St Ives - Robert Louis Stevenson

St Ives - Robert Louis Stevenson - 1898 Edition.
St. Ives
Being
The Adventures of a French Prisoner
in England
CHAPTER I - A TALE OF A LION RAMPANT
IT was in the month of May 1813 that I was so unlucky as to fall at
last into the hands of the enemy. My knowledge of the English
language had marked me out for a certain employment. Though I
cannot conceive a soldier refusing to incur the risk, yet to be
hanged for a spy is a disgusting business; and I was relieved to be
held a prisoner of war. Into the Castle of Edinburgh, standing in
the midst of that city on the summit of an extraordinary rock, I
was cast with several hundred fellow-sufferers, all privates like
myself, and the more part of them, by an accident, very ignorant,
plain fellows. My English, which had brought me into that scrape,
now helped me very materially to bear it. I had a thousand
advantages. I was often called to play the part of an interpreter,
whether of orders or complaints, and thus brought in relations,
sometimes of mirth, sometimes almost of friendship, with the
officers in charge. A young lieutenant singled me out to be his
adversary at chess, a game in which I was extremely proficient, and
would reward me for my gambits with excellent cigars. The major of
the battalion took lessons of French from me while at breakfast,
and was sometimes so obliging as to have me join him at the meal.
Chevenix was his name. He was stiff as a drum-major and selfish as
an Englishman, but a fairly conscientious pupil and a fairly
upright man. Little did I suppose that his ramrod body and frozen
face would, in the end, step in between me and all my dearest
wishes; that upon this precise, regular, icy soldier-man my
fortunes should so nearly shipwreck! I never liked, but yet I
trusted him; and though it may seem but a trifle, I found his
snuff-box with the bean in it come very welcome.
For it is strange how grown men and seasoned soldiers can go back
in life; so that after but a little while in prison, which is after
all the next thing to being in the nursery, they grow absorbed in
the most pitiful, childish interests, and a sugar biscuit or a
pinch of snuff become things to follow after and scheme for!
We made but a poor show of prisoners. The officers had been all
offered their parole, and had taken it. They lived mostly in
suburbs of the city, lodging with modest families, and enjoyed
their freedom and supported the almost continual evil tidings of
the Emperor as best they might. It chanced I was the only
gentleman among the privates who remained. A great part were
ignorant Italians, of a regiment that had suffered heavily in
Catalonia. The rest were mere diggers of the soil, treaders of
grapes or hewers of wood, who had been suddenly and violently
preferred to the glorious state of soldiers. We had but the one
interest in common: each of us who had any skill with his fingers
passed the hours of his captivity in the making of little toys and
ARTICLES OF PARIS; and the prison was daily visited at certain
hours by a concourse of people of the country, come to exult over
our distress, or - it is more tolerant to suppose - their own
vicarious triumph. Some moved among us with a decency of shame or
sympathy. Others were the most offensive personages in the world,
gaped at us as if we had been baboons, sought to evangelise us to
their rustic, northern religion, as though we had been savages, or
tortured us with intelligence of disasters to the arms of France.
Good, bad, and indifferent, there was one alleviation to the
annoyance of these visitors; for it was the practice of almost all
to purchase some specimen of our rude handiwork. This led, amongst
the prisoners, to a strong spirit of competition. Some were neat
of hand, and (the genius of the French being always distinguished)
could place upon sale little miracles of dexterity and taste. Some
had a more engaging appearance; fine features were found to do as
well as fine merchandise, and an air of youth in particular (as it
appealed to the sentiment of pity in our visitors) to be a source
of profit. Others again enjoyed some acquaintance with the
language, and were able to recommend the more agreeably to
purchasers such trifles as they had to sell. To the first of these
advantages I could lay no claim, for my fingers were all thumbs.
Some at least of the others I possessed; and finding much
entertainment in our commerce, I did not suffer my advantages to
rust. I have never despised the social arts, in which it is a
national boast that every Frenchman should excel. For the approach
of particular sorts of visitors, I had a particular manner of
address, and even of appearance, which I could readily assume and
change on the occasion rising. I never lost an opportunity to
flatter either the person of my visitor, if it should be a lady,
or, if it should be a man, the greatness of his country in war.
And in case my compliments should miss their aim, I was always
ready to cover my retreat with some agreeable pleasantry, which
would often earn me the name of an 'oddity' or a 'droll fellow.'
In this way, although I was so left-handed a toy-maker, I made out
to be rather a successful merchant; and found means to procure many
little delicacies and alleviations, such as children or prisoners
desire.
I am scarcely drawing the portrait of a very melancholy man. It is
not indeed my character; and I had, in a comparison with my
comrades, many reasons for content. In the first place, I had no
family: I was an orphan and a bachelor; neither wife nor child
awaited me in France. In the second, I had never wholly forgot the
emotions with which I first found myself a prisoner; and although a
military prison be not altogether a garden of delights, it is still
preferable to a gallows. In the third, I am almost ashamed to say
it, but I found a certain pleasure in our place of residence: being
an obsolete and really mediaeval fortress, high placed and
commanding extraordinary prospects, not only over sea, mountain,
and champaign but actually over the thoroughfares of a capital
city, which we could see blackened by day with the moving crowd of
the inhabitants, and at night shining with lamps. And lastly,
although I was not insensible to the restraints of prison or the
scantiness of our rations, I remembered I had sometimes eaten quite
as ill in Spain, and had to mount guard and march perhaps a dozen
leagues into the bargain. The first of my troubles, indeed, was
the costume we were obliged to wear. There is a horrible practice
in England to trick out in ridiculous uniforms, and as it were to
brand in mass, not only convicts but military prisoners, and even
the children in charity schools. I think some malignant genius had
found his masterpiece of irony in the dress which we were condemned
to wear: jacket, waistcoat, and trousers of a sulphur or mustard
yellow, and a shirt or blue-and-white striped cotton. It was
conspicuous, it was cheap, it pointed us out to laughter - we, who
were old soldiers, used to arms, and some of us showing noble
scars, - like a set of lugubrious zanies at a fair. The old name
of that rock on which our prison stood was (I have heard since
then) the PAINTED HILL. Well, now it was all painted a bright
yellow with our costumes; and the dress of the soldiers who guarded
us being of course the essential British red rag, we made up
together the elements of a lively picture of hell. I have again
and again looked round upon my fellow-prisoners, and felt my anger
rise, and choked upon tears, to behold them thus parodied. The
more part, as I have said, were peasants, somewhat bettered perhaps
by the drill-sergeant, but for all that ungainly, loutish fellows,
with no more than a mere barrack-room smartness of address: indeed,
you could have seen our army nowhere more discreditably represented
than in this Castle of Edinburgh. And I used to see myself in
fancy, and blush. It seemed that my more elegant carriage would
but point the insult of the travesty. And I remembered the days
when I wore the coarse but honourable coat of a soldier; and
remembered further back how many of the noble, the fair, and the
gracious had taken a delight to tend my childhood. . . . But I
must not recall these tender and sorrowful memories twice; their
place is further on, and I am now upon another business. The
perfidy of the Britannic Government stood nowhere more openly
confessed than in one particular of our discipline: that we were
shaved twice in the week. To a man who has loved all his life to
be fresh shaven, can a more irritating indignity be devised?
Monday and Thursday were the days. Take the Thursday, and conceive
the picture I must present by Sunday evening! And Saturday, which
was almost as bad, was the great day for visitors.
Those who came to our market were of all qualities, men and women,
the lean and the stout, the plain and the fairly pretty. Sure, if
people at all understood the power of beauty, there would be no
prayers addressed except to Venus; and the mere privilege of
beholding a comely woman is worth paying for. Our visitors, upon
the whole, were not much to boast of; and yet, sitting in a corner
and very much ashamed of myself and my absurd appearance, I have
again and again tasted the finest, the rarest, and the most
ethereal pleasures in a glance of an eye that I should never see
again - and never wanted to. The flower of the hedgerow and the
star in heaven satisfy and delight us: how much more the look of
that exquisite being who was created to bear and rear, to madden
and rejoice, mankind!
There was one young lady in particular, about eighteen or nineteen,
tall, of a gallant carriage, and with a profusion of hair in which
the sun found threads of gold. As soon as she came in the
courtyard (and she was a rather frequent visitor) it seemed I was
aware of it. She had an air of angelic candour, yet of a high
spirit; she stepped like a Diana, every movement was noble and
free. One day there was a strong east wind; the banner was
straining at the flagstaff; below us the smoke of the city chimneys
blew hither and thither in a thousand crazy variations; and away
out on the Forth we could see the ships lying down to it and
scudding. I was thinking what a vile day it was, when she
appeared. Her hair blew in the wind with changes of colour; her
garments moulded her with the accuracy of sculpture; the ends of
her shawl fluttered about her ear and were caught in again with an
inimitable deftness. You have seen a pool on a gusty day, how it
suddenly sparkles and flashes like a thing alive? So this lady's
face had become animated and coloured; and as I saw her standing,
somewhat inclined, her lips parted, a divine trouble in her eyes, I
could have clapped my hands in applause, and was ready to acclaim
her a genuine daughter of the winds. What put it in my head, I
know not: perhaps because it was a Thursday and I was new from the
razor; but I determined to engage her attention no later than that
day. She was approaching that part of the court in which I sat
with my merchandise, when I observed her handkerchief to escape
from her hands and fall to the ground; the next moment the wind had
taken it up and carried it within my reach. I was on foot at once:
I had forgot my mustard-coloured clothes, I had forgot the private
soldier and his salute. Bowing deeply, I offered her the slip of
cambric.
'Madam,' said I, 'your handkerchief. The wind brought it me.'
I met her eyes fully.
'I thank you, sir,' said she.
'The wind brought it me,' I repeated. 'May I not take it for an
omen? You have an English proverb, "It's an ill wind that blows
nobody good."'
'Well,' she said, with a smile, '"One good turn deserves another."
I will see what you have.'
She followed me to where my wares were spread out under lee of a
piece of cannon.
'Alas, mademoiselle!' said I, 'I am no very perfect craftsman.
This is supposed to be a house, and you see the chimneys are awry.
You may call this a box if you are very indulgent; but see where my
tool slipped! Yes, I am afraid you may go from one to another, and
find a flaw in everything. FAILURES FOR SALE should be on my
signboard. I do not keep a shop; I keep a Humorous Museum.' I
cast a smiling glance about my display, and then at her, and
instantly became grave. 'Strange, is it not,' I added, 'that a
grown man and a soldier should be engaged upon such trash, and a
sad heart produce anything so funny to look at?'
An unpleasant voice summoned her at this moment by the name of
Flora, and she made a hasty purchase and rejoined her party.
A few days after she came again. But I must first tell you how she
came to be so frequent. Her aunt was one of those terrible British
old maids, of which the world has heard much; and having nothing
whatever to do, and a word or two of French, she had taken what she
called an INTEREST IN THE FRENCH PRISONERS. A big, bustling, bold
old lady, she flounced about our market-place with insufferable
airs of patronage and condescension. She bought, indeed, with
liberality, but her manner of studying us through a quizzing-glass,
and playing cicerone to her followers, acquitted us of any
gratitude. She had a tail behind her of heavy, obsequious old
gentlemen, or dull, giggling misses, to whom she appeared to be an
oracle. 'This one can really carve prettily: is he not a quiz with
his big whiskers?' she would say. 'And this one,' indicating
myself with her gold eye-glass, 'is, I assure you, quite an
oddity.' The oddity, you may be certain, ground his teeth. She
had a way of standing in our midst, nodding around, and addressing
us in what she imagined to be French: 'BIENNE, HOMMES! CA VA
BIENNE?' I took the freedom to reply in the same lingo: BIENNE,
FEMME! CA VA COUCI-COUCI TOUT D'MEME, LA BOURGEOISE!' And at that,
when we had all laughed with a little more heartiness than was
entirely civil, 'I told you he was quite an oddity!' says she in
triumph. Needless to say, these passages were before I had
remarked the niece.
The aunt came on the day in question with a following rather more
than usually large, which she manoeuvred to and fro about the
market and lectured to at rather more than usual length, and with
rather less than her accustomed tact. I kept my eyes down, but
they were ever fixed in the same direction, quite in vain. The
aunt came and went, and pulled us out, and showed us off, like
caged monkeys; but the niece kept herself on the outskirts of the
crowd and on the opposite side of the courtyard, and departed at
last as she had come, without a sign. Closely as I had watched
her, I could not say her eyes had ever rested on me for an instant;
and my heart was overwhelmed with bitterness and blackness. I tore
out her detested image; I felt I was done with her for ever; I
laughed at myself savagely, because I had thought to please; when I
lay down at night sleep forsook me, and I lay, and rolled, and
gloated on her charms, and cursed her insensibility, for half the
night. How trivial I thought her! and how trivial her sex! A man
might be an angel or an Apollo, and a mustard-coloured coat would
wholly blind them to his merits. I was a prisoner, a slave, a
contemned and despicable being, the butt of her sniggering
countrymen. I would take the lesson: no proud daughter of my foes
should have the chance to mock at me again; none in the future
should have the chance to think I had looked at her with
admiration. You cannot imagine any one of a more resolute and
independent spirit, or whose bosom was more wholly mailed with
patriotic arrogance, than I. Before I dropped asleep, I had
remembered all the infamies of Britain, and debited them in an
overwhelming column to Flora.
The next day, as I sat in my place, I became conscious there was
some one standing near; and behold, it was herself! I kept my
seat, at first in the confusion of my mind, later on from policy;
and she stood, and leaned a little over me, as in pity. She was
very still and timid; her voice was low. Did I suffer in my
captivity? she asked me. Had I to complain of any hardship?
'Mademoiselle, I have not learned to complain,' said I. 'I am a
soldier of Napoleon.'
She sighed. 'At least you must regret LA FRANCE,' said she, and
coloured a little as she pronounced the words, which she did with a
pretty strangeness of accent.
'What am I to say?' I replied. 'If you were carried from this
country, for which you seem so wholly suited, where the very rains
and winds seem to become you like ornaments, would you regret, do
you think? We must surely all regret! the son to his mother, the
man to his country; these are native feelings.'
'You have a mother?' she asked.
'In heaven, mademoiselle,' I answered. 'She, and my father also,
went by the same road to heaven as so many others of the fair and
brave: they followed their queen upon the scaffold. So, you see, I
am not so much to be pitied in my prison,' I continued: 'there are
none to wait for me; I am alone in the world. 'Tis a different
case, for instance, with yon poor fellow in the cloth cap. His bed
is next to mine, and in the night I hear him sobbing to himself.
He has a tender character, full of tender and pretty sentiments;
and in the dark at night, and sometimes by day when he can get me
apart with him, he laments a mother and a sweetheart. Do you know
what made him take me for a confidant?'
She parted her lips with a look, but did not speak. The look
burned all through me with a sudden vital heat.
'Because I had once seen, in marching by, the belfry of his
village!' I continued. 'The circumstance is quaint enough. It
seems to bind up into one the whole bundle of those human instincts
that make life beautiful, and people and places dear - and from
which it would seem I am cut off!'
I rested my chin on my knee and looked before me on the ground. I
had been talking until then to hold her; but I was now not sorry
she should go: an impression is a thing so delicate to produce and
so easy to overthrow! Presently she seemed to make an effort.
'I will take this toy,' she said, laid a five-and-sixpenny piece in
my hand, and was gone ere I could thank her.
I retired to a place apart near the ramparts and behind a gun. The
beauty, the expression of her eyes, the tear that had trembled
there, the compassion in her voice, and a kind of wild elegance
that consecrated the freedom of her movements, all combined to
enslave my imagination and inflame my heart. What had she said?
Nothing to signify; but her eyes had met mine, and the fire they
had kindled burned inextinguishably in my veins. I loved her; and
I did not fear to hope. Twice I had spoken with her; and in both
interviews I had been well inspired, I had engaged her sympathies,
I had found words that she must remember, that would ring in her
ears at night upon her bed. What mattered if I were half shaved
and my clothes a caricature? I was still a man, and I had drawn my
image on her memory. I was still a man, and, as I trembled to
realise, she was still a woman. Many waters cannot quench love;
and love, which is the law of the world, was on my side. I closed
my eyes, and she sprang up on the background of the darkness, more
beautiful than in life. 'Ah!' thought I, 'and you too, my dear,
you too must carry away with you a picture, that you are still to
behold again and still to embellish. In the darkness of night, in
the streets by day, still you are to have my voice and face,
whispering, making love for me, encroaching on your shy heart. Shy
as your heart is, IT is lodged there - I am lodged there; let the
hours do their office - let time continue to draw me ever in more
lively, ever in more insidious colours.' And then I had a vision
of myself, and burst out laughing.
A likely thing, indeed, that a beggar-man, a private soldier, a
prisoner in a yellow travesty, was to awake the interest of this
fair girl! I would not despair; but I saw the game must be played
fine and close. It must be my policy to hold myself before her,
always in a pathetic or pleasing attitude; never to alarm or
startle her; to keep my own secret locked in my bosom like a story
of disgrace, and let hers (if she could be induced to have one)
grow at its own rate; to move just so fast, and not by a hair'sbreadth
any faster, than the inclination of her heart. I was the
man, and yet I was passive, tied by the foot in prison. I could
not go to her; I must cast a spell upon her at each visit, so that
she should return to me; and this was a matter of nice management.
I had done it the last time - it seemed impossible she should not
come again after our interview; and for the next I had speedily
ripened a fresh plan. A prisoner, if he has one great disability
for a lover, has yet one considerable advantage: there is nothing
to distract him, and he can spend all his hours ripening his love
and preparing its manifestations. I had been then some days upon a
piece of carving, - no less than the emblem of Scotland, the Lion
Rampant. This I proceeded to finish with what skill I was
possessed of; and when at last I could do no more to it (and, you
may be sure, was already regretting I had done so much), added on
the base the following dedication. -
A LA BELLE FLORA
LE PRISONNIER RECONNAISSANT
A. D. ST. Y. D. K.
I put my heart into the carving of these letters. What was done
with so much ardour, it seemed scarce possible that any should
behold with indifference; and the initials would at least suggest
to her my noble birth. I thought it better to suggest: I felt that
mystery was my stock-in-trade; the contrast between my rank and
manners, between my speech and my clothing, and the fact that she
could only think of me by a combination of letters, must all tend
to increase her interest and engage her heart.
This done, there was nothing left for me but to wait and to hope.
And there is nothing further from my character: in love and in war,
I am all for the forward movement; and these days of waiting made
my purgatory. It is a fact that I loved her a great deal better at
the end of them, for love comes, like bread, from a perpetual
rehandling. And besides, I was fallen into a panic of fear. How,
if she came no more, how was I to continue to endure my empty days?
how was I to fall back and find my interest in the major's lessons,
the lieutenant's chess, in a twopenny sale in the market, or a
halfpenny addition to the prison fare?
Days went by, and weeks; I had not the courage to calculate, and
to-day I have not the courage to remember; but at last she was
there. At last I saw her approach me in the company of a boy about
her own age, and whom I divined at once to be her brother.
I rose and bowed in silence.
'This is my brother, Mr. Ronald Gilchrist,' said she. 'I have told
him of your sufferings. He is so sorry for you!'
'It is more than I have the right to ask,' I replied; 'but among
gentlefolk these generous sentiments are natural. If your brother
and I were to meet in the field, we should meet like tigers; but
when he sees me here disarmed and helpless, he forgets his
animosity.' (At which, as I had ventured to expect, this beardless
champion coloured to the ears for pleasure.) 'Ah, my dear young
lady,' I continued, 'there are many of your countrymen languishing
in my country, even as I do here. I can but hope there is found
some French lady to convey to each of them the priceless
consolation of her sympathy. You have given me alms; and more than
alms - hope; and while you were absent I was not forgetful. Suffer
me to be able to tell myself that I have at least tried to make a
return; and for the prisoner's sake deign to accept this trifle.'
So saying, I offered her my lion, which she took, looked at in some
embarrassment, and then, catching sight of the dedication, broke
out with a cry.
'Why, how did you know my name?' she exclaimed.
'When names are so appropriate, they should be easily guessed,'
said I, bowing. 'But indeed, there was no magic in the matter. A
lady called you by name on the day I found your handkerchief, and I
was quick to remark and cherish it.'
'It is very, very beautiful,' said she, 'and I shall be always
proud of the inscription. - Come, Ronald, we must be going.' She
bowed to me as a lady bows to her equal, and passed on (I could
have sworn) with a heightened colour.
I was overjoyed: my innocent ruse had succeeded; she had taken my
gift without a hint of payment, and she would scarce sleep in peace
till she had made it up to me. No greenhorn in matters of the
heart, I was besides aware that I had now a resident ambassador at
the court of my lady. The lion might be ill chiselled; it was
mine. My hands had made and held it; my knife - or, to speak more
by the mark, my rusty nail - had traced those letters; and simple
as the words were, they would keep repeating to her that I was
grateful and that I found her fair. The boy had looked like a
gawky, and blushed at a compliment; I could see besides that he
regarded me with considerable suspicion; yet he made so manly a
figure of a lad, that I could not withhold from him my sympathy.
And as for the impulse that had made her bring and introduce him, I
could not sufficiently admire it. It seemed to me finer than wit,
and more tender than a caress. It said (plain as language), 'I do
not and I cannot know you. Here is my brother - you can know him;
this is the way to me - follow it.'
CHAPTER II - A TALE OF A PAIR OF SCISSORS
I WAS still plunged in these thoughts when the bell was rung that
discharged our visitors into the street. Our little market was no
sooner closed than we were summoned to the distribution, and
received our rations, which we were then allowed to eat according
to fancy in any part of our quarters.
I have said the conduct of some of our visitors was unbearably
offensive; it was possibly more so than they dreamed - as the
sight-seers at a menagerie may offend in a thousand ways, and quite
without meaning it, the noble and unfortunate animals behind the
bars; and there is no doubt but some of my compatriots were
susceptible beyond reason. Some of these old whiskerandos,
originally peasants, trained since boyhood in victorious armies,
and accustomed to move among subject and trembling populations,
could ill brook their change of circumstance. There was one man of
the name of Goguelat, a brute of the first water, who had enjoyed
no touch of civilisation beyond the military discipline, and had
risen by an extreme heroism of bravery to a grade for which he was
otherwise unfitted - that of MARECHAL DES LOGIS in the 22nd of the
line. In so far as a brute can be a good soldier, he was a good
soldier; the Cross was on his breast, and gallantly earned; but in
all things outside his line of duty the man was no other than a
brawling, bruising ignorant pillar of low pothouses. As a
gentleman by birth, and a scholar by taste and education, I was the
type of all that he least understood and most detested; and the
mere view of our visitors would leave him daily in a transport of
annoyance, which he would make haste to wreak on the nearest
victim, and too often on myself.
It was so now. Our rations were scarce served out, and I had just
withdrawn into a corner of the yard, when I perceived him drawing
near. He wore an air of hateful mirth; a set of young fools, among
whom he passed for a wit, followed him with looks of expectation;
and I saw I was about to be the object of some of his insufferable
pleasantries. He took a place beside me, spread out his rations,
drank to me derisively from his measure of prison beer, and began.
What he said it would be impossible to print; but his admirers, who
believed their wit to have surpassed himself, actually rolled among
the gravel. For my part, I thought at first I should have died. I
had not dreamed the wretch was so observant; but hate sharpens the
ears, and he had counted our interviews and actually knew Flora by
her name. Gradually my coolness returned to me, accompanied by a
volume of living anger that surprised myself.
'Are you nearly done?' I asked. 'Because if you are, I am about to
say a word or two myself.'
'Oh, fair play!' said he. 'Turn about! The Marquis of Carabas to
the tribune.'
'Very well,' said I. 'I have to inform you that I am a gentleman.
You do not know what that means, hey? Well, I will tell you. It
is a comical sort of animal; springs from another strange set of
creatures they call ancestors; and, in common with toads and other
vermin, has a thing that he calls feelings. The lion is a
gentleman; he will not touch carrion. I am a gentleman, and I
cannot bear to soil my fingers with such a lump of dirt. Sit
still, Philippe Goguelat! sit still and do not say a word, or I
shall know you are a coward; the eyes of our guards are upon us.
Here is your health!' said I, and pledged him in the prison beer.
'You have chosen to speak in a certain way of a young child,' I
continued, 'who might be your daughter, and who was giving alms to
me and some others of us mendicants. If the Emperor' - saluting -
'if my Emperor could hear you, he would pluck off the Cross from
your gross body. I cannot do that; I cannot take away what His
Majesty has given; but one thing I promise you - I promise you,
Goguelat, you shall be dead to-night.'
I had borne so much from him in the past, I believe he thought
there was no end to my forbearance, and he was at first amazed.
But I have the pleasure to think that some of my expressions had
pierced through his thick hide; and besides, the brute was truly a
hero of valour, and loved fighting for itself. Whatever the cause,
at least, he had soon pulled himself together, and took the thing
(to do him justice) handsomely.
'And I promise you, by the devil's horns, that you shall have the
chance!' said he, and pledged me again; and again I did him
scrupulous honour.
The news of this defiance spread from prisoner to prisoner with the
speed of wings; every face was seen to be illuminated like those of
the spectators at a horse-race; and indeed you must first have
tasted the active life of a soldier, and then mouldered for a while
in the tedium of a jail, in order to understand, perhaps even to
excuse, the delight of our companions. Goguelat and I slept in the
same squad, which greatly simplified the business; and a committee
of honour was accordingly formed of our shed-mates. They chose for
president a sergeant-major in the 4th Dragoons, a greybeard of the
army, an excellent military subject, and a good man. He took the
most serious view of his functions, visited us both, and reported
our replies to the committee. Mine was of a decent firmness. I
told him the young lady of whom Goguelat had spoken had on several
occasions given me alms. I reminded him that, if we were now
reduced to hold out our hands and sell pill-boxes for charity, it
was something very new for soldiers of the Empire. We had all seen
bandits standing at a corner of a wood truckling for copper
halfpence, and after their benefactors were gone spitting out
injuries and curses. 'But,' said I, 'I trust that none of us will
fall so low. As a Frenchman and a soldier, I owe that young child
gratitude, and am bound to protect her character, and to support
that of the army. You are my elder and my superior: tell me if I
am not right.'
He was a quiet-mannered old fellow, and patted me with three
fingers on the back. 'C'EST BIEN, MON ENFANT,' says he, and
returned to his committee.
Goguelat was no more accommodating than myself. 'I do not like
apologies nor those that make them,' was his only answer. And
there remained nothing but to arrange the details of the meeting.
So far as regards place and time we had no choice; we must settle
the dispute at night, in the dark, after a round had passed by, and
in the open middle of the shed under which we slept. The question
of arms was more obscure. We had a good many tools, indeed, which
we employed in the manufacture of our toys; but they were none of
them suited for a single combat between civilised men, and, being
nondescript, it was found extremely hard to equalise the chances of
the combatants. At length a pair of scissors was unscrewed; and a
couple of tough wands being found in a corner of the courtyard, one
blade of the scissors was lashed solidly to each with resined twine
- the twine coming I know not whence, but the resin from the green
pillars of the shed, which still sweated from the axe. It was a
strange thing to feel in one's hand this weapon, which was no
heavier than a riding-rod, and which it was difficult to suppose
would prove more dangerous. A general oath was administered and
taken, that no one should interfere in the duel nor (suppose it to
result seriously) betray the name of the survivor. And with that,
all being then ready, we composed ourselves to await the moment.
The evening fell cloudy; not a star was to be seen when the first
round of the night passed through our shed and wound off along the
ramparts; and as we took our places, we could still hear, over the
murmurs of the surrounding city, the sentries challenging its
further passage. Leclos, the sergeant-major, set us in our
stations, engaged our wands, and left us. To avoid blood-stained
clothing, my adversary and I had stripped to the shoes; and the
chill of the night enveloped our bodies like a wet sheet. The man
was better at fencing than myself; he was vastly taller than I,
being of a stature almost gigantic, and proportionately strong. In
the inky blackness of the shed, it was impossible to see his eyes;
and from the suppleness of the wands, I did not like to trust to a
parade. I made up my mind accordingly to profit, if I might, by my
defect; and as soon as the signal should be given, to throw myself
down and lunge at the same moment. It was to play my life upon one
card: should I not mortally wound him, no defence would be left me;
what was yet more appalling, I thus ran the risk of bringing my own
face against his scissor with the double force of our assaults, and
my face and eyes are not that part of me that I would the most
readily expose.
'ALLEZ!' said the sergeant-major.
Both lunged in the same moment with an equal fury, and but for my
manoeuvre both had certainly been spitted. As it was, he did no
more than strike my shoulder, while my scissor plunged below the
girdle into a mortal part; and that great bulk of a man, falling
from his whole height, knocked me immediately senseless.
When I came to myself I was laid in my own sleeping-place, and
could make out in the darkness the outline of perhaps a dozen heads
crowded around me. I sat up. 'What is it?' I exclaimed.
'Hush!' said the sergeant-major. 'Blessed be God, all is well.' I
felt him clasp my hand, and there were tears in his voice. ''Tis
but a scratch, my child; here is papa, who is taking good care of
you. Your shoulder is bound up; we have dressed you in your
clothes again, and it will all be well.'
At this I began to remember. 'And Goguelat?' I gasped.
'He cannot bear to be moved; he has his bellyful; 'tis a bad
business,' said the sergeant-major.
The idea of having killed a man with such an instrument as half a
pair of scissors seemed to turn my stomach. I am sure I might have
killed a dozen with a firelock, a sabre, a bayonet, or any accepted
weapon, and been visited by no such sickness of remorse. And to
this feeling every unusual circumstance of our rencounter, the
darkness in which we had fought, our nakedness, even the resin on
the twine, appeared to contribute. I ran to my fallen adversary,
kneeled by him, and could only sob his name.
He bade me compose myself. 'You have given me the key of the
fields, comrade,' said he. 'SANS RANCUNE!'
At this my horror redoubled. Here had we two expatriated Frenchmen
engaged in an ill-regulated combat like the battles of beasts.
Here was he, who had been all his life so great a ruffian, dying in
a foreign land of this ignoble injury, and meeting death with
something of the spirit of a Bayard. I insisted that the guards
should be summoned and a doctor brought. 'It may still be possible
to save him,' I cried.
The sergeant-major reminded me of our engagement. 'If you had been
wounded,' said he, 'you must have lain there till the patrol came
by and found you. It happens to be Goguelat - and so must he!
Come, child, time to go to by-by.' And as I still resisted,
'Champdivers!' he said, 'this is weakness. You pain me.'
'Ay, off to your beds with you!' said Goguelat, and named us in a
company with one of his jovial gross epithets.
Accordingly the squad lay down in the dark and simulated, what they
certainly were far from experiencing, sleep. It was not yet late.
The city, from far below, and all around us, sent up a sound of
wheels and feet and lively voices. Yet awhile, and the curtain of
the cloud was rent across, and in the space of sky between the
eaves of the shed and the irregular outline of the ramparts a
multitude of stars appeared. Meantime, in the midst of us lay
Goguelat, and could not always withhold himself from groaning.
We heard the round far off; heard it draw slowly nearer. Last of
all, it turned the corner and moved into our field of vision: two
file of men and a corporal with a lantern, which he swung to and
fro, so as to cast its light in the recesses of the yards and
sheds.
'Hullo!' cried the corporal, pausing as he came by Goguelat.
He stooped with his lantern. All our hearts were flying.
'What devil's work is this?' he cried, and with a startling voice
summoned the guard.
We were all afoot upon the instant; more lanterns and soldiers
crowded in front of the shed; an officer elbowed his way in. In
the midst was the big naked body, soiled with blood. Some one had
covered him with his blanket; but as he lay there in agony, he had
partly thrown it off.
'This is murder!' cried the officer. 'You wild beasts, you will
hear of this to-morrow.'
As Goguelat was raised and laid upon a stretcher, he cried to us a
cheerful and blasphemous farewell.
CHAPTER III - MAJOR CHEVENIX COMES INTO THE STORY, AND GOGUELAT
GOES OUT
THERE was never any talk of a recovery, and no time was lost in
getting the man's deposition. He gave but the one account of it:
that he had committed suicide because he was sick of seeing so many
Englishmen. The doctor vowed it was impossible, the nature and
direction of the wound forbidding it. Goguelat replied that he was
more ingenious than the other thought for, and had propped up the
weapon in the ground and fallen on the point - 'just like
Nebuchadnezzar,' he added, winking to the assistants. The doctor,
who was a little, spruce, ruddy man of an impatient temper, pished
and pshawed and swore over his patient. 'Nothing to be made of
him!' he cried. 'A perfect heathen. If we could only find the
weapon!' But the weapon had ceased to exist. A little resined
twine was perhaps blowing about in the castle gutters; some bits of
broken stick may have trailed in corners; and behold, in the
pleasant air of the morning, a dandy prisoner trimming his nails
with a pair of scissors!
Finding the wounded man so firm, you may be sure the authorities
did not leave the rest of us in peace. No stone was left unturned.
We were had in again and again to be examined, now singly, now in
twos and threes. We were threatened with all sorts of impossible
severities and tempted with all manner of improbable rewards. I
suppose I was five times interrogated, and came off from each with
flying colours. I am like old Souvaroff, I cannot understand a
soldier being taken aback by any question; he should answer, as he
marches on the fire, with an instant briskness and gaiety. I may
have been short of bread, gold or grace; I was never yet found
wanting in an answer. My comrades, if they were not all so ready,
were none of them less staunch; and I may say here at once that the
inquiry came to nothing at the time, and the death of Goguelat
remained a mystery of the prison. Such were the veterans of
France! And yet I should be disingenuous if I did not own this was
a case apart; in ordinary circumstances, some one might have
stumbled or been intimidated into an admission; and what bound us
together with a closeness beyond that of mere comrades was a secret
to which we were all committed and a design in which all were
equally engaged. No need to inquire as to its nature: there is
only one desire, and only one kind of design, that blooms in
prisons. And the fact that our tunnel was near done supported and
inspired us.
I came off in public, as I have said, with flying colours; the
sittings of the court of inquiry died away like a tune that no one
listens to; and yet I was unmasked - I, whom my very adversary
defended, as good as confessed, as good as told the nature of the
quarrel, and by so doing prepared for myself in the future a most
anxious, disagreeable adventure. It was the third morning after
the duel, and Goguelat was still in life, when the time came round
for me to give Major Chevenix a lesson. I was fond of this
occupation; not that he paid me much - no more, indeed, than
eighteenpence a month, the customary figure, being a miser in the
grain; but because I liked his breakfasts and (to some extent)
himself. At least, he was a man of education; and of the others
with whom I had any opportunity of speech, those that would not
have held a book upsidedown would have torn the pages out for pipelights.
For I must repeat again that our body of prisoners was
exceptional: there was in Edinburgh Castle none of that educational
busyness that distinguished some of the other prisons, so that men
entered them unable to read, and left them fit for high
employments. Chevenix was handsome, and surprisingly young to be a
major: six feet in his stockings, well set up, with regular
features and very clear grey eyes. It was impossible to pick a
fault in him, and yet the sum-total was displeasing. Perhaps he
was too clean; he seemed to bear about with him the smell of soap.
Cleanliness is good, but I cannot bear a man's nails to seem
japanned. And certainly he was too self-possessed and cold. There
was none of the fire of youth, none of the swiftness of the
soldier, in this young officer. His kindness was cold, and cruel
cold; his deliberation exasperating. And perhaps it was from this
character, which is very much the opposite of my own, that even in
these days, when he was of service to me, I approached him with
suspicion and reserve.
I looked over his exercise in the usual form, and marked six
faults.
'H'm. Six,' says he, looking at the paper. 'Very annoying! I can
never get it right.'
'Oh, but you make excellent progress!' I said. I would not
discourage him, you understand, but he was congenitally unable to
learn French. Some fire, I think, is needful, and he had quenched
his fire in soapsuds.
He put the exercise down, leaned his chin upon his hand, and looked
at me with clear, severe eyes.
'I think we must have a little talk,' said he.
'I am entirely at your disposition,' I replied; but I quaked, for I
knew what subject to expect.
'You have been some time giving me these lessons,' he went on, 'and
I am tempted to think rather well of you. I believe you are a
gentleman.'
'I have that honour, sir,' said I.
'You have seen me for the same period. I do not know how I strike
you; but perhaps you will be prepared to believe that I also am a
man of honour,' said he.
'I require no assurances; the thing is manifest,' and I bowed.
'Very well, then,' said he. 'What about this Goguelat?'
'You heard me yesterday before the court,' I began. 'I was
awakened only - '
'Oh yes; I "heard you yesterday before the court," no doubt,' he
interrupted, 'and I remember perfectly that you were "awakened
only." I could repeat the most of it by rote, indeed. But do you
suppose that I believed you for a moment?'
'Neither would you believe me if I were to repeat it here,' said I.
'I may be wrong - we shall soon see,' says he; 'but my impression
is that you will not "repeat it here." My impression is that you
have come into this room, and that you will tell me something
before you go out.'
I shrugged my shoulders.
'Let me explain,' he continued. 'Your evidence, of course, is
nonsense. I put it by, and the court put it by.'
'My compliments and thanks!' said I.
'You MUST know - that's the short and the long,' he proceeded.
'All of you in shed B are bound to know. And I want to ask you
where is the common-sense of keeping up this farce, and maintaining
this cock-and-bull story between friends. Come, come, my good
fellow, own yourself beaten, and laugh at it yourself.'
'Well, I hear you, go ahead,' said I. 'You put your heart in it.'
He crossed his legs slowly. 'I can very well understand,' he
began, 'that precautions have had to be taken. I dare say an oath
was administered. I can comprehend that perfectly.' (He was
watching me all the time with his cold, bright eyes.) 'And I can
comprehend that, about an affair of honour, you would be very
particular to keep it.'
'About an affair of honour?' I repeated, like a man quite puzzled.
'It was not an affair of honour, then?' he asked.
'What was not? I do not follow,' said I.
He gave no sign of impatience; simply sat awhile silent, and began
again in the same placid and good-natured voice: 'The court and I
were at one in setting aside your evidence. It could not deceive a
child. But there was a difference between myself and the other
officers, because I KNEW MY MAN and they did not. They saw in you
a common soldier, and I knew you for a gentleman. To them your
evidence was a leash of lies, which they yawned to hear you
telling. Now, I was asking myself, how far will a gentleman go?
Not surely so far as to help hush a murder up? So that - when I
heard you tell how you knew nothing of the matter, and were only
awakened by the corporal, and all the rest of it - I translated
your statements into something else. Now, Champdivers,' he cried,
springing up lively and coming towards me with animation, 'I am
going to tell you what that was, and you are going to help me to
see justice done: how, I don't know, for of course you are under
oath - but somehow. Mark what I'm going to say.'
At that moment he laid a heavy, hard grip upon my shoulder; and
whether he said anything more or came to a full stop at once, I am
sure I could not tell you to this day. For, as the devil would
have it, the shoulder he laid hold of was the one Goguelat had
pinked. The wound was but a scratch; it was healing with the first
intention; but in the clutch of Major Chevenix it gave me agony.
My head swam; the sweat poured off my face; I must have grown
deadly pale.
He removed his hand as suddenly as he had laid it there. 'What is
wrong with you?' said he.
'It is nothing,' said I. 'A qualm. It has gone by.'
'Are you sure?' said he. 'You are as white as a sheet.'
'Oh no, I assure you! Nothing whatever. I am my own man again,' I
said, though I could scarce command my tongue.
'Well, shall I go on again?' says he. 'Can you follow me?'
'Oh, by all means!' said I, and mopped my streaming face upon my
sleeve, for you may be sure in those days I had no handkerchief.
'If you are sure you can follow me. That was a very sudden and
sharp seizure,' he said doubtfully. 'But if you are sure, all
right, and here goes. An affair of honour among you fellows would,
naturally, be a little difficult to carry out, perhaps it would be
impossible to have it wholly regular. And yet a duel might be very
irregular in form, and, under the peculiar circumstances of the
case, loyal enough in effect. Do you take me? Now, as a gentleman
and a soldier.'
His hand rose again at the words and hovered over me. I could bear
no more, and winced away from him. 'No,' I cried, 'not that. Do
not put your hand upon my shoulder. I cannot bear it. It is
rheumatism,' I made haste to add. 'My shoulder is inflamed and
very painful.'
He returned to his chair and deliberately lighted a cigar.
'I am sorry about your shoulder,' he said at last. 'Let me send
for the doctor.'
'Not in the least,' said I. 'It is a trifle. I am quite used to
it. It does not trouble me in the smallest. At any rate, I don't
believe in doctors.'
'All right,' said he, and sat and smoked a good while in a silence
which I would have given anything to break. 'Well,' he began
presently, 'I believe there is nothing left for me to learn. I
presume I may say that I know all.'
'About what?' said I boldly.
'About Goguelat,' said he.
'I beg your pardon. I cannot conceive,' said I.
'Oh,' says the major, 'the man fell in a duel, and by your hand! I
am not an infant.'
'By no means,' said I. 'But you seem to me to be a good deal of a
theorist.'
'Shall we test it?' he asked. 'The doctor is close by. If there
is not an open wound on your shoulder, I am wrong. If there is - '
He waved his hand. 'But I advise you to think twice. There is a
deuce of a nasty drawback to the experiment - that what might have
remained private between us two becomes public property.'
'Oh, well!' said I, with a laugh, 'anything rather than a doctor!
I cannot bear the breed.'
His last words had a good deal relieved me, but I was still far
from comfortable.
Major Chevenix smoked awhile, looking now at his cigar ash, now at
me. 'I'm a soldier myself,' he says presently, 'and I've been out
in my time and hit my man. I don't want to run any one into a
corner for an affair that was at all necessary or correct. At the
same time, I want to know that much, and I'll take your word of
honour for it. Otherwise, I shall be very sorry, but the doctor
must be called in.'
'I neither admit anything nor deny anything,' I returned. 'But if
this form of words will suffice you, here is what I say: I give you
my parole, as a gentleman and a soldier, there has nothing taken
place amongst us prisoners that was not honourable as the day.'
'All right,' says he. 'That was all I wanted. You can go now,
Champdivers.'
And as I was going out he added, with a laugh: 'By the bye, I ought
to apologise: I had no idea I was applying the torture!'
The same afternoon the doctor came into the courtyard with a piece
of paper in his hand. He seemed hot and angry, and had certainly
no mind to be polite.
'Here!' he cried. 'Which of you fellows knows any English? Oh!' -
spying me - 'there you are, what's your name! YOU'LL do. Tell
these fellows that the other fellow's dying. He's booked; no use
talking; I expect he'll go by evening. And tell them I don't envy
the feelings of the fellow who spiked him. Tell them that first.'
I did so.
'Then you can tell 'em,' he resumed, 'that the fellow, Goggle -
what's his name? - wants to see some of them before he gets his
marching orders. If I got it right, he wants to kiss or embrace
you, or some sickening stuff. Got that? Then here's a list he's
had written, and you'd better read it out to them - I can't make
head or tail of your beastly names - and they can answer PRESENT,
and fall in against that wall.'
It was with a singular movement of incongruous feelings that I read
the first name on the list. I had no wish to look again on my own
handiwork; my flesh recoiled from the idea; and how could I be sure
what reception he designed to give me? The cure was in my own
hand; I could pass that first name over - the doctor would not know
- and I might stay away. But to the subsequent great gladness of
my heart, I did not dwell for an instant on the thought, walked
over to the designated wall, faced about, read out the name
'Champdivers,' and answered myself with the word 'Present.'
There were some half dozen on the list, all told; and as soon as we
were mustered, the doctor led the way to the hospital, and we
followed after, like a fatigue party, in single file. At the door
he paused, told us 'the fellow' would see each of us alone, and, as
soon as I had explained that, sent me by myself into the ward. It
was a small room, whitewashed; a south window stood open on a vast
depth of air and a spacious and distant prospect; and from deep
below, in the Grassmarket the voices of hawkers came up clear and
far away. Hard by, on a little bed, lay Goguelat. The sunburn had
not yet faded from his face, and the stamp of death was already
there. There was something wild and unmannish in his smile, that
took me by the throat; only death and love know or have ever seen
it. And when he spoke, it seemed to shame his coarse talk.
He held out his arms as if to embrace me. I drew near with
incredible shrinkings, and surrendered myself to his arms with
overwhelming disgust. But he only drew my ear down to his lips.
'Trust me,' he whispered. 'JE SUIS BON BOUGRE, MOI. I'll take it
to hell with me, and tell the devil.'
Why should I go on to reproduce his grossness and trivialities?
All that he thought, at that hour, was even noble, though he could
not clothe it otherwise than in the language of a brutal farce.
Presently he bade me call the doctor; and when that officer had
come in, raised a little up in his bed, pointed first to himself
and then to me, who stood weeping by his side, and several times
repeated the expression, 'Frinds - frinds - dam frinds.'
To my great surprise, the doctor appeared very much affected. He
nodded his little bob-wigged head at us, and said repeatedly, 'All
right, Johnny - me comprong.'
Then Goguelat shook hands with me, embraced me again, and I went
out of the room sobbing like an infant.
How often have I not seen it, that the most unpardonable fellows
make the happiest exits! It is a fate we may well envy them.
Goguelat was detested in life; in the last three days, by his
admirable staunchness and consideration, he won every heart; and
when word went about the prison the same evening that he was no
more, the voice of conversation became hushed as in a house of
mourning.
For myself I was like a man distracted; I cannot think what ailed
me: when I awoke the following day, nothing remained of it; but
that night I was filled with a gloomy fury of the nerves. I had
killed him; he had done his utmost to protect me; I had seen him
with that awful smile. And so illogical and useless is this
sentiment of remorse, that I was ready, at a word or a look, to
quarrel with somebody else. I presume the disposition of my mind
was imprinted on my face; and when, a little after, I overtook,
saluted and addressed the doctor, he looked on me with
commiseration and surprise.
I had asked him if it was true.
'Yes,' he said, 'the fellow's gone.'
'Did he suffer much?' I asked.
'Devil a bit; passed away like a lamb,' said he. He looked on me a
little, and I saw his hand go to his fob. 'Here, take that! no
sense in fretting,' he said, and, putting a silver two-penny-bit in
my hand, he left me.
I should have had that twopenny framed to hang upon the wall, for
it was the man's one act of charity in all my knowledge of him.
Instead of that, I stood looking at it in my hand and laughed out
bitterly, as I realised his mistake; then went to the ramparts, and
flung it far into the air like blood money. The night was falling;
through an embrasure and across the gardened valley I saw the
lamplighters hasting along Princes Street with ladder and lamp, and
looked on moodily. As I was so standing a hand was laid upon my
shoulder, and I turned about. It was Major Chevenix, dressed for
the evening, and his neckcloth really admirably folded. I never
denied the man could dress.
'Ah!' said he, 'I thought it was you, Champdivers. So he's gone?'
I nodded.
'Come, come,' said he, 'you must cheer up. Of course it's very
distressing, very painful and all that. But do you know, it ain't
such a bad thing either for you or me? What with his death and
your visit to him I am entirely reassured.'
So I was to owe my life to Goguelat at every point.
'I had rather not discuss it,' said I.
'Well,' said he, 'one word more, and I'll agree to bury the
subject. What did you fight about?'
'Oh, what do men ever fight about?' I cried.
'A lady?' said he.
I shrugged my shoulders.
'Deuce you did!' said he. 'I should scarce have thought it of
him.'
And at this my ill-humour broke fairly out in words. 'He!' I
cried. 'He never dared to address her - only to look at her and
vomit his vile insults! She may have given him sixpence: if she
did, it may take him to heaven yet!'
At this I became aware of his eyes set upon me with a considering
look, and brought up sharply.
'Well, well,' said he. 'Good night to you, Champdivers. Come to
me at breakfast-time to-morrow, and we'll talk of other subjects.'
I fully admit the man's conduct was not bad: in writing it down so
long after the events I can even see that it was good.
CHAPTER IV - ST. IVES GETS A BUNDLE OF BANK NOTES
I WAS surprised one morning, shortly after, to find myself the
object of marked consideration by a civilian and a stranger. This
was a man of the middle age; he had a face of a mulberry colour,
round black eyes, comical tufted eyebrows, and a protuberant
forehead; and was dressed in clothes of a Quakerish cut. In spite
of his plainness, he had that inscrutable air of a man well-to-do
in his affairs. I conceived he had been some while observing me
from a distance, for a sparrow sat betwixt us quite unalarmed on
the breech of a piece of cannon. So soon as our eyes met, he drew
near and addressed me in the French language, which he spoke with a
good fluency but an abominable accent.
'I have the pleasure of addressing Monsieur le Vicomte Anne de
Keroual de Saint-Yves?' said he.
'Well,' said I, 'I do not call myself all that; but I have a right
to, if I chose. In the meanwhile I call myself plain Champdivers,
at your disposal. It was my mother's name, and good to go
soldiering with.'
'I think not quite,' said he; 'for if I remember rightly, your
mother also had the particle. Her name was Florimonde de
Champdivers.'
'Right again!' said I, 'and I am extremely pleased to meet a
gentleman so well informed in my quarterings. Is monsieur Born
himself?' This I said with a great air of assumption, partly to
conceal the degree of curiosity with which my visitor had inspired
me, and in part because it struck me as highly incongruous and
comical in my prison garb and on the lips of a private soldier.
He seemed to think so too, for he laughed.
'No, sir,' he returned, speaking this time in English; 'I am not
"BORN," as you call it, and must content myself with DYING, of
which I am equally susceptible with the best of you. My name is
Mr. Romaine - Daniel Romaine - a solicitor of London City, at your
service; and, what will perhaps interest you more, I am here at the
request of your great-uncle, the Count.'
'What!' I cried, 'does M. de Keroual de St.-Yves remember the
existence of such a person as myself, and will he deign to count
kinship with a soldier of Napoleon?'
'You speak English well,' observed my visitor.
'It has been a second language to me from a child,' said I. 'I had
an English nurse; my father spoke English with me; and I was
finished by a countryman of yours and a dear friend of mine, a Mr.
Vicary.'
A strong expression of interest came into the lawyer's face.
'What!' he cried, 'you knew poor Vicary?'
'For more than a year,' said I; 'and shared his hiding-place for
many months.'
'And I was his clerk, and have succeeded him in business,' said he.
'Excellent man! It was on the affairs of M. de Keroual that he
went to that accursed country, from which he was never destined to
return. Do you chance to know his end, sir?'
'I am sorry,' said I, 'I do. He perished miserably at the hands of
a gang of banditti, such as we call CHAUFFEURS. In a word, he was
tortured, and died of it. See,' I added, kicking off one shoe, for
I had no stockings; 'I was no more than a child, and see how they
had begun to treat myself.'
He looked at the mark of my old burn with a certain shrinking.
'Beastly people!' I heard him mutter to himself.
'The English may say so with a good grace,' I observed politely.
Such speeches were the coin in which I paid my way among this
credulous race. Ninety per cent. of our visitors would have
accepted the remark as natural in itself and creditable to my
powers of judgment, but it appeared my lawyer was more acute.
'You are not entirely a fool, I perceive,' said he.
'No,' said I; 'not wholly.'
'And yet it is well to beware of the ironical mood,' he continued.
'It is a dangerous instrument. Your great-uncle has, I believe,
practised it very much, until it is now become a problem what he
means.'
'And that brings me back to what you will admit is a most natural
inquiry,' said I. 'To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?
how did you recognise me? and how did you know I was here?'
Carefull separating his coat skirts, the lawyer took a seat beside
me on the edge of the flags.
'It is rather an odd story,' says he, 'and, with your leave, I'll
answer the second question first. It was from a certain
resemblance you bear to your cousin, M. le Vicomte.'
'I trust, sir, that I resemble him advantageously?' said I.
'I hasten to reassure you,' was the reply: 'you do. To my eyes, M.
Alain de St.-Yves has scarce a pleasing exterior. And yet, when I
knew you were here, and was actually looking for you - why, the
likeness helped. As for how I came to know your whereabouts, by an
odd enough chance, it is again M. Alain we have to thank. I should
tell you, he has for some time made it his business to keep M. de
Keroual informed of your career; with what purpose I leave you to
judge. When he first brought the news of your - that you were
serving Buonaparte, it seemed it might be the death of the old
gentleman, so hot was his resentment. But from one thing to
another, matters have a little changed. Or I should rather say,
not a little. We learned you were under orders for the Peninsula,
to fight the English; then that you had been commissioned for a
piece of bravery, and were again reduced to the ranks. And from
one thing to another (as I say), M. de Keroual became used to the
idea that you were his kinsman and yet served with Buonaparte, and
filled instead with wonder that he should have another kinsman who
was so remarkably well informed of events in France. And it now
became a very disagreeable question, whether the young gentleman
was not a spy? In short, sir, in seeking to disserve you, he had
accumulated against himself a load of suspicions.'
My visitor now paused, took snuff, and looked at me with an air of
benevolence.
'Good God, sir!' says I, 'this is a curious story.'
'You will say so before I have done,' said he. 'For there have two
events followed. The first of these was an encounter of M. de
Keroual and M. de Mauseant.'
'I know the man to my cost,' said I: 'it was through him I lost my
commission.'
'Do you tell me so?' he cried. 'Why, here is news!'
'Oh, I cannot complain!' said I. 'I was in the wrong. I did it
with my eyes open. If a man gets a prisoner to guard and lets him
go, the least he can expect is to be degraded.'
'You will be paid for it,' said he. 'You did well for yourself and
better for your king.'
'If I had thought I was injuring my emperor,' said I, 'I would have
let M. de Mauseant burn in hell ere I had helped him, and be sure
of that! I saw in him only a private person in a difficulty: I let
him go in private charity; not even to profit myself will I suffer
it to be misunderstood.'
'Well, well,' said the lawyer, 'no matter now. This is a foolish
warmth - a very misplaced enthusiasm, believe me! The point of the
story is that M. de Mauseant spoke of you with gratitude, and drew
your character in such a manner as greatly to affect your uncle's
views. Hard upon the back of which, in came your humble servant,
and laid before him the direct proof of what we had been so long
suspecting. There was no dubiety permitted. M. Alain's expensive
way of life, his clothes and mistresses, his dicing and racehorses,
were all explained: he was in the pay of Buonaparte, a hired spy,
and a man that held the strings of what I can only call a
convolution of extremely fishy enterprises. To do M. de Keroual
justice, he took it in the best way imaginable, destroyed the
evidences of the one great-nephew's disgrace - and transferred his
interest wholly to the other.'
'What am I to understand by that?' said I.
'I will tell you,' says he. 'There is a remarkable inconsistency
in human nature which gentlemen of my cloth have a great deal of
occasion to observe. Selfish persons can live without chick or
child, they can live without all mankind except perhaps the barber
and the apothecary; but when it comes to dying, they seem
physically unable to die without an heir. You can apply this
principle for yourself. Viscount Alain, though he scarce guesses
it, is no longer in the field. Remains, Viscount Anne.'
'I see,' said I, 'you give a very unfavourable impression of my
uncle, the Count.'
'I had not meant it,' said he. 'He has led a loose life - sadly
loose - but he is a man it is impossible to know and not to admire;
his courtesy is exquisite.'
'And so you think there is actually a chance for me?' I asked.
'Understand,' said he: 'in saying as much as I have done, I travel
quite beyond my brief. I have been clothed with no capacity to
talk of wills, or heritages, or your cousin. I was sent here to
make but the one communication: that M. de Keroual desires to meet
his great-nephew.'
'Well,' said I, looking about me on the battlements by which we sat
surrounded, 'this is a case in which Mahomet must certainly come to
the mountain.'
'Pardon me,' said Mr. Romaine; 'you know already your uncle is an
aged man; but I have not yet told you that he is quite broken up,
and his death shortly looked for. No, no, there is no doubt about
it - it is the mountain that must come to Mahomet.'
'From an Englishman, the remark is certainly significant,' said I;
'but you are of course, and by trade, a keeper of men's secrets,
and I see you keep that of Cousin Alain, which is not the mark of a
truculent patriotism, to say the least.'
'I am first of all the lawyer of your family!' says he.
'That being so,' said I, 'I can perhaps stretch a point myself.
This rock is very high, and it is very steep; a man might come by a
devil of a fall from almost any part of it, and yet I believe I
have a pair of wings that might carry me just so far as to the
bottom. Once at the bottom I am helpless.'
'And perhaps it is just then that I could step in,' returned the
lawyer. 'Suppose by some contingency, at which I make no guess,
and on which I offer no opinion - '
But here I interrupted him. 'One word ere you go further. I am
under no parole,' said I.
'I understood so much,' he replied, 'although some of you French
gentry find their word sit lightly on them.'
'Sir, I am not one of those,' said I.
'To do you plain justice, I do not think you one,' said he.
'Suppose yourself, then, set free and at the bottom of the rock,'
he continued, 'although I may not be able to do much, I believe I
can do something to help you on your road. In the first place I
would carry this, whether in an inside pocket or my shoe.' And he
passed me a bundle of bank notes.
'No harm in that,' said I, at once concealing them.
'In the second place,' he resumed, 'it is a great way from here to
where your uncle lives - Amersham Place, not far from Dunstable;
you have a great part of Britain to get through; and for the first
stages, I must leave you to your own luck and ingenuity. I have no
acquaintance here in Scotland, or at least' (with a grimace) 'no
dishonest ones. But further to the south, about Wakefield, I am
told there is a gentleman called Burchell Fenn, who is not so
particular as some others, and might be willing to give you a cast
forward. In fact, sir, I believe it's the man's trade: a piece of
knowledge that burns my mouth. But that is what you get by
meddling with rogues; and perhaps the biggest rogue now extant, M.
de Saint-Yves, is your cousin, M. Alain.'
'If this be a man of my cousin's,' I observed, 'I am perhaps better
to keep clear of him?'
'It was through some paper of your cousin's that we came across his
trail,' replied the lawyer. 'But I am inclined to think, so far as
anything is safe in such a nasty business, you might apply to the
man Fenn. You might even, I think, use the Viscount's name; and
the little trick of family resemblance might come in. How, for
instance, if you were to call yourself his brother?'
'It might be done,' said I. 'But look here a moment? You propose
to me a very difficult game: I have apparently a devil of an
opponent in my cousin; and, being a prisoner of war, I can scarcely
be said to hold good cards. For what stakes, then, am I playing?'
'They are very large,' said he. 'Your great-uncle is immensely
rich - immensely rich. He was wise in time; he smelt the
revolution long before; sold all that he could, and had all that
was movable transported to England through my firm. There are
considerable estates in England; Amersham Place itself is very
fine; and he has much money, wisely invested. He lives, indeed,
like a prince. And of what use is it to him? He has lost all that
was worth living for - his family, his country; he has seen his
king and queen murdered; he has seen all these miseries and
infamies,' pursued the lawyer, with a rising inflection and a
heightening colour; and then broke suddenly off, - 'In short, sir,
he has seen all the advantages of that government for which his
nephew carries arms, and he has the misfortune not to like them.'
'You speak with a bitterness that I suppose I must excuse,' said I;
'yet which of us has the more reason to be bitter? This man, my
uncle, M. de Keroual, fled. My parents, who were less wise
perhaps, remained. In the beginning, they were even republicans;
to the end they could not be persuaded to despair of the people.
