‘Well, I’ve got to take care of the cart and ‘orses, I have,’ says he. ‘I don’t take up with no runagate vagabones, you see, else.’
‘I ought to thank you for your touching confidence,’ said I, approaching carelessly nearer as I spoke. ‘But I admit the road is solitary hereabouts, and no doubt an accident soon happens. Little fear of anything of the kind with you! I like you for it, like your prudence, like that pastoral shyness of disposition. But why not put it out of my power to hurt? Why not open the door and bestow me here in the box, or whatever you please to call it?’ And I laid my hand demonstratively on the body of the cart.
He had been timorous before; but at this, he seemed to lose the power of speech a moment, and stared at me in a perfect enthusiasm of fear.
‘Why not?’ I continued. ‘The idea is good. I should be safe in there if I were the monster Williams himself. The great thing is to have me under lock and key. For it does lock; it is locked now,’ said I, trying the door. ‘A propos, what have you for a cargo? It must be precious.’
He found not a word to answer.
Rat-tat-tat, I went upon the door like a well-drilled footman.
‘Any one at home?’ I said, and stooped to listen.
There came out of the interior a stifled sneeze, the first of an uncontrollable paroxysm; another followed immediately on the heels of it; and then the driver turned with an oath, laid the lash upon the horses with so much energy that they found their heels again, and the whole equipage fled down the road at a gallop.
At the first sound of the sneeze, I had started back like a man shot. The next moment, a great light broke on my mind, and I understood. Here was the secret of Fenn’s trade: this was how he forwarded the escape of prisoners, hawking them by night about the country in his covered cart. There had been Frenchmen close to me; he who had just sneezed was my countryman, my comrade, perhaps already my friend! I took to my heels in pursuit. ‘Hold hard!’ I shouted. ‘Stop! It’s all right! Stop!’ But the driver only turned a white face on me for a moment, and redoubled his efforts, bending forward, plying his whip and crying to his horses; these lay themselves down to the gallop and beat the highway with flying hoofs; and the cart bounded after them among the ruts and fled in a halo of rain and spattering mud. But a minute since, and it had been trundling along like a lame cow; and now it was off as though drawn by Apollo’s coursers. There is no telling what a man can do, until you frighten him!
It was as much as I could do myself, though I ran valiantly, to maintain my distance; and that (since I knew my countrymen so near) was become a chief point with me. A hundred yards farther on the cart whipped out of the high-road into a lane embowered with leafless trees, and became lost to view. When I saw it next, the driver had increased his advantage considerably, but all danger was at an end, and the horses had again declined into a hobbling walk. Persuaded that they could not escape me, I took my time, and recovered my breath as I followed them.
Presently the lane twisted at right angles, and showed me a gate and the beginning of a gravel sweep; and a little after, as I continued to advance, a red brick house about seventy years old, in a fine style of architecture, and presenting a front of many windows to a lawn and garden. Behind, I could see outhouses and the peaked roofs of stacks; and I judged that a manor-house had in some way declined to be the residence of a tenant-farmer, careless alike of appearances and substantial comfort. The marks of neglect were visible on every side, in flower-bushes straggling beyond the borders, in the ill-kept turf, and in the broken windows that were incongruously patched with paper or stuffed with rags. A thicket of trees, mostly evergreen, fenced the place round and secluded it from the eyes of prying neighbours. As I came in view of it, on that melancholy winter’s morning, in the deluge of the falling rain, and with the wind that now rose in occasional gusts and hooted over the old chimneys, the cart had already drawn up at the front-door steps, and the driver was already in earnest discourse with Mr. Burchell Fenn. He was standing with his hands behind his back–a man of a gross, misbegotten face and body, dewlapped like a bull and red as a harvest moon; and in his jockey cap, blue coat and top boots, he had much the air of a good, solid tenant-farmer.
The pair continued to speak as I came up the approach, but received me at last in a sort of goggling silence. I had my hat in my hand.
‘I have the pleasure of addressing Mr. Burchell Fenn?’ said I.
‘The same, sir,’ replied Mr. Fenn, taking off his jockey cap in answer to my civility, but with the distant look and the tardy movements of one who continues to think of something else. ‘And who may you be?’ he asked.
‘I shall tell you afterwards,’ said I. ‘Suffice it, in the meantime, that I come on business.’
He seemed to digest my answer laboriously, his mouth gaping, his little eyes never straying from my face.
‘Suffer me to point out to you, sir,’ I resumed, ‘that this is a devil of a wet morning; and that the chimney corner, and possibly a glass of something hot, are clearly indicated.’
Indeed, the rain was now grown to be a deluge; the gutters of the house roared; the air was filled with the continuous, strident crash. The stolidity of his face, on which the rain streamed, was far from reassuring me. On the contrary, I was aware of a distinct qualm of apprehension, which was not at all lessened by a view of the driver, craning from his perch to observe us with the expression of a fascinated bird. So we stood silent, when the prisoner again began to sneeze from the body of the cart; and at the sound, prompt as a transformation, the driver had whipped up his horses and was shambling off round the corner of the house, and Mr. Fenn, recovering his wits with a gulp, had turned to the door behind him.
‘Come in, come in, sir,’ he said. ‘I beg your pardon, sir; the lock goes a trifle hard.’
Indeed, it took him a surprising time to open the door, which was not only locked on the outside, but the lock seemed rebellious from disuse; and when at last he stood back and motioned me to enter before him, I was greeted on the threshold by that peculiar and convincing sound of the rain echoing over empty chambers. The entrance-hall, in which I now found myself, was of a good size and good proportions; potted plants occupied the corners; the paved floor was soiled with muddy footprints and encumbered with straw; on a mahogany hall-table, which was the only furniture, a candle had been stuck and suffered to burn down–plainly a long while ago, for the gutterings were green with mould. My mind, under these new impressions, worked with unusual vivacity. I was here shut off with Fenn and his hireling in a deserted house, a neglected garden, and a wood of evergreens: the most eligible theatre for a deed of darkness. There came to me a vision of two flagstones raised in the hall-floor, and the driver putting in the rainy afternoon over my grave, and the prospect displeased me extremely. I felt I had carried my pleasantry as far as was safe; I must lose no time in declaring my true character, and I was even choosing the words in which I was to begin, when the hall-door was slammed-to behind me with a bang, and I turned, dropping my stick as I did so, in time– and not any more than time–to save my life.
The surprise of the onslaught and the huge weight of my assailant gave him the advantage. He had a pistol in his right hand of a portentous size, which it took me all my strength to keep deflected. With his left arm he strained me to his bosom, so that I thought I must be crushed or stifled. His mouth was open, his face crimson, and he panted aloud with hard animal sounds. The affair was as brief as it was hot and sudden. The potations which had swelled and bloated his carcase had already weakened the springs of energy. One more huge effort, that came near to overpower me, and in which the pistol happily exploded, and I felt his grasp slacken and weakness come on his joints; his legs succumbed under his weight, and he grovelled on his knees on the stone floor. ‘Spare me!’ he gasped.
I had not only been abominably frightened; I was shocked besides: my delicacy was in arms, like a lady to whom violence should have been offered by a similar monster. I plucked myself from his horrid contact, I snatched the pistol–even discharged, it was a formidable weapon–and menaced him with the butt. ‘Spare you!’ I cried, ‘you beast!’
His voice died in his fat inwards, but his lips still vehemently framed the same words of supplication. My anger began to pass off, but not all my repugnance; the picture he made revolted me, and I was impatient to be spared the further view of it.
‘Here,’ said I, ‘stop this performance: it sickens me. I am not going to kill you, do you hear? I have need of you.’
A look of relief, that I could almost have called beautiful, dawned on his countenance. ‘Anything–anything you wish,’ said he.
Anything is a big word, and his use of it brought me for a moment to a stand. ‘Why, what do you mean?’ I asked. ‘Do you mean that you will blow the gaff on the whole business?’
He answered me Yes with eager asseverations.
‘I know Monsieur de Saint-Yves is in it; it was through his papers we traced you,’ I said. ‘Do you consent to make a clean breast of the others?’
‘I do–I will!’ he cried. ‘The ‘ole crew of ’em; there’s good names among ’em. I’ll be king’s evidence.’
‘So that all shall hang except yourself? You damned villain!’ I broke out. ‘Understand at once that I am no spy or thief-taker. I am a kinsman of Monsieur de St. Yves–here in his interest. Upon my word, you have put your foot in it prettily, Mr. Burchell Fenn! Come, stand up; don’t grovel there. Stand up, you lump of iniquity!’
He scrambled to his feet. He was utterly unmanned, or it might have gone hard with me yet; and I considered him hesitating, as, indeed, there was cause. The man was a double-dyed traitor: he had tried to murder me, and I had first baffled his endeavours and then exposed and insulted him. Was it wise to place myself any longer at his mercy? With his help I should doubtless travel more quickly; doubtless also far less agreeably; and there was everything to show that it would be at a greater risk. In short, I should have washed my hands of him on the spot, but for the temptation of the French officers, whom I knew to be so near, and for whose society I felt so great and natural an impatience. If I was to see anything of my countrymen, it was clear I had first of all to make my peace with Mr. Fenn; and that was no easy matter. To make friends with any one implies concessions on both sides; and what could I concede? What could I say of him, but that he had proved himself a villain and a fool, and the worse man?
‘Well,’ said I, ‘here has been rather a poor piece of business, which I dare say you can have no pleasure in calling to mind; and, to say truth, I would as readily forget it myself. Suppose we try. Take back your pistol, which smells very ill; put it in your pocket or wherever you had it concealed. There! Now let us meet for the first time.–Give you good morning, Mr. Fenn! I hope you do very well. I come on the recommendation of my kinsman, the Vicomte de St. Yves.’
‘Do you mean it?’ he cried. ‘Do you mean you will pass over our little scrimmage?’
‘Why, certainly!’ said I. ‘It shows you are a bold fellow, who may be trusted to forget the business when it comes to the point. There is nothing against you in the little scrimmage, unless that your courage is greater than your strength. You are not so young as you once were, that is all.’
‘And I beg of you, sir, don’t betray me to the Vis-count,’ he pleaded. ‘I’ll not deny but what my ‘eart failed me a trifle; but it was only a word, sir, what anybody might have said in the ‘eat of the moment, and over with it.’
‘Certainly,’ said I. ‘That is quite my own opinion.’
‘The way I came to be anxious about the Vis-count,’ he continued, ‘is that I believe he might be induced to form an ‘asty judgment. And the business, in a pecuniary point of view, is all that I could ask; only trying, sir–very trying. It’s making an old man of me before my time. You might have observed yourself, sir, that I ‘aven’t got the knees I once ‘ad. The knees and the breathing, there’s where it takes me. But I’m very sure, sir, I address a gentleman as would be the last to make trouble between friends.’
‘I am sure you do me no more than justice,’ said I; ‘and I shall think it quite unnecessary to dwell on any of these passing circumstances in my report to the Vicomte.’
