New Arabian Nights by Robert Louis Stevenson

NEW ARABIAN NIGHTS

Contents:

The Suicide Club
The Rajah's Diamond
The Pavilion on the Links
A Lodging for the Night - a Story of Francis Villon
The Sire de Maletroit's Door
Providence and the Guitar

THE SUICIDE CLUB

STORY OF THE YOUNG MAN WITH THE CREAM TARTS

During his residence in London, the accomplished Prince Florizel of
Bohemia gained the affection of all classes by the seduction of his
manner and by a well-considered generosity.  He was a remarkable
man even by what was known of him; and that was but a small part of
what he actually did.  Although of a placid temper in ordinary
circumstances, and accustomed to take the world with as much
philosophy as any ploughman, the Prince of Bohemia was not without
a taste for ways of life more adventurous and eccentric than that
to which he was destined by his birth.  Now and then, when he fell
into a low humour, when there was no laughable play to witness in
any of the London theatres, and when the season of the year was
unsuitable to those field sports in which he excelled all
competitors, he would summon his confidant and Master of the Horse,
Colonel Geraldine, and bid him prepare himself against an evening
ramble.  The Master of the Horse was a young officer of a brave and
even temerarious disposition.  He greeted the news with delight,
and hastened to make ready.  Long practice and a varied
acquaintance of life had given him a singular facility in disguise;
he could adapt not only his face and bearing, but his voice and
almost his thoughts, to those of any rank, character, or nation;
and in this way he diverted attention from the Prince, and
sometimes gained admission for the pair into strange societies.
The civil authorities were never taken into the secret of these
adventures; the imperturbable courage of the one and the ready
invention and chivalrous devotion of the other had brought them
through a score of dangerous passes; and they grew in confidence as
time went on.

One evening in March they were driven by a sharp fall of sleet into
an Oyster Bar in the immediate neighbourhood of Leicester Square.
Colonel Geraldine was dressed and painted to represent a person
connected with the Press in reduced circumstances; while the Prince
had, as usual, travestied his appearance by the addition of false
whiskers and a pair of large adhesive eyebrows.  These lent him a
shaggy and weather-beaten air, which, for one of his urbanity,
formed the most impenetrable disguise.  Thus equipped, the
commander and his satellite sipped their brandy and soda in
security.

The bar was full of guests, male and female; but though more than
one of these offered to fall into talk with our adventurers, none
of them promised to grow interesting upon a nearer acquaintance.
There was nothing present but the lees of London and the
commonplace of disrespectability; and the Prince had already fallen
to yawning, and was beginning to grow weary of the whole excursion,
when the swing doors were pushed violently open, and a young man,
followed by a couple of commissionaires, entered the bar.  Each of
the commissionaires carried a large dish of cream tarts under a
cover, which they at once removed; and the young man made the round
of the company, and pressed these confections upon every one's
acceptance with an exaggerated courtesy.  Sometimes his offer was
laughingly accepted; sometimes it was firmly, or even harshly,
rejected.  In these latter cases the new-comer always ate the tart
himself, with some more or less humorous commentary.

At last he accosted Prince Florizel.

"Sir," said he, with a profound obeisance, proffering the tart at
the same time between his thumb and forefinger, "will you so far
honour an entire stranger?  I can answer for the quality of the
pastry, having eaten two dozen and three of them myself since five
o'clock."

"I am in the habit," replied the Prince, "of looking not so much to
the nature of a gift as to the spirit in which it is offered."

"The spirit, sir," returned the young man, with another bow, "is
one of mockery."

"Mockery?" repeated Florizel.  "And whom do you propose to mock?"

"I am not here to expound my philosophy," replied the other, "but
to distribute these cream tarts.  If I mention that I heartily
include myself in the ridicule of the transaction, I hope you will
consider honour satisfied and condescend.  If not, you will
constrain me to eat my twenty-eighth, and I own to being weary of
the exercise."

"You touch me," said the Prince, "and I have all the will in the
world to rescue you from this dilemma, but upon one condition.  If
my friend and I eat your cakes - for which we have neither of us
any natural inclination - we shall expect you to join us at supper
by way of recompense."

