Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson

by Robert Louis Stevenson

  So soon as Balmile appeared between her husband and herself, Marie-Madeleine transferred to him her eyes. It might be her last moment, and she fed upon that face; reading there inimitable courage and illimitable valour to protect. And when the momentary peril was gone by, and the champion turned a little awkwardly towards her whom he had rescued, it was to meet, and quail before, a gaze of admiration more distinct than words. He bowed, he stammered, his words failed him; he who had crossed the floor a moment ago, like a young god, to smite, returned like one discomfited; got somehow to his place by the table, muffled himself again in his discarded cloak, and for a last touch of the ridiculous, seeking for anything to restore his countenance, drank of the wine before him, deep as a porter after a heavy lift. It was little wonder if Ballantrae, reading the scene with malevolent eyes, laughed out loud and brief, and drank with raised glass, ‘To the champion of the Fair.’

  Marie-Madeleine stood in her old place within the counter; she disdained the mocking laughter; it fell on her ears, but it did not reach her spirit. For her, the world of living persons was all resumed again into one pair, as in the days of Eden; there was but the one end in life, the one hope before her, the one thing needful, the one thing possible — to be his.

  CHAPTER I — THE PRINCE

  That same night there was in the city of Avignon a young man in distress of mind. Now he sat, now walked in a high apartment, full of draughts and shadows. A single candle made the darkness visible; and the light scarce sufficed to show upon the wall, where they had been recently and rudely nailed, a few miniatures and a copper medal of the young man’s head. The same was being sold that year in London, to admiring thousands. The original was fair; he had beautiful brown eyes, a beautiful bright open face; a little feminine, a little hard, a little weak; still full of the light of youth, but already beginning to be vulgarised; a sordid bloom come upon it, the lines coarsened with a touch of puffiness. He was dressed, as for a gala, in peach-colour and silver; his breast sparkled with stars and was bright with ribbons; for he had held a levee in the afternoon and received a distinguished personage incognito. Now he sat with a bowed head, now walked precipitately to and fro, now went and gazed from the uncurtained window, where the wind was still blowing, and the lights winked in the darkness.

  The bells of Avignon rose into song as he was gazing; and the high notes and the deep tossed and drowned, boomed suddenly near or were suddenly swallowed up, in the current of the mistral. Tears sprang in the pale blue eyes; the expression of his face was changed to that of a more active misery, it seemed as if the voices of the bells reached, and touched and pained him, in a waste of vacancy where even pain was welcome. Outside in the night they continued to sound on, swelling and fainting; and the listener heard in his memory, as it were their harmonies, joy-bells clashing in a northern city, and the acclamations of a multitude, the cries of battle, the gross voices of cannon, the stridor of an animated life. And then all died away, and he stood face to face with himself in the waste of vacancy, and a horror came upon his mind, and a faintness on his brain, such as seizes men upon the brink of cliffs.

  On the table, by the side of the candle, stood a tray of glasses, a bottle, and a silver bell. He went thither swiftly, then his hand lowered first above the bell, then settled on the bottle. Slowly he filled a glass, slowly drank it out; and, as a tide of animal warmth recomforted the recesses of his nature, stood there smiling at himself. He remembered he was young; the funeral curtains rose, and he saw his life shine and broaden and flow out majestically, like a river sunward. The smile still on his lips, he lit a second candle and a third; a fire stood ready built in a chimney, he lit that also; and the fir-cones and the gnarled olive billets were swift to break in flame and to crackle on the hearth, and the room brightened and enlarged about him like his hopes. To and fro, to and fro, he went, his hands lightly clasped, his breath deeply and pleasurably taken. Victory walked with him; he marched to crowns and empires among shouting followers; glory was his dress. And presently again the shadows closed upon the solitary. Under the gilt of flame and candle-light, the stone walls of the apartment showed down bare and cold; behind the depicted triumph loomed up the actual failure: defeat, the long distress of the flight, exile, despair, broken followers, mourning faces, empty pockets, friends estranged. The memory of his father rose in his mind: he, too, estranged and defied; despair sharpened into wrath. There was one who had led armies in the field, who had staked his life upon the family enterprise, a man of action and experience, of the open air, the camp, the court, the council-room; and he was to accept direction from an old, pompous gentleman in a home in Italy, and buzzed about by priests? A pretty king, if he had not a martial son to lean upon! A king at all?