It was a glorious folly, for which, as a son, I reverence them.
First one and then the other perished. If I have any mark of a
gentleman, all who taught me died upon the scaffold, and my last
school of manners was the prison of the Abbaye. Do you think you
can teach bitterness to a man with a history like mine?'
'I have no wish to try,' said he. 'And yet there is one point I
cannot understand: I cannot understand that one of your blood and
experience should serve the Corsican. I cannot understand it: it
seems as though everything generous in you must rise against that -
domination.'
'And perhaps,' I retorted, 'had your childhood passed among wolves,
you would have been overjoyed yourself to see the Corsican
Shepherd.'
'Well, well,' replied Mr. Romaine, 'it may be. There are things
that do not bear discussion.'
And with a wave of his hand he disappeared abruptly down a flight
of steps and under the shadow of a ponderous arch.
CHAPTER V - ST. IVES IS SHOWN A HOUSE
THE lawyer was scarce gone before I remembered many omissions; and
chief among these, that I had neglected to get Mr. Burchell Fenn's
address. Here was an essential point neglected; and I ran to the
head of the stairs to find myself already too late. The lawyer was
beyond my view; in the archway that led downward to the castle
gate, only the red coat and the bright arms of a sentry glittered
in the shadow; and I could but return to my place upon the
ramparts.
I am not very sure that I was properly entitled to this corner.
But I was a high favourite; not an officer, and scarce a private,
in the castle would have turned me back, except upon a thing of
moment; and whenever I desired to be solitary, I was suffered to
sit here behind my piece of cannon unmolested. The cliff went down
before me almost sheer, but mantled with a thicket of climbing
trees; from farther down, an outwork raised its turret; and across
the valley I had a view of that long terrace of Princes Street
which serves as a promenade to the fashionable inhabitants of
Edinburgh. A singularity in a military prison, that it should
command a view on the chief thoroughfare!
It is not necessary that I should trouble you with the train of my
reflections, which turned upon the interview I had just concluded
and the hopes that were now opening before me. What is more
essential, my eye (even while I thought) kept following the
movement of the passengers on Princes Street, as they passed
briskly to and fro - met, greeted, and bowed to each other - or
entered and left the shops, which are in that quarter, and, for a
town of the Britannic provinces, particularly fine. My mind being
busy upon other things, the course of my eye was the more random;
and it chanced that I followed, for some time, the advance of a
young gentleman with a red head and a white great-coat, for whom I
cared nothing at the moment, and of whom it is probable I shall be
gathered to my fathers without learning more. He seemed to have a
large acquaintance: his hat was for ever in his hand; and I daresay
I had already observed him exchanging compliments with half a
dozen, when he drew up at last before a young man and a young lady
whose tall persons and gallant carriage I thought I recognised.
It was impossible at such a distance that I could be sure, but the
thought was sufficient, and I craned out of the embrasure to follow
them as long as possible. To think that such emotions, that such a
concussion of the blood, may have been inspired by a chance
resemblance, and that I may have stood and thrilled there for a
total stranger! This distant view, at least, whether of Flora or
of some one else, changed in a moment the course of my reflections.
It was all very well, and it was highly needful, I should see my
uncle; but an uncle, a great-uncle at that, and one whom I had
never seen, leaves the imagination cold; and if I were to leave the
castle, I might never again have the opportunity of finding Flora.
The little impression I had made, even supposing I had made any,
how soon it would die out! how soon I should sink to be a phantom
memory, with which (in after days) she might amuse a husband and
children! No, the impression must be clenched, the wax impressed
with the seal, ere I left Edinburgh. And at this the two interests
that were now contending in my bosom came together and became one.
I wished to see Flora again; and I wanted some one to further me in
my flight and to get me new clothes. The conclusion was apparent.
Except for persons in the garrison itself, with whom it was a point
of honour and military duty to retain me captive, I knew, in the
whole country of Scotland, these two alone. If it were to be done
at all, they must be my helpers. To tell them of my designed
escape while I was still in bonds, would be to lay before them a
most difficult choice. What they might do in such a case, I could
not in the least be sure of, for (the same case arising) I was far
from sure what I should do myself. It was plain I must escape
first. When the harm was done, when I was no more than a poor
wayside fugitive, I might apply to them with less offence and more
security. To this end it became necessary that I should find out
where they lived and how to reach it; and feeling a strong
confidence that they would soon return to visit me, I prepared a
series of baits with which to angle for my information. It will be
seen the first was good enough.
Perhaps two days after, Master Ronald put in an appearance by
himself. I had no hold upon the boy, and pretermitted my design
till I should have laid court to him and engaged his interest. He
was prodigiously embarrassed, not having previously addressed me
otherwise than by a bow and blushes; and he advanced to me with an
air of one stubbornly performing a duty, like a raw soldier under
fire. I laid down my carving; greeted him with a good deal of
formality, such as I thought he would enjoy; and finding him to
remain silent, branched off into narratives of my campaigns such as
Goguelat himself might have scrupled to endorse. He visibly thawed
and brightened; drew more near to where I sat; forgot his timidity
so far as to put many questions; and at last, with another blush,
informed me he was himself expecting a commission.
'Well,' said I, 'they are fine troops, your British troops in the
Peninsula. A young gentleman of spirit may well be proud to be
engaged at the head of such soldiers.'
'I know that,' he said; 'I think of nothing else. I think shame to
be dangling here at home and going through with this foolery of
education, while others, no older than myself, are in the field.'
'I cannot blame you,' said I. 'I have felt the same myself.'
'There are - there are no troops, are there, quite so good as
ours?' he asked.
'Well,' said I, 'there is a point about them: they have a defect, -
they are not to be trusted in a retreat. I have seen them behave
very ill in a retreat.'
'I believe that is our national character,' he said - God forgive
him! - with an air of pride.
'I have seen your national character running away at least, and had
the honour to run after it!' rose to my lips, but I was not so ill
advised as to give it utterance. Every one should be flattered,
but boys and women without stint; and I put in the rest of the
afternoon narrating to him tales of British heroism, for which I
should not like to engage that they were all true.
'I am quite surprised,' he said at last. 'People tell you the
French are insincere. Now, I think your sincerity is beautiful. I
think you have a noble character. I admire you very much. I am
very grateful for your kindness to - to one so young,' and he
offered me his hand.
'I shall see you again soon?' said I.
'Oh, now! Yes, very soon,' said he. 'I - I wish to tell you. I
would not let Flora - Miss Gilchrist, I mean - come to-day. I
wished to see more of you myself. I trust you are not offended:
you know, one should be careful about strangers.'
I approved his caution, and he took himself away: leaving me in a
mixture of contrarious feelings, part ashamed to have played on one
so gullible, part raging that I should have burned so much incense
before the vanity of England; yet, in the bottom of my soul,
delighted to think I had made a friend - or, at least, begun to
make a friend - of Flora's brother.
As I had half expected, both made their appearance the next day. I
struck so fine a shade betwixt the pride that is allowed to
soldiers and the sorrowful humility that befits a captive, that I
declare, as I went to meet them, I might have afforded a subject
for a painter. So much was high comedy, I must confess; but so
soon as my eyes lighted full on her dark face and eloquent eyes,
the blood leaped into my cheeks - and that was nature! I thanked
them, but not the least with exultation; it was my cue to be
mournful, and to take the pair of them as one.
'I have been thinking,' I said, 'you have been so good to me, both
of you, stranger and prisoner as I am, that I have been thinking
how I could testify to my gratitude. It may seem a strange subject
for a confidence, but there is actually no one here, even of my
comrades, that knows me by my name and title. By these I am called
plain Champdivers, a name to which I have a right, but not the name
which I should bear, and which (but a little while ago) I must hide
like a crime. Miss Flora, suffer me to present to you the Vicomte
Anne de Keroual de Saint-Yves, a private soldier.'
'I knew it!' cried the boy; 'I knew he was a noble!'
And I thought the eyes of Miss Flora said the same, but more
persuasively. All through this interview she kept them on the
ground, or only gave them to me for a moment at a time, and with a
serious sweetness.
'You may conceive, my friends, that this is rather a painful
confession,' I continued. 'To stand here before you, vanquished, a
prisoner in a fortress, and take my own name upon my lips, is
painful to the proud. And yet I wished that you should know me.
Long after this, we may yet hear of one another - perhaps Mr.
Gilchrist and myself in the field and from opposing camps - and it
would be a pity if we heard and did not recognise.'
They were both moved; and began at once to press upon me offers of
service, such as to lend me books, get me tobacco if I used it, and
the like. This would have been all mighty welcome, before the
tunnel was ready. Now it signified no more to me than to offer the
transition I required.
'My dear friends,' I said - 'for you must allow me to call you
that, who have no others within so many hundred leagues - perhaps
you will think me fanciful and sentimental; and perhaps indeed I
am; but there is one service that I would beg of you before all
others. You see me set here on the top of this rock in the midst
of your city. Even with what liberty I have, I have the
opportunity to see a myriad roofs, and I dare to say, thirty
leagues of sea and land. All this hostile! Under all these roofs
my enemies dwell; wherever I see the smoke of a house rising, I
must tell myself that some one sits before the chimney and reads
with joy of our reverses. Pardon me, dear friends, I know that you
must do the same, and I do not grudge at it! With you, it is all
different. Show me your house then, were it only the chimney, or,
if that be not visible, the quarter of the town in which it lies!
So, when I look all about me, I shall be able to say: "THERE IS ONE
HOUSE IN WHICH I AM NOT QUITE UNKINDLY THOUGHT OF."'
Flora stood a moment.
'It is a pretty thought,' said she, 'and, as far as regards Ronald
and myself, a true one. Come, I believe I can show you the very
smoke out of our chimney.'
So saying, she carried me round the battlements towards the
opposite or southern side of the fortress, and indeed to a bastion
almost immediately overlooking the place of our projected flight.
Thence we had a view of some foreshortened suburbs at our feet, and
beyond of a green, open, and irregular country rising towards the
Pentland Hills. The face of one of these summits (say two leagues
from where we stood) is marked with a procession of white scars.
And to this she directed my attention.
'You see these marks?' she said. 'We call them the Seven Sisters.
Follow a little lower with your eye, and you will see a fold of the
hill, the tops of some trees, and a tail of smoke out of the midst
of them. That is Swanston Cottage, where my brother and I are
living with my aunt. If it gives you pleasure to see it, I am
glad. We, too, can see the castle from a corner in the garden, and
we go there in the morning often - do we not, Ronald? - and we
think of you, M. de Saint-Yves; but I am afraid it does not
altogether make us glad.'
'Mademoiselle!' said I, and indeed my voice was scarce under
command, 'if you knew how your generous words - how even the sight
of you - relieved the horrors of this place, I believe, I hope, I
know, you would be glad. I will come here daily and look at that
dear chimney and these green hills, and bless you from the heart,
and dedicate to you the prayers of this poor sinner. Ah! I do not
say they can avail!'
'Who can say that, M. de Saint-Yves?' she said softly. 'But I
think it is time we should be going.'
'High time,' said Ronald, whom (to say the truth) I had a little
forgotten.
On the way back, as I was laying myself out to recover lost ground
with the youth, and to obliterate, if possible, the memory of my
last and somewhat too fervent speech, who should come past us but
the major? I had to stand aside and salute as he went by, but his
eyes appeared entirely occupied with Flora.
'Who is that man?' she asked.
'He is a friend of mine,' said I. 'I give him lessons in French,
and he has been very kind to me.'
'He stared,' she said, - 'I do not say, rudely; but why should he
stare?'
'If you do not wish to be stared at, mademoiselle, suffer me to
recommend a veil,' said I.
She looked at me with what seemed anger. 'I tell you the man
stared,' she said.
And Ronald added. 'Oh, I don't think he meant any harm. I suppose
he was just surprised to see us walking about with a pr - with M.
Saint-Yves.'
But the next morning, when I went to Chevenix's rooms, and after I
had dutifully corrected his exercise - 'I compliment you on your
taste,' said he to me.
'I beg your pardon?' said I.
'Oh no, I beg yours,' said he. 'You understand me perfectly, just
as I do you.'
I murmured something about enigmas.
'Well, shall I give you the key to the enigma?' said he, leaning
back. 'That was the young lady whom Goguelat insulted and whom you
avenged. I do not blame you. She is a heavenly creature.'
'With all my heart, to the last of it!' said I. 'And to the first
also, if it amuses you! You are become so very acute of late that
I suppose you must have your own way.'
'What is her name?' he asked.
'Now, really!' said I. 'Do you think it likely she has told me?'
'I think it certain,' said he.
I could not restrain my laughter. 'Well, then, do you think it
likely I would tell you?' I cried.
'Not a bit.' said he. 'But come, to our lesson!'
CHAPTER VI - THE ESCAPE
THE time for our escape drew near, and the nearer it came the less
we seemed to enjoy the prospect. There is but one side on which
this castle can be left either with dignity or safety; but as there
is the main gate and guard, and the chief street of the upper city,
it is not to be thought of by escaping prisoners. In all other
directions an abominable precipice surrounds it, down the face of
which (if anywhere at all) we must regain our liberty. By our
concurrent labours in many a dark night, working with the most
anxious precautions against noise, we had made out to pierce below
the curtain about the south-west corner, in a place they call the
DEVIL'S ELBOW. I have never met that celebrity; nor (if the rest
of him at all comes up to what they called his elbow) have I the
least desire of his acquaintance. From the heel of the masonry,
the rascally, breakneck precipice descended sheer among waste
lands, scattered suburbs of the city, and houses in the building.
I had never the heart to look for any length of time - the thought
that I must make the descent in person some dark night robbing me
of breath; and, indeed, on anybody not a seaman or a steeple-jack,
the mere sight of the DEVIL'S ELBOW wrought like an emetic.
I don't know where the rope was got, and doubt if I much cared. It
was not that which gravelled me, but whether, now that we had it,
it would serve our turn. Its length, indeed, we made a shift to
fathom out; but who was to tell us how that length compared with
the way we had to go? Day after day, there would be always some of
us stolen out to the DEVIL'S ELBOW and making estimates of the
descent, whether by a bare guess or the dropping of stones. A
private of pioneers remembered the formula for that - or else
remembered part of it and obligingly invented the remainder. I had
never any real confidence in that formula; and even had we got it
from a book, there were difficulties in the way of the application
that might have daunted Archimedes. We durst not drop any
considerable pebble lest the sentinels should hear, and those that
we dropped we could not hear ourselves. We had never a watch - or
none that had a second-hand; and though every one of us could guess
a second to a nicety, all somehow guessed it differently. In
short, if any two set forth upon this enterprise, they invariably
returned with two opinions, and often with a black eye in the
bargain. I looked on upon these proceedings, although not without
laughter, yet with impatience and disgust. I am one that cannot
bear to see things botched or gone upon with ignorance; and the
thought that some poor devil was to hazard his bones upon such
premises, revolted me. Had I guessed the name of that unhappy
first adventurer, my sentiments might have been livelier still.
The designation of this personage was indeed all that remained for
us to do; and even in that we had advanced so far that the lot had
fallen on Shed B. It had been determined to mingle the bitter and
the sweet; and whoever went down first, the whole of his shed-mates
were to follow next in order. This caused a good deal of joy in
Shed B, and would have caused more if it had not still remained to
choose our pioneer. In view of the ambiguity in which we lay as to
the length of the rope and the height of the precipice - and that
this gentleman was to climb down from fifty to seventy fathoms on a
pitchy night, on a rope entirely free, and with not so much as an
infant child to steady it at the bottom, a little backwardness was
perhaps excusable. But it was, in our case, more than a little.
The truth is, we were all womanish fellows about a height; and I
have myself been put, more than once, HORS DE COMBAT by a less
affair than the rock of Edinburgh Castle.
We discussed it in the dark and between the passage of the rounds;
and it was impossible for any body of men to show a less
adventurous spirit. I am sure some of us, and myself first among
the number, regretted Goguelat. Some were persuaded it was safe,
and could prove the same by argument; but if they had good reasons
why some one else should make the trial, they had better still why
it should not be themselves. Others, again, condemned the whole
idea as insane; among these, as ill-luck would have it, a seaman of
the fleet; who was the most dispiriting of all. The height, he
reminded us, was greater than the tallest ship's mast, the rope
entirely free; and he as good as defied the boldest and strongest
to succeed. We were relieved from this dead-lock by our sergeantmajor
of dragoons.
'Comrades,' said he, 'I believe I rank you all; and for that
reason, if you really wish it, I will be the first myself. At the
same time, you are to consider what the chances are that I may
prove to be the last, as well. I am no longer young - I was sixty
near a month ago. Since I have been a prisoner, I have made for
myself a little BEDAINE. My arms are all gone to fat. And you
must promise not to blame me, if I fall and play the devil with the
whole thing.'
'We cannot hear of such a thing!' said I. 'M. Laclas is the oldest
man here; and, as such, he should be the very last to offer. It is
plain, we must draw lots.'
'No,' said M. Laclas; 'you put something else in my head! There is
one here who owes a pretty candle to the others, for they have kept
his secret. Besides, the rest of us are only rabble; and he is
another affair altogether. Let Champdivers - let the noble go the
first.'
I confess there was a notable pause before the noble in question
got his voice. But there was no room for choice. I had been so
ill-advised, when I first joined the regiment, as to take ground on
my nobility. I had been often rallied on the matter in the ranks,
and had passed under the by-names of MONSEIGNEUR and THE MARQUIS.
It was now needful I should justify myself and take a fair revenge.
Any little hesitation I may have felt passed entirely unnoticed,
from the lucky incident of a round happening at that moment to go
by. And during the interval of silence there occurred something
that sent my blood to the boil. There was a private in our shed
called Clausel, a man of a very ugly disposition. He had made one
of the followers of Goguelat; but, whereas Goguelat had always a
kind of monstrous gaiety about him, Clausel was no less morose than
he was evil-minded. He was sometimes called THE GENERAL, and
sometimes by a name too ill-mannered for repetition. As we all sat
listening, this man's hand was laid on my shoulder, and his voice
whispered in my ear: 'If you don't go, I'll have you hanged,
Marquis!'
As soon as the round was past - 'Certainly, gentlemen!' said I. 'I
will give you a lead, with all the pleasure in the world. But,
first of all, there is a hound here to be punished. M. Clausel has
just insulted me, and dishonoured the French army; and I demand
that he run the gauntlet of this shed.'
There was but one voice asking what he had done, and, as soon as I
had told them, but one voice agreeing to the punishment. The
General was, in consequence, extremely roughly handled, and the
next day was congratulated by all who saw him on his NEW
DECORATIONS. It was lucky for us that he was one of the prime
movers and believers in our project of escape, or he had certainly
revenged himself by a denunciation. As for his feelings towards
myself, they appeared, by his looks, to surpass humanity; and I
made up my mind to give him a wide berth in the future.
Had I been to go down that instant, I believe I could have carried
it well. But it was already too late - the day was at hand. The
rest had still to be summoned. Nor was this the extent of my
misfortune; for the next night, and the night after, were adorned
with a perfect galaxy of stars, and showed every cat that stirred
in a quarter of a mile. During this interval, I have to direct
your sympathies on the Vicomte de Saint-Yves! All addressed me
softly, like folk round a sickbed. Our Italian corporal, who had
got a dozen of oysters from a fishwife, laid them at my feet, as
though I were a Pagan idol; and I have never since been wholly at
my ease in the society of shellfish. He who was the best of our
carvers brought me a snuff-box, which he had just completed, and
which, while it was yet in hand, he had often declared he would not
part with under fifteen dollars. I believe the piece was worth the
money too! And yet the voice stuck in my throat with which I must
thank him. I found myself, in a word, to be fed up like a prisoner
in a camp of anthropophagi, and honoured like the sacrificial bull.
And what with these annoyances, and the risky venture immediately
ahead, I found my part a trying one to play.
It was a good deal of a relief when the third evening closed about
the castle with volumes of sea-fog. The lights of Princes Street
sometimes disappeared, sometimes blinked across at us no brighter
than the eyes of cats; and five steps from one of the lanterns on
the ramparts it was already groping dark. We made haste to lie
down. Had our jailers been upon the watch, they must have observed
our conversation to die out unusually soon. Yet I doubt if any of
us slept. Each lay in his place, tortured at once with the hope of
liberty and the fear of a hateful death. The guard call sounded;
the hum of the town declined by little and little. On all sides of
us, in their different quarters, we could hear the watchman cry the
hours along the street. Often enough, during my stay in England,
have I listened to these gruff or broken voices; or perhaps gone to
my window when I lay sleepless, and watched the old gentleman
hobble by upon the causeway with his cape and his cap, his hanger
and his rattle. It was ever a thought with me how differently that
cry would re-echo in the chamber of lovers, beside the bed of
death, or in the condemned cell. I might be said to hear it that
night myself in the condemned cell! At length a fellow with a
voice like a bull's began to roar out in the opposite thoroughfare:
'Past yin o'cloak, and a dark, haary moarnin'.'
At which we were all silently afoot.
As I stole about the battlements towards the - gallows, I was about
to write - the sergeant-major, perhaps doubtful of my resolution,
kept close by me, and occasionally proffered the most indigestible
reassurances in my ear. At last I could bear them no longer.
'Be so obliging as to let me be!' said I. 'I am neither a coward
nor a fool. What do YOU know of whether the rope be long enough?
But I shall know it in ten minutes!'
The good old fellow laughed in his moustache, and patted me.
It was all very well to show the disposition of my temper before a
friend alone; before my assembled comrades the thing had to go
handsomely. It was then my time to come on the stage; and I hope I
took it handsomely.
'Now, gentlemen,' said I, 'if the rope is ready, here is the
criminal!'
The tunnel was cleared, the stake driven, the rope extended. As I
moved forward to the place, many of my comrades caught me by the
hand and wrung it, an attention I could well have done without.
'Keep an eye on Clausel!' I whispered to Laclas; and with that, got
down on my elbows and knees took the rope in both hands, and worked
myself, feet foremost, through the tunnel. When the earth failed
under my feet, I thought my heart would have stopped; and a moment
after I was demeaning myself in mid-air like a drunken jumpingjack.
I have never been a model of piety, but at this juncture
prayers and a cold sweat burst from me simultaneously.
The line was knotted at intervals of eighteen inches; and to the
inexpert it may seem as if it should have been even easy to
descend. The trouble was, this devil of a piece of rope appeared
to be inspired, not with life alone, but with a personal malignity
against myself. It turned to the one side, paused for a moment,
and then spun me like a toasting-jack to the other; slipped like an
eel from the clasp of my feet; kept me all the time in the most
outrageous fury of exertion; and dashed me at intervals against the
face of the rock. I had no eyes to see with; and I doubt if there
was anything to see but darkness. I must occasionally have caught
a gasp of breath, but it was quite unconscious. And the whole
forces of my mind were so consumed with losing hold and getting it
again, that I could scarce have told whether I was going up or
coming down.
Of a sudden I knocked against the cliff with such a thump as almost
bereft me of my sense; and, as reason twinkled back, I was amazed
to find that I was in a state of rest, that the face of the
precipice here inclined outwards at an angle which relieved me
almost wholly of the burthen of my own weight, and that one of my
feet was safely planted on a ledge. I drew one of the sweetest
breaths in my experience, hugged myself against the rope, and
closed my eyes in a kind of ecstasy of relief. It occurred to me
next to see how far I was advanced on my unlucky journey, a point
on which I had not a shadow of a guess. I looked up: there was
nothing above me but the blackness of the night and the fog. I
craned timidly forward and looked down. There, upon a floor of
darkness, I beheld a certain pattern of hazy lights, some of them
aligned as in thoroughfares, others standing apart as in solitary
houses; and before I could well realise it, or had in the least
estimated my distance, a wave of nausea and vertigo warned me to
lie back and close my eyes. In this situation I had really but the
one wish, and that was: something else to think of! Strange to
say, I got it: a veil was torn from my mind, and I saw what a fool
I was - what fools we had all been - and that I had no business to
be thus dangling between earth and heaven by my arms. The only
thing to have done was to have attached me to a rope and lowered
me, and I had never the wit to see it till that moment!
I filled my lungs, got a good hold on my rope, and once more
launched myself on the descent. As it chanced, the worst of the
danger was at an end, and I was so fortunate as to be never again
exposed to any violent concussion. Soon after I must have passed
within a little distance of a bush of wallflower, for the scent of
it came over me with that impression of reality which characterises
scents in darkness. This made me a second landmark, the ledge
being my first. I began accordingly to compute intervals of time:
so much to the ledge, so much again to the wallflower, so much more
below. If I were not at the bottom of the rock, I calculated I
must be near indeed to the end of the rope, and there was no doubt
that I was not far from the end of my own resources. I began to be
light-headed and to be tempted to let go, - now arguing that I was
certainly arrived within a few feet of the level and could safely
risk a fall, anon persuaded I was still close at the top and it was
idle to continue longer on the rock. In the midst of which I came
to a bearing on plain ground, and had nearly wept aloud. My hands
were as good as flayed, my courage entirely exhausted, and, what
with the long strain and the sudden relief, my limbs shook under me
with more than the violence of ague, and I was glad to cling to the
rope.
But this was no time to give way. I had (by God's single mercy)
got myself alive out of that fortress; and now I had to try to get
the others, my comrades. There was about a fathom of rope to
spare; I got it by the end, and searched the whole ground
thoroughly for anything to make it fast to. In vain: the ground
was broken and stony, but there grew not there so much as a bush of
furze.
'Now then,' thought I to myself, 'here begins a new lesson, and I
believe it will prove richer than the first. I am not strong
enough to keep this rope extended. If I do not keep it extended
the next man will be dashed against the precipice. There is no
reason why he should have my extravagant good luck. I see no
reason why he should not fall - nor any place for him to fall on
but my head.'
From where I was now standing there was occasionally visible, as
the fog lightened, a lamp in one of the barrack windows, which gave
me a measure of the height he had to fall and the horrid force that
he must strike me with. What was yet worse, we had agreed to do
without signals: every so many minutes by Laclas' watch another man
was to be started from the battlements. Now, I had seemed to
myself to be about half an hour in my descent, and it seemed near
as long again that I waited, straining on the rope for my next
comrade to begin. I began to be afraid that our conspiracy was
out, that my friends were all secured, and that I should pass the
remainder of the night, and be discovered in the morning, vainly
clinging to the rope's end like a hooked fish upon an angle. I
could not refrain, at this ridiculous image, from a chuckle of
laughter. And the next moment I knew, by the jerking of the rope,
that my friend had crawled out of the tunnel and was fairly
launched on his descent. It appears it was the sailor who had
insisted on succeeding me: as soon as my continued silence had
assured him the rope was long enough, Gautier, for that was his
name, had forgot his former arguments, and shown himself so
extremely forward, that Laclas had given way. It was like the
fellow, who had no harm in him beyond an instinctive selfishness.
But he was like to have paid pretty dearly for the privilege. Do
as I would, I could not keep the rope as I could have wished it;
and he ended at last by falling on me from a height of several
yards, so that we both rolled together on the ground. As soon as
he could breathe he cursed me beyond belief, wept over his finger,
which he had broken, and cursed me again. I bade him be still and
think shame of himself to be so great a cry-baby. Did he not hear
the round going by above? I asked; and who could tell but what the
noise of his fall was already remarked, and the sentinels at the
very moment leaning upon the battlements to listen?
The round, however, went by, and nothing was discovered; the third
man came to the ground quite easily; the fourth was, of course,
child's play; and before there were ten of us collected, it seemed
to me that, without the least injustice to my comrades, I might
proceed to take care of myself.
I knew their plan: they had a map and an almanack, and designed for
Grangemouth, where they were to steal a ship. Suppose them to do
so, I had no idea they were qualified to manage it after it was
stolen. Their whole escape, indeed, was the most haphazard thing
imaginable; only the impatience of captives and the ignorance of
private soldiers would have entertained so misbegotten a device;
and though I played the good comrade and worked with them upon the
tunnel, but for the lawyer's message I should have let them go
without me. Well, now they were beyond my help, as they had always
been beyond my counselling; and, without word said or leave taken,
I stole out of the little crowd. It is true I would rather have
waited to shake hands with Laclas, but in the last man who had
descended I thought I recognised Clausel, and since the scene in
the shed my distrust of Clausel was perfect. I believed the man to
be capable of any infamy, and events have since shown that I was
right.
CHAPTER VII - SWANSTON COTTAGE
I HAD two views. The first was, naturally, to get clear of
Edinburgh Castle and the town, to say nothing of my fellowprisoners;
the second to work to the southward so long as it was
night, and be near Swanston Cottage by morning. What I should do
there and then, I had no guess, and did not greatly care, being a
devotee of a couple of divinities called Chance and Circumstance.
Prepare, if possible; where it is impossible, work straight
forward, and keep your eyes open and your tongue oiled. Wit and a
good exterior - there is all life in a nutshell.
I had at first a rather chequered journey: got involved in gardens,
butted into houses, and had even once the misfortune to awake a
sleeping family, the father of which, as I suppose, menaced me from
the window with a blunderbuss. Altogether, though I had been some
time gone from my companions, I was still at no great distance,
when a miserable accident put a period to the escape. Of a sudden
the night was divided by a scream. This was followed by the sound
of something falling, and that again by the report of a musket from
the Castle battlements. It was strange to hear the alarm spread
through the city. In the fortress drums were beat and a bell rung
backward. On all hands the watchmen sprang their rattles. Even in
that limbo or no-man's-land where I was wandering, lights were made
in the houses; sashes were flung up; I could hear neighbouring
families converse from window to window, and at length I was
challenged myself.
'Wha's that?' cried a big voice.
I could see it proceeded from a big man in a big nightcap, leaning
from a one-pair window; and as I was not yet abreast of his house,
I judged it was more wise to answer. This was not the first time I
had had to stake my fortunes on the goodness of my accent in a
foreign tongue; and I have always found the moment inspiriting, as
a gambler should. Pulling around me a sort of great-coat I had
made of my blanket, to cover my sulphur-coloured livery, - 'A
friend!' said I.
'What like's all this collieshangie?' said he.
I had never heard of a collieshangie in my days, but with the
racket all about us in the city, I could have no doubt as to the
man's meaning.
'I do not know, sir, really,' said I; 'but I suppose some of the
prisoners will have escaped.'
'Bedamned!' says he.
'Oh, sir, they will be soon taken,' I replied: 'it has been found
in time. Good morning, sir!'
'Ye walk late, sir?' he added.
'Oh, surely not,' said I, with a laugh. 'Earlyish, if you like!'
which brought me finally beyond him, highly pleased with my
success.
I was now come forth on a good thoroughfare, which led (as well as
I could judge) in my direction. It brought me almost immediately
through a piece of street, whence I could hear close by the
springing of a watchman's rattle, and where I suppose a sixth part
of the windows would be open, and the people, in all sorts of night
gear, talking with a kind of tragic gusto from one to another.
Here, again, I must run the gauntlet of a half-dozen questions, the
rattle all the while sounding nearer; but as I was not walking
inordinately quick, as I spoke like a gentleman, and the lamps were
too dim to show my dress, I carried it off once more. One person,
indeed, inquired where I was off to at that hour.
I replied vaguely and cheerfully, and as I escaped at one end of
this dangerous pass I could see the watchman's lantern entering by
the other. I was now safe on a dark country highway, out of sight
of lights and out of the fear of watchmen. And yet I had not gone
above a hundred yards before a fellow made an ugly rush at me from
the roadside. I avoided him with a leap, and stood on guard,
cursing my empty hands, wondering whether I had to do with an
officer or a mere footpad, and scarce knowing which to wish. My
assailant stood a little; in the thick darkness I could see him bob
and sidle as though he were feinting at me for an advantageous
onfall. Then he spoke.
'My goo' frien',' says he, and at the first word I pricked my ears,
'my goo' frien', will you oblishe me with lil neshary infamation?
Whish roa' t' Cramond?'
I laughed out clear and loud, stepped up to the convivialist, took
him by the shoulders and faced him about. 'My good friend,' said
I, 'I believe I know what is best for you much better than
yourself, and may God forgive you the fright you have given me!
There, get you gone to Edinburgh!' And I gave a shove, which he
obeyed with the passive agility of a ball, and disappeared
incontinently in the darkness down the road by which I had myself
come.
Once clear of this foolish fellow, I went on again up a gradual
hill, descended on the other side through the houses of a country
village, and came at last to the bottom of the main ascent leading
to the Pentlands and my destination. I was some way up when the
fog began to lighten; a little farther, and I stepped by degrees
into a clear starry night, and saw in front of me, and quite
distinct, the summits of the Pentlands, and behind, the valley of
the Forth and the city of my late captivity buried under a lake of
vapour. I had but one encounter - that of a farm-cart, which I
heard, from a great way ahead of me, creaking nearer in the night,
and which passed me about the point of dawn like a thing seen in a
dream, with two silent figures in the inside nodding to the horse's
steps. I presume they were asleep; by the shawl about her head and
shoulders, one of them should be a woman. Soon, by concurrent
steps, the day began to break and the fog to subside and roll away.
The east grew luminous and was barred with chilly colours, and the
Castle on its rock, and the spires and chimneys of the upper town,
took gradual shape, and arose, like islands, out of the receding
cloud. All about me was still and sylvan; the road mounting and
winding, with nowhere a sign of any passenger, the birds chirping,
I suppose for warmth, the boughs of the trees knocking together,
and the red leaves falling in the wind.
It was broad day, but still bitter cold and the sun not up, when I
came in view of my destination. A single gable and chimney of the
cottage peeped over the shoulder of the hill; not far off, and a
trifle higher on the mountain, a tall old white-washed farmhouse
stood among the trees, beside a falling brook; beyond were rough
hills of pasture. I bethought me that shepherd folk were early
risers, and if I were once seen skulking in that neighbourhood it
might prove the ruin of my prospects; took advantage of a line of
hedge, and worked myself up in its shadow till I was come under the
garden wall of my friends' house. The cottage was a little quaint
place of many rough-cast gables and grey roofs. It had something
the air of a rambling infinitesimal cathedral, the body of it
rising in the midst two storeys high, with a steep-pitched roof,
and sending out upon all hands (as it were chapter-houses, chapels,
and transepts) one-storeyed and dwarfish projections. To add to
this appearance, it was grotesquely decorated with crockets and
gargoyles, ravished from some medieval church. The place seemed
hidden away, being not only concealed in the trees of the garden,
but, on the side on which I approached it, buried as high as the
eaves by the rising of the ground. About the walls of the garden
there went a line of well-grown elms and beeches, the first
entirely bare, the last still pretty well covered with red leaves,
and the centre was occupied with a thicket of laurel and holly, in
which I could see arches cut and paths winding.
I was now within hail of my friends, and not much the better. The
house appeared asleep; yet if I attempted to wake any one, I had no
guarantee it might not prove either the aunt with the gold
eyeglasses (whom I could only remember with trembling), or some ass
of a servant-maid who should burst out screaming at sight of me.
Higher up I could hear and see a shepherd shouting to his dogs and
striding on the rough sides of the mountain, and it was clear I
must get to cover without loss of time. No doubt the holly
thickets would have proved a very suitable retreat, but there was
mounted on the wall a sort of signboard not uncommon in the country
of Great Britain, and very damping to the adventurous: SPRING GUNS
AND MAN-TRAPS was the legend that it bore. I have learned since
that these advertisements, three times out of four, were in the
nature of Quaker guns on a disarmed battery, but I had not learned
it then, and even so, the odds would not have been good enough.
For a choice, I would a hundred times sooner be returned to
Edinburgh Castle and my corner in the bastion, than to leave my
foot in a steel trap or have to digest the contents of an automatic
blunderbuss. There was but one chance left - that Ronald or Flora
might be the first to come abroad; and in order to profit by this
chance if it occurred, I got me on the cope of the wall in a place
where it was screened by the thick branches of a beech, and sat
there waiting.
As the day wore on, the sun came very pleasantly out. I had been
awake all night, I had undergone the most violent agitations of
mind and body, and it is not so much to be wondered at, as it was
exceedingly unwise and foolhardy, that I should have dropped into a
doze. From this I awakened to the characteristic sound of digging,
looked down, and saw immediately below me the back view of a
gardener in a stable waistcoat. Now he would appear steadily
immersed in his business; anon, to my more immediate terror, he
would straighten his back, stretch his arms, gaze about the
otherwise deserted garden, and relish a deep pinch of snuff. It
was my first thought to drop from the wall upon the other side. A
glance sufficed to show me that even the way by which I had come
was now cut off, and the field behind me already occupied by a
couple of shepherds' assistants and a score or two of sheep. I
have named the talismans on which I habitually depend, but here was
a conjuncture in which both were wholly useless. The copestone of
a wall arrayed with broken bottles is no favourable rostrum; and I
might be as eloquent as Pitt, and as fascinating as Richelieu, and
neither the gardener nor the shepherd lads would care a halfpenny.
In short, there was no escape possible from my absurd position:
there I must continue to sit until one or other of my neighbours
should raise his eyes and give the signal for my capture.
The part of the wall on which (for my sins) I was posted could be
scarce less than twelve feet high on the inside; the leaves of the
beech which made a fashion of sheltering me were already partly
fallen; and I was thus not only perilously exposed myself, but
enabled to command some part of the garden walks and (under an
evergreen arch) the front lawn and windows of the cottage. For
long nothing stirred except my friend with the spade; then I heard
the opening of a sash; and presently after saw Miss Flora appear in
a morning wrapper and come strolling hitherward between the
borders, pausing and visiting her flowers - herself as fair. THERE
was a friend; HERE, immediately beneath me, an unknown quantity -
the gardener: how to communicate with the one and not attract the
notice of the other? To make a noise was out of the question; I
dared scarce to breathe. I held myself ready to make a gesture as
soon as she should look, and she looked in every possible direction
but the one. She was interested in the vilest tuft of chickweed,
she gazed at the summit of the mountain, she came even immediately
below me and conversed on the most fastidious topics with the
gardener; but to the top of that wall she would not dedicate a
glance! At last she began to retrace her steps in the direction of
the cottage; whereupon, becoming quite desperate, I broke off a
piece of plaster, took a happy aim, and hit her with it in the nape
of the neck. She clapped her hand to the place, turned about,
looked on all sides for an explanation, and spying me (as indeed I
was parting the branches to make it the more easy), half uttered
and half swallowed down again a cry of surprise.
The infernal gardener was erect upon the instant. 'What's your
wull, miss?' said he.
Her readiness amazed me. She had already turned and was gazing in
the opposite direction. 'There's a child among the artichokes,'
she said.
'The Plagues of Egyp'! I'LL see to them!' cried the gardener
truculently, and with a hurried waddle disappeared among the
evergreens.
That moment she turned, she came running towards me, her arms
stretched out, her face incarnadined for the one moment with
heavenly blushes, the next pale as death. 'Monsieur de. Saint-
Yves!' she said.
'My dear young lady,' I said, 'this is the damnedest liberty - I
know it! But what else was I to do?'
'You have escaped?' said she.
'If you call this escape,' I replied.
'But you cannot possibly stop there!' she cried.
'I know it,' said I. 'And where am I to go?'
She struck her hands together. 'I have it!' she exclaimed. 'Come
down by the beech trunk - you must leave no footprint in the border
- quickly, before Robie can get back! I am the hen-wife here: I
keep the key; you must go into the hen-house - for the moment.'
I was by her side at once. Both cast a hasty glance at the blank
windows of the cottage and so much as was visible of the garden
alleys; it seemed there was none to observe us. She caught me by
the sleeve and ran. It was no time for compliments; hurry breathed
upon our necks; and I ran along with her to the next corner of the
garden, where a wired court and a board hovel standing in a grove
of trees advertised my place of refuge. She thrust me in without a
word; the bulk of the fowls were at the same time emitted; and I
found myself the next moment locked in alone with half a dozen
sitting hens. In the twilight of the place all fixed their eyes on
me severely, and seemed to upbraid me with some crying impropriety.
Doubtless the hen has always a puritanic appearance, although (in
its own behaviour) I could never observe it to be more particular
than its neighbours. But conceive a British hen!
CHAPTER VIII - THE HEN-HOUSE
I WAS half an hour at least in the society of these distressing
bipeds, and alone with my own reflections and necessities. I was
in great pain of my flayed hands, and had nothing to treat them
with; I was hungry and thirsty, and had nothing to eat or to drink;
I was thoroughly tired, and there was no place for me to sit. To
be sure there was the floor, but nothing could be imagined less
inviting.
At the sound of approaching footsteps, my good-humour was restored.
The key rattled in the lock, and Master Ronald entered, closed the
door behind him, and leaned his back to it.
'I say, you know!' he said, and shook a sullen young head.
'I know it's a liberty,' said I.
'It's infernally awkward: my position is infernally embarrassing,'
said he.
'Well,' said I, 'and what do you think of mine?'
This seemed to pose him entirely, and he remained gazing upon me
with a convincing air of youth and innocence. I could have
laughed, but I was not so inhumane.
'I am in your hands,' said I, with a little gesture. 'You must do
with me what you think right.'
'Ah, yes!' he cried: 'if I knew!'
'You see,' said I, 'it would be different if you had received your
commission. Properly speaking, you are not yet a combatant; I have
ceased to be one; and I think it arguable that we are just in the
position of one ordinary gentleman to another, where friendship
usually comes before the law. Observe, I only say ARGUABLE. For
God's sake, don't think I wish to dictate an opinion. These are
the sort of nasty little businesses, inseparable from war, which
every gentleman must decide for himself. If I were in your place -
'
'Ay, what would you do, then?' says he.
'Upon my word, I do not know,' said I. 'Hesitate, as you are
doing, I believe.'
'I will tell you,' he said. 'I have a kinsman, and it is what HE
would think, that I am thinking. It is General Graham of Lynedoch
- Sir Thomas Graham. I scarcely know him, but I believe I admire
him more than I do God.'
'I admire him a good deal myself,' said I, 'and have good reason
to. I have fought with him, been beaten, and run away. VENI,
VICTUS SUM, EVASI.'
'What!' he cried. 'You were at Barossa?'
'There and back, which many could not say,' said I. 'It was a
pretty affair and a hot one, and the Spaniards behaved abominably,
as they usually did in a pitched field; the Marshal Duke of Belluno
made a fool of himself, and not for the first time; and your friend
Sir Thomas had the best of it, so far as there was any best. He is
a brave and ready officer.'
'Now, then, you will understand!' said the boy. 'I wish to please
Sir Thomas: what would he do?'
'Well, I can tell you a story,' said I, 'a true one too, and about
this very combat of Chiclana, or Barossa as you call it. I was in
the Eighth of the Line; we lost the eagle of the First Battalion,
more betoken, but it cost you dear. Well, we had repulsed more
charges than I care to count, when your 87th Regiment came on at a
foot's pace, very slow but very steady; in front of them a mounted
officer, his hat in his hand, white-haired, and talking very
quietly to the battalions. Our Major, Vigo-Roussillon, set spurs
to his horse and galloped out to sabre him, but seeing him an old
man, very handsome, and as composed as if he were in a coffeehouse,
lost heart and galloped back again. Only, you see, they had
been very close together for the moment, and looked each other in
the eyes. Soon after the Major was wounded, taken prisoner, and
carried into Cadiz. One fine day they announced to him the visit
of the General, Sir Thomas Graham. "Well, sir," said the General,
taking him by the hand, "I think we were face to face upon the
field." It was the white-haired officer!'
'Ah!' cried the boy, - his eyes were burning.
'Well, and here is the point,' I continued. 'Sir Thomas fed the
Major from his own table from that day, and served him with six
covers.'
'Yes, it is a beautiful - a beautiful story,' said Ronald. 'And
yet somehow it is not the same - is it?'
'I admit it freely,' said I.
The boy stood awhile brooding. 'Well, I take my risk of it,' he
cried. 'I believe it's treason to my sovereign - I believe there
is an infamous punishment for such a crime - and yet I'm hanged if
I can give you up'
I was as much moved as he. 'I could almost beg you to do
otherwise,' I said. 'I was a brute to come to you, a brute and a
coward. You are a noble enemy; you will make a noble soldier.'
And with rather a happy idea of a compliment for this warlike
youth, I stood up straight and gave him the salute.
He was for a moment confused; his face flushed. 'Well, well, I
must be getting you something to eat, but it will not be for six,'
he added, with a smile: 'only what we can get smuggled out. There
is my aunt in the road, you see,' and he locked me in again with
the indignant hens.
I always smile when I recall that young fellow; and yet, if the
reader were to smile also, I should feel ashamed. If my son shall
be only like him when he comes to that age, it will be a brave day
for me and not a bad one for his country.
At the same time I cannot pretend that I was sorry when his sister
succeeded in his place. She brought me a few crusts of bread and a
jug of milk, which she had handsomely laced with whisky after the
Scottish manner.
'I am so sorry,' she said: 'I dared not bring on anything more. We
are so small a family, and my aunt keeps such an eye upon the
servants. I have put some whisky in the milk - it is more
wholesome so - and with eggs you will be able to make something of
a meal. How many eggs will you be wanting to that milk? for I must
be taking the others to my aunt - that is my excuse for being here.
I should think three or four. Do you know how to beat them? or
shall I do it?'
Willing to detain her a while longer in the hen-house, I displayed
my bleeding palms; at which she cried aloud.
'My dear Miss Flora, you cannot make an omelette without breaking
eggs,' said I; 'and it is no bagatelle to escape from Edinburgh
Castle. One of us, I think, was even killed.'
'And you are as white as a rag, too,' she exclaimed, 'and can
hardly stand! Here is my shawl, sit down upon it here in the
corner, and I will beat your eggs. See, I have brought a fork too;
I should have been a good person to take care of Jacobites or
Covenanters in old days! You shall have more to eat this evening;
Ronald is to bring it you from town. We have money enough,
although no food that we can call our own. Ah, if Ronald and I
kept house, you should not be lying in this shed! He admires you
so much.'
'My dear friend,' said I, 'for God's sake do not embarrass me with
more alms. I loved to receive them from that hand, so long as they
were needed; but they are so no more, and whatever else I may lack
- and I lack everything - it is not money.' I pulled out my sheaf
of notes and detached the top one: it was written for ten pounds,
and signed by that very famous individual, Abraham Newlands.
'Oblige me, as you would like me to oblige your brother if the
parts were reversed, and take this note for the expenses. I shall
need not only food, but clothes.'
'Lay it on the ground,' said she. 'I must not stop my beating.'
'You are not offended?' I exclaimed.
She answered me by a look that was a reward in itself, and seemed
to imply the most heavenly offers for the future. There was in it
a shadow of reproach, and such warmth of communicative cordiality
as left me speechless. I watched her instead till her hens' milk
was ready.
'Now,' said she, 'taste that.'
I did so, and swore it was nectar. She collected her eggs and
crouched in front of me to watch me eat. There was about this tall
young lady at the moment an air of motherliness delicious to
behold. I am like the English general, and to this day I still
wonder at my moderation.
'What sort of clothes will you be wanting?' said she.
'The clothes of a gentleman,' said I. 'Right or wrong, I think it
is the part I am best qualified to play. Mr. St. Ives (for that's
to be my name upon the journey) I conceive as rather a theatrical
figure, and his make-up should be to match.'
'And yet there is a difficulty,' said she. 'If you got coarse
clothes the fit would hardly matter. But the clothes of a fine
gentleman - O, it is absolutely necessary that these should fit!
And above all, with your' - she paused a moment - 'to our ideas
somewhat noticeable manners.'
'Alas for my poor manners!' said I. 'But my dear friend Flora,
these little noticeabilities are just what mankind has to suffer
under. Yourself, you see, you're very noticeable even when you
come in a crowd to visit poor prisoners in the Castle.'
I was afraid I should frighten my good angel visitant away, and
without the smallest breath of pause went on to add a few
directions as to stuffs and colours.
She opened big eyes upon me. 'O, Mr. St. Ives!' she cried - 'if
that is to be your name - I do not say they would not be becoming;
but for a journey, do you think they would be wise? I am afraid' -
she gave a pretty break of laughter - 'I am afraid they would be
daft-like!'
'Well, and am I not daft?' I asked her.
'I do begin to think you are,' said she.
'There it is, then!' said I. 'I have been long enough a figure of
fun. Can you not feel with me that perhaps the bitterest thing in
this captivity has been the clothes? Make me a captive - bind me
with chains if you like - but let me be still myself. You do not
know what it is to be a walking travesty - among foes,' I added
bitterly.
'O, but you are too unjust!' she cried. 'You speak as though any
one ever dreamed of laughing at you. But no one did. We were all
pained to the heart. Even my aunt - though sometimes I do think
she was not quite in good taste - you should have seen her and
heard her at home! She took so much interest. Every patch in your
clothes made us sorry; it should have been a sister's work.'
'That is what I never had - a sister,' said I. 'But since you say
that I did not make you laugh - '
'O, Mr. St. Ives! never!' she exclaimed. 'Not for one moment. It
was all too sad. To see a gentleman - '
'In the clothes of a harlequin, and begging?' I suggested.
'To see a gentleman in distress, and nobly supporting it,' she
said.
'And do you not understand, my fair foe,' said I, 'that even if all
were as you say - even if you had thought my travesty were becoming
- I should be only the more anxious, for my sake, for my country's
sake, and for the sake of your kindness, that you should see him
whom you have helped as God meant him to be seen? that you should
have something to remember him by at least more characteristic than
a misfitting sulphur-yellow suit, and half a week's beard?'
'You think a great deal too much of clothes,' she said. 'I am not
that kind of girl.'
'And I am afraid I am that kind of man,' said I. 'But do not think
of me too harshly for that. I talked just now of something to
remember by. I have many of them myself, of these beautiful
reminders, of these keepsakes, that I cannot be parted from until I
lose memory and life. Many of them are great things, many of them
are high virtues - charity, mercy, faith. But some of them are
trivial enough. Miss Flora, do you remember the day that I first
saw you, the day of the strong east wind? Miss Flora, shall I tell
you what you wore?'
We had both risen to our feet, and she had her hand already on the
door to go. Perhaps this attitude emboldened me to profit by the
last seconds of our interview; and it certainly rendered her escape
the more easy.
'O, you are too romantic!' she said, laughing; and with that my sun
was blown out, my enchantress had fled away, and I was again left
alone in the twilight with the lady hens.
CHAPTER IX - THREE IS COMPANY, AND FOUR NONE
THE rest of the day I slept in the corner of the hen-house upon
Flora's shawl. Nor did I awake until a light shone suddenly in my
eyes, and starting up with a gasp (for, indeed, at the moment I
dreamed I was still swinging from the Castle battlements) I found
Ronald bending over me with a lantern. It appeared it was past
midnight, that I had slept about sixteen hours, and that Flora had
returned her poultry to the shed and I had heard her not. I could
not but wonder if she had stooped to look at me as I slept. The
puritan hens now slept irremediably; and being cheered with the
promise of supper I wished them an ironical good-night, and was
lighted across the garden and noiselessly admitted to a bedroom on
the ground floor of the cottage. There I found soap, water, razors
- offered me diffidently by my beardless host - and an outfit of
new clothes. To be shaved again without depending on the barber of
the gaol was a source of a delicious, if a childish joy. My hair
was sadly too long, but I was none so unwise as to make an attempt
on it myself. And, indeed, I thought it did not wholly misbecome
me as it was, being by nature curly. The clothes were about as
good as I expected. The waistcoat was of toilenet, a pretty piece,
the trousers of fine kerseymere, and the coat sat extraordinarily
well. Altogether, when I beheld this changeling in the glass, I
kissed my hand to him.
'My dear fellow,' said I, 'have you no scent?'
'Good God, no!' cried Ronald. 'What do you want with scent?'
'Capital thing on a campaign,' said I. 'But I can do without.'
I was now led, with the same precautions against noise, into the
little bow-windowed dining-room of the cottage. The shutters were
up, the lamp guiltily turned low; the beautiful Flora greeted me in
a whisper; and when I was set down to table, the pair proceeded to
help me with precautions that might have seemed excessive in the
Ear of Dionysius.
'She sleeps up there,' observed the boy, pointing to the ceiling;
and the knowledge that I was so imminently near to the restingplace
of that gold eyeglass touched even myself with some
uneasiness.
Our excellent youth had imported from the city a meat pie, and I
was glad to find it flanked with a decanter of really admirable
wine of Oporto. While I ate, Ronald entertained me with the news
of the city, which had naturally rung all day with our escape:
troops and mounted messengers had followed each other forth at all
hours and in all directions; but according to the last intelligence
no recapture had been made. Opinion in town was very favourable to
us: our courage was applauded, and many professed regret that our
ultimate chance of escape should be so small. The man who had
fallen was one Sombref, a peasant; he was one who slept in a
different part of the Castle; and I was thus assured that the whole
of my former companions had attained their liberty, and Shed A was
untenanted.
From this we wandered insensibly into other topics. It is
impossible to exaggerate the pleasure I took to be thus sitting at
the same table with Flora, in the clothes of a gentleman, at
liberty and in the full possession of my spirits and resources; of
all of which I had need, because it was necessary that I should
support at the same time two opposite characters, and at once play
the cavalier and lively soldier for the eyes of Ronald, and to the
ears of Flora maintain the same profound and sentimental note that
I had already sounded. Certainly there are days when all goes well
with a man; when his wit, his digestion, his mistress are in a
conspiracy to spoil him, and even the weather smiles upon his
wishes. I will only say of myself upon that evening that I
surpassed my expectations, and was privileged to delight my hosts.
Little by little they forgot their terrors and I my caution; until
at last we were brought back to earth by a catastrophe that might
very easily have been foreseen, but was not the less astonishing to
us when it occurred.
I had filled all the glasses. 'I have a toast to propose,' I
whispered, 'or rather three, but all so inextricably interwoven
that they will not bear dividing. I wish first to drink to the
health of a brave and therefore a generous enemy. He found me
disarmed, a fugitive and helpless. Like the lion, he disdained so
poor a triumph; and when he might have vindicated an easy valour,
he preferred to make a friend. I wish that we should next drink to
a fairer and a more tender foe. She found me in prison; she
cheered me with a priceless sympathy; what she has done since, I
know she has done in mercy, and I only pray - I dare scarce hope -
her mercy may prove to have been merciful. And I wish to conjoin
with these, for the first, and perhaps the last time, the health -
and I fear I may already say the memory - of one who has fought,
not always without success, against the soldiers of your nation;
but who came here, vanquished already, only to be vanquished again
by the loyal hand of the one, by the unforgettable eyes of the
other.'
It is to be feared I may have lent at times a certain resonancy to
my voice; it is to be feared that Ronald, who was none the better
for his own hospitality, may have set down his glass with something
of a clang. Whatever may have been the cause, at least, I had
scarce finished my compliment before we were aware of a thump upon
the ceiling overhead. It was to be thought some very solid body
had descended to the floor from the level (possibly) of a bed. I
have never seen consternation painted in more lively colours than
on the faces of my hosts. It was proposed to smuggle me forth into
the garden, or to conceal my form under a horsehair sofa which
stood against the wall. For the first expedient, as was now plain
by the approaching footsteps, there was no longer time; from the
second I recoiled with indignation.
'My dear creatures,' said I, 'let us die, but do not let us be
ridiculous.'
The words were still upon my lips when the door opened and my
friend of the gold eyeglass appeared, a memorable figure, on the
threshold. In one hand she bore a bedroom candlestick; in the
other, with the steadiness of a dragoon, a horse-pistol. She was
wound about in shawls which did not wholly conceal the candid
fabric of her nightdress, and surmounted by a nightcap of
portentous architecture. Thus accoutred, she made her entrance;
laid down the candle and pistol, as no longer called for; looked
about the room with a silence more eloquent than oaths; and then,
in a thrilling voice - 'To whom have I the pleasure?' she said,
addressing me with a ghost of a bow.
'Madam, I am charmed, I am sure,' said I. 'The story is a little
long; and our meeting, however welcome, was for the moment entirely
unexpected by myself. I am sure - ' but here I found I was quite
sure of nothing, and tried again. 'I have the honour,' I began,
and found I had the honour to be only exceedingly confused. With
that, I threw myself outright upon her mercy. 'Madam, I must be
more frank with you,' I resumed. 'You have already proved your
charity and compassion for the French prisoners, I am one of these;
and if my appearance be not too much changed, you may even yet
recognise in me that ODDITY who had the good fortune more than once
to make you smile.'
Still gazing upon me through her glass, she uttered an
uncompromising grunt; and then, turning to her niece - 'Flora,'
said she, 'how comes he here?'
The culprits poured out for a while an antiphony of explanations,
which died out at last in a miserable silence.
'I think at least you might have told your aunt,' she snorted.
'Madam,' I interposed, 'they were about to do so. It is my fault
if it be not done already. But I made it my prayer that your
slumbers might be respected, and this necessary formula of my
presentation should be delayed until to-morrow in the morning.'
The old lady regarded me with undissembled incredulity, to which I
was able to find no better repartee than a profound and I trust
graceful reverence.
'French prisoners are very well in their place,' she said, 'but I
cannot see that their place is in my private dining-room.'
'Madam,' said I, 'I hope it may be said without offence, but
(except the Castle of Edinburgh) I cannot think upon the spot from
which I would so readily be absent.'
At this, to my relief, I thought I could perceive a vestige of a
smile to steal upon that iron countenance and to be bitten
immediately in.
'And if it is a fair question, what do they call ye?' she asked.
'At your service, the Vicomte Anne de St.-Yves,' said I.
'Mosha the Viscount,' said she, 'I am afraid you do us plain people
a great deal too much honour.'
'My dear lady,' said I, 'let us be serious for a moment. What was
I to do? Where was I to go? And how can you be angry with these
benevolent children who took pity on one so unfortunate as myself?
Your humble servant is no such terrific adventurer that you should
come out against him with horse-pistol and' - smiling - 'bedroom
candlesticks. It is but a young gentleman in extreme distress,
hunted upon every side, and asking no more than to escape from his
pursuers. I know your character, I read it in your face' - the
heart trembled in my body as I said these daring words. 'There are
unhappy English prisoners in France at this day, perhaps at this
hour. Perhaps at this hour they kneel as I do; they take the hand
of her who might conceal and assist them; they press it to their
lips as I do - '
'Here, here!' cried the old lady, breaking from my solicitations.
'Behave yourself before folk! Saw ever anyone the match of that?
And on earth, my dears, what are we to do with him?'
'Pack him off, my dear lady,' said I: 'pack off the impudent fellow
double-quick! And if it may be, and if your good heart allows it,
help him a little on the way he has to go.'
'What's this pie?' she cried stridently. 'Where is this pie from,
Flora?'
No answer was vouchsafed by my unfortunate and (I may say) extinct
accomplices.
'Is that my port?' she pursued. 'Hough! Will somebody give me a
glass of my port wine?'
I made haste to serve her.
She looked at me over the rim with an extraordinary expression. 'I
hope ye liked it?' said she.
'It is even a magnificent wine,' said I.
'Aweel, it was my father laid it down,' said she. 'There were few
knew more about port wine than my father, God rest him!' She
settled herself in a chair with an alarming air of resolution.
'And so there is some particular direction that you wish to go in?'
said she.
