CHAPTER XI.

The door clanged, shutting out all but a little light, and I was left

alone on my back. By the tricks I had long since learned in the jacket,

I managed to writhe myself across the floor an inch at a time until the

edge of the sole of my right shoe touched the door. There was an

immense cheer in this. I was not utterly alone. If the need arose, I

could at least rap knuckle talk to Morrell.

But Warden Atherton must have left strict injunctions on the guards,

for, though I managed to call Morrell and tell him I intended trying

the experiment, he was prevented by the guards from replying. Me they

could only curse, for, in so far as I was in the jacket for a ten days’

bout, I was beyond all threat of punishment.

I remember remarking at the time my serenity of mind. The customary

pain of the jacket was in my body, but my mind was so passive that I

was no more aware of the pain than was I aware of the floor beneath me

or the walls around me. Never was a man in better mental and spiritual

condition for such an experiment. Of course, this was largely due to my

extreme weakness. But there was more to it. I had long schooled myself

to be oblivious to pain. I had neither doubts nor fears. All the

content of my mind seemed to be an absolute faith in the over-lordship

of the mind. This passivity was almost dream-like, and yet, in its way,

it was positive almost to a pitch of exaltation.

I began my concentration of will. Even then my body was numbing and

prickling through the loss of circulation. I directed my will to the

little toe of my right foot, and I willed that toe to cease to be alive

in my consciousness. I willed that toe to die—to die so far as I, its

lord, and a different thing entirely from it, was concerned. There was

the hard struggle. Morrell had warned me that it would be so. But there

was no flicker of doubt to disturb my faith. I knew that that toe would

die, and I knew when it was dead. Joint by joint it had died under the

compulsion of my will.

The rest was easy, but slow, I will admit. Joint by joint, toe by toe,

all the toes of both my feet ceased to be. And joint by joint, the

process went on. Came the time when my flesh below the ankles had

ceased. Came the time when all below my knees had ceased.

Such was the pitch of my perfect exaltation, that I knew not the

slightest prod of rejoicing at my success. I knew nothing save that I

was making my body die. All that was I was devoted to that sole task. I

performed the work as thoroughly as any mason laying bricks, and I

regarded the work as just about as commonplace as would a brick-mason

regard his work.

At the end of an hour my body was dead to the hips, and from the hips

up, joint by joint, I continued to will the ascending death.

It was when I reached the level of my heart that the first blurring and

dizzying of my consciousness occurred. For fear that I should lose

consciousness, I willed to hold the death I had gained, and shifted my

concentration to my fingers. My brain cleared again, and the death of

my arms to the shoulders was most rapidly accomplished.

At this stage my body was all dead, so far as I was concerned, save my

head and a little patch of my chest. No longer did the pound and smash

of my compressed heart echo in my brain. My heart was beating steadily

but feebly. The joy of it, had I dared joy at such a moment, would have

been the cessation of sensations.

At this point my experience differs from Morrell’s. Still willing

automatically, I began to grow dreamy, as one does in that borderland

between sleeping and waking. Also, it seemed as if a prodigious

enlargement of my brain was taking place within the skull itself that

did not enlarge. There were occasional glintings and flashings of light

as if even I, the overlord, had ceased for a moment and the next moment

was again myself, still the tenant of the fleshly tenement that I was

making to die.

Most perplexing was the seeming enlargement of brain. Without having

passed through the wall of skull, nevertheless it seemed to me that the

periphery of my brain was already outside my skull and still expanding.

Along with this was one of the most remarkable sensations or

experiences that I have ever encountered. Time and space, in so far as

they were the stuff of my consciousness, underwent an enormous

extension. Thus, without opening my eyes to verify, I knew that the

walls of my narrow cell had receded until it was like a vast

audience-chamber. And while I contemplated the matter, I knew that they

continued to recede. The whim struck me for a moment that if a similar

expansion were taking place with the whole prison, then the outer walls

of San Quentin must be far out in the Pacific Ocean on one side and on

the other side must be encroaching on the Nevada desert. A companion

whim was that since matter could permeate matter, then the walls of my

cell might well permeate the prison walls, pass through the prison

walls, and thus put my cell outside the prison and put me at liberty.

Of course, this was pure fantastic whim, and I knew it at the time for

what it was.

The extension of time was equally remarkable. Only at long intervals

did my heart beat. Again a whim came to me, and I counted the seconds,

slow and sure, between my heart-beats. At first, as I clearly noted,

over a hundred seconds intervened between beats. But as I continued to

count the intervals extended so that I was made weary of counting.

And while this illusion of the extension of time and space persisted

and grew, I found myself dreamily considering a new and profound

problem. Morrell had told me that he had won freedom from his body by

killing his body—or by eliminating his body from his consciousness,

which, of course, was in effect the same thing. Now, my body was so

near to being entirely dead that I knew in all absoluteness that by a

quick concentration of will on the yet-alive patch of my torso it, too,

would cease to be. But—and here was the problem, and Morrell had not

warned me: should I also will my head to be dead? If I did so, no

matter what befell the spirit of Darrell Standing, would not the body

of Darrell Standing be for ever dead?

I chanced the chest and the slow-beating heart. The quick compulsion of

my will was rewarded. I no longer had chest nor heart. I was only a

mind, a soul, a consciousness—call it what you will—incorporate in a

nebulous brain that, while it still centred inside my skull, was

expanded, and was continuing to expand, beyond my skull.

And then, with flashings of light, I was off and away. At a bound I had

vaulted prison roof and California sky, and was among the stars. I say

“stars” advisedly. I walked among the stars. I was a child. I was clad

in frail, fleece-like, delicate-coloured robes that shimmered in the

cool starlight. These robes, of course, were based upon my boyhood

observance of circus actors and my boyhood conception of the garb of

young angels.