‘Which you do favour him (if you’ll excuse me being so bold as to mention it) exac’ly!’ said he. ‘I should have known you anywheres. May I offer you a pot of ‘ome-brewed ale, sir? By your leave! This way, if you please. I am ‘eartily grateful–‘eartily pleased to be of any service to a gentleman like you, sir, which is related to the Vis-count, and really a fambly of which you might well be proud! Take care of the step, sir. You have good news of ‘is ‘ealth, I trust? as well as that of Monseer the Count?’
God forgive me! the horrible fellow was still puffing and panting with the fury of his assault, and already he had fallen into an obsequious, wheedling familiarity like that of an old servant,– already he was flattering me on my family connections!
I followed him through the house into the stable-yard, where I observed the driver washing the cart in a shed. He must have heard the explosion of the pistol. He could not choose but hear it: the thing was shaped like a little blunderbuss, charged to the mouth, and made a report like a piece of field artillery. He had heard, he had paid no attention; and now, as we came forth by the back- door, he raised for a moment a pale and tell-tale face that was as direct as a confession. The rascal had expected to see Fenn come forth alone; he was waiting to be called on for that part of sexton, which I had already allotted to him in fancy.
I need not detain the reader very long with any description of my visit to the back-kitchen; of how we mulled our ale there, and mulled it very well; nor of how we sat talking, Fenn like an old, faithful, affectionate dependant, and I–well! I myself fallen into a mere admiration of so much impudence, that transcended words, and had very soon conquered animosity. I took a fancy to the man, he was so vast a humbug. I began to see a kind of beauty in him, his aplomb was so majestic. I never knew a rogue to cut so fat; his villainy was ample, like his belly, and I could scarce find it in my heart to hold him responsible for either. He was good enough to drop into the autobiographical; telling me how the farm, in spite of the war and the high prices, had proved a disappointment; how there was ‘a sight of cold, wet land as you come along the ‘igh-road’; how the winds and rains and the seasons had been misdirected, it seemed ‘o’ purpose’; how Mrs. Fenn had died–‘I lost her coming two year agone; a remarkable fine woman, my old girl, sir! if you’ll excuse me,’ he added, with a burst of humility. In short, he gave me an opportunity of studying John Bull, as I may say, stuffed naked–his greed, his usuriousness, his hypocrisy, his perfidy of the back-stairs, all swelled to the superlative–such as was well worth the little disarray and fluster of our passage in the hall.
CHAPTER XIII–I MEET TWO OF MY COUNTRYMEN
As soon as I judged it safe, and that was not before Burchell Fenn had talked himself back into his breath and a complete good humour, I proposed he should introduce me to the French officers, henceforth to become my fellow-passengers. There were two of them, it appeared, and my heart beat as I approached the door. The specimen of Perfidious Albion whom I had just been studying gave me the stronger zest for my fellow-countrymen. I could have embraced them; I could have wept on their necks. And all the time I was going to a disappointment.
It was in a spacious and low room, with an outlook on the court, that I found them bestowed. In the good days of that house the apartment had probably served as a library, for there were traces of shelves along the wainscot. Four or five mattresses lay on the floor in a corner, with a frowsy heap of bedding; near by was a basin and a cube of soap; a rude kitchen-table and some deal chairs stood together at the far end; and the room was illuminated by no less than four windows, and warmed by a little, crazy, sidelong grate, propped up with bricks in the vent of a hospitable chimney, in which a pile of coals smoked prodigiously and gave out a few starveling flames. An old, frail, white-haired officer sat in one of the chairs, which he had drawn close to this apology for a fire. He was wrapped in a camlet cloak, of which the collar was turned up, his knees touched the bars, his hands were spread in the very smoke, and yet he shivered for cold. The second–a big, florid, fine animal of a man, whose every gesture labelled him the cock of the walk and the admiration of the ladies–had apparently despaired of the fire, and now strode up and down, sneezing hard, bitterly blowing his nose, and proffering a continual stream of bluster, complaint, and barrack-room oaths.
Fenn showed me in with the brief form of introduction: ‘Gentlemen all, this here’s another fare!’ and was gone again at once. The old man gave me but the one glance out of lack-lustre eyes; and even as he looked a shiver took him as sharp as a hiccough. But the other, who represented to admiration the picture of a Beau in a Catarrh, stared at me arrogantly.
‘And who are you, sir?’ he asked.
I made the military salute to my superiors.
‘Champdivers, private, Eighth of the Line,’ said I.
‘Pretty business!’ said he. ‘And you are going on with us? Three in a cart, and a great trolloping private at that! And who is to pay for you, my fine fellow?’ he inquired.
‘If monsieur comes to that,’ I answered civilly, ‘who paid for him?’
‘Oh, if you choose to play the wit!’ said he,–and began to rail at large upon his destiny, the weather, the cold, the danger and the expense of the escape, and, above all, the cooking of the accursed English. It seemed to annoy him particularly that I should have joined their party. ‘If you knew what you were doing, thirty thousand millions of pigs! you would keep yourself to yourself! The horses can’t drag the cart; the roads are all ruts and swamps. No longer ago than last night the Colonel and I had to march half the way–thunder of God!–half the way to the knees in mud–and I with this infernal cold–and the danger of detection! Happily we met no one: a desert–a real desert–like the whole abominable country! Nothing to eat–no, sir, there is nothing to eat but raw cow and greens boiled in water–nor to drink but Worcestershire sauce! Now I, with my catarrh, I have no appetite; is it not so? Well, if I were in France, I should have a good soup with a crust in it, an omelette, a fowl in rice, a partridge in cabbages–things to tempt me, thunder of God! But here–day of God!–what a country! And cold, too! They talk about Russia–this is all the cold I want! And the people–look at them! What a race! Never any handsome men; never any fine officers!’–and he looked down complacently for a moment at his waist–‘And the women–what faggots! No, that is one point clear, I cannot stomach the English!’
There was something in this man so antipathetic to me, as sent the mustard into my nose. I can never bear your bucks and dandies, even when they are decent-looking and well dressed; and the Major– for that was his rank–was the image of a flunkey in good luck. Even to be in agreement with him, or to seem to be so, was more than I could make out to endure.
‘You could scarce be expected to stomach them,’ said I civilly, ‘after having just digested your parole.’
He whipped round on his heel and turned on me a countenance which I dare say he imagined to be awful; but another fit of sneezing cut him off ere he could come the length of speech.
‘I have not tried the dish myself,’ I took the opportunity to add. ‘It is said to be unpalatable. Did monsieur find it so?’
With surprising vivacity the Colonel woke from his lethargy. He was between us ere another word could pass.
‘Shame, gentlemen!’ he said. ‘Is this a time for Frenchmen and fellow-soldiers to fall out? We are in the midst of our enemies; a quarrel, a loud word, may suffice to plunge us back into irretrievable distress. Monsieur le Commandant, you have been gravely offended. I make it my request, I make it my prayer–if need be, I give you my orders–that the matter shall stand by until we come safe to France. Then, if you please, I will serve you in any capacity. And for you, young man, you have shown all the cruelty and carelessness of youth. This gentleman is your superior; he is no longer young’–at which word you are to conceive the Major’s face. ‘It is admitted he has broken his parole. I know not his reason, and no more do you. It might be patriotism in this hour of our country’s adversity, it might be humanity, necessity; you know not what in the least, and you permit yourself to reflect on his honour. To break parole may be a subject for pity and not derision. I have broken mine–I, a colonel of the Empire. And why? I have been years negotiating my exchange, and it cannot be managed; those who have influence at the Ministry of War continually rush in before me, and I have to wait, and my daughter at home is in a decline. I am going to see my daughter at last, and it is my only concern lest I should have delayed too long. She is ill, and very ill,–at death’s door. Nothing is left me but my daughter, my Emperor, and my honour; and I give my honour, blame me for it who dare!’
At this my heart smote me.
‘For God’s sake,’ I cried, ‘think no more of what I have said! A parole? what is a parole against life and death and love? I ask your pardon; this gentleman’s also. As long as I shall be with you, you shall not have cause to complain of me again. I pray God you will find your daughter alive and restored.’
‘That is past praying for,’ said the Colonel; and immediately the brief fire died out of him, and, returning to the hearth, he relapsed into his former abstraction.
But I was not so easy to compose. The knowledge of the poor gentleman’s trouble, and the sight of his face, had filled me with the bitterness of remorse; and I insisted upon shaking hands with the Major (which he did with a very ill grace), and abounded in palinodes and apologies.
‘After all,’ said I, ‘who am I to talk? I am in the luck to be a private soldier; I have no parole to give or to keep; once I am over the rampart, I am as free as air. I beg you to believe that I regret from my soul the use of these ungenerous expressions. Allow me . . . Is there no way in this damned house to attract attention? Where is this fellow, Fenn?’
I ran to one of the windows and threw it open. Fenn, who was at the moment passing below in the court, cast up his arms like one in despair, called to me to keep back, plunged into the house, and appeared next moment in the doorway of the chamber.
‘Oh, sir!’ says he, ‘keep away from those there windows. A body might see you from the back lane.’
‘It is registered,’ said I. ‘Henceforward I will be a mouse for precaution and a ghost for invisibility. But in the meantime, for God’s sake, fetch us a bottle of brandy! Your room is as damp as the bottom of a well, and these gentlemen are perishing of cold.’
So soon as I had paid him (for everything, I found, must be paid in advance), I turned my attention to the fire, and whether because I threw greater energy into the business, or because the coals were now warmed and the time ripe, I soon started a blaze that made the chimney roar again. The shine of it, in that dark, rainy day, seemed to reanimate the Colonel like a blink of sun. With the outburst of the flames, besides, a draught was established, which immediately delivered us from the plague of smoke; and by the time Fenn returned, carrying a bottle under his arm and a single tumbler in his hand, there was already an air of gaiety in the room that did the heart good.
I poured out some of the brandy.
‘Colonel,’ said I, ‘I am a young man and a private soldier. I have not been long in this room, and already I have shown the petulance that belongs to the one character and the ill manners that you may look for in the other. Have the humanity to pass these slips over, and honour me so far as to accept this glass.’
‘My lad,’ says he, waking up and blinking at me with an air of suspicion, ‘are you sure you can afford it?’
I assured him I could.
‘I thank you, then: I am very cold.’ He took the glass out, and a little colour came in his face. ‘I thank you again,’ said he. ‘It goes to the heart.’
The Major, when I motioned him to help himself, did so with a good deal of liberality; continued to do so for the rest of the morning, now with some sort of apology, now with none at all; and the bottle began to look foolish before dinner was served. It was such a meal as he had himself predicted: beef, greens, potatoes, mustard in a teacup, and beer in a brown jug that was all over hounds, horses, and hunters, with a fox at the fat end and a gigantic John Bull– for all the world like Fenn–sitting in the midst in a bob-wig and smoking tobacco. The beer was a good brew, but not good enough for the Major; he laced it with brandy–for his cold, he said; and in this curative design the remainder of the bottle ebbed away. He called my attention repeatedly to the circumstance; helped me pointedly to the dregs, threw the bottle in the air and played tricks with it; and at last, having exhausted his ingenuity, and seeing me remain quite blind to every hint, he ordered and paid for another himself.
