A Capillary Crime, and Other Stories

by Francis Davis Millet

Miss Van Hoorn anxiously watched the slaughter from the safe elevation of the easel, and, when it was over, fainted into the artist’s arms.

The most unique and remarkable engagement ring ever marked with a date at Tiffany’s was a beautiful antique intaglio of Medusa’s head set in Etruscan gold.

THE FOURTH WAITS

I.

THE click of dominos is an accompaniment scarcely in harmony with a discussion of psychology and religion. But no subject is too sacred, or too profane, to be discussed in a café—that neutral ground where all parties and all sects meet; and it was a serious debate during a game of dominos that marked the beginning of a course of strange coincidences and sad occurrences that crowd one chapter in an eventful Bohemian life.

There were four of us art-students in the Academy of Antwerp assembled, as was our custom after the evening life-class, at a café in a quiet faubourg of the city. It was a gloomy November evening, cold and raw in the wind, but not too chill to sit in the open air under the lee of the wooden shed which enclosed two sides of the café garden. The heavy atmosphere had not crushed every spark of cheerfulness out of the buoyant natures of the materialistic Flemings, and the tables were filled with noisy bourgeois and their families, drinking the mild beer of Louvain or generous cups of coffee. Their gayety seemed sacrilegious in the solemn presence of approaching winter—that long, depressing, ghostly season which in the Low Countries gives warning of its coming with prophetic sobs and continued tears, and trails the shroud of summer before the eyes of shrinking mortals for weeks before it buries its victim. In a climate like that of Flanders, the winter, rarely marked by severe cold, really begins with the rainy season in early autumn, and it continues in an interminable succession of dismal days with shrouded skies.

On the evening in question the clouds seemed lower than usual; the wind was fitful and spasmodic, and came in long, mournful, insinuating sighs that stole in mockingly between the peals of music and laughter, and startled every one in his gayest mood. The gas-jets flickered and wavered weirdly, and the dry leaves danced accompaniment to the movements of the swift-footed waiters. The clatter of wooden shoes on the pavement without, and the measureless but not unmusical songs of the jolly workmen on their way home, filled the score of the medley of sounds that broke the sepulchral quiet of the evening.

There were four of us, as I have said: old Reiner, Tyck, Henley, and myself. Each represented a different nationality. Reiner was a Norwegian of German descent, tall and ungainly, with a large head, a shock of light-colored, coarse hair, a virgin beard, and a good-humored face focused in a pair of searching gray eyes that pried their way into everything that came under their owner’s observation. He was by no means a handsome man, neither was he unattractive; and his sober habits, cool judgment, and great stock of general information gained for him the familiar name of old Reiner among the more thoughtless and more superficial students who were his friends. He was by nature of a more scientific than artistic turn of mind. He was conversant with nine languages, including Sanskrit, had received a thorough university education in Norway and Germany, took delight in investigating every subject that came in his way—from the habits of an ant to the movements of the gold market in America—and could talk intelligently and instructively on every topic proposed to him. Indeed, his scientific and literary attainments were a wonder to the rest of us, who had lived quite as long and had accomplished much less. As an artist he had great talents as well; but here also his love of investigation constantly directed his efforts. In his academic course he had less success than might have been anticipated, except in the direction of positive rendering of certain effects. He was not a colorist; such natures rarely are; and it is probable that he would never have made a brilliant artist in any branch of the profession, for he was too much of a positivist, and even his historical pictures would have been little more than marvels of correctness of costume and accessories. In his association with us, the flow of his abundant good-humor, which sometimes seemed unlimited, was interrupted by occasional spells of complete reaction, when he neither spoke to nor even saw any one else, but made a hermit of himself until the mood had passed.