McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 by Various

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"And then those behind cried out that there was enough talk. Would he
yield or would he die? And they rushed forward, pressing the nearest
against him. And he, an old man, frail and feeble--yet once he was
as brave a man as any--cried, in his weak tones: 'Enough, friends, I
yield; I--' And they fell back. But my lord stood for an instant; then
he set his hand to his side, and swayed and tottered and fell, and the
blood ran from his side. And the Lord Constantine fell on his knees
beside him, crying: 'Who stabbed him?' And Vlacho smiled grimly, and
the others looked at one another. And I, who had run out from the
doorway whence I had seen it all, knelt by my lord and stanched the
blood. Then Vlacho said, fixing his eyes straight and keen on the Lord
Constantine, 'It was not I, my lord,' 'Nor I, by heaven!' cried the
Lord Constantine; and he rose to his feet, demanding: 'Who struck the
blow?' But none answered, and he went on: 'Nay, if it were in error,
if it were because he would not yield, speak! There shall be pardon,'
But Vlacho, hearing this, turned himself round and faced them all,
saying: 'Did he not sell us like oxen and like pigs?' and he broke
into the death chant, and they all raised the chant, none caring any
more who had struck the blow. And Lord Constantine--" The impetuous
flow of the old woman's story was frozen to sudden silence.

"Well, and Lord Constantine?" said I, in low, stern tones, that
quivered with excitement; and I felt Denny's hand, that was on my arm,
jump up and down. "And Constantine, woman?"

"Nay, he did nothing," said she. "He talked with Vlacho a while, and
then they went away, and he bade me tend my lord, and went himself
to seek the Lady Euphrosyne. And presently he came back with her. Her
eyes were red, and she wept afresh when she saw my poor lord, for she
loved him. And she sat by him till Constantine came and told her that
you would not go, and that you and your friends would be killed if
you did not go. And then, weeping to leave my lord, she went, praying
heaven she might find him alive when she returned. 'I must go,' she
said to me; 'for though it is a shameful thing that the island should
have been sold, yet these men must be persuaded to go away and not
meet death. Kiss him for me if he awakes.' Thus she went, and left
me with my lord, and I fear he will die." And she ended in a burst of
sobbing.

For a moment there was silence. Then I said again:

"Who struck the blow, woman? Who struck the blow?"

She shrank from me as though I had struck her. "I do not know, I do
not know," she moaned.

Then a thing happened that seemed strange and awful in the gloomy,
dark hall. For the stricken man opened his eyes, his lips moved, and
he groaned: "Constantine! You, Constantine!" and the old woman's eyes
met mine for a moment, and fell to the ground again.

"Why--why, Constantine?" moaned the wounded man. "I had yielded--I had
yielded, Constantine. I would have sent them--" His words ceased, his
eyes closed, his lips met again, but met only to part. A moment later
his jaw dropped. The old lord of Neopalia was dead.

Then I, carried away by anger and by hatred of the man who, for a
reason I did not yet understand, had struck so foul a blow against his
kinsman and an old man, did a thing so rash that it seems to me now,
when I consider it in the cold light of the past, a mad deed. Yet then
I could do nothing else; and Denny's face, aye, and the eyes of the
others, too, told me that they were with me.

"Compose this old man's body," I said, "and we will watch it. And do
you go and tell this Constantine Stefanopoulos that I know his crime,
that I know who struck that blow, and that what I know all men shall
know, and that I will not rest day nor night until he has paid the
penalty of this murder. And tell him I swore this on the honor of an
English gentleman."

"And say I swore it, too!" cried Denny; and Hogvardt and Watkins, not
making bold to speak, ranged up close to me; and I knew that they also
meant what I meant.

The old woman looked at me with searching eyes.

"You are a bold man, my lord," said she.

"I see nothing to be afraid of up to now," said I. "Such courage as
is needed to tell a scoundrel what I think of him, I believe I can
claim."

"But he will never let you go now. You would go to Rhodes, and tell
his--tell what you say of him."

"Yes, and farther than Rhodes, if need be. He shall die for it as sure
as I live."

A thousand men might have tried in vain to persuade me; the treachery
of Constantine had fired my heart and driven out all opposing motives.

"Do as I bid you," said I, sternly, "and waste no time on it. We will
watch here by the old man till you return."

"My lord," she replied, "you run on your own death. And you are young,
and the young man by you is yet younger."