  ‘There was a weaver (of all people) joined me at St. Ninians; he was more of a man than my papa!’ he thought. ‘I saw him lie doubled in his blood and a grenadier below him — and he died for my papa! All died for him, or risked the dying, and I lay for him all those months in the rain and skulked in heather like a fox; and now he writes me his advice! calls me Carluccio — me, the man of the house, the only king in that king’s race.’ He ground his teeth. ‘The only king in Europe!’ Who else? Who has done and suffered except me? who has lain and run and hidden with his faithful subjects, like a second Bruce? Not my accursed cousin, Louis of France, at least, the lewd effeminate traitor!’ And filling the glass to the brim, he drank a king’s damnation. Ah, if he had the power of Louis, what a king were here!

  The minutes followed each other into the past, and still he persevered in this debilitating cycle of emotions, still fed the fire of his excitement with driblets of Rhine wine: a boy at odds with life, a boy with a spark of the heroic, which he was now burning out and drowning down in futile reverie and solitary excess.

  From two rooms beyond, the sudden sound of a raised voice attracted him.

  ‘By . . .

  The Short Story Collections

  The Old College, University of Edinburgh, where Stevenson studied law. Stevenson completed the degree but never practised, having decided during his studies to become a writer instead.

  NEW ARABIAN NIGHTS

  This short story collection was first published in 1882 and features some of Stevenson’s earliest published works, including ‘A Lodging for the Night: a Story of Francis Villon’, the first piece of fiction Stevenson wrote.

  The collection was first published in two volumes with the first volume being made up of the eponymous New Arabian Nights (or Latter-Day Arabian Nights, to give them the title under which they were first serialised in the London Magazine during 1878). These delightful fantasies of London life strongly influenced later depictions of the city by the likes of Oscar Wilde and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

  The stories’ hero is Prince Florizel of Bohemia, who travels the streets incognito with his faithful servant, in search of adventure, novelty and any injustice that needs setting right. The serial is divided into two self-contained strands, made up of three and four stories respectively. The first is ‘The Suicide Club’, in which Florizel thwarts the President of a diabolical secret society, whose practices blur the line between suicide and murder. The second strand, ‘The Rajah’s Diamond’, concerns the theft of the eponymous jewel.

  The other stories, making up the second volume, includes the romances ‘The Sire de Malétroit’s Door’ and ‘Providence and the Guitar’, as well as the more substantial ‘Pavilion on the Links’, a thrilling adventure story involving death-by-quicksand, Italian gangsters and murder.

