Book: Short Stories

V >> Various >> Short Stories




The vast fireplace, full of clear flame, cast an intense heat against
the backs of the row on the right of the table. Three spits were
revolving, laden with chickens, pigeons, and legs of mutton; and a
delectable odor of roast meat, and of gravy dripping from the browned
skin, came forth from the hearth, stirred the guests to merriment, and
made their mouths water.

All the aristocracy of the plough ate there, at Mast' Jourdain's, the
innkeeper and horse trader--a shrewd rascal who had money.

The dishes passed and were soon emptied, like the jugs of yellow
cider. Every one told of his affairs, his sales and his purchases.
They inquired about the crops. The weather was good for green stuffs,
but a little wet for wheat.

Suddenly a drum rolled in the yard, in front of the house. In an
instant everybody was on his feet, save a few indifferent ones; and
they all ran to the door and windows with their mouths still full and
napkins in hand.

Having finished his long tattoo, the public crier shouted in a jerky
voice, making his pauses in the wrong places:--

"The people of Goderville, and all those present at the market are
informed that between--nine and ten o'clock this morning on the
Beuzeville--road, a black leather wallet was lost, containing five
hundred--francs, and business papers. The finder is requested to carry
it to--the mayor's at once, or to Master Fortune Huelbreque of
Manneville. A reward of twenty francs will be paid."

Then he went away. They heard once more in the distance the muffled
roll of the drum and the indistinct voice of the crier.

Then they began to talk about the incident, reckoning Master
Houlbreque's chance of finding or not finding his wallet.

And the meal went on.

They were finishing their coffee when the corporal of gendarmes
appeared in the doorway.

He inquired:--

"Is Master Hauchecorne of Breaute here?"

Master Hauchecorne, who was seated at the farther end of the table,
answered:--

"Here I am."

And the corporal added:--

"Master Hauchecorne, will you be kind enough to go to the mayor's
office with me? Monsieur the mayor would like to speak to you."

The peasant, surprised and disturbed, drank his _petit verre[6]_ at
one swallow, rose, and even more bent than in the morning, for the
first steps after each rest were particularly painful, he started off,
repeating:--

"Here I am, here I am."

And he followed the brigadier.

The mayor was waiting for him, seated in his arm-chair. He was the
local notary, a stout, solemn-faced man, given to pompous speeches.

"Master Hauchecorne," he said, "you were seen this morning, on the
Beuzeville road, to pick up the wallet lost by Master Huelbreque of
Manneville."

The rustic, dumfounded, stared at the mayor, already alarmed by this
suspicion which had fallen upon him, although he failed to understand
it.

"I, I--I picked up that wallet?"

"Yes, you."

"On my word of honor, I didn't even so much as see it."

"You were seen."

"They saw me, me? Who was it saw me?"

"Monsieur Malandain, the harness-maker."

Thereupon the old man remembered and understood; and flushing with
anger, he cried:--

"Ah! he saw me, did he, that sneak? He saw me pick up this string,
look, m'sieu' mayor."

And fumbling in the depths of his pocket, he produced the little piece
of cord.

But the mayor was incredulous and shook his head.

"You won't make me believe, Master Hauchecorne, that Monsieur
Malandain, who is a man deserving of credit, mistook this string for a
wallet."

The peasant, in a rage, raised his hand, spit to one side to pledge
his honor, and said:--

"It's God's own truth, the sacred truth, all the same, m'sieu' mayor.
I say it again, by my soul and my salvation."

"After picking it up," rejoined the mayor, "you hunted a long while in
the mud, to see if some piece of money hadn't fallen out."

The good man was suffocated with wrath and fear.

"If any one can tell--if any one can tell lies like that to ruin an
honest man! If any one can say--"

To no purpose did he protest; he was not believed.

He was confronted with Monsieur Malandain, who repeated and maintained
his declaration. They insulted each other for a whole hour. At his own
request, Master Hauchecorne was searched. They found nothing on him.
At last the mayor, being sorely perplexed, discharged him, but warned
him that he proposed to inform the prosecuting attorney's office and
to ask for orders.

The news had spread. On leaving the mayor's office, the old man was
surrounded and questioned with serious or bantering curiosity, in
which, however, there was no trace of indignation. And he began to
tell the story of the string. They did not believe him. They laughed.

He went his way, stopping his acquaintances, repeating again and again
his story and his protestations, showing his pockets turned inside
out, to prove that he had nothing.