As for the Colonel, he ate nothing, sat sunk in a muse, and only awoke occasionally to a sense of where he was, and what he was supposed to be doing. On each of these occasions he showed a gratitude and kind courtesy that endeared him to me beyond expression. ‘Champdivers, my lad, your health!’ he would say. ‘The Major and I had a very arduous march last night, and I positively thought I should have eaten nothing, but your fortunate idea of the brandy has made quite a new man of me–quite a new man.’ And he would fall to with a great air of heartiness, cut himself a mouthful, and, before he had swallowed it, would have forgotten his dinner, his company, the place where he then was, and the escape he was engaged on, and become absorbed in the vision of a sick-room and a dying girl in France. The pathos of this continual preoccupation, in a man so old, sick, and over-weary, and whom I looked upon as a mere bundle of dying bones and death-pains, put me wholly from my victuals: it seemed there was an element of sin, a kind of rude bravado of youth, in the mere relishing of food at the same table with this tragic father; and though I was well enough used to the coarse, plain diet of the English, I ate scarce more than himself. Dinner was hardly over before he succumbed to a lethargic sleep; lying on one of the mattresses with his limbs relaxed, and his breath seemingly suspended–the very image of dissolution.
This left the Major and myself alone at the table. You must not suppose our tete-a-tete was long, but it was a lively period while it lasted. He drank like a fish or an Englishman; shouted, beat the table, roared out songs, quarrelled, made it up again, and at last tried to throw the dinner-plates through the window, a feat of which he was at that time quite incapable. For a party of fugitives, condemned to the most rigorous discretion, there was never seen so noisy a carnival; and through it all the Colonel continued to sleep like a child. Seeing the Major so well advanced, and no retreat possible, I made a fair wind of a foul one, keeping his glass full, pushing him with toasts; and sooner than I could have dared to hope, he became drowsy and incoherent. With the wrong-headedness of all such sots, he would not be persuaded to lie down upon one of the mattresses until I had stretched myself upon another. But the comedy was soon over; soon he slept the sleep of the just, and snored like a military music; and I might get up again and face (as best I could) the excessive tedium of the afternoon.
I had passed the night before in a good bed; I was denied the resource of slumber; and there was nothing open for me but to pace the apartment, maintain the fire, and brood on my position. I compared yesterday and to-day–the safety, comfort, jollity, open- air exercise and pleasant roadside inns of the one, with the tedium, anxiety, and discomfort of the other. I remembered that I was in the hands of Fenn, who could not be more false–though he might be more vindictive–than I fancied him. I looked forward to nights of pitching in the covered cart, and days of monotony in I knew not what hiding-places; and my heart failed me, and I was in two minds whether to slink off ere it was too late, and return to my former solitary way of travel. But the Colonel stood in the path. I had not seen much of him; but already I judged him a man of a childlike nature–with that sort of innocence and courtesy that, I think, is only to be found in old soldiers or old priests– and broken with years and sorrow. I could not turn my back on his distress; could not leave him alone with the selfish trooper who snored on the next mattress. ‘Champdivers, my lad, your health!’ said a voice in my ear, and stopped me–and there are few things I am more glad of in the retrospect than that it did.
It must have been about four in the afternoon–at least the rain had taken off, and the sun was setting with some wintry pomp–when the current of my reflections was effectually changed by the arrival of two visitors in a gig. They were farmers of the neighbourhood, I suppose–big, burly fellows in great-coats and top-boots, mightily flushed with liquor when they arrived, and, before they left, inimitably drunk. They stayed long in the kitchen with Burchell, drinking, shouting, singing, and keeping it up; and the sound of their merry minstrelsy kept me a kind of company. The night fell, and the shine of the fire brightened and blinked on the panelled wall. Our illuminated windows must have been visible not only from the back lane of which Fenn had spoken, but from the court where the farmers’ gig awaited them. In the far end of the firelit room lay my companions, the one silent, the other clamorously noisy, the images of death and drunkenness. Little wonder if I were tempted to join in the choruses below, and sometimes could hardly refrain from laughter, and sometimes, I believe, from tears–so unmitigated was the tedium, so cruel the suspense, of this period.
At last, about six at night, I should fancy, the noisy minstrels appeared in the court, headed by Fenn with a lantern, and knocking together as they came. The visitors clambered noisily into the gig, one of them shook the reins, and they were snatched out of sight and hearing with a suddenness that partook of the nature of prodigy. I am well aware there is a Providence for drunken men, that holds the reins for them and presides over their troubles; doubtless he had his work cut out for him with this particular gigful! Fenn rescued his toes with an ejaculation from under the departing wheels, and turned at once with uncertain steps and devious lantern to the far end of the court. There, through the open doors of a coach-house, the shock-headed lad was already to be seen drawing forth the covered cart. If I wished any private talk with our host, it must be now or never.
Accordingly I groped my way downstairs, and came to him as he looked on at and lighted the harnessing of the horses.
‘The hour approaches when we have to part,’ said I; ‘and I shall be obliged if you will tell your servant to drop me at the nearest point for Dunstable. I am determined to go so far with our friends, Colonel X and Major Y, but my business is peremptory, and it takes me to the neighbourhood of Dunstable.’
Orders were given to my satisfaction, with an obsequiousness that seemed only inflamed by his potations.
CHAPTER XIV–TRAVELS OF THE COVERED CART
My companions were aroused with difficulty: the Colonel, poor old gentleman, to a sort of permanent dream, in which you could say of him only that he was very deaf and anxiously polite; the Major still maudlin drunk. We had a dish of tea by the fireside, and then issued like criminals into the scathing cold of the night. For the weather had in the meantime changed. Upon the cessation of the rain, a strict frost had succeeded. The moon, being young, was already near the zenith when we started, glittered everywhere on sheets of ice, and sparkled in ten thousand icicles. A more unpromising night for a journey it was hard to conceive. But in the course of the afternoon the horses had been well roughed; and King (for such was the name of the shock-headed lad) was very positive that he could drive us without misadventure. He was as good as his word; indeed, despite a gawky air, he was simply invaluable in his present employment, showing marked sagacity in all that concerned the care of horses, and guiding us by one short cut after another for days, and without a fault.
The interior of that engine of torture, the covered cart, was fitted with a bench, on which we took our places; the door was shut; in a moment, the night closed upon us solid and stifling; and we felt that we were being driven carefully out of the courtyard. Careful was the word all night, and it was an alleviation of our miseries that we did not often enjoy. In general, as we were driven the better part of the night and day, often at a pretty quick pace and always through a labyrinth of the most infamous country lanes and by-roads, we were so bruised upon the bench, so dashed against the top and sides of the cart, that we reached the end of a stage in truly pitiable case, sometimes flung ourselves down without the formality of eating, made but one sleep of it until the hour of departure returned, and were only properly awakened by the first jolt of the renewed journey. There were interruptions, at times, that we hailed as alleviations. At times the cart was bogged, once it was upset, and we must alight and lend the driver the assistance of our arms; at times, too (as on the occasion when I had first encountered it), the horses gave out, and we had to trail alongside in mud or frost until the first peep of daylight, or the approach to a hamlet or a high road, bade us disappear like ghosts into our prison.
The main roads of England are incomparable for excellence, of a beautiful smoothness, very ingeniously laid down, and so well kept that in most weathers you could take your dinner off any part of them without distaste. On them, to the note of the bugle, the mail did its sixty miles a day; innumerable chaises whisked after the bobbing postboys; or some young blood would flit by in a curricle and tandem, to the vast delight and danger of the lieges. On them, the slow-pacing waggons made a music of bells, and all day long the travellers on horse-back and the travellers on foot (like happy Mr. St. Ives so little a while before!) kept coming and going, and baiting and gaping at each other, as though a fair were due, and they were gathering to it from all England. No, nowhere in the world is travel so great a pleasure as in that country. But unhappily our one need was to be secret; and all this rapid and animated picture of the road swept quite apart from us, as we lumbered up hill and down dale, under hedge and over stone, among circuitous byways. Only twice did I receive, as it were, a whiff of the highway. The first reached my ears alone. I might have been anywhere. I only knew I was walking in the dark night and among ruts, when I heard very far off, over the silent country that surrounded us, the guard’s horn wailing its signal to the next post-house for a change of horses. It was like the voice of the day heard in darkness, a voice of the world heard in prison, the note of a cock crowing in the mid-seas–in short, I cannot tell you what it was like, you will have to fancy for yourself–but I could have wept to hear it. Once we were belated: the cattle could hardly crawl, the day was at hand, it was a nipping, rigorous morning, King was lashing his horses, I was giving an arm to the old Colonel, and the Major was coughing in our rear. I must suppose that King was a thought careless, being nearly in desperation about his team, and, in spite of the cold morning, breathing hot with his exertions. We came, at last, a little before sunrise to the summit of a hill, and saw the high-road passing at right angles through an open country of meadows and hedgerow pollards; and not only the York mail, speeding smoothly at the gallop of the four horses, but a post-chaise besides, with the post-boy titupping briskly, and the traveller himself putting his head out of the window, but whether to breathe the dawn, or the better to observe the passage of the mail, I do not know. So that we enjoyed for an instant a picture of free life on the road, in its most luxurious forms of despatch and comfort. And thereafter, with a poignant feeling of contrast in our hearts, we must mount again into our wheeled dungeon.
We came to our stages at all sorts of odd hours, and they were in all kinds of odd places. I may say at once that my first experience was my best. Nowhere again were we so well entertained as at Burchell Fenn’s. And this, I suppose, was natural, and indeed inevitable, in so long and secret a journey. The first stop, we lay six hours in a barn standing by itself in a poor, marshy orchard, and packed with hay; to make it more attractive, we were told it had been the scene of an abominable murder, and was now haunted. But the day was beginning to break, and our fatigue was too extreme for visionary terrors. The second or third, we alighted on a barren heath about midnight, built a fire to warm us under the shelter of some thorns, supped like beggars on bread and a piece of cold bacon, and slept like gipsies with our feet to the fire. In the meanwhile, King was gone with the cart, I know not where, to get a change of horses, and it was late in the dark morning when he returned and we were able to resume our journey. In the middle of another night, we came to a stop by an ancient, whitewashed cottage of two stories; a privet hedge surrounded it; the frosty moon shone blankly on the upper windows; but through those of the kitchen the firelight was seen glinting on the roof and reflected from the dishes on the wall. Here, after much hammering on the door, King managed to arouse an old crone from the chimney-corner chair, where she had been dozing in the watch; and we were had in, and entertained with a dish of hot tea. This old lady was an aunt of Burchell Fenn’s–and an unwilling partner in his dangerous trade. Though the house stood solitary, and the hour was an unlikely one for any passenger upon the road, King and she conversed in whispers only. There was something dismal, something of the sick-room, in this perpetual, guarded sibilation. The apprehensions of our hostess insensibly communicated themselves to every one present. We ate like mice in a cat’s ear; if one of us jingled a teaspoon, all would start; and when the hour came to take the road again, we drew a long breath of relief, and climbed to our places in the covered cart with a positive sense of escape. The most of our meals, however, were taken boldly at hedgerow alehouses, usually at untimely hours of the day, when the clients were in the field or the farmyard at labour. I shall have to tell presently of our last experience of the sort, and how unfortunately it miscarried; but as that was the signal for my separation from my fellow-travellers, I must first finish with them.