'O,' said I, following her example, 'I am by no means such a
vagrant as you suppose. I have good friends, if I could get to
them, for which all I want is to be once clear of Scotland; and I
have money for the road.' And I produced my bundle.
'English bank-notes?' she said. 'That's not very handy for
Scotland. It's been some fool of an Englishman that's given you
these, I'm thinking. How much is it?'
'I declare to heaven I never thought to count!' I exclaimed. 'But
that is soon remedied.'
And I counted out ten notes of ten pound each, all in the name of
Abraham Newlands, and five bills of country bankers for as many
guineas.
'One hundred and twenty six pound five,' cried the old lady. 'And
you carry such a sum about you, and have not so much as counted it!
If you are not a thief, you must allow you are very thief-like.'
'And yet, madam, the money is legitimately mine,' said I.
She took one of the bills and held it up. 'Is there any
probability, now, that this could be traced?' she asked.
'None, I should suppose; and if it were, it would be no matter,'
said I. 'With your usual penetration, you guessed right. An
Englishman brought it me. It reached me, through the hands of his
English solicitor, from my great-uncle, the Comte de Keroual de
Saint-Yves, I believe the richest EMIGRE in London.'
'I can do no more than take your word for it,' said she.
'And I trust, madam, not less,' said I.
'Well,' said she, 'at this rate the matter may be feasible. I will
cash one of these five-guinea bills, less the exchange, and give
you silver and Scots notes to bear you as far as the border.
Beyond that, Mosha the Viscount, you will have to depend upon
yourself.'
I could not but express a civil hesitation as to whether the amount
would suffice, in my case, for so long a journey.
'Ay,' said she, 'but you havenae heard me out. For if you are not
too fine a gentleman to travel with a pair of drovers, I believe I
have found the very thing, and the Lord forgive me for a
treasonable old wife! There are a couple stopping up by with the
shepherd-man at the farm; to-morrow they will take the road for
England, probably by skriegh of day - and in my opinion you had
best be travelling with the stots,' said she.
'For Heaven's sake do not suppose me to be so effeminate a
character!' I cried. 'An old soldier of Napoleon is certainly
beyond suspicion. But, dear lady, to what end? and how is the
society of these excellent gentlemen supposed to help me?'
'My dear sir,' said she, 'you do not at all understand your own
predicament, and must just leave your matters in the hands of those
who do. I dare say you have never even heard tell of the droveroads
or the drovers; and I am certainly not going to sit up all
night to explain it to you. Suffice it, that it is me who is
arranging this affair - the more shame to me! - and that is the way
ye have to go. Ronald,' she continued, 'away up-by to the
shepherds; rowst them out of their beds, and make it perfectly
distinct that Sim is not to leave till he has seen me.'
Ronald was nothing loath to escape from his aunt's neighbourhood,
and left the room and the cottage with a silent expedition that was
more like flight than mere obedience. Meanwhile the old lady
turned to her niece.
'And I would like to know what we are to do with him the night!'
she cried.
'Ronald and I meant to put him in the hen-house,' said the
encrimsoned Flora.
'And I can tell you he is to go to no such a place,' replied the
aunt. 'Hen-house, indeed! If a guest he is to be, he shall sleep
in no mortal hen-house. Your room is the most fit, I think, if he
will consent to occupy it on so great a suddenty. And as for you,
Flora, you shall sleep with me.'
I could not help admiring the prudence and tact of this old
dowager, and of course it was not for me to make objections. Ere I
well knew how, I was alone with a flat candlestick, which is not
the most sympathetic of companions, and stood studying the snuff in
a frame of mind between triumph and chagrin. All had gone well
with my flight: the masterful lady who had arrogated to herself the
arrangement of the details gave me every confidence; and I saw
myself already arriving at my uncle's door. But, alas! it was
another story with my love affair. I had seen and spoken with her
alone; I had ventured boldly; I had been not ill received; I had
seen her change colour, had enjoyed the undissembled kindness of
her eyes; and now, in a moment, down comes upon the scene that
apocalyptic figure with the nightcap and the horse-pistol, and with
the very wind of her coming behold me separated from my love!
Gratitude and admiration contended in my breast with the extreme of
natural rancour. My appearance in her house at past midnight had
an air (I could not disguise it from myself) that was insolent and
underhand, and could not but minister to the worst suspicions. And
the old lady had taken it well. Her generosity was no more to be
called in question than her courage, and I was afraid that her
intelligence would be found to match. Certainly, Miss Flora had to
support some shrewd looks, and certainly she had been troubled. I
could see but the one way before me: to profit by an excellent bed,
to try to sleep soon, to be stirring early, and to hope for some
renewed occasion in the morning. To have said so much and yet to
say no more, to go out into the world upon so half-hearted a
parting, was more than I could accept.
It is my belief that the benevolent fiend sat up all night to baulk
me. She was at my bedside with a candle long ere day, roused me,
laid out for me a damnable misfit of clothes, and bade me pack my
own (which were wholly unsuited to the journey) in a bundle. Sore
grudging, I arrayed myself in a suit of some country fabric, as
delicate as sackcloth and about as becoming as a shroud; and, on
coming forth, found the dragon had prepared for me a hearty
breakfast. She took the head of the table, poured out the tea, and
entertained me as I ate with a great deal of good sense and a
conspicuous lack of charm. How often did I not regret the change!
- how often compare her, and condemn her in the comparison, with
her charming niece! But if my entertainer was not beautiful, she
had certainly been busy in my interest. Already she was in
communication with my destined fellow-travellers; and the device on
which she had struck appeared entirely suitable. I was a young
Englishman who had outrun the constable; warrants were out against
me in Scotland, and it had become needful I should pass the border
without loss of time, and privately.
'I have given a very good account of you,' said she, 'which I hope
you may justify. I told them there was nothing against you beyond
the fact that you were put to the haw (if that is the right word)
for debt.'
'I pray God you have the expression incorrectly, ma'am,' said I.
'I do not give myself out for a person easily alarmed; but you must
admit there is something barbarous and mediaeval in the sound well
qualified to startle a poor foreigner.'
'It is the name of a process in Scots Law, and need alarm no honest
man,' said she. 'But you are a very idle-minded young gentleman;
you must still have your joke, I see: I only hope you will have no
cause to regret it.'
'I pray you not to suppose, because I speak lightly, that I do not
feel deeply,' said I. 'Your kindness has quite conquered me; I lay
myself at your disposition, I beg you to believe, with real
tenderness; I pray you to consider me from henceforth as the most
devoted of your friends.'
'Well, well,' she said, 'here comes your devoted friend the drover.
I'm thinking he will be eager for the road; and I will not be easy
myself till I see you well off the premises, and the dishes washed,
before my servant-woman wakes. Praise God, we have gotten one that
is a treasure at the sleeping!'
The morning was already beginning to be blue in the trees of the
garden, and to put to shame the candle by which I had breakfasted.
The lady rose from table, and I had no choice but to follow her
example. All the time I was beating my brains for any means by
which I should be able to get a word apart with Flora, or find the
time to write her a billet. The windows had been open while I
breakfasted, I suppose to ventilate the room from any traces of my
passage there; and, Master Ronald appearing on the front lawn, my
ogre leaned forth to address him.
'Ronald,' she said, 'wasn't that Sim that went by the wall?'
I snatched my advantage. Right at her back there was pen, ink, and
paper laid out. I wrote: 'I love you'; and before I had time to
write more, or so much as to blot what I had written, I was again
under the guns of the gold eyeglasses.
'It's time,' she began; and then, as she observed my occupation,
'Umph!' she broke off. 'Ye have something to write?' she demanded.
'Some notes, madam,' said I, bowing with alacrity.
'Notes,' she said; 'or a note?'
'There is doubtless some FINESSE of the English language that I do
not comprehend,' said I.
'I'll contrive, however, to make my meaning very plain to ye, Mosha
le Viscount,' she continued. 'I suppose you desire to be
considered a gentleman?'
'Can you doubt it, madam?' said I.
'I doubt very much, at least, whether you go to the right way about
it,' she said. 'You have come here to me, I cannot very well say
how; I think you will admit you owe me some thanks, if it was only
for the breakfast I made ye. But what are you to me? A waif young
man, not so far to seek for looks and manners, with some English
notes in your pocket and a price upon your head. I am a lady; I
have been your hostess, with however little will; and I desire that
this random acquaintance of yours with my family will cease and
determine.'
I believe I must have coloured. 'Madam,' said I, 'the notes are of
no importance; and your least pleasure ought certainly to be my
law. You have felt, and you have been pleased to express, a doubt
of me. I tear them up.' Which you may be sure I did thoroughly.
'There's a good lad!' said the dragon, and immediately led the way
to the front lawn.
The brother and sister were both waiting us here, and, as well as I
could make out in the imperfect light, bore every appearance of
having passed through a rather cruel experience. Ronald seemed
ashamed to so much as catch my eye in the presence of his aunt, and
was the picture of embarrassment. As for Flora, she had scarce the
time to cast me one look before the dragon took her by the arm, and
began to march across the garden in the extreme first glimmer of
the dawn without exchanging speech. Ronald and I followed in equal
silence.
There was a door in that same high wall on the top of which I had
sat perched no longer gone than yesterday morning. This the old
lady set open with a key; and on the other side we were aware of a
rough-looking, thick-set man, leaning with his arms (through which
was passed a formidable staff) on a dry-stone dyke. Him the old
lady immediately addressed.
'Sim,' said she, 'this is the young gentleman.'
Sim replied with an inarticulate grumble of sound, and a movement
of one arm and his head, which did duty for a salutation.
'Now, Mr. St. Ives,' said the old lady, 'it's high time for you to
be taking the road. But first of all let me give the change of
your five-guinea bill. Here are four pounds of it in British Linen
notes, and the balance in small silver, less sixpence. Some charge
a shilling, I believe, but I have given you the benefit of the
doubt. See and guide it with all the sense that you possess.'
'And here, Mr. St. Ives,' said Flora, speaking for the first time,
'is a plaid which you will find quite necessary on so rough a
journey. I hope you will take it from the hands of a Scotch
friend,' she added, and her voice trembled.
'Genuine holly: I cut it myself,' said Ronald, and gave me as good
a cudgel as a man could wish for in a row.
The formality of these gifts, and the waiting figure of the driver,
told me loudly that I must be gone. I dropped on one knee and bade
farewell to the aunt, kissing her hand. I did the like - but with
how different a passion! - to her niece; as for the boy, I took him
to my arms and embraced him with a cordiality that seemed to strike
him speechless. 'Farewell!' and 'Farewell!' I said. 'I shall
never forget my friends. Keep me sometimes in memory. Farewell!'
With that I turned my back and began to walk away; and had scarce
done so, when I heard the door in the high wall close behind me.
Of course this was the aunt's doing; and of course, if I know
anything of human character, she would not let me go without some
tart expressions. I declare, even if I had heard them, I should
not have minded in the least, for I was quite persuaded that,
whatever admirers I might be leaving behind me in Swanston Cottage,
the aunt was not the least sincere.
CHAPTER X - THE DROVERS
IT took me a little effort to come abreast of my new companion; for
though he walked with an ugly roll and no great appearance of
speed, he could cover the around at a good rate when he wanted to.
Each looked at the other: I with natural curiosity, he with a great
appearance of distaste. I have heard since that his heart was
entirely set against me; he had seen me kneel to the ladies, and
diagnosed me for a 'gesterin' eediot.'
'So, ye're for England, are ye?' said he.
I told him yes.
'Weel, there's waur places, I believe,' was his reply; and he
relapsed into a silence which was not broken during a quarter of an
hour of steady walking.
This interval brought us to the foot of a bare green valley, which
wound upwards and backwards among the hills. A little stream came
down the midst and made a succession of clear pools; near by the
lowest of which I was aware of a drove of shaggy cattle, and a man
who seemed the very counterpart of Mr. Sim making a breakfast upon
bread and cheese. This second drover (whose name proved to be
Candlish) rose on our approach.
'Here's a mannie that's to gang through with us,' said Sim. 'It
was the auld wife, Gilchrist, wanted it.'
'Aweel, aweel,' said the other; and presently, remembering his
manners, and looking on me with a solemn grin, 'A fine day!' says
he.
I agreed with him, and asked him how he did.
'Brawly,' was the reply; and without further civilities, the pair
proceeded to get the cattle under way. This, as well as almost all
the herding, was the work of a pair of comely and intelligent dogs,
directed by Sim or Candlish in little more than monosyllables.
Presently we were ascending the side of the mountain by a rude
green track, whose presence I had not hitherto observed. A
continual sound of munching and the crying of a great quantity of
moor birds accompanied our progress, which the deliberate pace and
perennial appetite of the cattle rendered wearisomely slow. In the
midst my two conductors marched in a contented silence that I could
not but admire. The more I looked at them, the more I was
impressed by their absurd resemblance to each other. They were
dressed in the same coarse homespun, carried similar sticks, were
equally begrimed about the nose with snuff, and each wound in an
identical plaid of what is called the shepherd's tartan. In a back
view they might be described as indistinguishable; and even from
the front they were much alike. An incredible coincidence of
humours augmented the impression. Thrice and four times I
attempted to pave the way for some exchange of thought, sentiment,
or - at the least of it - human words. An AY or an NHM was the
sole return, and the topic died on the hill-side without echo. I
can never deny that I was chagrined; and when, after a little more
walking, Sim turned towards me and offered me a ram's horn of
snuff, with the question 'Do ye use it?' I answered, with some
animation, 'Faith, sir, I would use pepper to introduce a little
cordiality.' But even this sally failed to reach, or at least
failed to soften, my companions.
At this rate we came to the summit of a ridge, and saw the track
descend in front of us abruptly into a desert vale, about a league
in length, and closed at the farther end by no less barren
hilltops. Upon this point of vantage Sim came to a halt, took off
his hat, and mopped his brow.
'Weel,' he said, 'here we're at the top o' Howden.'
'The top o' Howden, sure eneuch,' said Candlish.
'Mr. St. Ivey, are ye dry?' said the first.
'Now, really,' said I, 'is not this Satan reproving sin?'
'What ails ye, man?' said he. 'I'm offerin' ye a dram.'
'Oh, if it be anything to drink,' said I, 'I am as dry as my
neighbours.'
Whereupon Sim produced from the corner of his plaid a black bottle,
and we all drank and pledged each other. I found these gentlemen
followed upon such occasions an invariable etiquette, which you may
be certain I made haste to imitate. Each wiped his mouth with the
back of his left hand, held up the bottle in his right, remarked
with emphasis, 'Here's to ye!' and swallowed as much of the spirit
as his fancy prompted. This little ceremony, which was the nearest
thing to manners I could perceive in either of my companions, was
repeated at becoming intervals, generally after an ascent.
Occasionally we shared a mouthful of ewe-milk cheese and an
inglorious form of bread, which I understood (but am far from
engaging my honour on the point) to be called 'shearer's bannock.'
And that may be said to have concluded our whole active intercourse
for the first day.
I had the more occasion to remark the extraordinarily desolate
nature of that country, through which the drove road continued,
hour after hour and even day after day, to wind. A continual
succession of insignificant shaggy hills, divided by the course of
ten thousand brooks, through which we had to wade, or by the side
of which we encamped at night; infinite perspectives of heather,
infinite quantities of moorfowl; here and there, by a stream side,
small and pretty clumps of willows or the silver birch; here and
there, the ruins of ancient and inconsiderable fortresses - made
the unchanging characters of the scene. Occasionally, but only in
the distance, we could perceive the smoke of a small town or of an
isolated farmhouse or cottage on the moors; more often, a flock of
sheep and its attendant shepherd, or a rude field of agriculture
perhaps not yet harvested. With these alleviations, we might
almost be said to pass through an unbroken desert - sure, one of
the most impoverished in Europe; and when I recalled to mind that
we were yet but a few leagues from the chief city (where the law
courts sat every day with a press of business, soldiers garrisoned
the castle, and men of admitted parts were carrying on the practice
of letters and the investigations of science), it gave me a
singular view of that poor, barren, and yet illustrious country
through which I travelled. Still more, perhaps, did it commend the
wisdom of Miss Gilchrist in sending me with these uncouth
companions and by this unfrequented path.
My itinerary is by no means clear to me; the names and distances I
never clearly knew, and have now wholly forgotten; and this is the
more to be regretted as there is no doubt that, in the course of
those days, I must have passed and camped among sites which have
been rendered illustrious by the pen of Walter Scott. Nay, more, I
am of opinion that I was still more favoured by fortune, and have
actually met and spoken with that inimitable author. Our encounter
was of a tall, stoutish, elderly gentleman, a little grizzled, and
of a rugged but cheerful and engaging countenance. He sat on a
hill pony, wrapped in a plaid over his green coat, and was
accompanied by a horse-woman, his daughter, a young lady of the
most charming appearance. They overtook us on a stretch of heath,
reined up as they came alongside, and accompanied us for perhaps a
quarter of an hour before they galloped off again across the
hillsides to our left. Great was my amazement to find the
unconquerable Mr. Sim thaw immediately on the accost of this
strange gentleman, who hailed him with a ready familiarity,
proceeded at once to discuss with him the trade of droving and the
prices of cattle, and did not disdain to take a pinch from the
inevitable ram's horn. Presently I was aware that the stranger's
eye was directed on myself; and there ensued a conversation, some
of which I could not help overhearing at the time, and the rest
have pieced together more or less plausibly from the report of Sim.
'Surely that must be an AMATEUR DROVER ye have gotten there?' the
gentleman seems to have asked.
Sim replied, I was a young gentleman that had a reason of his own
to travel privately.
'Well, well, ye must tell me nothing of that. I am in the law, you
know, and TACE is the Latin for a candle,' answered the gentleman.
'But I hope it's nothing bad.'
Sim told him it was no more than debt.
'Oh, Lord, if that be all!' cried the gentleman; and turning to
myself, 'Well, sir,' he added, 'I understand you are taking a tramp
through our forest here for the pleasure of the thing?'
'Why, yes, sir,' said I; 'and I must say I am very well
entertained.'
'I envy you,' said he. 'I have jogged many miles of it myself when
I was younger. My youth lies buried about here under every
heather-bush, like the soul of the licentiate Lucius. But you
should have a guide. The pleasure of this country is much in the
legends, which grow as plentiful as blackberries.' And directing
my attention to a little fragment of a broken wall no greater than
a tombstone, he told me for an example a story of its earlier
inhabitants. Years after it chanced that I was one day diverting
myself with a Waverley Novel, when what should I come upon but the
identical narrative of my green-coated gentleman upon the moors!
In a moment the scene, the tones of his voice, his northern accent,
and the very aspect of the earth and sky and temperature of the
weather, flashed back into my mind with the reality of dreams. The
unknown in the green-coat had been the Great Unknown! I had met
Scott; I had heard a story from his lips; I should have been able
to write, to claim acquaintance, to tell him that his legend still
tingled in my ears. But the discovery came too late, and the great
man had already succumbed under the load of his honours and
misfortunes.
Presently, after giving us a cigar apiece, Scott bade us farewell
and disappeared with his daughter over the hills. And when I
applied to Sim for information, his answer of 'The Shirra, man!
A'body kens the Shirra!' told me, unfortunately, nothing.
A more considerable adventure falls to be related. We were now
near the border. We had travelled for long upon the track beaten
and browsed by a million herds, our predecessors, and had seen no
vestige of that traffic which had created it. It was early in the
morning when we at last perceived, drawing near to the drove road,
but still at a distance of about half a league, a second caravan,
similar to but larger than our own. The liveliest excitement was
at once exhibited by both my comrades. They climbed hillocks, they
studied the approaching drove from under their hand, they consulted
each other with an appearance of alarm that seemed to me
extraordinary. I had learned by this time that their stand-oft
manners implied, at least, no active enmity; and I made bold to ask
them what was wrong.
'Bad yins,' was Sim's emphatic answer.
All day the dogs were kept unsparingly on the alert, and the drove
pushed forward at a very unusual and seemingly unwelcome speed.
All day Sim and Candlish, with a more than ordinary expenditure
both of snuff and of words, continued to debate the position. It
seems that they had recognised two of our neighbours on the road -
one Faa, and another by the name of Gillies. Whether there was an
old feud between them still unsettled I could never learn; but Sim
and Candlish were prepared for every degree of fraud or violence at
their hands. Candlish repeatedly congratulated himself on having
left 'the watch at home with the mistress'; and Sim perpetually
brandished his cudgel, and cursed his ill-fortune that it should be
sprung.
'I willna care a damn to gie the daashed scoon'rel a fair clout wi'
it,' he said. 'The daashed thing micht come sindry in ma hand.'
'Well, gentlemen,' said I, 'suppose they do come on, I think we can
give a very good account of them.' And I made my piece of holly,
Ronald's gift, the value of which I now appreciated, sing about my
head.
'Ay, man? Are ye stench?' inquired Sim, with a gleam of approval
in his wooden countenance.
The same evening, somewhat wearied with our day-long expedition, we
encamped on a little verdant mound, from the midst of which there
welled a spring of clear water scarce great enough to wash the
hands in. We had made our meal and lain down, but were not yet
asleep, when a growl from one of the collies set us on the alert.
All three sat up, and on a second impulse all lay down again, but
now with our cudgels ready. A man must be an alien and an outlaw,
an old soldier and a young man in the bargain, to take adventure
easily. With no idea as to the rights of the quarrel or the
probable consequences of the encounter, I was as ready to take part
with my two drovers, as ever to fall in line on the morning of a
battle. Presently there leaped three men out of the heather; we
had scarce time to get to our feet before we were assailed; and in
a moment each one of us was engaged with an adversary whom the
deepening twilight scarce permitted him to see. How the battle
sped in other quarters I am in no position to describe. The rogue
that fell to my share was exceedingly agile and expert with his
weapon; had and held me at a disadvantage from the first assault;
forced me to give ground continually, and at last, in mere selfdefence,
to let him have the point. It struck him in the throat,
and he went down like a ninepin and moved no more.
It seemed this was the signal for the engagement to be
discontinued. The other combatants separated at once; our foes
were suffered, without molestation, to lift up and bear away their
fallen comrade; so that I perceived this sort of war to be not
wholly without laws of chivalry, and perhaps rather to partake of
the character of a tournament than of a battle A OUTRANCE. There
was no doubt, at least, that I was supposed to have pushed the
affair too seriously. Our friends the enemy removed their wounded
companion with undisguised consternation; and they were no sooner
over the top of the brae, than Sim and Candlish roused up their
wearied drove and set forth on a night march.
'I'm thinking Faa's unco bad,' said the one.
'Ay,' said the other, 'he lookit dooms gash.'
'He did that,' said the first.
And their weary silence fell upon them again.
Presently Sim turned to me. 'Ye're unco ready with the stick,'
said he.
'Too ready, I'm afraid,' said I. 'I am afraid Mr. Faa (if that be
his name) has got his gruel.'
'Weel, I wouldnae wonder,' replied Sim.
'And what is likely to happen?' I inquired.
'Aweel,' said Sim, snuffing profoundly, 'if I were to offer an
opeenion, it would not be conscientious. For the plain fac' is,
Mr. St. Ivy, that I div not ken. We have had crackit heids - and
rowth of them - ere now; and we have had a broken leg or maybe twa;
and the like of that we drover bodies make a kind of a practice
like to keep among oursel's. But a corp we have none of us ever
had to deal with, and I could set nae leemit to what Gillies micht
consider proper in the affair. Forbye that, he would be in raither
a hobble himsel', if he was to gang hame wantin' Faa. Folk are
awfu' throng with their questions, and parteecularly when they're
no wantit.'
'That's a fac',' said Candlish.
I considered this prospect ruefully; and then making the best of
it, 'Upon all which accounts,' said I, 'the best will be to get
across the border and there separate. If you are troubled, you can
very truly put the blame upon your late companion; and if I am
pursued, I must just try to keep out of the way.'
'Mr. St. Ivy,' said Sim, with something resembling enthusiasm, 'no'
a word mair! I have met in wi' mony kinds o' gentry ere now; I hae
seen o' them that was the tae thing, and I hae seen o' them that
was the tither; but the wale of a gentleman like you I have no sae
very frequently seen the bate of.'
Our night march was accordingly pursued with unremitting diligence.
The stars paled, the east whitened, and we were still, both dogs
and men, toiling after the wearied cattle. Again and again Sim and
Candlish lamented the necessity: it was 'fair ruin on the bestial,'
they declared; but the thought of a judge and a scaffold hunted
them ever forward. I myself was not so much to be pitied. All
that night, and during the whole of the little that remained before
us of our conjunct journey, I enjoyed a new pleasure, the reward of
my prowess, in the now loosened tongue of Mr. Sim. Candlish was
still obdurately taciturn: it was the man's nature; but Sim, having
finally appraised and approved me, displayed without reticence a
rather garrulous habit of mind and a pretty talent for narration.
The pair were old and close companions, co-existing in these
endless moors in a brotherhood of silence such as I have heard
attributed to the trappers of the west. It seems absurd to mention
love in connection with so ugly and snuffy a couple; at least,
their trust was absolute; and they entertained a surprising
admiration for each other's qualities; Candlish exclaiming that Sim
was 'grand company!' and Sim frequently assuring me in an aside
that for 'a rale, auld, stench bitch, there was nae the bate of
Candlish in braid Scotland.' The two dogs appeared to be entirely
included in this family compact, and I remarked that their exploits
and traits of character were constantly and minutely observed by
the two masters. Dog stories particularly abounded with them; and
not only the dogs of the present but those of the past contributed
their quota. 'But that was naething,' Sim would begin: 'there was
a herd in Manar, they ca'd him Tweedie - ye'll mind Tweedie,
Can'lish?' 'Fine, that!' said Candlish. 'Aweel, Tweedie had a dog
- ' The story I have forgotten; I dare say it was dull, and I
suspect it was not true; but indeed, my travels with the drove
rendered me indulgent, and perhaps even credulous, in the matter of
dog stories. Beautiful, indefatigable beings! as I saw them at the
end of a long day's journey frisking, barking, bounding, striking
attitudes, slanting a bushy tail, manifestly playing to the
spectator's eye, manifestly rejoicing in their grace and beauty -
and turned to observe Sim and Candlish unornamentally plodding in
the rear with the plaids about their bowed shoulders and the drop
at their snuffy nose - I thought I would rather claim kinship with
the dogs than with the men! My sympathy was unreturned; in their
eyes I was a creature light as air; and they would scarce spare me
the time for a perfunctory caress or perhaps a hasty lap of the wet
tongue, ere they were back again in sedulous attendance on those
dingy deities, their masters - and their masters, as like as not,
damning their stupidity.
Altogether the last hours of our tramp were infinitely the most
agreeable to me, and I believe to all of us; and by the time we
came to separate, there had grown up a certain familiarity and
mutual esteem that made the parting harder. It took place about
four of the afternoon on a bare hillside from which I could see the
ribbon of the great north road, henceforth to be my conductor. I
asked what was to pay.
'Naething,' replied Sim.
'What in the name of folly is this?' I exclaimed. 'You have led
me, you have fed me, you have filled me full of whisky, and now you
will take nothing!'
'Ye see we indentit for that,' replied Sim.
'Indented?' I repeated; 'what does the man mean?'
'Mr. St. Ivy,' said Sim, 'this is a maitter entirely between
Candlish and me and the auld wife, Gilchrist. You had naething to
say to it; weel, ye can have naething to do with it, then.'
'My good man,' said I, 'I can allow myself to be placed in no such
ridiculous position. Mrs. Gilchrist is nothing to me, and I refuse
to be her debtor.'
'I dinna exac'ly see what way ye're gaun to help it,' observed my
drover.
'By paying you here and now,' said I.
'There's aye twa to a bargain, Mr. St. Ives,' said he.
'You mean that you will not take it?' said I.
'There or thereabout,' said he. 'Forbye, that it would set ye a
heap better to keep your siller for them you awe it to. Ye're
young, Mr. St. Ivy, and thoughtless; but it's my belief that, wi'
care and circumspection, ye may yet do credit to yoursel'. But
just you bear this in mind: that him that AWES siller should never
GIE siller.'
Well, what was there to say? I accepted his rebuke, and bidding
the pair farewell, set off alone upon my southward way.
'Mr. St. Ivy,' was the last word of Sim, 'I was never muckle ta'en
up in Englishry; but I think that I really ought to say that ye
seem to me to have the makings of quite a decent lad.'
CHAPTER XI - THE GREAT NORTH ROAD
IT chanced that as I went down the hill these last words of my
friend the drover echoed not unfruitfully in my head. I had never
told these men the least particulars as to my race or fortune, as
it was a part, and the best part, of their civility to ask no
questions: yet they had dubbed me without hesitation English. Some
strangeness in the accent they had doubtless thus explained. And
it occurred to me, that if I could pass in Scotland for an
Englishman, I might be able to reverse the process and pass in
England for a Scot. I thought, if I was pushed to it, I could make
a struggle to imitate the brogue; after my experience with Candlish
and Sim, I had a rich provision of outlandish words at my command;
and I felt I could tell the tale of Tweedie's dog so as to deceive
a native. At the same time, I was afraid my name of St. Ives was
scarcely suitable; till I remembered there was a town so called in
the province of Cornwall, thought I might yet be glad to claim it
for my place of origin, and decided for a Cornish family and a
Scots education. For a trade, as I was equally ignorant of all,
and as the most innocent might at any moment be the means of my
exposure, it was best to pretend to none. And I dubbed myself a
young gentleman of a sufficient fortune and an idle, curious habit
of mind, rambling the country at my own charges, in quest of
health, information, and merry adventures.
At Newcastle, which was the first town I reached, I completed my
preparations for the part, before going to the inn, by the purchase
of a knapsack and a pair of leathern gaiters. My plaid I continued
to wear from sentiment. It was warm, useful to sleep in if I were
again benighted, and I had discovered it to be not unbecoming for a
man of gallant carriage. Thus equipped, I supported my character
of the light-hearted pedestrian not amiss. Surprise was indeed
expressed that I should have selected such a season of the year;
but I pleaded some delays of business, and smilingly claimed to be
an eccentric. The devil was in it, I would say, if any season of
the year was not good enough for me; I was not made of sugar, I was
no mollycoddle to be afraid of an ill-aired bed or a sprinkle of
snow; and I would knock upon the table with my fist and call for
t'other bottle, like the noisy and free-hearted young gentleman I
was. It was my policy (if I may so express myself) to talk much
and say little. At the inn tables, the country, the state of the
roads, the business interest of those who sat down with me, and the
course of public events, afforded me a considerable field in which
I might discourse at large and still communicate no information
about myself. There was no one with less air of reticence; I
plunged into my company up to the neck; and I had a long cock-andbull
story of an aunt of mine which must have convinced the most
suspicious of my innocence. 'What!' they would have said, 'that
young ass to be concealing anything! Why, he has deafened me with
an aunt of his until my head aches. He only wants you should give
him a line, and he would tell you his whole descent from Adam
downward, and his whole private fortune to the last shilling.' A
responsible solid fellow was even so much moved by pity for my
inexperience as to give me a word or two of good advice: that I was
but a young man after all - I had at this time a deceptive air of
youth that made me easily pass for one-and-twenty, and was, in the
circumstances, worth a fortune - that the company at inns was very
mingled, that I should do well to be more careful, and the like; to
all which I made answer that I meant no harm myself and expected
none from others, or the devil was in it. 'You are one of those dd
prudent fellows that I could never abide with,' said I. 'You are
the kind of man that has a long head. That's all the world, my
dear sir: the long-heads and the short-horns! Now, I am a shorthorn.'
'I doubt,' says he, 'that you will not go very far without
getting sheared.' I offered to bet with him on that, and he made
off, shaking his head.
But my particular delight was to enlarge on politics and the war.
None damned the French like me; none was more bitter against the
Americans. And when the north-bound mail arrived, crowned with
holly, and the coachman and guard hoarse with shouting victory, I
went even so far as to entertain the company to a bowl of punch,
which I compounded myself with no illiberal hand, and doled out to
such sentiments as the following:-
'Our glorious victory on the Nivelle'! 'Lord Wellington, God bless
him! and may victory ever attend upon his arms!' and, 'Soult, poor
devil! and may he catch it again to the same tune!'
Never was oratory more applauded to the echo - never any one was
more of the popular man than I. I promise you, we made a night of
it. Some of the company supported each other, with the assistance
of boots, to their respective bedchambers, while the rest slept on
the field of glory where we had left them; and at the breakfast
table the next morning there was an extraordinary assemblage of red
eyes and shaking fists. I observed patriotism to burn much lower
by daylight. Let no one blame me for insensibility to the reverses
of France! God knows how my heart raged. How I longed to fall on
that herd of swine and knock their heads together in the moment of
their revelry! But you are to consider my own situation and its
necessities; also a certain lightheartedness, eminently Gallic,
which forms a leading trait in my character, and leads me to throw
myself into new circumstances with the spirit of a schoolboy. It
is possible that I sometimes allowed this impish humour to carry me
further than good taste approves: and I was certainly punished for
it once.
This was in the episcopal city of Durham. We sat down, a
considerable company, to dinner, most of us fine old vatted English
tories of that class which is often so enthusiastic as to be
inarticulate. I took and held the lead from the beginning; and,
the talk having turned on the French in the Peninsula, I gave them
authentic details (on the authority of a cousin of mine, an ensign)
of certain cannibal orgies in Galicia, in which no less a person
than General Caffarelli had taken a part. I always disliked that
commander, who once ordered me under arrest for insubordination;
and it is possible that a spice of vengeance added to the rigour of
my picture. I have forgotten the details; no doubt they were highcoloured.
No doubt I rejoiced to fool these jolter-heads; and no
doubt the sense of security that I drank from their dull, gasping
faces encouraged me to proceed extremely far. And for my sins,
there was one silent little man at table who took my story at the
true value. It was from no sense of humour, to which he was quite
dead. It was from no particular intelligence, for he had not any.
The bond of sympathy, of all things in the world, had rendered him
clairvoyant.
Dinner was no sooner done than I strolled forth into the streets
with some design of viewing the cathedral; and the little man was
silently at my heels. A few doors from the inn, in a dark place of
the street, I was aware of a touch on my arm, turned suddenly, and
found him looking up at me with eyes pathetically bright.
'I beg your pardon, sir; but that story of yours was particularly
rich. He - he! Particularly racy,' said he. 'I tell you, sir, I
took you wholly! I SMOKED you! I believe you and I, sir, if we
had a chance to talk, would find we had a good many opinions in
common. Here is the "Blue Bell," a very comfortable place. They
draw good ale, sir. Would you be so condescending as to share a
pot with me?'
There was something so ambiguous and secret in the little man's
perpetual signalling, that I confess my curiosity was much aroused.
Blaming myself, even as I did so, for the indiscretion, I embraced
his proposal, and we were soon face to face over a tankard of
mulled ale. He lowered his voice to the least attenuation of a
whisper.
'Here, sir,' said he, 'is to the Great Man. I think you take me?
No?' He leaned forward till our noses touched. 'Here is to the
Emperor!' said he.
I was extremely embarrassed, and, in spite of the creature's
innocent appearance, more than half alarmed. I thought him too
ingenious, and, indeed, too daring for a spy. Yet if he were
honest he must be a man of extraordinary indiscretion, and
therefore very unfit to be encouraged by an escaped prisoner. I
took a half course, accordingly - accepted his toast in silence,
and drank it without enthusiasm.
He proceeded to abound in the praises of Napoleon, such as I had
never heard in France, or at least only on the lips of officials
paid to offer them.
'And this Caffarelli, now,' he pursued: 'he is a splendid fellow,
too, is he not? I have not heard vastly much of him myself. No
details, sir - no details! We labour under huge difficulties here
as to unbiassed information.'
'I believe I have heard the same complaint in other countries,' I
could not help remarking. 'But as to Caffarelli, he is neither
lame nor blind, he has two legs and a nose in the middle of his
face. And I care as much about him as you care for the dead body
of Mr. Perceval!'
He studied me with glowing eyes.
'You cannot deceive me!' he cried. 'You have served under him.
You are a Frenchman! I hold by the hand, at last, one of that
noble race, the pioneers of the glorious principles of liberty and
brotherhood. Hush! No, it is all right. I thought there had been
somebody at the door. In this wretched, enslaved country we dare
not even call our souls our own. The spy and the hangman, sir -
the spy and the hangman! And yet there is a candle burning, too.
The good leaven is working, sir - working underneath. Even in this
town there are a few brave spirits, who meet every Wednesday. You
must stay over a day or so, and join us. We do not use this house.
Another, and a quieter. They draw fine ale, however - fair, mild
ale. You will find yourself among friends, among brothers. You
will hear some very daring sentiments expressed!' he cried,
expanding his small chest. 'Monarchy, Christianity - all the
trappings of a bloated past - the Free Confraternity of Durham and
Tyneside deride.'
Here was a devil of a prospect for a gentleman whose whole design
was to avoid observation! The Free Confraternity had no charms for
me; daring sentiments were no part of my baggage; and I tried,
instead, a little cold water.
'You seem to forget, sir, that my Emperor has re-established
Christianity,' I observed.
'Ah, sir, but that was policy!' he exclaimed. 'You do not
understand Napoleon. I have followed his whole career. I can
explain his policy from first to last. Now for instance in the
Peninsula, on which you were so very amusing, if you will come to a
friend's house who has a map of Spain, I can make the whole course
of the war quite clear to you, I venture to say, in half an hour.'
This was intolerable. Of the two extremes, I found I preferred the
British tory; and, making an appointment for the morrow, I pleaded
sudden headache, escaped to the inn, packed my knapsack, and fled,
about nine at night, from this accursed neighbourhood. It was
cold, starry, and clear, and the road dry, with a touch of frost.
For all that, I had not the smallest intention to make a long stage
of it; and about ten o'clock, spying on the right-hand side of the
way the lighted windows of an alehouse, I determined to bait there
for the night.
It was against my principle, which was to frequent only the dearest
inns; and the misadventure that befell me was sufficient to make me
more particular in the future. A large company was assembled in
the parlour, which was heavy with clouds of tobacco smoke, and
brightly lighted up by a roaring fire of coal. Hard by the chimney
stood a vacant chair in what I thought an enviable situation,
whether for warmth or the pleasure of society; and I was about to
take it, when the nearest of the company stopped me with his hand.
'Beg thy pardon, sir,' said he; 'but that there chair belongs to a
British soldier.'
A chorus of voices enforced and explained. It was one of Lord
Wellington's heroes. He had been wounded under Rowland Hill. He
was Colbourne's right-hand man. In short, this favoured individual
appeared to have served with every separate corps, and under every
individual general in the Peninsula. Of course I apologised. I
had not known. The devil was in it if a soldier had not a right to
the best in England. And with that sentiment, which was loudly
applauded, I found a corner of a bench, and awaited, with some
hopes of entertainment, the return of the hero. He proved, of
course, to be a private soldier. I say of course, because no
officer could possibly enjoy such heights of popularity. He had
been wounded before San Sebastian, and still wore his arm in a
sling. What was a great deal worse for him, every member of the
company had been plying him with drink. His honest yokel's
countenance blazed as if with fever, his eyes were glazed and
looked the two ways, and his feet stumbled as, amidst a murmur of
applause, he returned to the midst of his admirers.
Two minutes afterwards I was again posting in the dark along the
highway; to explain which sudden movement of retreat I must trouble
the reader with a reminiscence of my services.
I lay one night with the out-pickets in Castile. We were in close
touch with the enemy; the usual orders had been issued against
smoking, fires, and talk, and both armies lay as quiet as mice,
when I saw the English sentinel opposite making a signal by holding
up his musket. I repeated it, and we both crept together in the
dry bed of a stream, which made the demarcation of the armies. It
was wine he wanted, of which we had a good provision, and the
English had quite run out. He gave me the money, and I, as was the
custom, left him my firelock in pledge, and set off for the
canteen. When I returned with a skin of wine, behold, it had
pleased some uneasy devil of an English officer to withdraw the
outposts! Here was a situation with a vengeance, and I looked for
nothing but ridicule in the present and punishment in the future.
Doubtless our officers winked pretty hard at this interchange of
courtesies, but doubtless it would be impossible to wink at so
gross a fault, or rather so pitiable a misadventure as mine; and
you are to conceive me wandering in the plains of Castile,
benighted, charged with a wine-skin for which I had no use, and
with no knowledge whatever of the whereabouts of my musket, beyond
that it was somewhere in my Lord Wellington's army. But my
Englishman was either a very honest fellow, or else extremely
thirsty, and at last contrived to advertise me of his new position.
Now, the English sentry in Castile, and the wounded hero in the
Durham public-house, were one and the same person; and if he had
been a little less drunk, or myself less lively in getting away,
the travels of M. St. Ives might have come to an untimely end.
I suppose this woke me up; it stirred in me besides a spirit of
opposition, and in spite of cold, darkness, the highwaymen and the
footpads, I determined to walk right on till breakfast-time: a
happy resolution, which enabled me to observe one of those traits
of manners which at once depict a country and condemn it. It was
near midnight when I saw, a great way ahead of me, the light of
many torches; presently after, the sound of wheels reached me, and
the slow tread of feet, and soon I had joined myself to the rear of
a sordid, silent, and lugubrious procession, such as we see in
dreams. Close on a hundred persons marched by torchlight in
unbroken silence; in their midst a cart, and in the cart, on an
inclined platform, the dead body of a man - the centre-piece of
this solemnity, the hero whose obsequies we were come forth at this
unusual hour to celebrate. It was but a plain, dingy old fellow of
fifty or sixty, his throat cut, his shirt turned over as though to
show the wound. Blue trousers and brown socks completed his
attire, if we can talk so of the dead. He had a horrid look of a
waxwork. In the tossing of the lights he seemed to make faces and
mouths at us, to frown, and to be at times upon the point of
speech. The cart, with this shabby and tragic freight, and
surrounded by its silent escort and bright torches, continued for
some distance to creak along the high-road, and I to follow it in
amazement, which was soon exchanged for horror. At the corner of a
lane the procession stopped, and, as the torches ranged themselves
along the hedgerow-side, I became aware of a grave dug in the midst
of the thoroughfare, and a provision of quicklime piled in the
ditch. The cart was backed to the margin, the body slung off the
platform and dumped into the grave with an irreverent roughness. A
sharpened stake had hitherto served it for a pillow. It was now
withdrawn, held in its place by several volunteers, and a fellow
with a heavy mallet (the sound of which still haunts me at night)
drove it home through the bosom of the corpse. The hole was filled
with quicklime, and the bystanders, as if relieved of some
oppression, broke at once into a sound of whispered speech.
My shirt stuck to me, my heart had almost ceased beating, and I
found my tongue with difficulty.
'I beg your pardon,' I gasped to a neighbour, 'what is this? what
has he done? is it allowed?'
'Why, where do you come from?' replied the man.
'I am a traveller, sir,' said I, 'and a total stranger in this part
of the country. I had lost my way when I saw your torches, and
came by chance on this - this incredible scene. Who was the man?'
'A suicide,' said he. 'Ay, he was a bad one, was Johnnie Green.'
It appeared this was a wretch who had committed many barbarous
murders, and being at last upon the point of discovery fell of his
own hand. And the nightmare at the crossroads was the regular
punishment, according to the laws of England, for an act which the
Romans honoured as a virtue! Whenever an Englishman begins to
prate of civilisation (as, indeed, it's a defect they are rather
prone to), I hear the measured blows of a mallet, see the
bystanders crowd with torches about the grave, smile a little to
myself in conscious superiority - and take a thimbleful of brandy
for the stomach's sake.
I believe it must have been at my next stage, for I remember going
to bed extremely early, that I came to the model of a good oldfashioned
English inn, and was attended on by the picture of a
pretty chambermaid. We had a good many pleasant passages as she
waited table or warmed my bed for me with a devil of a brass
warming pan, fully larger than herself; and as she was no less pert
than she was pretty, she may be said to have given rather better
than she took. I cannot tell why (unless it were for the sake of
her saucy eyes), but I made her my confidante, told her I was
attached to a young lady in Scotland, and received the
encouragement of her sympathy, mingled and connected with a fair
amount of rustic wit. While I slept the down-mail stopped for
supper; it chanced that one of the passengers left behind a copy of
the EDINBURGH COURANT, and the next morning my pretty chambermaid
set the paper before me at breakfast, with the remark that there
was some news from my lady-love. I took it eagerly, hoping to find
some further word of our escape, in which I was disappointed; and I
was about to lay it down, when my eye fell on a paragraph
immediately concerning me. Faa was in hospital, grievously sick,
and warrants were out for the arrest of Sim and Candlish. These
two men had shown themselves very loyal to me. This trouble
emerging, the least I could do was to be guided by a similar
loyalty to them. Suppose my visit to my uncle crowned with some
success, and my finances re-established, I determined I should
immediately return to Edinburgh, put their case in the hands of a
good lawyer, and await events. So my mind was very lightly made up
to what proved a mighty serious matter. Candlish and Sim were all
very well in their way, and I do sincerely trust I should have been
at some pains to help them, had there been nothing else. But in
truth my heart and my eyes were set on quite another matter, and I
received the news of their tribulation almost with joy. That is
never a bad wind that blows where we want to go, and you may be
sure there was nothing unwelcome in a circumstance that carried me
back to Edinburgh and Flora. From that hour I began to indulge
myself with the making of imaginary scenes and interviews, in which
I confounded the aunt, flattered Ronald, and now in the witty, now
in the sentimental manner, declared my love and received the
assurance of its return. By means of this exercise my resolution
daily grew stronger, until at last I had piled together such a mass
of obstinacy as it would have taken a cataclysm of nature to
subvert.
'Yes,' said I to the chambermaid, 'here is news of my lady-love
indeed, and very good news too.'
All that day, in the teeth of a keen winter wind, I hugged myself
in my plaid, and it was as though her arms were flung around me.
CHAPTER XII - I FOLLOW A COVERED CART NEARLY TO MY DESTINATION
AT last I began to draw near, by reasonable stages, to the
neighbourhood of Wakefield; and the name of Mr. Burchell Fenn came
to the top in my memory. This was the gentleman (the reader may
remember) who made a trade of forwarding the escape of French
prisoners. How he did so: whether he had a sign-board, ESCAPES
FORWARDED, APPLY WITHIN; what he charged for his services, or
whether they were gratuitous and charitable, were all matters of
which I was at once ignorant and extremely curious. Thanks to my
proficiency in English, and Mr. Romaine's bank-notes, I was getting
on swimmingly without him; but the trouble was that I could not be
easy till I had come to the bottom of these mysteries, and it was
my difficulty that I knew nothing of him beyond the name. I knew
not his trade beyond that of Forwarder of Escapes - whether he
lived in town or country, whether he were rich or poor, nor by what
kind of address I was to gain his confidence. It would have a very
bad appearance to go along the highwayside asking after a man of
whom I could give so scanty an account; and I should look like a
fool, indeed, if I were to present myself at his door and find the
police in occupation! The interest of the conundrum, however,
tempted me, and I turned aside from my direct road to pass by
Wakefield; kept my ears pricked, as I went, for any mention of his
name, and relied for the rest on my good fortune. If Luck (who
must certainly be feminine) favoured me as far as to throw me in
the man's way, I should owe the lady a candle; if not, I could very
readily console myself. In this experimental humour, and with so
little to help me, it was a miracle that I should have brought my
enterprise to a good end; and there are several saints in the
calendar who might be happy to exchange with St. Ives!
I had slept that night in a good inn at Wakefield, made my
breakfast by candle-light with the passengers of an up-coach, and
set off in a very ill temper with myself and my surroundings. It
was still early; the air raw and cold; the sun low, and soon to
disappear under a vast canopy of rain-clouds that had begun to
assemble in the north-west, and from that quarter invaded the whole
width of the heaven. Already the rain fell in crystal rods;
already the whole face of the country sounded with the discharge of
drains and ditches; and I looked forward to a day of downpour and
the hell of wet clothes, in which particular I am as dainty as a
cat. At a corner of the road, and by the last glint of the
drowning sun, I spied a covered cart, of a kind that I thought I
had never seen before, preceding me at the foot's pace of jaded
horses. Anything is interesting to a pedestrian that can help him
to forget the miseries of a day of rain; and I bettered my pace and
gradually overtook the vehicle.
The nearer I came, the more it puzzled me. It was much such a cart
as I am told the calico printers use, mounted on two wheels, and
furnished with a seat in front for the driver. The interior closed
with a door, and was of a bigness to contain a good load of calico,
or (at a pinch and if it were necessary) four or five persons.
But, indeed, if human beings were meant to travel there, they had
my pity! They must travel in the dark, for there was no sign of a
window; and they would be shaken all the way like a phial of
doctor's stuff, for the cart was not only ungainly to look at - it
was besides very imperfectly balanced on the one pair of wheels,
and pitched unconscionably. Altogether, if I had any glancing idea
that the cart was really a carriage, I had soon dismissed it; but I
was still inquisitive as to what it should contain, and where it
had come from. Wheels and horses were splashed with many different
colours of mud, as though they had come far and across a
considerable diversity of country. The driver continually and
vainly plied his whip. It seemed to follow they had made a long,
perhaps an all-night, stage; and that the driver, at that early
hour of a little after eight in the morning, already felt himself
belated. I looked for the name of the proprietor on the shaft, and
started outright. Fortune had favoured the careless: it was
Burchell Fenn!
'A wet morning, my man,' said I.
The driver, a loutish fellow, shock-headed and turnip-faced,
returned not a word to my salutation, but savagely flogged his
horses. The tired animals, who could scarce put the one foot
before the other, paid no attention to his cruelty; and I continued
without effort to maintain my position alongside, smiling to myself
at the futility of his attempts, and at the same time pricked with
curiosity as to why he made them. I made no such formidable a
figure as that a man should flee when I accosted him; and my
conscience not being entirely clear, I was more accustomed to be
uneasy myself than to see others timid. Presently he desisted, and
put back his whip in the holster with the air of a man vanquished.
'So you would run away from me?' said I. 'Come, come, that's not
English.'
'Beg pardon, master: no offence meant,' he said, touching his hat.
'And none taken!' cried I. 'All I desire is a little gaiety by the
way.'
I understood him to say he didn't 'take with gaiety.'
'Then I will try you with something else,' said I. 'Oh, I can be
all things to all men, like the apostle! I dare to say I have
travelled with heavier fellows than you in my time, and done
famously well with them. Are you going home?'
'Yes, I'm a goin' home, I am,' he said.
'A very fortunate circumstance for me!' said I. 'At this rate we
shall see a good deal of each other, going the same way; and, now I
come to think of it, why should you not give me a cast? There is
room beside you on the bench.'
With a sudden snatch, he carried the cart two yards into the
roadway. The horses plunged and came to a stop. 'No, you don't!'
he said, menacing me with the whip. 'None o' that with me.'
'None of what?' said I. 'I asked you for a lift, but I have no
idea of taking one by force.'
'Well, I've got to take care of the cart and 'orses, I have,' says
he. 'I don't take up with no runagate vagabones, you see, else.'
'I ought to thank you for your touching confidence,' said I,
approaching carelessly nearer as I spoke. 'But I admit the road is
solitary hereabouts, and no doubt an accident soon happens. Little
fear of anything of the kind with you! I like you for it, like
your prudence, like that pastoral shyness of disposition. But why
not put it out of my power to hurt? Why not open the door and
bestow me here in the box, or whatever you please to call it?' And
I laid my hand demonstratively on the body of the cart.
He had been timorous before; but at this, he seemed to lose the
power of speech a moment, and stared at me in a perfect enthusiasm
of fear.
'Why not?' I continued. 'The idea is good. I should be safe in
there if I were the monster Williams himself. The great thing is
to have me under lock and key. For it does lock; it is locked
now,' said I, trying the door. 'A PROPOS, what have you for a
cargo? It must be precious.'
He found not a word to answer.
Rat-tat-tat, I went upon the door like a well-drilled footman.
'Any one at home?' I said, and stooped to listen.
There came out of the interior a stifled sneeze, the first of an
uncontrollable paroxysm; another followed immediately on the heels
of it; and then the driver turned with an oath, laid the lash upon
the horses with so much energy that they found their heels again,
and the whole equipage fled down the road at a gallop.
At the first sound of the sneeze, I had started back like a man
shot. The next moment, a great light broke on my mind, and I
understood. Here was the secret of Fenn's trade: this was how he
forwarded the escape of prisoners, hawking them by night about the
country in his covered cart. There had been Frenchmen close to me;
he who had just sneezed was my countryman, my comrade, perhaps
already my friend! I took to my heels in pursuit. 'Hold hard!' I
shouted. 'Stop! It's all right! Stop!' But the driver only
turned a white face on me for a moment, and redoubled his efforts,
bending forward, plying his whip and crying to his horses; these
lay themselves down to the gallop and beat the highway with flying
hoofs; and the cart bounded after them among the ruts and fled in a
halo of rain and spattering mud. But a minute since, and it had
been trundling along like a lame cow; and now it was off as though
drawn by Apollo's coursers. There is no telling what a man can do,
until you frighten him!
It was as much as I could do myself, though I ran valiantly, to
maintain my distance; and that (since I knew my countrymen so near)
was become a chief point with me. A hundred yards farther on the
cart whipped out of the high-road into a lane embowered with
leafless trees, and became lost to view. When I saw it next, the
driver had increased his advantage considerably, but all danger was
at an end, and the horses had again declined into a hobbling walk.
Persuaded that they could not escape me, I took my time, and
recovered my breath as I followed them.
Presently the lane twisted at right angles, and showed me a gate
and the beginning of a gravel sweep; and a little after, as I
continued to advance, a red brick house about seventy years old, in
a fine style of architecture, and presenting a front of many
windows to a lawn and garden. Behind, I could see outhouses and
the peaked roofs of stacks; and I judged that a manor-house had in
some way declined to be the residence of a tenant-farmer, careless
alike of appearances and substantial comfort. The marks of neglect
were visible on every side, in flower-bushes straggling beyond the
borders, in the ill-kept turf, and in the broken windows that were
incongruously patched with paper or stuffed with rags. A thicket
of trees, mostly evergreen, fenced the place round and secluded it
from the eyes of prying neighbours. As I came in view of it, on
that melancholy winter's morning, in the deluge of the falling
rain, and with the wind that now rose in occasional gusts and
hooted over the old chimneys, the cart had already drawn up at the
front-door steps, and the driver was already in earnest discourse
with Mr. Burchell Fenn. He was standing with his hands behind his
back - a man of a gross, misbegotten face and body, dewlapped like
a bull and red as a harvest moon; and in his jockey cap, blue coat
and top boots, he had much the air of a good, solid tenant-farmer.
The pair continued to speak as I came up the approach, but received
me at last in a sort of goggling silence. I had my hat in my hand.
'I have the pleasure of addressing Mr. Burchell Fenn?' said I.
'The same, sir,' replied Mr. Fenn, taking off his jockey cap in
answer to my civility, but with the distant look and the tardy
movements of one who continues to think of something else. 'And
who may you be?' he asked.
'I shall tell you afterwards,' said I. 'Suffice it, in the
meantime, that I come on business.'
He seemed to digest my answer laboriously, his mouth gaping, his
little eyes never straying from my face.
'Suffer me to point out to you, sir,' I resumed, 'that this is a
devil of a wet morning; and that the chimney corner, and possibly a
glass of something hot, are clearly indicated.'
Indeed, the rain was now grown to be a deluge; the gutters of the
house roared; the air was filled with the continuous, strident
crash. The stolidity of his face, on which the rain streamed, was
far from reassuring me. On the contrary, I was aware of a distinct
qualm of apprehension, which was not at all lessened by a view of
the driver, craning from his perch to observe us with the
expression of a fascinated bird. So we stood silent, when the
prisoner again began to sneeze from the body of the cart; and at
the sound, prompt as a transformation, the driver had whipped up
his horses and was shambling off round the corner of the house, and
Mr. Fenn, recovering his wits with a gulp, had turned to the door
behind him.
'Come in, come in, sir,' he said. 'I beg your pardon, sir; the
lock goes a trifle hard.'
Indeed, it took him a surprising time to open the door, which was
not only locked on the outside, but the lock seemed rebellious from
disuse; and when at last he stood back and motioned me to enter
before him, I was greeted on the threshold by that peculiar and
convincing sound of the rain echoing over empty chambers. The
entrance-hall, in which I now found myself, was of a good size and
good proportions; potted plants occupied the corners; the paved
floor was soiled with muddy footprints and encumbered with straw;
on a mahogany hall-table, which was the only furniture, a candle
had been stuck and suffered to burn down - plainly a long while
ago, for the gutterings were green with mould. My mind, under
these new impressions, worked with unusual vivacity. I was here
shut off with Fenn and his hireling in a deserted house, a
neglected garden, and a wood of evergreens: the most eligible
theatre for a deed of darkness. There came to me a vision of two
flagstones raised in the hall-floor, and the driver putting in the
rainy afternoon over my grave, and the prospect displeased me
extremely. I felt I had carried my pleasantry as far as was safe;
I must lose no time in declaring my true character, and I was even
choosing the words in which I was to begin, when the hall-door was
slammed-to behind me with a bang, and I turned, dropping my stick
as I did so, in time - and not any more than time - to save my
life.
The surprise of the onslaught and the huge weight of my assailant
gave him the advantage. He had a pistol in his right hand of a
portentous size, which it took me all my strength to keep
deflected. With his left arm he strained me to his bosom, so that
I thought I must be crushed or stifled. His mouth was open, his
face crimson, and he panted aloud with hard animal sounds. The
affair was as brief as it was hot and sudden. The potations which
had swelled and bloated his carcase had already weakened the
springs of energy. One more huge effort, that came near to
overpower me, and in which the pistol happily exploded, and I felt
his grasp slacken and weakness come on his joints; his legs
succumbed under his weight, and he grovelled on his knees on the
stone floor. 'Spare me!' he gasped.
I had not only been abominably frightened; I was shocked besides:
my delicacy was in arms, like a lady to whom violence should have
been offered by a similar monster. I plucked myself from his
horrid contact, I snatched the pistol - even discharged, it was a
formidable weapon - and menaced him with the butt. 'Spare you!' I
cried, 'you beast!'
His voice died in his fat inwards, but his lips still vehemently
framed the same words of supplication. My anger began to pass off,
but not all my repugnance; the picture he made revolted me, and I
was impatient to be spared the further view of it.
'Here,' said I, 'stop this performance: it sickens me. I am not
going to kill you, do you hear? I have need of you.'
A look of relief, that I could almost have called beautiful, dawned
on his countenance. 'Anything - anything you wish,' said he.
Anything is a big word, and his use of it brought me for a moment
to a stand. 'Why, what do you mean?' I asked. 'Do you mean that
you will blow the gaff on the whole business?'
He answered me Yes with eager asseverations.
'I know Monsieur de Saint-Yves is in it; it was through his papers
we traced you,' I said. 'Do you consent to make a clean breast of
the others?'
'I do - I will!' he cried. 'The 'ole crew of 'em; there's good
names among 'em. I'll be king's evidence.'
'So that all shall hang except yourself? You damned villain!' I
broke out. 'Understand at once that I am no spy or thief-taker. I
am a kinsman of Monsieur de St. Yves - here in his interest. Upon
my word, you have put your foot in it prettily, Mr. Burchell Fenn!
