“So far true,” said Peter. “I respect your shrewdness; you can talk sense sometimes. I will get that vial for you some time this week or next.”
“Do not forget the exact time after death—four hours. The perfection of the mixture would be gone if you did not attend to that. I shall come with you to the door, and wait for you and the vial, any night and any hour you mention.”
“Very well,” said Peter, as he got up and stretched himself. “I suppose your larder is empty?”
“Oh! I forgot. You can have what there is—cheese three days old, and some fresh brown bread, and two eggs, new-laid yesterday morning, which my friend the washerwoman gave me for sitting up at night with her sick boy. She would make me take them, and I am glad now I need not eat them myself. I should feel mean, if I did; and yet, if they stayed there till to-morrow, hunger would drive me to it. You are welcome to them.”
Meanwhile, Peter had silently helped himself to all the articles mentioned except one “hunch” of bread, and left the garret with a cool “Thank you.” Jan turned back to the window, and stayed nearly an hour looking down into the drowsy canal with its fringe of dark, huddled houses, each, as he thought, a frame for a picture full of the same agony of hopeless aspirations and submission to grim and sordid circumstances as his own. But he saw through glasses of his own staining; for many of those wretched, crazy, but beautiful houses held pictures of a bright home life and love that looked no higher or farther for happiness, and was, in truth, the outcome of a mind more philosophical than the future glory of Flemish art, staring into the flood from his garret window, could boast of possessing.
Three months went by, and no one saw the young artist, save the man who sold him his meagre provisions, Peter, and his friend of the eggs. Five days after the conversation we have recorded Peter and he were walking home at two o’clock in the morning through the streets, where no one but the watchman had leave and license to be, calling out the hour when the chimes struck it. It was bright moonlight, and the two men would gladly have dispensed with the beauty of the night, much as it enhanced the charm of the great mansions they passed, the carved doorways, the delicate balconies, the ponderous, magnificent iron bell-pulls, the lions’ and griffins’ heads on the many bridges over the narrow canals. Even Jan passed hurriedly by, standing nervously back in a doorway if he heard the clear cry of a watchman, starting as a loose stone rattled under his feet in the pavement, and even when his companion ill-naturedly put his hand in a fountain and noisily disturbed the water with a “swish” that made the other turn pale and look around in horror of being pursued.
As the weeks went by and the young man worked on alone, feverishly and battling with his own superstitions as well as the fear of being denounced by his two associates, an odd change came over him. Peter noticed it about one month after the day they had procured the vial of blood. Jan was taken with a pious fit that day, and insisted on spending some miserable pence he had on candles offered for the soul of the poisoned girl, and which he, with genuine devoutness, put on the iron spikes provided for the purpose in the church of Notre Dame. That day, having spent all in this way, he fasted altogether and nearly fainted at his easel; but when he left off work Peter saw that a startled, expectant look was in his eyes, which he directed furtively every now and then to one particular corner of his room. When questioned he hurriedly turned the conversation; but the scared look grew more and more intense as time went on. At last, one night, the young man asked Peter seriously and with great trepidation to stay and sleep with him.
“I believe I am getting nervous,” he said, with a laugh that was anything but genuine. Peter made no objection, but in the middle of the night he was awakened by Jan. The poor fellow was in a violent cold perspiration, and, pointing excitedly to the same corner, cried:
“There she is; and she never says a word, but only looks at me reproachfully! She has been there every night since the first Month’s Mind!”
“Pshaw!” said Peter, “I see nothing there, Jan; you should be bled—that is all. You have been overworking yourself.”