Nevertheless, thus clad, I trod interstellar space, exalted by the

knowledge that I was bound on vast adventure, where, at the end, I

would find all the cosmic formulæ and have made clear to me the

ultimate secret of the universe. In my hand I carried a long glass

wand. It was borne in upon me that with the tip of this wand I must

touch each star in passing. And I knew, in all absoluteness, that did I

but miss one star I should be precipitated into some unplummeted abyss

of unthinkable and eternal punishment and guilt.

Long I pursued my starry quest. When I say “long,” you must bear in

mind the enormous extension of time that had occurred in my brain. For

centuries I trod space, with the tip of my wand and with unerring eye

and hand tapping each star I passed. Ever the way grew brighter. Ever

the ineffable goal of infinite wisdom grew nearer. And yet I made no

mistake. This was no other self of mine. This was no experience that

had once been mine. I was aware all the time that it was I, Darrell

Standing, who walked among the stars and tapped them with a wand of

glass. In short, I knew that here was nothing real, nothing that had

ever been nor could ever be. I knew that it was nothing else than a

ridiculous orgy of the imagination, such as men enjoy in drug dreams,

in delirium, or in mere ordinary slumber.

And then, as all went merry and well with me on my celestial quest, the

tip of my wand missed a star, and on the instant I knew I had been

guilty of a great crime. And on the instant a knock, vast and

compulsive, inexorable and mandatory as the stamp of the iron hoof of

doom, smote me and reverberated across the universe. The whole sidereal

system coruscated, reeled and fell in flame.

I was torn by an exquisite and disruptive agony. And on the instant I

was Darrell Standing, the life-convict, lying in his strait-jacket in

solitary. And I knew the immediate cause of that summons. It was a rap

of the knuckle by Ed Morrell, in Cell Five, beginning the spelling of

some message.

And now, to give some comprehension of the extension of time and space

that I was experiencing. Many days afterwards I asked Morrell what he

had tried to convey to me. It was a simple message, namely: “Standing,

are you there?” He had tapped it rapidly, while the guard was at the

far end of the corridor into which the solitary cells opened. As I say,

he had tapped the message very rapidly. And now behold! Between the

first tap and the second I was off and away among the stars, clad in

fleecy garments, touching each star as I passed in my pursuit of the

formulæ that would explain the last mystery of life. And, as before, I

pursued the quest for centuries. Then came the summons, the stamp of

the hoof of doom, the exquisite disruptive agony, and again I was back

in my cell in San Quentin. It was the second tap of Ed Morrell’s

knuckle. The interval between it and the first tap could have been no

more than a fifth of a second. And yet, so unthinkably enormous was the

extension of time to me, that in the course of that fifth of a second I

had been away star-roving for long ages.

Now I know, my reader, that the foregoing seems all a farrago. I agree

with you. It is farrago. It was experience, however. It was just as

real to me as is the snake beheld by a man in delirium tremens.

Possibly, by the most liberal estimate, it may have taken Ed Morrell

two minutes to tap his question. Yet, to me, æons elapsed between the

first tap of his knuckle and the last. No longer could I tread my

starry path with that ineffable pristine joy, for my way was beset with

dread of the inevitable summons that would rip and tear me as it jerked

me back to my strait-jacket hell. Thus my æons of star-wandering were

æons of dread.

And all the time I knew it was Ed Morrell’s knuckle that thus cruelly

held me earth-bound. I tried to speak to him, to ask him to cease. But

so thoroughly had I eliminated my body from my consciousness that I was

unable to resurrect it. My body lay dead in the jacket, though I still

inhabited the skull. In vain I strove to will my foot to tap my message

to Morrell. I reasoned I had a foot. And yet, so thoroughly had I

carried out the experiment, I had no foot.

Next—and I know now that it was because Morrell had spelled his message

quite out—I pursued my way among the stars and was not called back.

After that, and in the course of it, I was aware, drowsily, that I was

falling asleep, and that it was delicious sleep. From time to time,

drowsily, I stirred—please, my reader, don’t miss that verb—I STIRRED.

I moved my legs, my arms. I was aware of clean, soft bed linen against

my skin. I was aware of bodily well-being. Oh, it was delicious! As

thirsting men on the desert dream of splashing fountains and flowing

wells, so dreamed I of easement from the constriction of the jacket, of

cleanliness in the place of filth, of smooth velvety skin of health in

place of my poor parchment-crinkled hide. But I dreamed with a

difference, as you shall see.

I awoke. Oh, broad and wide awake I was, although I did not open my

eyes. And please know that in all that follows I knew no surprise

whatever. Everything was the natural and the expected. I was I, be sure

of that. _But I was not Darrell Standing_. Darrell Standing had no more

to do with the being I was than did Darrell Standing’s

parchment-crinkled skin have aught to do with the cool, soft skin that

was mine. Nor was I aware of any Darrell Standing—as I could not well

be, considering that Darrell Standing was as yet unborn and would not

be born for centuries. But you shall see.

I lay with closed eyes, lazily listening. From without came the

clacking of many hoofs moving orderly on stone flags. From the

accompanying jingle of metal bits of man-harness and steed-harness I

knew some cavalcade was passing by on the street beneath my windows.

Also, I wondered idly who it was. From somewhere—and I knew where, for

I knew it was from the inn yard—came the ring and stamp of hoofs and an

impatient neigh that I recognized as belonging to my waiting horse.

