John Galsworthy
A Knight (1)

I

At Monte Carlo, in the spring of the year 189-, I used to notice an old fellow in a grey suit and sunburnt straw hat with a black ribbon. Every morning at eleven o’clock, he would come down to the Place, followed by a brindled German boarhound, walk once or twice round it, and seat himself on a bench facing the casino. There he would remain in the sun, with his straw hat tilted forward, his thin legs apart, his brown hands crossed between them, and the dog’s nose resting on his knee. After an hour or more he would get up, and, stooping a little from the waist, walk slowly round the Place and return up hill. Just before three, he would come down again in the same clothes and go into the casino, leaving the dog outside.

One afternoon, moved by curiosity, I followed him. He passed through the hall without looking at the gambling-rooms, and went into the concert. It became my habit after that to watch for him. When he sat in the Place I could see him from the window of my room. The chief puzzle to me was the matter of his nationality.

His lean, short face had a skin so burnt that it looked like leather; his jaw was long and prominent, his chin pointed, and he had hollows in his cheeks. There were wrinkles across his forehead; his eyes were brown; and little white moustaches were brushed up from the corners of his lips. The back of his head bulged out above the lines of his lean neck and high, sharp shoulders; his grey hair was cropped quite close. In the Marseilles buffet, on the journey out, I had met an Englishman, almost his counterpart in features—but somehow very different! This old fellow had nothing of the other’s alert, autocratic self-sufficiency. He was quiet and undemonstrative, without looking, as it were, insulated against shocks and foreign substances. He was certainly no Frenchman. His eyes, indeed, were brown, but hazel-brown, and gentle—not the red-brown sensual eye of the Frenchman. An American? But was ever an American so passive? A German? His moustache was certainly brushed up, but in a modest, almost pathetic way, not in the least Teutonic. Nothing seemed to fit him. I gave him up, and named him “the Cosmopolitan.”

Leaving at the end of April, I forgot him altogether. In the same month, however, of the following year I was again at Monte Carlo, and going one day to the concert found myself seated next this same old fellow. The orchestra was playing Meyerbeer’s “Prophete,” and my neighbour was asleep, snoring softly. He was dressed in the same grey suit, with the same straw hat (or one exactly like it) on his knees, and his hands crossed above it. Sleep had not disfigured him—his little white moustache was still brushed up, his lips closed; a very good and gentle expression hovered on his face. A curved mark showed on his right temple, the scar of a cut on the side of his neck, and his left hand was covered by an old glove, the little finger of which was empty. He woke up when the march was over and brisked up his moustache.

The next thing on the programme was a little thing by Poise from Le joli Gilles, played by Mons. Corsanego on the violin. Happening to glance at my old neighbour, I saw a tear caught in the hollow of his cheek, and another just leaving the corner of his eye; there was a faint smile on his lips. Then came an interval; and while orchestra and audience were resting, I asked him if he were fond of music. He looked up without distrust, bowed, and answered in a thin, gentle voice: “Certainly. I know nothing about it, play no instrument, could never sing a note; but fond of it! Who would not be?” His English was correct enough, but with an emphasis not quite American nor quite foreign. I ventured to remark that he did not care for Meyerbeer. He smiled.

“Ah!” he said, “I was asleep? Too bad of me. He is a little noisy—I know so little about music. There is Bach, for instance. Would you believe it, he gives me no pleasure? A great misfortune to be no musician!” He shook his head.

I murmured, “Bach is too elevating for you perhaps.”

“To me,” he answered, “any music I like is elevating. People say some music has a bad effect on them. I never found any music that gave me a bad thought—no—no—quite the opposite; only sometimes, as you see, I go to sleep. But what a lovely instrument the violin!” A faint flush came on his parched cheeks. “The human soul that has left the body. A curious thing, distant bugles at night have given me the same feeling.” The orchestra was now coming back, and, folding his hands, my neighbour turned his eyes towards them. When the concert was over we came out together. Waiting at the entrance was his dog.

“You have a beautiful dog!”

“Ah! yes, Freda, mia cara, da su mano!” The dog squatted on her haunches, and lifted her paw in the vague, bored way of big dogs when requested to perform civilities. She was a lovely creature—the purest brindle, without a speck of white, and free from the unbalanced look of most dogs of her breed.

“Basta! basta!” He turned to me apologetically. “We have agreed to speak Italian; in that way I keep up the language; astonishing the number of things that dog will understand!” I was about to take my leave, when he asked if I would walk a little way with him—“If you are free, that is.” We went up the street with Freda on the far side of her master.

“Do you never ‘play’ here?” I asked him.

“Play? No. It must be very interesting; most exciting, but as a matter of fact, I can’t afford it. If one has very little, one is too nervous.”

He had stopped in front of a small hairdresser’s shop. “I live here,” he said, raising his hat again. “Au revoir!—unless I can offer you a glass of tea. It’s all ready. Come! I’ve brought you out of your way; give me the pleasure!”

I have never met a man so free from all self-consciousness, and yet so delicate and diffident the combination is a rare one. We went up a steep staircase to a room on the second floor. My companion threw the shutters open, setting all the flies buzzing. The top of a plane-tree was on a level with the window, and all its little brown balls were dancing, quite close, in the wind. As he had promised, an urn was hissing on a table; there was also a small brown teapot, some sugar, slices of lemon, and glasses. A bed, washstand, cupboard, tin trunk, two chairs, and a small rug were all the furniture. Above the bed a sword in a leather sheath was suspended from two nails. The photograph of a girl stood on the closed stove. My host went to the cupboard and produced a bottle, a glass, and a second spoon. When the cork was drawn, the scent of rum escaped into the air. He sniffed at it and dropped a teaspoonful into both glasses.