"We are not dead yet," said Denny; and I had never seen him look as
he did then; for the gayety was out of his face, and he spoke from
between stern-set lips.

She raised her hands toward heaven--whether in prayer or in
lamentation, I do not know. We turned away and left her to her sad
offices, and going back to our places, waited there till dawn began to
break, and from the narrow windows we saw the gray crests of the waves
dancing and frolicking in the early dawn. As I watched them the old
woman was by my elbow.

"It is done, my lord," said she. "Are you still of the same mind?"

"Still of the same," said I.

"It is death--death for you all," she said; and without more she went
to the great door. Hogvardt opened it for her, and she walked away
down the road, between the high rocks that bounded the path on either
side. Then we went and carried the old man to a room that opened off
the hall, and, returning, stood in the doorway, cooling our brows in
the fresh, early air. And while we stood, Hogvardt said suddenly:

"It is five o'clock."

"Then we have only an hour to live," said I, smiling, "if we do not
make for the yacht."

"You're not going back to the yacht, my lord?"

"I'm puzzled," I admitted. "If we go this ruffian will escape. And if
we don't go--"

"Why, we," Hogvardt ended for me, "may not escape."

I saw that Hogvardt's sense of responsibility was heavy; he always
regarded himself as the shepherd, his employers as the sheep. I
believe this attitude of his confirmed my destiny, for I said, without
hesitation:

"Oh, we'll chance that. When they know what a villain the fellow is,
they'll turn against him. Besides, we said we'd wait here."

Denny seized on my last words with alacrity. When you are determined
to do a rash thing, there is great comfort in feeling that you are
already committed to it by some previous act or promise.

"So we did," he cried. "Then that settles it, Hogvardt."

"His lordship certainly expressed that intention," observed Watkins,
appearing at this moment with a large loaf of bread and a great
pitcher of milk. I eyed these viands.

"I bought the house and its contents," said I. "Come along."

Watkins's further researches produced a large chunk of native cheese;
and when he had set this down, he remarked:

"In a pen behind the house, close to the kitchen windows, there are
two goats; and your lordship sees there, on the right of the front
door, two cows tethered."

I began to laugh, Watkins was so wise and solemn.

"We can stand a siege, you mean?" I asked. "Well, I hope it won't come
to that."

Hogvardt rose, and began to move round the hall, examining the weapons
that decorated the walls. From time to time he grunted disapprovingly;
the guns were useless, rusted, out of date, and there was no
ammunition for them. But when he had almost completed his circuit,
he gave an exclamation of satisfaction, and came to me, holding an
excellent modern rifle and a large cartridge case.

"See!" he grunted, in huge satisfaction. "C.S. on the stock, I suspect
you can guess whose it is, my lord."

"This is very thoughtful of Constantine," observed Denny, who was
employing himself in cutting imaginary lemons in two with a fine
damascened scimiter that he had taken from the wall.

"As for the cows," said I, "perhaps they will carry them off."

"I think not," said Hogvardt, taking an aim with the rifle through the
window.

I looked at my watch. It was five minutes past six.

"Well, we can't go now," said I. "It's settled. What a comfort!" I
wonder if I had ever in my heart meant to go!

The next hour passed very quietly. We sat smoking pipes and cigars,
and talking in subdued tones. The recollection of the dead man in
the adjoining room sobered the excitement to which our position would
otherwise have given occasion. Indeed, I suppose that I, at least, who
had led the rest into this _imbroglio_ through my whim, should have
been utterly overwhelmed by the burden on me. But I was not. Perhaps
Hogvardt's assumption of responsibility relieved me; perhaps I was too
full of anger against Constantine to think of the risks we ourselves
ran; and I was more than half persuaded that the revelation of what he
had done would rob him of his power to hurt us. Moreover, if I might
judge from the words I heard on the road, we had on our side an ally
of uncertain, but probably considerable, power, in the sweet-voiced
girl whom the old woman called the Lady Euphrosyne; and she would not
support her uncle's murderer even though he were her cousin.

Presently Watkins carried me off to view his pen of goats, and, having
passed through the lofty, flagged kitchen, I found myself in a sort of
compound formed by the rocks. The ground had been levelled for a few
yards, and the cliffs rose straight to the height of ten or twelve
feet; from the top of this artificial bank they ran again, in wooded
slopes, toward the peak of the mountain. I followed their course
with my eye, and five hundred or more feet above us, just beneath the
summit, I perceived a little wooden _chalet_ or bungalow. Blue smoke
issued from the chimneys, and, even while we looked, a figure came out
of the door and stood still in front of it, apparently looking down
toward the house.