Came steps and movements—steps openly advertised as suppressed with the

intent of silence and that yet were deliberately noisy with the secret

intent of rousing me if I still slept. I smiled inwardly at the

rascal’s trick.

“Pons,” I ordered, without opening my eyes, “water, cold water, quick,

a deluge. I drank over long last night, and now my gullet scorches.”

“And slept over long to-day,” he scolded, as he passed me the water,

ready in his hand.

I sat up, opened my eyes, and carried the tankard to my lips with both

my hands. And as I drank I looked at Pons.

Now note two things. I spoke in French; I was not conscious that I

spoke in French. Not until afterward, back in solitary, when I

remembered what I am narrating, did I know that I had spoken in

French—ay, and spoken well. As for me, Darrell Standing, at present

writing these lines in Murderers’ Row of Folsom Prison, why, I know

only high school French sufficient to enable me to read the language.

As for my speaking it—impossible. I can scarcely intelligibly pronounce

my way through a menu.

But to return. Pons was a little withered old man. He was born in our

house—I know, for it chanced that mention was made of it this very day

I am describing. Pons was all of sixty years. He was mostly toothless,

and, despite a pronounced limp that compelled him to go slippity-hop,

he was very alert and spry in all his movements. Also, he was

impudently familiar. This was because he had been in my house sixty

years. He had been my father’s servant before I could toddle, and after

my father’s death (Pons and I talked of it this day) he became my

servant. The limp he had acquired on a stricken field in Italy, when

the horsemen charged across. He had just dragged my father clear of the

hoofs when he was lanced through the thigh, overthrown, and trampled.

My father, conscious but helpless from his own wounds, witnessed it

all. And so, as I say, Pons had earned such a right to impudent

familiarity that at least there was no gainsaying him by my father’s

son.

Pons shook his head as I drained the huge draught.

“Did you hear it boil?” I laughed, as I handed back the empty tankard.

“Like your father,” he said hopelessly. “But your father lived to learn

better, which I doubt you will do.”

“He got a stomach affliction,” I devilled, “so that one mouthful of

spirits turned it outside in. It were wisdom not to drink when one’s

tank will not hold the drink.”

While we talked Pons was gathering to my bedside my clothes for the

day.

“Drink on, my master,” he answered. “It won’t hurt you. You’ll die with

a sound stomach.”

“You mean mine is an iron-lined stomach?” I wilfully misunderstood him.

“I mean—” he began with a quick peevishness, then broke off as he

realized my teasing and with a pout of his withered lips draped my new

sable cloak upon a chair-back. “Eight hundred ducats,” he sneered. “A

thousand goats and a hundred fat oxen in a coat to keep you warm. A

score of farms on my gentleman’s fine back.”

“And in that a hundred fine farms, with a castle or two thrown in, to

say nothing, perhaps, of a palace,” I said, reaching out my hand and

touching the rapier which he was just in the act of depositing on the

chair.

“So your father won with his good right arm,” Pons retorted. “But what

your father won he held.”

Here Pons paused to hold up to scorn my new scarlet satin doublet—a

wondrous thing of which I had been extravagant.

“Sixty ducats for that,” Pons indicted. “Your father’d have seen all

the tailors and Jews of Christendom roasting in hell before he’d a-paid

such a price.”

And while we dressed—that is, while Pons helped me to dress—I continued

to quip with him.

“It is quite clear, Pons, that you have not heard the news,” I said

slyly.

Whereat up pricked his ears like the old gossip he was.

“Late news?” he queried. “Mayhap from the English Court?”

“Nay,” I shook my head. “But news perhaps to you, but old news for all

of that. Have you not heard? The philosophers of Greece were whispering

it nigh two thousand years ago. It is because of that news that I put

twenty fat farms on my back, live at Court, and am become a dandy. You

see, Pons, the world is a most evil place, life is most sad, all men

die, and, being dead . . . well, are dead. Wherefore, to escape the

evil and the sadness, men in these days, like me, seek amazement,

insensibility, and the madnesses of dalliance.”

“But the news, master? What did the philosophers whisper about so long

ago?”

“That God was dead, Pons,” I replied solemnly. “Didn’t you know that?

God is dead, and I soon shall be, and I wear twenty fat farms on my

back.”

“God lives,” Pons asserted fervently. “God lives, and his kingdom is at

hand. I tell you, master, it is at hand. It may be no later than

to-morrow that the earth shall pass away.”

“So said they in old Rome, Pons, when Nero made torches of them to

light his sports.”

Pons regarded me pityingly.

“Too much learning is a sickness,” he complained. “I was always opposed

to it. But you must have your will and drag my old body about with

you—a-studying astronomy and numbers in Venice, poetry and all the

Italian _fol-de-rols_ in Florence, and astrology in Pisa, and God knows

what in that madman country of Germany. Pish for the philosophers! I

tell you, master, I, Pons, your servant, a poor old man who knows not a

letter from a pike-staff—I tell you God lives, and the time you shall

appear before him is short.” He paused with sudden recollection, and

added: “He is here, the priest you spoke of.”

On the instant I remembered my engagement.

“Why did you not tell me before?” I demanded angrily.

“What did it matter?” Pons shrugged his shoulders. “Has he not been

waiting two hours as it is?”

“Why didn’t you call me?”

He regarded me with a thoughtful, censorious eye.

“And you rolling to bed and shouting like chanticleer, ‘Sing cucu, sing

cucu, cucu nu nu cucu, sing cucu, sing cucu, sing cucu, sing cucu.’”

He mocked me with the senseless refrain in an ear-jangling falsetto.

Without doubt I had bawled the nonsense out on my way to bed.

