The Incomplete Adventurer. (The Boom in Belltopps.)

Chapter I

M. ROHAND, ARMAND, AND THE HERO. M. Adolphe Rohand, chemist and man of science, went slowly up the winding wooden stairs, steep, frail, and not too cleanly, which led to the attic where he had visited the Englishman earlier in the day ; the echoes of the dingy Paris street growing fainter in his ears, and its emanations less pungent in his nostrils, as he ascended. It was the third week of May ; the air of the narrow staircase was hot and impure, and old M. Rohand panted as he climbed. On the top floor Armand, the patron or landlord, assistant fencing-master at Duclos' famous salle d'armes, a good-looking, thick set, brown-bearded Provencal, of middle A height, and about six-and-thirty years, received him, cap in hand. ' Well, and how is he going on 1 ' inquired M. Rohand. ' Monsieur, he is as snug as a sword in its scabbard.' ' It would have been impossible to put it more nicely,' observed the chemist, with a smile and a slight inclination of the head ; and he repeated the landlord's words to himself with leisurely relish, rounding the sentence off with a little flourish of his hand.

Armand bowed his acknowledgment of the compliment with a swordsman's grace, and led the way into the anteroom, a beggarly apartment, bare of all save the most indis pensable furniture, and quite destitute of ornament, unless that term might be held descriptive of a pair of rapiers which glittered on the edge of a table. Armand inquired whether the visitor would take une consommation, devoutly hoping, though for no penurious reason, that he would not. ' Thank you,' said the chemist, ' I take nothing stronger than coffee.' ' For myself,' replied Armand, ' I cannot take much of it at night.' ' Nothing would be more improper on your part than to do so,' said the man of science, erravelv. ' But one little cup is all that I ever take, monsieur.' ' That can do you no harm in the world.' 'Then, with your permission, monsieur, I will make two cups at once.' ' I thank you a thousand times,' answered M. Rohand.

The landlord bowed and withdrew. Outside the door he took off his shoes, and M. Rohand heard him descending the bare wooden stairs in his stockings. Then he, too, rose from his chair, moved silently across the anteroom, and stood listening at a door which conducted to an inner chamber. No sound reaching his ear, he pushed the door open and looked in. Right opposite to him was a common stump bedstead, meanly furnished in the matter of bedding, the occupant of which was a long limbed, powerful young man, verging on the thirties. His long, thick, brown hair gave a certain fictitious distinction and appearance of strength to a face which had an irregular force and fineness of its own. The nameless quality of gentle birth which was stamped upon the features asserted itself above the marks engraven there by the ' hard lean hand of poverty.' The sleeper had thrust the bed clothes below his chest, and M. Rohand observed that his nightshirt was much whiter and softer than the sheet above it. ' That was made for him at home,' thought he.

A pretty morsel of muslin was draped about the narrow window, on the sill of which a tallow candle with a nodding wick burned with a wan and fading light, like a taper in a skull. 'He bought that himself,' muttered the chemist, referring, not to the candle, but to the muslin. ' Yes ! And there 's another token of home ! ' His eye had lighted on a small and faded photograph, in a carved wooden frame, of a fair, matronly woman, plump and soft-eyed. ' If his eyes were open,' said M. Rohand, 'I could tell in a moment if that were his mother.' He went to the bed, which, by the way, was almost the only piece of furniture in the room, and bent attentively over the sleeper. 'The wound is nothing,' said the old man ; ' it was the loss of blood that made him so faint. What I want to know is, the effect of the powTder.

He should wake much better. We are going to see ! ' Then the odour of coffee tickled his nostrils, and his ear was pricked by a faint chink of dels in the anteroom. He went softly out of the bedroom, drawing the door close behind him. ' It has a beautiful smell,' he said to the landlord. Armand smiled pleasantly. 'I made it myself. And when I make coffee, Monsieur Rohand, I know what I am making.' ' I feel sure of that already, my friend,' returned the imperturbable chemist. 'It is so, I assure you, monsieur; I am not a man to boast. As a fencer I am only pretty fair; but when it comes to making coffee, I have no superior. There may be others as good, but there are none better.' ' I cannot permit myself to doubt it,' an swered the chemist. 'Monsieur is polite. I need not remind monsieur that there are ten species of the shrub, of which the most esteemed is a native of Arabia.