They said to him:--

"You old rogue, _va!_"

And he lost his temper, lashing himself into a rage, feverish with
excitement, desperate because he was not believed, at a loss what to
do, and still telling his story. Night came. He must needs go home. He
started with three neighbors, to whom he pointed out the place where
he had picked up the bit of string: and all the way he talked of his
misadventure.

During the evening he made a circuit of the village of Breaute, in
order to tell everybody about it. He found none but incredulous
listeners.

He was ill over it all night.

The next afternoon, about one o'clock, Marius Paumelle, a farmhand
employed by Master Breton, a farmer of Ymauville, restored the wallet
and its contents to Master Huelbreque of Manneville.

The man claimed that he had found it on the road; but, being unable to
read, had carried it home and given it to his employer.

The news soon became known in the neighborhood; Master Hauchecorne was
informed of it. He started out again at once, and began to tell his
story, now made complete by the denouement. He was triumphant.

"What made me feel bad," he said, "wasn't so much the thing itself,
you understand, but the lying. There's nothing hurts you so much as
being blamed for lying."

All day long he talked of his adventure; he told it on the roads to
people who passed; at the wine-shop to people who were drinking; and
after church on the following Sunday. He even stopped strangers to
tell them about it. His mind was at rest now, and yet something
embarrassed him, although he could not say just what it was. People
seemed to laugh while they listened to him. They did not seem
convinced. He felt as if remarks were made behind his back.

On Tuesday of the next week, he went to market at Goderville, impelled
solely by the longing to tell his story.

Malandain, standing in his doorway, began to laugh when he saw him
coming. Why?

He accosted a farmer from Criquetot, who did not let him finish, but
poked him in the pit of his stomach, and shouted in his face: "Go on,
you old fox!" Then he turned on his heel.

Master Hauchecorne was speechless, and more and more disturbed. Why
did he call him "old fox"?

When he was seated at the table, in Jourdain's Inn, he set about
explaining the affair once more.

A horse-trader from Montvilliers called out to him:--

"Nonsense, nonsense, you old dodger! I know all about your string!"

"But they've found the wallet!" faltered Hauchecorne.

"None of that, old boy; there's one who finds it, and there's one who
carries it back. I don't know just how you did it, but I understand
you."

The peasant was fairly stunned. He understood at last. He was accused
of having sent the wallet back by a confederate, an accomplice.

He tried to protest. The whole table began to laugh.

He could not finish his dinner, but left the inn amid a chorus of
jeers.

He returned home, shamefaced and indignant, suffocated by wrath, by
confusion, and all the more cast down because, with his Norman
cunning, he was quite capable of doing the thing with which he was
charged, and even of boasting of it as a shrewd trick. He had a
confused idea that his innocence was impossible to establish, his
craftiness being so well known. And he was cut to the heart by the
injustice of the suspicion.

Thereupon he began once more to tell of the adventure, making the
story longer each day, adding each time new arguments, more forcible
protestations, more solemn oaths, which he devised and prepared in his
hours of solitude, his mind being wholly engrossed by the story of the
string. The more complicated his defence and the more subtle his
reasoning, the less he was believed.

"Those are a liar's reasons," people said behind his back.

He realized it: he gnawed his nails, and exhausted himself in vain
efforts.

He grew perceptibly thinner.

Now the jokers asked him to tell the story of "The Piece of String"
for their amusement, as a soldier who has seen service is asked to
tell about his battles. His mind, attacked at its source, grew
feebler.

Late in December he took to his bed.

In the first days of January he died, and in his delirium, of the
death agony, he protested his innocence, repeating:

"A little piece of string--a little piece of string--see, here it is,
m'sieu' mayor."


NOTES

[1] _The Piece of String_ was written in 1884. Reprinted from _Little
French Masterpieces_, by permission of the publishers, _G.P. Putnam's
Sons_.

[2] 34:5 char-a-bancs. A pleasure car.

[3] 35:26 Angelus. A bell tolled at morning, noon, and night,
according to the Roman Catholic Church custom, to indicate the time of
the service of song and recitation in memory of the Virgin Mary. The
name is taken from the first word of the recitation.

[4] 35:30 cabriolet. A cab. Originally a light, one-horse pleasure
carriage with two seats.

[5] 35:30 tilbury. An old form of gig, seating two persons.

[6] 37:20 petit verre. Little glass.