“You have a good memory,” I commented drily, as I essayed a moment to

drape my shoulders with the new sable cloak ere I tossed it to Pons to

put aside. He shook his head sourly.

“No need of memory when you roared it over and over for the thousandth

time till half the inn was a-knock at the door to spit you for the

sleep-killer you were. And when I had you decently in the bed, did you

not call me to you and command, if the devil called, to tell him my

lady slept? And did you not call me back again, and, with a grip on my

arm that leaves it bruised and black this day, command me, as I loved

life, fat meat, and the warm fire, to call you not of the morning save

for one thing?”

“Which was?” I prompted, unable for the life of me to guess what I

could have said.

“Which was the heart of one, a black buzzard, you said, by name

Martinelli—whoever he may be—for the heart of Martinelli smoking on a

gold platter. The platter must be gold, you said; and you said I must

call you by singing, ‘Sing cucu, sing cucu, sing cucu.’ Whereat you

began to teach me how to sing, ‘Sing cucu, sing cucu, sing cucu.’”

And when Pons had said the name, I knew it at once for the priest,

Martinelli, who had been knocking his heels two mortal hours in the

room without.

When Martinelli was permitted to enter and as he saluted me by title

and name, I knew at once my name and all of it. I was Count Guillaume

de Sainte-Maure. (You see, only could I know then, and remember

afterward, what was in my conscious mind.)

The priest was Italian, dark and small, lean as with fasting or with a

wasting hunger not of this world, and his hands were as small and

slender as a woman’s. But his eyes! They were cunning and trustless,

narrow-slitted and heavy-lidded, at one and the same time as sharp as a

ferret’s and as indolent as a basking lizard’s.

“There has been much delay, Count de Sainte-Maure,” he began promptly,

when Pons had left the room at a glance from me. “He whom I serve grows

impatient.”

“Change your tune, priest,” I broke in angrily. “Remember, you are not

now in Rome.”

“My august master—” he began.

“Rules augustly in Rome, mayhap,” I again interrupted. “This is

France.”

Martinelli shrugged his shoulders meekly and patiently, but his eyes,

gleaming like a basilisk’s, gave his shoulders the lie.

“My august master has some concern with the doings of France,” he said

quietly. “The lady is not for you. My master has other plans. . .” He

moistened his thin lips with his tongue. “Other plans for the lady . .

. and for you.”

Of course, by the lady I knew he referred to the great Duchess

Philippa, widow of Geoffrey, last Duke of Aquitaine. But great duchess,

widow, and all, Philippa was a woman, and young, and gay, and

beautiful, and, by my faith, fashioned for me.

“What are his plans?” I demanded bluntly.

“They are deep and wide, Count Sainte-Maure—too deep and wide for me to

presume to imagine, much less know or discuss with you or any man.”

“Oh, I know big things are afoot and slimy worms squirming

underground,” I said.

“They told me you were stubborn-necked, but I have obeyed commands.”

Martinelli arose to leave, and I arose with him.

“I said it was useless,” he went on. “But the last chance to change

your mind was accorded you. My august master deals more fairly than

fair.”

“Oh, well, I’ll think the matter over,” I said airily, as I bowed the

priest to the door.

He stopped abruptly at the threshold.

“The time for thinking is past,” he said. “It is decision I came for.”

“I will think the matter over,” I repeated, then added, as

afterthought: “If the lady’s plans do not accord with mine, then mayhap

the plans of your master may fruit as he desires. For remember, priest,

he is no master of mine.”

“You do not know my master,” he said solemnly.

“Nor do I wish to know him,” I retorted.

And I listened to the lithe, light step of the little intriguing priest

go down the creaking stairs.

Did I go into the minutiæ of detail of all that I saw this half a day

and half a night that I was Count Guillaume de Sainte-Maure, not ten

books the size of this I am writing could contain the totality of the

matter. Much I shall skip; in fact, I shall skip almost all; for never

yet have I heard of a condemned man being reprieved in order that he

might complete his memoirs—at least, not in California.

When I rode out in Paris that day it was the Paris of centuries agone.

The narrow streets were an unsanitary scandal of filth and slime. But I

must skip. And skip I shall, all of the afternoon’s events, all of the

ride outside the walls, of the grand fête given by Hugh de Meung, of

the feasting and the drinking in which I took little part. Only of the

end of the adventure will I write, which begins with where I stood

jesting with Philippa herself—ah, dear God, she was wondrous beautiful.

A great lady—ay, but before that, and after that, and always, a woman.

We laughed and jested lightly enough, as about us jostled the merry

throng; but under our jesting was the deep earnestness of man and woman

well advanced across the threshold of love and yet not too sure each of

the other. I shall not describe her. She was small, exquisitely

slender—but there, I am describing her. In brief, she was the one woman

in the world for me, and little I recked the long arm of that gray old

man in Rome could reach out half across Europe between my woman and me.

And the Italian, Fortini, leaned to my shoulder and whispered:

“One who desires to speak.”

“One who must wait my pleasure,” I answered shortly.

“I wait no man’s pleasure,” was his equally short reply.

And, while my blood boiled, I remembered the priest, Martinelli, and

the gray old man at Rome. The thing was clear. It was deliberate. It

was the long arm. Fortini smiled lazily at me while I thus paused for

the moment to debate, but in his smile was the essence of all

insolence.

This, of all times, was the time I should have been cool. But the old

red anger began to kindle in me. This was the work of the priest. This

was the Fortini, poverished of all save lineage, reckoned the best

sword come up out of Italy in half a score of years. To-night it was

Fortini. If he failed the gray old man’s command to-morrow it would be

another sword, the next day another. And, perchance still failing, then

might I expect the common bravo’s steel in my back or the common

poisoner’s philter in my wine, my meat, or bread.