I have been told that the flowers are of a pure white, but of short dura tion ' 'As to their duration, it is the same with the life of man,' observed the chemist. ' Monsieur is a man of science and knows what he is talking of,' said the landlord. ' These flowers, I have been told, are tubulous, and divided into five parts at the top.' ' Now I wonder who told him that,' thought the chemist. ' Monsieur Rohand, it is the coffee of Arabia that you have before you. When you are leaving I shall ask you to examine the beans» for I am certain that you will recognise their genuineness at a glance.' ' This man's talents are wasted in a fencing saloon,' thought the chemist, as he sipped the malignant mixture with unwrinkled lips. ' Tell me,' he went on, ' has Monsieur Warwick slept quietly since I was here this afternoon . ' ' Just as quietly as he is sleeping now.

I think that was a good dose you put into him, though I am not given to praising medicine, which is sometimes a worse poison than the sickness you would cure with it — and that gives Nature a double job, you see.' The chemist smiled and looked very well pleased. ' My medicine is my own,' said he. ' We shall see what it will do.' ' He was very weak when we had him to bed,' said Armand. ' I fancied him strong for a man who had lost so much blood from the arm.' ' But you don't know his strength as I do. You should see him in the salle d'armes ! He is like one of those performing fellows when he lifts the weights. There are those who would advise him to train for the " variety " stage, but he would have knocked me over if I had suggested it. These English think so much more of their gentility than of art.

Though, to be sure, he is not wanting in esprit, and I believe that if I could talk in the style that he does I could persuade him that there is a great and even a noble career in the big-weight business. You can marry money in it always. But these last few weeks he has fallen away a good deal. Shall I tell you what I think he wants . ' ' He wants nothing but what I have given him,' answered M. Rohand, with a significant gesture. ' I hope we are going to prove that, monsieur.' ' But tell me, my friend,' pursued M. Ro hand, ' surely this is not his metier that you speak of . ' ' If you come to that,' replied Armand, ' I think everything is his metier. He is, as they say, homme qui fait tous les metiers, or, in another manner of speaking, homme a tout faire, which comes to the same thing.' 'Now that is very interesting,' said M. Rohand ; ' but if I may without impropriety suggest it to you, his friend, M. Warwick's skill in all callings does not seem to have met with more than the proverbial reward.' 'I must tell you,' Armand answered, 'that it is my belief he came a cropper here in Paris some years ago, and has never quite righted himself since then.

AVhat the affair was he has never told me, but one of the pupils at the salle d'armes said once that he had heard it was a failure in music' ' The first time I heard him speak,' observed M. Rohand, ' I was immensely struck by the admirable timbre of his voice. So you think ' that he failed in music ? There can scarcely be any failure more saddening to an ardent youth ; and when at that age — for he must have been very young then, M. Armand — what is most relied on fails most surely, there is almost always some mark left upon the nature. But he seems of a sanguine temperament, and not one to pine for an irrevocable past.' ' There you have him, jusqu'au bout de ses ongles !' cried Armand. 'Pine! Not much!' 'That is well. And M. Warwick is now engaged in the practice of the foil at Duclos' . ' 'He has been with us about five weeks.

