A Capillary Crime, and Other Stories

by Francis Davis Millet

Tyck at first sight looked like a Spaniard. He was slight in stature, one short leg causing a stoop which made him appear still smaller than he was. His skin was of a clear brown, warmed by an abundance of rich blood; a mass of strong, curling hair, and a black moustache and imperial framed in a face of peculiar strong beauty. His eyes had something in them too deep to be altogether pleasing, for they caused one to look at him seriously, yet they were as full of laughter and good-nature and cheerfulness as dark eyes can be. His face was one that, notwithstanding its peculiarities, gave a good first impression; and a long friendship had proved him to be chargeable with fewer blemishes of character than are written down against the most of us. But his hands were not in his favor. They were long, bony, and cold; the finger-joints were large and lacked firmness, and the pressure of the hand was listless or unsympathetic. The lines of life were faint and discouraging, and there were few prominent marks in the palm. The secret of his complexion lay in his parentage, for his mother was a native woman of Java, and his father a Dutch merchant, who settled in that far-off country, built up a fortune, and raised a small family of boys, who deserted the paternal nest as soon as they were old enough to flutter alone. Tyck was a colorist. He seemed to see the tones of nature rich with the warm reflections of a tropical sun; and his studies from life, while strong and luscious in tone, were full of fire and subtle gradations—qualities combined rarely enough in the works of older artists. He was to all appearance in the flush of health, and, notwithstanding his deformity, was uncommonly active and fond of exercise. We who knew him intimately, however, always looked upon him as a marked man. With all his rugged, healthy look, his physique was not vigorous enough to resist the attacks of the common foe, winter, and we knew that he occasionally pined mentally and physically for the luxurious warmth of his native land. He flourished in the raw climate of Flanders only as a transplanted flower flourishes; still, he was not declining in health or strength.

It is a long and delicate process to build up an intimate friendship between men of mercurial temperament and such an impersonation of coolness and deliberation and studied manners as was Henley, the third member of our group. From his type of face and his peculiar bearing he was easily recognizable as an Englishman, and even as a member of the Church of England. His manner was plainly the result of a severe and formal training; his whole life, as he told us himself, had been passed under the careful surveillance of a strict father, who was for a long time the rector of one of the first churches of London. But Henley, serious, formal, and cool, was not uncompanionable; and I am not quite sure whether it was not the bony thinness of his face, his straggling black beard and abundant dead-colored hair, that predisposed one at first sight to judge him as a sort of melancholy black sheep among his lighter-hearted companions. So we all placed him at our first meeting. When once the ice was broken, and we felt the sympathetic presence that surrounded him in his intercourse with friends, he became a necessity to complete the current of our little circle, and his English steadiness often served a good purpose in many wordy tempests.

In religious opinions we four were as divided as we were distinct in nationality. Henley, as I have said, was a member of the Church of England. Tyck was a Jew and a Freemason. Reiner entirely disbelieved in everything that was not plain to him intellectually. Our discussions on religious subjects were long and warm, for the theories of the fourth member of the circle piled new fuel upon the flames that sprang up under the friction of the ideas of the other three, and on these topics alone we were seriously at variance. Rarely were our disputes carried to that point where either of us felt wounded after the discussion was ended, but on more than one occasion they were violent enough to have ruptured our little bond if it had not been strengthened by ties of more than ordinary friendship.

This friendship was of the unselfish order, too. We were in the habit of living on the share-and-share-alike principle. Henley was the only one who had any allowance, and he always felt that his regular remittance was rather a bar to his complete and unqualified admission to our little ring. The joint capital among us was always kept in circulation. When one had money and the others had none, and it suited our inclinations or the purposes of our study to visit the Dutch cities, or even to cross the Channel, we travelled on the common purse. Share-and-share-alike in cases less pressing than sickness or actual want may not be a sound mercantile principle; but where the freemasonry of mutual tastes, united purposes, and common hardships binds friend to friend, the spirit of communism is half the charm of existence. Especially is this true of Bohemian life.

In introducing the characters a little time has been taken, partly in order to give us a chance to move our table into a more sheltered corner, and to allow us to get well started in another game of dominos. As I remember that evening, Reiner, who had not entirely recovered from an attack of one of his peculiar moods, had been discussing miracles and mysteries with more than his accustomed warmth, and the rest of us had been cornered and driven off the field in turn; even to Henley, who was not, with all his study, quite as well up on the subject of the Jewish priests and the Druids as old Reiner, whom no topic seemed to find unprepared. When the discussion was at its height I observed in Reiner certain uneasy movements, and I instinctively looked behind him to see if any one was watching him, as his actions resembled those of a person under the mesmerism of an unseen eye. I saw no one, and concluded that my imagination had deceived me. But Reiner became suddenly grave and even solemn, and the debate stopped entirely. At last, after a long silence, Reiner proposed another game of dominos. When the pieces were distributed he began the moves, saying at the same time, quite in earnest and as if talking to himself, “This will decide it.”