“I am busy,” I said. “Begone.”

“My business with you presses,” was his reply.

Insensibly our voices had slightly risen, so that Philippa heard.

“Begone, you Italian hound,” I said. “Take your howling from my door. I

shall attend to you presently.”

“The moon is up,” he said. “The grass is dry and excellent. There is no

dew. Beyond the fish-pond, an arrow’s flight to the left, is an open

space, quiet and private.”

“Presently you shall have your desire,” I muttered impatiently.

But still he persisted in waiting at my shoulder.

“Presently,” I said. “Presently I shall attend to you.”

Then spoke Philippa, in all the daring spirit and the iron of her.

“Satisfy the gentleman’s desire, Sainte-Maure. Attend to him now. And

good fortune go with you.” She paused to beckon to her her uncle, Jean

de Joinville, who was passing—uncle on her mother’s side, of the de

Joinvilles of Anjou. “Good fortune go with you,” she repeated, and then

leaned to me so that she could whisper: “And my heart goes with you,

Sainte-Maure. Do not be long. I shall await you in the big hall.”

I was in the seventh heaven. I trod on air. It was the first frank

admittance of her love. And with such benediction I was made so strong

that I knew I could kill a score of Fortinis and snap my fingers at a

score of gray old men in Rome.

Jean de Joinville bore Philippa away in the press, and Fortini and I

settled our arrangements in a trice. We separated—he to find a friend

or so, and I to find a friend or so, and all to meet at the appointed

place beyond the fish-pond.

First I found Robert Lanfranc, and, next, Henry Bohemond. But before I

found them I encountered a windlestraw which showed which way blew the

wind and gave promise of a very gale. I knew the windlestraw, Guy de

Villehardouin, a raw young provincial, come up the first time to Court,

but a fiery little cockerel for all of that. He was red-haired. His

blue eyes, small and pinched close together, were likewise red, at

least in the whites of them; and his skin, of the sort that goes with

such types, was red and freckled. He had quite a parboiled appearance.

As I passed him by a sudden movement he jostled me. Oh, of course, the

thing was deliberate. And he flamed at me while his hand dropped to his

rapier.

“Faith,” thought I, “the gray old man has many and strange tools,”

while to the cockerel I bowed and murmured, “Your pardon for my

clumsiness. The fault was mine. Your pardon, Villehardouin.”

But he was not to be appeased thus easily. And while he fumed and

strutted I glimpsed Robert Lanfranc, beckoned him to us, and explained

the happening.

“Sainte-Maure has accorded you satisfaction,” was his judgment. “He has

prayed your pardon.”

“In truth, yes,” I interrupted in my suavest tones. “And I pray your

pardon again, Villehardouin, for my very great clumsiness. I pray your

pardon a thousand times. The fault was mine, though unintentioned. In

my haste to an engagement I was clumsy, most woful clumsy, but without

intention.”

What could the dolt do but grudgingly accept the amends I so freely

proffered him? Yet I knew, as Lanfranc and I hastened on, that ere many

days, or hours, the flame-headed youth would see to it that we measured

steel together on the grass.

I explained no more to Lanfranc than my need of him, and he was little

interested to pry deeper into the matter. He was himself a lively

youngster of no more than twenty, but he had been trained to arms, had

fought in Spain, and had an honourable record on the grass. Merely his

black eyes flashed when he learned what was toward, and such was his

eagerness that it was he who gathered Henry Bohemond in to our number.

When the three of us arrived in the open space beyond the fish-pond

Fortini and two friends were already waiting us. One was Felix

Pasquini, nephew to the Cardinal of that name, and as close in his

uncle’s confidence as was his uncle close in the confidence of the gray

old man. The other was Raoul de Goncourt, whose presence surprised me,

he being too good and noble a man for the company he kept.

We saluted properly, and properly went about the business. It was

nothing new to any of us. The footing was good, as promised. There was

no dew. The moon shone fair, and Fortini’s blade and mine were out and

at earnest play.

This I knew: good swordsman as they reckoned me in France, Fortini was

a better. This, too, I knew: that I carried my lady’s heart with me

this night, and that this night, because of me, there would be one

Italian less in the world. I say I knew it. In my mind the issue could

not be in doubt. And as our rapiers played I pondered the manner I

should kill him. I was not minded for a long contest. Quick and

brilliant had always been my way. And further, what of my past gay

months of carousal and of singing “Sing cucu, sing cucu, sing cucu,” at

ungodly hours, I knew I was not conditioned for a long contest. Quick

and brilliant was my decision.

But quick and brilliant was a difficult matter with so consummate a

swordsman as Fortini opposed to me. Besides, as luck would have it,

Fortini, always the cold one, always the tireless-wristed, always sure

and long, as report had it, in going about such business, on this night

elected, too, the quick and brilliant.

It was nervous, tingling work, for as surely as I sensed his intention

of briefness, just as surely had he sensed mine. I doubt that I could

have done the trick had it been broad day instead of moonlight. The dim

light aided me. Also was I aided by divining, the moment in advance,

what he had in mind. It was the time attack, a common but perilous

trick that every novice knows, that has laid on his back many a good

man who attempted it, and that is so fraught with danger to the

perpetrator that swordsmen are not enamoured of it.

We had been at work barely a minute, when I knew under all his darting,

flashing show of offence that Fortini meditated this very time attack.

He desired of me a thrust and lunge, not that he might parry it but

that he might time it and deflect it by the customary slight turn of

the wrist, his rapier point directed to meet me as my body followed in

the lunge. A ticklish thing—ay, a ticklish thing in the best of light.