BIOGRAPHY

Henri Rene Albert Guy de Maupassant, French novelist, dramatist, and
short-story writer, was born in 1850. Until he was thirteen years old
he had no teacher except his mother, who personally superintended the
training of her two sons. Life for the two boys, during these early
years, was free and happy, Guy was a strong and robust Norman,
overflowing with animal spirits and exuberant with the joy of youthful
life.

When thirteen years of age Maupassant attended the seminary at Yvetot,
where he found school life irksome and a most distasteful contrast to
his former free life. Later he became a student in the Lycee in Rouen.
His experience as a student here was very pleasant, and he easily
acquired his degree. In 1870 he was appointed to a clerkship in the
Navy, and a little later to a more lucrative position in the
Department of Public Instruction. His work in these two positions
suffered very materially because of his negligence and daily practice
in writing verses and essays for Flaubert, the most careful literary
technicist in the history of literature, to criticize. For seven years
Maupassant served this severe task-master, always writing, receiving
criticisms, and publishing nothing.

Immediately after the publication of his first story Maupassant was
hailed as a finished master artist. From 1880 to 1890 he published six
novels, sixteen volumes of short-stories, three volumes of travels,
and many newspaper articles. This gigantic task was performed only
because of his regular habits and splendid physique. He wrote
regularly every morning from seven o'clock until noon, and at night
always wrote out notes on the impressions from his experiences of the
day.

Maupassant was a natural artist deeply in love with the technique of
his work. He did not write for money, although he believed that a
writer should have plenty of this world's possessions, nor did he
write for art's sake. In fact he avoided talking on the subject of
writing and to all appearances seemed to despise his profession. He
wrote because the restless, immitigable force within him compelled him
to work like a slave. He thought little of morals, or religion, but
was enamored with physical life and its insolvable problems. He was,
above everything else, a truthful man. Sometimes his subjects are
unclean and he treats them as such, but, if his subject is clean, his
treatment is undefiled.

In 1887 the shadows of insanity began to creep athwart his life. Even
in 1884 he seemed to feel a premonition of his coming catastrophe when
he wrote: "I am afraid of the walls, of the furniture, of the familiar
objects which seem to me to assume a kind of animal life. Above all, I
fear the horrible confusion of my thought, of my reason escaping,
entangled and scattered by an invisible and mysterious anguish." The
dreaded disease developed until, in 1890, he had to suspend his
writing. In 1892 he became wholly insane and had to be committed to an
insane asylum where he died in a padded cell one year later.


BIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES

_The New International Encyclopaedia_.

_Encyclopaedia Britannica_.

_Bookman_, 25:290-294_.


CRITICISMS

Maupassant's short-stories are generally conceded to be the best in
French literature. He handles his materials with great care, and his
descriptions of scenes and characters are unequalled. In his first
writings he seems impassive to the point of frigidity. He is a
recorder who sets down exactly the life before him. This is one of the
lessons he learned from Flaubert. He was not interested in what a
character thought or felt, but he noted and fondled every action of
his characters.

He loved life, despite the lack of solutions. At times his fondness
for mere physical life leads him to the brutal stage. In his story,
_On the Water_, he gives a confession of a purely sensual man: "How
gladly, at times, I would think no more, feel no more, live the life
of a brute, in a warm, bright country, in a yellow country, without
crude and brutal verdure, in one of those Eastern countries in which
one falls asleep without concern, is active and has no cares, loves
and has no distress, and is scarcely aware that one is going on
living!"

Maupassant was a keen observer, possessed an excellent but not lofty
imagination, and never asserted a philosophy of life. His writings are
all interesting, terse, precise, and truthful, but lack the glow that
comes with a sympathetic and spiritual outlook on life. Zola says of
him: ".... a Latin of good, clear, solid head, a maker of beautiful
sentences shining like gold...." He chooses a single incident, a few
characteristics and then moulds them into a compact story. Nine-tenths
of his stories deal with selfishness and hypocrisy.

Tolstoi wrote: "Maupassant possessed genius, that gift of attention
revealing in the objects and facts of life properties not perceived by
others; he possessed a beautiful form of expression, uttering clearly,
simply, and with charm what he wished to say; and he possessed also
the merit of sincerity, without which a work of art produces no
effect; that is he did not merely pretend to love or hate, but did
indeed love or hate what he described."


GENERAL REFERENCES

_Inquiries and Opinions_, Brander Matthews.

"A Criticism," _Outlook_, 88:973-976.

