A Capillary Crime, and Other Stories

by Francis Davis Millet

When we were well along in the bill of fare, a little incident occurred which put me out of the mood for further enjoyment of the breakfast, and for the rest of the day my position was that of silent spectator, watching the amusements with an expression not calculated to encourage sport. To begin with, I was unusually sensitive to nervous shocks, from the fact that my first impression of Rome had been intensely disagreeable. I found myself in a strangely exciting atmosphere, and subject to unpleasant influences. The first night passed in Rome was crowded with visions, and I cannot recall a period of twenty-four hours during my residence in that city that has not its unpleasant souvenir of strange hallucinations, wonderful dreams, or some shock to my nerves. The meeting with Tyck was doubtless the occasion of my visions and restlessness on the night before the Bohemian breakfast. The events of the previous winter in Antwerp came freshly to my mind; I lived over again that dark season of horrors, and the atmosphere of Rome nourished the growth of similar strange fancies. There was, however, in my train of thoughts on Christmas Eve no foreboding that I can recall, no prophetic fear of a continuance of the strange relations with that black poodle which had already taken away the best half of our circle. It needed little, nevertheless, to put me in a state of mind very similar to that which tortured me for months in Antwerp.

But to return to the breakfast. While we were at the table a hired singer and guitar-player, a young girl of sixteen or seventeen years, sang Italian popular songs and performed instrumental pieces. She had nearly exhausted her list when she began to sing the weird, mournful song of Naples, “Palomella,” at that time quite the rage, but since worn threadbare, and its naïve angles and depressions polished down to the meaningless monotony of a popular ditty. We heard a dog howl in the sleeping-room as the singer finished the ballad, and Lisa rose to open the door. My seat on Tyck’s left brought me quite near the door, and I turned on my chair to watch the entrance of the animal. A black poodle, as near as I could judge the exact counterpart of the Flemish dog, quietly walked into the room, evidently perfectly at home. My first calm reflection was that it was an hallucination, a mental reproduction of one of the grim pictures of the past winter; I could not believe my own vision, and it was some time before I came to realize the fact that my senses were not deceived. I was about to ask Tyck if he had noticed in the dog any curious resemblance to our self-appointed companion in Antwerp, when he turned, and, as I thought then, with a lingering touch of the old superstitious fear in his voice, said: “You’ve noticed the dog; he belongs to Lisa. When he first came here, a month ago, I was horrified to find in him the image of our Flemish friend. Lisa laughed me out of my fears, saying that the animal had been in the family for six months or more, and at last I began to look upon him as a harmless pup, and to wonder only at the strange coincidence.” But I could not turn the affair into a joke or forget for a moment past events, now recalled so vividly to my mind. This was the third time that a black poodle had taken a liking to one of us, and two out of the three attachments had already proved fatal to the human partner. It was not by any means clear that the same dog played these different renderings of one part, but to all appearance it was the identical poodle. If in two cases this friendship of the dog for his self-chosen master had proved fatal, it was but a natural inference that the third attachment would terminate in a similar manner. But Tyck was in better health than ever before, notwithstanding the companionship of the dog. Was not this a proof of the folly of my superstition? I asked myself. Reasons were not wanting to disprove the soundness of my logic. It was undoubtedly true that stranger and more wonderful coincidences had happened, and nothing had come of them, and it was undeniable that the imagination might distort facts to such a degree that coincidences would be suspected where none existed. If it were only a coincidence, fears were childish. And the dog manifested no particular friendship for Tyck; he belonged to Lisa, and seemed to take no special notice of any one else.

The déjeuner went on without further interruption, and the guitar girl drummed away until the table was cleared. We were not at a loss for entertainments after the feast was ended. Tyck’s costumes were drawn upon, and a Flemish musician sang a costume duet with a Walloon sculptor, one being laced up in a blue satin ball-dress, and the other staggering under the weight of a janissary’s uniform. Later on there was a dancing concours, in which the Indian war-dance, the English jig, the negro walk-around, the tarantella, the Flemish reuske, and the Hungarian csárdás each had its nimble-footed performers. The scene was worth putting upon canvas. The confusion of quaint and rare trinkets, the abundance of color-bits, and the picturesque groups of figures in all the costumes that could be improvised for the dance or the song—a museum of bric-à-brac and a carnival of characters—all this made a tableau vivant of great richness and interest.