"It's a woman," I pronounced.

"Yes, my lord. A peasant's wife, I suppose."

"I dare say," said I. But I soon doubted Watkins's opinion--in the
first place, because the woman's dress did not look like that of
a peasant woman; and, secondly, because she went into the house,
appeared again, and levelled at us what was, if I mistook not, a large
pair of binocular glasses. Now, such things were not likely to be
in the possession of the peasants of Neopalia. Then she suddenly
retreated, and through the silence of those still slopes we heard the
door of the cottage closed with violence.

"She doesn't seem to like the look of us," said I.

"Possibly," suggested Watkins, with deference, "she did not expect to
see your lordship here."

"I should think that's very likely, Watkins," said I.

I was recalled from the survey of my new domains--my satisfaction in
the thought that they were mine survived all the disturbing features
of the situation--by a call from Denny. In response to it I hurried
back to the hall, and found him at the window, with Constantine's
rifle rested on the sill.

"I could pick him off pat," said Denny, laughingly, and he pointed to
a figure which was approaching the house. It was a man riding a stout
pony. When he came within about two hundred yards of the house he
stopped, took a leisurely look, and then waved a white handkerchief.

"The laws of war must be observed," said I, smiling. "This is a
flag of truce." And I opened the door, stepped out, and waved my
handkerchief in return. The man, reassured, began to mop his brow with
the flag of truce, and put his pony to a trot. I now perceived him to
be the innkeeper Vlacho, and a moment later he reined up beside me,
giving an angry jerk at his pony's bridle.

"I have searched the island for you," he cried. "I am weary and hot.
How came you here?"

I explained to him briefly how I had chanced to take possession of my
house, and added, significantly:

"But has no message come to you from me?"

He smiled with equal meaning as he answered:

"No. An old woman came to speak to a gentleman who is in the village."

"Yes, to Constantine Stefanopoulos," said I with a nod.

"Well, then, if you will, to the Lord Constantine," he admitted, with
a careless shrug; "but her message was for his ear only. He took her
aside, and they talked alone."

"You know what she said, though."

"That is between my Lord Constantine and me."

"And the young lady knows it, I hope--the Lady Euphrosyne?"

Vlacho smiled broadly.

"We could not distress her with such a silly tale," he answered; and
he leant down toward me. "Nobody has heard the message but the lord
and one man he told it to; and nobody will. If that old woman spoke,
she--well, she knows, and will not speak."

"And you back up this murderer?" I cried.

"Murderer?" he repeated, questioningly. "Indeed, sir, it was an
accident, done in hot blood. It was the old man's fault, because he
tried to sell the island."

"He did sell the island," I corrected. "And a good many other people
will hear of what happened to him."

He looked at me again, smiling.

"If you shouted in the hearing of every man in Neopalia, what would
they do?" he asked, scornfully.

"Well, I should hope," I returned, "that they'd hang Constantine to
the tallest tree you've got here."

"They would do this," he said, with a nod; and he began to sing softly
the chant I had heard the night before.

I was disgusted at his savagery, but I said coolly:

"And the lady?"

"The lady believes what she is told, and will do as her cousin bids
her. Is she not his affianced wife?"

"The deuce she is!" I cried in amazement, fixing a keen scrutiny on
Vlacho's face. The face told me nothing.

"Certainly," he said, gently. "And they will rule the island
together."

"Will they, though?" said I. I was becoming rather annoyed. "There are
one or two obstacles in the way of that. First, it's my island."

He shrugged his shoulders again. "That," he seemed to say, "is not
worth answering." But I had a second shot in the locker for him, and
I let him have it for what it was worth. I knew it might be worth
nothing, but I tried it.

"And secondly," I observed, "how many wives does Constantine propose
to have?"

A hit! A hit! A palpable hit! I could have sung in glee. The fellow
was dumb-founded. He turned red, bit his lip, scowled fiercely.

"What do you mean?" he blurted out, with an attempt at blustering
defiance.

"Never mind what I mean. Something, perhaps, that the Lady Euphrosyne
might care to know. And now, my man, what do you want of me?"

He recovered his composure, and stated his errand with his old, cool
assurance; but the cloud of vexation still hung heavy on his brow.

"On behalf of the lady of the island--" he began.

"Or shall we say her cousin?" I interrupted.

