and don’t look as if you were going to quarrel with me! You can’t quarrel with me. If you were fifty times as irritable a man as you look, you couldn’t quarrel with me. I’m not young, and I’m not touchy—I’m Boxsious, the lawyer; the only man in the world who can’t be insulted, try it how you like!”

He chuckled as he said this, and walked away to the window. It was quite useless to take anything he said seriously, so I finished preparing my palette for the morning’s work with the utmost serenity of look and manner that I could possibly assume.

“There!” he went on, looking out of the window; “do you see that fat man slouching along the Parade, with a snuffy nose? That’s my favorite enemy, Dunball. He tried to quarrel with me ten years ago, and he has done nothing but bring out the hidden benevolence of my character ever since. Look at him! look how he frowns as he turns this way. And now look at me! I can smile and nod to him. I make a point of always smiling and nodding to him—it keeps my hand in for other enemies. Good-morning! (I’ve cast him twice in heavy damages) good-morning, Mr. Dunball. He bears malice, you see; he won’t speak; he’s short in the neck, passionate, and four times as fat as he ought to be; he has fought against my amiability for ten mortal years; when he can’t fight any longer, he’ll die suddenly, and I shall be the innocent cause of it.”

Mr. Boxsious uttered this fatal prophecy with extraordinary complacency, nodding and smiling out of the window all the time at the unfortunate man who had rashly tried to provoke him. When his favorite enemy was out of sight, he turned away, and indulged himself in a brisk turn or two up and down the room. Meanwhile I lifted my canvas on the easel, and was on the point of asking him to sit down, when he assailed me again.

“Now, Mr. Artist,” he cried, quickening his walk impatiently, “in the interests of the Town Council, your employers, allow me to ask you for the last time when you are going to begin?”

“And allow me, Mr. Boxsious, in the interest of the Town Council also,” said I, “to ask you if your notion of the proper way of sitting for your portrait is to walk about the room!”

“Aha! well put—devilish well put!” returned Mr. Boxsious; “that’s the only sensible thing you have said since you entered my house; I begin to like you already.” With these words he nodded at me approvingly, and jumped into the high chair that I had placed for him with the alacrity of a young man.

“I say, Mr. Artist,” he went on, when I had put him into the right position (he insisted on the front view of his face being taken, because the Town