I must end, I am really ashamed to say, with this. Anyhow, in one way my uncle was triumphant: I was convinced, at last and at least, of a value in cryptograms.
THE UNLUCKIEST MAN IN THE
WORLD
He was nicknamed, ironically, Carabas—a sort of French equivalent for Fortunatus—the only title by which I ever knew him. Perhaps the underlying sympathy which impelled the jest reconciled him to its mockery; for there is, after all, an acute distinction in being the unluckiest man in the world. Somebody says somewhere that it is better to “lead” in hell than be a super in heaven. There came a time, I think, when Carabas would have resented good fortune as an outrage. It would have broken his record, and made him commonplace at a blow. As with Hawthorne’s young woman who was bred and throve on poisons, a normal dietary would have been fatal to him. Carabas was nurtured on ill-luck.
I made his acquaintance at Verey’s in Montreux. It was for ever Carabas here and Carabas there, and, sometimes, in badinage, M. le Marquis; for the fellow was always in huge request for his capability and good-humour. There was a great deal of commiseration being shown for him when I first arrived. Latterly he had drawn a prize ticket—for thirty thousand francs, I think it was—in some State lottery. But, alas! a few days before the declaration of the winning numbers, he had parted with his voucher for a trifle over cost price. We got up a consolation subscription for him in the hotel—relatively, quite a respectable little sum—which, with effusive thanks, he deposited in the Bureau de Secours Mutuels. The bank stopped payment almost at once, and Carabas lost his nest-egg, with a prospect of future “calls” from the parent cuckoo.
After that, we abandoned him to his Nemesis. We had recognized finally, I suppose, that vails to him meant nothing but tips to his evil destiny, to whom, as to a rapacious head-waiter, they all accrued. And so he himself was convinced with us. He showed himself neither surprised nor aggrieved; but remained the sunniest fatalist, with just a touch of wistfulness, which Nature had ever produced out of a union between Candour and Philosophy.
I don’t know what his official position was. I don’t think he knew himself. He wore a plain peaked cap, and a sleeved waistcoat with brass buttons, and was, loosely, jackal to the tremendous concierge whose bullion took the costly glass tabernacle in the hall with splendour. Carabas himself was not at all a figure of splendour. He was small, and placable in expression, with smiling cheeks, mobile lips, pencilled over by a tiny black moustache, and strength visible in nothing but his eyes. They were his vouchers of distinction above the common brand.
One thing certain about him was that he was an accomplished linguist; a second, that, for all his unspoiledness, he had a large experience of man, and (notably) womankind; a third, that his courage was equal to his good temper; a fourth, that, with every natural claim to consideration, his pride halted at no service, whether of skill or complaisance, which an unscrupulous management could exact of him; a fifth and last, that he permitted his employers so to presume upon his reputation for successlessness, as to accept from them, in reward for his many accomplishments, wages which would have been cheap to inefficiency. His own material welfare, indeed, seemed always the thing remotest from his interests. To be helpful to others was the sum of his morality.
I never could satisfy myself as to his nationality. Once—as one might ask him anything without offence—I put the question to him. To my secret surprise, he seemed to hesitate a perceptible moment before he answered, with a smiling shrug of his shoulders—
“Cosmopolitan, monsieur; a foundling of Fortune.”
“We should do very well, then,” I answered, “to claim you for England.”