Did he deflect a fraction of a second too early, I should be warned and

saved. Did he deflect a fraction of a second too late, my thrust would

go home to him.

“Quick and brilliant is it?” was my thought. “Very well, my Italian

friend, quick and brilliant shall it be, and especially shall it be

quick.”

In a way, it was time attack against time attack, but I would fool him

on the time by being over-quick. And I was quick. As I said, we had

been at work scarcely a minute when it happened. Quick? That thrust and

lunge of mine were one. A snap of action it was, an explosion, an

instantaneousness. I swear my thrust and lunge were a fraction of a

second quicker than any man is supposed to thrust and lunge. I won the

fraction of a second. By that fraction of a second too late Fortini

attempted to deflect my blade and impale me on his. But it was his

blade that was deflected. It flashed past my breast, and I was

in—inside his weapon, which extended full length in the empty air

behind me—and my blade was inside of him, and through him, heart-high,

from right side of him to left side of him and outside of him beyond.

It is a strange thing to do, to spit a live man on a length of steel. I

sit here in my cell, and cease from writing a space, while I consider

the matter. And I have considered it often, that moonlight night in

France of long ago, when I taught the Italian hound quick and

brilliant. It was so easy a thing, that perforation of a torso. One

would have expected more resistance. There would have been resistance

had my rapier point touched bone. As it was, it encountered only the

softness of flesh. Still it perforated so easily. I have the sensation

of it now, in my hand, my brain, as I write. A woman’s hat-pin could go

through a plum pudding not more easily than did my blade go through the

Italian. Oh, there was nothing amazing about it at the time to

Guillaume de Sainte-Maure, but amazing it is to me, Darrell Standing,

as I recollect and ponder it across the centuries. It is easy, most

easy, to kill a strong, live, breathing man with so crude a weapon as a

piece of steel. Why, men are like soft-shell crabs, so tender, frail,

and vulnerable are they.

But to return to the moonlight on the grass. My thrust made home, there

was a perceptible pause. Not at once did Fortini fall. Not at once did

I withdraw the blade. For a full second we stood in pause—I, with legs

spread, and arched and tense, body thrown forward, right arm horizontal

and straight out; Fortini, his blade beyond me so far that hilt and

hand just rested lightly against my left breast, his body rigid, his

eyes open and shining.

So statuesque were we for that second that I swear those about us were

not immediately aware of what had happened. Then Fortini gasped and

coughed slightly. The rigidity of his pose slackened. The hilt and hand

against my breast wavered, then the arm drooped to his side till the

rapier point rested on the lawn. By this time Pasquini and de Goncourt

had sprung to him and he was sinking into their arms. In faith, it was

harder for me to withdraw the steel than to drive it in. His flesh

clung about it as if jealous to let it depart. Oh, believe me, it

required a distinct physical effort to get clear of what I had done.

But the pang of the withdrawal must have stung him back to life and

purpose, for he shook off his friends, straightened himself, and lifted

his rapier into position. I, too, took position, marvelling that it was

possible I had spitted him heart-high and yet missed any vital spot.

Then, and before his friends could catch him, his legs crumpled under

him and he went heavily to grass. They laid him on his back, but he was

already dead, his face ghastly still under the moon, his right hand

still a-clutch of the rapier.

Yes; it is indeed a marvellous easy thing to kill a man.

We saluted his friends and were about to depart, when Felix Pasquini

detained me.

“Pardon me,” I said. “Let it be to-morrow.”

“We have but to move a step aside,” he urged, “where the grass is still

dry.”

“Let me then wet it for you, Sainte-Maure,” Lanfranc asked of me, eager

himself to do for an Italian.

I shook my head.

“Pasquini is mine,” I answered. “He shall be first to-morrow.”

“Are there others?” Lanfranc demanded.

“Ask de Goncourt,” I grinned. “I imagine he is already laying claim to

the honour of being the third.”

At this, de Goncourt showed distressed acquiescence. Lanfranc looked

inquiry at him, and de Goncourt nodded.

“And after him I doubt not comes the cockerel,” I went on.

And even as I spoke the red-haired Guy de Villehardouin, alone, strode

to us across the moonlit grass.

“At least I shall have him,” Lanfranc cried, his voice almost

wheedling, so great was his desire.

“Ask him,” I laughed, then turned to Pasquini. “To-morrow,” I said. “Do

you name time and place, and I shall be there.”

“The grass is most excellent,” he teased, “the place is most excellent,

and I am minded that Fortini has you for company this night.”

“’Twere better he were accompanied by a friend,” I quipped. “And now

your pardon, for I must go.”

But he blocked my path.

“Whoever it be,” he said, “let it be now.”

For the first time, with him, my anger began to rise.

“You serve your master well,” I sneered.

“I serve but my pleasure,” was his answer. “Master I have none.”

“Pardon me if I presume to tell you the truth,” I said.

“Which is?” he queried softly.

“That you are a liar, Pasquini, a liar like all Italians.”

He turned immediately to Lanfranc and Bohemond.

“You heard,” he said. “And after that you cannot deny me him.”

They hesitated and looked to me for counsel of my wishes. But Pasquini

did not wait.

“And if you still have any scruples,” he hurried on, “then allow me to

remove them . . . thus.”

And he spat in the grass at my feet. Then my anger seized me and was

beyond me. The red wrath I call it—an overwhelming, all-mastering

desire to kill and destroy. I forgot that Philippa waited for me in the

great hall. All I knew was my wrongs—the unpardonable interference in

my affairs by the gray old man, the errand of the priest, the insolence

of Fortini, the impudence of Villehardouin, and here Pasquini standing

in my way and spitting in the grass. I saw red. I thought red. I looked

upon all these creatures as rank and noisome growths that must be hewn

out of my path, out of the world. As a netted lion may rage against the

meshes, so raged I against these creatures. They were all about me. In

truth, I was in the trap. The one way out was to cut them down, to

crush them into the earth and stamp upon them.