The only Englishman I have ever seen who fences as if it were an instinct with him, as the saying is. How it happened that he let me stick him in the arm to-day I can't imagine. You see, we had a little argument about duel ling, of which, by the way, M. Warwick strongly disapproves. I wanted to demon strate a particular thrust after the Italian School, and called in Italian Stoccata di Car toccio, which was strange to him. We took up those rapiers there, having no foils to hand, and fell en garde ; crossing our swords, as usual, en carte. I asked him to make a feint de coup droit. Slipping back with my left foot, and resting on my left hand, I made a half lunge, which took him unawares while he turned his wrist de seconde, and — well, that 's how it was done, monsieur. But I tell you I 'm not well pleased about it, for he was very weak when we put him to bed.' As he spoke, there was a brisk and springing movement in the bedroom. ' Hullo, there !

Armand, where are you . I want a drink.' The echo of the big vibrating voice made nothing of the slender partition between the bedroom and the anteroom. ' It is his old voice ! ' exclaimed the landlord. ' It is the medicine I gave him ! ' said Monsieur Rohand. They went at once into the bedroom, where they found the patient sitting up on his stump bed, pale but energetic. ' Ah, M. Rohand ! ' he cried, ' are you here again ? It is very kind of you. I say, what was that you gave me this afternoon . You are a magician , I think, for I 'm sure that is an elixir. Armand, mon brav, ask M. Rohand what he will allow me to drink. You have been giving him some of that vile coffee ; it is the most notorious compound I ever drank.' Armand, nothing abashed, shook his fist vehemently at the patient, and said that M. Rohand should see the beans for himself.

M. Rohand waved this debatable topic aside, with a delicate motion of his flexible white hand. The hand discovers age more unmis takably than any other portion of the body ; but although M. Rohand's was the hand of an old man, it showed no signs of feebleness. He seated himself upon the bed, with a soft ' Pardon,' and proceeded to take the young man's temperature. ' It is excellent,' he said ; ' you are already feeling greatly better, I think. You shall have some drink, of course ; I will prepare it for you myself.' ' What do you say to another dose of the reviver, monsieur . It is bread and meat and wine in one,' laughed Guy Warwick. A smile, mingled of pleasure and gratifica tion, broke over the lean visage of the chemist, wrinkled the lips, wdiich by this movement showed a set of even and well-preserved teeth, and stirred the grey hairs of his pointed beard. ' Ha !

You feel that . Yes, I shall give you another dose of it immediately. M. Armand can perhaps find me a slice of bread and-butter . ' ' A slice of bread, monsieur . Yes, certainly.' ' With butter,' added M. Rohand. At this, Armand began privately to wink and grimace at the patient, with an air of great discomfiture. Guy, his knees gathered up under the bedclothes, his elbows resting on them, and his cheeks in his hands, feigned not to observe these signals ; but his large eyes twinkled as if in enjoyment of some secret joke. ' You hear, Armand V he said. ' M. Rohand wants a slice of bread-and-butter for the medicine.' Armand, however, rose to the occasion. ' Monsieur will not be offended,' he said, addressing the chemist, ' if I observe that we have no butter in the house. For a long time past I have impressed upon Monsieur Warwick that butter does not agree with him.

It certainly spoils the muscle. As a man of science, monsieur will no doubt say that I am right.' The chemist, who appeared to accept this explanation in the best of faith, replied that the bread without the butter would serve his purpose. ' Then get the bread, mon brav,' said Guy ; ' for you see that I am desperately ill, and in wrant of sustenance." Armand fetched a roll of bread and a clean napkin from a cupboard in the anteroom, and spread the napkin on the end of a high deal box against the bed. M. Rohand meanwhile had taken a small paper packet from a leather case in his inner pocket ; and unfolding the packet, which contained a small quantity of a fine black powder, not unlike very small gun powder, he laid it on the box, and cut two thin slices from the roll. With these and the powder he made a sandwich, which he handed to Guy. ' Eat that,' said he, ' and you will want nothing stronger than water to drink.' Guy swallowed his sandwich and asked for another.