I had never any occasion to waver in my first judgment of the Colonel. The old gentleman seemed to me, and still seems in the retrospect, the salt of the earth. I had occasion to see him in the extremes of hardship, hunger and cold; he was dying, and he looked it; and yet I cannot remember any hasty, harsh, or impatient word to have fallen from his lips. On the contrary, he ever showed himself careful to please; and even if he rambled in his talk, rambled always gently–like a humane, half-witted old hero, true to his colours to the last. I would not dare to say how often he awoke suddenly from a lethargy, and told us again, as though we had never heard it, the story of how he had earned the cross, how it had been given him by the hand of the Emperor, and of the innocent- -and, indeed, foolish–sayings of his daughter when he returned with it on his bosom. He had another anecdote which he was very apt to give, by way of a rebuke, when the Major wearied us beyond endurance with dispraises of the English. This was an account of the braves gens with whom he had been boarding. True enough, he was a man so simple and grateful by nature, that the most common civilities were able to touch him to the heart, and would remain written in his memory; but from a thousand inconsiderable but conclusive indications, I gathered that this family had really loved him, and loaded him with kindness. They made a fire in his bedroom, which the sons and daughters tended with their own hands; letters from France were looked for with scarce more eagerness by himself than by these alien sympathisers; when they came, he would read them aloud in the parlour to the assembled family, translating as he went. The Colonel’s English was elementary; his daughter not in the least likely to be an amusing correspondent; and, as I conceived these scenes in the parlour, I felt sure the interest centred in the Colonel himself, and I thought I could feel in my own heart that mixture of the ridiculous and the pathetic, the contest of tears and laughter, which must have shaken the bosoms of the family. Their kindness had continued till the end. It appears they were privy to his flight, the camlet cloak had been lined expressly for him, and he was the bearer of a letter from the daughter of the house to his own daughter in Paris. The last evening, when the time came to say good-night, it was tacitly known to all that they were to look upon his face no more. He rose, pleading fatigue, and turned to the daughter, who had been his chief ally: ‘You will permit me, my dear–to an old and very unhappy soldier–and may God bless you for your goodness!’ The girl threw her arms about his neck and sobbed upon his bosom; the lady of the house burst into tears; ‘et je vous le jure, le pere se mouchait!’ quoth the Colonel, twisting his moustaches with a cavalry air, and at the same time blinking the water from his eyes at the mere recollection.
It was a good thought to me that he had found these friends in captivity; that he had started on this fatal journey from so cordial a farewell. He had broken his parole for his daughter: that he should ever live to reach her sick-bed, that he could continue to endure to an end the hardships, the crushing fatigue, the savage cold, of our pilgrimage, I had early ceased to hope. I did for him what I was able,–nursed him, kept him covered, watched over his slumbers, sometimes held him in my arms at the rough places of the road. ‘Champdivers,’ he once said, ‘you are like a son to me–like a son.’ It is good to remember, though at the time it put me on the rack. All was to no purpose. Fast as we were travelling towards France, he was travelling faster still to another destination. Daily he grew weaker and more indifferent. An old rustic accent of Lower Normandy reappeared in his speech, from which it had long been banished, and grew stronger; old words of the patois, too: Ouistreham, matrasse, and others, the sense of which we were sometimes unable to guess. On the very last day he began again his eternal story of the cross and the Emperor. The Major, who was particularly ill, or at least particularly cross, uttered some angry words of protest. ‘Pardonnez-moi, monsieur le commandant, mais c’est pour monsieur,’ said the Colonel: ‘Monsieur has not yet heard the circumstance, and is good enough to feel an interest.’ Presently after, however, he began to lose the thread of his narrative; and at last: ‘Que que j’ai? Je m’embrouille!’ says he, ‘Suffit: s’m’a la donne, et Berthe en etait bien contente.’ It struck me as the falling of the curtain or the closing of the sepulchre doors.
Sure enough, in but a little while after, he fell into a sleep as gentle as an infant’s, which insensibly changed into the sleep of death. I had my arm about his body at the time and remarked nothing, unless it were that he once stretched himself a little, so kindly the end came to that disastrous life. It was only at our evening halt that the Major and I discovered we were travelling alone with the poor clay. That night we stole a spade from a field–I think near Market Bosworth–and a little farther on, in a wood of young oak trees and by the light of King’s lantern, we buried the old soldier of the Empire with both prayers and tears.
We had needs invent Heaven if it had not been revealed to us; there are some things that fall so bitterly ill on this side Time! As for the Major, I have long since forgiven him. He broke the news to the poor Colonel’s daughter; I am told he did it kindly; and sure, nobody could have done it without tears! His share of purgatory will be brief; and in this world, as I could not very well praise him, I have suppressed his name. The Colonel’s also, for the sake of his parole. Requiescat.
CHAPTER XV–THE ADVENTURE OF THE ATTORNEY’S CLERK
I have mentioned our usual course, which was to eat in inconsiderable wayside hostelries, known to King. It was a dangerous business; we went daily under fire to satisfy our appetite, and put our head in the loin’s mouth for a piece of bread. Sometimes, to minimise the risk, we would all dismount before we came in view of the house, straggle in severally, and give what orders we pleased, like disconnected strangers. In like manner we departed, to find the cart at an appointed place, some half a mile beyond. The Colonel and the Major had each a word or two of English–God help their pronunciation! But they did well enough to order a rasher and a pot or call a reckoning; and, to say truth, these country folks did not give themselves the pains, and had scarce the knowledge, to be critical.
About nine or ten at night the pains of hunger and cold drove us to an alehouse in the flats of Bedfordshire, not far from Bedford itself. In the inn kitchen was a long, lean, characteristic- looking fellow of perhaps forty, dressed in black. He sat on a settle by the fireside, smoking a long pipe, such as they call a yard of clay. His hat and wig were hanged upon the knob behind him, his head as bald as a bladder of lard, and his expression very shrewd, cantankerous, and inquisitive. He seemed to value himself above his company, to give himself the airs of a man of the world among that rustic herd; which was often no more than his due; being, as I afterwards discovered, an attorney’s clerk. I took upon myself the more ungrateful part of arriving last; and by the time I entered on the scene the Major was already served at a side table. Some general conversation must have passed, and I smelled danger in the air. The Major looked flustered, the attorney’s clerk triumphant, and three or four peasants in smock-frocks (who sat about the fire to play chorus) had let their pipes go out.
‘Give you good evening, sir!’ said the attorney’s clerk to me.
‘The same to you, sir,’ said I.
‘I think this one will do,’ quoth the clerk to the yokels with a wink; and then, as soon as I had given my order, ‘Pray, sir, whither are you bound?’ he added.
‘Sir,’ said I, ‘I am not one of those who speak either of their business or their destination in houses of public entertainment.’
‘A good answer,’ said he, ‘and an excellent principle. Sir, do you speak French?’
‘Why, no, sir,’ said I. ‘A little Spanish at your service.’
‘But you know the French accent, perhaps?’ said the clerk.
‘Well do I do that!’ said I. ‘The French accent? Why, I believe I can tell a Frenchman in ten words.’
‘Here is a puzzle for you, then!’ he said. ‘I have no material doubt myself, but some of these gentlemen are more backward. The lack of education, you know. I make bold to say that a man cannot walk, cannot hear, and cannot see, without the blessings of education.’
He turned to the Major, whose food plainly stuck in his throat.
‘Now, sir,’ pursued the clerk, ‘let me have the pleasure to hear your voice again. Where are you going, did you say?’
‘Sare, I am go-ing to Lon-don,’ said the Major.
I could have flung my plate at him to be such an ass, and to have so little a gift of languages where that was the essential.
‘What think ye of that?’ said the clerk. ‘Is that French enough?’
‘Good God!’ cried I, leaping up like one who should suddenly perceive an acquaintance, ‘is this you, Mr. Dubois? Why, who would have dreamed of encountering you so far from home?’ As I spoke, I shook hands with the Major heartily; and turning to our tormentor, ‘Oh, sir, you may be perfectly reassured! This is a very honest fellow, a late neighbour of mine in the city of Carlisle.’
I thought the attorney looked put out; I little knew the man!
‘But he is French,’ said he, ‘for all that?’
‘Ay, to be sure!’ said I. ‘A Frenchman of the emigration! None of your Buonaparte lot. I will warrant his views of politics to be as sound as your own.’
‘What is a little strange,’ said the clerk quietly, ‘is that Mr. Dubois should deny it.’
I got it fair in the face, and took it smiling; but the shock was rude, and in the course of the next words I contrived to do what I have rarely done, and make a slip in my English. I kept my liberty and life by my proficiency all these months, and for once that I failed, it is not to be supposed that I would make a public exhibition of the details. Enough, that it was a very little error, and one that might have passed ninety-nine times in a hundred. But my limb of the law was as swift to pick it up as though he had been by trade a master of languages.
‘Aha!’ cries he; ‘and you are French, too! Your tongue bewrays you. Two Frenchmen coming into an alehouse, severally and accidentally, not knowing each other, at ten of the clock at night, in the middle of Bedfordshire? No, sir, that shall not pass! You are all prisoners escaping, if you are nothing worse. Consider yourselves under arrest. I have to trouble you for your papers.’
‘Where is your warrant, if you come to that?’ said I. ‘My papers! A likely thing that I would show my papers on the ipse dixit of an unknown fellow in a hedge alehouse!’
‘Would you resist the law?’ says he.
‘Not the law, sir!’ said I. ‘I hope I am too good a subject for that. But for a nameless fellow with a bald head and a pair of gingham small-clothes, why certainly! ‘Tis my birthright as an Englishman. Where’s Magna Charta, else?’
‘We will see about that,’ says he; and then, addressing the assistants, ‘where does the constable live?’
‘Lord love you, sir!’ cried the landlord, ‘what are you thinking of? The constable at past ten at night! Why, he’s abed and asleep, and good and drunk two hours agone!’
‘Ah that a’ be!’ came in chorus from the yokels.