“Very well,” I said, calmly enough, although my passion was such that

my frame shook. “You first, Pasquini. And you next, de Goncourt? And at

the end, de Villehardouin?”

Each nodded in turn and Pasquini and I prepared to step aside.

“Since you are in haste,” Henry Bohemond proposed to me, “and since

there are three of them and three of us, why not settle it at the one

time?”

“Yes, yes,” was Lanfranc’s eager cry. “Do you take de Goncourt. De

Villehardouin for mine.”

But I waved my good friends back.

“They are here by command,” I explained. “It is I they desire so

strongly that by my faith I have caught the contagion of their desire,

so that now I want them and will have them for myself.”

I had observed that Pasquini fretted at my delay of speech-making, and

I resolved to fret him further.

“You, Pasquini,” I announced, “I shall settle with in short account. I

would not that you tarried while Fortini waits your companionship. You,

Raoul de Goncourt, I shall punish as you deserve for being in such bad

company. You are getting fat and wheezy. I shall take my time with you

until your fat melts and your lungs pant and wheeze like leaky bellows.

You, de Villehardouin, I have not decided in what manner I shall kill.”

And then I saluted Pasquini, and we were at it. Oh, I was minded to be

rarely devilish this night. Quick and brilliant—that was the thing. Nor

was I unmindful of that deceptive moonlight. As with Fortini would I

settle with him if he dared the time attack. If he did not, and

quickly, then I would dare it.

Despite the fret I had put him in, he was cautious. Nevertheless I

compelled the play to be rapid, and in the dim light, depending less

than usual on sight and more than usual on feel, our blades were in

continual touch.

Barely was the first minute of play past when I did the trick. I

feigned a slight slip of the foot, and, in the recovery, feigned loss

of touch with Pasquini’s blade. He thrust tentatively, and again I

feigned, this time making a needlessly wide parry. The consequent

exposure of myself was the bait I had purposely dangled to draw him on.

And draw him on I did. Like a flash he took advantage of what he deemed

an involuntary exposure. Straight and true was his thrust, and all his

will and body were heartily in the weight of the lunge he made. And all

had been feigned on my part and I was ready for him. Just lightly did

my steel meet his as our blades slithered. And just firmly enough and

no more did my wrist twist and deflect his blade on my basket hilt. Oh,

such a slight deflection, a matter of inches, just barely sufficient to

send his point past me so that it pierced a fold of my satin doublet in

passing. Of course, his body followed his rapier in the lunge, while,

heart-high, right side, my rapier point met his body. And my

outstretched arm was stiff and straight as the steel into which it

elongated, and behind the arm and the steel my body was braced and

solid.

Heart-high, I say, my rapier entered Pasquini’s side on the right, but

it did not emerge, on the left, for, well-nigh through him, it met a

rib (oh, man-killing is butcher’s work!) with such a will that the

forcing overbalanced him, so that he fell part backward and part

sidewise to the ground. And even as he fell, and ere he struck, with

jerk and wrench I cleared my weapon of him.

De Goncourt was to him, but he waved de Goncourt to attend on me. Not

so swiftly as Fortini did Pasquini pass. He coughed and spat, and,

helped by de Villehardouin, propped his elbow under him, rested his

head on hand, and coughed and spat again.

“A pleasant journey, Pasquini,” I laughed to him in my red anger. “Pray

hasten, for the grass where you lie is become suddenly wet and if you

linger you will catch your death of cold.”

When I made immediately to begin with de Goncourt, Bohemond protested

that I should rest a space.

“Nay,” I said. “I have not properly warmed up.” And to de Goncourt,

“Now will we have you dance and wheeze—Salute!”

De Goncourt’s heart was not in the work. It was patent that he fought

under the compulsion of command. His play was old-fashioned, as any

middle-aged man’s is apt to be, but he was not an indifferent

swordsman. He was cool, determined, dogged. But he was not brilliant,

and he was oppressed with foreknowledge of defeat. A score of times, by

quick and brilliant, he was mine. But I refrained. I have said that I

was devilish-minded. Indeed I was. I wore him down. I backed him away

from the moon so that he could see little of me because I fought in my

own shadow. And while I wore him down until he began to wheeze as I had

predicted, Pasquini, head on hand and watching, coughed and spat out

his life.

“Now, de Goncourt,” I announced finally. “You see I have you quite

helpless. You are mine in any of a dozen ways. Be ready, brace

yourself, for this is the way I will.”

And, so saying, I merely went from carte to tierce, and as he recovered

wildly and parried widely I returned to carte, took the opening, and

drove home heart-high and through and through. And at sight of the

conclusion Pasquini let go his hold on life, buried his face in the

grass, quivered a moment, and lay still.

“Your master will be four servants short this night,” I assured de

Villehardouin, in the moment just ere we engaged.

And such an engagement! The boy was ridiculous. In what bucolic school

of fence he had been taught was beyond imagining. He was downright

clownish. “Short work and simple” was my judgment, while his red hair

seemed a-bristle with very rage and while he pressed me like a madman.