Come, stand up; don't grovel there. Stand up, you lump of
iniquity!'
He scrambled to his feet. He was utterly unmanned, or it might
have gone hard with me yet; and I considered him hesitating, as,
indeed, there was cause. The man was a double-dyed traitor: he had
tried to murder me, and I had first baffled his endeavours and then
exposed and insulted him. Was it wise to place myself any longer
at his mercy? With his help I should doubtless travel more
quickly; doubtless also far less agreeably; and there was
everything to show that it would be at a greater risk. In short, I
should have washed my hands of him on the spot, but for the
temptation of the French officers, whom I knew to be so near, and
for whose society I felt so great and natural an impatience. If I
was to see anything of my countrymen, it was clear I had first of
all to make my peace with Mr. Fenn; and that was no easy matter.
To make friends with any one implies concessions on both sides; and
what could I concede? What could I say of him, but that he had
proved himself a villain and a fool, and the worse man?
'Well,' said I, 'here has been rather a poor piece of business,
which I dare say you can have no pleasure in calling to mind; and,
to say truth, I would as readily forget it myself. Suppose we try.
Take back your pistol, which smells very ill; put it in your pocket
or wherever you had it concealed. There! Now let us meet for the
first time. - Give you good morning, Mr. Fenn! I hope you do very
well. I come on the recommendation of my kinsman, the Vicomte de
St. Yves.'
'Do you mean it?' he cried. 'Do you mean you will pass over our
little scrimmage?'
'Why, certainly!' said I. 'It shows you are a bold fellow, who may
be trusted to forget the business when it comes to the point.
There is nothing against you in the little scrimmage, unless that
your courage is greater than your strength. You are not so young
as you once were, that is all.'
'And I beg of you, sir, don't betray me to the Vis-count,' he
pleaded. 'I'll not deny but what my 'eart failed me a trifle; but
it was only a word, sir, what anybody might have said in the 'eat
of the moment, and over with it.'
'Certainly,' said I. 'That is quite my own opinion.'
'The way I came to be anxious about the Vis-count,' he continued,
'is that I believe he might be induced to form an 'asty judgment.
And the business, in a pecuniary point of view, is all that I could
ask; only trying, sir - very trying. It's making an old man of me
before my time. You might have observed yourself, sir, that I
'aven't got the knees I once 'ad. The knees and the breathing,
there's where it takes me. But I'm very sure, sir, I address a
gentleman as would be the last to make trouble between friends.'
'I am sure you do me no more than justice,' said I; 'and I shall
think it quite unnecessary to dwell on any of these passing
circumstances in my report to the Vicomte.'
'Which you do favour him (if you'll excuse me being so bold as to
mention it) exac'ly!' said he. 'I should have known you anywheres.
May I offer you a pot of 'ome-brewed ale, sir? By your leave!
This way, if you please. I am 'eartily grateful - 'eartily pleased
to be of any service to a gentleman like you, sir, which is related
to the Vis-count, and really a fambly of which you might well be
proud! Take care of the step, sir. You have good news of 'is
'ealth, I trust? as well as that of Monseer the Count?'
God forgive me! the horrible fellow was still puffing and panting
with the fury of his assault, and already he had fallen into an
obsequious, wheedling familiarity like that of an old servant, -
already he was flattering me on my family connections!
I followed him through the house into the stable-yard, where I
observed the driver washing the cart in a shed. He must have heard
the explosion of the pistol. He could not choose but hear it: the
thing was shaped like a little blunderbuss, charged to the mouth,
and made a report like a piece of field artillery. He had heard,
he had paid no attention; and now, as we came forth by the backdoor,
he raised for a moment a pale and tell-tale face that was as
direct as a confession. The rascal had expected to see Fenn come
forth alone; he was waiting to be called on for that part of
sexton, which I had already allotted to him in fancy.
I need not detain the reader very long with any description of my
visit to the back-kitchen; of how we mulled our ale there, and
mulled it very well; nor of how we sat talking, Fenn like an old,
faithful, affectionate dependant, and I - well! I myself fallen
into a mere admiration of so much impudence, that transcended
words, and had very soon conquered animosity. I took a fancy to
the man, he was so vast a humbug. I began to see a kind of beauty
in him, his APLOMB was so majestic. I never knew a rogue to cut so
fat; his villainy was ample, like his belly, and I could scarce
find it in my heart to hold him responsible for either. He was
good enough to drop into the autobiographical; telling me how the
farm, in spite of the war and the high prices, had proved a
disappointment; how there was 'a sight of cold, wet land as you
come along the 'igh-road'; how the winds and rains and the seasons
had been misdirected, it seemed 'o' purpose'; how Mrs. Fenn had
died - 'I lost her coming two year agone; a remarkable fine woman,
my old girl, sir! if you'll excuse me,' he added, with a burst of
humility. In short, he gave me an opportunity of studying John
Bull, as I may say, stuffed naked - his greed, his usuriousness,
his hypocrisy, his perfidy of the back-stairs, all swelled to the
superlative - such as was well worth the little disarray and
fluster of our passage in the hall.
CHAPTER XIII - I MEET TWO OF MY COUNTRYMEN
AS soon as I judged it safe, and that was not before Burchell Fenn
had talked himself back into his breath and a complete good humour,
I proposed he should introduce me to the French officers,
henceforth to become my fellow-passengers. There were two of them,
it appeared, and my heart beat as I approached the door. The
specimen of Perfidious Albion whom I had just been studying gave me
the stronger zest for my fellow-countrymen. I could have embraced
them; I could have wept on their necks. And all the time I was
going to a disappointment.
It was in a spacious and low room, with an outlook on the court,
that I found them bestowed. In the good days of that house the
apartment had probably served as a library, for there were traces
of shelves along the wainscot. Four or five mattresses lay on the
floor in a corner, with a frowsy heap of bedding; near by was a
basin and a cube of soap; a rude kitchen-table and some deal chairs
stood together at the far end; and the room was illuminated by no
less than four windows, and warmed by a little, crazy, sidelong
grate, propped up with bricks in the vent of a hospitable chimney,
in which a pile of coals smoked prodigiously and gave out a few
starveling flames. An old, frail, white-haired officer sat in one
of the chairs, which he had drawn close to this apology for a fire.
He was wrapped in a camlet cloak, of which the collar was turned
up, his knees touched the bars, his hands were spread in the very
smoke, and yet he shivered for cold. The second - a big, florid,
fine animal of a man, whose every gesture labelled him the cock of
the walk and the admiration of the ladies - had apparently
despaired of the fire, and now strode up and down, sneezing hard,
bitterly blowing his nose, and proffering a continual stream of
bluster, complaint, and barrack-room oaths.
Fenn showed me in with the brief form of introduction: 'Gentlemen
all, this here's another fare!' and was gone again at once. The
old man gave me but the one glance out of lack-lustre eyes; and
even as he looked a shiver took him as sharp as a hiccough. But
the other, who represented to admiration the picture of a Beau in a
Catarrh, stared at me arrogantly.
'And who are you, sir?' he asked.
I made the military salute to my superiors.
'Champdivers, private, Eighth of the Line,' said I.
'Pretty business!' said he. 'And you are going on with us? Three
in a cart, and a great trolloping private at that! And who is to
pay for you, my fine fellow?' he inquired.
'If monsieur comes to that,' I answered civilly, 'who paid for
him?'
'Oh, if you choose to play the wit!' said he, - and began to rail
at large upon his destiny, the weather, the cold, the danger and
the expense of the escape, and, above all, the cooking of the
accursed English. It seemed to annoy him particularly that I
should have joined their party. 'If you knew what you were doing,
thirty thousand millions of pigs! you would keep yourself to
yourself! The horses can't drag the cart; the roads are all ruts
and swamps. No longer ago than last night the Colonel and I had to
march half the way - thunder of God! - half the way to the knees in
mud - and I with this infernal cold - and the danger of detection!
Happily we met no one: a desert - a real desert - like the whole
abominable country! Nothing to eat - no, sir, there is nothing to
eat but raw cow and greens boiled in water - nor to drink but
Worcestershire sauce! Now I, with my catarrh, I have no appetite;
is it not so? Well, if I were in France, I should have a good soup
with a crust in it, an omelette, a fowl in rice, a partridge in
cabbages - things to tempt me, thunder of God! But here - day of
God! - what a country! And cold, too! They talk about Russia -
this is all the cold I want! And the people - look at them! What
a race! Never any handsome men; never any fine officers!' - and he
looked down complacently for a moment at his waist - 'And the women
- what faggots! No, that is one point clear, I cannot stomach the
English!'
There was something in this man so antipathetic to me, as sent the
mustard into my nose. I can never bear your bucks and dandies,
even when they are decent-looking and well dressed; and the Major -
for that was his rank - was the image of a flunkey in good luck.
Even to be in agreement with him, or to seem to be so, was more
than I could make out to endure.
'You could scarce be expected to stomach them,' said I civilly,
'after having just digested your parole.'
He whipped round on his heel and turned on me a countenance which I
dare say he imagined to be awful; but another fit of sneezing cut
him off ere he could come the length of speech.
'I have not tried the dish myself,' I took the opportunity to add.
'It is said to be unpalatable. Did monsieur find it so?'
With surprising vivacity the Colonel woke from his lethargy. He
was between us ere another word could pass.
'Shame, gentlemen!' he said. 'Is this a time for Frenchmen and
fellow-soldiers to fall out? We are in the midst of our enemies; a
quarrel, a loud word, may suffice to plunge us back into
irretrievable distress. MONSIEUR LE COMMANDANT, you have been
gravely offended. I make it my request, I make it my prayer - if
need be, I give you my orders - that the matter shall stand by
until we come safe to France. Then, if you please, I will serve
you in any capacity. And for you, young man, you have shown all
the cruelty and carelessness of youth. This gentleman is your
superior; he is no longer young' - at which word you are to
conceive the Major's face. 'It is admitted he has broken his
parole. I know not his reason, and no more do you. It might be
patriotism in this hour of our country's adversity, it might be
humanity, necessity; you know not what in the least, and you permit
yourself to reflect on his honour. To break parole may be a
subject for pity and not derision. I have broken mine - I, a
colonel of the Empire. And why? I have been years negotiating my
exchange, and it cannot be managed; those who have influence at the
Ministry of War continually rush in before me, and I have to wait,
and my daughter at home is in a decline. I am going to see my
daughter at last, and it is my only concern lest I should have
delayed too long. She is ill, and very ill, - at death's door.
Nothing is left me but my daughter, my Emperor, and my honour; and
I give my honour, blame me for it who dare!'
At this my heart smote me.
'For God's sake,' I cried, 'think no more of what I have said! A
parole? what is a parole against life and death and love? I ask
your pardon; this gentleman's also. As long as I shall be with
you, you shall not have cause to complain of me again. I pray God
you will find your daughter alive and restored.'
'That is past praying for,' said the Colonel; and immediately the
brief fire died out of him, and, returning to the hearth, he
relapsed into his former abstraction.
But I was not so easy to compose. The knowledge of the poor
gentleman's trouble, and the sight of his face, had filled me with
the bitterness of remorse; and I insisted upon shaking hands with
the Major (which he did with a very ill grace), and abounded in
palinodes and apologies.
'After all,' said I, 'who am I to talk? I am in the luck to be a
private soldier; I have no parole to give or to keep; once I am
over the rampart, I am as free as air. I beg you to believe that I
regret from my soul the use of these ungenerous expressions. Allow
me . . . Is there no way in this damned house to attract attention?
Where is this fellow, Fenn?'
I ran to one of the windows and threw it open. Fenn, who was at
the moment passing below in the court, cast up his arms like one in
despair, called to me to keep back, plunged into the house, and
appeared next moment in the doorway of the chamber.
'Oh, sir!' says he, 'keep away from those there windows. A body
might see you from the back lane.'
'It is registered,' said I. 'Henceforward I will be a mouse for
precaution and a ghost for invisibility. But in the meantime, for
God's sake, fetch us a bottle of brandy! Your room is as damp as
the bottom of a well, and these gentlemen are perishing of cold.'
So soon as I had paid him (for everything, I found, must be paid in
advance), I turned my attention to the fire, and whether because I
threw greater energy into the business, or because the coals were
now warmed and the time ripe, I soon started a blaze that made the
chimney roar again. The shine of it, in that dark, rainy day,
seemed to reanimate the Colonel like a blink of sun. With the
outburst of the flames, besides, a draught was established, which
immediately delivered us from the plague of smoke; and by the time
Fenn returned, carrying a bottle under his arm and a single tumbler
in his hand, there was already an air of gaiety in the room that
did the heart good.
I poured out some of the brandy.
'Colonel,' said I, 'I am a young man and a private soldier. I have
not been long in this room, and already I have shown the petulance
that belongs to the one character and the ill manners that you may
look for in the other. Have the humanity to pass these slips over,
and honour me so far as to accept this glass.'
'My lad,' says he, waking up and blinking at me with an air of
suspicion, 'are you sure you can afford it?'
I assured him I could.
'I thank you, then: I am very cold.' He took the glass out, and a
little colour came in his face. 'I thank you again,' said he. 'It
goes to the heart.'
The Major, when I motioned him to help himself, did so with a good
deal of liberality; continued to do so for the rest of the morning,
now with some sort of apology, now with none at all; and the bottle
began to look foolish before dinner was served. It was such a meal
as he had himself predicted: beef, greens, potatoes, mustard in a
teacup, and beer in a brown jug that was all over hounds, horses,
and hunters, with a fox at the fat end and a gigantic John Bull -
for all the world like Fenn - sitting in the midst in a bob-wig and
smoking tobacco. The beer was a good brew, but not good enough for
the Major; he laced it with brandy - for his cold, he said; and in
this curative design the remainder of the bottle ebbed away. He
called my attention repeatedly to the circumstance; helped me
pointedly to the dregs, threw the bottle in the air and played
tricks with it; and at last, having exhausted his ingenuity, and
seeing me remain quite blind to every hint, he ordered and paid for
another himself.
As for the Colonel, he ate nothing, sat sunk in a muse, and only
awoke occasionally to a sense of where he was, and what he was
supposed to be doing. On each of these occasions he showed a
gratitude and kind courtesy that endeared him to me beyond
expression. 'Champdivers, my lad, your health!' he would say.
'The Major and I had a very arduous march last night, and I
positively thought I should have eaten nothing, but your fortunate
idea of the brandy has made quite a new man of me - quite a new
man.' And he would fall to with a great air of heartiness, cut
himself a mouthful, and, before he had swallowed it, would have
forgotten his dinner, his company, the place where he then was, and
the escape he was engaged on, and become absorbed in the vision of
a sick-room and a dying girl in France. The pathos of this
continual preoccupation, in a man so old, sick, and over-weary, and
whom I looked upon as a mere bundle of dying bones and death-pains,
put me wholly from my victuals: it seemed there was an element of
sin, a kind of rude bravado of youth, in the mere relishing of food
at the same table with this tragic father; and though I was well
enough used to the coarse, plain diet of the English, I ate scarce
more than himself. Dinner was hardly over before he succumbed to a
lethargic sleep; lying on one of the mattresses with his limbs
relaxed, and his breath seemingly suspended - the very image of
dissolution.
This left the Major and myself alone at the table. You must not
suppose our TETE-A-TETE was long, but it was a lively period while
it lasted. He drank like a fish or an Englishman; shouted, beat
the table, roared out songs, quarrelled, made it up again, and at
last tried to throw the dinner-plates through the window, a feat of
which he was at that time quite incapable. For a party of
fugitives, condemned to the most rigorous discretion, there was
never seen so noisy a carnival; and through it all the Colonel
continued to sleep like a child. Seeing the Major so well
advanced, and no retreat possible, I made a fair wind of a foul
one, keeping his glass full, pushing him with toasts; and sooner
than I could have dared to hope, he became drowsy and incoherent.
With the wrong-headedness of all such sots, he would not be
persuaded to lie down upon one of the mattresses until I had
stretched myself upon another. But the comedy was soon over; soon
he slept the sleep of the just, and snored like a military music;
and I might get up again and face (as best I could) the excessive
tedium of the afternoon.
I had passed the night before in a good bed; I was denied the
resource of slumber; and there was nothing open for me but to pace
the apartment, maintain the fire, and brood on my position. I
compared yesterday and to-day - the safety, comfort, jollity, openair
exercise and pleasant roadside inns of the one, with the
tedium, anxiety, and discomfort of the other. I remembered that I
was in the hands of Fenn, who could not be more false - though he
might be more vindictive - than I fancied him. I looked forward to
nights of pitching in the covered cart, and days of monotony in I
knew not what hiding-places; and my heart failed me, and I was in
two minds whether to slink off ere it was too late, and return to
my former solitary way of travel. But the Colonel stood in the
path. I had not seen much of him; but already I judged him a man
of a childlike nature - with that sort of innocence and courtesy
that, I think, is only to be found in old soldiers or old priests -
and broken with years and sorrow. I could not turn my back on his
distress; could not leave him alone with the selfish trooper who
snored on the next mattress. 'Champdivers, my lad, your health!'
said a voice in my ear, and stopped me - and there are few things I
am more glad of in the retrospect than that it did.
It must have been about four in the afternoon - at least the rain
had taken off, and the sun was setting with some wintry pomp - when
the current of my reflections was effectually changed by the
arrival of two visitors in a gig. They were farmers of the
neighbourhood, I suppose - big, burly fellows in great-coats and
top-boots, mightily flushed with liquor when they arrived, and,
before they left, inimitably drunk. They stayed long in the
kitchen with Burchell, drinking, shouting, singing, and keeping it
up; and the sound of their merry minstrelsy kept me a kind of
company. The night fell, and the shine of the fire brightened and
blinked on the panelled wall. Our illuminated windows must have
been visible not only from the back lane of which Fenn had spoken,
but from the court where the farmers' gig awaited them. In the far
end of the firelit room lay my companions, the one silent, the
other clamorously noisy, the images of death and drunkenness.
Little wonder if I were tempted to join in the choruses below, and
sometimes could hardly refrain from laughter, and sometimes, I
believe, from tears - so unmitigated was the tedium, so cruel the
suspense, of this period.
At last, about six at night, I should fancy, the noisy minstrels
appeared in the court, headed by Fenn with a lantern, and knocking
together as they came. The visitors clambered noisily into the
gig, one of them shook the reins, and they were snatched out of
sight and hearing with a suddenness that partook of the nature of
prodigy. I am well aware there is a Providence for drunken men,
that holds the reins for them and presides over their troubles;
doubtless he had his work cut out for him with this particular
gigful! Fenn rescued his toes with an ejaculation from under the
departing wheels, and turned at once with uncertain steps and
devious lantern to the far end of the court. There, through the
open doors of a coach-house, the shock-headed lad was already to be
seen drawing forth the covered cart. If I wished any private talk
with our host, it must be now or never.
Accordingly I groped my way downstairs, and came to him as he
looked on at and lighted the harnessing of the horses.
'The hour approaches when we have to part,' said I; 'and I shall be
obliged if you will tell your servant to drop me at the nearest
point for Dunstable. I am determined to go so far with our
friends, Colonel X and Major Y, but my business is peremptory, and
it takes me to the neighbourhood of Dunstable.'
Orders were given to my satisfaction, with an obsequiousness that
seemed only inflamed by his potations.
CHAPTER XIV - TRAVELS OF THE COVERED CART
MY companions were aroused with difficulty: the Colonel, poor old
gentleman, to a sort of permanent dream, in which you could say of
him only that he was very deaf and anxiously polite; the Major
still maudlin drunk. We had a dish of tea by the fireside, and
then issued like criminals into the scathing cold of the night.
For the weather had in the meantime changed. Upon the cessation of
the rain, a strict frost had succeeded. The moon, being young, was
already near the zenith when we started, glittered everywhere on
sheets of ice, and sparkled in ten thousand icicles. A more
unpromising night for a journey it was hard to conceive. But in
the course of the afternoon the horses had been well roughed; and
King (for such was the name of the shock-headed lad) was very
positive that he could drive us without misadventure. He was as
good as his word; indeed, despite a gawky air, he was simply
invaluable in his present employment, showing marked sagacity in
all that concerned the care of horses, and guiding us by one short
cut after another for days, and without a fault.
The interior of that engine of torture, the covered cart, was
fitted with a bench, on which we took our places; the door was
shut; in a moment, the night closed upon us solid and stifling; and
we felt that we were being driven carefully out of the courtyard.
Careful was the word all night, and it was an alleviation of our
miseries that we did not often enjoy. In general, as we were
driven the better part of the night and day, often at a pretty
quick pace and always through a labyrinth of the most infamous
country lanes and by-roads, we were so bruised upon the bench, so
dashed against the top and sides of the cart, that we reached the
end of a stage in truly pitiable case, sometimes flung ourselves
down without the formality of eating, made but one sleep of it
until the hour of departure returned, and were only properly
awakened by the first jolt of the renewed journey. There were
interruptions, at times, that we hailed as alleviations. At times
the cart was bogged, once it was upset, and we must alight and lend
the driver the assistance of our arms; at times, too (as on the
occasion when I had first encountered it), the horses gave out, and
we had to trail alongside in mud or frost until the first peep of
daylight, or the approach to a hamlet or a high road, bade us
disappear like ghosts into our prison.
The main roads of England are incomparable for excellence, of a
beautiful smoothness, very ingeniously laid down, and so well kept
that in most weathers you could take your dinner off any part of
them without distaste. On them, to the note of the bugle, the mail
did its sixty miles a day; innumerable chaises whisked after the
bobbing postboys; or some young blood would flit by in a curricle
and tandem, to the vast delight and danger of the lieges. On them,
the slow-pacing waggons made a music of bells, and all day long the
travellers on horse-back and the travellers on foot (like happy Mr.
St. Ives so little a while before!) kept coming and going, and
baiting and gaping at each other, as though a fair were due, and
they were gathering to it from all England. No, nowhere in the
world is travel so great a pleasure as in that country. But
unhappily our one need was to be secret; and all this rapid and
animated picture of the road swept quite apart from us, as we
lumbered up hill and down dale, under hedge and over stone, among
circuitous byways. Only twice did I receive, as it were, a whiff
of the highway. The first reached my ears alone. I might have
been anywhere. I only knew I was walking in the dark night and
among ruts, when I heard very far off, over the silent country that
surrounded us, the guard's horn wailing its signal to the next
post-house for a change of horses. It was like the voice of the
day heard in darkness, a voice of the world heard in prison, the
note of a cock crowing in the mid-seas - in short, I cannot tell
you what it was like, you will have to fancy for yourself - but I
could have wept to hear it. Once we were belated: the cattle could
hardly crawl, the day was at hand, it was a nipping, rigorous
morning, King was lashing his horses, I was giving an arm to the
old Colonel, and the Major was coughing in our rear. I must
suppose that King was a thought careless, being nearly in
desperation about his team, and, in spite of the cold morning,
breathing hot with his exertions. We came, at last, a little
before sunrise to the summit of a hill, and saw the high-road
passing at right angles through an open country of meadows and
hedgerow pollards; and not only the York mail, speeding smoothly at
the gallop of the four horses, but a post-chaise besides, with the
post-boy titupping briskly, and the traveller himself putting his
head out of the window, but whether to breathe the dawn, or the
better to observe the passage of the mail, I do not know. So that
we enjoyed for an instant a picture of free life on the road, in
its most luxurious forms of despatch and comfort. And thereafter,
with a poignant feeling of contrast in our hearts, we must mount
again into our wheeled dungeon.
We came to our stages at all sorts of odd hours, and they were in
all kinds of odd places. I may say at once that my first
experience was my best. Nowhere again were we so well entertained
as at Burchell Fenn's. And this, I suppose, was natural, and
indeed inevitable, in so long and secret a journey. The first
stop, we lay six hours in a barn standing by itself in a poor,
marshy orchard, and packed with hay; to make it more attractive, we
were told it had been the scene of an abominable murder, and was
now haunted. But the day was beginning to break, and our fatigue
was too extreme for visionary terrors. The second or third, we
alighted on a barren heath about midnight, built a fire to warm us
under the shelter of some thorns, supped like beggars on bread and
a piece of cold bacon, and slept like gipsies with our feet to the
fire. In the meanwhile, King was gone with the cart, I know not
where, to get a change of horses, and it was late in the dark
morning when he returned and we were able to resume our journey.
In the middle of another night, we came to a stop by an ancient,
whitewashed cottage of two stories; a privet hedge surrounded it;
the frosty moon shone blankly on the upper windows; but through
those of the kitchen the firelight was seen glinting on the roof
and reflected from the dishes on the wall. Here, after much
hammering on the door, King managed to arouse an old crone from the
chimney-corner chair, where she had been dozing in the watch; and
we were had in, and entertained with a dish of hot tea. This old
lady was an aunt of Burchell Fenn's - and an unwilling partner in
his dangerous trade. Though the house stood solitary, and the hour
was an unlikely one for any passenger upon the road, King and she
conversed in whispers only. There was something dismal, something
of the sick-room, in this perpetual, guarded sibilation. The
apprehensions of our hostess insensibly communicated themselves to
every one present. We ate like mice in a cat's ear; if one of us
jingled a teaspoon, all would start; and when the hour came to take
the road again, we drew a long breath of relief, and climbed to our
places in the covered cart with a positive sense of escape. The
most of our meals, however, were taken boldly at hedgerow
alehouses, usually at untimely hours of the day, when the clients
were in the field or the farmyard at labour. I shall have to tell
presently of our last experience of the sort, and how unfortunately
it miscarried; but as that was the signal for my separation from my
fellow-travellers, I must first finish with them.
I had never any occasion to waver in my first judgment of the
Colonel. The old gentleman seemed to me, and still seems in the
retrospect, the salt of the earth. I had occasion to see him in
the extremes of hardship, hunger and cold; he was dying, and he
looked it; and yet I cannot remember any hasty, harsh, or impatient
word to have fallen from his lips. On the contrary, he ever showed
himself careful to please; and even if he rambled in his talk,
rambled always gently - like a humane, half-witted old hero, true
to his colours to the last. I would not dare to say how often he
awoke suddenly from a lethargy, and told us again, as though we had
never heard it, the story of how he had earned the cross, how it
had been given him by the hand of the Emperor, and of the innocent
- and, indeed, foolish - sayings of his daughter when he returned
with it on his bosom. He had another anecdote which he was very
apt to give, by way of a rebuke, when the Major wearied us beyond
endurance with dispraises of the English. This was an account of
the BRAVES GENS with whom he had been boarding. True enough, he
was a man so simple and grateful by nature, that the most common
civilities were able to touch him to the heart, and would remain
written in his memory; but from a thousand inconsiderable but
conclusive indications, I gathered that this family had really
loved him, and loaded him with kindness. They made a fire in his
bedroom, which the sons and daughters tended with their own hands;
letters from France were looked for with scarce more eagerness by
himself than by these alien sympathisers; when they came, he would
read them aloud in the parlour to the assembled family, translating
as he went. The Colonel's English was elementary; his daughter not
in the least likely to be an amusing correspondent; and, as I
conceived these scenes in the parlour, I felt sure the interest
centred in the Colonel himself, and I thought I could feel in my
own heart that mixture of the ridiculous and the pathetic, the
contest of tears and laughter, which must have shaken the bosoms of
the family. Their kindness had continued till the end. It appears
they were privy to his flight, the camlet cloak had been lined
expressly for him, and he was the bearer of a letter from the
daughter of the house to his own daughter in Paris. The last
evening, when the time came to say good-night, it was tacitly known
to all that they were to look upon his face no more. He rose,
pleading fatigue, and turned to the daughter, who had been his
chief ally: 'You will permit me, my dear - to an old and very
unhappy soldier - and may God bless you for your goodness!' The
girl threw her arms about his neck and sobbed upon his bosom; the
lady of the house burst into tears; 'ET JE VOUS LE JURE, LE PERE SE
MOUCHAIT!' quoth the Colonel, twisting his moustaches with a
cavalry air, and at the same time blinking the water from his eyes
at the mere recollection.
It was a good thought to me that he had found these friends in
captivity; that he had started on this fatal journey from so
cordial a farewell. He had broken his parole for his daughter:
that he should ever live to reach her sick-bed, that he could
continue to endure to an end the hardships, the crushing fatigue,
the savage cold, of our pilgrimage, I had early ceased to hope. I
did for him what I was able, - nursed him, kept him covered,
watched over his slumbers, sometimes held him in my arms at the
rough places of the road. 'Champdivers,' he once said, 'you are
like a son to me - like a son.' It is good to remember, though at
the time it put me on the rack. All was to no purpose. Fast as we
were travelling towards France, he was travelling faster still to
another destination. Daily he grew weaker and more indifferent.
An old rustic accent of Lower Normandy reappeared in his speech,
from which it had long been banished, and grew stronger; old words
of the PATOIS, too: OUISTREHAM, MATRASSE, and others, the sense of
which we were sometimes unable to guess. On the very last day he
began again his eternal story of the cross and the Emperor. The
Major, who was particularly ill, or at least particularly cross,
uttered some angry words of protest. 'PARDONNEZ-MOI, MONSIEUR LE
COMMANDANT, MAIS C'EST POUR MONSIEUR,' said the Colonel: 'Monsieur
has not yet heard the circumstance, and is good enough to feel an
interest.' Presently after, however, he began to lose the thread
of his narrative; and at last: 'QUE QUE J'AI? JE M'EMBROUILLE!'
says he, 'SUFFIT: S'M'A LA DONNE, ET BERTHE EN ETAIT BIEN
CONTENTE.' It struck me as the falling of the curtain or the
closing of the sepulchre doors.
Sure enough, in but a little while after, he fell into a sleep as
gentle as an infant's, which insensibly changed into the sleep of
death. I had my arm about his body at the time and remarked
nothing, unless it were that he once stretched himself a little, so
kindly the end came to that disastrous life. It was only at our
evening halt that the Major and I discovered we were travelling
alone with the poor clay. That night we stole a spade from a field
- I think near Market Bosworth - and a little farther on, in a wood
of young oak trees and by the light of King's lantern, we buried
the old soldier of the Empire with both prayers and tears.
We had needs invent Heaven if it had not been revealed to us; there
are some things that fall so bitterly ill on this side Time! As
for the Major, I have long since forgiven him. He broke the news
to the poor Colonel's daughter; I am told he did it kindly; and
sure, nobody could have done it without tears! His share of
purgatory will be brief; and in this world, as I could not very
well praise him, I have suppressed his name. The Colonel's also,
for the sake of his parole. REQUIESCAT.
CHAPTER XV - THE ADVENTURE OF THE ATTORNEY'S CLERK
I HAVE mentioned our usual course, which was to eat in
inconsiderable wayside hostelries, known to King. It was a
dangerous business; we went daily under fire to satisfy our
appetite, and put our head in the loin's mouth for a piece of
bread. Sometimes, to minimise the risk, we would all dismount
before we came in view of the house, straggle in severally, and
give what orders we pleased, like disconnected strangers. In like
manner we departed, to find the cart at an appointed place, some
half a mile beyond. The Colonel and the Major had each a word or
two of English - God help their pronunciation! But they did well
enough to order a rasher and a pot or call a reckoning; and, to say
truth, these country folks did not give themselves the pains, and
had scarce the knowledge, to be critical.
About nine or ten at night the pains of hunger and cold drove us to
an alehouse in the flats of Bedfordshire, not far from Bedford
itself. In the inn kitchen was a long, lean, characteristiclooking
fellow of perhaps forty, dressed in black. He sat on a
settle by the fireside, smoking a long pipe, such as they call a
yard of clay. His hat and wig were hanged upon the knob behind
him, his head as bald as a bladder of lard, and his expression very
shrewd, cantankerous, and inquisitive. He seemed to value himself
above his company, to give himself the airs of a man of the world
among that rustic herd; which was often no more than his due;
being, as I afterwards discovered, an attorney's clerk. I took
upon myself the more ungrateful part of arriving last; and by the
time I entered on the scene the Major was already served at a side
table. Some general conversation must have passed, and I smelled
danger in the air. The Major looked flustered, the attorney's
clerk triumphant, and three or four peasants in smock-frocks (who
sat about the fire to play chorus) had let their pipes go out.
'Give you good evening, sir!' said the attorney's clerk to me.
'The same to you, sir,' said I.
'I think this one will do,' quoth the clerk to the yokels with a
wink; and then, as soon as I had given my order, 'Pray, sir,
whither are you bound?' he added.
'Sir,' said I, 'I am not one of those who speak either of their
business or their destination in houses of public entertainment.'
'A good answer,' said he, 'and an excellent principle. Sir, do you
speak French?'
'Why, no, sir,' said I. 'A little Spanish at your service.'
'But you know the French accent, perhaps?' said the clerk.
'Well do I do that!' said I. 'The French accent? Why, I believe I
can tell a Frenchman in ten words.'
'Here is a puzzle for you, then!' he said. 'I have no material
doubt myself, but some of these gentlemen are more backward. The
lack of education, you know. I make bold to say that a man cannot
walk, cannot hear, and cannot see, without the blessings of
education.'
He turned to the Major, whose food plainly stuck in his throat.
'Now, sir,' pursued the clerk, 'let me have the pleasure to hear
your voice again. Where are you going, did you say?'
'Sare, I am go-ing to Lon-don,' said the Major.
I could have flung my plate at him to be such an ass, and to have
so little a gift of languages where that was the essential.
'What think ye of that?' said the clerk. 'Is that French enough?'
'Good God!' cried I, leaping up like one who should suddenly
perceive an acquaintance, 'is this you, Mr. Dubois? Why, who would
have dreamed of encountering you so far from home?' As I spoke, I
shook hands with the Major heartily; and turning to our tormentor,
'Oh, sir, you may be perfectly reassured! This is a very honest
fellow, a late neighbour of mine in the city of Carlisle.'
I thought the attorney looked put out; I little knew the man!
'But he is French,' said he, 'for all that?'
'Ay, to be sure!' said I. 'A Frenchman of the emigration! None of
your Buonaparte lot. I will warrant his views of politics to be as
sound as your own.'
'What is a little strange,' said the clerk quietly, 'is that Mr.
Dubois should deny it.'
I got it fair in the face, and took it smiling; but the shock was
rude, and in the course of the next words I contrived to do what I
have rarely done, and make a slip in my English. I kept my liberty
and life by my proficiency all these months, and for once that I
failed, it is not to be supposed that I would make a public
exhibition of the details. Enough, that it was a very little
error, and one that might have passed ninety-nine times in a
hundred. But my limb of the law was as swift to pick it up as
though he had been by trade a master of languages.
'Aha!' cries he; 'and you are French, too! Your tongue bewrays
you. Two Frenchmen coming into an alehouse, severally and
accidentally, not knowing each other, at ten of the clock at night,
in the middle of Bedfordshire? No, sir, that shall not pass! You
are all prisoners escaping, if you are nothing worse. Consider
yourselves under arrest. I have to trouble you for your papers.'
'Where is your warrant, if you come to that?' said I. 'My papers!
A likely thing that I would show my papers on the IPSE DIXIT of an
unknown fellow in a hedge alehouse!'
'Would you resist the law?' says he.
'Not the law, sir!' said I. 'I hope I am too good a subject for
that. But for a nameless fellow with a bald head and a pair of
gingham small-clothes, why certainly! 'Tis my birthright as an
Englishman. Where's MAGNA CHARTA, else?'
'We will see about that,' says he; and then, addressing the
assistants, 'where does the constable live?'
'Lord love you, sir!' cried the landlord, 'what are you thinking
of? The constable at past ten at night! Why, he's abed and
asleep, and good and drunk two hours agone!'
'Ah that a' be!' came in chorus from the yokels.
The attorney's clerk was put to a stand. He could not think of
force; there was little sign of martial ardour about the landlord,
and the peasants were indifferent - they only listened, and gaped,
and now scratched a head, and now would get a light to their pipes
from the embers on the hearth. On the other hand, the Major and I
put a bold front on the business and defied him, not without some
ground of law. In this state of matters he proposed I should go
along with him to one Squire Merton, a great man of the
neighbourhood, who was in the commission of the peace, the end of
his avenue but three lanes away. I told him I would not stir a
foot for him if it were to save his soul. Next he proposed I
should stay all night where I was, and the constable could see to
my affair in the morning, when he was sober. I replied I should go
when and where I pleased; that we were lawful travellers in the
fear of God and the king, and I for one would suffer myself to be
stayed by nobody. At the same time, I was thinking the matter had
lasted altogether too long, and I determined to bring it to an end
at once.
'See here,' said I, getting up, for till now I had remained
carelessly seated, 'there's only one way to decide a thing like
this - only one way that's right ENGLISH - and that's man to man.
Take off your coat, sir, and these gentlemen shall see fair play.'
At this there came a look in his eye that I could not mistake. His
education had been neglected in one essential and eminently British
particular: he could not box. No more could I, you may say; but
then I had the more impudence - and I had made the proposal.
'He says I'm no Englishman, but the proof of the pudding is the
eating of it,' I continued. And here I stripped my coat and fell
into the proper attitude, which was just about all I knew of this
barbarian art. 'Why, sir, you seem to me to hang back a little,'
said I. 'Come, I'll meet you; I'll give you an appetiser - though
hang me if I can understand the man that wants any enticement to
hold up his hands.' I drew a bank-note out of my fob and tossed it
to the landlord. 'There are the stakes,' said I. 'I'll fight you
for first blood, since you seem to make so much work about it. If
you tap my claret first, there are five guineas for you, and I'll
go with you to any squire you choose to mention. If I tap yours,
you'll perhaps let on that I'm the better man, and allow me to go
about my lawful business at my own time and convenience, by God; is
that fair, my lads?' says I, appealing to the company.
'Ay, ay,' said the chorus of chawbacons; 'he can't say no fairer
nor that, he can't. Take off thy coat master!'
The limb of the law was now on the wrong side of public opinion,
and, what heartened me to go on, the position was rapidly changing
in our favour. Already the Major was paying his shot to the very
indifferent landlord, and I could see the white face of King at the
back-door, making signals of haste.
'Oho!' quoth my enemy, 'you are as full of doubles as a fox, are
you not? But I see through you; I see through and through you.
You would change the venue, would you?'
'I may be transparent, sir,' says I, 'but if you'll do me the
favour to stand up, you'll find I can hit dam hard.'
'Which is a point, if you will observe, that I had never called in
question,' said he. 'Why, you ignorant clowns,' he proceeded,
addressing the company, 'can't you see the fellow's gulling you
before your eyes? Can't you see that he has changed the point upon
me? I say he's a French prisoner, and he answers that he can box!
What has that to do with it? I would not wonder but what he can
dance, too - they're all dancing masters over there. I say, and I
stick to it, that he's a Frenchy. He says he isn't. Well then,
let him out with his papers, if he has them! If he had, would he
not show them? If he had, would he not jump at the idea of going
to Squire Merton, a man you all know? Now, you are all plain,
straightforward Bedfordshire men, and I wouldn't ask a better lot
to appeal to. You're not the kind to be talked over with any
French gammon, and he's plenty of that. But let me tell him, he
can take his pigs to another market; they'll never do here; they'll
never go down in Bedfordshire. Why! look at the man! Look at his
feet! Has anybody got a foot in the room like that? See how he
stands! do any of you fellows stand like that? Does the landlord,
there? Why, he has Frenchman wrote all over him, as big as a signpost!'
This was all very well; and in a different scene I might even have
been gratified by his remarks; but I saw clearly, if I were to
allow him to talk, he might turn the tables on me altogether. He
might not be much of a hand at boxing; but I was much mistaken, or
he had studied forensic eloquence in a good school. In this
predicament I could think of nothing more ingenious than to burst
out of the house, under the pretext of an ungovernable rage. It
was certainly not very ingenious - it was elementary, but I had no
choice.
'You white-livered dog!' I broke out. 'Do you dare to tell me
you're an Englishman, and won't fight? But I'll stand no more of
this! I leave this place, where I've been insulted! Here! what's
to pay? Pay yourself!' I went on, offering the landlord a handful
of silver, 'and give me back my bank-note!'
The landlord, following his usual policy of obliging everybody,
offered no opposition to my design. The position of my adversary
was now thoroughly bad. He had lost my two companions. He was on
the point of losing me also. There was plainly no hope of arousing
the company to help; and watching him with a corner of my eye, I
saw him hesitate for a moment. The next, he had taken down his hat
and his wig, which was of black horsehair; and I saw him draw from
behind the settle a vast hooded great-coat and a small valise.
'The devil!' thought I: 'is the rascal going to follow me?'
I was scarce clear of the inn before the limb of the law was at my
heels. I saw his face plain in the moonlight; and the most
resolute purpose showed in it, along with an unmoved composure. A
chill went over me. 'This is no common adventure,' thinks I to
myself. 'You have got hold of a man of character, St. Ives! A
bite-hard, a bull-dog, a weasel is on your trail; and how are you
to throw him off?' Who was he? By some of his expressions I
judged he was a hanger-on of courts. But in what character had he
followed the assizes? As a simple spectator, as a lawyer's clerk,
as a criminal himself, or - last and worst supposition - as a Bowstreet
'runner'?
The cart would wait for me, perhaps, half a mile down our onward
road, which I was already following. And I told myself that in a
few minutes' walking, Bow-street runner or not, I should have him
at my mercy. And then reflection came to me in time. Of all
things, one was out of the question. Upon no account must this
obtrusive fellow see the cart. Until I had killed or shook him
off, I was quite divorced from my companions - alone, in the midst
of England, on a frosty by-way leading whither I knew not, with a
sleuth-hound at my heels, and never a friend but the holly-stick!
We came at the same time to a crossing of lanes. The branch to the
left was overhung with trees, deeply sunken and dark. Not a ray of
moonlight penetrated its recesses; and I took it at a venture. The
wretch followed my example in silence; and for some time we
crunched together over frozen pools without a word. Then he found
his voice, with a chuckle.
'This is not the way to Mr. Merton's,' said he.
'No?' said I. 'It is mine, however.'
'And therefore mine,' said he.
Again we fell silent; and we may thus have covered half a mile
before the lane, taking a sudden turn, brought us forth again into
the moonshine. With his hooded great-coat on his back, his valise
in his hand, his black wig adjusted, and footing it on the ice with
a sort of sober doggedness of manner, my enemy was changed almost
beyond recognition: changed in everything but a certain dry,
polemical, pedantic air, that spoke of a sedentary occupation and
high stools. I observed, too, that his valise was heavy; and,
putting this and that together, hit upon a plan.
'A seasonable night, sir,' said I. 'What do you say to a bit of
running? The frost has me by the toes.'
'With all the pleasure in life,' says he.
His voice seemed well assured, which pleased me little. However,
there was nothing else to try, except violence, for which it would
always be too soon. I took to my heels accordingly, he after me;
and for some time the slapping of our feet on the hard road might
have been heard a mile away. He had started a pace behind me, and
he finished in the same position. For all his extra years and the
weight of his valise, he had not lost a hair's breadth. The devil
might race him for me - I had enough of it!
And, besides, to run so fast was contrary to my interests. We
could not run long without arriving somewhere. At any moment we
might turn a corner and find ourselves at the lodge-gate of some
Squire Merton, in the midst of a village whose constable was sober,
or in the hands of a patrol. There was no help for it - I must
finish with him on the spot, as long as it was possible. I looked
about me, and the place seemed suitable; never a light, never a
house - nothing but stubble-fields, fallows, and a few stunted
trees. I stopped and eyed him in the moonlight with an angry
stare.
'Enough of this foolery!' said I.
He had tamed, and now faced me full, very pale, but with no sign of
shrinking.
'I am quite of your opinion,' said he. 'You have tried me at the
running; you can try me next at the high jump. It will be all the
same. It must end the one way.'
I made my holly whistle about my head.
'I believe you know what way!' said I. 'We are alone, it is night,
and I am wholly resolved. Are you not frightened?'
'No,' he said, 'not in the smallest. I do not box, sir; but I am
not a coward, as you may have supposed. Perhaps it will simplify
our relations if I tell you at the outset that I walk armed.'
Quick as lightning I made a feint at his head; as quickly he gave
ground, and at the same time I saw a pistol glitter in his hand.
'No more of that, Mr. French-Prisoner!' he said. 'It will do me no
good to have your death at my door.'
'Faith, nor me either!' said I; and I lowered my stick and
considered the man, not without a twinkle of admiration. 'You
see,' I said, 'there is one consideration that you appear to
overlook: there are a great many chances that your pistol may miss
fire.'
'I have a pair,' he returned. 'Never travel without a brace of
barkers.'
'I make you my compliment,' said I. 'You are able to take care of
yourself, and that is a good trait. But, my good man! let us look
at this matter dispassionately. You are not a coward, and no more
am I; we are both men of excellent sense; I have good reason,
whatever it may be, to keep my concerns to myself and to walk
alone. Now I put it to you pointedly, am I likely to stand it? Am
I likely to put up with your continued and - excuse me - highly
impudent INGERENCE into my private affairs?'
'Another French word,' says he composedly.
'Oh! damn your French words!' cried I. 'You seem to be a Frenchman
yourself!'
'I have had many opportunities by which I have profited,' he
explained. 'Few men are better acquainted with the similarities
and differences, whether of idiom or accent, of the two languages.'
'You are a pompous fellow, too!' said I.
'Oh, I can make distinctions, sir,' says he. 'I can talk with
Bedfordshire peasants; and I can express myself becomingly, I hope,
in the company of a gentleman of education like yourself.'
'If you set up to be a gentleman - ' I began.
'Pardon me,' he interrupted: 'I make no such claim. I only see the
nobility and gentry in the way of business. I am quite a plain
person.'
'For the Lord's sake,' I exclaimed, 'set my mind at rest upon one
point. In the name of mystery, who and what are you?'
'I have no cause to be ashamed of my name, sir,' said he, 'nor yet
my trade. I am Thomas Dudgeon, at your service, clerk to Mr.
Daniel Romaine, solicitor of London; High Holborn is our address,
sir.'
It was only by the ecstasy of the relief that I knew how horribly I
had been frightened. I flung my stick on the road.
'Romaine?' I cried. 'Daniel Romaine? An old hunks with a red face
and a big head, and got up like a Quaker? My dear friend, to my
arms!'
'Keep back, I say!' said Dudgeon weakly.
I would not listen to him. With the end of my own alarm, I felt as
if I must infallibly be at the end of all dangers likewise; as if
the pistol that he held in one hand were no more to be feared than
the valise that he carried with the other, and now put up like a
barrier against my advance.
'Keep back, or I declare I will fire,' he was crying. 'Have a
care, for God's sake! My pistol - '
He might scream as be pleased. Willy nilly, I folded him to my
breast, I pressed him there, I kissed his ugly mug as it had never
been kissed before and would never be kissed again; and in the
doing so knocked his wig awry and his hat off. He bleated in my
embrace; so bleats the sheep in the arms of the butcher. The whole
thing, on looking back, appears incomparably reckless and absurd; I
no better than a madman for offering to advance on Dudgeon, and he
no better than a fool for not shooting me while I was about it.
But all's well that ends well; or, as the people in these days kept
singing and whistling on the streets:-
'There's a sweet little cherub that sits up aloft
And looks out for the life of poor Jack.'
'There!' said I, releasing him a little, but still keeping my hands
on his shoulders, 'JE VOUS AI BEL ET BIEN EMBRASSE - and, as you
would say, there is another French word.' With his wig over one
eye, he looked incredibly rueful and put out. 'Cheer up, Dudgeon;
the ordeal is over, you shall be embraced no more. But do, first
of all, for God's-sake, put away your pistol; you handle it as if
you were a cockatrice; some time or other, depend upon it, it will
certainly go off. Here is your hat. No, let me put it on square,
and the wig before it. Never suffer any stress of circumstances to
come between you and the duty you owe to yourself. If you have
nobody else to dress for, dress for God!
'Put your wig straight
On your bald pate,
Keep your chin scraped,
And your figure draped.
Can you match me that? The whole duty of man in a quatrain! And
remark, I do not set up to be a professional bard; these are the
outpourings of a DILETTANTE.'
'But, my dear sir!' he exclaimed.
'But, my dear sir!' I echoed, 'I will allow no man to interrupt the
flow of my ideas. Give me your opinion on my quatrain, or I vow we
shall have a quarrel of it.'
'Certainly you are quite an original,' he said.
'Quite,' said I; 'and I believe I have my counterpart before me.'
'Well, for a choice,' says he, smiling, 'and whether for sense or
poetry, give me
'"Worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow:
The rest is all but leather and prunello."'
'Oh, but that's not fair - that's Pope! It's not original,
Dudgeon. Understand me,' said I, wringing his breast-button, 'the
first duty of all poetry is to be mine, sir - mine. Inspiration
now swells in my bosom, because - to tell you the plain truth, and
descend a little in style - I am devilish relieved at the turn
things have taken. So, I dare say, are you yourself, Dudgeon, if
you would only allow it. And A PROPOS, let me ask you a home
question. Between friends, have you ever fired that pistol?'
'Why, yes, sir,' he replied. 'Twice - at hedgesparrows.'
'And you would have fired at me, you bloody-minded man?' I cried.
'If you go to that, you seemed mighty reckless with your stick,'
said Dudgeon.
'Did I indeed? Well, well, 'tis all past history; ancient as King
Pharamond - which is another French word, if you cared to
accumulate more evidence,' says I. 'But happily we are now the
best of friends, and have all our interests in common.'
'You go a little too fast, if you'll excuse me, Mr. -: I do not
know your name, that I am aware,' said Dudgeon.
'No, to be sure!' said I. 'Never heard of it!'
'A word of explanation - ' he began.
'No, Dudgeon!' I interrupted. 'Be practical; I know what you want,
and the name of it is supper. RIEN NE CREUSE COMME L'EMOTION. I
am hungry myself, and yet I am more accustomed to warlike
palpitations than you, who are but a hunter of hedgesparrows. Let
me look at your face critically: your bill of fare is three slices
of cold rare roast beef, a Welsh rabbit, a pot of stout, and a
glass or two of sound tawny port, old in bottle - the right milk of
Englishmen.' Methought there seemed a brightening in his eye and a
melting about his mouth at this enumeration.
'The night is young,' I continued; 'not much past eleven, for a
wager. Where can we find a good inn? And remark that I say GOOD,
for the port must be up to the occasion - not a headache in a pipe
of it.'
'Really, sir,' he said, smiling a little, 'you have a way of
carrying things - '
'Will nothing make you stick to the subject?' I cried; 'you have
the most irrelevant mind! How do you expect to rise in your
profession? The inn?'
'Well, I will say you are a facetious gentleman!' said he. 'You
must have your way, I see. We are not three miles from Bedford by
this very road.'
'Done!' cried I. 'Bedford be it!'
I tucked his arm under mine, possessed myself of the valise, and
walked him off unresisting. Presently we came to an open piece of
country lying a thought downhill. The road was smooth and free of
ice, the moonshine thin and bright over the meadows and the
leafless trees. I was now honestly done with the purgatory of the
covered cart; I was close to my great-uncle's; I had no more fear
of Mr. Dudgeon; which were all grounds enough for jollity. And I
was aware, besides, of us two as of a pair of tiny and solitary
dolls under the vast frosty cupola of the midnight; the rooms
decked, the moon burnished, the least of the stars lighted, the
floor swept and waxed, and nothing wanting but for the band to
strike up and the dancing to begin. In the exhilaration of my
heart I took the music on myself -
'Merrily danced the Quaker's wife,
And merrily danced the Quaker.'
I broke into that animated and appropriate air, clapped my arm
about Dudgeon's waist, and away down the hill at a dancing step!
He hung back a little at the start, but the impulse of the tune,
the night, and my example, were not to be resisted. A man made of
putty must have danced, and even Dudgeon showed himself to be a
human being. Higher and higher were the capers that we cut; the
moon repeated in shadow our antic footsteps and gestures; and it
came over my mind of a sudden - really like balm - what appearance
of man I was dancing with, what a long bilious countenance he had
shown under his shaven pate, and what a world of trouble the rascal
had given me in the immediate past.
Presently we began to see the lights of Bedford. My Puritanic
companion stopped and disengaged himself.
'This is a trifle INFRA DIG., sir, is it not?' said he. 'A party
might suppose we had been drinking.'
'And so you shall be, Dudgeon,' said I. 'You shall not only be
drinking, you old hypocrite, but you shall be drunk - dead drunk,
sir - and the boots shall put you to bed! We'll warn him when we
go in. Never neglect a precaution; never put off till to-morrow
what you can do to-day!'
But he had no more frivolity to complain of. We finished our stage
and came to the inn-door with decorum, to find the house still
alight and in a bustle with many late arrivals; to give our orders
with a prompt severity which ensured obedience, and to be served
soon after at a side-table, close to the fire and in a blaze of
candle-light, with such a meal as I had been dreaming of for days
past. For days, you are to remember, I had been skulking in the
covered cart, a prey to cold, hunger, and an accumulation of
discomforts that might have daunted the most brave; and the white
table napery, the bright crystal, the reverberation of the fire,
the red curtains, the Turkey carpet, the portraits on the coffeeroom
wall, the placid faces of the two or three late guests who
were silently prolonging the pleasures of digestion, and (last, but
not by any means least) a glass of an excellent light dry port, put
me in a humour only to be described as heavenly. The thought of
the Colonel, of how he would have enjoyed this snug room and
roaring fire, and of his cold grave in the wood by Market Bosworth,
lingered on my palate, AMARI ALIQUID, like an after-taste, but was
not able - I say it with shame - entirely to dispel my selfcomplacency.
After all, in this world every dog hangs by its own
tail. I was a free adventurer, who had just brought to a
successful end - or, at least, within view of it - an adventure
very difficult and alarming; and I looked across at Mr. Dudgeon, as
the port rose to his cheeks, and a smile, that was semiconfidential
and a trifle foolish, began to play upon his leathery
features, not only with composure, but with a suspicion of
kindness. The rascal had been brave, a quality for which I would
value the devil; and if he had been pertinacious in the beginning,
he had more than made up for it before the end.
'And now, Dudgeon, to explain,' I began. 'I know your master, he
knows me, and he knows and approves of my errand. So much I may
tell you, that I am on my way to Amersham Place.'
'Oho!' quoth Dudgeon, 'I begin to see.'
'I am heartily glad of it,' said I, passing the bottle, 'because
that is about all I can tell you. You must take my word for the
remainder. Either believe me or don't. If you don't, let's take a
chaise; you can carry me to-morrow to High Holborn, and confront me
with Mr. Romaine; the result of which will be to set your mind at
rest - and to make the holiest disorder in your master's plans. If
I judge you aright (for I find you a shrewd fellow), this will not
be at all to your mind. You know what a subordinate gets by
officiousness; if I can trust my memory, old Romaine has not at all
the face that I should care to see in anger; and I venture to
predict surprising results upon your weekly salary - if you are
paid by the week, that is. In short, let me go free, and 'tis an
end of the matter; take me to London, and 'tis only a beginning -
and, by my opinion, a beginning of troubles. You can take your
choice.'
'And that is soon taken,' said he. 'Go to Amersham tomorrow, or go
to the devil if you prefer - I wash my hands of you and the whole
transaction. No, you don't find me putting my head in between
Romaine and a client! A good man of business, sir, but hard as
millstone grit. I might get the sack, and I shouldn't wonder!
But, it's a pity, too,' he added, and sighed, shook his head, and
took his glass off sadly.
'That reminds me,' said I. 'I have a great curiosity, and you can
satisfy it. Why were you so forward to meddle with poor Mr.
Dubois? Why did you transfer your attentions to me? And
generally, what induced you to make yourself such a nuisance?'
He blushed deeply.
'Why, sir,' says he, 'there is such a thing as patriotism, I hope.'
CHAPTER XVI - THE HOME-COMING OF MR. ROWLEY'S VISCOUNT
BY eight the next morning Dudgeon and I had made our parting. By
that time we had grown to be extremely familiar; and I would very
willingly have kept him by me, and even carried him to Amersham
Place. But it appeared he was due at the public-house where we had
met, on some affairs of my great-uncle the Count, who had an
outlying estate in that part of the shire. If Dudgeon had had his
way the night before, I should have been arrested on my uncle's
land and by my uncle's agent, a culmination of ill-luck.
A little after noon I started, in a hired chaise, by way of
Dunstable. The mere mention of the name Amersham Place made every
one supple and smiling. It was plainly a great house, and my uncle
lived there in style. The fame of it rose as we approached, like a
chain of mountains; at Bedford they touched their caps, but in
Dunstable they crawled upon their bellies. I thought the landlady
would have kissed me; such a flutter of cordiality, such smiles,
such affectionate attentions were called forth, and the good lady
bustled on my service in such a pother of ringlets and with such a
jingling of keys. 'You're probably expected, sir, at the Place? I
do trust you may 'ave better accounts of his lordship's 'elth, sir.
We understood that his lordship, Mosha de Carwell, was main bad.
Ha, sir, we shall all feel his loss, poor, dear, noble gentleman;
and I'm sure nobody more polite! They do say, sir, his wealth is
enormous, and before the Revolution, quite a prince in his own
country! But I beg your pardon, sir; 'ow I do run on, to be sure;
and doubtless all beknown to you already! For you do resemble the
family, sir. I should have known you anywheres by the likeness to
the dear viscount. Ha, poor gentleman, he must 'ave a 'eavy 'eart
these days.'
In the same place I saw out of the inn-windows a man-servant
passing in the livery of my house, which you are to think I had
never before seen worn, or not that I could remember. I had often
enough, indeed, pictured myself advanced to be a Marshal, a Duke of
the Empire, a Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour, and some other
kickshaws of the kind, with a perfect rout of flunkeys correctly
dressed in my own colours. But it is one thing to imagine, and
another to see; it would be one thing to have these liveries in a
house of my own in Paris - it was quite another to find them
flaunting in the heart of hostile England; and I fear I should have
made a fool of myself, if the man had not been on the other side of
the street, and I at a one-pane window. There was something
illusory in this transplantation of the wealth and honours of a
family, a thing by its nature so deeply rooted in the soil;
something ghostly in this sense of home-coming so far from home.
From Dunstable I rolled away into a crescendo of similar
impressions. There are certainly few things to be compared with
these castles, or rather country seats, of the English nobility and
gentry; nor anything at all to equal the servility of the
population that dwells in their neighbourhood. Though I was but
driving in a hired chaise, word of my destination seemed to have
gone abroad, and the women curtseyed and the men louted to me by
the wayside. As I came near, I began to appreciate the roots of
this widespread respect. The look of my uncle's park wall, even
from the outside, had something of a princely character; and when I
came in view of the house itself, a sort of madness of vicarious
vain-glory struck me dumb and kept me staring. It was about the
size of the Tuileries. It faced due north; and the last rays of
the sun, that was setting like a red-hot shot amidst a tumultuous
gathering of snow clouds, were reflected on the endless rows of
windows. A portico of Doric columns adorned the front, and would
have done honour to a temple. The servant who received me at the
door was civil to a fault - I had almost said, to offence; and the
hall to which he admitted me through a pair of glass doors was
warmed and already partly lighted by a liberal chimney heaped with
the roots of beeches.