About the middle of the afternoon the entertainment began to flag a little, and the moment there was a lull in the sport some one proposed a trip to Ponte Molle. The vote was immediately taken and carried, and we marched out to the Piazza del Popolo and engaged an omnibus for the rest of the day.

The straggling suburb outside the Porta del Popolo was lively with pleasure-seeking Romans. The wine-shops were full of sad-eyed peasants and weary, careworn laborers; all the mournful character of a Roman merry-making was unusually prominent on this cheerless holiday, and the cloaked natives chatted as solemnly as if they were mourners at a funeral. Roman festivities are, in general, not calculated to divert the participants to a dangerous extent. Wine-drinking is the chief amusement; and even under the enlivening influences of his potations the Roman rarely loses his habitual seriousness of manner, but bears himself to the end of the orgy as if he expected every moment to be called upon to answer for the sins of his ancestors. As we drove along the straight, broad road that raw afternoon, we met numberless carts and omnibuses filled with laborers returning from the wine-shops in the Campagna; the sidewalks were crowded with people on their way to and from the trattorie near the Tiber; and scarcely a song was heard, rarely a laugh sounded above the rattle of the wheels. The natives were making a business of amusement, and formed a staid and sober procession, on an occasion when in Germany or Belgium the frolics and noisy merriment of the people would have known no bounds short of the limit of physical endurance. We were probably regarded as escaped maniacs because we persisted in breaking the voiceless confusion by our hearty Flemish songs. We left the omnibus in the yard of a trattoria at some distance out in the Campagna, and strolled over the hills for an hour, watching the dark, cold mountains and the broad, sad-tinted waste spread out before us. The solemn beauty of the Campagna is always impressive; under a gray sky it assumes a sombre and mournful aspect. To the north of the city, the low, flat-topped hills combine in a peculiar way to form silhouettes of great nobleness of character and simplicity of line. They are the changeless forms that endure like the granite cliffs, monumental in their grandeur. When moving shadows of the clouds form purple patches across these hills, and the dull gray of the turf comes into occasional relief in a spot of strong sunlight, the scene is one of unique and matchless beauty—a heroic landscape, with wonderful vigor and dignity of line and extraordinary delicacy of tone. That afternoon the dog, which had accompanied Tyck on the excursion, furnished us our chief amusement. We tossed sticks down the steep gravel banks, to watch his lithe black form struggle through the brambles, seize the bit, and return it to us. He, poor animal, had probably been shut up within the walls of Rome longer than the rest of the party, and entered into the outdoor frolics with even more zest than his human companions. Below the trattoria there was a narrow brook bridged by a rail, and we tried to get the poodle to walk this narrow path, but with no success. Tyck at last made the attempt, to encourage the dog, but on his way back he slipped and wet his feet and ankles thoroughly. Most of us thought this accident of not the least importance, but one or two of the old residents advised a return to the wine-shop, hinting of a possible serious illness in consequence of the wetting. At the trattoria Tyck dried himself at the large open fire in the kitchen, and we thought no more of it. The old Porta del Popolo answered our chorus with a welcoming echo as we drove in, shortly after dark, and mingled with the shivering crowd hurrying to their homes. Our Christmas had at least been a merry one to the most of us, but I could not forget the incident of the dog; and as I walked through the streets to my cheerless room a strange dread gradually took entire possession of me in spite of my reason.

For a day or two, that least amusing of all occupations, studio-hunting, kept me busy from morning till night, and I saw none of the breakfast-party. It was beginning to surprise me that Tyck did not make his appearance, when I had a call from Lisa, bearing a message from him, saying he was slightly unwell and wanted me to come and see him. I lost no time in complying with his request. On my way to his room the same old dread, stifled for a while in the busy search for rooms, came back with all its force, and I already began to suffer the first agonies of grief at the loss of my friend. For, although the message was hopeful enough, it came at a time when it seemed the first sign of the fulfilment of my forebodings, and from that moment I looked upon Tyck as lost to us. Not pretending to myself that it was an excusable weakness on my part to become the victim of what would generally be declared a morbid state of the imagination; reasoning all the while that the weather, the peculiar, tomb-like atmosphere of Rome, our previous experience in Antwerp, and our long absence from the distractions and worldliness of a civilized society would have caused this state of mind in healthier organizations than my own; I still could not help thinking of my friend as already in the clutch of death, and soon to be numbered as the third lost from our little circle, while the fourth was still to wait.