"Greatest Short Story Writer that Ever Lived," _Current Literature_,
42:636-638.


COLLATERAL READINGS

_Happiness_ (Odd Number), Guy de Maupassant.

_The Wolf_, Guy de Maupassant.

_La Mere Sauvage_, Guy de Maupassant.

_The Confession_, Guy de Maupassant.

_On the Journey_, Guy de Maupassant.

_The Beggar_, Guy de Maupassant.

_A Ghost_, Guy de Maupassant.

_Little Soldier_, Guy de Maupassant.

_The Wreck_, Guy de Maupassant.

_The Necklace_, Guy de Maupassant.

_A Note of Scarlet_, Ruth Stuart.

_Expiation_, Octave Thanet.

_Fagan_, Rowland Thomas.

_La Grande Breteche_ ("Jessup and Canby"), Honore de Balzac.



THE MAN WHO WAS[1]

_By Rudyard Kipling (1865- )_


Let it be clearly understood that the Russian is a delightful person
till he tucks his shirt in. As an Oriental he is charming. It is only
when he insists upon being treated as the most easterly of Western
peoples, instead of the most westerly of Easterns, that he becomes a
racial anomaly[2] extremely difficult to handle. The host never knows
which side of his nature is going to turn up next.

Dirkovitch was a Russian--a Russian of the Russians, as he said--who
appeared to get his bread by serving the czar as an officer in a
Cossack regiment, and corresponding for a Russian newspaper with a
name that was never twice the same. He was a handsome young Oriental,
with a taste for wandering through unexplored portions of the earth,
and he arrived in India from nowhere in particular. At least no living
man could ascertain whether it was by way of Balkh, Budukhshan,
Chitral, Beloochistan, Nepaul, or anywhere else. The Indian
government, being in an unusually affable mood, gave orders that he
was to be civilly treated, and shown everything that was to be seen;
so he drifted, talking bad English and worse French, from one city to
another till he forgathered with her Majesty's White Hussars[3] in the
city of Peshawur,[4] which stands at the mouth of that narrow
sword-cut in the hills that men call the Khyber Pass. He was
undoubtedly an officer, and he was decorated, after the manner of the
Russians, with little enameled crosses, and he could talk, and (though
this has nothing to do with his merits) he had been given up as a
hopeless task or case by the Black Tyrones[5], who, individually and
collectively, with hot whisky and honey, mulled brandy and mixed
spirits of all kinds, had striven in all hospitality to make him
drunk. And when the Black Tyrones, who are exclusively Irish, fail to
disturb the peace of head of a foreigner, that foreigner is certain to
be a superior man. This was the argument of the Black Tyrones, but
they were ever an unruly and self-opinionated regiment, and they
allowed junior subalterns of four years' service to choose their
wines. The spirits were always purchased by the colonel and a
committee of majors. And a regiment that would so behave may be
respected but cannot be loved.

The White Hussars were as conscientious in choosing their wine as in
charging the enemy. There was a brandy that had been purchased by a
cultured colonel a few years after the battle of Waterloo. It has been
maturing ever since, and it was a marvelous brandy at the purchasing.
The memory of that liquor would cause men to weep as they lay dying in
the teak forests of upper Burmah[6] or the slime of the Irrawaddy[7].
And there was a port which was notable; and there was a champagne of
an obscure brand, which always came to mess without any labels,
because the White Hussars wished none to know where the source of
supply might be found. The officer on whose head the champagne
choosing lay was forbidden the use of tobacco for six weeks previous
to sampling.

This particularity of detail is necessary to emphasize the fact that
that champagne, that port, and above all, that brandy--the green and
yellow and white liqueurs did not count--was placed at the absolute
disposition of Dirkovitch, and he enjoyed himself hugely--even more
than among the Black Tyrones.

But he remained distressingly European through it all. The White
Hussars were--"My dear true friends," "Fellow-soldiers glorious," and
"Brothers inseparable." He would unburden himself by the hour on the
glorious future that awaited the combined arms of England and Russia
when their hearts and their territories should run side by side, and
the great mission of civilizing Asia should begin. That was
unsatisfactory, because Asia is not going to be civilized after the
methods of the West. There is too much Asia, and she is too old. You
cannot reform a lady of many lovers, and Asia has been insatiable in
her flirtations aforetime. She will never attend Sunday school, or
learn to vote save with swords for tickets.