'Vicomte Anne de St. Yves,' said I, in answer to the man's
question; whereupon he bowed before me lower still, and stepping
upon one side introduced me to the truly awful presence of the
major-domo. I have seen many dignitaries in my time, but none who
quite equalled this eminent being; who was good enough to answer to
the unassuming name of Dawson. From him I learned that my uncle
was extremely low, a doctor in close attendance, Mr. Romaine
expected at any moment, and that my cousin, the Vicomte de St.
Yves, had been sent for the same morning.
'It was a sudden seizure, then?' I asked.
Well, he would scarcely go as far as that. It was a decline, a
fading away, sir; but he was certainly took bad the day before, had
sent for Mr. Romaine, and the major-domo had taken it on himself a
little later to send word to the Viscount. 'It seemed to me, my
lord,' said he, 'as if this was a time when all the fambly should
be called together.'
I approved him with my lips, but not in my heart. Dawson was
plainly in the interests of my cousin.
'And when can I expect to see my great-uncle, the Count?' said I.
In the evening, I was told; in the meantime he would show me to my
room, which had been long prepared for me, and I should be expected
to dine in about an hour with the doctor, if my lordship had no
objections.
My lordship had not the faintest.
'At the same time,' I said, 'I have had an accident: I have
unhappily lost my baggage, and am here in what I stand in. I don't
know if the doctor be a formalist, but it is quite impossible I
should appear at table as I ought.'
He begged me to be under no anxiety. 'We have been long expecting
you,' said he. 'All is ready.'
Such I found to be the truth. A great room had been prepared for
me; through the mullioned windows the last flicker of the winter
sunset interchanged with the reverberation of a royal fire; the bed
was open, a suit of evening clothes was airing before the blaze,
and from the far corner a boy came forward with deprecatory smiles.
The dream in which I had been moving seemed to have reached its
pitch. I might have quitted this house and room only the night
before; it was my own place that I had come to; and for the first
time in my life I understood the force of the words home and
welcome.
'This will be all as you would want, sir?' said Mr. Dawson. 'This
'ere boy, Rowley, we place entirely at your disposition. 'E's not
exactly a trained vallet, but Mossho Powl, the Viscount's
gentleman, 'ave give him the benefick of a few lessons, and it is
'oped that he may give sitisfection. Hanythink that you may
require, if you will be so good as to mention the same to Rowley, I
will make it my business myself, sir, to see you sitisfied.'
So saying, the eminent and already detested Mr. Dawson took his
departure, and I was left alone with Rowley. A man who may be said
to have wakened to consciousness in the prison of the Abbaye, among
those ever graceful and ever tragic figures of the brave and fair,
awaiting the hour of the guillotine and denuded of every comfort, I
had never known the luxuries or the amenities of my rank in life.
To be attended on by servants I had only been accustomed to in
inns. My toilet had long been military, to a moment, at the note
of a bugle, too often at a ditch-side. And it need not be wondered
at if I looked on my new valet with a certain diffidence. But I
remembered that if he was my first experience of a valet, I was his
first trial as a master. Cheered by which consideration, I
demanded my bath in a style of good assurance. There was a
bathroom contiguous; in an incredibly short space of time the hot
water was ready; and soon after, arrayed in a shawl dressing-gown,
and in a luxury of contentment and comfort, I was reclined in an
easy-chair before the mirror, while Rowley, with a mixture of pride
and anxiety which I could well understand, laid out his razors.
'Hey, Rowley?' I asked, not quite resigned to go under fire with
such an inexperienced commander. 'It's all right, is it? You feel
pretty sure of your weapons?'
'Yes, my lord,' he replied. 'It's all right, I assure your
lordship.'
'I beg your pardon, Mr. Rowley, 'but for the sake of shortness,
would you mind not belording me in private?' said I. 'It will do
very well if you call me Mr. Anne. It is the way of my country, as
I dare say you know.'
Mr. Rowley looked blank.
'But you're just as much a Viscount as Mr. Powl's, are you not?' he
said.
'As Mr. Powl's Viscount?' said I, laughing. 'Oh, keep your mind
easy, Mr. Rowley's is every bit as good. Only, you see, as I am of
the younger line, I bear my Christian name along with the title.
Alain is the VISCOUNT; I am the VISCOUNT ANNE. And in giving me
the name of Mr. Anne, I assure you you will be quite regular.'
'Yes, Mr. Anne,' said the docile youth. 'But about the shaving,
sir, you need be under no alarm. Mr. Powl says I 'ave excellent
dispositions.'
'Mr. Powl?' said I. 'That doesn't seem to me very like a French
name.'
'No, sir, indeed, my lord,' said he, with a burst of confidence.
'No, indeed, Mr. Anne, and it do not surely. I should say now, it
was more like Mr. Pole.'
'And Mr. Powl is the Viscount's man?'
'Yes, Mr. Anne,' said he. 'He 'ave a hard billet, he do. The
Viscount is a very particular gentleman. I don't think as you'll
be, Mr. Anne?' he added, with a confidential smile in the mirror.
He was about sixteen, well set up, with a pleasant, merry, freckled
face, and a pair of dancing eyes. There was an air at once
deprecatory and insinuating about the rascal that I thought I
recognised. There came to me from my own boyhood memories of
certain passionate admirations long passed away, and the objects of
them long ago discredited or dead. I remembered how anxious I had
been to serve those fleeting heroes, how readily I told myself I
would have died for THEM, how much greater and handsomer than life
they had appeared. And looking in the mirror, it seemed to me that
I read the face of Rowley, like an echo or a ghost, by the light of
my own youth. I have always contended (somewhat against the
opinion of my friends) that I am first of all an economist; and the
last thing that I would care to throw away is that very valuable
piece of property - a boy's hero-worship.
'Why,' said I, 'you shave like an angel, Mr. Rowley!'
'Thank you, my lord,' says he. 'Mr. Powl had no fear of me. You
may be sure, sir, I should never 'ave had this berth if I 'adn't
'ave been up to Dick. We been expecting of you this month back.
My eye! I never see such preparations. Every day the fires has
been kep' up, the bed made, and all! As soon as it was known you
were coming, sir, I got the appointment; and I've been up and down
since then like a Jack-in-the-box. A wheel couldn't sound in the
avenue but what I was at the window! I've had a many
disappointments; but to-night, as soon as you stepped out of the
shay, I knew it was my - it was you. Oh, you had been expected!
Why, when I go down to supper, I'll be the 'ero of the servants'
'all: the 'ole of the staff is that curious!'
'Well,' said I, 'I hope you may be able to give a fair account of
me - sober, steady, industrious, good-tempered, and with a firstrate
character from my last place?'
He laughed an embarrassed laugh. 'Your hair curls beautiful,' he
said, by way of changing the subject. 'The Viscount's the boy for
curls, though; and the richness of it is, Mr. Powl tells me his
don't curl no more than that much twine - by nature. Gettin' old,
the Viscount is. He 'AVE gone the pace, 'aven't 'e, sir?'
'The fact is,' said I, 'that I know very little about him. Our
family has been much divided, and I have been a soldier from a
child.'
'A soldier, Mr. Anne, sir?' cried Rowley, with a sudden feverish
animation. 'Was you ever wounded?'
It is contrary to my principles to discourage admiration for
myself; and, slipping back the shoulder of the dressing-gown, I
silently exhibited the scar which I had received in Edinburgh
Castle. He looked at it with awe.
'Ah, well!' he continued, 'there's where the difference comes in!
It's in the training. The other Viscount have been horse-racing,
and dicing, and carrying on all his life. All right enough, no
doubt; but what I do say is, that it don't lead to nothink.
Whereas - '
'Whereas Mr. Rowley's?' I put in.
'My Viscount?' said he. 'Well, sir, I DID say it; and now that
I've seen you, I say it again!'
I could not refrain from smiling at this outburst, and the rascal
caught me in the mirror and smiled to me again.
'I'd say it again, Mr. Hanne,' he said. 'I know which side my
bread's buttered. I know when a gen'leman's a gen'leman. Mr. Powl
can go to Putney with his one! Beg your pardon, Mr. Anne, for
being so familiar,' said he, blushing suddenly scarlet. 'I was
especially warned against it by Mr. Powl.'
'Discipline before all,' said I. 'Follow your front-rank man.
With that, we began to turn our attention to the clothes. I was
amazed to find them fit so well: not A LA DIABLE, in the haphazard
manner of a soldier's uniform or a ready-made suit; but with
nicety, as a trained artist might rejoice to make them for a
favourite subject.
''Tis extraordinary,' cried I: 'these things fit me perfectly.'
'Indeed, Mr. Anne, you two be very much of a shape,' said Rowley.
'Who? What two?' said I.
'The Viscount,' he said.
'Damnation! Have I the man's clothes on me, too?' cried I.
But Rowley hastened to reassure me. On the first word of my
coming, the Count had put the matter of my wardrobe in the hands of
his own and my cousin's tailors; and on the rumour of our
resemblance, my clothes had been made to Alain's measure.
'But they were all made for you express, Mr. Anne. You may be
certain the Count would never do nothing by 'alf: fires kep'
burning; the finest of clothes ordered, I'm sure, and a bodyservant
being trained a-purpose.'
'Well,' said I, 'it's a good fire, and a good set-out of clothes;
and what a valet, Mr. Rowley! And there's one thing to be said for
my cousin - I mean for Mr. Powl's Viscount - he has a very fair
figure.'
'Oh, don't you be took in, Mr. Anne,' quoth the faithless Rowley:
'he has to be hyked into a pair of stays to get them things on!'
'Come, come, Mr. Rowley,' said I, 'this is telling tales out of
school! Do not you be deceived. The greatest men of antiquity,
including Caesar and Hannibal and Pope Joan, may have been very
glad, at my time of life or Alain's, to follow his example. 'Tis a
misfortune common to all; and really,' said I, bowing to myself
before the mirror like one who should dance the minuet, 'when the
result is so successful as this, who would do anything but
applaud?'
My toilet concluded, I marched on to fresh surprises. My chamber,
my new valet and my new clothes had been beyond hope: the dinner,
the soup, the whole bill of fare was a revelation of the powers
there are in man. I had not supposed it lay in the genius of any
cook to create, out of common beef and mutton, things so different
and dainty. The wine was of a piece, the doctor a most agreeable
companion; nor could I help reflecting on the prospect that all
this wealth, comfort and handsome profusion might still very
possibly become mine. Here were a change indeed, from the common
soldier and the camp kettle, the prisoner and his prison rations,
the fugitive and the horrors of the covered cart!
CHAPTER XVII - THE DESPATCH-BOX
THE doctor had scarce finished his meal before he hastened with an
apology to attend upon his patient; and almost immediately after I
was myself summoned and ushered up the great staircase and along
interminable corridors to the bedside of my great-uncle the Count.
You are to think that up to the present moment I had not set eyes
on this formidable personage, only on the evidences of his wealth
and kindness. You are to think besides that I had heard him
miscalled and abused from my earliest childhood up. The first of
the EMIGRES could never expect a good word in the society in which
my father moved. Even yet the reports I received were of a
doubtful nature; even Romaine had drawn of him no very amiable
portrait; and as I was ushered into the room, it was a critical eye
that I cast on my great-uncle. He lay propped on pillows in a
little cot no greater than a camp-bed, not visibly breathing. He
was about eighty years of age, and looked it; not that his face was
much lined, but all the blood and colour seemed to have faded from
his body, and even his eyes, which last he kept usually closed as
though the light distressed him. There was an unspeakable degree
of slyness in his expression, which kept me ill at ease; he seemed
to lie there with his arms folded, like a spider waiting for prey.
His speech was very deliberate and courteous, but scarce louder
than a sigh.
'I bid you welcome, MONSIEUR LE VICOMTE ANNE,' said he, looking at
me hard with his pale eyes, but not moving on his pillows. 'I have
sent for you, and I thank you for the obliging expedition you have
shown. It is my misfortune that I cannot rise to receive you. I
trust you have been reasonably well entertained?'
'MONSIEUR MON ONCLE,' I said, bowing very low, 'I am come at the
summons of the head of my family.'
'It is well,' he said. 'Be seated. I should be glad to hear some
news - if that can be called news that is already twenty years old
- of how I have the pleasure to see you here.'
By the coldness of his address, not more than by the nature of the
times that he bade me recall, I was plunged in melancholy. I felt
myself surrounded as with deserts of friendlessness, and the
delight of my welcome was turned to ashes in my mouth.
'That is soon told, MONSEIGNEUR,' said I. 'I understand that I
need tell you nothing of the end of my unhappy parents? It is only
the story of the lost dog.'
'You are right. I am sufficiently informed of that deplorable
affair; it is painful to me. My nephew, your father, was a man who
would not be advised,' said he. 'Tell me, if you please, simply of
yourself.'
'I am afraid I must run the risk of harrowing your sensibility in
the beginning,' said I, with a bitter smile, 'because my story
begins at the foot of the guillotine. When the list came out that
night, and her name was there, I was already old enough, not in
years but in sad experience, to understand the extent of my
misfortune. She - ' I paused. 'Enough that she arranged with a
friend, Madame de Chasserades, that she should take charge of me,
and by the favour of our jailers I was suffered to remain in the
shelter of the ABBAYE. That was my only refuge; there was no
corner of France that I could rest the sole of my foot upon except
the prison. Monsieur le Comte, you are as well aware as I can be
what kind of a life that was, and how swiftly death smote in that
society. I did not wait long before the name of Madame de
Chasserades succeeded to that of my mother on the list. She passed
me on to Madame de Noytot; she, in her turn, to Mademoiselle de
Braye; and there were others. I was the one thing permanent; they
were all transient as clouds; a day or two of their care, and then
came the last farewell and - somewhere far off in that roaring
Paris that surrounded us - the bloody scene. I was the cherished
one, the last comfort, of these dying women. I have been in
pitched fights, my lord, and I never knew such courage. It was all
done smiling, in the tone of good society; BELLE MAMAN was the name
I was taught to give to each; and for a day or two the new "pretty
mamma" would make much of me, show me off, teach me the minuet, and
to say my prayers; and then, with a tender embrace, would go the
way of her predecessors, smiling. There were some that wept too.
There was a childhood! All the time Monsieur de Culemberg kept his
eye on me, and would have had me out of the ABBAYE and in his own
protection, but my "pretty mammas" one after another resisted the
idea. Where could I be safer? they argued; and what was to become
of them without the darling of the prison? Well, it was soon shown
how safe I was! The dreadful day of the massacre came; the prison
was overrun; none paid attention to me, not even the last of my
"pretty mammas," for she had met another fate. I was wandering
distracted, when I was found by some one in the interests of
Monsieur de Culemberg. I understand he was sent on purpose; I
believe, in order to reach the interior of the prison, he had set
his hand to nameless barbarities: such was the price paid for my
worthless, whimpering little life! He gave me his hand; it was
wet, and mine was reddened; he led me unresisting. I remember but
the one circumstance of my flight - it was my last view of my last
pretty mamma. Shall I describe it to you?' I asked the Count, with
a sudden fierceness.
'Avoid unpleasant details,' observed my great-uncle gently.
At these words a sudden peace fell upon me. I had been angry with
the man before; I had not sought to spare him; and now, in a
moment, I saw that there was nothing to spare. Whether from
natural heartlessness or extreme old age, the soul was not at home;
and my benefactor, who had kept the fire lit in my room for a month
past - my only relative except Alain, whom I knew already to be a
hired spy - had trodden out the last sparks of hope and interest.
'Certainly,' said I; 'and, indeed, the day for them is nearly over.
I was taken to Monsieur de Culemberg's, - I presume, sir, that you
know the Abbe de Culemberg?'
He indicated assent without opening his eyes.
'He was a very brave and a very learned man - '
'And a very holy one,' said my uncle civilly.
'And a very holy one, as you observe,' I continued. 'He did an
infinity of good, and through all the Terror kept himself from the
guillotine. He brought me up, and gave me such education as I
have. It was in his house in the country at Dammarie, near Melun,
that I made the acquaintance of your agent, Mr. Vicary, who lay
there in hiding, only to fall a victim at the last to a gang of
CHAUFFEURS.'
'That poor Mr. Vicary!' observed my uncle. 'He had been many times
in my interests to France, and this was his first failure. QUEL
CHARMANT HOMME, N'EST-CE PAS?'
'Infinitely so,' said I. 'But I would not willingly detain you any
further with a story, the details of which it must naturally be
more or less unpleasant for you to hear. Suffice it that, by M. de
Culemberg's own advice, I said farewell at eighteen to that kind
preceptor and his books, and entered the service of France; and
have since then carried arms in such a manner as not to disgrace my
family.'
'You narrate well; VOUS AVES LA VOIX CHAUDE,' said my uncle,
turning on his pillows as if to study me. 'I have a very good
account of you by Monsieur de Mauseant, whom you helped in Spain.
And you had some education from the Abbe de Culemberg, a man of a
good house? Yes, you will do very well. You have a good manner
and a handsome person, which hurts nothing. We are all handsome in
the family; even I myself, I have had my successes, the memories of
which still charm me. It is my intention, my nephew, to make of
you my heir. I am not very well content with my other nephew,
Monsieur le Vicomte: he has not been respectful, which is the
flattery due to age. And there are other matters.'
I was half tempted to throw back in his face that inheritance so
coldly offered. At the same time I had to consider that he was an
old man, and, after all, my relation; and that I was a poor one, in
considerable straits, with a hope at heart which that inheritance
might yet enable me to realise. Nor could I forget that, however
icy his manners, he had behaved to me from the first with the
extreme of liberality and - I was about to write, kindness, but the
word, in that connection, would not come. I really owed the man
some measure of gratitude, which it would be an ill manner to repay
if I were to insult him on his deathbed.
'Your will, monsieur, must ever be my rule,' said I, bowing.
'You have wit, MONSIEUR MON NEVEU,' said he, 'the best wit - the
wit of silence. Many might have deafened me with their gratitude.
Gratitude!' he repeated, with a peculiar intonation, and lay and
smiled to himself. 'But to approach what is more important. As a
prisoner of war, will it be possible for you to be served heir to
English estates? I have no idea: long as I have dwelt in England,
I have never studied what they call their laws. On the other hand,
how if Romaine should come too late? I have two pieces of business
to be transacted - to die, and to make my will; and, however
desirous I may be to serve you, I cannot postpone the first in
favour of the second beyond a very few hours.'
'Well, sir, I must then contrive to be doing as I did before,' said
I.
'Not so,' said the Count. 'I have an alternative. I have just
drawn my balance at my banker's, a considerable sum, and I am now
to place it in your hands. It will be so much for you and so much
less - ' he paused, and smiled with an air of malignity that
surprised me. 'But it is necessary it should be done before
witnesses. MONSIEUR LE VICOMTE is of a particular disposition, and
an unwitnessed donation may very easily be twisted into a theft.'
He touched a bell, which was answered by a man having the
appearance of a confidential valet. To him he gave a key.
'Bring me the despatch-box that came yesterday, La Ferriere,' said
he. 'You will at the same time present my compliments to Dr.
Hunter and M. l'Abbe, and request them to step for a few moments to
my room.'
The despatch-box proved to be rather a bulky piece of baggage,
covered with Russia leather. Before the doctor and an excellent
old smiling priest it was passed over into my hands with a very
clear statement of the disposer's wishes; immediately after which,
though the witnesses remained behind to draw up and sign a joint
note of the transaction, Monsieur de Keroual dismissed me to my own
room, La Ferriere following with the invaluable box.
At my chamber door I took it from him with thanks, and entered
alone. Everything had been already disposed for the night, the
curtains drawn and the fire trimmed; and Rowley was still busy with
my bedclothes. He turned round as I entered with a look of welcome
that did my heart good. Indeed, I had never a much greater need of
human sympathy, however trivial, than at that moment when I held a
fortune in my arms. In my uncle's room I had breathed the very
atmosphere of disenchantment. He had gorged my pockets; he had
starved every dignified or affectionate sentiment of a man. I had
received so chilling an impression of age and experience that the
mere look of youth drew me to confide in Rowley: he was only a boy,
his heart must beat yet, he must still retain some innocence and
natural feelings, he could blurt out follies with his mouth, he was
not a machine to utter perfect speech! At the same time, I was
beginning to outgrow the painful impressions of my interview; my
spirits were beginning to revive; and at the jolly, empty looks of
Mr. Rowley, as he ran forward to relieve me of the box, St. Ives
became himself again.
'Now, Rowley, don't be in a hurry,' said I. 'This is a momentous
juncture. Man and boy, you have been in my service about three
hours. You must already have observed that I am a gentleman of a
somewhat morose disposition, and there is nothing that I more
dislike than the smallest appearance of familiarity. Mr. Pole or
Mr. Powl, probably in the spirit of prophecy, warned you against
this danger.'
'Yes, Mr. Anne,' said Rowley blankly.
'Now there has just arisen one of those rare cases, in which I am
willing to depart from my principles. My uncle has given me a box
- what you would call a Christmas box. I don't know what's in it,
and no more do you: perhaps I am an April fool, or perhaps I am
already enormously wealthy; there might be five hundred pounds in
this apparently harmless receptacle!'
'Lord, Mr. Anne!' cried Rowley.
'Now, Rowley, hold up your right hand and repeat the words of the
oath after me,' said I, laying the despatch-box on the table.
'Strike me blue if I ever disclose to Mr. Powl, or Mr. Powl's
Viscount, or anything that is Mr. Powl's, not to mention Mr. Dawson
and the doctor, the treasures of the following despatch-box; and
strike me sky-blue scarlet if I do not continually maintain,
uphold, love, honour and obey, serve, and follow to the four
corners of the earth and the waters that are under the earth, the
hereinafter before-mentioned (only that I find I have neglected to
mention him) Viscount Anne de Keroual de St.-Yves, commonly known
as Mr. Rowley's Viscount. So be it. Amen.'
He took the oath with the same exaggerated seriousness as I gave it
to him.
'Now,' said I. 'Here is the key for you; I will hold the lid with
both hands in the meanwhile.' He turned the key. 'Bring up all
the candles in the room, and range them along-side. What is it to
be? A live gorgon, a Jack-in-the-box, or a spring that fires a
pistol? On your knees, sir, before the prodigy!'
So saying, I turned the despatch-box upside down upon the table.
At sight of the heap of bank paper and gold that lay in front of
us, between the candles, or rolled upon the floor alongside, I
stood astonished.
'O Lord!' cried Mr. Rowley; 'oh Lordy, Lordy, Lord!' and he
scrambled after the fallen guineas. 'O my, Mr. Anne! what a sight
o' money! Why, it's like a blessed story-book. It's like the
Forty Thieves.'
'Now Rowley, let's be cool, let's be businesslike,' said I.
'Riches are deceitful, particularly when you haven't counted them;
and the first thing we have to do is to arrive at the amount of my
- let me say, modest competency. If I'm not mistaken, I have
enough here to keep you in gold buttons all the rest of your life.
You collect the gold, and I'll take the paper.'
Accordingly, down we sat together on the hearthrug, and for some
time there was no sound but the creasing of bills and the jingling
of guineas, broken occasionally by the exulting exclamations of
Rowley. The arithmetical operation on which we were embarked took
long, and it might have been tedious to others; not to me nor to my
helper.
'Ten thousand pounds!' I announced at last.
'Ten thousand!' echoed Mr. Rowley.
And we gazed upon each other.
The greatness of this fortune took my breath away. With that sum
in my hands, I need fear no enemies. People are arrested, in nine
cases out of ten, not because the police are astute, but because
they themselves run short of money; and I had here before me in the
despatch-box a succession of devices and disguises that insured my
liberty. Not only so; but, as I felt with a sudden and
overpowering thrill, with ten thousand pounds in my hands I was
become an eligible suitor. What advances I had made in the past,
as a private soldier in a military prison, or a fugitive by the
wayside, could only be qualified or, indeed, excused as acts of
desperation. And now, I might come in by the front door; I might
approach the dragon with a lawyer at my elbow, and rich settlements
to offer. The poor French prisoner, Champdivers, might be in a
perpetual danger of arrest; but the rich travelling Englishman,
St.-Ives, in his post-chaise, with his despatch-box by his side,
could smile at fate and laugh at locksmiths. I repeated the
proverb, exulting, LOVE LAUGHS AT LOCKSMITHS! In a moment, by the
mere coming of this money, my love had become possible - it had
come near, it was under my hand - and it may be by one of the
curiosities of human nature, but it burned that instant brighter.
'Rowley,' said I, 'your Viscount is a made man.'
'Why, we both are, sir,' said Rowley.
'Yes, both,' said I; 'and you shall dance at the wedding;' and I
flung at his head a bundle of bank notes, and had just followed it
up with a handful of guineas, when the door opened, and Mr. Romaine
appeared upon the threshold.
CHAPTER XVIII - MR. ROMAINE CALLS ME NAMES
FEELING very much of a fool to be thus taken by surprise, I
scrambled to my feet and hastened to make my visitor welcome. He
did not refuse me his hand; but he gave it with a coldness and
distance for which I was quite unprepared, and his countenance, as
he looked on me, was marked in a strong degree with concern and
severity.
'So, sir, I find you here?' said he, in tones of little
encouragement. 'Is that you, George? You can run away; I have
business with your master.'
He showed Rowley out, and locked the door behind him. Then he sat
down in an armchair on one side of the fire, and looked at me with
uncompromising sternness.
'I am hesitating how to begin,' said he. 'In this singular
labyrinth of blunders and difficulties that you have prepared for
us, I am positively hesitating where to begin. It will perhaps be
best that you should read, first of all, this paragraph.' And he
handed over to me a newspaper.
The paragraph in question was brief. It announced the recapture of
one of the prisoners recently escaped from Edinburgh Castle; gave
his name, Clausel, and added that he had entered into the
particulars of the recent revolting murder in the Castle, and
denounced the murderer:-
'It is a common soldier called Champdivers, who had himself
escaped, and is in all probability involved in the common fate of
his comrades. In spite of the activity along all the Forth and the
East Coast, nothing has yet been seen of the sloop which these
desperadoes seized at Grangemouth, and it is now almost certain
that they have found a watery grave.'
At the reading of this paragraph, my heart turned over. In a
moment I saw my castle in the air ruined; myself changed from a
mere military fugitive into a hunted murderer, fleeing from the
gallows; my love, which had a moment since appeared so near to me,
blotted from the field of possibility. Despair, which was my first
sentiment, did not, however, endure for more than a moment. I saw
that my companions had indeed succeeded in their unlikely design;
and that I was supposed to have accompanied and perished along with
them by shipwreck - a most probable ending to their enterprise. If
they thought me at the bottom of the North Sea, I need not fear
much vigilance on the streets of Edinburgh. Champdivers was
wanted: what was to connect him with St. Ives? Major Chevenix
would recognise me if he met me; that was beyond bargaining: he had
seen me so often, his interest had been kindled to so high a point,
that I could hope to deceive him by no stratagem of disguise.
Well, even so; he would have a competition of testimony before him:
he knew Clausel, he knew me, and I was sure he would decide for
honour. At the same time the image of Flora shot up in my mind's
eye with such a radiancy as fairly overwhelmed all other
considerations; the blood sprang to every corner of my body, and I
vowed I would see and win her, if it cost my neck.
'Very annoying, no doubt,' said I, as I returned the paper to Mr.
Romaine.
'Is annoying your word for it?' said he.
'Exasperating, if you like,' I admitted.
'And true?' he inquired.
'Well, true in a sense,' said I. 'But perhaps I had better answer
that question by putting you in possession of the facts?'
'I think so, indeed,' said he.
I narrated to him as much as seemed necessary of the quarrel, the
duel, the death of Goguelat, and the character of Clausel. He
heard me through in a forbidding silence, nor did he at all betray
the nature of his sentiments, except that, at the episode of the
scissors, I could observe his mulberry face to turn three shades
paler.
'I suppose I may believe you?' said he, when I had done.
'Or else conclude this interview,' said I.
'Can you not understand that we are here discussing matters of the
gravest import? Can you not understand that I feel myself weighed
with a load of responsibility on your account - that you should
take this occasion to air your fire-eating manners against your own
attorney? There are serious hours in life, Mr. Anne,' he said
severely. 'A capital charge, and that of a very brutal character
and with singularly unpleasant details; the presence of the man
Clausel, who (according to your account of it) is actuated by
sentiments of real malignity, and prepared to swear black white;
all the other witnesses scattered and perhaps drowned at sea; the
natural prejudice against a Frenchman and a runaway prisoner: this
makes a serious total for your lawyer to consider, and is by no
means lessened by the incurable folly and levity of your own
disposition.'
'I beg your pardon!' said I.
'Oh, my expressions have been selected with scrupulous accuracy,'
he replied. 'How did I find you, sir, when I came to announce this
catastrophe? You were sitting on the hearthrug playing, like a
silly baby, with a servant, were you not, and the floor all
scattered with gold and bank paper? There was a tableau for you!
It was I who came, and you were lucky in that. It might have been
any one - your cousin as well as another.'
'You have me there, sir,' I admitted. 'I had neglected all
precautions, and you do right to be angry. APROPOS, Mr. Romaine,
how did you come yourself, and how long have you been in the
house?' I added, surprised, on the retrospect, not to have heard
him arrive.
'I drove up in a chaise and pair,' he returned. 'Any one might
have heard me. But you were not listening, I suppose? being so
extremely at your ease in the very house of your enemy, and under a
capital charge! And I have been long enough here to do your
business for you. Ah, yes, I did it, God forgive me! - did it
before I so much as asked you the explanation of the paragraph.
For some time back the will has been prepared; now it is signed;
and your uncle has heard nothing of your recent piece of activity.
Why? Well, I had no fancy to bother him on his death-bed: you
might be innocent; and at bottom I preferred the murderer to the
spy.'
No doubt of it but the man played a friendly part; no doubt also
that, in his ill-temper and anxiety, he expressed himself
unpalatably.
'You will perhaps find me over delicate,' said I. 'There is a word
you employed - '
'I employ the words of my brief, sir,' he cried, striking with his
hand on the newspaper. 'It is there in six letters. And do not be
so certain - you have not stood your trial yet. It is an ugly
affair, a fishy business. It is highly disagreeable. I would give
my hand off - I mean I would give a hundred pound down, to have
nothing to do with it. And, situated as we are, we must at once
take action. There is here no choice. You must at once quit this
country, and get to France, or Holland, or, indeed, to Madagascar.'
'There may be two words to that,' said I.
'Not so much as one syllable!' he retorted. 'Here is no room for
argument. The case is nakedly plain. In the disgusting position
in which you have found means to place yourself, all that is to be
hoped for is delay. A time may come when we shall be able to do
better. It cannot be now: now it would be the gibbet.'
'You labour under a false impression, Mr. Romaine,' said I. 'I
have no impatience to figure in the dock. I am even as anxious as
yourself to postpone my first appearance there. On the other hand,
I have not the slightest intention of leaving this country, where I
please myself extremely. I have a good address, a ready tongue, an
English accent that passes, and, thanks to the generosity of my
uncle, as much money as I want. It would be hard indeed if, with
all these advantages, Mr. St. Ives should not be able to live
quietly in a private lodging, while the authorities amuse
themselves by looking for Champdivers. You forget, there is no
connection between these two personages.'
'And you forget your cousin,' retorted Romaine. 'There is the
link. There is the tongue of the buckle. He knows you are
Champdivers.' He put up his hand as if to listen. 'And, for a
wager, here he is himself!' he exclaimed.
As when a tailor takes a piece of goods upon his counter, and rends
it across, there came to our ears from the avenue the long tearing
sound of a chaise and four approaching at the top speed of the
horses. And, looking out between the curtains, we beheld the lamps
skimming on the smooth ascent.
'Ay,' said Romaine, wiping the window-pane that he might see more
clearly. 'Ay, that is he by the driving! So he squanders money
along the king's highway, the triple idiot! gorging every man he
meets with gold for the pleasure of arriving - where? Ah, yes,
where but a debtor's jail, if not a criminal prison!'
'Is he that kind of a man?' I said, staring on these lamps as
though I could decipher in them the secret of my cousin's
character.
'You will find him a dangerous kind,' answered the lawyer. 'For
you, these are the lights on a lee shore! I find I fall in a muse
when I consider of him; what a formidable being he once was, and
what a personable! and how near he draws to the moment that must
break him utterly! we none of us like him here; we hate him,
rather; and yet I have a sense - I don't think at my time of life
it can be pity - but a reluctance rather, to break anything so big
and figurative, as though he were a big porcelain pot or a big
picture of high price. Ay, there is what I was waiting for!' he
cried, as the lights of a second chaise swam in sight. 'It is he
beyond a doubt. The first was the signature and the next the
flourish. Two chaises, the second following with the baggage,
which is always copious and ponderous, and one of his valets: he
cannot go a step without a valet.'
'I hear you repeat the word big,' said I. 'But it cannot be that
he is anything out of the way in stature.'
'No,' said the attorney. 'About your height, as I guessed for the
tailors, and I see nothing wrong with the result. But, somehow, he
commands an atmosphere; he has a spacious manner; and he has kept
up, all through life, such a volume of racket about his
personality, with his chaises and his racers and his dicings, and I
know not what - that somehow he imposes! It seems, when the farce
is done, and he locked in Fleet prison - and nobody left but
Buonaparte and Lord Wellington and the Hetman Platoff to make a
work about - the world will be in a comparison quite tranquil. But
this is beside the mark,' he added, with an effort, turning again
from the window. 'We are now under fire, Mr. Anne, as you soldiers
would say, and it is high time we should prepare to go into action.
He must not see you; that would be fatal. All that he knows at
present is that you resemble him, and that is much more than
enough. If it were possible, it would be well he should not know
you were in the house.'
'Quite impossible, depend upon it,' said I. 'Some of the servants
are directly in his interests, perhaps in his pay: Dawson, for an
example.'
'My own idea!' cried Romaine. 'And at least,' he added, as the
first of the chaises drew up with a dash in front of the portico,
'it is now too late. Here he is.'
We stood listening, with a strange anxiety, to the various noises
that awoke in the silent house: the sound of doors opening and
closing, the sound of feet near at hand and farther off. It was
plain the arrival of my cousin was a matter of moment, almost of
parade, to the household. And suddenly, out of this confused and
distant bustle, a rapid and light tread became distinguishable. We
heard it come upstairs, draw near along the corridor, pause at the
door, and a stealthy and hasty rapping succeeded.
'Mr. Anne - Mr. Anne, sir! Let me in!' said the voice of Rowley.
We admitted the lad, and locked the door again behind him.
'It's HIM, sir,' he panted. 'He've come.'
'You mean the Viscount?' said I. 'So we supposed. But come,
Rowley - out with the rest of it! You have more to tell us, or
your face belies you !'
'Mr. Anne, I do,' he said. 'Mr. Romaine, sir, you're a friend of
his, ain't you?'
'Yes, George, I am a friend of his,' said Romaine, and, to my great
surprise, laid his hand upon my shoulder.
'Well, it's this way,' said Rowley - 'Mr. Powl have been at me!
It's to play the spy! I thought he was at it from the first! From
the first I see what he was after - coming round and round, and
hinting things! But to-night he outs with it plump! I'm to let
him hear all what you're to do beforehand, he says; and he gave me
this for an arnest' - holding up half a guinea; 'and I took it, so
I did! Strike me sky-blue scarlet?' says he, adducing the words of
the mock oath; and he looked askance at me as he did so.
I saw that he had forgotten himself, and that he knew it. The
expression of his eye changed almost in the passing of the glance
from the significant to the appealing - from the look of an
accomplice to that of a culprit; and from that moment he became the
model of a well-drilled valet.
'Sky-blue scarlet?' repeated the lawyer. 'Is the fool delirious?'
'No,' said I; 'he is only reminding me of something.'
'Well - and I believe the fellow will be faithful,' said Romaine.
'So you are a friend of Mr. Anne's' too?' he added to Rowley.
'If you please, sir,' said Rowley.
''Tis something sudden,' observed Romaine; 'but it may be genuine
enough. I believe him to be honest. He comes of honest people.
Well, George Rowley, you might embrace some early opportunity to
earn that half-guinea, by telling Mr. Powl that your master will
not leave here till noon to-morrow, if he go even then. Tell him
there are a hundred things to be done here, and a hundred more that
can only be done properly at my office in Holborn. Come to think
of it - we had better see to that first of all,' he went on,
unlocking the door. 'Get hold of Powl, and see. And be quick
back, and clear me up this mess.'
Mr. Rowley was no sooner gone than the lawyer took a pinch of
snuff, and regarded me with somewhat of a more genial expression.
'Sir,' said he, 'it is very fortunate for you that your face is so
strong a letter of recommendation. Here am I, a tough old
practitioner, mixing myself up with your very distressing business;
and here is this farmer's lad, who has the wit to take a bribe and
the loyalty to come and tell you of it - all, I take it, on the
strength of your appearance. I wish I could imagine how it would
impress a jury!' says he.
'And how it would affect the hangman, sir?' I asked
'ABSIT OMEN!' said Mr. Romaine devoutly.
We were just so far in our talk, when I heard a sound that brought
my heart into my mouth: the sound of some one slyly trying the
handle of the door. It had been preceded by no audible footstep.
Since the departure of Rowley our wing of the house had been
entirely silent. And we had every right to suppose ourselves
alone, and to conclude that the new-comer, whoever he might be, was
come on a clandestine, if not a hostile, errand.
'Who is there?' asked Romaine.
'It's only me, sir,' said the soft voice of Dawson. 'It's the
Viscount, sir. He is very desirous to speak with you on business.'
'Tell him I shall come shortly, Dawson,' said the lawyer. 'I am at
present engaged.'
'Thank you, sir!' said Dawson.
And we heard his feet draw off slowly along the corridor.
'Yes,' said Mr. Romaine, speaking low, and maintaining the attitude
of one intently listening, 'there is another foot. I cannot be
deceived!'
'I think there was indeed!' said I. 'And what troubles me - I am
not sure that the other has gone entirely away. By the time it got
the length of the head of the stair the tread was plainly single.'
'Ahem - blockaded?' asked the lawyer.
'A siege EN REGLE!' I exclaimed.
'Let us come farther from the door,' said Romaine, 'and reconsider
this damnable position. Without doubt, Alain was this moment at
the door. He hoped to enter and get a view of you, as if by
accident. Baffled in this, has he stayed himself, or has he
planted Dawson here by way of sentinel?'
'Himself, beyond a doubt,' said I. 'And yet to what end? He
cannot think to pass the night there!'
'If it were only possible to pay no heed!' said Mr. Romaine. 'But
this is the accursed drawback of your position. We can do nothing
openly. I must smuggle you out of this room and out of this house
like seizable goods; and how am I to set about it with a sentinel
planted at your very door?'
'There is no good in being agitated,' said I.
'None at all,' he acquiesced. 'And, come to think of it, it is
droll enough that I should have been that very moment commenting on
your personal appearance, when your cousin came upon this mission.
I was saying, if you remember, that your face was as good or better
than a letter of recommendation. I wonder if M. Alain would be
like the rest of us - I wonder what he would think of it?'
Mr. Romaine was sitting in a chair by the fire with his back to the
windows, and I was myself kneeling on the hearthrug and beginning
mechanically to pick up the scattered bills, when a honeyed voice
joined suddenly in our conversation.
'He thinks well of it, Mr. Romaine. He begs to join himself to
that circle of admirers which you indicate to exist already.'
CHAPTER XIX - THE DEVIL AND ALL AT AMERSHAM PLACE
NEVER did two human creatures get to their feet with more alacrity
than the lawyer and myself. We had locked and barred the main
gates of the citadel; but unhappily we had left open the bath-room
sally-port; and here we found the voice of the hostile trumpets
sounding from within, and all our defences taken in reverse. I
took but the time to whisper Mr. Romaine in the ear: 'Here is
another tableau for you!' at which he looked at me a moment with a
kind of pathos, as who should say, 'Don't hit a man when he's
down.' Then I transferred my eyes to my enemy.
He had his hat on, a little on one side: it was a very tall hat,
raked extremely, and had a narrow curling brim. His hair was all
curled out in masses like an Italian mountebank - a most
unpardonable fashion. He sported a huge tippeted overcoat of
frieze, such as watchmen wear, only the inside was lined with
costly furs, and he kept it half open to display the exquisite
linen, the many-coloured waistcoat, and the profuse jewellery of
watch-chains and brooches underneath. The leg and the ankle were
turned to a miracle. It is out of the question that I should deny
the resemblance altogether, since it has been remarked by so many
different persons whom I cannot reasonably accuse of a conspiracy.
As a matter of fact, I saw little of it and confessed to nothing.
Certainly he was what some might call handsome, of a pictorial,
exuberant style of beauty, all attitude, profile, and impudence: a
man whom I could see in fancy parade on the grand stand at a racemeeting
or swagger in Piccadilly, staring down the women, and
stared at himself with admiration by the coal-porters. Of his
frame of mind at that moment his face offered a lively if an
unconscious picture. He was lividly pale, and his lip was caught
up in a smile that could almost be called a snarl, of a sheer, arid
malignity that appalled me and yet put me on my mettle for the
encounter. He looked me up and down, then bowed and took off his
hat to me.
'My cousin, I presume?' he said.
'I understand I have that honour,' I replied.
'The honour is mine,' said he, and his voice shook as he said it.
'I should make you welcome, I believe,' said I.
'Why?' he inquired. 'This poor house has been my home for longer
than I care to claim. That you should already take upon yourself
the duties of host here is to be at unnecessary pains. Believe me,
that part would be more becomingly mine. And, by the way, I must
not fail to offer you my little compliment. It is a gratifying
surprise to meet you in the dress of a gentleman, and to see' -
with a circular look upon the scattered bills - 'that your
necessities have already been so liberally relieved.'
I bowed with a smile that was perhaps no less hateful than his own.
'There are so many necessities in this world,' said I. 'Charity
has to choose. One gets relieved, and some other, no less
indigent, perhaps indebted, must go wanting.'
'Malice is an engaging trait,' said he.
'And envy, I think?' was my reply.
He must have felt that he was not getting wholly the better of this
passage at arms; perhaps even feared that he should lose command of
his temper, which he reined in throughout the interview as with a
red-hot curb, for he flung away from me at the word, and addressed
the lawyer with insulting arrogance.
'Mr. Romaine,' he said, 'since when have you presumed to give
orders in this house?'
'I am not prepared to admit that I have given any,' replied
Romaine; 'certainly none that did not fall in the sphere of my
responsibilities.'
'By whose orders, then, am I denied entrance to my uncle's room?'
said my cousin.
'By the doctor's, sir,' replied Romaine; 'and I think even you will
admit his faculty to give them.'
'Have a care, sir,' cried Alain. 'Do not be puffed up with your
position. It is none so secure, Master Attorney. I should not
wonder in the least if you were struck off the rolls for this
night's work, and the next I should see of you were when I flung
you alms at a pothouse door to mend your ragged elbows. The
doctor's orders? But I believe I am not mistaken! You have tonight
transacted business with the Count; and this needy young
gentleman has enjoyed the privilege of still another interview, in
which (as I am pleased to see) his dignity has not prevented his
doing very well for himself. I wonder that you should care to
prevaricate with me so idly.'
'I will confess so much,' said Mr. Romaine, 'if you call it
prevarication. The order in question emanated from the Count
himself. He does not wish to see you.'
'For which I must take the word of Mr. Daniel Romaine?' asked
Alain.
'In default of any better,' said Romaine.
There was an instantaneous convulsion in my cousin's face, and I
distinctly heard him gnash his teeth at this reply; but, to my
surprise, he resumed in tones of almost good humour:
'Come, Mr. Romaine, do not let us be petty!' He drew in a chair
and sat down. 'Understand you have stolen a march upon me. You
have introduced your soldier of Napoleon, and (how, I cannot
conceive) he has been apparently accepted with favour. I ask no
better proof than the funds with which I find him literally
surrounded - I presume in consequence of some extravagance of joy
at the first sight of so much money. The odds are so far in your
favour, but the match is not yet won. Questions will arise of
undue influence, of sequestration, and the like: I have my
witnesses ready. I tell it you cynically, for you cannot profit by
the knowledge; and, if the worst come to the worst, I have good
hopes of recovering my own and of ruining you.'
'You do what you please,' answered Romaine; 'but I give it you for
a piece of good advice, you had best do nothing in the matter. You
will only make yourself ridiculous; you will only squander money,
of which you have none too much, and reap public mortification.'
'Ah, but there you make the common mistake, Mr. Romaine!' returned
Alain. 'You despise your adversary. Consider, if you please, how
very disagreeable I could make myself, if I chose. Consider the
position of your PROTEGE - an escaped prisoner! But I play a great
game. I condemn such petty opportunities.'
At this Romaine and I exchanged a glance of triumph. It seemed
manifest that Alain had as yet received no word of Clausel's
recapture and denunciation. At the same moment the lawyer, thus
relieved of the instancy of his fear, changed his tactics. With a
great air of unconcern, he secured the newspaper, which still lay
open before him on the table.
'I think, Monsieur Alain, that you labour under some illusion,'
said he. 'Believe me, this is all beside the mark. You seem to be
pointing to some compromise. Nothing is further from my views.
You suspect me of an inclination to trifle with you, to conceal how
things are going. I cannot, on the other hand, be too early or too
explicit in giving you information which concerns you (I must say)
capitally. Your great-uncle has to-night cancelled his will, and
made a new one in favour of your cousin Anne. Nay, and you shall
hear it from his own lips, if you choose! I will take so much upon
me,' said the lawyer, rising. 'Follow me, if you please,
gentlemen.'
Mr. Romaine led the way out of the room so briskly, and was so
briskly followed by Alain, that I had hard ado to get the remainder
of the money replaced and the despatch-box locked, and to overtake
them, even by running ere they should be lost in that maze of
corridors, my uncle's house. As it was, I went with a heart
divided; and the thought of my treasure thus left unprotected, save
by a paltry lid and lock that any one might break or pick open, put
me in a perspiration whenever I had the time to remember it. The
lawyer brought us to a room, begged us to be seated while he should
hold a consultation with the doctor, and, slipping out of another
door, left Alain and myself closeted together.
Truly he had done nothing to ingratiate himself; his every word had
been steeped in unfriendliness, envy, and that contempt which (as
it is born of anger) it is possible to support without humiliation.
On my part, I had been little more conciliating; and yet I began to
be sorry for this man, hired spy as I knew him to be. It seemed to
me less than decent that he should have been brought up in the
expectation of this great inheritance, and now, at the eleventh
hour, be tumbled forth out of the house door and left to himself,
his poverty and his debts - those debts of which I had so
ungallantly reminded him so short a time before. And we were
scarce left alone ere I made haste to hang out a flag of truce.
'My cousin,' said I, 'trust me, you will not find me inclined to be
your enemy.'
He paused in front of me - for he had not accepted the lawyer's
invitation to be seated, but walked to and fro in the apartment -
took a pinch of snuff, and looked at me while he was taking it with
an air of much curiosity.
'Is it even so?' said he. 'Am I so far favoured by fortune as to
have your pity? Infinitely obliged, my cousin Anne! But these
sentiments are not always reciprocal, and I warn you that the day
when I set my foot on your neck, the spine shall break. Are you
acquainted with the properties of the spine?' he asked with an
insolence beyond qualification.
It was too much. 'I am acquainted also with the properties of a
pair of pistols,' said I, toising him.
'No, no, no!' says he, holding up his finger. 'I will take my
revenge how and when I please. We are enough of the same family to
understand each other, perhaps; and the reason why I have not had
you arrested on your arrival, why I had not a picket of soldiers in
the first clump of evergreens, to await and prevent your coming -
I, who knew all, before whom that pettifogger, Romaine, has been
conspiring in broad daylight to supplant me - is simply this: that
I had not made up my mind how I was to take my revenge.'
At that moment he was interrupted by the tolling of a bell. As we
stood surprised and listening, it was succeeded by the sound of
many feet trooping up the stairs and shuffling by the door of our
room. Both, I believe, had a great curiosity to set it open, which
each, owing to the presence of the other, resisted; and we waited
instead in silence, and without moving, until Romaine returned and
bade us to my uncle's presence.
He led the way by a little crooked passage, which brought us out in
the sick-room, and behind the bed. I believe I have forgotten to
remark that the Count's chamber was of considerable dimensions. We
beheld it now crowded with the servants and dependants of the
house, from the doctor and the priest to Mr. Dawson and the
housekeeper, from Dawson down to Rowley and the last footman in
white calves, the last plump chambermaid in her clean gown and cap,
and the last ostler in a stable waiscoat. This large congregation
of persons (and I was surprised to see how large it was) had the
appearance, for the most part, of being ill at ease and heartily
bewildered, standing on one foot, gaping like zanies, and those who
were in the corners nudging each other and grinning aside. My
uncle, on the other hand, who was raised higher than I had yet seen
him on his pillows, wore an air of really imposing gravity. No
sooner had we appeared behind him, than he lifted his voice to a
good loudness, and addressed the assemblage.
'I take you all to witness - can you hear me? - I take you all to
witness that I recognise as my heir and representative this
gentleman, whom most of you see for the first time, the Viscount
Anne de St.-Yves, my nephew of the younger line. And I take you to
witness at the same time that, for very good reasons known to
myself, I have discarded and disinherited this other gentleman whom
you all know, the Viscount de St.-Yves. I have also to explain the
unusual trouble to which I have put you all - and, since your
supper was not over, I fear I may even say annoyance. It has
pleased M. Alain to make some threats of disputing my will, and to
pretend that there are among your number certain estimable persons
who may be trusted to swear as he shall direct them. It pleases me
thus to put it out of his power and to stop the mouths of his false
witnesses. I am infinitely obliged by your politeness, and I have
the honour to wish you all a very good evening.'
As the servants, still greatly mystified, crowded out of the
sickroom door, curtseying, pulling the forelock, scraping with the
foot, and so on, according to their degree, I turned and stole a
look at my cousin. He had borne this crushing public rebuke
without change of countenance. He stood, now, very upright, with
folded arms, and looking inscrutably at the roof of the apartment.
I could not refuse him at that moment the tribute of my admiration.
Still more so when, the last of the domestics having filed through
the doorway and left us alone with my great-uncle and the lawyer,
he took one step forward towards the bed, made a dignified
reverence, and addressed the man who had just condemned him to
ruin.
'My lord,' said he, 'you are pleased to treat me in a manner which
my gratitude, and your state, equally forbid me to call in
question. It will be only necessary for me to call your attention
to the length of time in which I have been taught to regard myself
as your heir. In that position, I judged it only loyal to permit
myself a certain scale of expenditure. If I am now to be cut off
with a shilling as the reward of twenty years of service, I shall
be left not only a beggar, but a bankrupt.'
Whether from the fatigue of his recent exertion, or by a wellinspired
ingenuity of hate, my uncle had once more closed his eyes;
nor did he open them now. 'Not with a shilling,' he contented
himself with replying; and there stole, as he said it, a sort of
smile over his face, that flickered there conspicuously for the
least moment of time, and then faded and left behind the old
impenetrable mask of years, cunning, and fatigue. There could be
no mistake: my uncle enjoyed the situation as he had enjoyed few
things in the last quarter of a century. The fires of life scarce
survived in that frail body; but hatred, like some immortal
quality, was still erect and unabated.
Nevertheless my cousin persevered.
'I speak at a disadvantage,' he resumed. 'My supplanter, with
perhaps more wisdom than delicacy, remains in the room,' and he
cast a glance at me that might have withered an oak tree.
I was only too willing to withdraw, and Romaine showed as much
alacrity to make way for my departure. But my uncle was not to be
moved. In the same breath of a voice, and still without opening
his eyes, he bade me remain.
'It is well,' said Alain. 'I cannot then go on to remind you of
the twenty years that have passed over our heads in England, and
the services I may have rendered you in that time. It would be a
position too odious. Your lordship knows me too well to suppose I
could stoop to such ignominy. I must leave out all my defence -
your lordship wills it so! I do not know what are my faults; I
know only my punishment, and it is greater than I have the courage
to face. My uncle, I implore your pity: pardon me so far; do not
send me for life into a debtors' jail - a pauper debtor.'
'CHAT ET VIEUX, PARDONNEZ?' said my uncle, quoting from La
Fontaine; and then, opening a pale-blue eye full on Alain, he
delivered with some emphasis:
'La jeunesse se flatte et croit tout obtenir;
La vieillesse est impitoyable.'
The blood leaped darkly into Alain's face. He turned to Romaine
and me, and his eyes flashed.
'It is your turn now,' he said. 'At least it shall be prison for
prison with the two viscounts.'
'Not so, Mr. Alain, by your leave,' said Romaine. 'There are a few
formalities to be considered first.'
But Alain was already striding towards the door.
'Stop a moment, stop a moment!' cried Romaine. 'Remember your own
counsel not to despise an adversary.'
Alain turned.
'If I do not despise I hate you!' he cried, giving a loose to his
passion. 'Be warned of that, both of you.'
'I understand you to threaten Monsieur le Vicomte Anne,' said the
lawyer. 'Do you know, I would not do that. I am afraid, I am very
much afraid, if you were to do as you propose, you might drive me
into extremes.'
'You have made me a beggar and a bankrupt,' said Alain. What
extreme is left?'
'I scarce like to put a name upon it in this company,' replied
Romaine. 'But there are worse things than even bankruptcy, and
worse places than a debtors' jail.'
The words were so significantly said that there went a visible
thrill through Alain; sudden as a sword-stroke, he fell pale again.
'I do not understand you,' said he.
'O yes, you do,' returned Romaine. 'I believe you understand me
very well. You must not suppose that all this time, while you were
so very busy, others were entirely idle. You must not fancy,
because I am an Englishman, that I have not the intelligence to
pursue an inquiry. Great as is my regard for the honour of your
house, M. Alain de St.-Yves, if I hear of you moving directly or
indirectly in this matter, I shall do my duty, let it cost what it
will: that is, I shall communicate the real name of the
Buonapartist spy who signs his letters RUE GREGOIRE DE TOURS.'
I confess my heart was already almost altogether on the side of my
insulted and unhappy cousin; and if it had not been before, it must
have been so now, so horrid was the shock with which he heard his
infamy exposed. Speech was denied him; he carried his hand to his
neckcloth; he staggered; I thought he must have fallen. I ran to
help him, and at that he revived, recoiled before me, and stood
there with arms stretched forth as if to preserve himself from the
outrage of my touch.
'Hands off!' he somehow managed to articulate.
'You will now, I hope,' pursued the lawyer, without any change of
voice, 'understand the position in which you are placed, and how
delicately it behoves you to conduct yourself. Your arrest hangs,
if I may so express myself, by a hair; and as you will be under the
perpetual vigilance of myself and my agents, you must look to it
narrowly that you walk straight. Upon the least dubiety, I will
take action.' He snuffed, looking critically at the tortured man.
'And now let me remind you that your chaise is at the door. This
interview is agitating to his lordship - it cannot be agreeable for
you - and I suggest that it need not be further drawn out. It does
not enter into the views of your uncle, the Count, that you should
again sleep under this roof.'
As Alain turned and passed without a word or a sign from the
apartment, I instantly followed. I suppose I must be at bottom
possessed of some humanity; at least, this accumulated torture,
this slow butchery of a man as by quarters of rock, had wholly
changed my sympathies. At that moment I loathed both my uncle and
the lawyer for their coldblooded cruelty.
Leaning over the banisters, I was but in time to hear his hasty
footsteps in that hall that had been crowded with servants to
honour his coming, and was now left empty against his friendless
departure. A moment later, and the echoes rang, and the air
whistled in my ears, as he slammed the door on his departing
footsteps. The fury of the concussion gave me (had one been still
wanted) a measure of the turmoil of his passions. In a sense, I
felt with him; I felt how he would have gloried to slam that door
on my uncle, the lawyer, myself, and the whole crowd of those who
had been witnesses to his humiliation.
CHAPTER XX - AFTER THE STORM
NO sooner was the house clear of my cousin than I began to reckon
up, ruefully enough, the probable results of what had passed. Here
were a number of pots broken, and it looked to me as if I should
have to pay for all! Here had been this proud, mad beast goaded
and baited both publicly and privately, till he could neither hear
nor see nor reason; whereupon the gate had been set open, and he
had been left free to go and contrive whatever vengeance he might
find possible. I could not help thinking it was a pity that,
whenever I myself was inclined to be upon my good behaviour, some
friends of mine should always determine to play a piece of heroics
and cast me for the hero - or the victim - which is very much the
same. The first duty of heroics is to be of your own choosing.
When they are not that, they are nothing. And I assure you, as I
walked back to my own room, I was in no very complaisant humour:
thought my uncle and Mr. Romaine to have played knuckle-bones with
my life and prospects; cursed them for it roundly; had no wish more
urgent than to avoid the pair of them; and was quite knocked out of
time, as they say in the ring, to find myself confronted with the
lawyer.
He stood on my hearthrug, leaning on the chimney-piece, with a
gloomy, thoughtful brow, as I was pleased to see, and not in the
least as though he were vain of the late proceedings.
'Well?' said I. 'You have done it now!'
'Is he gone?' he asked.
'He is gone,' said I. 'We shall have the devil to pay with him
when he comes back.'
'You are right,' said the lawyer, 'and very little to pay him with
but flams and fabrications, like to-night's.'
'To-night's?' I repeated.
'Ay, to-night's!' said he.
'To-night's WHAT?' I cried.
'To-night's flams and fabrications.'
'God be good to me, sir,' said I, 'have I something more to admire
in your conduct than ever I had suspected? You cannot think how
you interest me! That it was severe, I knew; I had already
chuckled over that. But that it should be false also! In what
sense, dear sir?'
I believe I was extremely offensive as I put the question, but the
lawyer paid no heed.
'False in all senses of the word,' he replied seriously. 'False in
the sense that they were not true, and false in the sense that they
were not real; false in the sense that I boasted, and in the sense
that I lied. How can I arrest him? Your uncle burned the papers!
I told you so - but doubtless you have forgotten - the day I first
saw you in Edinburgh Castle. It was an act of generosity; I have
seen many of these acts, and always regretted - always regretted!
"That shall be his inheritance," he said, as the papers burned; he
did not mean that it should have proved so rich a one. How rich,
time will tell.'
'I beg your pardon a hundred thousand times, my dear sir, but it
strikes me you have the impudence - in the circumstances, I may
call it the indecency - to appear cast down?'
'It is true,' said he: 'I am. I am cast down. I am literally cast
down. I feel myself quite helpless against your cousin.'
'Now, really!' I asked. 'Is this serious? And is it perhaps the
reason why you have gorged the poor devil with every species of
insult? and why you took such surprising pains to supply me with
what I had so little need of - another enemy? That you were
helpless against them? "Here is my last missile," say you; "my
ammunition is quite exhausted: just wait till I get the last in -
it will irritate, it cannot hurt him. There - you see! - he is
furious now, and I am quite helpless. One more prod, another kick:
now he is a mere lunatic! Stand behind me; I am quite helpless!"
Mr. Romaine, I am asking myself as to the background or motive of
this singular jest, and whether the name of it should not be called
treachery?'