The attorney’s clerk was put to a stand. He could not think of force; there was little sign of martial ardour about the landlord, and the peasants were indifferent–they only listened, and gaped, and now scratched a head, and now would get a light to their pipes from the embers on the hearth. On the other hand, the Major and I put a bold front on the business and defied him, not without some ground of law. In this state of matters he proposed I should go along with him to one Squire Merton, a great man of the neighbourhood, who was in the commission of the peace, the end of his avenue but three lanes away. I told him I would not stir a foot for him if it were to save his soul. Next he proposed I should stay all night where I was, and the constable could see to my affair in the morning, when he was sober. I replied I should go when and where I pleased; that we were lawful travellers in the fear of God and the king, and I for one would suffer myself to be stayed by nobody. At the same time, I was thinking the matter had lasted altogether too long, and I determined to bring it to an end at once.
‘See here,’ said I, getting up, for till now I had remained carelessly seated, ‘there’s only one way to decide a thing like this–only one way that’s right ENGLISH–and that’s man to man. Take off your coat, sir, and these gentlemen shall see fair play.’ At this there came a look in his eye that I could not mistake. His education had been neglected in one essential and eminently British particular: he could not box. No more could I, you may say; but then I had the more impudence–and I had made the proposal.
‘He says I’m no Englishman, but the proof of the pudding is the eating of it,’ I continued. And here I stripped my coat and fell into the proper attitude, which was just about all I knew of this barbarian art. ‘Why, sir, you seem to me to hang back a little,’ said I. ‘Come, I’ll meet you; I’ll give you an appetiser–though hang me if I can understand the man that wants any enticement to hold up his hands.’ I drew a bank-note out of my fob and tossed it to the landlord. ‘There are the stakes,’ said I. ‘I’ll fight you for first blood, since you seem to make so much work about it. If you tap my claret first, there are five guineas for you, and I’ll go with you to any squire you choose to mention. If I tap yours, you’ll perhaps let on that I’m the better man, and allow me to go about my lawful business at my own time and convenience, by God; is that fair, my lads?’ says I, appealing to the company.
‘Ay, ay,’ said the chorus of chawbacons; ‘he can’t say no fairer nor that, he can’t. Take off thy coat master!’
The limb of the law was now on the wrong side of public opinion, and, what heartened me to go on, the position was rapidly changing in our favour. Already the Major was paying his shot to the very indifferent landlord, and I could see the white face of King at the back-door, making signals of haste.
‘Oho!’ quoth my enemy, ‘you are as full of doubles as a fox, are you not? But I see through you; I see through and through you. You would change the venue, would you?’
‘I may be transparent, sir,’ says I, ‘but if you’ll do me the favour to stand up, you’ll find I can hit dam hard.’
‘Which is a point, if you will observe, that I had never called in question,’ said he. ‘Why, you ignorant clowns,’ he proceeded, addressing the company, ‘can’t you see the fellow’s gulling you before your eyes? Can’t you see that he has changed the point upon me? I say he’s a French prisoner, and he answers that he can box! What has that to do with it? I would not wonder but what he can dance, too–they’re all dancing masters over there. I say, and I stick to it, that he’s a Frenchy. He says he isn’t. Well then, let him out with his papers, if he has them! If he had, would he not show them? If he had, would he not jump at the idea of going to Squire Merton, a man you all know? Now, you are all plain, straightforward Bedfordshire men, and I wouldn’t ask a better lot to appeal to. You’re not the kind to be talked over with any French gammon, and he’s plenty of that. But let me tell him, he can take his pigs to another market; they’ll never do here; they’ll never go down in Bedfordshire. Why! look at the man! Look at his feet! Has anybody got a foot in the room like that? See how he stands! do any of you fellows stand like that? Does the landlord, there? Why, he has Frenchman wrote all over him, as big as a sign- post!’
This was all very well; and in a different scene I might even have been gratified by his remarks; but I saw clearly, if I were to allow him to talk, he might turn the tables on me altogether. He might not be much of a hand at boxing; but I was much mistaken, or he had studied forensic eloquence in a good school. In this predicament I could think of nothing more ingenious than to burst out of the house, under the pretext of an ungovernable rage. It was certainly not very ingenious–it was elementary, but I had no choice.
‘You white-livered dog!’ I broke out. ‘Do you dare to tell me you’re an Englishman, and won’t fight? But I’ll stand no more of this! I leave this place, where I’ve been insulted! Here! what’s to pay? Pay yourself!’ I went on, offering the landlord a handful of silver, ‘and give me back my bank-note!’
The landlord, following his usual policy of obliging everybody, offered no opposition to my design. The position of my adversary was now thoroughly bad. He had lost my two companions. He was on the point of losing me also. There was plainly no hope of arousing the company to help; and watching him with a corner of my eye, I saw him hesitate for a moment. The next, he had taken down his hat and his wig, which was of black horsehair; and I saw him draw from behind the settle a vast hooded great-coat and a small valise. ‘The devil!’ thought I: ‘is the rascal going to follow me?’
I was scarce clear of the inn before the limb of the law was at my heels. I saw his face plain in the moonlight; and the most resolute purpose showed in it, along with an unmoved composure. A chill went over me. ‘This is no common adventure,’ thinks I to myself. ‘You have got hold of a man of character, St. Ives! A bite-hard, a bull-dog, a weasel is on your trail; and how are you to throw him off?’ Who was he? By some of his expressions I judged he was a hanger-on of courts. But in what character had he followed the assizes? As a simple spectator, as a lawyer’s clerk, as a criminal himself, or–last and worst supposition–as a Bow- street ‘runner’?
The cart would wait for me, perhaps, half a mile down our onward road, which I was already following. And I told myself that in a few minutes’ walking, Bow-street runner or not, I should have him at my mercy. And then reflection came to me in time. Of all things, one was out of the question. Upon no account must this obtrusive fellow see the cart. Until I had killed or shook him off, I was quite divorced from my companions–alone, in the midst of England, on a frosty by-way leading whither I knew not, with a sleuth-hound at my heels, and never a friend but the holly-stick!
We came at the same time to a crossing of lanes. The branch to the left was overhung with trees, deeply sunken and dark. Not a ray of moonlight penetrated its recesses; and I took it at a venture. The wretch followed my example in silence; and for some time we crunched together over frozen pools without a word. Then he found his voice, with a chuckle.
‘This is not the way to Mr. Merton’s,’ said he.
‘No?’ said I. ‘It is mine, however.’
‘And therefore mine,’ said he.
Again we fell silent; and we may thus have covered half a mile before the lane, taking a sudden turn, brought us forth again into the moonshine. With his hooded great-coat on his back, his valise in his hand, his black wig adjusted, and footing it on the ice with a sort of sober doggedness of manner, my enemy was changed almost beyond recognition: changed in everything but a certain dry, polemical, pedantic air, that spoke of a sedentary occupation and high stools. I observed, too, that his valise was heavy; and, putting this and that together, hit upon a plan.
‘A seasonable night, sir,’ said I. ‘What do you say to a bit of running? The frost has me by the toes.’
‘With all the pleasure in life,’ says he.
His voice seemed well assured, which pleased me little. However, there was nothing else to try, except violence, for which it would always be too soon. I took to my heels accordingly, he after me; and for some time the slapping of our feet on the hard road might have been heard a mile away. He had started a pace behind me, and he finished in the same position. For all his extra years and the weight of his valise, he had not lost a hair’s breadth. The devil might race him for me–I had enough of it!
And, besides, to run so fast was contrary to my interests. We could not run long without arriving somewhere. At any moment we might turn a corner and find ourselves at the lodge-gate of some Squire Merton, in the midst of a village whose constable was sober, or in the hands of a patrol. There was no help for it–I must finish with him on the spot, as long as it was possible. I looked about me, and the place seemed suitable; never a light, never a house–nothing but stubble-fields, fallows, and a few stunted trees. I stopped and eyed him in the moonlight with an angry stare.
‘Enough of this foolery!’ said I.
He had tamed, and now faced me full, very pale, but with no sign of shrinking.
‘I am quite of your opinion,’ said he. ‘You have tried me at the running; you can try me next at the high jump. It will be all the same. It must end the one way.’
I made my holly whistle about my head.
‘I believe you know what way!’ said I. ‘We are alone, it is night, and I am wholly resolved. Are you not frightened?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘not in the smallest. I do not box, sir; but I am not a coward, as you may have supposed. Perhaps it will simplify our relations if I tell you at the outset that I walk armed.’
Quick as lightning I made a feint at his head; as quickly he gave ground, and at the same time I saw a pistol glitter in his hand.
‘No more of that, Mr. French-Prisoner!’ he said. ‘It will do me no good to have your death at my door.’
‘Faith, nor me either!’ said I; and I lowered my stick and considered the man, not without a twinkle of admiration. ‘You see,’ I said, ‘there is one consideration that you appear to overlook: there are a great many chances that your pistol may miss fire.’
‘I have a pair,’ he returned. ‘Never travel without a brace of barkers.’
‘I make you my compliment,’ said I. ‘You are able to take care of yourself, and that is a good trait. But, my good man! let us look at this matter dispassionately. You are not a coward, and no more am I; we are both men of excellent sense; I have good reason, whatever it may be, to keep my concerns to myself and to walk alone. Now I put it to you pointedly, am I likely to stand it? Am I likely to put up with your continued and–excuse me–highly impudent ingerence into my private affairs?’
‘Another French word,’ says he composedly.
‘Oh! damn your French words!’ cried I. ‘You seem to be a Frenchman yourself!’
‘I have had many opportunities by which I have profited,’ he explained. ‘Few men are better acquainted with the similarities and differences, whether of idiom or accent, of the two languages.’
‘You are a pompous fellow, too!’ said I.
‘Oh, I can make distinctions, sir,’ says he. ‘I can talk with Bedfordshire peasants; and I can express myself becomingly, I hope, in the company of a gentleman of education like yourself.’
‘If you set up to be a gentleman–‘ I began.
‘Pardon me,’ he interrupted: ‘I make no such claim. I only see the nobility and gentry in the way of business. I am quite a plain person.’
‘For the Lord’s sake,’ I exclaimed, ‘set my mind at rest upon one point. In the name of mystery, who and what are you?’
‘I have no cause to be ashamed of my name, sir,’ said he, ‘nor yet my trade. I am Thomas Dudgeon, at your service, clerk to Mr. Daniel Romaine, solicitor of London; High Holborn is our address, sir.’
It was only by the ecstasy of the relief that I knew how horribly I had been frightened. I flung my stick on the road.
‘Romaine?’ I cried. ‘Daniel Romaine? An old hunks with a red face and a big head, and got up like a Quaker? My dear friend, to my arms!’
‘Keep back, I say!’ said Dudgeon weakly.
I would not listen to him. With the end of my own alarm, I felt as if I must infallibly be at the end of all dangers likewise; as if the pistol that he held in one hand were no more to be feared than the valise that he carried with the other, and now put up like a barrier against my advance.