  The gathering of the Suicide Club, from a 1970 British TV adaptation

  CONTENTS

  THE SUICIDE CLUB

  STORY OF THE YOUNG MAN WITH THE CREAM TARTS

  STORY OF THE PHYSICIAN AND THE SARATOGA TRUNK

  THE ADVENTURE OF THE HANSOM CABS

  THE RAJAH’S DIAMOND

  STORY OF THE BANDBOX

  STORY OF THE YOUNG MAN IN HOLY ORDERS

  STORY OF THE HOUSE WITH THE GREEN
BLINDS

  THE ADVENTURE OF PRINCE FLORIZEL AND A DETECTIVE

  THE PAVILION ON THE LINKS

  CHAPTER I TELLS HOW I CAMPED IN GRADEN SEA-WOOD, AND BEHELD A LIGHT IN THE PAVILION

  CHAPTER II TELLS OF THE NOCTURNAL LANDING FROM THE YACHT

  CHAPTER III TELLS HOW I BECAME ACQUAINTED WITH MY WIFE

  CHAPTER IV TELLS IN WHAT A STARTLING MANNER I LEARNED THAT I WAS NOT ALONE IN GRADEN SEA-WOOD

  CHAPTER V TELLS OF AN INTERVIEW BETWEEN NORTHMOUR, CLARA, AND MYSELF

  CHAPTER VI TELLS OF MY INTRODUCTION TO THE TALL MAN

  CHAPTER VII TELLS HOW A WORD WAS CRIED THROUGH THE PAVILION WINDOW

  CHAPTER VIII TELLS THE LAST OF THE TALL MAN

  CHAPTER IX TELLS HOW NORTHMOUR CARRIED OUT HIS THREAT

  A LODGING FOR THE NIGHT: A STORY OF FRANCIS VILLON

  THE SIRE DE MALÉTROIT’S DOOR

  PROVIDENCE AND THE GUITAR

  CHAPTER I

  CHAPTER II

  CHAPTER III

  CHAPTER IV

  CHAPTER V

  CHAPTER VI

  Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne, Stevenson’s wife, whom he married in 1880. ‘The Pavillion on the Links’ was written during Stevenson’s dramatic journey across America in pursuit of Fanny, with whom he had fallen in love.

  W. E. Henley, poet and editor, in whose London Magazine many of the stories in ‘New Arabian Nights’ were first published. Stevenson and Henley were close friends, but became estranged in later life after Henley accused Stevenson’s wife of plagiarism.

  TO

  ROBERT ALLAN MOWBRAY STEVENSON

  IN GRATEFUL REMEMBRANCE OF THEIR YOUTH

  AND THEIR ALREADY OLD AFFECTION

  THE SUICIDE CLUB

  STORY OF THE YOUNG MAN WITH THE CREAM TARTS

  During his residence in London, the accomplished Prince Florizel of Bohemia gained the affection of all classes by the seduction of his manner and by a well-considered generosity. He was a remarkable man even by what was known of him; and that was but a small part of what he actually did. Although of a placid temper in ordinary circumstances, and accustomed to take the world with as much philosophy as any ploughman, the Prince of Bohemia was not without a taste for ways of life more adventurous and eccentric than that to which he was destined by his birth. Now and then, when he fell into a low humour, when there was no laughable play to witness in any of the London theatres, and when the season of the year was unsuitable to those field sports in which he excelled all competitors, he would summon his confidant and Master of the Horse, Colonel Geraldine, and bid him prepare himself against an evening ramble. The Master of the Horse was a young officer of a brave and even temerarious disposition. He greeted the news with delight, and hastened to make ready. Long practice and a varied acquaintance of life had given him a singular facility in disguise; he could adapt not only his face and bearing, but his voice and almost his thoughts, to those of any rank, character, or nation; and in this way he diverted attention from the Prince, and sometimes gained admission for the pair into strange societies. The civil authorities were never taken into the secret of these adventures; the imperturbable courage of the one and the ready invention and chivalrous devotion of the other had brought them through a score of dangerous passes; and they grew in confidence as time went on.

  One evening in March they were driven by a sharp fall of sleet into an Oyster Bar in the immediate neighbourhood of Leicester Square. Colonel Geraldine was dressed and painted to represent a person connected with the Press in reduced circumstances; while the Prince had, as usual, travestied his appearance by the addition of false whiskers and a pair of large adhesive eyebrows. These lent him a shaggy and weather-beaten air, which, for one of his urbanity, formed the most impenetrable disguise. Thus equipped, the commander and his satellite sipped their brandy and soda in security.

  The bar was full of guests, male and female; but though more than one of these offered to fall into talk with our adventurers, none of them promised to grow interesting upon a nearer acquaintance. There was nothing present but the lees of London and the commonplace of disrespectability; and the Prince had already fallen to yawning, and was beginning to grow weary of the whole excursion, when the swing doors were pushed violently open, and a young man, followed by a couple of commissionaires, entered the bar. Each of the commissionaires carried a large dish of cream tarts under a cover, which they at once removed; and the young man made the round of the company, and pressed these confections upon every one’s acceptance with an exaggerated courtesy. Sometimes his offer was laughingly accepted; sometimes it was firmly, or even harshly, rejected. In these latter cases the new-comer always ate the tart himself, with some more or less humorous commentary.

  At last he accosted Prince Florizel.