Dirkovitch knew this as well as any one else, but it suited him to
talk special-correspondently and to make himself as genial as he
could. Now and then he volunteered a little, a very little,
information about his own Sotnia[8] of Cossacks, left apparently to
look after themselves somewhere at the back of beyond. He had done
rough work in Central Asia, and had seen rather more help-yourself
fighting than most men of his years. But he was careful never to
betray his superiority, and more than careful to praise on all
occasions the appearance, drill, uniform, and organization of her
Majesty's White Hussars. And, indeed, they were a regiment to be
admired. When Mrs. Durgan, widow of the late Sir John Durgan, arrived
in their station, and after a short time had been proposed to by every
single man at mess, she put the public sentiment very neatly when she
explained that they were all so nice that unless she could marry them
all, including the colonel and some majors who were already married,
she was not going to content herself with one of them. Wherefore she
wedded a little man in a rifle regiment--being by nature
contradictious--and the White Hussars were going to wear crape on
their arms, but compromised by attending the wedding in full force,
and lining the aisle with unutterable reproach. She had jilted them
all--from Basset-Holmer, the senior captain, to Little Mildred, the
last subaltern, and he could have given her four thousand a year and a
title. He was a viscount, and on his arrival the mess had said he had
better go into the Guards, because they were all sons of large grocers
and small clothiers in the Hussars, but Mildred begged very hard to be
allowed to stay, and behaved so prettily that he was forgiven, and
became a man, which is much more important than being any sort of
viscount.

The only persons who did not share the general regard for the White
Hussars were a few thousand gentlemen of Jewish extraction who lived
across the border, and answered to the name of Pathan. They had only
met the regiment officially, and for something less than twenty
minutes, but the interview, which was complicated with many
casualties, had filled them with prejudice. They even called the White
Hussars "children of the devil," and sons of persons whom it would be
perfectly impossible to meet in decent society. Yet they were not
above making their aversion fill their money belts. The regiment
possessed carbines, beautiful Martini-Henri carbines, that would cob a
bullet into an enemy's camp at one thousand yards, and were even
handier than the long rifle. Therefore they were coveted all along the
border, and since demand inevitably breeds supply, they were supplied
at the risk of life and limb for exactly their weight in coined
silver--seven and one half pounds of rupees[9], or sixteen pounds and
a few shillings each, reckoning the rupee at par. They were stolen at
night by snaky-haired thieves that crawled on their stomachs under the
nose of the sentries; they disappeared mysteriously from armracks; and
in the hot weather, when all the doors and windows were open, they
vanished like puffs of their own smoke. The border people desired them
first for their own family vendettas[10] and then for contingencies.
But in the long cold nights of the Northern Indian winter they were
stolen most extensively. The traffic of murder was liveliest among the
hills at that season, and prices ruled high. The regimental guards
were first doubled and then trebled. A trooper does not much care if
he loses a weapon--government must make it good--but he deeply resents
the loss of his sleep. The regiment grew very angry, and one
night-thief who managed to limp away bears the visible marks of their
anger upon him to this hour. That incident stopped the burglaries for
a time, and the guards were reduced accordingly, and the regiment
devoted itself to polo with unexpected results, for it beat by two
goals to one that very terrible polo corps the Lushkar Light Horse,
though the latter had four ponies apiece for a short hour's fight, as
well as a native officer who played like a lambent flame across the
ground.

Then they gave a dinner to celebrate the event. The Lushkar team came,
and Dirkovitch came, in the fullest full uniform of Cossack officer,
which is as full as a dressing-gown, and was introduced to the
Lushkars, and opened his eyes as he regarded them. They were lighter
men than the Hussars, and they carried themselves with the swing that
is the peculiar right of the Punjab[11] frontier force and all
irregular horse. Like everything else in the service, it has to be
learned; but unlike many things, it is never forgotten, and remains on
the body till death.

The great beam-roofed mess room of the White Hussars was a sight to be
remembered. All the mess plate was on the long table--the same table
that had served up the bodies of five dead officers in a forgotten
fight long and long ago--the dingy, battered standards faced the door
of entrance, clumps of winter roses lay between the silver
candlesticks, the portraits of eminent officers deceased looked down
on their successors from between the heads of sambhur[12],
nilghai[13], maikhor, and, pride of all the mess, two grinning
snow-leopards that had cost Basset-Holmer four months' leave that he
might have spent in England instead of on the road to Thibet, and the
daily risk of his life on ledge, snowslide, and glassy grass slope.

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