"Which you will," he answered, as though it were not worth while to
wear the mask any longer. "On behalf, then, of my Lord Constantine, I
am to offer you safe passage to your boat, and a return of the money
you have paid."

"How's he going to pay that?"

"He will pay it in a year, and give you security meanwhile."

"And the condition is that I give up the island?" I asked; and I began
to think that perhaps I owed it to my companions to acquiesce in this
proposal, however distasteful it might be to me.

"Yes," said Vlacho; "and there is one other small condition, which
will not trouble you."

"And what's that? You're rich in conditions."

"You are lucky to be offered any. It is that you mind your own
business."

"I came here for the purpose," I observed.

"And that you undertake, for yourself and your companions, on your
word of honor, to speak not a word of what has passed in the island,
or of the affairs of the Lord Constantine."

"And if I won't give my word?"

"The yacht is in our hands; Demetri and Spiro are our men; there will
be no ship here for two months."

The fellow paused, smiling at me. I took the liberty of ending his
period for him.

"And there is," I said, returning the smile, "as we know by now, a
particularly sudden and fatal form of fever in the island."

"Certainly; you may chance to find that out," said he.

"But is there no antidote?" I asked; and I showed him the butt of my
revolver in the pocket of my coat.

"It may keep it off for a day or two; not longer. You have the bottle
there, but most of the drug is with your baggage at the inn."

His parable was true enough; we had only two or three dozen cartridges
apiece.

"But there is plenty of food for Constantine's rifle," said I,
pointing to the muzzle of it, which protruded from the window.

He suddenly became impatient.

"Your answer, sir?" he demanded, peremptorily.

"Here it is," said I. "I'll keep the island, and I'll see Constantine
hanged."

"So be it, so be it!" he cried. "You are warned; so be it!" and
without another word he turned his pony and trotted rapidly off down
the road. And I went back to the house, feeling, I must confess, not
in the best of spirits. But when my friends heard all that had passed,
they applauded me, and we made up our minds to "see it through," as
Denny said.

That day passed quietly. At noon we carried the old lord out of his
house, having wrapped him in a sheet, and we dug for him as good a
grave as we could, in a little patch of ground that lay outside the
windows of his own chapel, a small erection at the west end of the
house. There he must lie for the moment. This sad work done, we came
back, and--so swift are life's changes--we killed a goat for dinner,
and watched Watkins dress it. Thus the afternoon wore away, and when
evening came we ate our goat flesh, and Hogvardt milked our cows, and
we sat down to consider the position of the garrison.

But the evening was hot, and we adjourned out of doors, grouping
ourselves on the broad marble pavement in front of the door.
Hogvardt had just begun to expound a very elaborate scheme of escape,
depending, so far as I could make out, on our reaching the other side
of the island, and finding there a boat, which we had no reason to
suppose would be there, when Denny raised his hand, saying, "Hark!"

From the direction of the village and the harbor came the sound of a
horn, blown long and shrill, and echoed back in strange, protracted
shrieks and groans from the hillside behind us; and following on the
blast, we heard, low in the distance and indistinct, yet rising and
falling, and rising again in savage defiance and exultation, the death
chant that One-eyed Alexander the Bard had made on the death of
Stefan Stefanopoulos two hundred years ago. For a few minutes we sat
listening, and I do not think that any of us were very comfortable.
Then I rose to my feet, and I said:

"Hogvardt, old fellow, I fancy that scheme of yours must wait a
little. Unless I'm very much mistaken, we're going to have a lively
evening."

Well, and then we shook hands all round, and went in, and bolted the
door, and sat down to wait. We heard the death chant through the walls
now, for it was coming nearer.

(_To be continued._)

[Illustration]

[Illustration: A BROOK IN THE DEPARTMENT OF VAR, FRANCE. FROM A
PAINTING BY HENRI HARPIGNIES.

In the galleries of the Luxembourg, Paris. First exhibited at the
Salon of 1888.]

A CENTURY OF PAINTING.

NOTES DESCRIPTIVE AND CRITICAL.--COROT AND THE MODERN PASTORAL.--THE
MEN OF 1830.--ROUSSEAU, DIAZ, DUPRE, AND DAUBIGNY.--FOUR FIGURE
PAINTERS OF DIFFERING AIMS.

BY WILL H. LOW.