M. Rohand made a second, which was despatched with equal gusto. Then Guy drank his water, and said : ' Now, what is this surprising powder . ' 'It is the simplest thing in the world,' answered the chemist. ' But what is it . ' persisted Guy. 'That I shall tell another time,' responded M. Rohand ; ' and now be so kind as to hold out your arm. The bandage seems to be a little displaced.' Guy extended his right arm, which was bandaged from the elbow to the wrist. The wrappings scarcely concealed the beautiful shape of the limb, whilst they made more manifest its large and rounded strength. ' Voila, monsieur ! ' observed Armand. ' Is butter the food for a man with an arm like that . No, no ! If I had my way with him, I would feed him upon the blood of bulls.' M. Rohand gave a sudden start, and turned about and looked hard at the Provencal. ' What do you know of the value of blood 1 ' he asked sharply. 'Mais, monsieur, it is the life ; and I have been told that extraordinary things can be done by the infusion of the blood of animals into the veins of men.' ' Certainly you have been told some very strange things,' returned the chemist, dryly ; ' but there are better and less gross ways of using blood than that.' ' Monsieur is a man of science, and I am only a teacher of fencing,' answered Armand.

Then M. Rohand went to work again upon the bandage, which had become a little loose. He unwrapped a portion of it, and looked at the arm. ' It does not pain you . ' he asked. ' There is no inflammation at all.' ' It feels almost as well as ever, except that it's a little stiff,' Guy replied. ' That is of necessity ; but it will pass. It is healing beautifully.' ' But how long shall I be fixed up hke this ? It's the sword-arm, you see, monsieur, and a man of my profession might as well be coffined at once as deprived of that.' ' Well ! I should think so ! ' put in Armand. ' Monsieur here would not be worse off with the loss of his two eyes.' ' It will be necessary to hang up the foil for a little while. That I must say. But not for long, I trust.' ' Certainly not,' said Guy, ' or the powder is not what you and I know it to be — ha, monsieur ? ' The old chemist smiled again. ' The powder will do its work, I hope,' said he ; ' but, as I said before, there is no magic in it.

And now I shall leave you for the night. ' ' I am enormously indebted to you,' said Guy, as he gave his hand to M. Rohand. ' Do not speak of it, I pray,' said the old man. 'Apart from the pleasure I feel in having been of some little service to you, I have an interest of my own, which I assure you is quite selfish. To-morrow, perhaps, I shall ask leave to tell you more of that. And now, adieu. Sleep all you can.' And Monsieur Rohand took his cane and rusty hat, wdth the old-fashioned straight French brim, from the corner in which he had placed them, and bowed himself out some what precipitately, lest Armand should re member the coffee-beans. 'Sleep? Sleep all I can? No doubt! Does that good-natured old gentleman know us, Armand . ' ' To-day I saw him for the first time,' answered Armand. B ' And I also,' said Guy. ' Then we may take it that he does not know us.

Look here, ma vieille branche, put your eleven stone on the end of the bed and answer my questions. How many weeks' rent do I owe you V Armand held up three fingers without speak ing. ' Three weeks ? And I am ten days to the bad at the cafe". How much is there in the cash-box ? ' Armand got up and took from the cupboard an old teacup, with a saucer for a cover. Turning it upside down, he counted the money on the saucer. ' Seven francs fifty,' said he. ' And it will be a fortnight at least before I can fence again.' ' I should say three weeks,' returned Armand. ' But M. Rohand recommends you to sleep.' ' Mon cher,' said Guy, ' I shall not sleep comfortably to-night. The restaurant can wait ; Pere Berton has had his pickings out of me. But you are as hard up as I am, and you can't afford to house me a titre gracieux.' ' Assez, assez!' broke out Armand. 'The position is changed.

The wound wipes out the debt. If there is a debt left now, it is from me to you. The rest we can talk of to morrow. I am going to bed. Bonne nuit ! ' 'All right,' said Guy, putting out his hand. ' Bonne nuit ! We neither of us are poetical, and we won't affect sentiment. Bonne nuit ! Wake me before you go out to-morrow.'