  “Sir,” said he, with a profound obeisance, proffering the tart at the same time between his thumb and forefinger, “will you so far honour an entire stranger? I can answer for the quality of the pastry, having eaten two dozen and three of them myself since five o’clock.”

  “I am in the habit,” replied the Prince, “of looking not so much to the nature of a gift as to the spirit in which it is offered.”

  “The spirit, sir,” returned the young man, with another bow, “is one of mockery.”

  “Mockery?” repeated Florizel. “And whom do you propose to mock?”

  “I am not here to expound my philosophy,” replied the other, “but to distribute these cream tarts. If I mention that I heartily include myself in the ridicule of the transaction, I hope you will consider honour satisfied and condescend. If not, you will constrain me to eat my twenty-eighth, and I own to being weary of the exercise.”

  “You touch me,” said the Prince, “and I have all the will in the world to rescue you from this dilemma, but upon one condition. If my friend and I eat your cakes — for which we have neither of us any natural inclination — we shall expect you to join us at supper by way of recompense.”

  The young man seemed to reflect.

  “I have still several dozen upon hand,” he said at last; “and that will make it necessary for me to visit several more bars before my great affair is concluded. This will take some time; and if you are hungry—”

  The Prince interrupted him with a polite gesture.

  “My friend and I will accompany you,” he said; “for we have already a deep interest in your very agreeable mode of passing an evening. And now that the preliminaries of peace are settled, allow me to sign the treaty for both.”

  And the Prince swallowed the tart with the best grace imaginable.

  “It is delicious,” said he.

  “I perceive you are a connoisseur,” replied the young man.

  Colonel Geraldine likewise did honour to the pastry; and every one in that bar having now either accepted or refused his delicacies, the young man with the cream tarts led the way to another and similar establishment. The two commissionaires, who seemed to have grown accustomed to their absurd employment, followed immediately after; and the Prince and the Colonel brought up the rear, arm in arm, and smiling to each other as they went. In this order the company visited two other taverns, where scenes were enacted of a like nature to that already described — some refusing, some accepting, the favours of this vagabond hospitality, and the young man himself eating each rejected tart.

  On leaving the third saloon the young man counted his store. There were but nine remaining, three in one tray and six in the other.

  “Gentlemen,” said he, addressing himself to his two new followers, “I am unwilling to delay your supper. I am positively sure you must be hungry. I feel that I owe you a special consideration. And on this great day for me, when I am closing a career of folly by my most conspicuously silly action, I wish to behave handsomely to all who give me countenance. Gentlemen, you shall wait no longer. Although my constitution is shattered by previous excesses, at the risk of my life I liquidate the suspensory condition.”

  With these words he crushed the ni
ne remaining tarts into his mouth, and swallowed them at a single movement each. Then, turning to the commissionaires, he gave them a couple of sovereigns.

  “I have to thank you,” said be, “for your extraordinary patience.”

  And he dismissed them with a bow apiece. For some seconds he stood looking at the purse from which he had just paid his assistants, then, with a laugh, he tossed it into the middle of the street, and signified his readiness for supper.

  In a small French restaurant in Soho, which had enjoyed an exaggerated reputation for some little while, but had already begun to be forgotten, and in a private room up two pair of stairs, the three companions made a very elegant supper, and drank three or four bottles of champagne, talking the while upon indifferent subjects. The young man was fluent and gay, but he laughed louder than was natural in a person of polite breeding; his hands trembled violently, and his voice took sudden and surprising inflections, which seemed to be independent of his will. The dessert had been cleared away, and all three had lighted their cigars, when the Prince addressed him in these words: —

  “You will, I am sure, pardon my curiosity. What I have seen of you has greatly pleased but even more puzzled me. And though I should be loth to seem indiscreet, I must tell you that my friend and I are persons very well worthy to be entrusted with a secret. We have many of our own, which we are continually revealing to improper ears. And if, as I suppose, your story is a silly one, you need have no delicacy with us, who are two of the silliest men in England. My name is Godall, Theophilus Godall; my friend is Major Alfred Hammersmith — or at least, such is the name by which he chooses to be known. We pass our lives entirely in the search for extravagant adventures; and there is no extravagance with which we are not capable of sympathy.”