“Carabas, you are wonderful; and we shall not forget.”
Miller was as good as his word. With characteristic disregard for any but his own interests, he was gone the next morning, without sign or message, leaving us to wobble in his backwash of scandal, and to get out of it as best we could. His flight, of course, threw open all the doors of gossip. My business in Paris being unfinished, I had to go; but first I did my best to provide against unpleasantnesses by confiding Campaspe to the care of the least slanderous dame de compagnie I could find. I am afraid, nevertheless, she had but a poor time of it.
A week later I received a letter from Mr. G——, who in the interval had returned to Montreux.
“All is happily over with all,” he wrote: “with the exception, that is to say, of poor Carabas, who is to undergo an operation for appendicitis. It appears that a cherry-stone, which he swallowed unwittingly, did the business. The management (OWLS!) demur to the expense. I have insisted (FOOLS!) upon undertaking it upon my own account. We owe much to him; and so do they (IDIOTS!). But they don’t understand how to pay your debts is very often the best foresight.”
It was a case of pitch and toss. For days, it appeared, Carabas’s life hung in the balance. In the meanwhile, I was enabled to rejoin Mr. G—— and his daughter at Montreux, and to take my share in the nursing. Between gratitude and indignation, we rather claimed Carabas among us. Campaspe the poor fellow simply adored. Once, when he fancied himself losing hold, he confided to her, while we stood by, some main incidents in his life. I retail them here, in an abbreviated form.
CARABAS’S STORY
“There is no doubt,” he said “that as truly as some men are born without a palate, so some men are born without luck. It is no use trying to remedy the deficiency; it is well, rather, to study to reconcile oneself to it.
“I was born in an English village, of naturalized Huguenot parents. When I was nineteen, I fell passionately in love. I had for a rival a youth very strong and unscrupulous. One day he persuaded me to bathe with him in the river, then swollen with floods. In mid-stream he pounced upon me, and strove to bear me under. I struggled desperately—it was of no avail. Death thundered in my ears; the water enwrapped and proceeded to swallow me. The last thing I saw was a figure gesticulating and shouting on the bridge a little way above; then consciousness fled, and I sank. I came to myself, stranded somewhere in a dark channel. A mad face was bending over me. I knew it—it was that of the miller. I had been carried into his race, and, just short of the wheel, he had caught and dragged me to shore. He was a drunkard, of that I was aware; and he was now quite demented.
“ ‘Mordieu!’ he said, ‘I see what you’ve come for, and the devil shan’t call twice for his own.’
“I understood instantly. He meant himself to go with me into the water—to join issues with the devil who had called for him, and have a fine frolic into eternity with his visitor. Terror lent me strength. I caught at a post, and, as he leaned down, shot my whole body at him like a spring. He went over with a splash, and I heard the wheel hitch, then begin to turn again, chewing its prey. O, my friends, what a situation! I lay like one damned, a thousand dreadful reflections mastering me. I should be accused, if caught, of murdering this man. That terror quite devoured the other, and increased with every moment that I lay. Darkness came upon me, and then I rose and fled. I thought of nothing but to escape; and so, stealing always by night, I reached London.