Chapter II

'VISIONS OF GLORY, SPARE MY ACHING SIGHT ! ' But Armand had been sweating a good two hours in his leathern doublet in the salle d'armes before Guy awoke. It was M. Rohand who broke his slumbers, by letting fall his cane upon the floor ; a piece of carelessness of which he had never before been guilty, and which annoyed him the more that he was just then engaged upon an essay on sleep in which he had set himself to establish that act as a proof of the divinity of the soul. 'Ma vieille branche ! ' began Guy, but see ing that the ' old branch ' was M. Rohand and not Armand, he changed his tone, and gave him a bigvoiced welcome. Guy had a twinge of scruple when he per mitted himself to think of the doctor's bill, •20 but he appreciated the old man's polite good nature, was curious and enthusiastic about his mysterious medicine, and felt a spring-like freshness of pleasure in the making of a new and original acquaintance. ' And how are you this morning . ' began M. Rohand, in a tone, and with an air of more than formal interest. ' Oh, I am better than ever ! ' responded Guy. ' Ever so much better.

You are not going to keep me in bed any longer, I hope, monsieur ? ' ' I think you had better remain where you are for to-day, at all events. To-morrow I hope to have the pleasure of releasing you from your couch. Be so kind as to show me the arm. Yes, it is progressing in quite an astonishing manner. Your general condition is, as I think, excellent ; and that, you see, is a great assistance.' ' Well, I can't say that I have been pamper ing myself,' answered Guy, with his rich musical laugh. ' I am always more or less in training, because that happens to be something of a necessity with me at present. But in future, monsieur, I intend to live solely upon medicine. NowT, whose medicine do you think?' ' Aha ! Aha I ' The chemist raised his right hand with the forefinger uplifted, and smiled curiously, arching his eyebrows with an ex pression of mystery.

Then he drew close to the bedside the black leathern pormanteau painted with Guy's initials, which was the sole substitute for a chair ; and, becoming very serious, he said : ' Whether you jest or not, I cannot tell ; but this I can assure you, that medicine of mine, as you call it, does indeed contain all that is necessary to reinvigorate a weakened frame, and much of what is necessary to maintain life in health and vigour.' ' There is no stuff of j esting in my thoughts, monsieur ; I give you my word. What makes me so entirely curious to know more about this thing is, as I have already told you, that I myself am even now feeling its virtues within me. That is why I want you to tell me the mystery of it.' ' I shall do so,' returned M. Rohand ; ' but of mystery there is indeed none, save only the great and impenetrable mystery in which life itself is involved.' Here he paused, and seemed to lose himself in ardent reflection.

Then he spoke abruptly, and said : ' What a piece of architecture is the human skeleton ! You call it ugly, and a thing to shudder at ; but in its perfect adapta tion to the ends it serves, there is not any thing more beautiful. Then the muscles, so exquisitely modelled, clothing the bones, layer upon layer. The nerves next, to carry the bidding of the brain to the muscles. What mechanism for you ! But what can they all do — bones, muscles, nerves — without susten ance ? What sustains, what feeds, what nourishes them, hein ?' ' The blood,' answered Guy, wondering what this physiological discourse portended. ' You are right,' said M. Rohand, his voice rising and growing more animated. ' It is the blood. Did you perhaps observe me start last night, when Armand indulged us with the expression of his high belief in the nutritive and stimulating properties of blood ? ' 'I did; but ' ' Is it not blood that carries in its crimson stream the food of the bones, the muscles, the nerves, the brain, and every organ of the body ?

Is it not upon a strong and perfect circulation of this fluid that a high degree of mentality is dependent ? Does it flow swiftly, with hiss ings and muffled roarings, and concrete quickly in a state of rest ? — then it is all right with you ! And what a difference there is between the liquids of the animal economy in animals of the simplest structure, and those that are highest in the scale of being ! The life-fluid of the former seems to be only water charged with a certain amount of organic particles. In the higher animals, the humours are of quite another nature ; and there is one, distinct from all others, whose sublime destiny it is to nourish and sustain the body : it is the blood ! ' ' Still on the scent of blood, monsieur ! Do you mean then to tell me that this substance here ' ' Chut!