'I can scarce wonder,' said he. 'In truth it has been a singular
business, and we are very fortunate to be out of it so well. Yet
it was not treachery: no, no, Mr. Anne, it was not treachery; and
if you will do me the favour to listen to me for the inside of a
minute, I shall demonstrate the same to you beyond cavil.' He
seemed to wake up to his ordinary briskness. 'You see the point?'
he began. 'He had not yet read the newspaper, but who could tell
when he might? He might have had that damned journal in his
pocket, and how should we know? We were - I may say, we are - at
the mercy of the merest twopenny accident.'
'Why, true,' said I: 'I had not thought of that.'
'I warrant you,' cried Romaine, 'you had supposed it was nothing to
be the hero of an interesting notice in the journals! You had
supposed, as like as not, it was a form of secrecy! But not so in
the least. A part of England is already buzzing with the name of
Champdivers; a day or two more and the mail will have carried it
everywhere: so wonderful a machine is this of ours for
disseminating intelligence! Think of it! When my father was born
- but that is another story. To return: we had here the elements
of such a combustion as I dread to think of - your cousin and the
journal. Let him but glance an eye upon that column of print, and
where were we? It is easy to ask; not so easy to answer, my young
friend. And let me tell you, this sheet is the Viscount's usual
reading. It is my conviction he had it in his pocket.'
'I beg your pardon, sir,' said I. 'I have been unjust. I did not
appreciate my danger.'
'I think you never do,' said he.
'But yet surely that public scene - ' I began.
'It was madness. I quite agree with you,' Mr. Romaine interrupted.
'But it was your uncle's orders, Mr. Anne, and what could I do?
Tell him you were the murderer of Goguelat? I think not.'
'No, sure!' said I. 'That would but have been to make the trouble
thicker. We were certainly in a very ill posture.'
'You do not yet appreciate how grave it was,' he replied. 'It was
necessary for you that your cousin should go, and go at once. You
yourself had to leave to-night under cover of darkness, and how
could you have done that with the Viscount in the next room? He
must go, then; he must leave without delay. And that was the
difficulty.'
'Pardon me, Mr. Romaine, but could not my uncle have bidden him
go?' I asked.
'Why, I see I must tell you that this is not so simple as it
sounds,' he replied. 'You say this is your uncle's house, and so
it is. But to all effects and purposes it is your cousin's also.
He has rooms here; has had them coming on for thirty years now, and
they are filled with a prodigious accumulation of trash - stays, I
dare say, and powder-puffs, and such effeminate idiocy - to which
none could dispute his title, even suppose any one wanted to. We
had a perfect right to bid him go, and he had a perfect right to
reply, "Yes, I will go, but not without my stays and cravats. I
must first get together the nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine chestsfull
of insufferable rubbish, that I have spent the last thirty years
collecting - and may very well spend the next thirty hours apacking
of." And what should we have said to that?'
'By way of repartee?' I asked. 'Two tall footmen and a pair of
crabtree cudgels, I suggest.'
'The Lord deliver me from the wisdom of laymen!' cried Romaine.
'Put myself in the wrong at the beginning of a lawsuit? No,
indeed! There was but one thing to do, and I did it, and burned my
last cartridge in the doing of it. I stunned him. And it gave us
three hours, by which we should make haste to profit; for if there
is one thing sure, it is that he will be up to time again to-morrow
in the morning.'
'Well,' said I, 'I own myself an idiot. Well do they say, AN OLD
SOLDIER, AN OLD INNOCENT! For I guessed nothing of all this.'
'And, guessing it, have you the same objections to leave England?'
he inquired.
'The same,' said I.
'It is indispensable,' he objected.
'And it cannot be,' I replied. 'Reason has nothing to say in the
matter; and I must not let you squander any of yours. It will be
enough to tell you this is an affair of the heart.'
'Is it even so?' quoth Romaine, nodding his head. 'And I might
have been sure of it. Place them in a hospital, put them in a jail
in yellow overalls, do what you will, young Jessamy finds young
Jenny. O, have it your own way; I am too old a hand to argue with
young gentlemen who choose to fancy themselves in love; I have too
much experience, thank you. Only, be sure that you appreciate what
you risk: the prison, the dock, the gallows, and the halter -
terribly vulgar circumstances, my young friend; grim, sordid,
earnest; no poetry in that!'
'And there I am warned,' I returned gaily. 'No man could be warned
more finely or with a greater eloquence. And I am of the same
opinion still. Until I have again seen that lady, nothing shall
induce me to quit Great Britain. I have besides - '
And here I came to a full stop. It was upon my tongue to have told
him the story of the drovers, but at the first word of it my voice
died in my throat. There might be a limit to the lawyer's
toleration, I reflected. I had not been so long in Britain
altogether; for the most part of that time I had been by the heels
in limbo in Edinburgh Castle; and already I had confessed to
killing one man with a pair of scissors; and now I was to go on and
plead guilty to having settled another with a holly stick! A wave
of discretion went over me as cold and as deep as the sea.
'In short, sir, this is a matter of feeling,' I concluded, 'and
nothing will prevent my going to Edinburgh.'
If I had fired a pistol in his ear he could not have been more
startled.
'To Edinburgh?' he repeated. 'Edinburgh? where the very pavingstones
know you!'
'Then is the murder out!' said I. 'But, Mr. Romaine, is there not
sometimes safety in boldness? Is it not a common-place of strategy
to get where the enemy least expects you? And where would he
expect me less?'
'Faith, there is something in that, too!' cried the lawyer. 'Ay,
certainly, a great deal in that. All the witnesses drowned but
one, and he safe in prison; you yourself changed beyond recognition
- let us hope - and walking the streets of the very town you have
illustrated by your - well, your eccentricity! It is not badly
combined, indeed!'
'You approve it, then?' said I.
'O, approve!' said he; 'there is no question of approval. There is
only one course which I could approve, and that were to escape to
France instanter.'
'You do not wholly disapprove, at least?' I substituted.
'Not wholly; and it would not matter if I did,' he replied. 'Go
your own way; you are beyond argument. And I am not sure that you
will run more danger by that course than by any other. Give the
servants time to get to bed and fall asleep, then take a country
cross-road and walk, as the rhyme has it, like blazes all night.
In the morning take a chaise or take the mail at pleasure, and
continue your journey with all the decorum and reserve of which you
shall be found capable.'
'I am taking the picture in,' I said. 'Give me time. 'Tis the
TOUT ENSEMBLE I must see: the whole as opposed to the details.'
'Mountebank!' he murmured.
'Yes, I have it now; and I see myself with a servant, and that
servant is Rowley,' said I.
'So as to have one more link with your uncle?' suggested the
lawyer. 'Very judicious!'
'And, pardon me, but that is what it is,' I exclaimed. 'Judicious
is the word. I am not making a deception fit to last for thirty
years; I do not found a palace in the living granite for the night.
This is a shelter tent - a flying picture - seen, admired, and gone
again in the wink of an eye. What is wanted, in short, is a
TROMPE-L'OEIL that shall be good enough for twelve hours at an inn:
is it not so?'
'It is, and the objection holds. Rowley is but another danger,'
said Romaine.
'Rowley,' said I, 'will pass as a servant from a distance - as a
creature seen poised on the dicky of a bowling chaise. He will
pass at hand as a smart, civil fellow one meets in the inn
corridor, and looks back at, and asks, and is told, "Gentleman's
servant in Number 4." He will pass, in fact, all round, except
with his personal friends! My dear sir, pray what do you expect?
Of course if we meet my cousin, or if we meet anybody who took part
in the judicious exhibition of this evening, we are lost; and who's
denying it? To every disguise, however good and safe, there is
always the weak point; you must always take (let us say - and to
take a simile from your own waistcoat pocket) a snuff box-full of
risk. You'll get it just as small with Rowley as with anybody
else. And the long and short of it is, the lad's honest, he likes
me, I trust him; he is my servant, or nobody.'
'He might not accept,' said Romaine.
'I bet you a thousand pounds he does!' cried I. 'But no matter;
all you have to do is to send him out to-night on this crosscountry
business, and leave the thing to me. I tell you, he will
be my servant, and I tell you, he will do well.'
I had crossed the room, and was already overhauling my wardrobe as
I spoke.
'Well,' concluded the lawyer, with a shrug, 'one risk with another:
A GUERRE COMME A LA GUERRE, as you would say. Let the brat come
and be useful, at least.' And he was about to ring the bell, when
his eye was caught by my researches in the wardrobe. 'Do not fall
in love with these coats, waistcoats, cravats, and other panoply
and accoutrements by which you are now surrounded. You must not
run the post as a dandy. It is not the fashion, even.'
'You are pleased to be facetious, sir,' said I; 'and not according
to knowledge. These clothes are my life, they are my disguise; and
since I can take but few of them, I were a fool indeed if I
selected hastily! Will you understand, once and for all, what I am
seeking? To be invisible, is the first point; the second, to be
invisible in a post-chaise and with a servant. Can you not
perceive the delicacy of the quest? Nothing must be too coarse,
nothing too fine; RIEN DE VOYANT, RIEN QUI DELONNE; so that I may
leave everywhere the inconspicuous image of a handsome young man of
a good fortune travelling in proper style, whom the landlord will
forget in twelve hours - and the chambermaid perhaps remember, God
bless her! with a sigh. This is the very fine art of dress.'
'I have practised it with success for fifty years,' said Romaine,
with a chuckle. 'A black suit and a clean shirt is my infallible
recipe.'
'You surprise me; I did not think you would be shallow!' said I,
lingering between two coats. 'Pray, Mr. Romaine, have I your head?
or did you travel post and with a smartish servant?'
'Neither, I admit,' said he.
'Which change the whole problem,' I continued. 'I have to dress
for a smartish servant and a Russia leather despatch-box.' That
brought me to a stand. I came over and looked at the box with a
moment's hesitation. 'Yes,' I resumed. 'Yes, and for the
despatch-box! It looks moneyed and landed; it means I have a
lawyer. It is an invaluable property. But I could have wished it
to hold less money. The responsibility is crushing. Should I not
do more wisely to take five hundred pounds, and intrust the
remainder with you, Mr. Romaine?'
'If you are sure you will not want it,' answered Romaine.
'I am far from sure of that,' cried I. 'In the first place, as a
philosopher. This is the first time I have been at the head of a
large sum, and it is conceivable - who knows himself? - that I may
make it fly. In the second place, as a fugitive. Who knows what I
may need? The whole of it may be inadequate. But I can always
write for more.'
'You do not understand,' he replied. 'I break off all
communication with you here and now. You must give me a power of
attorney ere you start to-night, and then be done with me
trenchantly until better days.'
I believe I offered some objection.
'Think a little for once of me!' said Romaine. 'I must not have
seen you before to-night. To-night we are to have had our only
interview, and you are to have given me the power; and to-night I
am to have lost sight of you again - I know not whither, you were
upon business, it was none of my affairs to question you! And
this, you are to remark, in the interests of your own safety much
more than mine.'
'I am not even to write to you?' I said, a little bewildered.
'I believe I am cutting the last strand that connects you with
common sense,' he replied. 'But that is the plain English of it.
You are not even to write; and if you did, I would not answer.'
'A letter, however - ' I began.
'Listen to me,' interrupted Romaine. 'So soon as your cousin reads
the paragraph, what will he do? Put the police upon looking into
my correspondence! So soon as you write to me, in short, you write
to Bow Street; and if you will take my advice, you will date that
letter from France.'
'The devil!' said I, for I began suddenly to see that this might
put me out of the way of my business.
'What is it now?' says he.
'There will be more to be done, then, before we can part,' I
answered.
'I give you the whole night,' said he. 'So long as you are off ere
daybreak, I am content.'
'In short, Mr. Romaine,' said I, 'I have had so much benefit of
your advice and services that I am loth to sever the connection,
and would even ask a substitute. I would be obliged for a letter
of introduction to one of your own cloth in Edinburgh - an old man
for choice, very experienced, very respectable, and very secret.
Could you favour me with such a letter?'
'Why, no,' said he. 'Certainly not. I will do no such thing,
indeed.'
'It would be a great favour, sir,' I pleaded.
'It would be an unpardonable blunder,' he replied. 'What? Give
you a letter of introduction? and when the police come, I suppose,
I must forget the circumstance? No, indeed. Talk of it no more.'
'You seem to be always in the right,' said I. 'The letter would be
out of the question, I quite see that. But the lawyer's name might
very well have dropped from you in the way of conversation; having
heard him mentioned, I might profit by the circumstance to
introduce myself; and in this way my business would be the better
done, and you not in the least compromised.'
'What is this business?' said Romaine.
'I have not said that I had any,' I replied. 'It might arise.
This is only a possibility that I must keep in view.'
'Well,' said he, with a gesture of the hands, 'I mention Mr.
Robbie; and let that be an end of it! - Or wait!' he added, 'I have
it. Here is something that will serve you for an introduction, and
cannot compromise me.' And he wrote his name and the Edinburgh
lawyer's address on a piece of card and tossed it to me.
CHAPTER XXI - I BECOME THE OWNER OF A CLARET-COLOURED CHAISE
WHAT with packing, signing papers, and partaking of an excellent
cold supper in the lawyer's room, it was past two in the morning
before we were ready for the road. Romaine himself let us out of a
window in a part of the house known to Rowley: it appears it served
as a kind of postern to the servants' hall, by which (when they
were in the mind for a clandestine evening) they would come
regularly in and out; and I remember very well the vinegar aspect
of the lawyer on the receipt of this piece of information - how he
pursed his lips, jutted his eyebrows, and kept repeating, 'This
must be seen to, indeed! this shall be barred to-morrow in the
morning!' In this preoccupation, I believe he took leave of me
without observing it; our things were handed out; we heard the
window shut behind us; and became instantly lost in a horrid
intricacy of blackness and the shadow of woods.
A little wet snow kept sleepily falling, pausing, and falling
again; it seemed perpetually beginning to snow and perpetually
leaving off; and the darkness was intense. Time and again we
walked into trees; time and again found ourselves adrift among
garden borders or stuck like a ram in the thicket. Rowley had
possessed himself of the matches, and he was neither to be
terrified nor softened. 'No, I will not, Mr. Anne, sir,' he would
reply. 'You know he tell me to wait till we were over the 'ill.
It's only a little way now. Why, and I thought you was a soldier,
too!' I was at least a very glad soldier when my valet consented
at last to kindle a thieves' match. From this, we easily lit the
lantern; and thenceforward, through a labyrinth of woodland paths,
were conducted by its uneasy glimmer. Both booted and greatcoated,
with tall hats much of a shape, and laden with booty in the
form of a despatch-box, a case of pistols, and two plump valises, I
thought we had very much the look of a pair of brothers returning
from the sack of Amersham Place.
We issued at last upon a country by-road where we might walk
abreast and without precaution. It was nine miles to Aylesbury,
our immediate destination; by a watch, which formed part of my new
outfit, it should be about half-past three in the morning; and as
we did not choose to arrive before daylight, time could not be said
to press. I gave the order to march at ease.
'Now, Rowley,' said I, 'so far so good. You have come, in the most
obliging manner in the world, to carry these valises. The question
is, what next? What are we to do at Aylesbury? or, more
particularly, what are you? Thence, I go on a journey. Are you to
accompany me?'
He gave a little chuckle. 'That's all settled already, Mr. Anne,
sir,' he replied. 'Why, I've got my things here in the valise - a
half a dozen shirts and what not; I'm all ready, sir: just you lead
on: YOU'LL see.'
'The devil you have!' said I. 'You made pretty sure of your
welcome.'
'If you please, sir,' said Rowley.
He looked up at me, in the light of the lantern, with a boyish
shyness and triumph that awoke my conscience. I could never let
this innocent involve himself in the perils and difficulties that
beset my course, without some hint of warning, which it was a
matter of extreme delicacy to make plain enough and not too plain.
'No, no,' said I; 'you may think you have made a choice, but it was
blindfold, and you must make it over again. The Count's service is
a good one; what are you leaving it for? Are you not throwing away
the substance for the shadow? No, do not answer me yet. You
imagine that I am a prosperous nobleman, just declared my uncle's
heir, on the threshold of the best of good fortune, and, from the
point of view of a judicious servant, a jewel of a master to serve
and stick to? Well, my boy, I am nothing of the kind, nothing of
the kind.'
As I said the words, I came to a full stop and held up the lantern
to his face. He stood before me, brilliantly illuminated on the
background of impenetrable night and falling snow, stricken to
stone between his double burden like an ass between two panniers,
and gaping at me like a blunderbuss. I had never seen a face so
predestined to be astonished, or so susceptible of rendering the
emotion of surprise; and it tempted me as an open piano tempts the
musician.
'Nothing of the sort, Rowley,' I continued, in a churchyard voice.
'These are appearances, petty appearances. I am in peril,
homeless, hunted. I count scarce any one in England who is not my
enemy. From this hour I drop my name, my title; I become nameless;
my name is proscribed. My liberty, my life, hang by a hair. The
destiny which you will accept, if you go forth with me, is to be
tracked by spies, to hide yourself under a false name, to follow
the desperate pretences and perhaps share the fate of a murderer
with a price upon his head.'
His face had been hitherto beyond expectation, passing from one
depth to another of tragic astonishment, and really worth paying to
see; but at this it suddenly cleared. 'Oh, I ain't afraid!' he
said; and then, choking into laughter, 'why, I see it from the
first!'
I could have beaten him. But I had so grossly overshot the mark
that I suppose it took me two good miles of road and half an hour
of elocution to persuade him I had been in earnest. In the course
of which I became so interested in demonstrating my present danger
that I forgot all about my future safety, and not only told him the
story of Goguelat, but threw in the business of the drovers as
well, and ended by blurting out that I was a soldier of Napoleon's
and a prisoner of war.
This was far from my views when I began; and it is a common
complaint of me that I have a long tongue. I believe it is a fault
beloved by fortune. Which of you considerate fellows would have
done a thing at once so foolhardy and so wise as to make a
confidant of a boy in his teens, and positively smelling of the
nursery? And when had I cause to repent it? There is none so apt
as a boy to be the adviser of any man in difficulties such as mine.
To the beginnings of virile common sense he adds the last lights of
the child's imagination; and he can fling himself into business
with that superior earnestness that properly belongs to play. And
Rowley was a boy made to my hand. He had a high sense of romance,
and a secret cultus for all soldiers and criminals. His travelling
library consisted of a chap-book life of Wallace and some sixpenny
parts of the 'Old Bailey Sessions Papers' by Gurney the shorthand
writer; and the choice depicts his character to a hair. You can
imagine how his new prospects brightened on a boy of this
disposition. To be the servant and companion of a fugitive, a
soldier, and a murderer, rolled in one - to live by stratagems,
disguises, and false names, in an atmosphere of midnight and
mystery so thick that you could cut it with a knife - was really, I
believe, more dear to him than his meals, though he was a great
trencherman, and something of a glutton besides. For myself, as
the peg by which all this romantic business hung, I was simply
idolised from that moment; and he would rather have sacrificed his
hand than surrendered the privilege of serving me.
We arranged the terms of our campaign, trudging amicably in the
snow, which now, with the approach of morning, began to fall to
purpose. I chose the name of Ramornie, I imagine from its likeness
to Romaine; Rowley, from an irresistible conversion of ideas, I
dubbed Gammon. His distress was laughable to witness: his own
choice of an unassuming nickname had been Claude Duval! We settled
our procedure at the various inns where we should alight, rehearsed
our little manners like a piece of drill until it seemed impossible
we should ever be taken unprepared; and in all these dispositions,
you maybe sure the despatch-box was not forgotten. Who was to pick
it up, who was to set it down, who was to remain beside it, who was
to sleep with it - there was no contingency omitted, all was gone
into with the thoroughness of a drill-sergeant on the one hand and
a child with a new plaything on the other.
'I say, wouldn't it look queer if you and me was to come to the
post-house with all this luggage?' said Rowley.
'I dare say,' I replied. 'But what else is to be done?'
'Well, now, sir - you hear me,' says Rowley. 'I think it would
look more natural-like if you was to come to the post-house alone,
and with nothing in your 'ands - more like a gentleman, you know.
And you might say that your servant and baggage was a-waiting for
you up the road. I think I could manage, somehow, to make a shift
with all them dratted things - leastways if you was to give me a
'and up with them at the start.'
'And I would see you far enough before I allowed you to try, Mr.
Rowley!' I cried. 'Why, you would be quite defenceless! A footpad
that was an infant child could rob you. And I should probably come
driving by to find you in a ditch with your throat cut. But there
is something in your idea, for all that; and I propose we put it in
execution no farther forward than the next corner of a lane.'
Accordingly, instead of continuing to aim for Aylesbury, we headed
by cross-roads for some point to the northward of it, whither I
might assist Rowley with the baggage, and where I might leave him
to await my return in the post-chaise.
It was snowing to purpose, the country all white, and ourselves
walking snowdrifts, when the first glimmer of the morning showed us
an inn upon the highwayside. Some distance off, under the shelter
of a corner of the road and a clump of trees, I loaded Rowley with
the whole of our possessions, and watched him till he staggered in
safety into the doors of the GREEN DRAGON, which was the sign of
the house. Thence I walked briskly into Aylesbury, rejoicing in my
freedom and the causeless good spirits that belong to a snowy
morning; though, to be sure, long before I had arrived the snow had
again ceased to fall, and the eaves of Aylesbury were smoking in
the level sun. There was an accumulation of gigs and chaises in
the yard, and a great bustle going forward in the coffee-room and
about the doors of the inn. At these evidences of so much travel
on the road I was seized with a misgiving lest it should be
impossible to get horses, and I should be detained in the
precarious neighbourhood of my cousin. Hungry as I was, I made my
way first of all to the postmaster, where he stood - a big,
athletic, horsey-looking man, blowing into a key in the corner of
the yard.
On my making my modest request, he awoke from his indifference into
what seemed passion.
'A po'-shay and 'osses!' he cried. 'Do I look as if I 'ad a po'-
shay and 'osses? Damn me, if I 'ave such a thing on the premises.
I don't MAKE 'osses and chaises - I 'IRE 'em. You might be God
Almighty!' said he; and instantly, as if he had observed me for the
first time, he broke off, and lowered his voice into the
confidential. 'Why, now that I see you are a gentleman,' said he,
'I'll tell you what! If you like to BUY, I have the article to fit
you. Second-'and shay by Lycett, of London. Latest style; good as
new. Superior fittin's, net on the roof, baggage platform, pistol
'olsters - the most com-plete and the most gen-teel turn-out I ever
see! The 'ole for seventy-five pound! It's as good as givin' her
away!'
'Do you propose I should trundle it myself, like a hawker's
barrow?' said I. 'Why, my good man, if I had to stop here, anyway,
I should prefer to buy a house and garden!'
'Come and look at her!' he cried; and, with the word, links his arm
in mine and carries me to the outhouse where the chaise was on
view.
It was just the sort of chaise that I had dreamed of for my
purpose: eminently rich, inconspicuous, and genteel; for, though I
thought the postmaster no great authority, I was bound to agree
with him so far. The body was painted a dark claret, and the
wheels an invisible green. The lamp and glasses were bright as
silver; and the whole equipage had an air of privacy and reserve
that seemed to repel inquiry and disarm suspicion. With a servant
like Rowley, and a chaise like this, I felt that I could go from
the Land's End to John o' Groat's House amid a population of bowing
ostlers. And I suppose I betrayed in my manner the degree in which
the bargain tempted me.
'Come,' cried the postmaster - 'I'll make it seventy, to oblige a
friend!'
'The point is: the horses,' said I.
'Well,' said he, consulting his watch, 'it's now gone the 'alf
after eight. What time do you want her at the door?'
'Horses and all?' said I.
''Osses and all!' says he. 'One good turn deserves another. You
give me seventy pound for the shay, and I'll 'oss it for you. I
told you I didn't MAKE 'osses; but I CAN make 'em, to oblige a
friend.'
What would you have? It was not the wisest thing in the world to
buy a chaise within a dozen miles of my uncle's house; but in this
way I got my horses for the next stage. And by any other it
appeared that I should have to wait. Accordingly I paid the money
down - perhaps twenty pounds too much, though it was certainly a
well-made and well-appointed vehicle - ordered it round in half an
hour, and proceeded to refresh myself with breakfast.
The table to which I sat down occupied the recess of a bay-window,
and commanded a view of the front of the inn, where I continued to
be amused by the successive departures of travellers - the fussy
and the offhand, the niggardly and the lavish - all exhibiting
their different characters in that diagnostic moment of the
farewell: some escorted to the stirrup or the chaise door by the
chamberlain, the chambermaids and the waiters almost in a body,
others moving off under a cloud, without human countenance. In the
course of this I became interested in one for whom this ovation
began to assume the proportions of a triumph; not only the underservants,
but the barmaid, the landlady, and my friend the
postmaster himself, crowding about the steps to speed his
departure. I was aware, at the same time, of a good deal of
merriment, as though the traveller were a man of a ready wit, and
not too dignified to air it in that society. I leaned forward with
a lively curiosity; and the next moment I had blotted myself behind
the teapot. The popular traveller had turned to wave a farewell;
and behold! he was no other than my cousin Alain. It was a change
of the sharpest from the angry, pallid man I had seen at Amersham
Place. Ruddy to a fault, illuminated with vintages, crowned with
his curls like Bacchus, he now stood before me for an instant, the
perfect master of himself, smiling with airs of conscious
popularity and insufferable condescension. He reminded me at once
of a royal duke, or an actor turned a little elderly, and of a
blatant bagman who should have been the illegitimate son of a
gentleman. A moment after he was gliding noiselessly on the road
to London.
I breathed again. I recognised, with heartfelt gratitude, how
lucky I had been to go in by the stable-yard instead of the
hostelry door, and what a fine occasion of meeting my cousin I had
lost by the purchase of the claret-coloured chaise! The next
moment I remembered that there was a waiter present. No doubt but
he must have observed me when I crouched behind the breakfast
equipage; no doubt but he must have commented on this unusual and
undignified behaviour; and it was essential that I should do
something to remove the impression.
'Waiter!' said I, 'that was the nephew of Count Carwell that just
drove off, wasn't it?'
'Yes, sir: Viscount Carwell we calls him,' he replied.
'Ah, I thought as much,' said I. 'Well, well, damn all these
Frenchmen, say I!'
'You may say so indeed, sir,' said the waiter. 'They ain't not to
say in the same field with our 'ome-raised gentry.'
'Nasty tempers?' I suggested.
'Beas'ly temper, sir, the Viscount 'ave,' said the waiter with
feeling. 'Why, no longer agone than this morning, he was sitting
breakfasting and reading in his paper. I suppose, sir, he come on
some pilitical information, or it might be about 'orses, but he
raps his 'and upon the table sudden and calls for curacoa. It gave
me quite a turn, it did; he did it that sudden and 'ard. Now, sir,
that may be manners in France, but hall I can say is, that I'm not
used to it.'
'Reading the paper, was he?' said I. 'What paper, eh?'
'Here it is, sir,' exclaimed the waiter. 'Seems like as if he'd
dropped it.'
And picking it off the floor he presented it to me.
I may say that I was quite prepared, that I already knew what to
expect; but at sight of the cold print my heart stopped beating.
There it was: the fulfilment of Romaine's apprehension was before
me; the paper was laid open at the capture of Clausel. I felt as
if I could take a little curacoa myself, but on second thoughts
called for brandy. It was badly wanted; and suddenly I observed
the waiter's eye to sparkle, as it were, with some recognition;
made certain he had remarked the resemblance between me and Alain;
and became aware - as by a revelation - of the fool's part I had
been playing. For I had now managed to put my identification
beyond a doubt, if Alain should choose to make his inquiries at
Aylesbury; and, as if that were not enough, I had added, at an
expense of seventy pounds, a clue by which he might follow me
through the length and breadth of England, in the shape of the
claret-coloured chaise! That elegant equipage (which I began to
regard as little better than a claret-coloured ante-room to the
hangman's cart) coming presently to the door, I left my breakfast
in the middle and departed; posting to the north as diligently as
my cousin Alain was posting to the south, and putting my trust
(such as it was) in an opposite direction and equal speed.
CHAPTER XXII - CHARACTER AND ACQUIREMENTS OF MR. ROWLEY
I AM not certain that I had ever really appreciated before that
hour the extreme peril of the adventure on which I was embarked.
The sight of my cousin, the look of his face - so handsome, so
jovial at the first sight, and branded with so much malignity as
you saw it on the second - with his hyperbolical curls in order,
with his neckcloth tied as if for the conquests of love, setting
forth (as I had no doubt in the world he was doing) to clap the Bow
Street runners on my trail, and cover England with handbills, each
dangerous as a loaded musket, convinced me for the first time that
the affair was no less serious than death. I believe it came to a
near touch whether I should not turn the horses' heads at the next
stage and make directly for the coast. But I was now in the
position of a man who should have thrown his gage into the den of
lions; or, better still, like one who should have quarrelled
overnight under the influence of wine, and now, at daylight, in a
cold winter's morning, and humbly sober, must make good his words.
It is not that I thought any the less, or any the less warmly, of
Flora. But, as I smoked a grim segar that morning in a corner of
the chaise, no doubt I considered, in the first place, that the
letter-post had been invented, and admitted privately to myself, in
the second, that it would have been highly possible to write her on
a piece of paper, seal it, and send it skimming by the mail,
instead of going personally into these egregious dangers, and
through a country that I beheld crowded with gibbets and Bow Street
officers. As for Sim and Candlish, I doubt if they crossed my
mind.
At the Green Dragon Rowley was waiting on the doorsteps with the
luggage, and really was bursting with unpalatable conversation.
'Who do you think we've 'ad 'ere, sir?' he began breathlessly, as
the chaise drove off. 'Red Breasts'; and he nodded his head
portentously.
'Red Breasts?' I repeated, for I stupidly did not understand at the
moment an expression I had often heard.
'Ah!' said he. 'Red weskits. Runners. Bow Street runners. Two
on' em, and one was Lavender himself! I hear the other say quite
plain, "Now, Mr. Lavender, IF you're ready." They was breakfasting
as nigh me as I am to that postboy. They're all right; they ain't
after us. It's a forger; and I didn't send them off on a false
scent - O no! I thought there was no use in having them over our
way; so I give them "very valuable information," Mr. Lavender said,
and tipped me a tizzy for myself; and they're off to Luton. They
showed me the 'andcuffs, too - the other one did - and he clicked
the dratted things on my wrist; and I tell you, I believe I nearly
went off in a swound! There's something so beastly in the feel of
them! Begging your pardon, Mr. Anne,' he added, with one of his
delicious changes from the character of the confidential schoolboy
into that of the trained, respectful servant.
Well, I must not be proud! I cannot say I found the subject of
handcuffs to my fancy; and it was with more asperity than was
needful that I reproved him for the slip about the name.
'Yes, Mr. Ramornie,' says he, touching his hat. 'Begging your
pardon, Mr. Ramornie. But I've been very piticular, sir, up to
now; and you may trust me to be very piticular in the future. It
were only a slip, sir.'
'My good boy,' said I, with the most imposing severity, 'there must
be no slips. Be so good as to remember that my life is at stake.'
I did not embrace the occasion of telling him how many I had made
myself. It is my principle that an officer must never be wrong. I
have seen two divisions beating their brains out for a fortnight
against a worthless and quite impregnable castle in a pass: I knew
we were only doing it for discipline, because the General had said
so at first, and had not yet found any way out of his own words;
and I highly admired his force of character, and throughout these
operations thought my life exposed in a very good cause. With
fools and children, which included Rowley, the necessity was even
greater. I proposed to myself to be infallible; and even when he
expressed some wonder at the purchase of the claret-coloured
chaise, I put him promptly in his place. In our situation, I told
him, everything had to be sacrificed to appearances; doubtless, in
a hired chaise, we should have had more freedom, but look at the
dignity! I was so positive, that I had sometimes almost convinced
myself. Not for long, you may be certain! This detestable
conveyance always appeared to me to be laden with Bow Street
officers, and to have a placard upon the back of it publishing my
name and crimes. If I had paid seventy pounds to get the thing, I
should not have stuck at seven hundred to be safely rid of it.
And if the chaise was a danger, what an anxiety was the despatchbox
and its golden cargo! I had never had a care but to draw my
pay and spend it; I had lived happily in the regiment, as in my
father's house, fed by the great Emperor's commissariat as by
ubiquitous doves of Elijah - or, my faith! if anything went wrong
with the commissariat, helping myself with the best grace in the
world from the next peasant! And now I began to feel at the same
time the burthen of riches and the fear of destitution. There were
ten thousand pounds in the despatch-box, but I reckoned in French
money, and had two hundred and fifty thousand agonies; I kept it
under my hand all day, I dreamed of it at night. In the inns, I
was afraid to go to dinner and afraid to go to sleep. When I
walked up a hill I durst not leave the doors of the claret-coloured
chaise. Sometimes I would change the disposition of the funds:
there were days when I carried as much as five or six thousand
pounds on my own person, and only the residue continued to voyage
in the treasure-chest - days when I bulked all over like my cousin,
crackled to a touch with bank paper, and had my pockets weighed to
bursting-point with sovereigns. And there were other days when I
wearied of the thing - or grew ashamed of it - and put all the
money back where it had come from: there let it take its chance,
like better people! In short, I set Rowley a poor example of
consistency, and in philosophy, none at all.
Little he cared! All was one to him so long as he was amused, and
I never knew any one amused more easily. He was thrillingly
interested in life, travel, and his own melodramatic position. All
day he would be looking from the chaise windows with ebullitions of
gratified curiosity, that were sometimes justified and sometimes
not, and that (taken altogether) it occasionally wearied me to be
obliged to share. I can look at horses, and I can look at trees
too, although not fond of it. But why should I look at a lame
horse, or a tree that was like the letter Y? What exhilaration
could I feel in viewing a cottage that was the same colour as 'the
second from the miller's' in some place where I had never been, and
of which I had not previously heard? I am ashamed to complain, but
there were moments when my juvenile and confidential friend weighed
heavy on my hands. His cackle was indeed almost continuous, but it
was never unamiable. He showed an amiable curiosity when he was
asking questions; an amiable guilelessness when he was conferring
information. And both he did largely. I am in a position to write
the biographies of Mr. Rowley, Mr. Rowley's father and mother, his
Aunt Eliza, and the miller's dog; and nothing but pity for the
reader, and some misgivings as to the law of copyright, prevail on
me to withhold them.
A general design to mould himself upon my example became early
apparent, and I had not the heart to check it. He began to mimic
my carriage; he acquired, with servile accuracy, a little manner I
had of shrugging the shoulders; and I may say it was by observing
it in him that I first discovered it in myself. One day it came
out by chance that I was of the Catholic religion. He became
plunged in thought, at which I was gently glad. Then suddenly -
'Odd-rabbit it! I'll be Catholic too!' he broke out. 'You must
teach me it, Mr. Anne - I mean, Ramornie.'
I dissuaded him: alleging that he would find me very imperfectly
informed as to the grounds and doctrines of the Church, and that,
after all, in the matter of religions, it was a very poor idea to
change. 'Of course, my Church is the best,' said I; 'but that is
not the reason why I belong to it: I belong to it because it was
the faith of my house. I wish to take my chances with my own
people, and so should you. If it is a question of going to hell,
go to hell like a gentleman with your ancestors.'
'Well, it wasn't that,' he admitted. 'I don't know that I was
exactly thinking of hell. Then there's the inquisition, too.
That's rather a cawker, you know.'
'And I don't believe you were thinking of anything in the world,'
said I - which put a period to his respectable conversion.
He consoled himself by playing for awhile on a cheap flageolet,
which was one of his diversions, and to which I owed many intervals
of peace. When he first produced it, in the joints, from his
pocket, he had the duplicity to ask me if I played upon it. I
answered, no; and he put the instrument away with a sigh and the
remark that he had thought I might. For some while he resisted the
unspeakable temptation, his fingers visibly itching and twittering
about his pocket, even his interest in the landscape and in
sporadic anecdote entirely lost. Presently the pipe was in his
hands again; he fitted, unfitted, refitted, and played upon it in
dumb show for some time.
'I play it myself a little,' says he.
'Do you?' said I, and yawned.
And then he broke down.
'Mr. Ramornie, if you please, would it disturb you, sir, if I was
to play a chune?' he pleaded. And from that hour, the tootling of
the flageolet cheered our way.
He was particularly keen on the details of battles, single combats,
incidents of scouting parties, and the like. These he would make
haste to cap with some of the exploits of Wallace, the only hero
with whom he had the least acquaintance. His enthusiasm was
genuine and pretty. When he learned we were going to Scotland,
'Well, then,' he broke out, 'I'll see where Wallace lived!' And
presently after, he fell to moralising. 'It's a strange thing,
sir,' he began, 'that I seem somehow to have always the wrong sow
by the ear. I'm English after all, and I glory in it. My eye!
don't I, though! Let some of your Frenchies come over here to
invade, and you'll see whether or not! Oh, yes, I'm English to the
backbone, I am. And yet look at me! I got hold of this 'ere
William Wallace and took to him right off; I never heard of such a
man before! And then you came along, and I took to you. And both
the two of you were my born enemies! I - I beg your pardon, Mr.
Ramornie, but would you mind it very much if you didn't go for to
do anything against England' - he brought the word out suddenly,
like something hot - 'when I was along of you?'
I was more affected than I can tell.
'Rowley,' I said, 'you need have no fear. By how much I love my
own honour, by so much I will take care to protect yours. We are
but fraternising at the outposts, as soldiers do. When the bugle
calls, my boy, we must face each other, one for England, one for
France, and may God defend the right!'
So I spoke at the moment; but for all my brave airs, the boy had
wounded me in a vital quarter. His words continued to ring in my
hearing. There was no remission all day of my remorseful thoughts;
and that night (which we lay at Lichfield, I believe) there was no
sleep for me in my bed. I put out the candle and lay down with a
good resolution; and in a moment all was light about me like a
theatre, and I saw myself upon the stage of it playing ignoble
parts. I remembered France and my Emperor, now depending on the
arbitrament of war, bent down, fighting on their knees and with
their teeth against so many and such various assailants. And I
burned with shame to be here in England, cherishing an English
fortune, pursuing an English mistress, and not there, to handle a
musket in my native fields, and to manure them with my body if I
fell. I remembered that I belonged to France. All my fathers had
fought for her, and some had died; the voice in my throat, the
sight of my eyes, the tears that now sprang there, the whole man of
me, was fashioned of French earth and born of a French mother; I
had been tended and caressed by a succession of the daughters of
France, the fairest, the most ill-starred; and I had fought and
conquered shoulder to shoulder with her sons. A soldier, a noble,
of the proudest and bravest race in Europe, it had been left to the
prattle of a hobbledehoy lackey in an English chaise to recall me
to the consciousness of duty.
When I saw how it was I did not lose time in indecision. The old
classical conflict of love and honour being once fairly before me,
it did not cost me a thought. I was a Saint-Yves de Keroual; and I
decided to strike off on the morrow for Wakefield and Burchell
Fenn, and embark, as soon as it should be morally possible, for the
succour of my downtrodden fatherland and my beleaguered Emperor.
Pursuant on this resolve, I leaped from bed, made a light, and as
the watchman was crying half-past two in the dark streets of
Lichfield, sat down to pen a letter of farewell to Flora. And then
- whether it was the sudden chill of the night, whether it came by
association of ideas from the remembrance of Swanston Cottage I
know not, but there appeared before me - to the barking of sheepdogs
- a couple of snuffy and shambling figures, each wrapped in a
plaid, each armed with a rude staff; and I was immediately bowed
down to have forgotten them so long, and of late to have thought of
them so cavalierly.
Sure enough there was my errand! As a private person I was neither
French nor English; I was something else first: a loyal gentleman,
an honest man. Sim and Candlish must not be left to pay the
penalty of my unfortunate blow. They held my honour tacitly
pledged to succour them; and it is a sort of stoical refinement
entirely foreign to my nature to set the political obligation above
the personal and private. If France fell in the interval for the
lack of Anne de St.-Yves, fall she must! But I was both surprised
and humiliated to have had so plain a duty bound upon me for so
long - and for so long to have neglected and forgotten it. I think
any brave man will understand me when I say that I went to bed and
to sleep with a conscience very much relieved, and woke again in
the morning with a light heart. The very danger of the enterprise
reassured me: to save Sim and Candlish (suppose the worst to come
to the worst) it would be necessary for me to declare myself in a
court of justice, with consequences which I did not dare to dwell
upon; it could never be said that I had chosen the cheap and the
easy - only that in a very perplexing competition of duties I had
risked my life for the most immediate.
We resumed the journey with more diligence: thenceforward posted
day and night; did not halt beyond what was necessary for meals;
and the postillions were excited by gratuities, after the habit of
my cousin Alain. For twopence I could have gone farther and taken
four horses; so extreme was my haste, running as I was before the
terrors of an awakened conscience. But I feared to be conspicuous.
Even as it was, we attracted only too much attention, with our pair
and that white elephant, the seventy-pounds-worth of claretcoloured
chaise.
Meanwhile I was ashamed to look Rowley in the face. The young
shaver had contrived to put me wholly in the wrong; he had cost me
a night's rest and a severe and healthful humiliation; and I was
grateful and embarrassed in his society. This would never do; it
was contrary to all my ideas of discipline; if the officer has to
blush before the private, or the master before the servant, nothing
is left to hope for but discharge or death. I hit upon the idea of
teaching him French; and accordingly, from Lichfield, I became the
distracted master, and he the scholar - how shall I say?
indefatigable, but uninspired. His interest never flagged. He
would hear the same word twenty times with profound refreshment,
mispronounce it in several different ways, and forget it again with
magical celerity. Say it happened to be STIRRUP. 'No, I don't
seem to remember that word, Mr. Anne,' he would say: 'it don't seem
to stick to me, that word don't.' And then, when I had told it him
again, 'ETRIER!' he would cry. 'To be sure! I had it on the tip
of my tongue. ETERIER!' (going wrong already, as if by a fatal
instinct). 'What will I remember it by, now? Why, INTERIOR, to be
sure! I'll remember it by its being something that ain't in the
interior of a horse.' And when next I had occasion to ask him the
French for stirrup, it was a toss-up whether he had forgotten all
about it, or gave me EXTERIOR for an answer. He was never a hair
discouraged. He seemed to consider that he was covering the ground
at a normal rate. He came up smiling day after day. 'Now, sir,
shall we do our French?' he would say; and I would put questions,
and elicit copious commentary and explanation, but never the shadow
of an answer. My hands fell to my sides; I could have wept to hear
him. When I reflected that he had as yet learned nothing, and what
a vast deal more there was for him to learn, the period of these
lessons seemed to unroll before me vast as eternity, and I saw
myself a teacher of a hundred, and Rowley a pupil of ninety, still
hammering on the rudiments! The wretched boy, I should say, was
quite unspoiled by the inevitable familiarities of the journey. He
turned out at each stage the pink of serving-lads, deft, civil,
prompt, attentive, touching his hat like an automaton, raising the
status of Mr. Ramornie in the eyes of all the inn by his smiling
service, and seeming capable of anything in the world but the one
thing I had chosen - learning French!
CHAPTER XXIII - THE ADVENTURE OF THE RUNAWAY COUPLE
THE country had for some time back been changing in character. By
a thousand indications I could judge that I was again drawing near
to Scotland. I saw it written in the face of the hills, in the
growth of the trees, and in the glint of the waterbrooks that kept
the high-road company. It might have occurred to me, also, that I
was, at the same time, approaching a place of some fame in Britain
- Gretna Green. Over these same leagues of road - which Rowley and
I now traversed in the claret-coloured chaise, to the note of the
flageolet and the French lesson - how many pairs of lovers had gone
bowling northwards to the music of sixteen scampering horseshoes;
and how many irate persons, parents, uncles, guardians, evicted
rivals, had come tearing after, clapping the frequent red face to
the chaise-window, lavishly shedding their gold about the posthouses,
sedulously loading and re-loading, as they went, their
avenging pistols! But I doubt if I had thought of it at all,
before a wayside hazard swept me into the thick of an adventure of
this nature; and I found myself playing providence with other
people's lives, to my own admiration at the moment - and
subsequently to my own brief but passionate regret.
At rather an ugly corner of an uphill reach I came on the wreck of
a chaise lying on one side in the ditch, a man and a woman in
animated discourse in the middle of the road, and the two
postillions, each with his pair of horses, looking on and laughing
from the saddle.
'Morning breezes! here's a smash!' cried Rowley, pocketing his
flageolet in the middle of the TIGHT LITTLE ISLAND.
I was perhaps more conscious of the moral smash than the physical -
more alive to broken hearts than to broken chaises; for, as plain
as the sun at morning, there was a screw loose in this runaway
match. It is always a bad sign when the lower classes laugh: their
taste in humour is both poor and sinister; and for a man, running
the posts with four horses, presumably with open pockets, and in
the company of the most entrancing little creature conceivable, to
have come down so far as to be laughed at by his own postillions,
was only to be explained on the double hypothesis, that he was a
fool and no gentleman.
I have said they were man and woman. I should have said man and
child. She was certainly not more than seventeen, pretty as an
angel, just plump enough to damn a saint, and dressed in various
shades of blue, from her stockings to her saucy cap, in a kind of
taking gamut, the top note of which she flung me in a beam from her
too appreciative eye. There was no doubt about the case: I saw it
all. From a boarding-school, a black-board, a piano, and
Clementi's SONATINAS, the child had made a rash adventure upon life
in the company of a half-bred hawbuck; and she was already not only
regretting it, but expressing her regret with point and pungency.
As I alighted they both paused with that unmistakable air of being
interrupted in a scene. I uncovered to the lady and placed my
services at their disposal.
It was the man who answered. 'There's no use in shamming, sir,'
said he. 'This lady and I have run away, and her father's after
us: road to Gretna, sir. And here have these nincompoops spilt us
in the ditch and smashed the chaise!'
'Very provoking,' said I.
'I don't know when I've been so provoked!' cried he, with a glance
down the road, of mortal terror.
'The father is no doubt very much incensed?' I pursued civilly.
'O God!' cried the hawbuck. 'In short, you see, we must get out of
this. And I'll tell you what - it may seem cool, but necessity has
no law - if you would lend us your chaise to the next post-house,
it would be the very thing, sir.'
'I confess it seems cool,' I replied.
'What's that you say, sir?' he snapped.
'I was agreeing with you,' said I. 'Yes, it does seem cool; and
what is more to the point, it seems unnecessary. This thing can be
arranged in a more satisfactory manner otherwise, I think. You can
doubtless ride?'
This opened a door on the matter of their previous dispute, and the
fellow appeared life-sized in his true colours. 'That's what I've
been telling her: that, damn her! she must ride!' he broke out.
'And if the gentleman's of the same mind, why, damme, you shall!'
As he said so, he made a snatch at her wrist, which she evaded with
horror.
I stepped between them.
'No, sir,' said I; 'the lady shall not.'
He turned on me raging. 'And who are you to interfere?' he roared.
'There is here no question of who I am,' I replied. 'I may be the
devil or the Archbishop of Canterbury for what you know, or need
know. The point is that I can help you - it appears that nobody
else can; and I will tell you how I propose to do it. I will give
the lady a seat in my chaise, if you will return the compliment by
allowing my servant to ride one of your horses.'
I thought he would have sprung at my throat.
'You have always the alternative before you: to wait here for the
arrival of papa,' I added.
And that settled him. He cast another haggard look down the road,
and capitulated.
'I am sure, sir, the lady is very much obliged to you,' he said,
with an ill grace.
I gave her my hand; she mounted like a bird into the chaise;
Rowley, grinning from ear to ear, closed the door behind us; the
two impudent rascals of post-boys cheered and laughed aloud as we
drove off; and my own postillion urged his horses at once into a
rattling trot. It was plain I was supposed by all to have done a
very dashing act, and ravished the bride from the ravisher.
In the meantime I stole a look at the little lady. She was in a
state of pitiable discomposure, and her arms shook on her lap in
her black lace mittens.
'Madam - ' I began.
And she, in the same moment, finding her voice: 'O, what you must
think of me!'
'Madam,' said I, 'what must any gentleman think when he sees youth,
beauty and innocence in distress? I wish I could tell you that I
was old enough to be your father; I think we must give that up,' I
continued, with a smile. 'But I will tell you something about
myself which ought to do as well, and to set that little heart at
rest in my society. I am a lover. May I say it of myself - for I
am not quite used to all the niceties of English - that I am a true
lover? There is one whom I admire, adore, obey; she is no less
good than she is beautiful; if she were here, she would take you to
her arms: conceive that she has sent me - that she has said to me,
"Go, be her knight!"'
'O, I know she must be sweet, I know she must be worthy of you!'
cried the little lady. 'She would never forget female decorum -
nor make the terrible ERRATUM I've done!'
And at this she lifted up her voice and wept.
This did not forward matters: it was in vain that I begged her to
be more composed and to tell me a plain, consecutive tale of her
misadventures; but she continued instead to pour forth the most
extraordinary mixture of the correct school miss and the poor
untutored little piece of womanhood in a false position - of
engrafted pedantry and incoherent nature.
'I am certain it must have been judicial blindness,' she sobbed.
'I can't think how I didn't see it, but I didn't; and he isn't, is
he? And then a curtain rose . . . O, what a moment was that! But
I knew at once that YOU WERE; you had but to appear from your
carriage, and I knew it, O, she must be a fortunate young lady!
And I have no fear with you, none - a perfect confidence.'
'Madam,' said I, 'a gentleman.'
'That's what I mean - a gentleman,' she exclaimed. 'And he - and
that - HE isn't. O, how shall I dare meet father!' And disclosing
to me her tear-stained face, and opening her arms with a tragic
gesture: 'And I am quite disgraced before all the young ladies, my
school-companions!' she added.
'O, not so bad as that!' I cried. 'Come, come, you exaggerate, my
dear Miss - ? Excuse me if I am too familiar: I have not yet heard
your name.'
'My name is Dorothy Greensleeves, sir: why should I conceal it? I
fear it will only serve to point an adage to future generations,
and I had meant so differently! There was no young female in the
county more emulous to be thought well of than I. And what a fall
was there! O, dear me, what a wicked, piggish donkey of a girl I
have made of myself, to be sure! And there is no hope! O, Mr. - '
And at that she paused and asked my name.
I am not writing my eulogium for the Academy; I will admit it was
unpardonably imbecile, but I told it her. If you had been there -
and seen her, ravishingly pretty and little, a baby in years and
mind - and heard her talking like a book, with so much of
schoolroom propriety in her manner, with such an innocent despair
in the matter - you would probably have told her yours. She
repeated it after me.
'I shall pray for you all my life,' she said. 'Every night, when I
retire to rest, the last thing I shall do is to remember you by
name.'
Presently I succeeded in winning from her her tale, which was much
what I had anticipated: a tale of a schoolhouse, a walled garden, a
fruit-tree that concealed a bench, an impudent raff posturing in
church, an exchange of flowers and vows over the garden wall, a
silly schoolmate for a confidante, a chaise and four, and the most
immediate and perfect disenchantment on the part of the little
lady. 'And there is nothing to be done!' she wailed in conclusion.
'My error is irretrievable, I am quite forced to that conclusion.
O, Monsieur de Saint-Yves! who would have thought that I could have
been such a blind, wicked donkey!'
I should have said before - only that I really do not know when it
came in - that we had been overtaken by the two post-boys, Rowley
and Mr. Bellamy, which was the hawbuck's name, bestriding the four
post-horses; and that these formed a sort of cavalry escort, riding
now before, now behind the chaise, and Bellamy occasionally
posturing at the window and obliging us with some of his
conversation. He was so ill-received that I declare I was tempted
to pity him, remembering from what a height he had fallen, and how
few hours ago it was since the lady had herself fled to his arms,
all blushes and ardour. Well, these great strokes of fortune
usually befall the unworthy, and Bellamy was now the legitimate
object of my commiseration and the ridicule of his own post-boys!
'Miss Dorothy,' said I, 'you wish to be delivered from this man?'
'O, if it were possible!' she cried. 'But not by violence.'
'Not in the least, ma'am,' I replied. 'The simplest thing in life.
We are in a civilised country; the man's a malefactor - '
'O, never!' she cried. 'Do not even dream it! With all his
faults, I know he is not THAT.'
'Anyway, he's in the wrong in this affair - on the wrong side of
the law, call it what you please,' said I; and with that, our four
horsemen having for the moment headed us by a considerable
interval, I hailed my post-boy and inquired who was the nearest
magistrate and where he lived. Archdeacon Clitheroe, he told me, a
prodigious dignitary, and one who lived but a lane or two back, and
at the distance of only a mile or two out of the direct road. I
showed him the king's medallion.
'Take the lady there, and at full gallop,' I cried.
'Right, sir! Mind yourself,' says the postillion.
And before I could have thought it possible, he had turned the
carriage to the rightabout and we were galloping south.
Our outriders were quick to remark and imitate the manoeuvre, and
came flying after us with a vast deal of indiscriminate shouting;
so that the fine, sober picture of a carriage and escort, that we
had presented but a moment back, was transformed in the twinkling
of an eye into the image of a noisy fox-chase. The two postillions
and my own saucy rogue were, of course, disinterested actors in the
comedy; they rode for the mere sport, keeping in a body, their
mouths full of laughter, waving their hats as they came on, and
crying (as the fancy struck them) Tally-ho!' 'Stop, thief!' 'A
highwayman! A highwayman!' It was otherguess work with Bellamy.
That gentleman no sooner observed our change of direction than he
turned his horse with so much violence that the poor animal was
almost cast upon its side, and launched her in immediate and
desperate pursuit. As he approached I saw that his face was deadly
white and that he carried a drawn pistol in his hand. I turned at
once to the poor little bride that was to have been, and now was
not to be; she, upon her side, deserting the other window, turned
as if to meet me.
'O, O, don't let him kill me!' she screamed.
'Never fear,' I replied.
Her face was distorted with terror. Her hands took hold upon me
with the instinctive clutch of an infant. The chaise gave a flying
lurch, which took the feet from under me and tumbled us anyhow upon
the seat. And almost in the same moment the head of Bellamy
appeared in the window which Missy had left free for him.
Conceive the situation! The little lady and I were falling - or
had just fallen - backward on the seat, and offered to the eye a
somewhat ambiguous picture. The chaise was speeding at a furious
pace, and with the most violent leaps and lurches, along the
highway. Into this bounding receptacle Bellamy interjected his
head, his pistol arm, and his pistol; and since his own horse was
travelling still faster than the chaise, he must withdraw all of
them again in the inside of the fraction of a minute. He did so,
but he left the charge of the pistol behind him - whether by design
or accident I shall never know, and I dare say he has forgotten!
Probably he had only meant to threaten, in hopes of causing us to
arrest our flight. In the same moment came the explosion and a
pitiful cry from Missy; and my gentleman, making certain he had
struck her, went down the road pursued by the furies, turned at the
first corner, took a flying leap over the thorn hedge, and
disappeared across country in the least possible time.
Rowley was ready and eager to pursue; but I withheld him, thinking
we were excellently quit of Mr. Bellamy, at no more cost than a
scratch on the forearm and a bullet-hole in the left-hand claretcoloured
panel. And accordingly, but now at a more decent pace, we
proceeded on our way to Archdeacon Clitheroe's, Missy's gratitude
and admiration were aroused to a high pitch by this dramatic scene,
and what she was pleased to call my wound. She must dress it for
me with her handkerchief, a service which she rendered me even with
tears. I could well have spared them, not loving on the whole to
be made ridiculous, and the injury being in the nature of a cat's
scratch. Indeed, I would have suggested for her kind care rather
the cure of my coat-sleeve, which had suffered worse in the
encounter; but I was too wise to risk the anti-climax. That she
had been rescued by a hero, that the hero should have been wounded
in the affray, and his wound bandaged with her handkerchief (which
it could not even bloody), ministered incredibly to the recovery of
her self-respect; and I could hear her relate the incident to 'the
young ladies, my school-companions,' in the most approved manner of
Mrs. Radcliffe! To have insisted on the torn coat-sleeve would
have been unmannerly, if not inhuman.
Presently the residence of the archdeacon began to heave in sight.
A chaise and four smoking horses stood by the steps, and made way
for us on our approach; and even as we alighted there appeared from
the interior of the house a tall ecclesiastic, and beside him a
little, headstrong, ruddy man, in a towering passion, and
brandishing over his head a roll of paper. At sight of him Miss
Dorothy flung herself on her knees with the most moving
adjurations, calling him father, assuring him she was wholly cured
and entirely repentant of her disobedience, and entreating
forgiveness; and I soon saw that she need fear no great severity
from Mr. Greensleeves, who showed himself extraordinarily fond,
loud, greedy of caresses and prodigal of tears.
To give myself a countenance, as well as to have all ready for the
road when I should find occasion, I turned to quit scores with
Bellamy's two postillions. They had not the least claim on me, but
one of which they were quite ignorant - that I was a fugitive. It
is the worst feature of that false position that every gratuity
becomes a case of conscience. You must not leave behind you any
one discontented nor any one grateful. But the whole business had
been such a 'hurrah-boys' from the beginning, and had gone off in
the fifth act so like a melodrama, in explosions, reconciliations,
and the rape of a post-horse, that it was plainly impossible to
keep it covered. It was plain it would have to be talked over in
all the inn-kitchens for thirty miles about, and likely for six
months to come. It only remained for me, therefore, to settle on
that gratuity which should be least conspicuous - so large that
nobody could grumble, so small that nobody would be tempted to
boast. My decision was hastily and nor wisely taken. The one
fellow spat on his tip (so he called it) for luck; the other
developing a sudden streak of piety, prayed God bless me with
fervour. It seemed a demonstration was brewing, and I determined
to be off at once. Bidding my own post-boy and Rowley be in
readiness for an immediate start, I reascended the terrace and
presented myself, hat in hand, before Mr. Greensleeves and the
archdeacon.
'You will excuse me, I trust,' said I. 'I think shame to interrupt
this agreeable scene of family effusion, which I have been
privileged in some small degree to bring about.'
And at these words the storm broke.
'Small degree! small degree, sir!' cries the father; 'that shall
not pass, Mr. St. Eaves! If I've got my darling back, and none the
worse for that vagabone rascal, I know whom I have to thank. Shake
hands with me - up to the elbows, sir! A Frenchman you may be, but
you're one of the right breed, by God! And, by God, sir, you may
have anything you care to ask of me, down to Dolly's hand, by God!'
All this he roared out in a voice surprisingly powerful from so
small a person. Every word was thus audible to the servants, who
had followed them out of the house and now congregated about us on
the terrace, as well as to Rowley and the five postillions on the
gravel sweep below. The sentiments expressed were popular; some
ass, whom the devil moved to be my enemy, proposed three cheers,
and they were given with a will. To hear my own name resounding
amid acclamations in the hills of Westmorland was flattering,
perhaps; but it was inconvenient at a moment when (as I was morally
persuaded) police handbills were already speeding after me at the
rate of a hundred miles a day.
Nor was that the end of it. The archdeacon must present his
compliments, and pressed upon me some of his West India sherry, and
I was carried into a vastly fine library, where I was presented to
his lady wife. While we were at sherry in the library, ale was
handed round upon the terrace. Speeches were made, hands were
shaken, Missy (at her father's request) kissed me farewell, and the
whole party reaccompanied me to the terrace, where they stood
waving hats and handkerchiefs, and crying farewells to all the
echoes of the mountains until the chaise had disappeared.