Alas! It was his clownishness that undid me. When I had played with him

and laughed at him for a handful of seconds for the clumsy boor he was,

he became so angered that he forgot the worse than little fence he

knew. With an arm-wide sweep of his rapier, as though it bore heft and

a cutting edge, he whistled it through the air and rapped it down on my

crown. I was in amaze. Never had so absurd a thing happened to me. He

was wide open, and I could have run him through forthright. But, as I

said, I was in amaze, and the next I knew was the pang of the entering

steel as this clumsy provincial ran me through and charged forward,

bull-like, till his hilt bruised my side and I was borne backward.

As I fell I could see the concern on the faces of Lanfranc and Bohemond

and the glut of satisfaction in the face of de Villehardouin as he

pressed me.

I was falling, but I never reached the grass. Came a blurr of flashing

lights, a thunder in my ears, a darkness, a glimmering of dim light

slowly dawning, a wrenching, racking pain beyond all describing, and

then I heard the voice of one who said:

“I can’t feel anything.”

I knew the voice. It was Warden Atherton’s. And I knew myself for

Darrell Standing, just returned across the centuries to the jacket hell

of San Quentin. And I knew the touch of finger-tips on my neck was

Warden Atherton’s. And I knew the finger-tips that displaced his were

Doctor Jackson’s. And it was Doctor Jackson’s voice that said:

“You don’t know how to take a man’s pulse from the neck. There—right

there—put your fingers where mine are. D’ye get it? Ah, I thought so.

Heart weak, but steady as a chronometer.”

“It’s only twenty-four hours,” Captain Jamie said, “and he was never in

like condition before.”

“Putting it on, that’s what he’s doing, and you can stack on that,” Al

Hutchins, the head trusty, interjected.

“I don’t know,” Captain Jamie insisted. “When a man’s pulse is that low

it takes an expert to find it—”

“Aw, I served my apprenticeship in the jacket,” Al Hutchins sneered.

“And I’ve made you unlace me, Captain, when you thought I was croaking,

and it was all I could do to keep from snickering in your face.”

“What do you think, Doc?” Warden Atherton asked.

“I tell you the heart action is splendid,” was the answer. “Of course

it is weak. That is only to be expected. I tell you Hutchins is right.

The man is feigning.”

With his thumb he turned up one of my eyelids, whereat I opened my

other eye and gazed up at the group bending over me.

“What did I tell you?” was Doctor Jackson’s cry of triumph.

And then, although it seemed the effort must crack my face, I summoned

all the will of me and smiled.

They held water to my lips, and I drank greedily. It must be remembered

that all this while I lay helpless on my back, my arms pinioned along

with my body inside the jacket. When they offered me food—dry prison

bread—I shook my head. I closed my eyes in advertisement that I was

tired of their presence. The pain of my partial resuscitation was

unbearable. I could feel my body coming to life. Down the cords of my

neck and into my patch of chest over the heart darting pains were

making their way. And in my brain the memory was strong that Philippa

waited me in the big hall, and I was desirous to escape away back to

the half a day and half a night I had just lived in old France.

So it was, even as they stood about me, that I strove to eliminate the

live portion of my body from my consciousness. I was in haste to

depart, but Warden Atherton’s voice held me back.

“Is there anything you want to complain about?” he asked.

Now I had but one fear, namely, that they would unlace me; so that it

must be understood that my reply was not uttered in braggadocio but was

meant to forestall any possible unlacing.

“You might make the jacket a little tighter,” I whispered. “It’s too

loose for comfort. I get lost in it. Hutchins is stupid. He is also a

fool. He doesn’t know the first thing about lacing the jacket. Warden,

you ought to put him in charge of the loom-room. He is a more profound

master of inefficiency than the present incumbent, who is merely stupid

without being a fool as well. Now get out, all of you, unless you can

think of worse to do to me. In which case, by all means remain. I

invite you heartily to remain, if you think in your feeble imaginings

that you have devised fresh torture for me.”

“He’s a wooz, a true-blue, dyed-in-the-wool wooz,” Doctor Jackson

chanted, with the medico’s delight in a novelty.

“Standing, you _are_ a wonder,” the Warden said. “You’ve got an iron

will, but I’ll break it as sure as God made little apples.”

“And you’ve the heart of a rabbit,” I retorted. “One-tenth the

jacketing I have received in San Quentin would have squeezed your

rabbit heart out of your long ears.”

Oh, it was a touch, that, for the Warden did have unusual ears. They

would have interested Lombroso, I am sure.

“As for me,” I went on, “I laugh at you, and I wish no worse fate to

the loom-room than that you should take charge of it yourself. Why,

you’ve got me down and worked your wickedness on me, and still I live

and laugh in your face. Inefficient? You can’t even kill me.

Inefficient? You couldn’t kill a cornered rat with a stick of

dynamite—_real_ dynamite, and not the sort you are deluded into

believing I have hidden away.”

“Anything more?” he demanded, when I had ceased from my diatribe.

And into my mind flashed what I had told Fortini when he pressed his

insolence on me.

“Begone, you prison cur,” I said. “Take your yapping from my door.”

It must have been a terrible thing for a man of Warden Atherton’s

stripe to be thus bearded by a helpless prisoner. His face whitened

with rage and his voice shook as he threatened:

“By God, Standing, I’ll do for you yet.”

“There is only one thing you can do,” I said. “You can tighten this

distressingly loose jacket. If you won’t, then get out. And I don’t

care if you fail to come back for a week or for the whole ten days.”

And what can even the Warden of a great prison do in reprisal on a

prisoner upon whom the ultimate reprisal has already been wreaked? It

may be that Warden Atherton thought of some possible threat, for he

began to speak. But my voice had strengthened with the exercise, and I

began to sing, “Sing cucu, sing cucu, sing cucu.” And sing I did until

my door clanged and the bolts and locks squeaked and grated fast.