‘Keep back, or I declare I will fire,’ he was crying. ‘Have a care, for God’s sake! My pistol–‘
He might scream as be pleased. Willy nilly, I folded him to my breast, I pressed him there, I kissed his ugly mug as it had never been kissed before and would never be kissed again; and in the doing so knocked his wig awry and his hat off. He bleated in my embrace; so bleats the sheep in the arms of the butcher. The whole thing, on looking back, appears incomparably reckless and absurd; I no better than a madman for offering to advance on Dudgeon, and he no better than a fool for not shooting me while I was about it. But all’s well that ends well; or, as the people in these days kept singing and whistling on the streets:-
‘There’s a sweet little cherub that sits up aloft And looks out for the life of poor Jack.’
‘There!’ said I, releasing him a little, but still keeping my hands on his shoulders, ‘je vous ai bel et bien embrasse–and, as you would say, there is another French word.’ With his wig over one eye, he looked incredibly rueful and put out. ‘Cheer up, Dudgeon; the ordeal is over, you shall be embraced no more. But do, first of all, for God’s-sake, put away your pistol; you handle it as if you were a cockatrice; some time or other, depend upon it, it will certainly go off. Here is your hat. No, let me put it on square, and the wig before it. Never suffer any stress of circumstances to come between you and the duty you owe to yourself. If you have nobody else to dress for, dress for God!
‘Put your wig straight
On your bald pate,
Keep your chin scraped,
And your figure draped.
Can you match me that? The whole duty of man in a quatrain! And remark, I do not set up to be a professional bard; these are the outpourings of a dilettante.’
‘But, my dear sir!’ he exclaimed.
‘But, my dear sir!’ I echoed, ‘I will allow no man to interrupt the flow of my ideas. Give me your opinion on my quatrain, or I vow we shall have a quarrel of it.’
‘Certainly you are quite an original,’ he said.
‘Quite,’ said I; ‘and I believe I have my counterpart before me.’
‘Well, for a choice,’ says he, smiling, ‘and whether for sense or poetry, give me
‘”Worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow: The rest is all but leather and prunello.”‘
‘Oh, but that’s not fair–that’s Pope! It’s not original, Dudgeon. Understand me,’ said I, wringing his breast-button, ‘the first duty of all poetry is to be mine, sir–mine. Inspiration now swells in my bosom, because–to tell you the plain truth, and descend a little in style–I am devilish relieved at the turn things have taken. So, I dare say, are you yourself, Dudgeon, if you would only allow it. And a propos, let me ask you a home question. Between friends, have you ever fired that pistol?’
‘Why, yes, sir,’ he replied. ‘Twice–at hedgesparrows.’
‘And you would have fired at me, you bloody-minded man?’ I cried.
‘If you go to that, you seemed mighty reckless with your stick,’ said Dudgeon.
‘Did I indeed? Well, well, ’tis all past history; ancient as King Pharamond–which is another French word, if you cared to accumulate more evidence,’ says I. ‘But happily we are now the best of friends, and have all our interests in common.’
‘You go a little too fast, if you’ll excuse me, Mr. -: I do not know your name, that I am aware,’ said Dudgeon.
‘No, to be sure!’ said I. ‘Never heard of it!’
‘A word of explanation–‘ he began.
‘No, Dudgeon!’ I interrupted. ‘Be practical; I know what you want, and the name of it is supper. Rien ne creuse comme l’emotion. I am hungry myself, and yet I am more accustomed to warlike palpitations than you, who are but a hunter of hedgesparrows. Let me look at your face critically: your bill of fare is three slices of cold rare roast beef, a Welsh rabbit, a pot of stout, and a glass or two of sound tawny port, old in bottle–the right milk of Englishmen.’ Methought there seemed a brightening in his eye and a melting about his mouth at this enumeration.
‘The night is young,’ I continued; ‘not much past eleven, for a wager. Where can we find a good inn? And remark that I say GOOD, for the port must be up to the occasion–not a headache in a pipe of it.’
‘Really, sir,’ he said, smiling a little, ‘you have a way of carrying things–‘
‘Will nothing make you stick to the subject?’ I cried; ‘you have the most irrelevant mind! How do you expect to rise in your profession? The inn?’
‘Well, I will say you are a facetious gentleman!’ said he. ‘You must have your way, I see. We are not three miles from Bedford by this very road.’
‘Done!’ cried I. ‘Bedford be it!’
I tucked his arm under mine, possessed myself of the valise, and walked him off unresisting. Presently we came to an open piece of country lying a thought downhill. The road was smooth and free of ice, the moonshine thin and bright over the meadows and the leafless trees. I was now honestly done with the purgatory of the covered cart; I was close to my great-uncle’s; I had no more fear of Mr. Dudgeon; which were all grounds enough for jollity. And I was aware, besides, of us two as of a pair of tiny and solitary dolls under the vast frosty cupola of the midnight; the rooms decked, the moon burnished, the least of the stars lighted, the floor swept and waxed, and nothing wanting but for the band to strike up and the dancing to begin. In the exhilaration of my heart I took the music on myself –
‘Merrily danced the Quaker’s wife,
And merrily danced the Quaker.’
I broke into that animated and appropriate air, clapped my arm about Dudgeon’s waist, and away down the hill at a dancing step! He hung back a little at the start, but the impulse of the tune, the night, and my example, were not to be resisted. A man made of putty must have danced, and even Dudgeon showed himself to be a human being. Higher and higher were the capers that we cut; the moon repeated in shadow our antic footsteps and gestures; and it came over my mind of a sudden–really like balm–what appearance of man I was dancing with, what a long bilious countenance he had shown under his shaven pate, and what a world of trouble the rascal had given me in the immediate past.
Presently we began to see the lights of Bedford. My Puritanic companion stopped and disengaged himself.
‘This is a trifle infra dig., sir, is it not?’ said he. ‘A party might suppose we had been drinking.’
‘And so you shall be, Dudgeon,’ said I. ‘You shall not only be drinking, you old hypocrite, but you shall be drunk–dead drunk, sir–and the boots shall put you to bed! We’ll warn him when we go in. Never neglect a precaution; never put off till to-morrow what you can do to-day!’
But he had no more frivolity to complain of. We finished our stage and came to the inn-door with decorum, to find the house still alight and in a bustle with many late arrivals; to give our orders with a prompt severity which ensured obedience, and to be served soon after at a side-table, close to the fire and in a blaze of candle-light, with such a meal as I had been dreaming of for days past. For days, you are to remember, I had been skulking in the covered cart, a prey to cold, hunger, and an accumulation of discomforts that might have daunted the most brave; and the white table napery, the bright crystal, the reverberation of the fire, the red curtains, the Turkey carpet, the portraits on the coffee- room wall, the placid faces of the two or three late guests who were silently prolonging the pleasures of digestion, and (last, but not by any means least) a glass of an excellent light dry port, put me in a humour only to be described as heavenly. The thought of the Colonel, of how he would have enjoyed this snug room and roaring fire, and of his cold grave in the wood by Market Bosworth, lingered on my palate, amari aliquid, like an after-taste, but was not able–I say it with shame–entirely to dispel my self- complacency. After all, in this world every dog hangs by its own tail. I was a free adventurer, who had just brought to a successful end–or, at least, within view of it–an adventure very difficult and alarming; and I looked across at Mr. Dudgeon, as the port rose to his cheeks, and a smile, that was semi-confidential and a trifle foolish, began to play upon his leathery features, not only with composure, but with a suspicion of kindness. The rascal had been brave, a quality for which I would value the devil; and if he had been pertinacious in the beginning, he had more than made up for it before the end.
‘And now, Dudgeon, to explain,’ I began. ‘I know your master, he knows me, and he knows and approves of my errand. So much I may tell you, that I am on my way to Amersham Place.’
‘Oho!’ quoth Dudgeon, ‘I begin to see.’
‘I am heartily glad of it,’ said I, passing the bottle, ‘because that is about all I can tell you. You must take my word for the remainder. Either believe me or don’t. If you don’t, let’s take a chaise; you can carry me to-morrow to High Holborn, and confront me with Mr. Romaine; the result of which will be to set your mind at rest–and to make the holiest disorder in your master’s plans. If I judge you aright (for I find you a shrewd fellow), this will not be at all to your mind. You know what a subordinate gets by officiousness; if I can trust my memory, old Romaine has not at all the face that I should care to see in anger; and I venture to predict surprising results upon your weekly salary–if you are paid by the week, that is. In short, let me go free, and ’tis an end of the matter; take me to London, and ’tis only a beginning–and, by my opinion, a beginning of troubles. You can take your choice.’
‘And that is soon taken,’ said he. ‘Go to Amersham tomorrow, or go to the devil if you prefer–I wash my hands of you and the whole transaction. No, you don’t find me putting my head in between Romaine and a client! A good man of business, sir, but hard as millstone grit. I might get the sack, and I shouldn’t wonder! But, it’s a pity, too,’ he added, and sighed, shook his head, and took his glass off sadly.
‘That reminds me,’ said I. ‘I have a great curiosity, and you can satisfy it. Why were you so forward to meddle with poor Mr. Dubois? Why did you transfer your attentions to me? And generally, what induced you to make yourself such a nuisance?’
He blushed deeply.
‘Why, sir,’ says he, ‘there is such a thing as patriotism, I hope.’
CHAPTER XVI–THE HOME-COMING OF MR. ROWLEY’S VISCOUNT
By eight the next morning Dudgeon and I had made our parting. By that time we had grown to be extremely familiar; and I would very willingly have kept him by me, and even carried him to Amersham Place. But it appeared he was due at the public-house where we had met, on some affairs of my great-uncle the Count, who had an outlying estate in that part of the shire. If Dudgeon had had his way the night before, I should have been arrested on my uncle’s land and by my uncle’s agent, a culmination of ill-luck.
A little after noon I started, in a hired chaise, by way of Dunstable. The mere mention of the name Amersham Place made every one supple and smiling. It was plainly a great house, and my uncle lived there in style. The fame of it rose as we approached, like a chain of mountains; at Bedford they touched their caps, but in Dunstable they crawled upon their bellies. I thought the landlady would have kissed me; such a flutter of cordiality, such smiles, such affectionate attentions were called forth, and the good lady bustled on my service in such a pother of ringlets and with such a jingling of keys. ‘You’re probably expected, sir, at the Place? I do trust you may ‘ave better accounts of his lordship’s ‘elth, sir. We understood that his lordship, Mosha de Carwell, was main bad. Ha, sir, we shall all feel his loss, poor, dear, noble gentleman; and I’m sure nobody more polite! They do say, sir, his wealth is enormous, and before the Revolution, quite a prince in his own country! But I beg your pardon, sir; ‘ow I do run on, to be sure; and doubtless all beknown to you already! For you do resemble the family, sir. I should have known you anywheres by the likeness to the dear viscount. Ha, poor gentleman, he must ‘ave a ‘eavy ‘eart these days.’