The echoes of the mountains were engaged in saying to me privately:
'You fool, you have done it now!'
'They do seem to have got 'old of your name, Mr. Anne,' said
Rowley. 'It weren't my fault this time.'
'It was one of those accidents that can never be foreseen,' said I,
affecting a dignity that I was far from feeling. 'Some one
recognised me.'
'Which on 'em, Mr. Anne?' said the rascal.
'That is a senseless question; it can make no difference who it
was,' I returned.
'No, nor that it can't!' cried Rowley. 'I say, Mr. Anne, sir, it's
what you would call a jolly mess, ain't it? looks like "clean
bowled-out in the middle stump," don't it?'
'I fail to understand you, Rowley.'
'Well, what I mean is, what are we to do about this one?' pointing
to the postillion in front of us, as he alternately hid and
revealed his patched breeches to the trot of his horse. 'He see
you get in this morning under Mr. RAMORNIE - I was very piticular
to MR. RAMORNIE you, if you remember, sir - and he see you get in
again under Mr. Saint Eaves, and whatever's he going to see you get
out under? that's what worries me, sir. It don't seem to me like
as if the position was what you call STRATETEGIC!'
'PARRRBLEU! will you let me be!' I cried. 'I have to think; you
cannot imagine how your constant idiotic prattle annoys me.'
'Beg pardon, Mr. Anne,' said he; and the next moment, 'You wouldn't
like for us to do our French now, would you, Mr. Anne?'
'Certainly not,' said I. 'Play upon your flageolet.'
The which he did with what seemed to me to be irony.
Conscience doth make cowards of us all! I was so downcast by my
pitiful mismanagement of the morning's business that I shrank from
the eye of my own hired infant, and read offensive meanings into
his idle tootling.
I took off my coat, and set to mending it, soldier-fashion, with a
needle and thread. There is nothing more conducive to thought,
above all in arduous circumstances; and as I sewed, I gradually
gained a clearness upon my affairs. I must be done with the
claret-coloured chaise at once. It should be sold at the next
stage for what it would bring. Rowley and I must take back to the
road on our four feet, and after a decent interval of trudging, get
places on some coach for Edinburgh again under new names! So much
trouble and toil, so much extra risk and expense and loss of time,
and all for a slip of the tongue to a little lady in blue!
CHAPTER XXIV - THE INN-KEEPER OF KIRKBY-LONSDALE
I HAD hitherto conceived and partly carried out an ideal that was
dear to my heart. Rowley and I descended from our claret-coloured
chaise, a couple of correctly dressed, brisk, bright-eyed young
fellows, like a pair of aristocratic mice; attending singly to our
own affairs, communicating solely with each other, and that with
the niceties and civilities of drill. We would pass through the
little crowd before the door with high-bred preoccupation,
inoffensively haughty, after the best English pattern; and
disappear within, followed by the envy and admiration of the
bystanders, a model master and servant, point-device in every part.
It was a heavy thought to me, as we drew up before the inn at
Kirkby-Lonsdale, that this scene was now to be enacted for the last
time. Alas! and had I known it, it was to go of with so inferior a
grace!
I had been injudiciously liberal to the post-boys of the chaise and
four. My own post-boy, he of the patched breeches, now stood
before me, his eyes glittering with greed, his hand advanced. It
was plain he anticipated something extraordinary by way of a
POURBOIRE; and considering the marches and counter-marches by which
I had extended the stage, the military character of our affairs
with Mr. Bellamy, and the bad example I had set before him at the
archdeacon's, something exceptional was certainly to be done. But
these are always nice questions, to a foreigner above all: a shade
too little will suggest niggardliness, a shilling too much smells
of hush-money. Fresh from the scene at the archdeacon's, and
flushed by the idea that I was now nearly done with the
responsibilities of the claret-coloured chaise, I put into his
hands five guineas; and the amount served only to waken his
cupidity.
'O, come, sir, you ain't going to fob me of with this? Why, I seen
fire at your side!' he cried.
It would never do to give him more; I felt I should become the
fable of Kirkby-Lonsdale if I did; and I looked him in the face,
sternly but still smiling, and addressed him with a voice of
uncompromising firmness.
'If you do not like it, give it back,' said I.
He pocketed the guineas with the quickness of a conjurer, and, like
a base-born cockney as he was, fell instantly to casting dirt.
' 'Ave your own way of it, Mr. Ramornie - leastways Mr. St. Eaves,
or whatever your blessed name may be. Look 'ere' - turning for
sympathy to the stable-boys - 'this is a blessed business. Blessed
'ard, I calls it. 'Ere I takes up a blessed son of a pop-gun what
calls hisself anything you care to mention, and turns out to be a
blessed MOUNSEER at the end of it! 'Ere 'ave I been drivin' of him
up and down all day, a-carrying off of gals, a-shootin' of
pistyils, and a-drinkin' of sherry and hale; and wot does he up and
give me but a blank, blank, blanketing blank!'
The fellow's language had become too powerful for reproduction, and
I passed it by.
Meanwhile I observed Rowley fretting visibly at the bit; another
moment, and he would have added a last touch of the ridiculous to
our arrival by coming to his hands with the postillion.
'Rowley!' cried I reprovingly.
Strictly it should have been Gammon; but in the hurry of the
moment, my fault (I can only hope) passed unperceived. At the same
time I caught the eye of the postmaster. He was long and lean, and
brown and bilious; he had the drooping nose of the humourist, and
the quick attention of a man of parts. He read my embarrassment in
a glance, stepped instantly forward, sent the post-boy to the
rightabout with half a word, and was back next moment at my side.
'Dinner in a private room, sir? Very well. John, No. 4! What
wine would you care to mention? Very well, sir. Will you please
to order fresh horses? Not, sir? Very well.'
Each of these expressions was accompanied by something in the
nature of a bow, and all were prefaced by something in the nature
of a smile, which I could very well have done without. The man's
politeness was from the teeth outwards; behind and within, I was
conscious of a perpetual scrutiny: the scene at his doorstep, the
random confidences of the post-boy, had not been thrown away on
this observer; and it was under a strong fear of coming trouble
that I was shown at last into my private room. I was in half a
mind to have put off the whole business. But the truth is, now my
name had got abroad, my fear of the mail that was coming, and the
handbills it should contain, had waxed inordinately, and I felt I
could never eat a meal in peace till I had severed my connection
with the claret-coloured chaise.
Accordingly, as soon as I had done with dinner, I sent my
compliments to the landlord and requested he should take a glass of
wine with me. He came; we exchanged the necessary civilities, and
presently I approached my business.
'By the bye,' said I, 'we had a brush down the road to-day. I dare
say you may have heard of it?'
He nodded.
'And I was so unlucky as to get a pistol ball in the panel of my
chaise,' I continued, 'which makes it simply useless to me. Do you
know any one likely to buy?'
'I can well understand that,' said the landlord, 'I was looking at
it just now; it's as good as ruined, is that chaise. General rule,
people don't like chaises with bullet-holes.'
'Too much ROMANCE OF THE FOREST?' I suggested, recalling my little
friend of the morning, and what I was sure had been her favourite
reading - Mrs. Radcliffe's novels.
'Just so,' said he. 'They may be right, they may be wrong; I'm not
the judge. But I suppose it's natural, after all, for respectable
people to like things respectable about them; not bullet-holes, nor
puddles of blood, nor men with aliases.'
I took a glass of wine and held it up to the light to show that my
hand was steady.
'Yes,' said I, 'I suppose so.'
'You have papers, of course, showing you are the proper owner?' he
inquired.
'There is the bill, stamped and receipted,' said I, tossing it
across to him.
He looked at it.
'This all you have?' he asked.
'It is enough, at least,' said I. 'It shows you where I bought and
what I paid for it.'
'Well, I don't know,' he said. 'You want some paper of
identification.'
'To identify the chaise?' I inquired.
'Not at all: to identify YOU,' said he.
'My good sir, remember yourself!' said I. 'The title-deeds of my
estate are in that despatch-box; but you do not seriously suppose
that I should allow you to examine them?'
'Well, you see, this paper proves that some Mr. Ramornie paid
seventy guineas for a chaise,' said the fellow. 'That's all well
and good; but who's to prove to me that you are Mr. Ramornie?'
'Fellow!' cried I.
'O, fellow as much as you please!' said he. 'Fellow, with all my
heart! That changes nothing. I am fellow, of course - obtrusive
fellow, impudent fellow, if you like - but who are you? I hear of
you with two names; I hear of you running away with young ladies,
and getting cheered for a Frenchman, which seems odd; and one thing
I will go bail for, that you were in a blue fright when the postboy
began to tell tales at my door. In short, sir, you may be a
very good gentleman; but I don't know enough about you, and I'll
trouble you for your papers, or to go before a magistrate. Take
your choice; if I'm not fine enough, I hope the magistrates are.'
'My good man,' I stammered, for though I had found my voice, I
could scarce be said to have recovered my wits, 'this is most
unusual, most rude. Is it the custom in Westmorland that gentlemen
should be insulted?'
'That depends,' said he. 'When it's suspected that gentlemen are
spies it IS the custom; and a good custom, too. No no,' he broke
out, perceiving me to make a movement. 'Both hands upon the table,
my gentleman! I want no pistol balls in my chaise panels.'
'Surely, sir, you do me strange injustice!' said I, now the master
of myself. 'You see me sitting here, a monument of tranquillity:
pray may I help myself to wine without umbraging you?'
I took this attitude in sheer despair. I had no plan, no hope.
The best I could imagine was to spin the business out some minutes
longer, then capitulate. At least, I would not capituatle one
moment too soon.
'Am I to take that for NO?' he asked.
'Referring to your former obliging proposal?' said I. 'My good
sir, you are to take it, as you say, for "No." Certainly I will
not show you my deeds; certainly I will not rise from table and
trundle out to see your magistrates. I have too much respect for
my digestion, and too little curiosity in justices of the peace.'
He leaned forward, looked me nearly in the face, and reached out
one hand to the bell-rope. 'See here, my fine fellow!' said he.
'Do you see that bell-rope? Let me tell you, there's a boy waiting
below: one jingle, and he goes to fetch the constable.'
'Do you tell me so?' said I. 'Well, there's no accounting for
tastes! I have a prejudice against the society of constables, but
if it is your fancy to have one in for the dessert - ' I shrugged
my shoulders lightly. 'Really, you know,' I added, 'this is vastly
entertaining. I assure you, I am looking on, with all the interest
of a man of the world, at the development of your highly original
character.'
He continued to study my face without speech, his hand still on the
button of the bell-rope, his eyes in mine; this was the decisive
heat. My face seemed to myself to dislimn under his gaze, my
expression to change, the smile (with which I had began) to
degenerate into the grin of the man upon the rack. I was besides
harassed with doubts. An innocent man, I argued, would have
resented the fellow's impudence an hour ago; and by my continued
endurance of the ordeal, I was simply signing and sealing my
confession; in short, I had reached the end of my powers.
'Have you any objection to my putting my hands in my breeches
pockets?' I inquired. 'Excuse me mentioning it, but you showed
yourself so extremely nervous a moment back.' My voice was not all
I could have wished, but it sufficed. I could hear it tremble, but
the landlord apparently could not. He turned away and drew a long
breath, and you may be sure I was quick to follow his example.
'You're a cool hand at least, and that's the sort I like,' said he.
'Be you what you please, I'll deal square. I'll take the chaise
for a hundred pound down, and throw the dinner in.'
'I beg your pardon,' I cried, wholly mystified by this form of
words.
'You pay me a hundred down,' he repeated, 'and I'll take the
chaise. It's very little more than it cost,' he added, with a
grin, 'and you know you must get it off your hands somehow.'
I do not know when I have been better entertained than by this
impudent proposal. It was broadly funny, and I suppose the least
tempting offer in the world. For all that, it came very welcome,
for it gave me the occasion to laugh. This I did with the most
complete abandonment, till the tears ran down my cheeks; and ever
and again, as the fit abated, I would get another view of the
landlord's face, and go off into another paroxysm.
'You droll creature, you will be the death of me yet!' I cried,
drying my eyes.
My friend was now wholly disconcerted; he knew not where to look,
nor yet what to say; and began for the first time to conceive it
possible he was mistaken.
'You seem rather to enjoy a laugh, sir,' said he.
'O, yes! I am quite an original,' I replied, and laughed again.
Presently, in a changed voice, he offered me twenty pounds for the
chaise; I ran him up to twenty-five, and closed with the offer:
indeed, I was glad to get anything; and if I haggled, it was not in
the desire of gain, but with the view at any price of securing a
safe retreat. For although hostilities were suspended, he was yet
far from satisfied; and I could read his continued suspicions in
the cloudy eye that still hovered about my face. At last they took
shape in words.
'This is all very well,' says he: 'you carry it off well; but for
all that, I must do my duty.'
I had my strong effect in reserve; it was to burn my ships with a
vengeance! I rose. 'Leave the room,' said I. 'This is
insuperable. Is the man mad?' And then, as if already halfashamed
of my passion: 'I can take a joke as well as any one,' I
added; 'but this passes measure. Send my servant and the bill.'
When he had left me alone, I considered my own valour with
amazement. I had insulted him; I had sent him away alone; now, if
ever, he would take what was the only sensible resource, and fetch
the constable. But there was something instinctively treacherous
about the man which shrank from plain courses. And, with all his
cleverness, he missed the occasion of fame. Rowley and I were
suffered to walk out of his door, with all our baggage, on foot,
with no destination named, except in the vague statement that we
were come 'to view the lakes'; and my friend only watched our
departure with his chin in his hand, still moodily irresolute.
I think this one of my great successes. I was exposed, unmasked,
summoned to do a perfectly natural act, which must prove my doom
and which I had not the slightest pretext for refusing. I kept my
head, stuck to my guns, and, against all likelihood, here I was
once more at liberty and in the king's highway. This was a strong
lesson never to despair; and, at the same time, how many hints to
be cautious! and what a perplexed and dubious business the whole
question of my escape now appeared! That I should have risked
perishing upon a trumpery question of a POURBOIRE, depicted in
lively colours the perils that perpetually surrounded us. Though,
to be sure, the initial mistake had been committed before that; and
if I had not suffered myself to be drawn a little deep in
confidences to the innocent Dolly, there need have been no tumble
at the inn of Kirkby-Lonsdale. I took the lesson to heart, and
promised myself in the future to be more reserved. It was none of
my business to attend to broken chaises or shipwrecked travellers.
I had my hands full of my own affairs; and my best defence would be
a little more natural selfishness and a trifle less imbecile goodnature.
CHAPTER XXV - I MEET A CHEERFUL EXTRAVAGANT
I PASS over the next fifty or sixty leagues of our journey without
comment. The reader must be growing weary of scenes of travel; and
for my own part I have no cause to recall these particular miles
with any pleasure. We were mainly occupied with attempts to
obliterate our trail, which (as the result showed) were far from
successful; for, on my cousin following, he was able to run me home
with the least possible loss of time, following the claret-coloured
chaise to Kirkby-Lonsdale, where I think the landlord must have
wept to learn what he had missed, and tracing us thereafter to the
doors of the coach-office in Edinburgh without a single check.
Fortune did not favour me, and why should I recapitulate the
details of futile precautions which deceived nobody, and wearisome
arts which proved to be artless?
The day was drawing to an end when Mr. Rowley and I bowled into
Edinburgh to the stirring sound of the guard's bugle and the
clattering team. I was here upon my field of battle; on the scene
of my former captivity, escape and exploits; and in the same city
with my love. My heart expanded; I have rarely felt more of a
hero. All down the Bridges I sat by the driver with my arms folded
and my face set, unflinchingly meeting every eye, and prepared
every moment for a cry of recognition. Hundreds of the population
were in the habit of visiting the Castle, where it was my practice
(before the days of Flora) to make myself conspicuous among the
prisoners; and I think it an extraordinary thing that I should have
encountered so few to recognise me. But doubtless a clean chin is
a disguise in itself; and the change is great from a suit of
sulphur-yellow to fine linen, a well-fitting mouse-coloured greatcoat
furred in black, a pair of tight trousers of fashionable cut,
and a hat of inimitable curl. After all, it was more likely that I
should have recognised our visitors, than that they should have
identified the modish gentleman with the miserable prisoner in the
Castle.
I was glad to set foot on the flagstones, and to escape from the
crowd that had assembled to receive the mail. Here we were, with
but little daylight before us, and that on Saturday afternoon, the
eve of the famous Scottish Sabbath, adrift in the New Town of
Edinburgh, and overladen with baggage. We carried it ourselves. I
would not take a cab, nor so much as hire a porter, who might
afterwards serve as a link between my lodgings and the mail, and
connect me again with the claret-coloured chaise and Aylesbury.
For I was resolved to break the chain of evidence for good, and to
begin life afresh (so far as regards caution) with a new character.
The first step was to find lodgings, and to find them quickly.
This was the more needful as Mr. Rowley and I, in our smart clothes
and with our cumbrous burthen, made a noticeable appearance in the
streets at that time of the day and in that quarter of the town,
which was largely given up to fine folk, bucks and dandies and
young ladies, or respectable professional men on their way home to
dinner.
On the north side of St. James' Square I was so happy as to spy a
bill in a third-floor window. I was equally indifferent to cost
and convenience in my choice of a lodging - 'any port in a storm'
was the principle on which I was prepared to act; and Rowley and I
made at once for the common entrance and sealed the stair.
We were admitted by a very sour-looking female in bombazine. I
gathered she had all her life been depressed by a series of
bereavements, the last of which might very well have befallen her
the day before; and I instinctively lowered my voice when I
addressed her. She admitted she had rooms to let - even showed
them to us - a sitting-room and bedroom in a SUITE, commanding a
fine prospect to the Firth and Fifeshire, and in themselves well
proportioned and comfortably furnished, with pictures on the wall,
shells on the mantelpiece, and several books upon the table which I
found afterwards to be all of a devotional character, and all
presentation copies, 'to my Christian friend,' or 'to my devout
acquaintance in the Lord, Bethiah McRankine.' Beyond this my
'Christian friend' could not be made to advance: no, not even to do
that which seemed the most natural and pleasing thing in the world
- I mean to name her price - but stood before us shaking her head,
and at times mourning like the dove, the picture of depression and
defence. She had a voice the most querulous I have ever heard, and
with this she produced a whole regiment of difficulties and
criticisms.
She could not promise an attendance.
'Well, madam,' said I, 'and what is my servant for?'
'Him?' she asked. 'Be gude to us! Is HE your servant?'
'I am sorry, ma'am, he meets with your disapproval.'
'Na, I never said that. But he's young. He'll be a great breaker,
I'm thinkin'. Ay! he'll be a great responsibeelity to ye, like.
Does he attend to his releegion?'
'Yes, m'm,' returned Rowley, with admirable promptitude, and,
immediately closing his eyes, as if from habit, repeated the
following distich with more celerity than fervour:-
'Matthew, Mark, Luke and John
Bless the bed that I lie on!'
'Nhm!' said the lady, and maintained an awful silence.
'Well, ma'am,' said I, 'it seems we are never to hear the beginning
of your terms, let alone the end of them. Come - a good movement!
and let us be either off or on.'
She opened her lips slowly. 'Ony raferences?' she inquired, in a
voice like a bell.
I opened my pocket-book and showed her a handful of bank bills. 'I
think, madam, that these are unexceptionable,' said I.
'Ye'll be wantin' breakfast late?' was her reply.
'Madam, we want breakfast at whatever hour it suits you to give it,
from four in the morning till four in the afternoon!' I cried.
'Only tell us your figure, if your mouth be large enough to let it
out!'
'I couldnae give ye supper the nicht,' came the echo.
'We shall go out to supper, you incorrigible female!' I vowed,
between laughter and tears. 'Here - this is going to end! I want
you for a landlady - let me tell you that! - and I am going to have
my way. You won't tell me what you charge? Very well; I will do
without! I can trust you! You don't seem to know when you have a
good lodger; but I know perfectly when I have an honest landlady!
Rowley, unstrap the valises!'
Will it be credited? The monomaniac fell to rating me for my
indiscretion! But the battle was over; these were her last guns,
and more in the nature of a salute than of renewed hostilities.
And presently she condescended on very moderate terms, and Rowley
and I were able to escape in quest of supper. Much time had,
however, been lost; the sun was long down, the lamps glimmered
along the streets, and the voice of a watchman already resounded in
the neighbouring Leith Road. On our first arrival I had observed a
place of entertainment not far off, in a street behind the Register
House. Thither we found our way, and sat down to a late dinner
alone. But we had scarce given our orders before the door opened,
and a tall young fellow entered with something of a lurch, looked
about him, and approached the same table.
'Give you good evening, most grave and reverend seniors!' said he.
'Will you permit a wanderer, a pilgrim - the pilgrim of love, in
short - to come to temporary anchor under your lee? I care not who
knows it, but I have a passionate aversion from the bestial
practice of solitary feeding!'
'You are welcome, sir,' said I, 'if I may take upon me so far to
play the host in a public place.'
He looked startled, and fixed a hazy eye on me, as he sat down.
'Sir,' said he, 'you are a man not without some tincture of
letters, I perceive! What shall we drink, sir?'
I mentioned I had already called for a pot of porter.
'A modest pot - the seasonable quencher?' said he. 'Well, I do not
know but what I could look at a modest pot myself! I am, for the
moment, in precarious health. Much study hath heated my brain,
much walking wearied my - well, it seems to be more my eyes!'
'You have walked far, I dare say?' I suggested.
'Not so much far as often,' he replied. 'There is in this city -
to which, I think, you are a stranger? Sir, to your very good
health and our better acquaintance! - there is, in this city of
Dunedin, a certain implication of streets which reflects the utmost
credit on the designer and the publicans - at every hundred yards
is seated the Judicious Tavern, so that persons of contemplative
mind are secure, at moderate distances, of refreshment. I have
been doing a trot in that favoured quarter, favoured by art and
nature. A few chosen comrades - enemies of publicity and friends
to wit and wine - obliged me with their society. "Along the cool,
sequestered vale of Register Street we kept the uneven tenor of our
way," sir.'
'It struck me, as you came in - ' I began.
'O, don't make any bones about it!' he interrupted. 'Of course it
struck you! and let me tell you I was devilish lucky not to strike
myself. When I entered this apartment I shone "with all the pomp
and prodigality of brandy and water," as the poet Gray has in
another place expressed it. Powerful bard, Gray! but a niminypiminy
creature, afraid of a petticoat and a bottle - not a man,
sir, not a man! Excuse me for being so troublesome, but what the
devil have I done with my fork? Thank you, I am sure. TEMULENTIA,
QUOAD ME IPSUM, BREVIS COLLIGO EST. I sit and eat, sir, in a
London fog. I should bring a link-boy to table with me; and I
would too, if the little brutes were only washed! I intend to
found a Philanthropical Society for Washing the Deserving Poor and
Shaving Soldiers. I am pleased to observe that, although not of an
unmilitary bearing, you are apparently shaved. In my calendar of
the virtues shaving comes next to drinking. A gentleman may be a
low-minded ruffian without sixpence, but he will always be close
shaved. See me, with the eye of fancy, in the chill hours of the
morning, say about a quarter to twelve, noon - see me awake! First
thing of all, without one thought of the plausible but
unsatisfactory small beer, or the healthful though insipid sodawater,
I take the deadly razor in my vacillating grasp; I proceed
to skate upon the margin of eternity. Stimulating thought! I
bleed, perhaps, but with medicable wounds. The stubble reaped, I
pass out of my chamber, calm but triumphant. To employ a hackneyed
phrase, I would not call Lord Wellington my uncle! I, too, have
dared, perhaps bled, before the imminent deadly shaving-table.'
In this manner the bombastic fellow continued to entertain me all
through dinner, and by a common error of drunkards, because he had
been extremely talkative himself, leaped to the conclusion that he
had chanced on very genial company. He told me his name, his
address; he begged we should meet again; finally he proposed that I
should dine with him in the country at an early date.
'The dinner is official,' he explained. 'The office-bearers and
Senatus of the University of Cramond - an educational institution
in which I have the honour to be Professor of Nonsense - meet to do
honour to our friend Icarus, at the old-established HOWFF, Cramond
Bridge. One place is vacant, fascinating stranger, - I offer it to
you!'
'And who is your friend Icarus?' I asked,
'The aspiring son of Daedalus!' said he. 'Is it possible that you
have never heard the name of Byfield?'
'Possible and true,' said I.
'And is fame so small a thing?' cried he. 'Byfield, sir, is an
aeronaut. He apes the fame of a Lunardi, and is on the point of
offering to the inhabitants - I beg your pardon, to the nobility
and gentry of our neighbourhood - the spectacle of an ascension.
As one of the gentry concerned I may be permitted to remark that I
am unmoved. I care not a Tinker's Damn for his ascension. No more
- I breathe it in your ear - does anybody else. The business is
stale, sir, stale. Lunardi did it, and overdid it. A whimsical,
fiddling, vain fellow, by all accounts - for I was at that time
rocking in my cradle. But once was enough. If Lunardi went up and
came down, there was the matter settled. We prefer to grant the
point. We do not want to see the experiment repeated AD NAUSEAM by
Byfield, and Brown, and Butler, and Brodie, and Bottomley. Ah! if
they would go up and NOT come down again! But this is by the
question. The University of Cramond delights to honour merit in
the man, sir, rather than utility in the profession; and Byfield,
though an ignorant dog, is a sound reliable drinker, and really not
amiss over his cups. Under the radiance of the kindly jar
partiality might even credit him with wit.'
It will be seen afterwards that this was more my business than I
thought it at the time. Indeed, I was impatient to be gone. Even
as my friend maundered ahead a squall burst, the jaws of the rain
were opened against the coffee-house windows, and at that inclement
signal I remembered I was due elsewhere.
CHAPTER XXVI - THE COTTAGE AT NIGHT
AT the door I was nearly blown back by the unbridled violence of
the squall, and Rowley and I must shout our parting words. All the
way along Princes Street (whither my way led) the wind hunted me
behind and screamed in my ears. The city was flushed with
bucketfuls of rain that tasted salt from the neighbouring ocean.
It seemed to darken and lighten again in the vicissitudes of the
gusts. Now you would say the lamps had been blown out from end to
end of the long thoroughfare; now, in a lull, they would revive,
re-multiply, shine again on the wet pavements, and make darkness
sparingly visible.
By the time I had got to the corner of the Lothian Road there was a
distinct improvement. For one thing, I had now my shoulder to the
wind; for a second, I came in the lee of my old prison-house, the
Castle; and, at any rate, the excessive fury of the blast was
itself moderating. The thought of what errand I was on re-awoke
within me, and I seemed to breast the rough weather with increasing
ease. With such a destination, what mattered a little buffeting of
wind or a sprinkle of cold water? I recalled Flora's image, I took
her in fancy to my arms, and my heart throbbed. And the next
moment I had recognised the inanity of that fool's paradise. If I
could spy her taper as she went to bed, I might count myself lucky.
I had about two leagues before me of a road mostly uphill, and now
deep in mire. So soon as I was clear of the last street lamp,
darkness received me - a darkness only pointed by the lights of
occasional rustic farms, where the dogs howled with uplifted heads
as I went by. The wind continued to decline: it had been but a
squall, not a tempest. The rain, on the other hand, settled into a
steady deluge, which had soon drenched me thoroughly. I continued
to tramp forward in the night, contending with gloomy thoughts and
accompanied by the dismal ululation of the dogs. What ailed them
that they should have been thus wakeful, and perceived the small
sound of my steps amid the general reverberation of the rain, was
more than I could fancy. I remembered tales with which I had been
entertained in childhood. I told myself some murderer was going
by, and the brutes perceived upon him the faint smell of blood; and
the next moment, with a physical shock, I had applied the words to
my own case!
Here was a dismal disposition for a lover. 'Was ever lady in this
humour wooed?' I asked myself, and came near turning back. It is
never wise to risk a critical interview when your spirits are
depressed, your clothes muddy, and your hands wet! But the
boisterous night was in itself favourable to my enterprise: now, or
perhaps never, I might find some way to have an interview with
Flora; and if I had one interview (wet clothes, low spirits and
all), I told myself there would certainly be another.
Arrived in the cottage-garden I found the circumstances mighty
inclement. From the round holes in the shutters of the parlour,
shafts of candle-light streamed forth; elsewhere the darkness was
complete. The trees, the thickets, were saturated; the lower parts
of the garden turned into a morass. At intervals, when the wind
broke forth again, there passed overhead a wild coil of clashing
branches; and between whiles the whole enclosure continuously and
stridently resounded with the rain. I advanced close to the window
and contrived to read the face of my watch. It was half-past
seven; they would not retire before ten, they might not before
midnight, and the prospect was unpleasant. In a lull of the wind I
could hear from the inside the voice of Flora reading aloud; the
words of course inaudible - only a flow of undecipherable speech,
quiet, cordial, colourless, more intimate and winning, more
eloquent of her personality, but not less beautiful than song. And
the next moment the clamour of a fresh squall broke out about the
cottage; the voice was drowned in its bellowing, and I was glad to
retreat from my dangerous post.
For three egregious hours I must now suffer the elements to do
their worst upon me, and continue to hold my ground in patience. I
recalled the least fortunate of my services in the field: being
out-sentry of the pickets in weather no less vile, sometimes
unsuppered and with nothing to look forward to by way of breakfast
but musket-balls; and they seemed light in comparison. So
strangely are we built: so much more strong is the love of woman
than the mere love of life.
At last my patience was rewarded. The light disappeared from the
parlour and reappeared a moment after in the room above. I was
pretty well informed for the enterprise that lay before me. I knew
the lair of the dragon - that which was just illuminated. I knew
the bower of my Rosamond, and how excellently it was placed on the
ground-level, round the flank of the cottage and out of earshot of
her formidable aunt. Nothing was left but to apply my knowledge.
I was then at the bottom of the garden, whether I had gone (Heaven
save the mark!) for warmth, that I might walk to and fro unheard
and keep myself from perishing. The night had fallen still, the
wind ceased; the noise of the rain had much lightened, if it had
not stopped, and was succeeded by the dripping of the garden trees.
In the midst of this lull, and as I was already drawing near to the
cottage, I was startled by the sound of a window-sash screaming in
its channels; and a step or two beyond I became aware of a gush of
light upon the darkness. It fell from Flora's window, which she
had flung open on the night, and where she now sat, roseate and
pensive, in the shine of two candles falling from behind, her
tresses deeply embowering and shading her; the suspended comb still
in one hand, the other idly clinging to the iron stanchions with
which the window was barred.
Keeping to the turf, and favoured by the darkness of the night and
the patter of the rain which was now returning, though without
wind, I approached until I could almost have touched her. It
seemed a grossness of which I was incapable to break up her reverie
by speech. I stood and drank her in with my eyes; how the light
made a glory in her hair, and (what I have always thought the most
ravishing thing in nature) how the planes ran into each other, and
were distinguished, and how the hues blended and varied, and were
shaded off, between the cheek and neck. At first I was abashed:
she wore her beauty like an immediate halo of refinement; she
discouraged me like an angel, or what I suspect to be the next most
discouraging, a modern lady. But as I continued to gaze, hope and
life returned to me; I forgot my timidity, I forgot the sickening
pack of wet clothes with which I stood burdened, I tingled with new
blood.
Still unconscious of my presence, still gazing before her upon the
illuminated image of the window, the straight shadows of the bars,
the glinting of pebbles on the path, and the impenetrable night on
the garden and the hills beyond it, she heaved a deep breath that
struck upon my heart like an appeal.
'Why does Miss Gilchrist sigh?' I whispered. 'Does she recall
absent friends?'
She turned her head swiftly in my direction; it was the only sign
of surprise she deigned to make. At the same time I stepped into
the light and bowed profoundly.
'You!' she said. 'Here?'
'Yes, I am here,' I replied. 'I have come very far, it may be a
hundred and fifty leagues, to see you. I have waited all this
night in your garden. Will Miss Gilchrist not offer her hand - to
a friend in trouble?'
She extended it between the bars, and I dropped upon one knee on
the wet path and kissed it twice. At the second it was withdrawn
suddenly, methought with more of a start than she had hitherto
displayed. I regained my former attitude, and we were both silent
awhile. My timidity returned on me tenfold. I looked in her face
for any signals of anger, and seeing her eyes to waver and fall
aside from mine, augured that all was well.
'You must have been mad to come here!' she broke out. 'Of all
places under heaven this is no place for you to come. And I was
just thinking you were safe in France!'
'You were thinking of me!' I cried.
'Mr. St. Ives, you cannot understand your danger,' she replied. 'I
am sure of it, and yet I cannot find it in my heart to tell you.
O, be persuaded, and go!'
'I believe I know the worst. But I was never one to set an undue
value on life, the life that we share with beasts. My university
has been in the wars, not a famous place of education, but one
where a man learns to carry his life in his hand as lightly as a
glove, and for his lady or his honour to lay it as lightly down.
You appeal to my fears, and you do wrong. I have come to Scotland
with my eyes quite open to see you and to speak with you - it may
be for the last time. With my eyes quite open, I say; and if I did
not hesitate at the beginning do you think that I would draw back
now?'
'You do not know!' she cried, with rising agitation. 'This
country, even this garden, is death to you. They all believe it; I
am the only one that does not. If they hear you now, if they heard
a whisper - I dread to think of it. O, go, go this instant. It is
my prayer.'
'Dear lady, do not refuse me what I have come so far to seek; and
remember that out of all the millions in England there is no other
but yourself in whom I can dare confide. I have all the world
against me; you are my only ally; and as I have to speak, you have
to listen. All is true that they say of me, and all of it false at
the same time. I did kill this man Goguelat - it was that you
meant?'
She mutely signed to me that it was; she had become deadly pale.
'But I killed him in fair fight. Till then, I had never taken a
life unless in battle, which is my trade. But I was grateful, I
was on fire with gratitude, to one who had been good to me, who had
been better to me than I could have dreamed of an angel, who had
come into the darkness of my prison like sunrise. The man Goguelat
insulted her. O, he had insulted me often, it was his favourite
pastime, and he might insult me as he pleased - for who was I? But
with that lady it was different. I could never forgive myself if I
had let it pass. And we fought, and he fell, and I have no
remorse.'
I waited anxiously for some reply. The worst was now out, and I
knew that she had heard of it before; but it was impossible for me
to go on with my narrative without some shadow of encouragement.
'You blame me?'
'No, not at all. It is a point I cannot speak on - I am only a
girl. I am sure you were in the right: I have always said so - to
Ronald. Not, of course, to my aunt. I am afraid I let her speak
as she will. You must not think me a disloyal friend; and even
with the Major - I did not tell you he had become quite a friend of
ours - Major Chevenix, I mean - he has taken such a fancy to
Ronald! It was he that brought the news to us of that hateful
Clausel being captured, and all that he was saying. I was
indignant with him. I said - I dare say I said too much - and I
must say he was very good-natured. He said, "You and I, who are
his friends, KNOW that Champdivers is innocent. But what is the
use of saying it?" All this was in the corner of the room in what
they call an aside. And then he said, "Give me a chance to speak
to you in private, I have much to tell you." And he did. And told
me just what you did - that it was an affair of honour, and no
blame attached to you. O, I must say I like that Major Chevenix!'
At this I was seized with a great pang of jealousy. I remembered
the first time that he had seen her, the interest that he seemed
immediately to conceive; and I could not but admire the dog for the
use he had been ingenious enough to make of our acquaintance in
order to supplant me. All is fair in love and war. For all that,
I was now no less anxious to do the speaking myself than I had been
before to hear Flora. At least, I could keep clear of the hateful
image of Major Chevenix. Accordingly I burst at once on the
narrative of my adventures. It was the same as you have read, but
briefer, and told with a very different purpose. Now every
incident had a particular bearing, every by-way branched off to
Rome - and that was Flora.
When I had begun to speak I had kneeled upon the gravel withoutside
the low window, rested my arms upon the sill, and lowered my voice
to the most confidential whisper. Flora herself must kneel upon
the other side, and this brought our heads upon a level with only
the bars between us. So placed, so separated, it seemed that our
proximity, and the continuous and low sounds of my pleading voice,
worked progressively and powerfully on her heart, and perhaps not
less so on my own. For these spells are double-edged. The silly
birds may be charmed with the pipe of the fowler, which is but a
tube of reeds. Not so with a bird of our own feather! As I went
on, and my resolve strengthened, and my voice found new
modulations, and our faces were drawn closer to the bars and to
each other, not only she, but I, succumbed to the fascination, and
were kindled by the charm. We make love, and thereby ourselves
fall the deeper in it. It is with the heart only that one captures
a heart.
'And now,' I continued, 'I will tell you what you can still do for
me. I run a little risk just now, and you see for yourself how
unavoidable it is for any man of honour. But if - but in case of
the worst I do not choose to enrich either my enemies or the Prince
Regent. I have here the bulk of what my uncle gave me. Eight
thousand odd pounds. Will you take care of it for me? Do not
think of it merely as money; take and keep it as a relic of your
friend or some precious piece of him. I may have bitter need of it
ere long. Do you know the old country story of the giant who gave
his heart to his wife to keep for him, thinking it safer to repose
on her loyalty than his own strength? Flora, I am the giant - a
very little one: will you be the keeper of my life? It is my heart
I offer you in this symbol. In the sight of God, if you will have
it, I give you my name, I endow you with my money. If the worst
come, if I may never hope to call you wife, let me at least think
that you will use my uncle's legacy as my widow.'
'No, not that,' she said. 'Never that.'
'What then?' I said. 'What else, my angel? What are words to me?
There is but one name that I care to know you by. Flora, my love!'
'Anne!' she said.
What sound is so full of music as one's own name uttered for the
first time in the voice of her we love!
'My darling!' said I.
The jealous bars, set at the top and bottom in stone and lime,
obstructed the rapture of the moment; but I took her to myself as
wholly as they allowed. She did not shun my lips. My arms were
wound round her body, which yielded itself generously to my
embrace. As we so remained, entwined and yet severed, bruising our
faces unconsciously on the cold bars, the irony of the universe -
or as I prefer to say, envy of some of the gods - again stirred up
the elements of that stormy night. The wind blew again in the
tree-tops; a volley of cold sea-rain deluged the garden, and, as
the deuce would have it, a gutter which had been hitherto choked up
began suddenly to play upon my head and shoulders with the vivacity
of a fountain. We parted with a shock; I sprang to my feet, and
she to hers, as though we had been discovered. A moment after, but
now both standing, we had again approached the window on either
side.
'Flora,' I said, 'this is but a poor offer I can make you.'
She took my hand in hers and clasped it to her bosom.
'Rich enough for a queen!' she said, with a lift in her breathing
that was more eloquent than words. 'Anne, my brave Anne! I would
be glad to be your maidservant; I could envy that boy Rowley. But,
no!' she broke off, 'I envy no one - I need not - I am yours.'
'Mine,' said I, 'for ever! By this and this, mine!'
'All of me,' she repeated. 'Altogether and forever!'
And if the god were envious, he must have seen with mortification
how little he could do to mar the happiness of mortals. I stood in
a mere waterspout; she herself was wet, not from my embrace only,
but from the splashing of the storm. The candles had guttered out;
we were in darkness. I could scarce see anything but the shining
of her eyes in the dark room. To her I must have appeared as a
silhouette, haloed by rain and the spouting of the ancient Gothic
gutter above my head.
Presently we became more calm and confidential; and when that
squall, which proved to be the last of the storm, had blown by,
fell into a talk of ways and means. It seemed she knew Mr. Robbie,
to whom I had been so slenderly accredited by Romaine - was even
invited to his house for the evening of Monday, and gave me a
sketch of the old gentleman's character which implied a great deal
of penetration in herself, and proved of great use to me in the
immediate sequel. It seemed he was an enthusiastic antiquary, and
in particular a fanatic of heraldry. I heard it with delight, for
I was myself, thanks to M. de Culemberg, fairly grounded in that
science, and acquainted with the blazons of most families of note
in Europe. And I had made up my mind - even as she spoke, it was
my fixed determination, though I was a hundred miles from saying it
- to meet Flora on Monday night as a fellow-guest in Mr. Robbie's
house.
I gave her my money - it was, of course, only paper I had brought.
I gave it her, to be her marriage-portion, I declared.
'Not so bad a marriage-portion for a private soldier,' I told her,
laughing, as I passed it through the bars.
'O, Anne, and where am I to keep it?' she cried. 'If my aunt
should find it! What would I say!'
'Next your heart,' I suggested.
'Then you will always be near your treasure,' she cried, 'for you
are always there!'
We were interrupted by a sudden clearness that fell upon the night.
The clouds dispersed; the stars shone in every part of the heavens;
and, consulting my watch, I was startled to find it already hard on
five in the morning.
CHAPTER XXVII - THE SABBATH DAY
IT was indeed high time I should be gone from Swanston; but what I
was to do in the meanwhile was another question. Rowley had
received his orders last night: he was to say that I had met a
friend, and Mrs. McRankine was not to expect me before morning. A
good enough tale in itself; but the dreadful pickle I was in made
it out of the question. I could not go home till I had found
harbourage, a fire to dry my clothes at, and a bed where I might
lie till they were ready.
Fortune favoured me again. I had scarce got to the top of the
first hill when I spied a light on my left, about a furlong away.
It might be a case of sickness; what else it was likely to be - in
so rustic a neighbourhood, and at such an ungodly time of the
morning - was beyond my fancy. A faint sound of singing became
audible, and gradually swelled as I drew near, until at last I
could make out the words, which were singularly appropriate both to
the hour and to the condition of the singers. 'The cock may craw,
the day may daw,' they sang; and sang it with such laxity both in
time and tune, and such sentimental complaisance in the expression,
as assured me they had got far into the third bottle at least.
I found a plain rustic cottage by the wayside, of the sort called
double, with a signboard over the door; and, the lights within
streaming forth and somewhat mitigating the darkness of the
morning, I was enabled to decipher the inscription: 'The Hunters'
Tryst, by Alexander Hendry. Porter Ales, and British Spirits.
Beds.'
My first knock put a period to the music, and a voice challenged
tipsily from within.
'Who goes there?' it said; and I replied, 'A lawful traveller.'
Immediately after, the door was unbarred by a company of the
tallest lads my eyes had ever rested on, all astonishingly drunk
and very decently dressed, and one (who was perhaps the drunkest of
the lot) carrying a tallow candle, from which he impartially
bedewed the clothes of the whole company. As soon as I saw them I
could not help smiling to myself to remember the anxiety with which
I had approached. They received me and my hastily-concocted story,
that I had been walking from Peebles and had lost my way, with
incoherent benignity; jostled me among them into the room where
they had been sitting, a plain hedgerow alehouse parlour, with a
roaring fire in the chimney and a prodigious number of empty
bottles on the floor; and informed me that I was made, by this
reception, a temporary member of the SIX-FEET-HIGH CLUB, an
athletic society of young men in a good station, who made of the
Hunters' Tryst a frequent resort. They told me I had intruded on
an 'all-night sitting,' following upon an 'all-day Saturday tramp'
of forty miles; and that the members would all be up and 'as right
as ninepence' for the noonday service at some neighbouring church -
Collingwood, if memory serves me right. At this I could have
laughed, but the moment seemed ill-chosen. For, though six feet
was their standard, they all exceeded that measurement
considerably; and I tasted again some of the sensations of
childhood, as I looked up to all these lads from a lower plane, and
wondered what they would do next. But the Six-Footers, if they
were very drunk, proved no less kind. The landlord and servants of
the Hunters' Tryst were in bed and asleep long ago. Whether by
natural gift or acquired habit they could suffer pandemonium to
reign all over the house, and yet lie ranked in the kitchen like
Egyptian mummies, only that the sound of their snoring rose and
fell ceaselessly like the drone of a bagpipe. Here the Six-Footers
invaded them - in their citadel, so to speak; counted the bunks and
the sleepers; proposed to put me in bed to one of the lasses,
proposed to have one of the lasses out to make room for me, fell
over chairs, and made noise enough to waken the dead: the whole
illuminated by the same young torch-bearer, but now with two
candles, and rapidly beginning to look like a man in a snowstorm.
At last a bed was found for me, my clothes were hung out to dry
before the parlour fire, and I was mercifully left to my repose.
I awoke about nine with the sun shining in my eyes. The landlord
came at my summons, brought me my clothes dried and decently
brushed, and gave me the good news that the Six-Feet-High Club were
all abed and sleeping off their excesses. Where they were bestowed
was a puzzle to me until (as I was strolling about the garden patch
waiting for breakfast) I came on a barn door, and, looking in, saw
all the red face mixed in the straw like plums in a cake. Quoth
the stalwart maid who brought me my porridge and bade me 'eat them
while they were hot,' 'Ay, they were a' on the ran-dan last nicht!
Hout! they're fine lads, and they'll be nane the waur of it. Forby
Farbes's coat. I dinna see wha's to get the creish off that!' she
added, with a sigh; in which, identifying Forbes as the torchbearer,
I mentally joined.
It was a brave morning when I took the road; the sun shone, spring
seemed in the air, it smelt like April or May, and some overventurous
birds sang in the coppices as I went by. I had plenty to
think of, plenty to be grateful for, that gallant morning; and yet
I had a twitter at my heart. To enter the city by daylight might
be compared to marching on a battery; every face that I confronted
would threaten me like the muzzle of a gun; and it came into my
head suddenly with how much better a countenance I should be able
to do it if I could but improvise a companion. Hard by Merchiston
I was so fortunate as to observe a bulky gentleman in broadcloth
and gaiters, stooping with his head almost between his knees,
before a stone wall. Seizing occasion by the forelock, I drew up
as I came alongside and inquired what he had found to interest him.
He turned upon me a countenance not much less broad than his back.
'Why, sir,' he replied, 'I was even marvelling at my own
indefeasible stupeedity: that I should walk this way every week of
my life, weather permitting, and should never before have NOTTICED
that stone,' touching it at the same time with a goodly oak staff.
I followed the indication. The stone, which had been built
sideways into the wall, offered traces of heraldic sculpture. At
once there came a wild idea into my mind: his appearance tallied
with Flora's description of Mr. Robbie; a knowledge of heraldry
would go far to clinch the proof; and what could be more desirable
than to scrape an informal acquaintance with the man whom I must
approach next day with my tale of the drovers, and whom I yet
wished to please? I stooped in turn.
'A chevron,' I said; 'on a chief three mullets? Looks like
Douglas, does it not?'
'Yes, sir, it does; you are right,' said he: 'it DOES look like
Douglas; though, without the tinctures, and the whole thing being
so battered and broken up, who shall venture an opinion? But allow
me to be more personal, sir. In these degenerate days I am
astonished you should display so much proficiency.'
'O, I was well grounded in my youth by an old gentleman, a friend
of my family, and I may say my guardian,' said I; 'but I have
forgotten it since. God forbid I should delude you into thinking
me a herald, sir! I am only an ungrammatical amateur.'
'And a little modesty does no harm even in a herald,' says my new
acquaintance graciously.
In short, we fell together on our onward way, and maintained very
amicable discourse along what remained of the country road, past
the suburbs, and on into the streets of the New Town, which was as
deserted and silent as a city of the dead. The shops were closed,
no vehicle ran, cats sported in the midst of the sunny causeway;
and our steps and voices re-echoed from the quiet houses. It was
the high-water, full and strange, of that weekly trance to which
the city of Edinburgh is subjected: the apotheosis of the SAWBATH;
and I confess the spectacle wanted not grandeur, however much it
may have lacked cheerfulness. There are few religious ceremonies
more imposing. As we thus walked and talked in a public seclusion
the bells broke out ringing through all the bounds of the city, and
the streets began immediately to be thronged with decent churchgoers.
'Ah!' said my companion, 'there are the bells! Now, sir, as you
are a stranger I must offer you the hospitality of my pew. I do
not know whether you are at all used with our Scottish form; but in
case you are not I will find your places for you; and Dr. Henry
Gray, of St. Mary's (under whom I sit), is as good a preacher as we
have to show you.'
This put me in a quandary. It was a degree of risk I was scarce
prepared for. Dozens of people, who might pass me by in the street
with no more than a second look, would go on from the second to the
third, and from that to a final recognition, if I were set before
them, immobilised in a pew, during the whole time of service. An
unlucky turn of the head would suffice to arrest their attention.
'Who is that?' they would think: 'surely I should know him!' and, a
church being the place in all the world where one has least to
think of, it was ten to one they would end by remembering me before
the benediction. However, my mind was made up: I thanked my
obliging friend, and placed myself at his disposal.
Our way now led us into the north-east quarter of the town, among
pleasant new faubourgs, to a decent new church of a good size,
where I was soon seated by the side of my good Samaritan, and
looked upon by a whole congregation of menacing faces. At first
the possibility of danger kept me awake; but by the time I had
assured myself there was none to be apprehended, and the service
was not in the least likely to be enlivened by the arrest of a
French spy, I had to resign myself to the task of listening to Dr.
Henry Gray.
As we moved out, after this ordeal was over, my friend was at once
surrounded and claimed by his acquaintances of the congregation;
and I was rejoiced to hear him addressed by the expected name of
Robbie.
So soon as we were clear of the crowd - 'Mr. Robbie?' said I,
bowing.
'The very same, sir,' said he.
'If I mistake not, a lawyer?'
'A writer to His Majesty's Signet, at your service.'
'It seems we were predestined to be acquaintances!' I exclaimed.
'I have here a card in my pocket intended for you. It is from my
family lawyer. It was his last word, as I was leaving, to ask to
be remembered kindly, and to trust you would pass over so informal
an introduction.'
And I offered him the card.
'Ay, ay, my old friend Daniel!' says he, looking on the card. 'And
how does my old friend Daniel?'
I gave a favourable view of Mr. Romaine's health.
'Well, this is certainly a whimsical incident,' he continued. 'And
since we are thus met already - and so much to my advantage! - the
simplest thing will be to prosecute the acquaintance instantly.
Let me propose a snack between sermons, a bottle of my particular
green seal - and when nobody is looking we can talk blazons, Mr.
Ducie!' - which was the name I then used and had already
incidentally mentioned, in the vain hope of provoking a return in
kind.
'I beg your pardon, sir: do I understand you to invite me to your
house?' said I.
'That was the idea I was trying to convey,' said he. 'We have the
name of hospitable people up here, and I would like you to try
mine.'
'Mr. Robbie, I shall hope to try it some day, but not yet,' I
replied. 'I hope you will not misunderstand me. My business,
which brings me to your city, is of a peculiar kind. Till you
shall have heard it, and, indeed, till its issue is known, I should
feel as if I had stolen your invitation.'
'Well, well,' said he, a little sobered, 'it must be as you wish,
though you would hardly speak otherwise if you had committed
homicide! Mine is the loss. I must eat alone; a very pernicious
thing for a person of my habit of body, content myself with a pint
of skinking claret, and meditate the discourse. But about this
business of yours: if it is so particular as all that, it will
doubtless admit of no delay.'
'I must confess, sir, it presses,' I acknowledged.
'Then, let us say to-morrow at half-past eight in the morning,'
said he; 'and I hope, when your mind is at rest (and it does you
much honour to take it as you do), that you will sit down with me
to the postponed meal, not forgetting the bottle. You have my
address?' he added, and gave it me - which was the only thing I
wanted.
At last, at the level of York Place, we parted with mutual
civilities, and I was free to pursue my way, through the mobs of
people returning from church, to my lodgings in St. James' Square.
Almost at the house door whom should I overtake but my landlady in
a dress of gorgeous severity, and dragging a prize in her wake: no
less than Rowley, with the cockade in his hat, and a smart pair of
tops to his boots! When I said he was in the lady's wake I spoke
but in metaphor. As a matter of fact he was squiring her, with the
utmost dignity, on his arm; and I followed them up the stairs,
smiling to myself.
Both were quick to salute me as soon as I was perceived, and Mrs.
McRankine inquired where I had been. I told her boastfully, giving
her the name of the church and the divine, and ignorantly supposing
I should have gained caste. But she soon opened my eyes. In the
roots of the Scottish character there are knots and contortions
that not only no stranger can understand, but no stranger can
follow; he walks among explosives; and his best course is to throw
himself upon their mercy - 'Just as I am, without one plea,' a
citation from one of the lady's favourite hymns.
The sound she made was unmistakable in meaning, though it was
impossible to be written down; and I at once executed the manoeuvre
I have recommended.
'You must remember I am a perfect stranger in your city,' said I.
'If I have done wrong, it was in mere ignorance, my dear lady; and
this afternoon, if you will be so good as to take me, I shall
accompany YOU.'
But she was not to be pacified at the moment, and departed to her
own quarters murmuring.
'Well, Rowley,' said I; 'and have you been to church?'
'If you please, sir,' he said.
'Well, you have not been any less unlucky than I have,' I returned.
'And how did you get on with the Scottish form?'
'Well, sir, it was pretty 'ard, the form was, and reether narrow,'
he replied. 'I don't know w'y it is, but it seems to me like as if
things were a good bit changed since William Wallace! That was a
main queer church she took me to, Mr. Anne! I don't know as I
could have sat it out, if she 'adn't 'a' give me peppermints. She
ain't a bad one at bottom, the old girl; she do pounce a bit, and
she do worry, but, law bless you, Mr. Anne, it ain't nothink really
- she don't MEAN it. W'y, she was down on me like a 'undredweight
of bricks this morning. You see, last night she 'ad me in to
supper, and, I beg your pardon, sir, but I took the freedom of
playing her a chune or two. She didn't mind a bit; so this morning
I began to play to myself, and she flounced in, and flew up, and
carried on no end about Sunday!'
'You see, Rowley,' said I, 'they're all mad up here, and you have
to humour them. See and don't quarrel with Mrs. McRankine; and,
above all, don't argue with her, or you'll get the worst of it.
Whatever she says, touch your forelock and say, "If you please!" or
"I beg pardon, ma'am." And let me tell you one thing: I am sorry,
but you have to go to church with her again this afternoon. That's
duty, my boy!'
As I had foreseen, the bells had scarce begun before Mrs. McRankine
presented herself to be our escort, upon which I sprang up with
readiness and offered her my arm. Rowley followed behind. I was
beginning to grow accustomed to the risks of my stay in Edinburgh,
and it even amused me to confront a new churchful. I confess the
amusement did not last until the end; for if Dr. Gray were long,
Mr. McCraw was not only longer, but more incoherent, and the matter
of his sermon (which was a direct attack, apparently, on all the
Churches of the world, my own among the number), where it had not
the tonic quality of personal insult, rather inclined me to
slumber. But I braced myself for my life, kept up Rowley with the
end of a pin, and came through it awake, but no more.
Bethiah was quite conquered by this 'mark of grace,' though, I am
afraid, she was also moved by more worldly considerations. The
first is, the lady had not the least objection to go to church on
the arm of an elegantly dressed young gentleman, and be followed by
a spruce servant with a cockade in his hat. I could see it by the
way she took possession of us, found us the places in the Bible,
whispered to me the name of the minister, passed us lozenges, which
I (for my part) handed on to Rowley, and at each fresh attention
stole a little glance about the church to make sure she was
observed. Rowley was a pretty boy; you will pardon me if I also
remembered that I was a favourable-looking young man. When we grow
elderly, how the room brightens, and begins to look as it ought to
look, on the entrance of youth, grace, health, and comeliness! You
do not want them for yourself, perhaps not even for your son, but
you look on smiling; and when you recall their images - again, it
is with a smile. I defy you to see or think of them and not smile
with an infinite and intimate, but quite impersonal, pleasure.
Well, either I know nothing of women, or that was the case with
Bethiah McRankine. She had been to church with a cockade behind
her, on the one hand; on the other, her house was brightened by the
presence of a pair of good-looking young fellows of the other sex,
who were always pleased and deferential in her society and accepted
her views as final.
These were sentiments to be encouraged; and, on the way home from
church - if church it could be called - I adopted a most insidious
device to magnify her interest. I took her into the confidence,
that is, of my love affair, and I had no sooner mentioned a young
lady with whom my affections were engaged than she turned upon me a
face of awful gravity.
'Is she bonny?' she inquired.
I gave her full assurances upon that.
'To what denoamination does she beloang?' came next, and was so
unexpected as almost to deprive me of breath.
'Upon my word, ma'am, I have never inquired,' cried I; 'I only know
that she is a heartfelt Christian, and that is enough.'
'Ay!' she sighed, 'if she has the root of the maitter! There's a
remnant practically in most of the denoaminations. There's some in
the McGlashanites, and some in the Glassites, and mony in the
McMillanites, and there's a leeven even in the Estayblishment.'
'I have known some very good Papists even, if you go to that,' said
I.
'Mr. Ducie, think shame to yoursel'!' she cried.
'Why, my dear madam! I only - ' I began.
'You shouldnae jest in sairious maitters,' she interrupted.
On the whole, she entered into what I chose to tell her of our
idyll with avidity, like a cat licking her whiskers over a dish of
cream; and, strange to say - and so expansive a passion is that of
love! - that I derived a perhaps equal satisfaction from confiding
in that breast of iron. It made an immediate bond: from that hour
we seemed to be welded into a family-party; and I had little
difficulty in persuading her to join us and to preside over our
tea-table. Surely there was never so ill-matched a trio as Rowley,
Mrs. McRankine, and the Viscount Anne! But I am of the Apostle's
way, with a difference: all things to all women! When I cannot
please a woman, hang me in my cravat!
CHAPTER XXVIII - EVENTS OF MONDAY: THE LAWYER'S PARTY
BY half-past eight o'clock on the next morning, I was ringing the
bell of the lawyer's office in Castle Street, where I found him
ensconced at a business table, in a room surrounded by several
tiers of green tin cases. He greeted me like an old friend.
'Come away, sir, come away!' said he. 'Here is the dentist ready
for you, and I think I can promise you that the operation will be
practically painless.'
'I am not so sure of that, Mr. Robbie,' I replied, as I shook hands
with him. 'But at least there shall be no time lost with me.'
I had to confess to having gone a-roving with a pair of drovers and
their cattle, to having used a false name, to having murdered or
half-murdered a fellow-creature in a scuffle on the moors, and to
having suffered a couple of quite innocent men to lie some time in
prison on a charge from which I could have immediately freed them.
All this I gave him first of all, to be done with the worst of it;
and all this he took with gravity, but without the least appearance
of surprise.
'Now, sir,' I continued, 'I expect to have to pay for my unhappy
frolic, but I would like very well if it could be managed without
my personal appearance or even the mention of my real name. I had
so much wisdom as to sail under false colours in this foolish jaunt
of mine; my family would be extremely concerned if they had wind of
it; but at the same time, if the case of this Faa has terminated
fatally, and there are proceedings against Todd and Candlish, I am
not going to stand by and see them vexed, far less punished; and I
authorise you to give me up for trial if you think that best - or,
if you think it unnecessary, in the meanwhile to make preparations
for their defence. I hope, sir, that I am as little anxious to be
Quixotic, as I am determined to be just.'
'Very fairly spoken,' said Mr. Robbie. 'It is not much in my line,
as doubtless your friend, Mr. Romaine, will have told you. I
rarely mix myself up with anything on the criminal side, or
approaching it. However, for a young gentleman like you, I may
stretch a point, and I dare say I may be able to accomplish more
than perhaps another. I will go at once to the Procurator Fiscal's
office and inquire.'
'Wait a moment, Mr. Robbie,' said I. 'You forget the chapter of
expenses. I had thought, for a beginning, of placing a thousand
pounds in your hands.'
'My dear sir, you will kindly wait until I render you my bill,'
said Mr. Robbie severely.'
'It seemed to me,' I protested, 'that coming to you almost as a
stranger, and placing in your hands a piece of business so contrary
to your habits, some substantial guarantee of my good faith - '
'Not the way that we do business in Scotland, sir,' he interrupted,
with an air of closing the dispute.
'And yet, Mr. Robbie,' I continued, 'I must ask you to allow me to
proceed. I do not merely refer to the expenses of the case. I
have my eye besides on Todd and Candlish. They are thoroughly
deserving fellows; they have been subjected through me to a
considerable term of imprisonment; and I suggest, sir, that you
should not spare money for their indemnification. This will
explain,' I added smiling, 'my offer of the thousand pounds. It
was in the nature of a measure by which you should judge the scale
on which I can afford to have this business carried through.'
'I take you perfectly, Mr. Ducie,' said he. 'But the sooner I am
off, the better this affair is like to be guided. My clerk will
show you into the waiting-room and give you the day's CALEDONIAN
MERCURY and the last REGISTER to amuse yourself with in the
interval.'
I believe Mr. Robbie was at least three hours gone. I saw him
descend from a cab at the door, and almost immediately after I was
shown again into his study, where the solemnity of his manner led
me to augur the worst. For some time he had the inhumanity to read
me a lecture as to the incredible silliness, 'not to say
immorality,' of my behaviour. 'I have the satisfaction in telling
you my opinion, because it appears that you are going to get off
scot free,' he continued, where, indeed, I thought he might have
begun.
'The man, Faa, has been discharged cured; and the two men, Todd and
Candlish, would have been leeberated lone ago if it had not been
for their extraordinary loyalty to yourself, Mr. Ducie - or Mr. St.
Ivey, as I believe I should now call you. Never a word would
either of the two old fools volunteer that in any manner pointed at
the existence of such a person; and when they were confronted with
Faa's version of the affair, they gave accounts so entirely
discrepant with their own former declarations, as well as with each
other, that the Fiscal was quite nonplussed, and imaigined there
was something behind it. You may believe I soon laughed him out of
that! And I had the satisfaction of seeing your two friends set
free, and very glad to be on the causeway again.'
'Oh, sir,' I cried, 'you should have brought them here.'
'No instructions, Mr. Ducie!' said he. 'How did I know you wished
to renew an acquaintance which you had just terminated so
fortunately? And, indeed, to be frank with you, I should have set
my face against it, if you had! Let them go! They are paid and
contented, and have the highest possible opinion of Mr. St. Ivey!
When I gave them fifty pounds apiece - which was rather more than
enough, Mr. Ducie, whatever you may think - the man Todd, who has
the only tongue of the party, struck his staff on the ground.
"Weel," says he, "I aye said he was a gentleman!" "Man, Todd,"
said I, "that was just what Mr St. Ivey said of yourself!"'
'So it was a case of "Compliments fly when gentlefolk meet."'
'No, no, Mr. Ducie, man Todd and man Candlish are gone out of your
life, and a good riddance! They are fine fellows in their way, but
no proper associates for the like of yourself; and do you finally
agree to be done with all eccentricity - take up with no more
drovers, or tinkers, but enjoy the naitural pleesures for which
your age, your wealth, your intelligence, and (if I may be allowed
to say it) your appearance so completely fit you. And the first of
these,' quoth he, looking at his watch, 'will be to step through to
my dining-room and share a bachelor's luncheon.'
Over the meal, which was good, Mr. Robbie continued to develop the
same theme. 'You're, no doubt, what they call a dancing-man?' said
he. 'Well, on Thursday night there is the Assembly Ball. You must
certainly go there, and you must permit me besides to do the
honours of the ceety and send you a ticket. I am a thorough
believer in a young man being a young man - but no more drovers or
rovers, if you love me! Talking of which puts me in mind that you
may be short of partners at the Assembly - oh, I have been young
myself! - and if ye care to come to anything so portentiously
tedious as a tea-party at the house of a bachelor lawyer,
consisting mainly of his nieces and nephews, and his grand-nieces
and grand-nephews, and his wards, and generally the whole clan of
the descendants of his clients, you might drop in to-night towards
seven o'clock. I think I can show you one or two that are worth
looking at, and you can dance with them later on at the Assembly.'
He proceeded to give me a sketch of one or two eligible young
ladies' whom I might expect to meet. 'And then there's my
parteecular friend, Miss Flora,' said he. 'But I'll make no
attempt of a description. You shall see her for yourself.'
It will be readily supposed that I accepted his invitation; and
returned home to make a toilette worthy of her I was to meet and
the good news of which I was the bearer. The toilette, I have
reason to believe, was a success. Mr. Rowley dismissed me with a
farewell: 'Crikey! Mr. Anne, but you do look prime!' Even the
stony Bethiah was - how shall I say? - dazzled, but scandalised, by
my appearance; and while, of course, she deplored the vanity that
led to it, she could not wholly prevent herself from admiring the
result.
'Ay, Mr. Ducie, this is a poor employment for a wayfaring Christian
man!' she said. 'Wi' Christ despised and rejectit in all pairts of
the world and the flag of the Covenant flung doon, you will be
muckle better on your knees! However, I'll have to confess that it
sets you weel. And if it's the lassie ye're gaun to see the nicht,
I suppose I'll just have to excuse ye! Bairns maun be bairns!' she
said, with a sigh. 'I mind when Mr. McRankine came courtin', and
that's lang by-gane - I mind I had a green gown, passementit, that
was thocht to become me to admiration. I was nae just exactly what
ye would ca' bonny; but I was pale, penetratin', and interestin'.'
And she leaned over the stair-rail with a candle to watch my
descent as long as it should be possible.
It was but a little party at Mr. Robbie's - by which, I do not so
much mean that there were few people, for the rooms were crowded,
as that there was very little attempted to entertain them. In one
apartment there were tables set out, where the elders were solemnly
engaged upon whist; in the other and larger one, a great number of
youth of both sexes entertained themselves languidly, the ladies
sitting upon chairs to be courted, the gentlemen standing about in
various attitudes of insinuation or indifference. Conversation
appeared the sole resource, except in so far as it was modified by
a number of keepsakes and annuals which lay dispersed upon the
tables, and of which the young beaux displayed the illustrations to
the ladies. Mr. Robbie himself was customarily in the card-room;
only now and again, when he cut out, he made an incursion among the
young folks, and rolled about jovially from one to another, the
very picture of the general uncle.
It chanced that Flora had met Mr. Robbie in the course of the
afternoon. 'Now, Miss Flora,' he had said, 'come early, for I have
a Phoenix to show you - one Mr. Ducie, a new client of mine that, I
vow, I have fallen in love with'; and he was so good as to add a
word or two on my appearance, from which Flora conceived a
suspicion of the truth. She had come to the party, in consequence,
on the knife-edge of anticipation and alarm; had chosen a place by
the door, where I found her, on my arrival, surrounded by a posse
of vapid youths; and, when I drew near, sprang up to meet me in the
most natural manner in the world, and, obviously, with a prepared
form of words.
'How do you do, Mr. Ducie?' she said. 'It is quite an age since I
have seen you!'
'I have much to tell you, Miss Gilchrist,' I replied. 'May I sit
down?'
For the artful girl, by sitting near the door, and the judicious
use of her shawl, had contrived to keep a chair empty by her side.
She made room for me, as a matter of course, and the youths had the
discretion to melt before us. As soon as I was once seated her fan
flew out, and she whispered behind it:
'Are you mad?'
'Madly in love,' I replied; 'but in no other sense.'
'I have no patience! You cannot understand what I am suffering!'
she said. 'What are you to say to Ronald, to Major Chevenix, to my
aunt?'
Your aunt?' I cried, with a start. 'PECCAVI! is she here?'
'She is in the card-room at whist,' said Flora.
'Where she will probably stay all the evening?' I suggested.
'She may,' she admitted; 'she generally does!'
'Well, then, I must avoid the card-room,' said I, 'which is very
much what I had counted upon doing. I did not come here to play
cards, but to contemplate a certain young lady to my heart's
content - if it can ever be contented! - and to tell her some good
news.'
'But there are still Ronald and the Major!' she persisted. 'They
are not card-room fixtures! Ronald will be coming and going. And
as for Mr. Chevenix, he - '
'Always sits with Miss Flora?' I interrupted. 'And they talk of
poor St. Ives? I had gathered as much, my dear; and Mr. Ducie has
come to prevent it! But pray dismiss these fears! I mind no one
but your aunt.'
'Why my aunt?'
'Because your aunt is a lady, my dear, and a very clever lady, and,
like all clever ladies, a very rash lady,' said I. 'You can never
count upon them, unless you are sure of getting them in a corner,
as I have got you, and talking them over rationally, as I am just
engaged on with yourself! It would be quite the same to your aunt
to make the worst kind of a scandal, with an equal indifference to
my danger and to the feelings of our good host!'
'Well,' she said, 'and what of Ronald, then? Do you think HE is
above making a scandal? You must know him very little!'
'On the other hand, it is my pretension that I know him very well!'
I replied. 'I must speak to Ronald first - not Ronald to me - that
is all!'
'Then, please, go and speak to him at once!' she pleaded. He is
there - do you see? - at the upper end of the room, talking to that
girl in pink.'
'And so lose this seat before I have told you my good news?' I
exclaimed. 'Catch me! And, besides, my dear one, think a little
of me and my good news! I thought the bearer of good news was
always welcome! I hoped he might be a little welcome for himself!
Consider! I have but one friend; and let me stay by her! And
there is only one thing I care to hear; and let me hear it!'
'Oh, Anne,' she sighed, 'if I did not love you, why should I be so
uneasy? I am turned into a coward, dear! Think, if it were the
other way round - if you were quite safe and I was in, oh, such
danger!'
She had no sooner said it than I was convicted of being a dullard.
'God forgive me, dear!' I made haste to reply. 'I never saw
before that there were two sides to this!' And I told her my tale
as briefly as I could, and rose to seek Ronald. 'You see, my dear,
you are obeyed,' I said.
She gave me a look that was a reward in itself; and as I turned
away from her, with a strong sense of turning away from the sun, I
carried that look in my bosom like a caress. The girl in pink was
an arch, ogling person, with a good deal of eyes and teeth, and a
great play of shoulders and rattle of conversation. There could be
no doubt, from Mr. Ronald's attitude, that he worshipped the very
chair she sat on. But I was quite ruthless. I laid my hand on his
shoulder, as he was stooping over her like a hen over a chicken.
'Excuse me for one moment, Mr. Gilchrist!' said I.
He started and span about in answer to my touch, and exhibited a
face of inarticulate wonder.
'Yes!' I continued, 'it is even myself! Pardon me for
interrupting so agreeable a TETE-A-TETE, but you know, my good
fellow, we owe a first duty to Mr. Robbie. It would never do to
risk making a scene in the man's drawing-room; so the first thing I
had to attend to was to have you warned. The name I go by is
Ducie, too, in case of accidents.'
'I - I say, you know!' cried Ronald. 'Deuce take it, what are you
doing here?'
'Hush, hush!' said I. 'Not the place, my dear fellow - not the
place. Come to my rooms, if you like, to-night after the party, or
to-morrow in the morning, and we can talk it out over a segar. But
here, you know, it really won't do at all.'
Before he could collect his mind for an answer, I had given him my
address in St. James Square, and had again mingled with the crowd.
Alas! I was not fated to get back to Flora so easily! Mr. Robbie
was in the path: he was insatiably loquacious; and as he continued
to palaver I watched the insipid youths gather again about my idol,
and cursed my fate and my host. He remembered suddenly that I was
to attend the Assembly Ball on Thursday, and had only attended tonight
by way of a preparative. This put it into his head to
present me to another young lady; but I managed this interview with
so much art that, while I was scrupulously polite and even cordial
to the fair one, I contrived to keep Robbie beside me all the time
and to leave along with him when the ordeal was over. We were just
walking away arm in arm, when I spied my friend the Major
approaching, stiff as a ramrod and, as usual, obtrusively clean.
'Oh! there's a man I want to know,' said I, taking the bull by the
horns. 'Won't you introduce me to Major Chevenix?'
'At a word, my dear fellow,' said Robbie; and 'Major!' he cried,
'come here and let me present to you my friend Mr. Ducie, who
desires the honour of your acquaintance.'
The Major flushed visibly, but otherwise preserved his composure.
He bowed very low. 'I'm not very sure,' he said: 'I have an idea
we have met before?'
'Informally,' I said, returning his bow; 'and I have long looked
forward to the pleasure of regularising our acquaintance.'
'You are very good, Mr. Ducie,' he returned. 'Perhaps you could
aid my memory a little? Where was it that I had the pleasure?'
'Oh, that would be telling tales out of school,' said I, with a
laugh, 'and before my lawyer, too!'
'I'll wager,' broke in Mr. Robbie, 'that, when you knew my client,
Chevenix - the past of our friend Mr. Ducie is an obscure chapter
full of horrid secrets - I'll wager, now, you knew him as St.
Ivey,' says he, nudging me violently.
'I think not, sir,' said the Major, with pinched lips.
'Well, I wish he may prove all right!' continued the lawyer, with
certainly the worst-inspired jocularity in the world. 'I know
nothing by him! He may be a swell mobsman for me with his aliases.
You must put your memory on the rack, Major, and when ye've
remembered when and where ye met him, be sure ye tell me.'
'I will not fail, sir,' said Chevenix.
'Seek to him!' cried Robbie, waving his hand as he departed.
The Major, as soon as we were alone, turned upon me his impassive
countenance.
'Well,' he said, 'you have courage.'
'It is undoubted as your honour, sir,' I returned, bowing.
'Did you expect to meet me, may I ask?' said he.
'You saw, at least, that I courted the presentation,' said I.
'And you were not afraid?' said Chevenix.
'I was perfectly at ease. I knew I was dealing with a gentleman.
Be that your epitaph.'
'Well, there are some other people looking for you,' he said, 'who
will make no bones about the point of honour. The police, my dear
sir, are simply agog about you.'
'And I think that that was coarse,' said I.
'You have seen Miss Gilchrist?' he inquired, changing the subject.
'With whom, I am led to understand, we are on a footing of
rivalry?' I asked. 'Yes, I have seen her.'
'And I was just seeking her,' he replied.
I was conscious of a certain thrill of temper; so, I suppose, was
he. We looked each other up and down.
'The situation is original,' he resumed.
'Quite,' said I. 'But let me tell you frankly you are blowing a
cold coal. I owe you so much for your kindness to the prisoner
Champdivers.'
'Meaning that the lady's affections are more advantageously
disposed of?' he asked, with a sneer. 'Thank you, I am sure. And,
since you have given me a lead, just hear a word of good advice in
your turn. Is it fair, is it delicate, is it like a gentleman, to
compromise the young lady by attentions which (as you know very
well) can come to nothing?'
I was utterly unable to find words in answer.
'Excuse me if I cut this interview short,' he went on. 'It seems
to me doomed to come to nothing, and there is more attractive
metal.'
'Yes,' I replied, 'as you say, it cannot amount to much. You are
impotent, bound hand and foot in honour. You know me to be a man
falsely accused, and even if you did not know it, from your
position as my rival you have only the choice to stand quite still
or to be infamous.'
'I would not say that,' he returned, with another change of colour.
'I may hear it once too often.'
With which he moved off straight for where Flora was sitting amidst
her court of vapid youths, and I had no choice but to follow him, a
bad second, and reading myself, as I went, a sharp lesson on the
command of temper.
It is a strange thing how young men in their teens go down at the
mere wind of the coming of men of twenty-five and upwards! The
vapid ones fled without thought of resistance before the Major and
me; a few dallied awhile in the neighbourhood - so to speak, with
their fingers in their mouths - but presently these also followed
the rout, and we remained face to face before Flora. There was a
draught in that corner by the door; she had thrown her pelisse over
her bare arms and neck, and the dark fur of the trimming set them
off. She shone by contrast; the light played on her smooth skin to
admiration, and the colour changed in her excited face. For the
least fraction of a second she looked from one to the other of her
pair of rival swains, and seemed to hesitate. Then she addressed
Chevenix:-
'You are coming to the Assembly, of course, Major Chevenix?' said
she.
'I fear not; I fear I shall be otherwise engaged,' he replied.
'Even the pleasure of dancing with you, Miss Flora, must give way
to duty.'
For awhile the talk ran harmlessly on the weather, and then
branched off towards the war. It seemed to be by no one's fault;
it was in the air, and had to come.
'Good news from the scene of operations,' said the Major.
'Good news while it lasts,' I said. 'But will Miss Gilchrist tell
us her private thought upon the war? In her admiration for the
victors, does not there mingle some pity for the vanquished?'
'Indeed, sir,' she said, with animation, 'only too much of it! War
is a subject that I do not think should be talked of to a girl. I
am, I have to be - what do you call it? - a non-combatant? And to
remind me of what others have to do and suffer: no, it is not
fair!'
'Miss Gilchrist has the tender female heart,' said Chevenix.
'Do not be too sure of that!' she cried. 'I would love to be
allowed to fight myself!'
'On which side?' I asked.
'Can you ask?' she exclaimed. 'I am a Scottish girl!'
'She is a Scottish girl!' repeated the Major, looking at me. 'And
no one grudges you her pity!'
'And I glory in every grain of it she has to spare,' said I. 'Pity
is akin to love.'
'Well, and let us put that question to Miss Gilchrist. It is for
her to decide, and for us to bow to the decision. Is pity, Miss
Flora, or is admiration, nearest love?'
'Oh come,' said I, 'let us be more concrete. Lay before the lady a
complete case: describe your man, then I'll describe MINE, and Miss
Flora shall decide.'
'I think I see your meaning,' said he, 'and I'll try. You think
that pity - and the kindred sentiments - have the greatest power
upon the heart. I think more nobly of women. To my view, the man
they love will first of all command their respect; he will be
steadfast - proud, if you please; dry, possibly - but of all things
steadfast. They will look at him in doubt; at last they will see
that stern face which he presents to all the rest of the world
soften to them alone. First, trust, I say. It is so that a woman
loves who is worthy of heroes.'
'Your man is very ambitious, sir,' said I, 'and very much of a
hero! Mine is a humbler, and, I would fain think, a more human
dog. He is one with no particular trust in himself, with no
superior steadfastness to be admired for, who sees a lady's face,
who hears her voice, and, without any phrase about the matter,
falls in love. What does he ask for, then, but pity? - pity for
his weakness, pity for his love, which is his life. You would make
women always the inferiors, gaping up at your imaginary lover; he,
like a marble statue, with his nose in the air! But God has been
wiser than you; and the most steadfast of your heroes may prove
human, after all. We appeal to the queen for judgment,' I added,
turning and bowing before Flora.
'And how shall the queen judge?' she asked. 'I must give you an
answer that is no answer at all. "The wind bloweth where it
listeth": she goes where her heart goes.'
Her face flushed as she said it; mine also, for I read in it a
declaration, and my heart swelled for joy. But Chevenix grew pale.
'You make of life a very dreadful kind of lottery, ma'am,' said he.
'But I will not despair. Honest and unornamental is still my
choice.'
And I must say he looked extremely handsome and very amusingly like
the marble statue with its nose in the air to which I had compared
him.
'I cannot imagine how we got upon this subject,' said Flora.
'Madame, it was through the war,' replied Chevenix.
'All roads lead to Rome,' I commented. 'What else would you expect
Mr. Chevenix and myself to talk of?'
About this time I was conscious of a certain bustle and movement in
the room behind me, but did not pay to it that degree of attention
which perhaps would have been wise. There came a certain change in
Flora's face; she signalled repeatedly with her fan; her eyes
appealed to me obsequiously; there could be no doubt that she
wanted something - as well as I could make out, that I should go
away and leave the field clear for my rival, which I had not the
least idea of doing. At last she rose from her chair with
impatience.
'I think it time you were saying good-night, Mr Ducie!' she said.
I could not in the least see why, and said so.
Whereupon she gave me this appalling answer, 'My aunt is coming out
of the card-room.'
In less time than it takes to tell, I had made my bow and my
escape. Looking back from the doorway, I was privileged to see,
for a moment, the august profile and gold eyeglasses of Miss
Gilchrist issuing from the card-room; and the sight lent me wings.
I stood not on the order of my going; and a moment after, I was on
the pavement of Castle Street, and the lighted windows shone down
on me, and were crossed by ironical shadows of those who had
remained behind.
CHAPTER XXIX - EVENTS OF TUESDAY: THE TOILS CLOSING
THIS day began with a surprise. I found a letter on my breakfasttable
addressed to Edward Ducie, Esquire; and at first I was
startled beyond measure. 'Conscience doth make cowards of us all!'
When I had opened it, it proved to be only a note from the lawyer,
enclosing a card for the Assembly Ball on Thursday evening.
Shortly after, as I was composing my mind with a segar at one of
the windows of the sitting-room, and Rowley, having finished the
light share of work that fell to him, sat not far off tootling with
great spirit and a marked preference for the upper octave, Ronald
was suddenly shown in. I got him a segar, drew in a chair to the
side of the fire, and installed him there - I was going to say, at
his ease, but no expression could be farther from the truth. He
was plainly on pins and needles, did not know whether to take or to
refuse the segar, and, after he had taken it, did not know whether
to light or to return it. I saw he had something to say; I did not
think it was his own something; and I was ready to offer a large
bet it was really something of Major Chevenix's.
'Well, and so here you are!' I observed, with pointless cordiality,
for I was bound I should do nothing to help him out. If he were,
indeed, here running errands for my rival, he might have a fair
field, but certainly no favour.
'The fact is,' he began, 'I would rather see you alone.'
'Why, certainly,' I replied. 'Rowley, you can step into the
bedroom. My dear fellow,' I continued, 'this sounds serious.
Nothing wrong, I trust.'
'Well, I'll be quite honest,' said he. 'I AM a good deal
bothered.'
'And I bet I know why!' I exclaimed. 'And I bet I can put you to
rights, too!'
'What do you mean!' he asked.
'You must be hard up,' said I, 'and all I can say is, you've come
to the right place. If you have the least use for a hundred
pounds, or any such trifling sum as that, please mention it. It's
here, quite at your service.'
'I am sure it is most kind of you,' said Ronald, 'and the truth is,
though I can't think how you guessed it, that I really AM a little
behind board. But I haven't come to talk about that.'
'No, I dare say!' cried I. 'Not worth talking about! But
remember, Ronald, you and I are on different sides of the business.
Remember that you did me one of those services that make men
friends for ever. And since I have had the fortune to come into a
fair share of money, just oblige me, and consider so much of it as
your own.'
'No,' he said, 'I couldn't take it; I couldn't, really. Besides,
the fact is, I've come on a very different matter. It's about my
sister, St. Ives,' and he shook his head menacingly at me.
'You're quite sure?' I persisted. 'It's here, at your service - up
to five hundred pounds, if you like. Well, all right; only
remember where it is, when you do want it.'
'Oh, please let me alone!' cried Ronald: 'I've come to say
something unpleasant; and how on earth can I do it, if you don't
give a fellow a chance? It's about my sister, as I said. You can
see for yourself that it can't be allowed to go on. It's
compromising; it don't lead to anything; and you're not the kind of
man (you must feel it yourself) that I can allow my female
relatives to have anything to do with. I hate saying this, St.
Ives; it looks like hitting a man when he's down, you know; and I
told the Major I very much disliked it from the first. However, it
had to be said; and now it has been, and, between gentlemen, it
shouldn't be necessary to refer to it again.'
'It's compromising; it doesn't lead to anything; not the kind of
man,' I repeated thoughtfully. 'Yes, I believe I understand, and
shall make haste to put myself EN REGLE.' I stood up, and laid my
segar down. 'Mr. Gilchrist,' said I, with a bow, 'in answer to
your very natural observations, I beg to offer myself as a suitor
for your sister's hand. I am a man of title, of which we think
lightly in France, but of ancient lineage, which is everywhere
prized. I can display thirty-two quarterings without a blot. My
expectations are certainly above the average: I believe my uncle's
income averages about thirty thousand pounds, though I admit I was
not careful to inform myself. Put it anywhere between fifteen and
fifty thousand; it is certainly not less.'
'All this is very easy to say,' said Ronald, with a pitying smile.
'Unfortunately, these things are in the air.'
'Pardon me, - in Buckinghamshire,' said I, smiling.
'Well, what I mean is, my dear St. Ives, that you CAN'T PROVE
them,' he continued. 'They might just as well not be: do you
follow me? You can't bring us any third party to back you.'
'Oh, come!' cried I, springing up and hurrying to the table. 'You
must excuse me!' I wrote Romaine's address. 'There is my
reference, Mr. Gilchrist. Until you have written to him, and
received his negative answer, I have a right to be treated, and I
shall see that you treat me, as a gentleman.' He was brought up
with a round turn at that.
'I beg your pardon, St. Ives,' said he. 'Believe me, I had no wish
to be offensive. But there's the difficulty of this affair; I
can't make any of my points without offence! You must excuse me,
it's not my fault. But, at any rate, you must see for yourself
this proposal of marriage is - is merely impossible, my dear
fellow. It's nonsense! Our countries are at war; you are a
prisoner.'
'My ancestor of the time of the Ligue,' I replied, 'married a
Huguenot lady out of the Saintonge, riding two hundred miles
through an enemy's country to bring off his bride; and it was a
happy marriage.'
'Well!' he began; and then looked down into the fire, and became
silent.
'Well?' I asked.
'Well, there's this business of - Goguelat,' said he, still looking
at the coals in the grate.
'What!' I exclaimed, starting in my chair. 'What's that you say?'
'This business about Goguelat,' he repeated.
'Ronald,' said I, 'this is not your doing. These are not your own
words. I know where they came from: a coward put them in your
mouth.'
'St. Ives!' he cried, 'why do you make it so hard for me? and
where's the use of insulting other people? The plain English is,
that I can't hear of any proposal of marriage from a man under a
charge like that. You must see it for yourself, man! It's the
most absurd thing I ever heard of! And you go on forcing me to
argue with you, too!'
'Because I have had an affair of honour which terminated unhappily,
you - a young soldier, or next-door to it - refuse my offer? Do I
understand you aright?' said I.
'My dear fellow!' he wailed, 'of course you can twist my words, if
you like. You SAY it was an affair of honour. Well, I can't, of
course, tell you that - I can't - I mean, you must see that that's
just the point! Was it? I don't know.'
'I have the honour to inform you,' said I.
'Well, other people say the reverse, you see!'
'They lie, Ronald, and I will prove it in time.'
'The short and the long of it is, that any man who is so
unfortunate as to have such things said about him is not the man to
be my brother-in-law!' he cried.
'Do you know who will be my first witness at the court? Arthur
Chevenix!' said I.
'I don't care!' he cried, rising from his chair and beginning to
pace outrageously about the room. 'What do you mean, St. Ives?
What is this about? It's like a dream, I declare! You made an
offer, and I have refused it. I don't like it, I don't want it;
and whatever I did, or didn't, wouldn't matter - my aunt wouldn't
bear of it anyway! Can't you take your answer, man?'
'You must remember, Ronald, that we are playing with edged tools,'
said I. 'An offer of marriage is a delicate subject to handle.
You have refused, and you have justified your refusal by several
statements: first, that I was an impostor; second, that our
countries were at war; and third - No, I will speak,' said I; 'you
can answer when I have done, - and third, that I had dishonourably
killed - or was said to have done so - the man Goguelat. Now, my
dear fellow, these are very awkward grounds to be taking. From any
one else's lips I need scarce tell you how I should resent them;
but my hands are tied. I have so much gratitude to you, without
talking of the love I bear your sister, that you insult me, when
you do so, under the cover of a complete impunity. I must feel the
pain - and I do feel it acutely - I can do nothing to protect
myself.' He had been anxious enough to interrupt me in the
beginning; but now, and after I had ceased, he stood a long while
silent.
'St. Ives,' he said at last, 'I think I had better go away. This
has been very irritating. I never at all meant to say anything of
the kind, and I apologise to you. I have all the esteem for you
that one gentleman should have for another. I only meant to tell
you - to show you what had influenced my mind; and that, in short,
the thing was impossible. One thing you may be quite sure of: I
shall do nothing against you. Will you shake hands before I go
away?' he blurted out.
'Yes,' said I, 'I agree with you - the interview has been
irritating. Let bygones be bygones. Good-bye, Ronald.'
'Good-bye, St. Ives!' he returned. 'I'm heartily sorry.'
And with that he was gone.
The windows of my own sitting-room looked towards the north; but
the entrance passage drew its light from the direction of the
square. Hence I was able to observe Ronald's departure, his very
disheartened gait, and the fact that he was joined, about half-way,
by no less a man than Major Chevenix. At this, I could scarce keep
from smiling; so unpalatable an interview must be before the pair
of them, and I could hear their voices, clashing like crossed
swords, in that eternal antiphony of 'I told you,' and 'I told you
not.' Without doubt, they had gained very little by their visit;
but then I had gained less than nothing, and had been bitterly
dispirited into the bargain. Ronald had stuck to his guns and
refused me to the last. It was no news; but, on the other hand, it
could not be contorted into good news. I was now certain that
during my temporary absence in France, all irons would be put into
the fire, and the world turned upside down, to make Flora disown
the obtrusive Frenchman and accept Chevenix. Without doubt she
would resist these instances: but the thought of them did not
please me, and I felt she should be warned and prepared for the
battle.
It was no use to try and see her now, but I promised myself early
that evening to return to Swanston. In the meantime I had to make
all my preparations, and look the coming journey in the face. Here
in Edinburgh I was within four miles of the sea, yet the business
of approaching random fishermen with my hat in the one hand and a
knife in the other, appeared so desperate, that I saw nothing for
it but to retrace my steps over the northern counties, and knock a
second time at the doors of Birchell Fenn. To do this, money would
be necessary; and after leaving my paper in the hands of Flora I
had still a balance of about fifteen hundred pounds. Or rather I
may say I had them and I had them not; for after my luncheon with
Mr. Robbie I had placed the amount, all but thirty pounds of
change, in a bank in George Street, on a deposit receipt in the
name of Mr. Rowley. This I had designed to be my gift to him, in
case I must suddenly depart. But now, thinking better of the
arrangement, I despatched my little man, cockade and all, to lift
the fifteen hundred.
He was not long gone, and returned with a flushed face, and the
deposit receipt still in his hand.
'No go, Mr. Anne,' says he.
'How's that?' I inquired,
'Well, sir, I found the place all right, and no mistake,' said he.
'But I tell you what gave me a blue fright! There was a customer
standing by the door, and I reckonised him! Who do you think it
was, Mr. Anne? W'y, that same Red-Breast - him I had breakfast
with near Aylesbury.'
'You are sure you are not mistaken? ' I asked.
'Certain sure,' he replied. 'Not Mr. Lavender, I don't mean, sir;
I mean the other party. "Wot's he doing here?' says I. It don't
look right."'
'Not by any means,' I agreed.
I walked to and fro in the apartment reflecting. This particular
Bow Street runner might be here by accident; but it was to imagine
a singular play of coincidence that he, who had met Rowley and
spoken with him in the 'Green Dragon,' hard by Aylesbury, should be
now in Scotland, where he could have no legitimate business, and by
the doors of the bank where Rowley kept his account.
'Rowley,' said I, 'he didn't see you, did he?'
'Never a fear,' quoth Rowley. 'W'y Mr. Anne, sir, if he 'ad, you
wouldn't have seen ME any more! I ain't a hass, sir!'
'Well, my boy, you can put that receipt in your pocket. You'll
have no more use for it till you're quite clear of me. Don't lose
it, though; it's your share of the Christmas-box: fifteen hundred
pounds all for yourself.'
'Begging your pardon, Mr. Anne, sir, but wot for!' said Rowley.
'To set up a public-house upon,' said I.
'If you'll excuse me, sir, I ain't got any call to set up a publichouse,
sir,' he replied stoutly. 'And I tell you wot, sir, it
seems to me I'm reether young for the billet. I'm your body
servant, Mr. Anne, or else I'm nothink.'
'Well, Rowley,' I said, 'I'll tell you what it's for. It's for the
good service you have done me, of which I don't care - and don't
dare - to speak. It's for your loyalty and cheerfulness, my dear
boy. I had meant it for you; but to tell you the truth, it's past
mending now - it has to be yours. Since that man is waiting by the
bank, the money can't be touched until I'm gone.'
'Until you're gone, sir?' re-echoed Rowley. 'You don't go
anywheres without me, I can tell you that, Mr. Anne, sir!'
'Yes, my boy,' said I, 'we are going to part very soon now;
probably to-morrow. And it's for my sake, Rowley! Depend upon it,
if there was any reason at all for that Bow Street man being at the
bank, he was not there to look out for you. How they could have
found out about the account so early is more than I can fathom;
some strange coincidence must have played me false! But there the
fact is; and Rowley, I'll not only have to say farewell to you
presently, I'll have to ask you to stay indoors until I can say it.
Remember, my boy, it's only so that you can serve me now.'
'W'y, sir, you say the word, and of course I'll do it!' he cried.
'"Nothink by 'alves," is my motto! I'm your man, through thick and
thin, live or die, I am!'
In the meantime there was nothing to be done till towards sunset.
My only chance now was to come again as quickly as possible to
speech of Flora, who was my only practicable banker; and not before
evening was it worth while to think of that. I might compose
myself as well as I was able over the CALEDONIAN MERCURY, with its
ill news of the campaign of France and belated documents about the
retreat from Russia; and, as I sat there by the fire, I was
sometimes all awake with anger and mortification at what I was
reading, and sometimes again I would be three parts asleep as I
dozed over the barren items of home intelligence. 'Lately arrived'
- this is what I suddenly stumbled on - 'at Dumbreck's Hotel, the
Viscount of Saint-Yves.'
'Rowley,' said I.
'If you please, Mr. Anne, sir,' answered the obsequious, lowering
his pipe.
'Come and look at this, my boy,' said I, holding out the paper.
'My crikey!' said he. 'That's 'im, sir, sure enough!'
'Sure enough, Rowley,' said I. 'He's on the trail. He has fairly
caught up with us. He and this Bow Street man have come together,
I would swear. And now here is the whole field, quarry, hounds and
hunters, all together in this city of Edinburgh.'
'And wot are you goin' to do now, sir? Tell you wot, let me take
it in 'and, please! Gimme a minute, and I'll disguise myself, and
go out to this Dum - to this hotel, leastways, sir - and see wot
he's up to. You put your trust in me, Mr. Anne: I'm fly, don't you
make no mistake about it. I'm all a-growing and a-blowing, I am.'
'Not one foot of you,' said I. 'You are a prisoner, Rowley, and
make up your mind to that. So am I, or next door to it. I showed
it you for a caution; if you go on the streets, it spells death to
me, Rowley.'
'If you please, sir,' says Rowley.
'Come to think of it,' I continued, 'you must take a cold, or
something. No good of awakening Mrs. McRankine's suspicions.'
'A cold?' he cried, recovering immediately from his depression. 'I
can do it, Mr. Anne.'
And he proceeded to sneeze and cough and blow his nose, till I
could not restrain myself from smiling.
'Oh, I tell you, I know a lot of them dodges,' he observed proudly.
'Well, they come in very handy,' said I.
'I'd better go at once and show it to the old gal, 'adn't I?' he
asked.
I told him, by all means; and he was gone upon the instant, gleeful
as though to a game of football.
I took up the paper and read carelessly on, my thoughts engaged
with my immediate danger, till I struck on the next paragraph:-
'In connection with the recent horrid murder in the Castle, we are
desired to make public the following intelligence. The soldier,
Champdivers, is supposed to be in the neighbourhood of this city.
He is about the middle height or rather under, of a pleasing
appearance and highly genteel address. When last heard of he wore
a fashionable suit of pearl-grey, and boots with fawn-coloured
tops. He is accompanied by a servant about sixteen years of age,
speaks English without any accent, and passed under the ALIAS of
Ramornie. A reward is offered for his apprehension.'
In a moment I was in the next room, stripping from me the pearlcoloured
suit!
I confess I was now a good deal agitated. It is difficult to watch
the toils closing slowly and surely about you, and to retain your
composure; and I was glad that Rowley was not present to spy on my
confusion. I was flushed, my breath came thick; I cannot remember
a time when I was more put out.
And yet I must wait and do nothing, and partake of my meals, and
entertain the ever-garrulous Rowley, as though I were entirely my
own man. And if I did not require to entertain Mrs. McRankine
also, that was but another drop of bitterness in my cup! For what
ailed my landlady, that she should hold herself so severely aloof,
that she should refuse conversation, that her eyes should be
reddened, that I should so continually hear the voice of her
private supplications sounding through the house? I was much
deceived, or she had read the insidious paragraph and recognised
the comminated pearl-grey suit. I remember now a certain air with
which she had laid the paper on my table, and a certain sniff,
between sympathy and defiance, with which she had announced it:
'There's your MERCURY for ye!'
In this direction, at least, I saw no pressing danger; her tragic
countenance betokened agitation; it was plain she was wrestling
with her conscience, and the battle still hung dubious. The
question of what to do troubled me extremely. I could not venture
to touch such an intricate and mysterious piece of machinery as my
landlady's spiritual nature: it might go off at a word, and in any
direction, like a badly-made firework. And while I praised myself
extremely for my wisdom in the past, that I had made so much a
friend of her, I was all abroad as to my conduct in the present.
There seemed an equal danger in pressing and in neglecting the
accustomed marks of familiarity. The one extreme looked like
impudence, and might annoy, the other was a practical confession of
guilt. Altogether, it was a good hour for me when the dusk began
to fall in earnest on the streets of Edinburgh, and the voice of an
early watchman bade me set forth.
I reached the neighbourhood of the cottage before seven; and as I
breasted the steep ascent which leads to the garden wall, I was
struck with surprise to hear a dog. Dogs I had heard before, but
only from the hamlet on the hillside above. Now, this dog was in
the garden itself, where it roared aloud in paroxysms of fury, and
I could hear it leaping and straining on the chain. I waited some
while, until the brute's fit of passion had roared itself out.
Then, with the utmost precaution, I drew near again; and finally
approached the garden wall. So soon as I had clapped my head above
the level, however, the barking broke forth again with redoubled
energy. Almost at the same time, the door of the cottage opened,
and Ronald and the Major appeared upon the threshold with a
lantern. As they so stood, they were almost immediately below me,
strongly illuminated, and within easy earshot. The Major pacified
the dog, who took instead to low, uneasy growling intermingled with
occasional yelps.
'Good thing I brought Towzer!' said Chevenix.
'Damn him, I wonder where he is!' said Ronald; and he moved the
lantern up and down, and turned the night into a shifting puzzlework
of gleam and shadow. 'I think I'll make a sally.'
'I don't think you will,' replied Chevenix. 'When I agreed to come
out here and do sentry-go, it was on one condition, Master Ronald:
don't you forget that! Military discipline, my boy! Our beat is
this path close about the house. Down, Towzer! good boy, good boy
- gently, then!' he went on, caressing his confounded monster.
'To think! The beggar may be hearing us this minute!' cried
Ronald.
'Nothing more probable,' said the Major. 'You there, St. Ives?' he
added, in a distinct but guarded voice. 'I only want to tell you,
you had better go home. Mr. Gilchrist and I take watch and watch.'
The game was up. 'BEAUCOUP DE PLAISIR!' I replied, in the same
tones. 'IL FAIT UN PEU FROID POUR VEILLER; GARDEZ-VOUS DES
ENGELURES!'
I suppose it was done in a moment of ungovernable rage; but in
spite of the excellent advice he had given to Ronald the moment
before, Chevenix slipped the chain, and the dog sprang, straight as
an arrow, up the bank. I stepped back, picked up a stone of about
twelve pounds weight, and stood ready. With a bound the beast
landed on the cope-stone of the wall; and, almost in the same
instant, my missile caught him fair in the face. He gave a stifled
cry, went tumbling back where he had come from, and I could hear
the twelve-pounder accompany him in his fall. Chevenix, at the
same moment, broke out in a roaring voice: 'The hell-hound! If
he's killed my dog!' and I judged, upon all grounds, it was as well
to be off.
CHAPTER XXX - EVENTS OF WEDNESDAY; THE UNIVERSITY OF CRAMOND
I AWOKE to much diffidence, even to a feeling that might be called
the beginnings of panic, and lay for hours in my bed considering
the situation. Seek where I pleased, there was nothing to
encourage me and plenty to appal. They kept a close watch about
the cottage; they had a beast of a watch-dog - at least, unless I
had settled it; and if I had, I knew its bereaved master would only
watch the more indefatigably for the loss. In the pardonable
ostentation of love I had given all the money I could spare to
Flora; I had thought it glorious that the hunted exile should come
down, like Jupiter, in a shower of gold, and pour thousands in the
lap of the beloved. Then I had in an hour of arrant folly buried
what remained to me in a bank in George Street. And now I must get
back the one or the other; and which? and how?
As I tossed in my bed, I could see three possible courses, all
extremely perilous. First, Rowley might have been mistaken; the
bank might not be watched; it might still be possible for him to
draw the money on the deposit receipt. Second, I might apply again
to Robbie. Or, third, I might dare everything, go to the Assembly
Ball, and speak with Flora under the eyes of all Edinburgh. This
last alternative, involving as it did the most horrid risks, and
the delay of forty-eight hours, I did but glance at with an averted
head, and turned again to the consideration of the others. It was
the likeliest thing in the world that Robbie had been warned to
have no more to do with me. The whole policy of the Gilchrists was
in the hands of Chevenix; and I thought this was a precaution so
elementary that he was certain to have taken it. If he had not, of
course I was all right: Robbie would manage to communicate with
Flora; and by four o'clock I might be on the south road and, I was
going to say, a free man. Lastly, I must assure myself with my own
eyes whether the bank in George Street were beleaguered.
I called to Rowley and questioned him tightly as to the appearance
of the Bow Street officer.
'What sort of looking man is he, Rowley?' I asked, as I began to
dress.
'Wot sort of a looking man he is?' repeated Rowley. 'Well, I don't
very well know wot you would say, Mr. Anne. He ain't a beauty,
any'ow.'
'Is he tall?'
'Tall? Well, no, I shouldn't say TALL Mr. Anne.'
'Well, then, is he short?'
'Short? No, I don't think I would say he was what you would call
SHORT. No, not piticular short, sir.'
'Then, I suppose, he must be about the middle height?'
'Well, you might say it, sir; but not remarkable so.'
I smothered an oath.
'Is he clean-shaved?' I tried him again.
'Clean-shaved?' he repeated, with the same air of anxious candour.
'Good heaven, man, don't repeat my words like a parrot!' I cried.
'Tell me what the man was like: it is of the first importance that
I should be able to recognise him.'
'I'm trying to, Mr. Anne. But CLEAN-SHAVED? I don't seem to
rightly get hold of that p'int. Sometimes it might appear to me
like as if he was; and sometimes like as if he wasn't. No, it
wouldn't surprise me now if you was to tell me he 'ad a bit o'
whisker.'
'Was the man red-faced?' I roared, dwelling on each syllable.
'I don't think you need go for to get cross about it, Mr. Anne!'
said he. 'I'm tellin' you every blessed thing I see! Red-faced?
Well, no, not as you would remark upon.'
A dreadful calm fell upon me.
'Was he anywise pale?' I asked.
'Well, it don't seem to me as though he were. But I tell you
truly, I didn't take much heed to that.'
'Did he look like a drinking man?'
'Well, no. If you please, sir, he looked more like an eating one.'
'Oh, he was stout, was he?'
'No, sir. I couldn't go so far as that. No, he wasn't not to say
STOUT. If anything, lean rather.'
I need not go on with the infuriating interview. It ended as it
began, except that Rowley was in tears, and that I had acquired one
fact. The man was drawn for me as being of any height you like to
mention, and of any degree of corpulence or leanness; clean-shaved
or not, as the case might be; the colour of his hair Rowley 'could
not take it upon himself to put a name on'; that of his eyes he
thought to have been blue - nay, it was the one point on which he
attained to a kind of tearful certainty. 'I'll take my davy on
it,' he asseverated. They proved to have been as black as sloes,
very little and very near together. So much for the evidence of
the artless! And the fact, or rather the facts, acquired? Well,
they had to do not with the person but with his clothing. The man
wore knee-breeches and white stockings; his coat was 'some kind of
a lightish colour - or betwixt that and dark'; and he wore a 'moleskin
weskit.' As if this were not enough, he presently haled me
from my breakfast in a prodigious flutter, and showed me an honest
and rather venerable citizen passing in the Square.
'That's HIM, sir,' he cried, 'the very moral of him! Well, this
one is better dressed, and p'r'aps a trifler taller; and in the
face he don't favour him noways at all, sir. No, not when I come
to look again, 'e don't seem to favour him noways.'
'Jackass!' said I, and I think the greatest stickler for manners
will admit the epithet to have been justified.
Meanwhile the appearance of my landlady added a great load of
anxiety to what I already suffered. It was plain that she had not
slept; equally plain that she had wept copiously. She sighed, she
groaned, she drew in her breath, she shook her head, as she waited
on table. In short, she seemed in so precarious a state, like a
petard three times charged with hysteria, that I did not dare to
address her; and stole out of the house on tiptoe, and actually ran
downstairs, in the fear that she might call me back. It was plain
that this degree of tension could not last long.
It was my first care to go to George Street, which I reached (by
good luck) as a boy was taking down the bank shutters. A man was
conversing with him; he had white stockings and a moleskin
waistcoat, and was as ill-looking a rogue as you would want to see
in a day's journey. This seemed to agree fairly well with Rowley's
SIGNALEMENT: he had declared emphatically (if you remember), and
had stuck to it besides, that the companion of the great Lavender
was no beauty.
Thence I made my way to Mr. Robbie's, where I rang the bell. A
servant answered the summons, and told me the lawyer was engaged,
as I had half expected.
'Wha shall I say was callin'?' she pursued; and when I had told her
'Mr. Ducie,' 'I think this'll be for you, then?' she added, and
handed me a letter from the hall table. It ran:
'DEAR MR. DUCIE,
'My single advice to you is to leave QUAM PRIMUM for the South.
Yours, T. ROBBIE.'
That was short and sweet. It emphatically extinguished hope in one
direction. No more was to be gotten of Robbie; and I wondered,
from my heart, how much had been told him. Not too much, I hoped,
for I liked the lawyer who had thus deserted me, and I placed a
certain reliance in the discretion of Chevenix. He would not be
merciful; on the other hand, I did not think he would be cruel
without cause.
It was my next affair to go back along George Street, and assure
myself whether the man in the moleskin vest was still on guard.
There was no sign of him on the pavement. Spying the door of a
common stair nearly opposite the bank, I took it in my head that
this would be a good point of observation, crossed the street,
entered with a businesslike air and fell immediately against the
man in the moleskin vest. I stopped and apologised to him; he
replied in an unmistakable English accent, thus putting the matter
almost beyond doubt. After this encounter I must, of course,
ascend to the top story, ring the bell of a suite of apartments,
inquire for Mr. Vavasour, learn (with no great surprise) that he
did not live there, come down again and, again politely saluting
the man from Bow Street, make my escape at last into the street.
I was now driven back upon the Assembly Ball. Robbie had failed
me. The bank was watched; it would never do to risk Rowley in that
neighbourhood. All I could do was to wait until the morrow
evening, and present myself at the Assembly, let it end as it
might. But I must say I came to this decision with a good deal of
genuine fright; and here I came for the first time to one of those
places where my courage stuck. I do not mean that my courage
boggled and made a bit of a bother over it, as it did over the
escape from the Castle; I mean, stuck, like a stopped watch or a
dead man. Certainly I would go to the ball; certainly I must see
this morning about my clothes. That was all decided. But the most
of the shops were on the other side of the valley, in the Old Town;
and it was now my strange discovery that I was physically unable to
cross the North Bridge! It was as though a precipice had stood
between us, or the deep sea had intervened. Nearer to the Castle
my legs refused to bear me.
I told myself this was mere superstition; I made wagers with myself
- and gained them; I went down on the esplanade of Princes Street,
walked and stood there, alone and conspicuous, looking across the
garden at the old grey bastions of the fortress, where all these
troubles had begun. I cocked my hat, set my hand on my hip, and
swaggered on the pavement, confronting detection. And I found I
could do all this with a sense of exhilaration that was not
unpleasing, and with a certain CRANERIE of manner that raised me in
my own esteem. And yet there was one thing I could not bring my
mind to face up to, or my limbs to execute; and that was to cross
the valley into the Old Town. It seemed to me I must be arrested
immediately if I had done so; I must go straight into the twilight
of a prison cell, and pass straight thence to the gross and final
embraces of the nightcap and the halter. And yet it was from no
reasoned fear of the consequences that I could not go. I was
unable. My horse baulked, and there was an end!
My nerve was gone: here was a discovery for a man in such imminent
peril, set down to so desperate a game, which I could only hope to
win by continual luck and unflagging effrontery! The strain had
been too long continued, and my nerve was gone. I fell into what
they call panic fear, as I have seen soldiers do on the alarm of a
night attack, and turned out of Princes Street at random as though
the devil were at my heels. In St. Andrew Square, I remember
vaguely hearing some one call out. I paid no heed, but pressed on
blindly. A moment after, a hand fell heavily on my shoulder, and I
thought I had fainted. Certainly the world went black about me for
some seconds; and when that spasm passed I found myself standing
face to face with the 'cheerful extravagant,' in what sort of
disarray I really dare not imagine, dead white at least, shaking
like an aspen, and mowing at the man with speechless lips. And
this was the soldier of Napoleon, and the gentleman who intended
going next night to an Assembly Ball! I am the more particular in
telling of my breakdown, because it was my only experience of the
sort; and it is a good tale for officers. I will allow no man to
call me coward; I have made my proofs; few men more. And yet I
(come of the best blood in France and inured to danger from a
child) did, for some ten or twenty minutes, make this hideous
exhibition of myself on the streets of the New Town of Edinburgh.
With my first available breath I begged his pardon. I was of an
extremely nervous disposition, recently increased by late hours; I
could not bear the slightest start.
He seemed much concerned. 'You must be in a devil of a state!'
said he; 'though of course it was my fault - damnably silly, vulgar
sort of thing to do! A thousand apologies! But you really must be
run down; you should consult a medico. My dear sir, a hair of the
dog that bit you is clearly indicated. A touch of Blue Ruin, now?
Or, come: it's early, but is man the slave of hours? what do you
say to a chop and a bottle in Dumbreck's Hotel?'
I refused all false comfort; but when he went on to remind me that
this was the day when the University of Cramond met; and to propose
a five-mile walk into the country and a dinner in the company of
young asses like himself, I began to think otherwise. I had to
wait until to-morrow evening, at any rate; this might serve as well
as anything else to bridge the dreary hours. The country was the
very place for me: and walking is an excellent sedative for the
nerves. Remembering poor Rowley, feigning a cold in our lodgings
and immediately under the guns of the formidable and now doubtful
Bethiah, I asked if I might bring my servant. 'Poor devil! it is
dull for him,' I explained.
'The merciful man is merciful to his ass,' observed my sententious
friend. 'Bring him by all means!
"The harp, his sole remaining joy,
Was carried by an orphan boy;"
and I have no doubt the orphan boy can get some cold victuals in
the kitchen, while the Senatus dines.'
Accordingly, being now quite recovered from my unmanly condition,
except that nothing could yet induce me to cross the North Bridge,
I arranged for my ball dress at a shop in Leith Street, where I was
not served ill, cut out Rowley from his seclusion, and was ready
along with him at the trysting-place, the corner of Duke Street and
York Place, by a little after two. The University was represented
in force: eleven persons, including ourselves, Byfield the
aeronaut, and the tall lad, Forbes, whom I had met on the Sunday
morning, bedewed with tallow, at the 'Hunters' Rest.' I was
introduced; and we set off by way of Newhaven and the sea beach; at
first through pleasant country roads, and afterwards along a
succession of bays of a fairylike prettiness, to our destination -
Cramond on the Almond - a little hamlet on a little river,
embowered in woods, and looking forth over a great flat of
quicksand to where a little islet stood planted in the sea. It was
miniature scenery, but charming of its kind. The air of this good
February afternoon was bracing, but not cold. All the way my
companions were skylarking, jesting and making puns, and I felt as
if a load had been taken off my lungs and spirits, and skylarked
with the best of them.
Byfield I observed, because I had heard of him before, and seen his
advertisements, not at all because I was disposed to feel interest
in the man. He was dark and bilious and very silent; frigid in his
manners, but burning internally with a great fire of excitement;
and he was so good as to bestow a good deal of his company and
conversation (such as it was) upon myself, who was not in the least
grateful. If I had known how I was to be connected with him in the
immediate future, I might have taken more pains.
In the hamlet of Cramond there is a hostelry of no very promising
appearance, and here a room had been prepared for us, and we sat
down to table.
'Here you will find no guttling or gormandising, no turtle or
nightingales' tongues,' said the extravagant, whose name, by the
way, was Dalmahoy. 'The device, sir, of the University of Cramond
is Plain Living and High Drinking.'
Grace was said by the Professor of Divinity, in a macaronic Latin,
which I could by no means follow, only I could hear it rhymed, and
I guessed it to be more witty than reverent. After which the
SENATUS ACADEMICUS sat down to rough plenty in the shape of
rizzar'd haddocks and mustard, a sheep's head, a haggis, and other
delicacies of Scotland. The dinner was washed down with brown
stout in bottle, and as soon as the cloth was removed, glasses,
boiling water, sugar, and whisky were set out for the manufacture
of toddy. I played a good knife and fork, did not shun the bowl,
and took part, so far as I was able, in the continual fire of
pleasantry with which the meal was seasoned. Greatly daring, I
ventured, before all these Scotsmen, to tell Sim's Tale of
Tweedie's dog; and I was held to have done such extraordinary
justice to the dialect, 'for a Southron,' that I was immediately
voted into the Chair of Scots, and became, from that moment, a full
member of the University of Cramond. A little after, I found
myself entertaining them with a song; and a little after - perhaps
a little in consequence - it occurred to me that I had had enough,
and would be very well inspired to take French leave. It was not
difficult to manage, for it was nobody's business to observe my
movements, and conviviality had banished suspicion.
I got easily forth of the chamber, which reverberated with the
voices of these merry and learned gentlemen, and breathed a long
breath. I had passed an agreeable afternoon and evening, and I had
apparently escaped scot free. Alas! when I looked into the
kitchen, there was my monkey, drunk as a lord, toppling on the edge
of the dresser, and performing on the flageolet to an audience of
the house lasses and some neighbouring ploughmen.
I routed him promptly from his perch, stuck his hat on, put his
instrument in his pocket, and set off with him for Edinburgh.
His limbs were of paper, his mind quite in abeyance; I must uphold
and guide him, prevent his frantic dives, and set him continually
on his legs again. At first he sang wildly, with occasional
outbursts of causeless laughter. Gradually an inarticulate
melancholy succeeded; he wept gently at times; would stop in the
middle of the road, say firmly 'No, no, no,' and then fall on his
back: or else address me solemnly as 'M'lord' and fall on his face
by way of variety. I am afraid I was not always so gentle with the
little pig as I might have been, but really the position was
unbearable. We made no headway at all, and I suppose we were
scarce gotten a mile away from Cramond, when the whole SENATUS
ACADEMICUS was heard hailing, and doubling the pace to overtake
its.
Some of them were fairly presentable; and they were all Christian
martyrs compared to Rowley; but they were in a frolicsome and
rollicking humour that promised danger as we approached the town.
They sang songs, they ran races, they fenced with their walkingsticks
and umbrellas; and, in spite of this violent exercise, the
fun grew only the more extravagant with the miles they traversed.
Their drunkenness was deep-seated and permanent, like fire in a
peat; or rather - to be quite just to them - it was not so much to
be called drunkenness at all, as the effect of youth and high
spirits - a fine night, and the night young, a good road under
foot, and the world before you!
I had left them once somewhat unceremoniously; I could not attempt
it a second time; and, burthened as I was with Mr. Rowley, I was
really glad of assistance. But I saw the lamps of Edinburgh draw
near on their hill-top with a good deal of uneasiness, which
increased, after we had entered the lighted streets, to positive
alarm. All the passers-by were addressed, some of them by name. A
worthy man was stopped by Forbes. 'Sir,' said he, 'in the name of
the Senatus of the University of Cramond, I confer upon you the
degree of LL.D.,' and with the words he bonneted him. Conceive the
predicament of St. Ives, committed to the society of these
outrageous youths, in a town where the police and his cousin were
both looking for him! So far, we had pursued our way unmolested,
although raising a clamour fit to wake the dead; but at last, in
Abercromby Place, I believe - at least it was a crescent of highly
respectable houses fronting on a garden - Byfield and I, having
fallen somewhat in the rear with Rowley, came to a simultaneous
halt. Our ruffians were beginning to wrench off bells and doorplates!
'Oh, I say!' says Byfield, 'this is too much of a good thing!
Confound it, I'm a respectable man - a public character, by George!
I can't afford to get taken up by the police.'
'My own case exactly,' said I.
'Here, let's bilk them,' said he.
And we turned back and took our way down hill again.
It was none too soon: voices and alarm bells sounded; watchmen here
and there began to spring their rattles; it was plain the
University of Cramond would soon be at blows with the police of
Edinburgh! Byfield and I, running the semi-inanimate Rowley before
us, made good despatch, and did not stop till we were several
streets away, and the hubbub was already softened by distance.
'Well, sir,' said he, 'we are well out of that! Did ever any one
see such a pack of young barbarians?'
'We are properly punished, Mr. Byfield; we had no business there,'
I replied.
'No, indeed, sir, you may well say that! Outrageous! And my
ascension announced for Friday, you know!' cried the aeronaut. 'A
pretty scandal! Byfield the aeronaut at the police-court! Tuttut!
Will you be able to get your rascal home, sir? Allow me to
offer you my card. I am staying at Walker and Poole's Hotel, sir,
where I should be pleased to see you.'
'The pleasure would be mutual, sir,' said I, but I must say my
heart was not in my words, and as I watched Mr. Byfield departing I
desired nothing less than to pursue the acquaintance
One more ordeal remained for me to pass. I carried my senseless
load upstairs to our lodging, and was admitted by the landlady in a
tall white nightcap and with an expression singularly grim. She
lighted us into the sitting-room; where, when I had seated Rowley
in a chair, she dropped me a cast-iron courtesy. I smelt gunpowder
on the woman. Her voice, tottered with emotion.
'I give ye nottice, Mr. Ducie,' said she. 'Dacent folks' houses .
. .'
And at that apparently temper cut off her utterance, and she took
herself off without more words.
I looked about me at the room, the goggling Rowley, the
extinguished fire; my mind reviewed the laughable incidents of the
day and night; and I laughed out loud to myself - lonely and
cheerless laughter!.......
[As this point the Author's manuscript breaks off]