The young man seemed to reflect.

"I have still several dozen upon hand," he said at last; "and that
will make it necessary for me to visit several more bars before my
great affair is concluded.  This will take some time; and if you
are hungry - "

The Prince interrupted him with a polite gesture.

"My friend and I will accompany you," he said; "for we have already
a deep interest in your very agreeable mode of passing an evening.
And now that the preliminaries of peace are settled, allow me to
sign the treaty for both."

And the Prince swallowed the tart with the best grace imaginable.

"It is delicious," said he.

"I perceive you are a connoisseur," replied the young man.

Colonel Geraldine likewise did honour to the pastry; and every one
in that bar having now either accepted or refused his delicacies,
the young man with the cream tarts led the way to another and
similar establishment.  The two commissionaires, who seemed to have
grown accustomed to their absurd employment, followed immediately
after; and the Prince and the Colonel brought up the rear, arm in
arm, and smiling to each other as they went.  In this order the
company visited two other taverns, where scenes were enacted of a
like nature to that already described - some refusing, some
accepting, the favours of this vagabond hospitality, and the young
man himself eating each rejected tart.

On leaving the third saloon the young man counted his store.  There
were but nine remaining, three in one tray and six in the other.

"Gentlemen," said he, addressing himself to his two new followers,
"I am unwilling to delay your supper.  I am positively sure you
must be hungry.  I feel that I owe you a special consideration.
And on this great day for me, when I am closing a career of folly
by my most conspicuously silly action, I wish to behave handsomely
to all who give me countenance.  Gentlemen, you shall wait no
longer.  Although my constitution is shattered by previous
excesses, at the risk of my life I liquidate the suspensory
condition."

With these words he crushed the nine remaining tarts into his
mouth, and swallowed them at a single movement each.  Then, turning
to the commissionaires, he gave them a couple of sovereigns.

"I have to thank you," said be, "for your extraordinary patience."

And he dismissed them with a bow apiece.  For some seconds he stood
looking at the purse from which he had just paid his assistants,
then, with a laugh, he tossed it into the middle of the street, and
signified his readiness for supper.

In a small French restaurant in Soho, which had enjoyed an
exaggerated reputation for some little while, but had already begun
to be forgotten, and in a private room up two pair of stairs, the
three companions made a very elegant supper, and drank three or
four bottles of champagne, talking the while upon indifferent
subjects.  The young man was fluent and gay, but he laughed louder
than was natural in a person of polite breeding; his hands trembled
violently, and his voice took sudden and surprising inflections,
which seemed to be independent of his will.  The dessert had been
cleared away, and all three had lighted their cigars, when the
Prince addressed him in these words:-

"You will, I am sure, pardon my curiosity.  What I have seen of you
has greatly pleased but even more puzzled me.  And though I should
be loth to seem indiscreet, I must tell you that my friend and I
are persons very well worthy to be entrusted with a secret.  We
have many of our own, which we are continually revealing to
improper ears.  And if, as I suppose, your story is a silly one,
you need have no delicacy with us, who are two of the silliest men
in England.  My name is Godall, Theophilus Godall; my friend is
Major Alfred Hammersmith - or at least, such is the name by which
he chooses to be known.  We pass our lives entirely in the search
for extravagant adventures; and there is no extravagance with which
we are not capable of sympathy."

"I like you, Mr. Godall," returned the young man; "you inspire me
with a natural confidence; and I have not the slightest objection
to your friend the Major, whom I take to be a nobleman in
masquerade.  At least, I am sure he is no soldier."

The Colonel smiled at this compliment to the perfection of his art;
and the young man went on in a more animated manner.

"There is every reason why I should not tell you my story.  Perhaps
that is just the reason why I am going to do so.  At least, you
seem so well prepared to hear a tale of silliness that I cannot
find it in my heart to disappoint you.  My name, in spite of your
example, I shall keep to myself.  My age is not essential to the
narrative.  I am descended from my ancestors by ordinary
generation, and from them I inherited the very eligible human
tenement which I still occupy and a fortune of three hundred pounds
a year.  I suppose they also handed on to me a hare-brain humour,
which it has been my chief delight to indulge.  I received a good