In the same place I saw out of the inn-windows a man-servant passing in the livery of my house, which you are to think I had never before seen worn, or not that I could remember. I had often enough, indeed, pictured myself advanced to be a Marshal, a Duke of the Empire, a Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour, and some other kickshaws of the kind, with a perfect rout of flunkeys correctly dressed in my own colours. But it is one thing to imagine, and another to see; it would be one thing to have these liveries in a house of my own in Paris–it was quite another to find them flaunting in the heart of hostile England; and I fear I should have made a fool of myself, if the man had not been on the other side of the street, and I at a one-pane window. There was something illusory in this transplantation of the wealth and honours of a family, a thing by its nature so deeply rooted in the soil; something ghostly in this sense of home-coming so far from home.
From Dunstable I rolled away into a crescendo of similar impressions. There are certainly few things to be compared with these castles, or rather country seats, of the English nobility and gentry; nor anything at all to equal the servility of the population that dwells in their neighbourhood. Though I was but driving in a hired chaise, word of my destination seemed to have gone abroad, and the women curtseyed and the men louted to me by the wayside. As I came near, I began to appreciate the roots of this widespread respect. The look of my uncle’s park wall, even from the outside, had something of a princely character; and when I came in view of the house itself, a sort of madness of vicarious vain-glory struck me dumb and kept me staring. It was about the size of the Tuileries. It faced due north; and the last rays of the sun, that was setting like a red-hot shot amidst a tumultuous gathering of snow clouds, were reflected on the endless rows of windows. A portico of Doric columns adorned the front, and would have done honour to a temple. The servant who received me at the door was civil to a fault–I had almost said, to offence; and the hall to which he admitted me through a pair of glass doors was warmed and already partly lighted by a liberal chimney heaped with the roots of beeches.
‘Vicomte Anne de St. Yves,’ said I, in answer to the man’s question; whereupon he bowed before me lower still, and stepping upon one side introduced me to the truly awful presence of the major-domo. I have seen many dignitaries in my time, but none who quite equalled this eminent being; who was good enough to answer to the unassuming name of Dawson. From him I learned that my uncle was extremely low, a doctor in close attendance, Mr. Romaine expected at any moment, and that my cousin, the Vicomte de St. Yves, had been sent for the same morning.
‘It was a sudden seizure, then?’ I asked.
Well, he would scarcely go as far as that. It was a decline, a fading away, sir; but he was certainly took bad the day before, had sent for Mr. Romaine, and the major-domo had taken it on himself a little later to send word to the Viscount. ‘It seemed to me, my lord,’ said he, ‘as if this was a time when all the fambly should be called together.’
I approved him with my lips, but not in my heart. Dawson was plainly in the interests of my cousin.
‘And when can I expect to see my great-uncle, the Count?’ said I.
In the evening, I was told; in the meantime he would show me to my room, which had been long prepared for me, and I should be expected to dine in about an hour with the doctor, if my lordship had no objections.
My lordship had not the faintest.
‘At the same time,’ I said, ‘I have had an accident: I have unhappily lost my baggage, and am here in what I stand in. I don’t know if the doctor be a formalist, but it is quite impossible I should appear at table as I ought.’
He begged me to be under no anxiety. ‘We have been long expecting you,’ said he. ‘All is ready.’
Such I found to be the truth. A great room had been prepared for me; through the mullioned windows the last flicker of the winter sunset interchanged with the reverberation of a royal fire; the bed was open, a suit of evening clothes was airing before the blaze, and from the far corner a boy came forward with deprecatory smiles. The dream in which I had been moving seemed to have reached its pitch. I might have quitted this house and room only the night before; it was my own place that I had come to; and for the first time in my life I understood the force of the words home and welcome.
‘This will be all as you would want, sir?’ said Mr. Dawson. ‘This ‘ere boy, Rowley, we place entirely at your disposition. ‘E’s not exactly a trained vallet, but Mossho Powl, the Viscount’s gentleman, ‘ave give him the benefick of a few lessons, and it is ‘oped that he may give sitisfection. Hanythink that you may require, if you will be so good as to mention the same to Rowley, I will make it my business myself, sir, to see you sitisfied.’
So saying, the eminent and already detested Mr. Dawson took his departure, and I was left alone with Rowley. A man who may be said to have wakened to consciousness in the prison of the Abbaye, among those ever graceful and ever tragic figures of the brave and fair, awaiting the hour of the guillotine and denuded of every comfort, I had never known the luxuries or the amenities of my rank in life. To be attended on by servants I had only been accustomed to in inns. My toilet had long been military, to a moment, at the note of a bugle, too often at a ditch-side. And it need not be wondered at if I looked on my new valet with a certain diffidence. But I remembered that if he was my first experience of a valet, I was his first trial as a master. Cheered by which consideration, I demanded my bath in a style of good assurance. There was a bathroom contiguous; in an incredibly short space of time the hot water was ready; and soon after, arrayed in a shawl dressing-gown, and in a luxury of contentment and comfort, I was reclined in an easy-chair before the mirror, while Rowley, with a mixture of pride and anxiety which I could well understand, laid out his razors.
‘Hey, Rowley?’ I asked, not quite resigned to go under fire with such an inexperienced commander. ‘It’s all right, is it? You feel pretty sure of your weapons?’
‘Yes, my lord,’ he replied. ‘It’s all right, I assure your lordship.’
‘I beg your pardon, Mr. Rowley, ‘but for the sake of shortness, would you mind not belording me in private?’ said I. ‘It will do very well if you call me Mr. Anne. It is the way of my country, as I dare say you know.’
Mr. Rowley looked blank.
‘But you’re just as much a Viscount as Mr. Powl’s, are you not?’ he said.
‘As Mr. Powl’s Viscount?’ said I, laughing. ‘Oh, keep your mind easy, Mr. Rowley’s is every bit as good. Only, you see, as I am of the younger line, I bear my Christian name along with the title. Alain is the Viscount; I am the Viscount Anne. And in giving me the name of Mr. Anne, I assure you you will be quite regular.’
‘Yes, Mr. Anne,’ said the docile youth. ‘But about the shaving, sir, you need be under no alarm. Mr. Powl says I ‘ave excellent dispositions.’
‘Mr. Powl?’ said I. ‘That doesn’t seem to me very like a French name.’
‘No, sir, indeed, my lord,’ said he, with a burst of confidence. ‘No, indeed, Mr. Anne, and it do not surely. I should say now, it was more like Mr. Pole.’
‘And Mr. Powl is the Viscount’s man?’
‘Yes, Mr. Anne,’ said he. ‘He ‘ave a hard billet, he do. The Viscount is a very particular gentleman. I don’t think as you’ll be, Mr. Anne?’ he added, with a confidential smile in the mirror.
He was about sixteen, well set up, with a pleasant, merry, freckled face, and a pair of dancing eyes. There was an air at once deprecatory and insinuating about the rascal that I thought I recognised. There came to me from my own boyhood memories of certain passionate admirations long passed away, and the objects of them long ago discredited or dead. I remembered how anxious I had been to serve those fleeting heroes, how readily I told myself I would have died for THEM, how much greater and handsomer than life they had appeared. And looking in the mirror, it seemed to me that I read the face of Rowley, like an echo or a ghost, by the light of my own youth. I have always contended (somewhat against the opinion of my friends) that I am first of all an economist; and the last thing that I would care to throw away is that very valuable piece of property–a boy’s hero-worship.
‘Why,’ said I, ‘you shave like an angel, Mr. Rowley!’
‘Thank you, my lord,’ says he. ‘Mr. Powl had no fear of me. You may be sure, sir, I should never ‘ave had this berth if I ‘adn’t ‘ave been up to Dick. We been expecting of you this month back. My eye! I never see such preparations. Every day the fires has been kep’ up, the bed made, and all! As soon as it was known you were coming, sir, I got the appointment; and I’ve been up and down since then like a Jack-in-the-box. A wheel couldn’t sound in the avenue but what I was at the window! I’ve had a many disappointments; but to-night, as soon as you stepped out of the shay, I knew it was my–it was you. Oh, you had been expected! Why, when I go down to supper, I’ll be the ‘ero of the servants’ ‘all: the ‘ole of the staff is that curious!’
‘Well,’ said I, ‘I hope you may be able to give a fair account of me–sober, steady, industrious, good-tempered, and with a first- rate character from my last place?’
He laughed an embarrassed laugh. ‘Your hair curls beautiful,’ he said, by way of changing the subject. ‘The Viscount’s the boy for curls, though; and the richness of it is, Mr. Powl tells me his don’t curl no more than that much twine–by nature. Gettin’ old, the Viscount is. He ‘AVE gone the pace, ‘aven’t ‘e, sir?’
‘The fact is,’ said I, ‘that I know very little about him. Our family has been much divided, and I have been a soldier from a child.’
‘A soldier, Mr. Anne, sir?’ cried Rowley, with a sudden feverish animation. ‘Was you ever wounded?’
It is contrary to my principles to discourage admiration for myself; and, slipping back the shoulder of the dressing-gown, I silently exhibited the scar which I had received in Edinburgh Castle. He looked at it with awe.
‘Ah, well!’ he continued, ‘there’s where the difference comes in! It’s in the training. The other Viscount have been horse-racing, and dicing, and carrying on all his life. All right enough, no doubt; but what I do say is, that it don’t lead to nothink. Whereas–‘
‘Whereas Mr. Rowley’s?’ I put in.
‘My Viscount?’ said he. ‘Well, sir, I DID say it; and now that I’ve seen you, I say it again!’
I could not refrain from smiling at this outburst, and the rascal caught me in the mirror and smiled to me again.
‘I’d say it again, Mr. Hanne,’ he said. ‘I know which side my bread’s buttered. I know when a gen’leman’s a gen’leman. Mr. Powl can go to Putney with his one! Beg your pardon, Mr. Anne, for being so familiar,’ said he, blushing suddenly scarlet. ‘I was especially warned against it by Mr. Powl.’
‘Discipline before all,’ said I. ‘Follow your front-rank man.
With that, we began to turn our attention to the clothes. I was amazed to find them fit so well: not a la diable, in the haphazard manner of a soldier’s uniform or a ready-made suit; but with nicety, as a trained artist might rejoice to make them for a favourite subject.
”Tis extraordinary,’ cried I: ‘these things fit me perfectly.’
‘Indeed, Mr. Anne, you two be very much of a shape,’ said Rowley.
‘Who? What two?’ said I.
‘The Viscount,’ he said.
‘Damnation! Have I the man’s clothes on me, too?’ cried I.
But Rowley hastened to reassure me. On the first word of my coming, the Count had put the matter of my wardrobe in the hands of his own and my cousin’s tailors; and on the rumour of our resemblance, my clothes had been made to Alain’s measure.