“This is a trick I learned from the Russians after Plevna; they had my little finger, so I deserved something in exchange.” He looked round; his eyes, his whole face, seemed to twinkle. “I assure you it was worth it—makes all the difference. Try!” He poured off the tea.

“Had you a sympathy with the Turks?”

“The weaker side—” He paused abruptly, then added: “But it was not that.” Over his face innumerable crow’s-feet had suddenly appeared, his eyes twitched; he went on hurriedly, “I had to find something to do just then—it was necessary.” He stared into his glass; and it was some time before I ventured to ask if he had seen much fighting.

“Yes,” he replied gravely, “nearly twenty years altogether; I was one of Garibaldi’s Mille in ’60.”

“Surely you are not Italian?”

He leaned forward with his hands on his knees. “I was in Genoa at that time learning banking; Garibaldi was a wonderful man! One could not help it.” He spoke quite simply. “You might say it was like seeing a little man stand up to a ring of great hulking fellows; I went, just as you would have gone, if you’d been there. I was not long with them—our war began; I had to go back home.” He said this as if there had been but one war since the world began. “In ’60,” he mused, “till ’65. Just think of it! The poor country. Why, in my State, South Carolina—I was through it all—nobody could be spared there—we were one to three.”

“I suppose you have a love of fighting?”

“H’m!” he said, as if considering the idea for the first time. “Sometimes I fought for a living, and sometimes—because I was obliged; one must try to be a gentleman. But won’t you have some more?”

I refused more tea and took my leave, carrying away with me a picture of the old fellow looking down from the top of the steep staircase, one hand pressed to his back, the other twisting up those little white moustaches, and murmuring, “Take care, my dear sir, there’s a step there at the corner.”

“To be a gentleman!” I repeated in the street, causing an old French lady to drop her parasol, so that for about two minutes we stood bowing and smiling to each other, then separated full of the best feeling.

II

A week later I found myself again seated next him at a concert. In the meantime I had seen him now and then, but only in passing. He seemed depressed. The corners of his lips were tightened, his tanned cheeks had a greyish tinge, his eyes were restless; and, between two numbers of the programme, he murmured, tapping his fingers on his hat, “Do you ever have bad days? Yes? Not pleasant, are they?”

Then something occurred from which all that I have to tell you followed. There came into the concert-hall the heroine of one of those romances, crimes, follies, or irregularities, call it what you will, which had just attracted the “world’s” stare. She passed us with her partner, and sat down in a chair a few rows to our right. She kept turning her head round, and at every turn I caught the gleam of her uneasy eyes. Some one behind us said: “The brazen baggage!”

My companion turned full round, and glared at whoever it was who had spoken. The change in him was quite remarkable. His lips were drawn back from his teeth; he frowned; the scar on his temple had reddened.

“Ah!” he said to me. “The hue and cry! Contemptible! How I hate it! But you wouldn’t understand—!” he broke off, and slowly regained his usual air of self-obliteration; he even seemed ashamed, and began trying to brush his moustaches higher than ever, as if aware that his heat had robbed them of neatness.

“I’m not myself, when I speak of such matters,” he said suddenly; and began reading his programme, holding it upside down. A minute later, however, he said in a peculiar voice: “There are people to be found who object to vivisecting animals; but the vivisection of a woman, who minds that? Will you tell me it’s right, that because of some tragedy like this—believe me, it is always a tragedy—we should hunt down a woman? That her fellow-women should make an outcast of her? That we, who are men, should make a prey of her? If I thought that....” Again he broke off, staring very hard in front of him. “It is we who make them what they are; and even if that is not so—why! if I thought there was a woman in the world I could not take my hat off to—I—I—couldn’t sleep at night.” He got up from his seat, put on his old straw hat with trembling fingers, and, without a glance back, went out, stumbling over the chair-legs.

I sat there, horribly disturbed; the words, “One must try to be a gentleman!” haunting me. When I came out, he was standing by the entrance with one hand on his hip and the other on his dog. In that attitude of waiting he was such a patient figure; the sun glared down and showed the threadbare nature of his clothes and the thinness of his brown hands, with their long fingers and nails yellow from tobacco. Seeing me he came up the steps again, and raised his hat.

“I am glad to have caught you; please forget all that.” I asked if he would do me the honour of dining at my hotel.

“Dine?” he repeated with the sort of smile a child gives if you offer him a box of soldiers; “with the greatest pleasure. I seldom dine out, but I think I can muster up a coat. Yes—yes—and at what time shall I come? At half-past seven, and your hotel is—? Good! I shall be there. Freda, mia cara, you will be alone this evening. You do not smoke caporal, I fear. I find it fairly good; though it has too much bite.” He walked off with Freda, puffing at his thin roll of caporal.

Once or twice he stopped, as if bewildered or beset by some sudden doubt or memory; and every time he stopped, Freda licked his hand. They disappeared round the corner of the street, and I went to my hotel to see about dinner. On the way I met Jules le Ferrier, and asked him to come too.