"Pictures?" boasted Turner. "Give me canvas, colors, a room to work
in, _with a door that will lock_, and it is not difficult to paint
pictures!" This was the spirit of the older men, against which
Constable rose in his might. It was the legacy of the past; the
principle, or the lack of it, which permitted Titian (in a picture now
in the National Gallery, London) to paint the shadows of his figures
falling away from the spectator into the picture, and _towards_ the
setting sun in the background. The return to nature, however, was not
accomplished at once. It is doubtful, indeed, if a painter can ever
arrive at a respectable technical achievement without imbibing certain
conventions which prevent complete submission to nature; absolute
_naivete_ thus becoming only theoretically possible. Constable, with
all his independence, dared not throw over all received canons of art.
And Gericault, while daring to paint a modern theme, daring still more
to embody it in forms plausibly like average humanity, and refusing to
place on a raft in mid-ocean a carefully chosen assortment of antique
statues, still did not think, apparently, that the heavily marked
shadows prevalent throughout his picture were never seen under the
far-reaching arch of the sky, but fell from a studio window. Nor do
the early pictures by Corot free themselves from the influences of the
academy at once. In the studies which he bequeathed to the Louvre--two
tiny canvases on which are depicted the Coliseum and the Castle of St.
Angelo at Rome--the conventional picking out of detail, the painting
of separate objects by themselves, without due relation to each other,
is the effect of early study; and it is only in the as yet timid
reaching for effect of light and atmosphere that we feel the Corot of
the future. These studies were painted in 1826; and as late as 1835
the same influences are manifest in the "Hagar and Ishmael in the
Desert," a historical landscape of the kind dear to the academies,
but saved and made of interest by the native qualities of the painter
struggling to the surface.

Jean Baptiste Camille Corot was born in Paris, July 28, 1796. His
father was originally a barber; but, marrying a dressmaker, he joined
forces with his wife to such effect that they became the fashionable
house of their time; and a "dress from Corot's" found its place in the
comedies of the early part of the century, very much as the name of
Worth has been potent in later days. The youth's distaste for business
(certain unfortunate experiences in selling olive-colored cloth
leading directly thereto) at length vanquished the parents' opposition
to his choice of a career; and after a solemn family conclave, it was
decided that he was to have an allowance of three hundred dollars a
year, and be free to follow his own inclinations. Procuring materials
for work, Corot sat him down the same day on the bank of the Seine,
almost under the windows of his father's shop, and began to paint. It
is prettily related that one of the shop-women, Mademoiselle Rose by
name, was the only person of his _entourage_ who sympathized with the
young fellow, and who came to look at his work to encourage him. Late
in life the good Corot said: "Look at my first study; the colors are
still bright, the hour and day remain fixed on the canvas; and only
the other day Mademoiselle Rose came to see me; and, alas, the old
maid and the old man, how faded they are!"

[Illustration: JEAN BAPTISTE CAMILLE COROT. AFTER A PHOTOGRAPH FROM
LIFE.

This portrait represents "good Papa Corot," as he was universally
known, at work out of doors.]

It was Corot's good fortune to meet at the start a young landscape
painter, Michallon, who had lately returned from Rome, where he had
gone after winning the prize for historical landscape, which then
formed part of the curriculum of the Ecole des Beaux Arts. Michallon
died in 1824, when only twenty-eight years old, too soon to have shown
the fruits of an independent spirit which had already revolted against
the trammels of the school. Desiring to save Corot from the mistakes
which he had himself made, he adjured him to remain _naif_, to paint
nature as he saw it, and to disregard the counsels of those who were
for the moment in authority. Gentle, almost timid by nature, having
met so far in life with little but disapproval, Corot disregarded his
friend's advice at first, and placed himself under the guidance of
Victor Bertin, a painter then in vogue, and, needless to say, deeply
imbued with scholastic tradition. In his company Corot made his first
voyage to Italy, in 1825, and thus came for the first time under the
true classic influence. The lessons taught in the school of nature,
where Claude had studied, were those best fitted for the temperament
of Corot, who has been called "a child of the eighteenth century,
grown in the midst of that imitation of antiquity so ardent, and so
often unintelligent, where the Directory copied Athens, and the Empire
forced itself to imitate Rome." It is a curious and interesting fact
that when, as in this case, the spirit of classicism reveals itself
anew, its never-dying influence can be the motive for work as
fresh and modern as that of Corot. It is also true that the rigid
enforcement of the study of drawing was a healthy influence on Corot's
early life. All the pictures of his early period show the most minute
attention to form and modelling; and when he had finally rid himself
of the hard manner which it entailed, there remained the substratum of
a constructive basis upon which his freer brush played at will.

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