‘But they were all made for you express, Mr. Anne. You may be certain the Count would never do nothing by ‘alf: fires kep’ burning; the finest of clothes ordered, I’m sure, and a body- servant being trained a-purpose.’
‘Well,’ said I, ‘it’s a good fire, and a good set-out of clothes; and what a valet, Mr. Rowley! And there’s one thing to be said for my cousin–I mean for Mr. Powl’s Viscount–he has a very fair figure.’
‘Oh, don’t you be took in, Mr. Anne,’ quoth the faithless Rowley: ‘he has to be hyked into a pair of stays to get them things on!’
‘Come, come, Mr. Rowley,’ said I, ‘this is telling tales out of school! Do not you be deceived. The greatest men of antiquity, including Caesar and Hannibal and Pope Joan, may have been very glad, at my time of life or Alain’s, to follow his example. ‘Tis a misfortune common to all; and really,’ said I, bowing to myself before the mirror like one who should dance the minuet, ‘when the result is so successful as this, who would do anything but applaud?’
My toilet concluded, I marched on to fresh surprises. My chamber, my new valet and my new clothes had been beyond hope: the dinner, the soup, the whole bill of fare was a revelation of the powers there are in man. I had not supposed it lay in the genius of any cook to create, out of common beef and mutton, things so different and dainty. The wine was of a piece, the doctor a most agreeable companion; nor could I help reflecting on the prospect that all this wealth, comfort and handsome profusion might still very possibly become mine. Here were a change indeed, from the common soldier and the camp kettle, the prisoner and his prison rations, the fugitive and the horrors of the covered cart!
CHAPTER XVII–THE DESPATCH-BOX
The doctor had scarce finished his meal before he hastened with an apology to attend upon his patient; and almost immediately after I was myself summoned and ushered up the great staircase and along interminable corridors to the bedside of my great-uncle the Count. You are to think that up to the present moment I had not set eyes on this formidable personage, only on the evidences of his wealth and kindness. You are to think besides that I had heard him miscalled and abused from my earliest childhood up. The first of the emigres could never expect a good word in the society in which my father moved. Even yet the reports I received were of a doubtful nature; even Romaine had drawn of him no very amiable portrait; and as I was ushered into the room, it was a critical eye that I cast on my great-uncle. He lay propped on pillows in a little cot no greater than a camp-bed, not visibly breathing. He was about eighty years of age, and looked it; not that his face was much lined, but all the blood and colour seemed to have faded from his body, and even his eyes, which last he kept usually closed as though the light distressed him. There was an unspeakable degree of slyness in his expression, which kept me ill at ease; he seemed to lie there with his arms folded, like a spider waiting for prey. His speech was very deliberate and courteous, but scarce louder than a sigh.
‘I bid you welcome, Monsieur le Vicomte Anne,’ said he, looking at me hard with his pale eyes, but not moving on his pillows. ‘I have sent for you, and I thank you for the obliging expedition you have shown. It is my misfortune that I cannot rise to receive you. I trust you have been reasonably well entertained?’
‘Monsieur mon oncle,’ I said, bowing very low, ‘I am come at the summons of the head of my family.’
‘It is well,’ he said. ‘Be seated. I should be glad to hear some news–if that can be called news that is already twenty years old– of how I have the pleasure to see you here.’
By the coldness of his address, not more than by the nature of the times that he bade me recall, I was plunged in melancholy. I felt myself surrounded as with deserts of friendlessness, and the delight of my welcome was turned to ashes in my mouth.
‘That is soon told, monseigneur,’ said I. ‘I understand that I need tell you nothing of the end of my unhappy parents? It is only the story of the lost dog.’
‘You are right. I am sufficiently informed of that deplorable affair; it is painful to me. My nephew, your father, was a man who would not be advised,’ said he. ‘Tell me, if you please, simply of yourself.’
‘I am afraid I must run the risk of harrowing your sensibility in the beginning,’ said I, with a bitter smile, ‘because my story begins at the foot of the guillotine. When the list came out that night, and her name was there, I was already old enough, not in years but in sad experience, to understand the extent of my misfortune. She–‘ I paused. ‘Enough that she arranged with a friend, Madame de Chasserades, that she should take charge of me, and by the favour of our jailers I was suffered to remain in the shelter of the Abbaye. That was my only refuge; there was no corner of France that I could rest the sole of my foot upon except the prison. Monsieur le Comte, you are as well aware as I can be what kind of a life that was, and how swiftly death smote in that society. I did not wait long before the name of Madame de Chasserades succeeded to that of my mother on the list. She passed me on to Madame de Noytot; she, in her turn, to Mademoiselle de Braye; and there were others. I was the one thing permanent; they were all transient as clouds; a day or two of their care, and then came the last farewell and–somewhere far off in that roaring Paris that surrounded us–the bloody scene. I was the cherished one, the last comfort, of these dying women. I have been in pitched fights, my lord, and I never knew such courage. It was all done smiling, in the tone of good society; belle maman was the name I was taught to give to each; and for a day or two the new “pretty mamma” would make much of me, show me off, teach me the minuet, and to say my prayers; and then, with a tender embrace, would go the way of her predecessors, smiling. There were some that wept too. There was a childhood! All the time Monsieur de Culemberg kept his eye on me, and would have had me out of the Abbaye and in his own protection, but my “pretty mammas” one after another resisted the idea. Where could I be safer? they argued; and what was to become of them without the darling of the prison? Well, it was soon shown how safe I was! The dreadful day of the massacre came; the prison was overrun; none paid attention to me, not even the last of my “pretty mammas,” for she had met another fate. I was wandering distracted, when I was found by some one in the interests of Monsieur de Culemberg. I understand he was sent on purpose; I believe, in order to reach the interior of the prison, he had set his hand to nameless barbarities: such was the price paid for my worthless, whimpering little life! He gave me his hand; it was wet, and mine was reddened; he led me unresisting. I remember but the one circumstance of my flight–it was my last view of my last pretty mamma. Shall I describe it to you?’ I asked the Count, with a sudden fierceness.
‘Avoid unpleasant details,’ observed my great-uncle gently.
At these words a sudden peace fell upon me. I had been angry with the man before; I had not sought to spare him; and now, in a moment, I saw that there was nothing to spare. Whether from natural heartlessness or extreme old age, the soul was not at home; and my benefactor, who had kept the fire lit in my room for a month past–my only relative except Alain, whom I knew already to be a hired spy–had trodden out the last sparks of hope and interest.
‘Certainly,’ said I; ‘and, indeed, the day for them is nearly over. I was taken to Monsieur de Culemberg’s,–I presume, sir, that you know the Abbe de Culemberg?’
He indicated assent without opening his eyes.
‘He was a very brave and a very learned man–‘
‘And a very holy one,’ said my uncle civilly.
‘And a very holy one, as you observe,’ I continued. ‘He did an infinity of good, and through all the Terror kept himself from the guillotine. He brought me up, and gave me such education as I have. It was in his house in the country at Dammarie, near Melun, that I made the acquaintance of your agent, Mr. Vicary, who lay there in hiding, only to fall a victim at the last to a gang of chauffeurs.’
‘That poor Mr. Vicary!’ observed my uncle. ‘He had been many times in my interests to France, and this was his first failure. Quel charmant homme, n’est-ce pas?’
‘Infinitely so,’ said I. ‘But I would not willingly detain you any further with a story, the details of which it must naturally be more or less unpleasant for you to hear. Suffice it that, by M. de Culemberg’s own advice, I said farewell at eighteen to that kind preceptor and his books, and entered the service of France; and have since then carried arms in such a manner as not to disgrace my family.’
‘You narrate well; vous aves la voix chaude,’ said my uncle, turning on his pillows as if to study me. ‘I have a very good account of you by Monsieur de Mauseant, whom you helped in Spain. And you had some education from the Abbe de Culemberg, a man of a good house? Yes, you will do very well. You have a good manner and a handsome person, which hurts nothing. We are all handsome in the family; even I myself, I have had my successes, the memories of which still charm me. It is my intention, my nephew, to make of you my heir. I am not very well content with my other nephew, Monsieur le Vicomte: he has not been respectful, which is the flattery due to age. And there are other matters.’
I was half tempted to throw back in his face that inheritance so coldly offered. At the same time I had to consider that he was an old man, and, after all, my relation; and that I was a poor one, in considerable straits, with a hope at heart which that inheritance might yet enable me to realise. Nor could I forget that, however icy his manners, he had behaved to me from the first with the extreme of liberality and–I was about to write, kindness, but the word, in that connection, would not come. I really owed the man some measure of gratitude, which it would be an ill manner to repay if I were to insult him on his deathbed.
‘Your will, monsieur, must ever be my rule,’ said I, bowing.
‘You have wit, monsieur mon neveu,’ said he, ‘the best wit–the wit of silence. Many might have deafened me with their gratitude. Gratitude!’ he repeated, with a peculiar intonation, and lay and smiled to himself. ‘But to approach what is more important. As a prisoner of war, will it be possible for you to be served heir to English estates? I have no idea: long as I have dwelt in England, I have never studied what they call their laws. On the other hand, how if Romaine should come too late? I have two pieces of business to be transacted–to die, and to make my will; and, however desirous I may be to serve you, I cannot postpone the first in favour of the second beyond a very few hours.’
‘Well, sir, I must then contrive to be doing as I did before,’ said I.
‘Not so,’ said the Count. ‘I have an alternative. I have just drawn my balance at my banker’s, a considerable sum, and I am now to place it in your hands. It will be so much for you and so much less–‘ he paused, and smiled with an air of malignity that surprised me. ‘But it is necessary it should be done before witnesses. Monsieur le Vicomte is of a particular disposition, and an unwitnessed donation may very easily be twisted into a theft.’
He touched a bell, which was answered by a man having the appearance of a confidential valet. To him he gave a key.
‘Bring me the despatch-box that came yesterday, La Ferriere,’ said he. ‘You will at the same time present my compliments to Dr. Hunter and M. l’Abbe, and request them to step for a few moments to my room.’
The despatch-box proved to be rather a bulky piece of baggage, covered with Russia leather. Before the doctor and an excellent old smiling priest it was passed over into my hands with a very clear statement of the disposer’s wishes; immediately after which, though the witnesses remained behind to draw up and sign a joint note of the transaction, Monsieur de Keroual dismissed me to my own room, La Ferriere following with the invaluable box.
At my chamber door I took it from him with thanks, and entered alone. Everything had been already disposed for the night, the curtains drawn and the fire trimmed; and Rowley was still busy with my bedclothes. He turned round as I entered with a look of welcome that did my heart good. Indeed, I had never a much greater need of human sympathy, however trivial, than at that moment when I held a fortune in my arms. In my uncle’s room I had breathed the very atmosphere of disenchantment. He had gorged my pockets; he had starved every dignified or affectionate sentiment of a man. I had received so chilling an impression of age and experience that the mere look of youth drew me to confide in Rowley: he was only a