Paix! What have I said concern ing this substance here . I insist that I have made no discovery ; I have invented no elixir. But let me tell you a little story, M. Warwick. I am old, and childless, and alone in the world. That is nothing ; my studies have absorbed the greater portion of my life, and have filled it almost to repletion — almost, but not quite. It is well, in the midst of abstract speculation, to keep oneself ever so little in touch with the human world ; if not at many points, at least at one. To what end does the man of science wrork, if not to render happier the lot of his fellow-men ? He, then, who loves most is likeliest (if otherwise capable) to achieve most for his race. I have only one love, apart from my work, but it has sufficed me for twenty years. Two years ago my grand daughter, the only child of my only son, was wasting slowly before my eyes.

The doctor told me that this vitalising fluid we have spoken of might save her, if she would but take it. I knew that he was right. But in its crude and gross form it was impossible to her ; she was delicate, sensitive, and shrinking. To please me, she tried it ; but it was useless, and she went on wasting. I will not see her in the article of death, thought I, and went to work, experimenting. For a whole year I experimented, working night and day. I had entered my science for a match with death. In the end — it was a year precisely — this powder here resulted from my labours. It saved Estelle, who has health now that neither riches, nor travel, nor medicine could have procured for her. Monsieur, I can let ambi tion slide ; I have never entertained it ; I am clear of it. Wealth does not entice me, nor fame.

To have put back death from the couch of one I love is achievement enough for me. In a few lesser cases I have added to my first success ; but I have made no effort to draw public attention, and I and the doit that my science has wrung for me from nature remain unknown. But I am resolved of its worth, and am satisfied.' It was midday, and the chiming of clocks proclaimed it. Armand's step was heard upon the stairs. M. Rohand got up from the portmanteau. ' M. Warwick,' he said, ' I shall perhaps see you again in the afternoon.' ' Come, by all means, M. Rohand,' answered Guy. 'You have given me something to think about. I have a notion, and am going to develop it. Don't fail to come this afternoon ; I shall have something to say to you. I see a great deal more in this than you have suggested.

As for riches, good men have asked Heaven for them before now ; yes, and dwelt secure by them when they had got them. Who is not disposed to abuse them, need not tremble at the prospect of them. . . . But I am more than ever puzzled to know the precise nature of this extraordinary reviver.' Armand entered as M. Rohand withdrew. ' Mon cher,' said Guy, ' this fencing business isn't bad for bread and cheese, but it's not the thing to live by. Get out my togs. I 'm going to balance myself on my feet. A very little of the horizontal goes a long way to prove its unsuitability as a position for action. If I had spoken that in English I could have put it less clumsily. Don't give me the right leg of my trousers first ; the left-leggedness of man joins with his right handedness to attest his superiority in the animal world.

I tell you, we are going to be enormously rich. There is nothing like science. That chemist doesn't know how much he is going to do for us.' ' He has dosed you with too much powder,' said Armand. ' Wait till he doses you.' ' I 'm afraid of magic' ' What, and a Provencal ! ' ' Yes ; but a good Catholic too.' ' Shave me, and say no more.' When M. Rohand returned in the afternoon he found six feet one of enthusiastic impatience awaiting him. Guy, in a scarecrow suit, with his wounded arm in a sling, his heavy hair combed back from his forehead, and a long red scratch on his chin (the chief result of Armand's attempt with the razor, for his cheeks were still very scrubby), was seated on the edge of the table, making passes at the wall with a rapier held in his left hand ; and had something the air of a youthful and muscular Don Quixote. ' Why, you 've been in the wars again ! ' said M. Rohand, pointing to the scar on Guy's chin. ' Yes ; he 's been carving me again.