Tyck was in bed when I entered his chamber. There was a fresh glow deep in his brown cheek, and his eyes seemed to me brighter than usual; still there was no visible sign of a dangerous illness, and my reason laughed at my fears. He complained of dizziness, headache, pains in the back, and coughed at intervals. His manner showed that his mind was troubled, and from Lisa I learned that he had not yet received the expected remittance for the sale of his last pictures sent to London. The winter was severe and fuel expensive; models were awaiting payment, and the rent-day was drawing near. I gave Lisa all the money I had with me, and charged her to keep me posted as to the wants of the household, if by any bad fortune Tyck should be obliged to keep his room for any length of time. She afterwards told me that later in the day several friends called, suspected the state of affairs, and each contributed according to his purse—always without the knowledge of the sufferer.

Every day after that, I passed a portion of the daylight in Tyck’s room. His cough gradually grew more violent, and in a day or two he became seriously ill with high fever. The doctor, a spare, wise-looking German, of considerable reputation as a successful practitioner in fever cases, was called that day and afterwards made more frequent visits than the length of our purses would warrant. On the third or fourth day he decided that the disease was typhoid fever, and commenced a severe and to us inexperienced nurses a harsh treatment, dosing continually with quinine and blistering the extremities. Before the end of a week Tyck fell into long spells of delirium, and recognized his friends only at intervals. His tongue was black, and protruded from his mouth, and between his fits of coughing he could at last only whisper a few words in Italian. We had been in the habit of conversing at discretion in English, French, Flemish, or German; talking always on art questions in French, telling stories in the picturesque Flemish patois, and reserving the German and English languages for more solemn conversation. Tyck would frequently attempt to use one of these languages when he wished to speak with me during his illness, aware of my slight acquaintance with Italian, and it was most painful to witness his struggles with an English or French sentence. The words seemed too rasping for his tender throat and blistered tongue; the easy enunciation of the Italian vowels gave him no pain, and in a sigh he could whisper a whole sentence.

When at last Lisa was quite worn out with nursing, and there was need of more skilful and experienced hands to administer the medicines and perform the thousand duties of a sick-room, the doctor advised us to make application at a convent for a sister to come and watch at night. We did so, and on the evening of the same day a cheerful, home-like little body, in the stiffest of winged bonnets, climbed the long stairs and took immediate possession of the sick-room, putting things into faultless order in a very few moments. Her first step was to banish the dog to a neighboring studio, and I awaited her entrance into the painting-room with some anxiety. The long table had been removed, but otherwise the studio remained just the same as it was on the day of the feast. A regiment of bottles was drawn up near the window; various tell-tale dishes, broken glasses, and other débris cluttered the corner near where the stove stood, and I was sure that a lecture on the sin of the debauchery which had brought my friend to a sick-bed awaited me the moment the sister saw these proofs of our worldliness. She trotted out into the studio at last, in the course of her busy preparation for the night; and then, instead of bursting forth with a reproof, she covered her face with her hands, turned about, and walked out of the house. I, of course, followed her and begged for an explanation. She hesitated long, but finally with some difficulty said she could not stay in a room where such pictures decorated the walls, and before she would consent to return she must be assured of their removal or concealment. I hastened up, covered all the academy studies with bits of newspaper; and the sister returned and went on with her duties as if nothing had happened. So the expected lecture was never delivered. In the sight of the greater enormity of academy studies, she clearly thought it useless to lecture on the appetite.

Few days elapsed after the sister took charge of the sick-room before we were all rejoiced at an improvement in Tyck. He grew better rapidly, and in two weeks was able to sit up in bed and talk to us. Though we were full of joy at his apparent speedy recovery, there was always a bitterness in the thought that the fatal relapse might be expected at every moment, and this shadow hung over us even in the most hopeful hours. The sister gave up her charge, and as Tyck grew better day by day, Lisa came to act as sole nurse and companion, although we made daily visits to the sick-room. The month of January passed, and Carnival approached. Tyck was able to have his clothes put on, and to move around the room a little. The doctor made infrequent and irregular visits, and but for the fear of a relapse would have ceased to come altogether.