His voice was so strange and his look so determined that we felt that something was at stake, and instinctively and in chorus declared that it was useless to play the game out, and proposed an adjournment to the sketching-club. Reiner did not object, and we rose to go. As we left the table I saw behind Reiner’s chair two small, luminous, green balls, set in a black mass, turned towards us—evidently the eyes of a dog, glistening in the reflection of the gas like emerald fires. Possibly the others did not notice the animal, and I was too much startled at the discovery of the unseen eye to speak of it at that moment. Before I had recovered myself completely we were out of the gate, followed by the dog. Under the street-lamp, he leaped about and seemed quite at home. He was seen to be a perfectly black Spitz poodle, with cropped ears and tail, very lively in his movements, and with a remarkably intelligent expression. He was a dog of a character not commonly met, and once observed was not easily mistaken for others of the same breed. Our walk to the club was dreary enough. The gloomy manner of old Reiner was contagious, and no one spoke a word. I was too busy reflecting on the strange manner in which our game had been interrupted to occupy myself with my companion, remembering the now frequent recurrence of Reiner’s blue days, and dreading his absence from the class and the club, which I knew from experience was sure to follow such symptoms as I had observed in the café. To the sketching-club we brought an atmosphere so forbidding that it seemed as if we were the heralds of some misfortune. Scarcely a cheerful word was said after our entrance, and frequent glasses of Louvain or d’orge, drunk on the production of new caricatures, failed to raise the barometer of our spirits. The meeting broke up early, and we four separated. The dog, which had been lying under a settee near the door, followed Reiner as he turned down the boulevard.

For a week we did not meet again. Reiner kept his room or was out of town. He made no sign, and without him we frequented neither the café nor the club. The weather grew cold and rainy; the last evening at the café proved to have been the final gasp of dying autumn, and winter had fairly begun. At last Reiner made his appearance at dinner one dark afternoon, and took his accustomed seat at our table, near the window which opened out upon the glass-covered court-yard of the small hotel where we used to dine, a score of us, artists and students all. He looked very weary and hollow-eyed; said he had been unwell, had taken an overdose of laudanum for neuralgia, and had been confined to his room for a few days. Expecting each day to be able to go out the next morning, he had neglected to send us word, and so the week had passed. As he was speaking I noticed a dog in the court-yard, the same black poodle that attached himself to us in the café. Reiner, observing my surprise, explained that the dog had been living with him at his room in the Steenhouwersvest, and that they were inseparable companions now. We could all see that old Reiner was not yet himself again. One of us ventured to suggest that there might be something Mephistophelian about the animal, and that Reiner was endeavoring, Faust-like, to get at the kernel of the beast, so as to fathom whatever mystery of heaven or earth was as yet to him inexplicable. No further remarks were made, as Reiner arose to go away, leaving his dinner untouched. He shook hands with us all almost solemnly, and with the poodle went out into the gloomy street.

Another week passed, and we saw neither Reiner nor the poodle. December began, and the days were short and dark, the sun scarcely appearing above the cathedral roof in his course from east to west. The absence of old Reiner was a constant theme of conversation, and there were multitudes of conjectures as to whether he were in love, in debt, or really ill. We had no message from him, not a word, not a written line.

One evening as we sat at dinner—it was Thursday, and a heavy rain was falling—the black poodle dashed suddenly in, closely followed by Reiner’s servant-girl, bonnetless and in slippers, and drenched to the skin. Her message was guessed before she had time to gasp out, “Och, Mynheeren, uwer vriend Reiner is dood!” Not waiting for explanations, we followed her as she returned through the slippery streets, scarcely walking or running. How I got there I never knew; it seemed at the time as if I were carried along by some superior force. Filled with dread and fear, mingled with hope that it was an awful mistake and that something might yet be done, I reached the door of the house. Through the grocery-shop, where was assembled a crowd of shivering, drenched people who had gathered there on hearing of the event, conscious that all were watching our entrance with solemn sympathy, not seeing distinctly any one or anything, forgetting the narrow, dark, and winding wooden stair, I was at the door of Reiner’s room in an instant. The tall figure of a gendarme was silhouetted against the window; a few women stood by the table whispering together, awe-stricken at the sight of something that was before them, to the left, and still hidden from me as I took in the scene on entering the door.

Another step brought me to the bedside. There in the dim light lay old Reiner, not as if asleep, for the awful pallor of death was on his face, but with an expression as calm and peaceful as if he were soon to awake from pleasant dreams, as if his soul were still dreaming on. He lay on his right side, with his head resting on his doubled arm. The bedclothes were scarcely disturbed, and his left arm lay naturally on the sheet which was turned over the coverlid. Great, dark stains splashed the wall behind the bed and the pillow; dark streaks ran along over the linen and made little pools upon the floor. His shirt-bosom was one broad, irregular blotch of blood, and in his left hand I could see the carved ivory handle of the little Scandinavian sheath-knife that he always carried in his belt. Before I had fully comprehended the awful reality of poor Reiner’s death, the doctor arrived, lights were brought, and the examination began. Our dead comrade’s head being raised and his shirt-bosom opened, there were exposed two great gashes across the left jugular vein and one across the right, and nine deep wounds in the breast. Few of the cuts would not have proved mortal, and the ferocity with which the fatal knife had been plunged again and again into his breast testified to the madness of the determination to destroy his life. On the dressing-table by the bed we found two small laudanum vials, both empty, and one over-turned, as if placed hastily beside its fellow. In all probability poor Reiner took this large dose of laudanum early in the morning, as it was found that he had been in bed during the entire day, and was seen by the servant to be sleeping at three o’clock in the afternoon. His iron constitution and great physical strength overcoming the effects of the narcotic, he probably awoke to consciousness late in the afternoon. Finding himself still alive, in the agonies of despair and disappointment at the unsuccessful attempt to dream over the chasm into the next world, he seized his knife and madly stabbed himself, doubtless feeling little pain, and only happily conscious that his long-planned step was successfully taken at last. The room was unchanged, nothing was disturbed, and there was no evidence of the premeditation of the suicide, except an open letter on the table, addressed to us, his friends. It contained a simple statement of his reasons for leaving the world, saying that he was discouraged with his progress in art, that he could not establish himself as an artist without great expense to his family and friends, and that he believed by committing suicide he simply annihilated himself—nothing more or less—and so ceased to trouble himself or those interested in him. He gave no directions as to the disposal of his effects, but enclosed a written confession of faith, which read: