St. Ives: Being the Adventures of a French Prisoner in England
by Robert Louis Stevenson · English · Gutenberg #322 · 578,866 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: St. Ives: Being the Adventures of a French Prisoner in England
Author: Robert Louis Stevenson
Release date: September 1, 1995 [eBook #322]
Most recently updated: October 30, 2010
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/322
Credits: Transcribed 1898 William Heinemann edition by David Price
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ST. IVES: BEING THE ADVENTURES OF A FRENCH PRISONER IN ENGLAND ***
Transcribed 1898 William Heinemann edition by David Price, email
ccx074@pflaf.org
St. Ives
Being
The Adventures of a French Prisoner
in England
By
Robert Louis Stevenson
* * * * *
_SECOND EDITION_
* * * * *
London
William Heinemann
1898
* * * * *
_First Edition_, _May_ 5, 1897; _Reprinted May_ 6, 1897
* * * * *
_All rights reserved_
* * * * *
_The following tale was taken down from Mr. Stevenson’s dictation by his
stepdaughter and amanuensis_, _Mrs. Strong_, _at intervals between
January_ 1893 _and October_ 1894 (_see_ Vailima Letters, _pp._ 242–246,
299, 324 _and_ 350). _About six weeks before his death he laid the story
aside to take up_ Weir of Hermiston. _The thirty chapters of_ St. Ives
_which he had written_ (_the last few of them apparently unrevised_)
_brought the tale within sight of its conclusion_, _and the intended
course of the remainder was known in outline to Mrs. Strong_. _For the
benefit of those readers who do not like a story to be left unfinished_,
_the delicate task of supplying the missing chapters has been entrusted
to Mr. Quiller-Couch_, _whose work begins at Chap. XXXI._ {0}
[_S. C._]
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_! _ça va bienne_?’ I took the freedom to
reply in the same lingo: _Bienne_, _femme_! _ça va couci-couci tout
d’même_, _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’s-breadth 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.—
À 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 _maréchal 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 pipe-lights. 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 Kéroual 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 Kéroual 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 Kéroual 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 Kéroual 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 Kéroual 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 Kéroual
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
Kéroual 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 Kéroual 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
Kéroual, 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 Kéroual 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 sergeant-major 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 jumping-jack. 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 fellow-prisoners; 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 coffee-house, 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 resting-place 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 Kéroual de Saint-Yves, I believe the richest
_émigré_ 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 drove-roads 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-off 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 self-defence, 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 _à 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-and-bull 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 d---d 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 short-horn.’ ‘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 high-coloured. 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 old-fashioned 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 th
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